Staying True to Your Mission While Scaling a Fast-Growing Company with Arad Levertov at Sunbit

In this episode of Growth Think Tank, Gene Hammett sits down with Arad Levertov, CEO and Co-Founder of Sunbit, an Inc. 5000 company ranked No. 1,374 in 2025, to discuss how leaders can stay true to their mission while scaling a fast-growing organization. Arad shares how Sunbit was founded with a mission to reduce financial waste and friction by providing personalized financial solutions that benefit both consumers and merchants. He reflects on the frustrating credit card application experience that inspired the company's creation and explains how Sunbit has expanded across industries, including auto repair, dental care, and eyewear, while facilitating millions of customer financing transactions. The conversation also explores how mission-driven leadership is reinforced through communication, company values, and performance evaluations, as well as the important lessons learned from hiring too quickly during rapid growth. This episode offers valuable insights for leaders seeking to scale their companies without losing sight of their purpose. Episode Highlights & Time Stamps 1:22 Staying True While Scaling 4:15 Sunbit's Customer Promise 5:10 The Costco Moment 8:12 Who Sunbit Serves 11:45 Growth Pressure And Fees 14:35 Spreading The Mission 16:32 Living The Core Values 18:06 Leading By Customer Feel 20:10 Hiring Mistakes And Focus Key Takeaways ✅ Why mission-driven companies outperform when growth creates pressure. ✅ The personal Costco experience that inspired Sunbit's founding. ✅ How eliminating financial waste became Sunbit's core mission. ✅ Why Sunbit refuses to charge late fees or origination fees. ✅ The importance of consistent communication as companies scale. ✅ How company values are reinforced through hiring, performance reviews, and daily decisions. ✅ Why "Serve Others Before Self" is Sunbit's foundational value. ✅ How leaders can avoid becoming disconnected from customers as organizations grow. ✅ Lessons learned from hiring too quickly during periods of rapid expansion. ✅ Why maintaining focus requires saying "no" more often than saying "yes." This episode is a must-listen for CEOs and executives looking to lead innovation with purpose, scale responsibly with AI, and build cultures where people feel empowered to think boldly and grow. Connect With Today's Guest Arad Levertov is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sunbit, a financial technology company focused on eliminating financial waste and helping consumers spend and save with confidence through personalized financial solutions. Under his leadership, Sunbit has expanded to more than 40,000 merchant locations and served millions of customers across the United States. How to Connect with Arad Levertov: LinkedIn: Arad Levertov (LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/in/arad-levertov-37815b4 Company Website: Sunbit https://sunbit.com/ – to learn more about his work and platform Get In Touch with Arad: https://sunbit.com/contact-us/ Resources & Next Steps Ready to take your leadership energy to the next level? Explore free training and resources at https://training.coreelevation.com/ to help you identify energy leaks, strengthen your leadership presence, and elevate your team's performance. 🌐 Explore More: https://training.coreelevation.com/ 🎧 Listen to the Full Episode: Growth Think Tank Podcast

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Don't focus on your ego. Our goal together is to serve the others. Like first of all, to serve other employees, but definitely serve the customers and what we call the merchants. And one of the things that I'm super proud of Sunbit is that when new employee are coming,

• 0:19Speaker 00

  the door is open for them. Nobody hides for them like information. Nobody tried to compete with them. It's not that you just joined my team. I want you to be at least as good as I am. Because together, we can serve more customers. We can eliminate more financial ways and we can help more people. We live it, we do it. We do it when there is a dilemma. When customers call to the call center, first, we answer, we listen, and we see how we can we serve the customer, how we can we do better, all the way from the sales level to the operation, to the call center, to the legal, every department. We leave this value all the time.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about how to stay true to your mission even when your company is growing fast. When you have a mission in your business that is a driving force, it is something that's hard to even describe, how powerful it can be. Now, a lot of people would say, "Oh, we're, our mission's to make money, or our mission's to do X, Y, or Z."

