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 states. Jerry and Stan talk about selling value instead of coverage, how one reclassification cut a client's premium from about $80K to $11K, scaling toward $100M in premium, and hiring the right integrator.

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🔗 Elevate the Hustle is the #1 insurance podcast in the U.S., hosted by Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo, co-founders of Elevate Teams. Every week we sit down with agency owners, founders and operators to break down what it actually takes to build teams, scale companies and lead with intensity.

Elevate Teams matches U.S. independent insurance agencies with pre-vetted, bilingual LATAM virtual assistants who become part of your team. Please tell us your AMS and the hours you need covered, and we'll show you who fits.

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Real talk, real stories, and occasionally real bad language.

🌐 Website: elevateteams.io
📷 Instagram: @elevateteams
🔗 LinkedIn: Elevate Teams
🎙️ YouTube: @ElevateTheHustlePodcast

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.

In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Darrin joins Stanley Meytin and Dominic Piccirillo to share how HawkSoft grew on word of mouth with no marketing department until 2012, why it treats sales like consulting and walks away from the wrong fit, and the Purple Cow philosophy behind its passionate users.

He also gets honest about AI in insurance: when the tech stack helps clients, and when it starts to replace the reason agents do this work.

If your best clients came from someone who trusted you, this one's for you.

elevateteams.io | LinkedIn | Instagram: @elevatethehustlepodcast @elevateteams.io

Real talk, real stories, and occasionally real bad language.

🌐 Website: elevateteams.io
📷 Instagram: @elevateteams
🔗 LinkedIn: Elevate Teams
🎙️ YouTube: @ElevateTheHustlePodcast

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 45 and started High School Hustle after his son's summer pressure washing business taught him more than college.

They break down the lunchroom pitch that changed their growth, the $2,500 "beat the summer" benchmark, the newspaper route lesson behind every business, and why even their best young founders struggle to make the first hire.

If you believe the best business education comes from doing, this one's for you.

Website: elevateteams.io

LinkedIn: Elevate Teams

Instagram: @elevatethehustlepodcast

Real talk, real stories, and occasionally real bad language.

🌐 Website: elevateteams.io
📷 Instagram: @elevateteams
🔗 LinkedIn: Elevate Teams
🎙️ YouTube: @ElevateTheHustlePodcast