Episodes

Callan Harrington sits down with PJ Cannon, Regional Managing Director at Henderson Brothers, to break down how he recruits and builds high-performing insurance teams. PJ traces his approach back to his college football recruiting days at Wisconsin and explains how attention to detail and making people feel valued shaped the way he attracts talent today. The conversation digs into the tactics behind building a new office in Columbus from scratch, including how PJ leverages centers of influence,...

Callan Harrington sits down with Alex Frommeyer, Founder and CEO of Stack Health, to break down the future of small business health benefits. Alex previously founded Beam Dental, which he started in his dorm room and grew to over $175 million in premiums before its exit to Principal. Now he is tackling what he calls the core problem in healthcare: benefits organized around the employer instead of the individual. Alex explains how ICHRA plans shift employers from defined benefit to defined contr...

In this episode of The Insurance Growth Lab, host Callan Harrington sits down with Jeff Cohen, Senior Vice President at Zywave, to break down how data separates transactional agents from true advisers. Jeff has spent over 20 years building two powerful datasets, an insurance program benchmarking database and a library of more than 1 million verified loss events. He explains why benchmarking answers what everyone else is doing while loss data answers why they do it. The conversation digs into th...

Host Callan Harrington pulls together some of the best cross-sell moments from top insurance agencies on The Insurance Growth Lab. Featuring Chris Paradiso, Eric Roberts, and Clinton Houck, this episode breaks down exactly how elite agencies grow policies per customer and treat retention as the foundation of everything. Chris explains why emails are for information and phone calls are for communication, and why calling every client each year beats any shortcut. Eric shares his detailed renewal ...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Bill Johnson, Chairman and CEO of Liberty Company, to unpack one of the most unusual growth stories in insurance. Bill built an agency to $3 million in revenue, left to produce more than 30 films alongside major actors, then returned to grow Liberty to over $240 million in revenue and 900 people. He explains why he almost sold the business, how the universe pushed him to keep part of it, and what pulled him back years later. The heart of the conversation is...

Callan Harrington sits down with Lee LeBaigue, SVP at ISU Steadfast Retail and Brokerage, to break down how he is using AI to improve accuracy and generate new business inside an insurance agency. Lee shares how his years touring in a punk band shaped the business instincts he now applies to marketing, submissions, and growth. The conversation gets tactical fast. Lee explains how AI policy checking with citation tools caught a suite number error and a 15-year coverage gap that made the agency a...

Host Callan Harrington pulls together some of the best moments from The Insurance Growth Lab, featuring Ryan Hanley, Matt Naimoli, Curtis Barton, and Patrick McBride. The theme is simple. In a crowded broker world, the top agencies find ways to create real separation, and this episode breaks down exactly how they did it. Ryan explains why every leader needs a personal brand and how content fills the trust gap before a prospect ever talks to you. Matt shares the story of custom bobbleheads sent ...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Diane Brickner, Retired President and CEO of Peace Hills Insurance, to break down how a company with no profit for its first 10 years became consistently profitable for more than three decades. Diane shares the unlikely story of how Peace Hills started from three people, an idea, and a dormant insurance charter to become a company with over 350 employees and half a billion in annual premiums. Diane explains why she walked away from a rising career at Royal ...

Host Callan Harrington takes the mic solo in this episode to break down what separates the elite insurance brokers from everyone else. After 40 episodes of the Insurance Growth Lab, Callan pulled out the three themes that consistently show up among the top performers and turned them into practical takeaways you can apply to your own business. The conversation digs into how the best brokers find untapped markets that let them avoid head-to-head competition, using Matic Insurance and its move int...

Callan Harrington sits down with Travis Hedge, Co-Founder and CEO at Vouch Insurance, to explore how his company became an AI-enabled brokerage generating 73 NPS scores and $200M+ in funding. The conversation dives into Vouch's transformation from primarily a carrier to exclusively a brokerage business and how that shift unlocked new opportunities for AI integration. Travis shares specific examples of AI workflows his team has built, from automated renewal proposals to real-time coaching system...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Scott Tannas, Chairman of Western Investment Company and Canadian Senator, to explore how he transformed a single small-town insurance agency into a massive enterprise. Scott shares the remarkable journey of growing Western Financial Group's stock price by 1038 percent, ultimately leading to a $775 million acquisition in 2017. Scott walks through his methodical approach to acquiring insurance agencies across small-town Western Canada, starting with just $10...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Chad King, Chairman and Founder of King Risk Partners, to explore how he transformed a 6-person family agency into a $125 million powerhouse with over 600 employees. Chad shares the pivotal lesson from his father about keeping your word that became the foundation of his business philosophy, from driving through hurricanes to close deals to building authentic relationships that differentiate King in the competitive M&A landscape. Chad reveals his unconventio...

