The Gift Is Time: Zito on Tour Production Management and the Pivot (Episode 97)

Luck = preparation + opportunity.

Zito is a man with one name and a 21-year veteran of the music industry. As a production manager he has toured with some of the biggest names in music, including Ariana Grande, the Backstreet Boys, Sia, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Josh Groban and OneRepublic, and he won Tourlink's "Top Dog Young Gun Production Manager" award.

In Episode 97 of The Career Musician, Zito and Nomad, who worked together on the road, talk about what happens when the tours stop overnight, how touring skills translate to any business, and what being a tour production manager really means. It is a masterclass in leadership and the pivot.

You create your own luck

Zito opened with a line Nomad loved. People see press and success and call it luck. Zito does not.

"We create our own luck at the end of the day. Everything is happening because we worked for it."

Zito, 2:55

His version of the 80/20 rule: talent is the small part you hone with practice. The other 80 percent is branding, marketing and hustle. You either hustle or you don't, and nothing just comes to you.

When the tour ends in one day

In March 2020 Zito was on the road with DJ Steve Aoki, his first run in the DJ world. They loaded out in Cleveland, had a day off in Chicago, and by the end of that day they were on the bus home. Tour canceled. Their gear was still in the truck.

Every pivot he had ever imagined was still inside the industry. Now there was no industry to pivot within. He looked at a resume of huge tours and felt unqualified for the "real world." He is one of a relatively small number of people in the world who can do his job, but how do you put that on paper?

So he made a choice.

"I'm going to choose to look at this as a gift, and I'm going to say the gift is time."

Zito, 7:02

After years on the road around 300 days a year, he decided to account for that time as if someone handed him a million dollars. Cycling, cooking, gardening, baking. Not lazy. Moving toward something.

From a neighborhood bake sale to a real business

He started selling sourdough in his subdivision for ten dollars a loaf. Groceries, not the mortgage. Then he did the math on scale: his oven fit two loaves, or 64 cinnamon rolls. He posted rolls at five dollars each and sold 63 the first week. Then 83. Then 200, 400, 600. They outgrew the home kitchen, moved into a shared commercial kitchen, and by the time of this conversation had rolled more than 25,000 cinnamon rolls in nine months, with roadies on the payroll.

The big insight: it was still logistics. Most home bakers would stumble going from six rolls to six hundred. Zito used the same systems, scheduling and leadership he uses on tour. On a 1,200-roll day, he lined up his crew like a load-in, one person on buttercream, the next closing boxes, sliding them down the line. The kitchen's owner told him she finally saw what made him good at his job. That is Diversify or Die, built on skills he already had.

Zito also thinks touring people would be gold in the corporate world. They work hard, move fast and get it done. The gap is terminology and structure, and someone needs to bridge it.

The musician's ear makes a better engineer

Zito went to school for music and played guitar, bass, sax and piano. Walking past the practice rooms one day, he heard a jazz guitarist and a sax player who were better than him. He decided to take his unique skill set and do something different with it, as long as he was part of music and traveling.

That background paid off. A front of house engineer who can talk to musicians in their language, and explain why a sound is not translating in the room, gets better results than the techie who just says it is too loud. Shared terminology between departments, Zito and Nomad agreed, is vital.

Managing production is easy. Managing people is hard.

"Managing production is easy, really easy. Managing people is hard."

Zito, 23:41

People who sign up for touring are, in Zito's words, the fringe: rough around the edges and strong willed. He told a story about his dad's heavy old circular saw that Zito could never cut straight with. His dad kept it for decades because, in the right hands, it would cut through anything. Learn to lead strong personalities, and you can get anything done.

It also takes self-awareness. Nomad recalled going to Zito the morning after a disagreement to say he was wrong. Zito added that leaders will sometimes make the wrong call, and still have to make calls and keep things moving. That is Humility and Objectivity from the ETHOS code in action.

Lead from inside the building

On Ariana Grande's tour, Zito says they carried about 130 people, roughly 20 trucks and 16 buses. Big tours split into an A party (artist), B party (band and dancers) and C party (crew). He leads through department heads, so he leads a dozen people who each lead their teams.

His rule: if his crew is in the building, he is in the building, until the last truck is loaded. He buys the crew drinks now and then, not for show, but to say thanks. On one wild OneRepublic year of back-to-back travel, he paid for the whole touring team to get tattoos of their mantra: it is what it is. Not to dodge accountability, but to remember that you can't change the schedule or the venues. You can only change your attitude. That is Low maintenance / no drama as a leadership style.

How to get in

For young techs who want to work on major tours, Zito's advice is simple: put yourself in the situation, be willing to work, build relationships, and work with local vendors and sound companies. He worked his way up from sleeping on a van floor between club gigs. That grit, he says, gives you an appreciation that people who start on the biggest tours sometimes miss.

His definition of success: support yourself, do what you love, and keep improving. He will never stand on a mountaintop and say he has arrived. Work begets work.

The takeaway

Treat downtime as a gift. Your skills travel further than you think. Learn to lead people, own your mistakes, and stay in the building. And remember that the press and the "luck" come from the emails, calls and small shows nobody sees. If you are building your next move right now, start with the free Get the Gig Guide, and map it out with the free plan of attack (POA) worksheet.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

Watch on YouTube or find every episode on the TCM Podcast page.