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Unless you really are connecting it to your communities, the people, the audience.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Whoever it is you serve and really understand the value of that. You don't really have a strong mission that can pull you through the tough times of your business. But it's even harder to stay true to your mission when you get the pressure of growth. Today, we have the founder of Sunbit. Sunbit is a fintech company. They are around to eliminate financial waste. He will tell you more about it inside of this, but A-Rod Lever Tav is just a really remarkable leader and sharing his story about connecting and finding his mission. But also, how does it flow through the organization? What keeps it in check?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  All of those things are discovered inside today's interview with A-Rod. My name is Gene Hammond. I'm a founder coach. We do leadership development within companies that are going through a bit of chaos. And many times those founders are in a founder-dependent situation. That means you're the center of the business. You're the driving force. You're making most of the decisions, even though your team should be or could be making many of them. You are the chief firefighter. I could go on and on and on because I've been doing this for over 16 years. And we help founder-dependent businesses create founder-led and move into what's called team-driven. These may not be terms that you're familiar with, but you've definitely experienced the founder dependency thing.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  If you know what I'm talking about, somewhere around 20 to 40 employees. But what really is the goal for many businesses is for the founder not to be the central driving force, but to be able to create a team of leaders, create a team that is aligned and create something that's team-driven. All that is what we do. If you want to find out more about what we do, let me just go ahead and pitch. This is a free book that you can find. Get Founder Freedom. You can download it for free. GetFounderFreedom.com. This has the eight freedoms to help you get out of that cycle. So go do it. Today. Now here's the interview with A-Rod.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Hello, how are you guys doing, A-Rod?

• 4:08Speaker 00

  I'm good. Great to be here. Thanks for the time.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Thank you for being on the show. Before we dive in, I'd love for you to tell us about your company, Sunbit.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Again, thank great to be here. Thanks for the time. So Sunbit is a financial services company, financial technology company that has a pretty clear mission to eliminate financial waste and friction. So people can spend and save with confidence while helping merchant to grow substantially. We basically help every American to maximize their hard earned money by replacing the confusing the traditional financial services with a tailored, personalized, smart solution that built around the customer and is personalized for every customer. Whether it's fixing your car, going to the dentist, or just paying for your credit card.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  We at Sunbit will build the best solution for every customer.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's a, that's a big promise to make. What is the, the mission behind this? Is there some kind of story that you can like bring us into of why you started this business?

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, you know, I believe that every, every business starts with, with, with a story, with a mission. For me, it actually literally happened to me. I was working for a financial services company that was providing loans to customer who did not qualify for credit cards.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  It was good for me. I learned a lot. I became the CEO of the company managing about 800 people and really growing. What I didn't know that I actually myself was one of these customers. Until I went one day to Costco. It was, I think back in 2010 or 2011. And I tried to apply for a credit card, the Costco credit card. So you can imagine me. With the cashier, at a cashier with like about $300 worth of groceries, decided that this is my time to get a credit card. Me with my three of my kids, starting to set the application. The cashier asked me all these personalized weird questions.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  How much do I make? Where do I live? What was my social security number? And after about 10 minutes of really clunky process and conversation, the cashier looked at me with a sad face, saying that unfortunately she cannot help me because she doesn't know what happened, but I have to find a way to pay for my groceries. And then I basically connected the two points. On my day to day, I was spending a lot of money on marketing to get customer to come and apply for loans. Then after it, I give them the loan and they go to buy at places like Costco. But at Costco, the process was so bad, so many people got declined.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  So I thought that if we can connect the dots, if we can build

