Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Salty Adjuster

“We lose the fact that we are a human business.”

The tools got faster. The workload got bigger. Someone scheduled another meeting about it.

Live from the CPCU Society’s In2Risk 2026 in Las Vegas, Venbrook Chief Claims Officer Awais Farooq joins Salty and Producer Brett for a candid conversation about leading people, staying curious, and preparing for the future of claims.

Awais shares why every employee needs something different from a leader, how a little designation envy can motivate your next career move, and why adjusters need to keep learning as AI changes the job.

Then we get into coffee-fueled action figures, meetings that could have been emails, and which insurance executives are getting voted off the island. His pick for a mandatory conference session? “Being Human.”

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Barga. Every claim is different. Barga puts in the work to find the opportunity. Let’s talk about your next claim at http://www.Barga.ca.

“Community is everything.” When you live and work in the Bahamas, those words carry the weight of what it takes to rebuild after a storm.

Live from the CPCU Society’s In2Risk conference in Las Vegas, Salty and Producer Brett sit down with Ranesha Dean, the Society’s International Ambassador and branch manager at Caribbean Alliance Insurance in the Bahamas.

Ranesha shares her perspective on Caribbean resilience, the relationships that sustain communities through disaster, and the people who helped her see herself as a leader. She reflects on her mother’s encouragement and a late mentor who gave her the support and space to grow.

We also talk about making connections as an introvert, staying curious throughout your career, and why insurance could use a designation in relationship studies. Plus, Ranesha clears up a few things Americans get wrong about the Bahamas and explains why someone who already lives near a beautiful beach might choose Vegas.

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Barga.ca

“We lose out when we lose these very capable women.”

Next week, The Salty Adjuster welcomes Amy Diehl, Ph.D., for a two-part conversation about the state of women working in insurance, including some difficult, candid dialogues about credibility, opportunity, safety, and whose voices get heard.

Amy is an award-winning technology executive, chief information officer at Wilson College, and gender equity researcher with 17 years devoted to studying the barriers women face. She is the co-author of Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work, and her writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Ms. Magazine.

In this trailer for Part 1, Amy joins Salty and Producer Brett to unpack the “credibility deficit”: the extra work women do to establish expertise their male colleagues are often assumed to have. For women in claims, that can mean more questions, more explanations, and more time defending decisions. When performance review season arrives, who accounts for that time? In the expanded episodes, part 1 and 2, we will address recent SA violence in the news, including the situation at Cornell. Trigger warnings will be applied; please listen with care.

Across both episodes, we explore the barriers that shape women’s careers, the personal cost of navigating them, and what colleagues and leaders can do to help. Some of these conversations are uncomfortable. They deserve space on the microphone.

We’re also taking the conversation beyond the show. The Salty Adjuster and CoVerse Communications are offering women’s safety webinars, along with a larger “State of Women Working” lunch-and-learn-style Zoom webinar in November. Everyone is welcome, including the colleagues, managers, and leaders who want to better understand women’s experiences and help improve them.

Listen to the trailer, look for both episodes next week, and stay tuned for webinar dates and registration details.

Casual Professionals, Chronically Unhinged. Certified Professional Chaos Understander. Claims People Crying Uncontrollably.

We’re pretty sure CPCU stands for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, but we have some proposals. Salty objects to “crying uncontrollably” because you have to be able to turn it off when the phone rings.

In this Grains of Salty episode, Associate Producer Heather Blevins, our resident Insurance Rebel and an actual CPCU, gets Salty and Producer Brett ready for In2Risk in Las Vegas next week. It’s Salty’s first Vegas trip beyond the airport, and Heather is responsible for getting us invited. Please direct all risk assessment questions to her.

Heather shares how chasing a trip to Hawaii led to a designation and a community that changed her career, why you don’t need those four letters to get involved, and how mentoring and connections can put your name in rooms you haven’t entered yet. We also cover comfortable shoes, depleted social batteries and a proposed CPCU dinosaur mascot with an endorsement for its fourth appendage.

Headed to In2Risk? Come find us. We’re friendly, curious and apparently someone’s acceptable risk.

“Once you get that binder, once you get the policy, that’s your ticket to dance. That’s not the end of the relationship, that’s the very beginning of it.”

Matthew Struck joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about what happens after the sale, when coverage meets a catastrophe and someone is counting on you to help them get their life back.

