Elevate The Hustle

39 Episodes

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Your AMs Are Too Busy to Cross-Sell. That’s Your Growth Problem

2026-11-0201:00:38

Curtis Barton wanted to be a lawyer. His dad told him he didn't like reading enough. So he helped his dad start an insurance agency with zero clients and did whatever needed doing, including taking out the trash. Years later he bought the agency, reinvested his own commissions into it, and nearly tripled it. Then, instead of selling, he merged seven agencies to form Alchemy Insurance Services. Nearly 100 transactions later, Alchemy has 1,500 people. Curtis tells Stan and Dom why most agency o...

Ep.38 Operations Bores Me”: The Producer Who Became an Agency Owner

2026-10-2639:27

Daniel Rojas walked into insurance by accident in 2004. A couple of months later, four hurricanes hit Florida. He figured if he could survive that, he'd be fine. Twenty years later, he's co-owner of Lime Street Insurance in Miami. Along the way he let go of every account under $50K in premium to double his book, got two weeks to sign a new contract when his agency sold, and started his own agency during COVID with three kids under three. The hardest part wasn't selling. It was everything el...

E37: He Worked for the Wolf of Wall Street. Now He Insures $5B in Real Estate.

2026-10-1951:19

Jerry Katz was an immigrant kid named Igor when nobody came to his birthday party. That's the day he says his hustle started. From there: a sales mentor who warned him about the golden handcuffs, a stint at Stratton Oakmont, millions made and lost in the dot-com bubble, a Miami real estate portfolio, and a $144,000 insurance increase with 72 hours' notice that pushed him to open his own agency. Today, Premier Protection Insurance covers around $5 billion in commercial real estate across 15 ...

E36:Your Clients Should Be Your Marketing Department: How HawkSoft Grew on Word of Mouth

2026-10-1248:45

You built your agency on relationships. Now everyone's telling you to automate, buy more leads and spend more on ads. Darrin DeFouw has watched that pressure from inside one of insurance's most loved software companies for 22 years. Darrin joined HawkSoft in 2004 as employee #8, after years as an agent and CSR. His interview was a backyard barbecue with the founder's family, his first desk was a shelf in a coat closet, and the first thing he was told was that his family comes first. Always. I...

E.35 Every Business Comes Down to These 3 Things | High School Hustle

2026-10-0552:13

In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Scott Lingle and Peter SerVaas, co-founders of High School Hustle, join Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo to talk about the summer competition teaching teenagers to build real businesses. One of their students was 15, couldn't drive, knocked on 1,031 doors, and made $25K. Peter shares how he threw high school dance parties to help pay his parents' mortgage and built a software company acquired by Ford. Scott explains how he became an entrepreneur at ...

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