• 7:05Speaker 00

  a product that will be fast and seamless in terms of experience, using a lot of data and AI that is able to approve a lot of customers while maintaining low fees and low interest, we can help the customer get what they need now. The merchant, which in that case was Costco, but it can be car dealership or other stuff, to get the sale and everybody will be happy. And with that, we can also save all the money that my previous company was spending on marketing to acquire customer and basically I call it split it with the customer. The customer gets better rate and we build a good company.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  And with that, we came to the mission of what we call it the limited financial waste. Passing the savings back to the people, supporting the merchants as well.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Great story. I mean, so many businesses are created because of a need that we have in our own personal self, the founder. I know my business, from a coaching standpoint, that's the reason it's it's been created. And this is a great story. Let's fast forward to today. Like, give us a snapshot of of kind of, who is the ideal customer for for you today?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  So that's a great question. Our approach to market was really what we call B to B to C, right? We work with merchants to help them support the customers. Basically, the customer can get the service now and pay over time, what we call buy now, pay later. And once the customer completes the transaction, the end customer becomes our customer. And then we can offer more products for the customers. We do it all with full transparency, low rate, no fees, and our net promoter score is in the is actually eighty seven, which is super, super high. We are super proud of it. And now, when you ask, who are these customers?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  The customers are every Americans, people that are want to maximize their spend, maximize their benefit from from with financials. We are operating right now in more than forty thousand merchant locations. We help people fix the cars with car dealership authorized car dealership when they need to fix your car at Toyota or Honda. We help people go to the get the treatment at the dental location, get their glasses in Iowa locations. And we are, we did over six million loans of what we call buy now, pay later in these locations.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  And then, for the for the customers that we keep with us, we offer a credit card, and then they can use it anywhere. So we basically have customers across what we call the credit spectrum. For really good customers, they just got an unexpected expense and need to get it done. A lot of time, they do not pay any interest for us. And for customers, they struggle, but need someone to actually be with them and help them in this in this moment.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  I would imagine with the buy now, pay later, it's a huge, you know, moment in time for people because I went to Costco recently and it felt like twice as many people were shopping for a bargain, buying in bulk and doing all the things. So right now, I would imagine there's more need for what you're offering than ever before.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  You know, I think there was always need. Right now, people more talking about it, but in general, people, customers do not talk about the financial situation. Think about people that you know, people usually don't talk about how much they're making, what is the credit card debt? And when they have a debt, they need to pay fees to the credit card companies. Sometimes they need to pay extra late fees for banks. And we try to be super transparent, never charge any fees, really release the stress of dealing with financial situation. Yes, right now, many people need it, but also in the future, many people will need it and also in the past. This is the way our economy works.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Hey Rod, I wanted to get a really good context of the business before we dive into our core subject today, which is about staying true to your mission while scaling a fast-growth company. You've already shared with us what your mission is, but as you have scaled up to 750-plus employees, I know it's, you know, it's a lot of it, people. You've made the ink list many, many times. How do you continue to stay true to the mission as you've grown?

• 11:46Speaker 00

  This is a great question because as we mentioned, when you started the company, you started with a mission, right? You started with something that you want to do and that's why you are raising money. That's how you hire the first employees. That's how you get your partners. But then when you grow, there is much more pressure, right? I'll give you an example. There is more pressure to get more revenue and you can get more revenue by adding more fees, but you started it to eliminate financial way, so you want to reduce the fees.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  And there is more pressure to um you have to make some decision about what to prioritize and and and and that's for but I think that we remind ourselves all the time why are we doing everything we do when the way we design product, the way we treat customers, we have about three hundred fifty employees of call centers that this is the main mission, listen to the customer, put the customer at the center and do it. I mean, and especially when there is a dilemma, when there is a dilemma of what to do, people look up to you. And if you miss it once, you're going to lose the people. So I'll give you again example. Um, we decided

• 13:00Speaker 00

  that we do not charge any what we call origination fee from the customers or late fee. If the customer is late, we don't blame the customer, we blame ourselves, which means we didn't provide the customer with the right loan. So we should, we are not making money from customer late. I'm sure that if you look at your credit card, you will see that if you are late by one day, you will pay forty forty dollars um uh just for a late fee. Um, so what we do, we have been pushing to try to make more money. I mean, we've been kind of our investors, everybody say, okay, get the revenue. But we said, we are not going to increase fees. We're going to get better. We're going to get more efficient. We're

• 13:42Speaker 00

  going to prioritize projects that are eliminate more waste by being better, reducing uh data that you use, improving operation, just to um have the ability to serve more customers and to do it. And people, you talk about it, you do it, you act about it, and eventually people follow you. Because if you if you um if you don't do it, then it will be a short then a short term gain, but eventually people will just leave you and you're not going to be able to succeed.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Hey Rod, you've got more employees than most of the Inc. five thousand companies. You probably don't know all the data, but you're on the top side as it relates to number of employees. So I'm kind of curious, it's one thing for you to understand what the mission is. How do you ensure that it gets translated and consistently reinforced as it goes through the culture down to the front lines?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  I will start by communication, continue with communication, and then I will say that every time I feel that they don't communicate enough, so we need to do all more communication.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  But so communication means one, of course, when you talk about in company meetings, when you talk about in a evaluation process for employees, you actually measure people based on it. When you prioritize projects, we have about 120 engineers and there is always question of how to prioritize which project, you focus on this. When you talk about which business to choose, you focus about it and you mention it. It always go back to the, this is the north star of everything we do. After that we were, I think about