The insurance broker, entrepreneur and Ungovernable podcast host traces his unlikely path from biomedical engineering to building an agency from scratch. He shares what Hurricane Sandy taught him about the business, why brokers and adjusters need to understand each other’s work, and how good advocacy can move a claim forward without adding another person yelling into the phone.

We also get into the cost of owning your own business, an industry that keeps poaching talent while expecting someone else to train it, and what Matthew learned by questioning his own assumptions.

Plus: an emergency penguin rescue, a wildly underfunded movie pitch and a Nirvana entrance worthy of an insurance conference.

Come as you are. Bring your questions. And please don't forget to vote for The Salty Adjuster in the Signal Awards! Signal Listener's Choice

“The people that are busy telling you they’re important usually aren’t that good.”

Alex Bond spends his days helping InsurTech businesses hire leaders. He’s picked up a few things about the ones people actually want to work for.

The FinPro founder, recruiter and Leadership in Insurance podcast host joins Salty and Producer Brett for a candid conversation about why people leave jobs, what “we work hard and play hard” might be hiding, and the trouble with founders who decide they’ve mastered insurance before hiring anyone who’s worked in it.

We talk about curiosity, ego and choosing a career that fits your own definition of success. Alex also shares what he’s learned from supporting women in InsurTech, including why women keep getting asked about motherhood and imposter syndrome when they came to talk about their expertise.

Then we hand him three hires to build his InsurTech dream team. He names names, risks some friendships and gives us a little MySpace Top 8 drama.

Plus: why he’d keep podcasts and put LinkedIn in the bin, the interview question worth asking, and a compelling case for hiring a velociraptor to run compliance.

An insurance broker, a hurricane and an aquarium full of penguins. Naturally, we’re trying to get Tom Hardy involved.

Matthew Struck joins Salty and Producer Brett with a Hurricane Sandy story involving a failing generator, an emergency gasoline run he nearly had to make and penguins he absolutely could not let down. Within minutes, we’re pitching a rescue movie with laser guns, Terminators and a suspicious resemblance to Mad Max meets Operation Dumbo Drop.

Get a taste of our conversation with Matthew, then catch the full episode (S2E7) of The Salty Adjuster coming tomorrow. Tom Hardy, your people can call our people.

Love our goofy trailers? PLEASE vote for us in the Signal Awards people's choice for BEST TRAILER! We are honored to be a finalist and need your help to take home the gold.Vote here: Signal Listener's Choice

“I had no idea that just showing up to work, a smile on my face, was doing anything but masking my own pain and my own agony.”

Natalie Arroyave was a teenager rebuilding her life after Hurricane Katrina when someone told her that her presence had helped save their life. She hadn’t known what they were going through. They hadn’t known the full weight of what she was carrying, either.

That experience stayed with her. So did losing her family’s home, which sat under 13 feet of water for three weeks. Years later, she pursued claims because she knew what it felt like to be the person who had lost everything.

For World Mental Health Day, we’re sharing “After the Storm,” our conversation with Natalie about mental health, claims and showing up for each other.

Natalie is a Certified General Adjuster, president of the Louisiana Claims Association, a RISE mentor and Baton Rouge ambassador, and the host of Adjuster Hour. Her show began with an hour she set aside every day for her adjusting crew to ask questions, work through claims and get to know one another.

She and Salty talk about the loneliness of fieldwork, burnout and what happens when you’re struggling but don’t know whether it’s safe to tell your manager. They also get specific about support: making time for your team, helping with an overwhelming workload and taking their concerns seriously.

There are laughs along the way. Salty immediately calls the collaboration “The Salty Adjuster Hour,” and they compare notes on roof arguments, deleted email responses and why Natalie wants absolutely nothing to do with your crawl space.

Read Natalie's moving post about suicide prevention which we reference throughout the episode, here: https://lnkd.in/p/gS85X4Se

And if you'd like to vote for The Salty Adjuster in The Signal Awards as referenced during the show's commercial, here is the link to do so. https://bit.ly/3U7kBrf⁠

We appreciate each and every one of you!

"If you want to be treated as a trusted advisor, act like a trusted advisor. Even if it’s detrimental or if it’s risky for you.”

Tell clients the bad news early. Know their business. Return the call. And when a claim happens, be there.

Chris Poveromo, president of the brokerage division at Poms & Associates, joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about the everyday work that earns a broker the next call, the next referral and the client’s trust.

