Elevate The Hustle

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 fir...

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&apo...

Ricky Brito joins Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo to break down how he went from working rooftops at age 10 to becoming one of the most connected people in the insurance industry, and why his next chapter is built on relationships instead of transactions. Ricky shares how he stumbled into insurance through a family connection, built his reputation at Agent Brokers United through pure persist...

Greg and Becky Hile, co-founders of QuoteRUSH, join Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo to tell the real story behind one of the insurance industry's most trusted quoting platforms, now serving over 1,100 agencies. Greg shares how he got fired from a construction job for refusing to cut corners, then taught himself to code from library books, betting he could build a business with zero phys...

Justin Goodman, founder of Total CSR, joins Stan and Dom to break down how he turned his own agency's biggest problem, watching big houses poach every employee he trained, into an online trade school now used by 1,400+ insurance agencies across the country. Justin shares his path from a golf career cut short by a degenerative spinal disorder, to building his own agency with his brother, to ev...

Brett Young and Matt Main of Erb & Young join Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo to break down how three guys with zero insurance experience and $17,000 in year one built one of the fastest-growing P&C agencies in the country. Brett shares the real story behind leaving a corporate benefits career to start Erb & Young from scratch, why moving fast and failing faster became their bigg...

Melissa Rivera, Head of Training at Elevate Teams, joins Stan Meytin and Dom Piccirillo to break down what it actually takes to build and train a great virtual assistant. Melissa has trained over 1,500 VAs for U.S. insurance agencies over the last four and a half years. In this episode, she shares her own path from pre-med student to Head of Training, the framework she uses to coach VAs through tr...

"Relationships close deals. Rates don't." In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan and Dom sit down with Adam Urbania, part of the leadership team at The AC (Agency Collective), for a real conversation on why trust beats price in the insurance industry, and how a network built on relationships grew into a top-6 fastest-growing aggregator in the country, without a single acquisiti...

"$225K for 10%. He left owing 32%. Still called it a win." In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan and Dom sit down with Nelson Brooks, founder of Cabana Boys Events, who built an 8,000-party empire before Shark Tank ever called, for a real conversation on Shark Tank negotiations, scaling a service business, and knowing when to ask for help. Nelson breaks down: How he walked in askin...

14 years old. Already failed 10,000 times. And he's just getting started. In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan and Dom sit down with Cody DeCoons, a 14-year-old entrepreneur who built Sports Sitters, a real, paying business, from scratch, to talk about failure, patience, and what it actually takes to build something before anyone thinks you're old enough to. Cody breaks down:  – H...

He lost his father at 26, inherited a family business he wasn't ready for, and turned it into an 80-person insurance agency with 20+ acquisitions. In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Marc Duffy, who took over his family's insurance agency at 27 and scaled it through M&A into one of the largest independent agencies in Greater Boston. Mar...

Insurance agency owners: How Greg May launched a specialty casualty MGA from scratch with his brother, said no to the opportunity three times, and bound their first policy in under five months. Want to grow your insurance agency without burning out or selling out? Book an intro call with Elevate Teams: https://calendly.com/elevateteamsllc/introductory-consultation ═══════════ In Episode 25 of Elev...

In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Kim Ades, founder of Frame of Mind Coaching and one of the most respected executive coaches in the entrepreneurial world. Kim started selling back massages on Cape Cod at 10 years old, built simulation-based assessments that tested every measurable trait in high performers, and discovered that emotional resilience...

In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Stan Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Ryan Hanley, 20-year insurance industry veteran, founder of Rogue Risk, board member at Linkora, and one of the most polarizing voices in the independent agent space. Ryan grew up collecting recyclable bottles at 5am to make $40 before school, got fired from every corporate job he ever had, and somehow became the p...

Insurance agency owners: How Jon Spaugy spent 16 years building one of the most connected networks in the independent insurance world, and why the agents who stay personal are the ones who survive what's coming. Want to grow your insurance agency without burning out or selling out? Book an intro call with Elevate Teams: https://calendly.com/elevateteamsllc/introductory-consultation?utm_source...

Insurance agency owners: How Kevin Panter built a $20M independent insurance agency in a Georgia county of 27,000 people, and why he keeps saying no to private equity. Want to grow your insurance agency without burning out or selling out? Book an intro call with Elevate Teams: https://calendly.com/elevateteamsllc/introductory-consultation?utm_source=youtubeeth&utm_medium=marketing&utm_camp...

Most people build a business to find freedom. Liz Mershon built five and was still a prisoner. In Episode 20 of Elevate The Hustle, hosts Stanley Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Liz to unpack the unfiltered story of how she sold her car at 22 to fund her first business, built Miami's most iconic production studio where Shakira, Oliver Stone, and Paramount Pictures all worked, scaled 5...

In Episode 20 of Elevate The Hustle, hosts Stanley Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Neil Krauter to unpack a career that started with peanut brittle sales records and a keg party that changed everything, leading to a $40 million book of business, a firm built from scratch, and adventures that would make most people's heads spin. At 18, Neil made a decision: retire by 40. What followed...

Most people talk about building something. Andrew Nigri had the audacity to actually do it. In Episode 19 of Elevate The Hustle, hosts Stanley Meytin and Dom Piccirillo sit down with Andrew to unpack the unfiltered story of how he walked away from a stable role, launched his own insurance agency from scratch, and built a referral-driven empire in one of the most complex and competitive niches in t...

"This company has survived the Great Depression, multiple wars. When you really think about what it takes to navigate business for that long, it's really insane." Connor Lynch runs a 107-year-old insurance agency in South Florida. His grandfather bought it in the 1940s. His dad took over in 1969. Connor became CEO of Plastridge Insurance in 2019. Every week, private equity firms cal...

"No one grows up wanting to get into insurance, right? It's not on your vision board." Before Kenneth Mantuo Jr. was building a multi-state insurance agency and trying to make the industry sexy, he was chasing a very different dream: the NFL. He played football since he was seven. Pop Warner. High school. College ball. Then overseas in Germany for a year. Came back. Trained harder....

"We knew the need before they knew the need." Before Troy Chakarun was helping scale one of the fastest-growing firms in insurance, he was making cold calls, sorting mail, answering phones, and getting yelled at by strangers at Merrill Lynch. His first job in business? Picking up a phone book and calling dead people. Not exactly glamorous. But it taught him how to sell, how to handle rej...

"This is not the ceiling for me. I need more, I want more, and I've always worked for that." Gabriela Rodriguez started as a virtual assistant in Venezuela in 2017. $1 an hour. Paid in a collapsing currency. Her first client? Cold calling people in Mexico to book appointments. She got removed from the placement—couldn't hit the goals. But she didn't give up. She got placed...

 The best investment you can ever make? Yourself. "I took a 70% pay cut at 25 just to get my foot in the door. Whether I made money at it or not, it was going to provide me tremendous value long term." David Ragno started at Travelers crunching big data and analytics—making good money, safe career path, comfortable future. Then he walked away from it all to work an entry-level role at Ke...

"I promoted myself to COO. See, when you don't want to promote me, I promote my damn self."  Sonya Horton started as a receptionist at a Brooklyn livery cab brokerage in the '90s—answering phones for quarters and dimes, reading BOP policies on the train, learning insurance line by line because there was no ChatGPT, no LinkedIn, no shortcuts. Just work ethic inherited from immig...