Callan Harrington sits down with Jackson Rollo, President of Rollo Insurance, to explore how he became president at 24 and led the agency through 5x growth over 5 years without private equity backing. Jackson explains Rollo's unique philosophy of being a local generalist rather than pursuing industry niches, focusing on relationships and community connections over product specialization. He details their systematic approach to scaling culture across 250 teammates in 50 locations nationwide, inc...

Callan Harrington sits down with David Wald, President and Co-Founder of Aclaimant, to explore what it truly means to become a risk advisor in today's insurance market. David shares the unexpected origin story of Aclaimant and its growth trajectory to tracking billions of dollars in claims annually and serving thousands of companies. The conversation dives into the practical aspects of becoming a true risk advisor rather than just a rate-shopping broker. David outlines the three key components ...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Chris Paradiso, owner of Paradiso Financial and Insurance Services, to dive into the retention strategies that form the foundation of real agency growth. Chris shares how his 50+ employee agency learned the hard way that retention is everything when their numbers dropped nearly 10% after getting lazy with client communication during COVID. Chris breaks down his systematic approach to client retention, from the 60-day renewal process to the three-attempt pho...

Callan Harrington sits down with Lyndon Block, President & CEO of Block's Agencies, Prairie Insurance, Mello Insurance, and Rosthern Agencies, to explore his unconventional path to building 7 insurance brokerages across Saskatchewan. Lyndon shares how a chance encounter with marketing expert Chris Paradiso at a conference sparked a relentless pursuit of digital marketing mastery that changed everything. After being called out for doing "nothing" with his marketing efforts, Lyndon's persistence l...

Curtis Barton didn't take the traditional path to building a large platform agency. He convinced six agency owners to merge their businesses, raise private equity capital together, and build something that had never been done in the industry. Alkeme is now ranked 21st on the Insurance Journal top 100, with over $2 billion in premiums written, $122 million in EBITDA, and 83 acquisitions completed. Callan Harrington sits down with Curtis to break down how Alkeme was built from the ground up, why ...

Callan Harrington sits down with Andy Cohen, President and COO of Snapsheet, to dive into why claims operations represent the biggest opportunity left in insurance, and what it actually looks like when carriers get it right. Andy brings perspective from both the carrier side and Snapsheet's work with over 180 carriers, including 16 of the top 20 P&C carriers. Andy covers why loss adjustment expenses have barely moved even as premiums have surged, what modern claims operations actually look like...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Paul VanderMarck, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at SageSure, to explore what the best insurance producers actually do differently, and why a softening market is about to make that question impossible to ignore. Paul shares how top producers navigate the shift from a supply-constrained hard market to one where competition on price is back, and carriers are getting aggressive. He walks through a real example of how an admitted policy with full repla...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Kyle Nakatsuji, CEO and Founder of Clearcover and Dearborn Labs, to explore how AI is reshaping insurance from the ground up. Kyle shares his unconventional path from persistent business school dropout to insurance entrepreneur who raised over $500 million and built technology capable of processing claims in 7 minutes. The conversation dives into Kyle's decision to launch Dearborn Labs, essentially bringing a decade of hard-won AI deployment lessons to carr...

Matt Naimoli went from college baseball player to building one of the fastest-growing insurance agencies in America using an unconventional $10,000 bobblehead campaign. What started as a networking attempt became a systematic referral machine generating 500 warm leads monthly with a 75% closing ratio. In this episode, Callan Harrington sits with Matt to break down the exact process behind the campaign that helped his agency capture 7% of all new home sales in Massachusetts. He reveals how they ...

Host Callan Harrington sits down with Jim Waterwash, Partner at INSocial Risk Advisors, to get into the details behind their 90%+ retention rate across 5 agency acquisitions, as well as the hard lessons that got them there. Jim traces the arc from running a fully digital agency selling 100% over the phone, to building a traditional operation with 20+ employees, $20M+ in premium, and a repeatable acquisition playbook. The insight that changed everything: the challenge of retaining a client you'v...

Callan Harrington sits down with Jeff Snyder, President of Matic, to break down how an “unqualified” first employee built one of the most successful embedded insurance platforms in the mortgage servicing space. Jeff shares the unconventional strategy behind generating 750,000 leads annually by focusing on loan servicing rather than origination, targeting 65 million outstanding mortgages instead of the typical 4 to 6 million new home loans. Jeff walks through the three distinct phases of scaling...

Callan Harrington sits down with Eric Roberts, owner of My Insurance Group, to break down the systematic approach behind building a $20 million agency that generates 270 new inbound leads monthly without any cold calling. Eric brings a unique perspective to insurance sales, having spent 15 years on the claims side doing water and fire restoration before transitioning to agency ownership. The conversation dives into Eric's cross-sell engine, which has more than doubled his policies per household...