Chris once swore he’d never follow his dad into insurance. Twenty-five years into the business, he shares what separates a great broker from an average one: understanding a client’s industry, preventing losses and helping them through the claims that can turn their business upside down.

We talk about giving clients months of warning before a difficult renewal, why empathy can mean pushing someone toward an uncomfortable decision and how AI helps Chris ask better questions. He also gets candid about brokerage consolidation, investing in producers and why Poms is committed to staying private.

Plus: his former life as a baseball umpire, why preparation now beats instinct and a dinosaur name that takes the whole team to figure out.

Enjoy our conversation with Chris Poveromo of Poms & Associates.

“If I have a friend who is eating, I see has a pack of Starbursts and I ask for one and they hand me a yellow, they’re not the friend I thought they were.”

She’s new here, but she already knows where she stands.

Assistant Producer Sophia Fouse joins Salty and Producer Brett for a family episode about how Team Salty came together, what 32 episodes taught us and becoming a Signal Awards finalist in our first four months.

First, the origin story: Sophia moved to Chicago looking for opportunities. Brett and Salty walked into the restaurant where she was serving, looking for lunch. One conversation and a handwritten exchange of contact information later, we had a new teammate.

Then Sophia turns the questions on us. We revisit the conversation with Precious Norman Walton, for which the trailer became a Signal Awards finalist. We also talking openly about how grief matters to listeners and what it felt like to realize people we’d never met were listening.

And, if you've EVER dreamed of starting your own podcast, we give you the full scoop from both Salty's and Producer Brett's perspectives. One of them says "DO IT" and the other's answer is a little more complex. You might be surprised by what you learn.

“I also once worked in the produce department of a grocery store and I don’t eat fruits or vegetables.” — Salty

Naturally, we finish with cereal theology, Starburst loyalties, dinosaurs and rapid-fire answers that are absolutely not rapid, plus the worst thing Starbucks has ever called Brett.

Welcome to our chosen Salty family, Sophia. Pink Starbursts are on us.

Support Team Salty by voting for The Salty Adjuster in the Signal Awards HERE (https://bit.ly/3U7kBrf ) , and PLEASE subscibe and follow the show wherever you listen. Have a rapid-fire question for us? Send it to thesaltyadjuster@gmail.com.

Welcome to Season 2 and to our new "minisode" series "Grains of Salty: Behind the Episode." Going forward, these five minute snippets will capture Team Salty's reaction to pivotal conversations. Today, Assistant Producer Sophia interviews Salty and Producer Brett on being named Signal Award Finalists in the "Best Trailer" category. If you didn't listen to the episode that earned them these accolades, go back and revisit Season 1: Episode 20 "Lament" with Precious Norman Walton here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5nRgHRnD0pYsjpsjuIVpEq?si=Cg9rfEOgRGaVvz_XvbLJwQ

Salty reflects on why this particular episode is the one he's the proudest of, and Producer Brett gives the details behind assembling the trailer that earned the nomination.

Speaking of the Signal Awards... We need your support to take home the GOLD! You can vote here (please do!): https://bit.ly/3U7kBrf

“I don’t have to know everything. I just have to know where to go to get the answers.” — Chris Stanley

That’s one of the most valuable things Chris Stanley learned during six months of training with his father-in-law. He was 20, working at Walmart distribution and learning auto damage appraising four days a week. He’d never even changed his own oil.

Eighteen years later, he’s helping other people get their start.

Chris is the founder of IA Path, which has certified about 700 appraisers, and the author of 32 books. Those include the Independent Adjuster’s Playbook and the Burned Out Adjuster’s Playbook, co-written with fellow Season 2 guest Chris Casaleggio. He also travels full time with his wife and three boys between a sailboat and a converted school bus.

In this hour-long conversation, Chris, Salty and Producer Brett get into what it takes to build a claims career and why the industry makes it harder than it needs to be.

We talk about:

• The experience catch-22. Companies want someone with two to five years under their belt. Who’s supposed to train that person?
• Confidence without pretending. Knowing when to ask questions, where to find answers and why admitting you don’t know something can make you better at the job.
• The “fossil workforce.” What years of repetition, difficult files and pressure teach experienced insurance professionals, and how to pass that knowledge along.
• “Bench and burn.” Keeping capable people in the same seat because they’re too useful there, then wondering why they leave.
• The human skills that matter. Recognizing candidates who can listen, communicate and help someone through a terrible day.
• AI and your own voice. Chris shares what happened when he experimented with AI-assisted writing and the boundaries he set afterward.
• Mentorship that actually teaches. Making the knowledge in someone’s head useful to the next person doing the work.