• 15:27Speaker 00

  200 or 250 employees, we hired our first leader of HR and I asked the leader of HR, write the values on the wall. The values are there. Don't bring value from other companies that you copy paste. Look at the company, see what are the values and write them on the wall. So then we follow the values. And you do it again and again and again. And I believe right now, if you interview many of our employees, they will understand the mission. They will remember it. They will do it all the way from the board, definitely to the newest employees.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  So you brought up values and I've seen this through the podcast so many times. Probably more than 60% of the companies that have made the Inc. List and been on the show have talked about the importance of defining the values, but the really most important part is living the values. If we were peeking into your meetings and peeking into your, the way you guys interact and communicate with each other, how would we see you actually using values that we could probably learn from?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  I'll give you, I'll give you one example, right? I mean, our first value is we call it serve others before self, which mean, don't focus on your ego. Our goal together is to serve the others. Like first of all, to serve other employees, but definitely serve the customers and what we call the merchants. And one of the thing that I'm super proud of Sunbit is that when new employee are coming, the door is open for them. Nobody hides for them like information. Nobody tried to compete with them. It's not that you, you join, you just joined my team. I want you to be at least as good as I am. Because together, we can serve more customers.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  We can eliminate more financial waste and we can help more people. We live it, we do it. We do it when there is a dilemma. When customers call to the call center, first, we answer. We listen and we see how we can we serve the customer. How we can we do better? All the way from the sales level to the operation, to the call center, to the legal, every department. We live this value all the time.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Well, I've heard so many examples of this and I appreciate you going into the detail of how you live the values. Let's turn the spotlight onto you for a second, Arad. I, we're talking about staying true to the mission. How do you continue to stay true and connect to this as you have grown this company?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Interesting. Some people, you ask them, okay, what drives you as a CEO or as a leader? Some people will say, okay, I'm running after the numbers. I want to get to whatever. This year, we're gonna do north of $450 million in revenue. I want to get to this number. I feel good. Some people are being driven by the number of employees they're managing. You know, they feel good about it. I actually don't at all. I really love to feel the customers, to listen to customers, to make sure that we serve many, many customers. I read the Google reviews. I go to the call center, I listen to call. I talk to people and I see where we are.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  One of the things I tell to every new employee and I remind myself and others all the time. We should not get blinded by the numbers. As I mentioned, we served about 6 million customers. But behind these numbers...

• 19:01Speaker 00

  There are real people, real people that need to fix the car, go to the dentist, and we just help them to get the service now in a period of time with no fee, with good, and we should treat each customer like he or she was the only customer for Sunbit, because if not, we're gonna lose it all. Like if we don't treat you well, because we just had another, I don't know, 5,000 today, like you, we're gonna lose it. No, but we, each customer, every interaction of a customer with any member of Sunbit, whether it's a call center, whether it's sales, or whether it's even internal customer

• 19:43Speaker 00

  between two employees, this is the most important thing that this person needs to do.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Hey Rod, we're wrapping up today's conversation. I appreciate you being here. One final question for you. We as leaders have all made mistakes. Founders have made mistakes. What's a mistake that you're willing to share back with us so that we might be able to kind of look at it and make sure we avoid as we're growing our businesses? Is there anything that you could share with us today?

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. One of the things that happened, I mean, not a lot, but to me in around 2021, when everything seemed so easy, because everybody was able to raise money, the growth was super high. I personally, you know, lost the track on hiring the right people for the right positions. And it felt wrong. It felt wrong. We hired a little bit too many people, not that fit to the right positions. And luckily, we fixed it. But in general, I would say, especially now when there is a lot of technology and improving in AI.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Be slow to hire in order to do well. One of the things that I'm proud that we did so far actually is to stay focused on the mission, stay focused on everything. We say a lot of no to many opportunities.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  And this is something that I think helped us to get to where we are. And I hope will continue to help us in the future. Say focus is about saying no, which is hard to do.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Erad, thank you so much for being here. We're talking about staying true to your mission as your company is scaling fast. You're a great example of that. I love what you guys are doing at Sunbit and I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  Great, thank you for the time. I really enjoyed it. Thanks.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Wow, what a great interview to have, to talk about mission. Being a mission-driven company is an honor. And when you are a leader that has a clear mission, you owe it to yourself, the culture and your people and even your audience, who you serve, to make that mission-driven company despite the pressure of fast growth, despite whatever's going on around you with the economy, to stay true to that mission. And that is sometimes hard. So hopefully you've got some tips about it, some strategies, and I'm here to help you if you ever get stuck. My name is Gene Hammett. I am a founder coach. We do leadership development. If we can help in any way, please reach out. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth thinking. As always, live with courage. We'll see you next time.