And despite having an author and mentor in the room, Salty makes his own position clear: “I’m not the guy you come to for wise sayings.”

Fortunately, we booked Chris.PLEASE SHOW YOUR LOVE FOR THE SALTY ADJUSTER by voting for us in the Signal Awards: https://bit.ly/3U7kBrf

“The insurance industry doesn’t have a talent problem. It really has a taste problem.” — Chris Stanley

Chris Stanley has a question for the insurance industry: If you’ve found someone you want on your team, why not teach them claims?

The IA Path founder, author and independent adjuster mentor joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about the people getting overlooked while companies keep searching for candidates with all the right experience. People who have paid for their own training, earned their licenses and put in the work, only to be told they won’t even get an interview.

Meanwhile, the person standing in a flooded home needs someone who can listen, explain what happens next and answer basic questions about their coverage. Their first question probably isn’t about your AI efficiency metrics.

“That’s the hard part to find, is the good human in the room,” Chris says.

In this trailer, we talk about recognizing that person, giving them a chance and taking responsibility for teaching the skills we keep insisting everyone should already have.

The full episode with Chris Stanley drops later today on The Salty Adjuster!

“I don’t think you’re as salty as everyone says.”

Well. We’re back. And we're a SIGNAL AWARD FINALIST! You can vote for us right here (please do!).

After a two-week hiatus, The Salty Adjuster is kicking off Season 2 with author Chris Casaleggio, who wasted approximately 30 seconds before questioning the entire premise of this podcast.

According to Chris, property adjusters might be “lightly salted.” Coming from auto liability, he considers his people “more heavily salted.”

Brett’s interpretation: “He just said you’re not salty enough.”

Once Salty recovered, we actually talked about careers.

Chris is a longtime claims professional, forensic expert and six-time author. His newest book, Claims Crossroads: Fresh Starts, Smart Pivots & New Paths for Adjusters, explores something we care a lot about on this show: where a career in claims can take you. (You can find his entire collection of books at

Because, as Chris puts it, “Adjusters are professional problem solvers who happen to work in insurance.”

Investigation. Negotiation. Writing. Conflict management. Decision making when you don’t have perfect information. Those skills travel.

Chris and Salty talk about career pivots, lateral moves, mentorship, networking, taking the files that scare you, what actually gets people promoted and the seven things Chris wishes he’d done differently in his own career.

We also get the most insurance-specific dinosaur answer we’ve heard yet: Triceratops. Three horns. Coverage, liability and damages.

The Salty Adjuster is back for Season 2.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’: Author Chris Casaleggio on Where a Career in Claims Can Take You.”

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

“Adjusters are professional problem solvers who happen to work in insurance.”

Chris Casaleggio has spent his career in claims, serves as a forensic expert and regional director at MC Consultants, and has written six books about the profession, including his newest, Claims Crossroads: Fresh Starts, Smart Pivots & New Paths for Adjusters.

So when he says adjusters may underestimate just how transferable their skills are, he knows what he’s talking about.

Investigation. Negotiation. Writing. Conflict management. Making decisions when the information is incomplete and the stakes are real.

In this preview of The Salty Adjuster, Chris and Salty talk about where those skills can take you, from underwriting and learning and development to insurtech, consulting and, apparently, podcasting.

Season TWO of our show kicks off on Wednesday 9/30! Don't miss it.

"I don’t like this.” - Salty

What happens when you let (aka “are bullied into letting”) your guest ask you the rapid fire questions instead? The Salty Adjuster found out the hard way when Morgan Blocher pulled off a hostile takeover.

Is soup cereal? Does the color gray go with… other gray? Turns out everybody’s got salty opinions. ICYMI, here’s an excerpt from Season 1 Episode 30, our BrokerTech Connect MEGASODE.

Want YOUR chance to grill The Salty Adjuster AND Producer Brett? We will be doing a Reddit AMA on 10/19. Details coming SOON so follow us on Reddit here: https://lnkd.in/deNi565N

🌹 “We tend to compare our everyday selves to what we see and what we think is real with people we put on a pedestal... we’re comparing our everyday to their best day.” — ⁠Rose Hall, PE, RH Business Ventures, LLC

Rose Hall has spent a career doing some pretty impressive things. She’s an engineer. An insurance and construction veteran. An innovation strategist. Her last three roles, inside of carriers and out, were jobs she helped create herself.

But #RosesRenaissance has also been about letting people see more than the resume.

On this episode of The Salty Adjuster, Rose talks about career reinvention, long COVID, authenticity and why she’s willing to share the hard parts alongside the accomplishments.

We also get appropriately salty about one of insurance’s favorite words: innovation.

Rose’s definition? “Creating new value where it didn’t exist before.”

An idea isn’t innovation. A shiny new piece of technology isn’t automatically innovation. And sometimes innovation means being willing to admit something didn’t work, learn from it and change direction.

Salty also shares some of his own mental health story and recommends Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” a poem that fits remarkably well with Rose’s point about comparing our everyday lives to someone else’s best day.

And the conversation continues at ITC Vegas.

Headed to ITC? On Tuesday, Sept. 29, Rose will moderate “From Reactive to Resilient: How Tech is Rewriting the Rules of Risk,” alongside Valkyrie Holmes of Faura, Christina Villena of Hanover Insurance and Peter Mielert of The Hartford. Don't miss it, and don't miss following #RosesRenaissance on Linkedin.

“Conversations with real human beings are so much more valuable than applications.” — Josh Fischer

The claims job market is weird right now.

Experienced adjusters are applying to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of jobs and hearing nothing. Recruiters are getting buried under hundreds of applications for a single opening. Hiring managers are struggling to find the right people. And somehow everyone involved thinks the process sucks.

So we brought in Josh Fischer, founder of and recruiter at Kru Talent Group and host of Claims Recruiter Office Hours, to talk about what actually works.

Josh joins Salty and Brett to dig into why blindly applying for more jobs may be making your search worse, how to build relationships before you need them, the value of your existing network and what adjusters should know about LinkedIn, recruiters and the infamous green Open to Work banner.

They also get into career pivots, burnout and overloaded claims desks, why adjusters may be overlooking skills that can take them far beyond traditional claims roles, and Josh’s goal of helping 100 people land jobs in 2026.

Plus: cover letters are dead, Salty would like a $200,000 remote job with a company car, and Josh actually did research before answering the dinosaur question.

Listen to Josh’s Claims Recruiter Office Hours every Tuesday and connect with him on LinkedIn.

“I guess the question that’s probably on all of our listeners’ minds is: How does The Salty Adjuster show up to a conference with his face?”

Episode 30 of The Salty Adjuster takes us to BrokerTech Ventures' BrokerTech Connect in Chicago (8/31-9/2), the pod's first major trade show event and Salty’s first ever insurtech trade show. Turns out an anonymous podcast host can move through a conference pretty easily when, to everyone else in the elevator, he's just a normal dude.

We recap Salty and Producer Brett's experience before sharing three of our chats from the show with Advance CEO Omer Rimoch (14:39), Advance Director of Sales Morgan Blocher (30:13), and RevUp's Marissa Buckley (44:52).

“How are we still pushing so many papers, literal physical papers?” Omer Rimoch, co-founder and CEO of Advance, came to insurance from FinTech and found an industry talking about AI while still dealing with checks, trust accounts, manual reconciliation and customers asking for invoices through physical mail. We talk about the “boring plumbing” underneath insurance and why some of the least sexy problems may be the ones most worth solving.

“If I am the smartest person in that room, I’m in the wrong room.” Advance Director of Sales Morgan Blocher talks mentorship, relationships and why “garbage in, garbage out” still applies when everyone wants to throw AI at a problem. Then she and Producer Brett "bully" Salty into being on the receiving end of some spicy rapid fires.

“[Adjusters have] got great instinct that can’t be coded.” RevUp Studios’ Marissa Buckley joins Salty to unpack the Wired story reporting that 98% of Glassdoor reviews from claims adjusters mentioning AI were negative. They get into what happens when companies roll out technology without enough training, communication or investment in the humans expected to use it, and why bringing frontline adjusters into the process early can save a whole lot of pain later.

And because apparently this is still The Salty Adjuster:

“I guess cereal could be a form of soup. It’s like a crunchy gazpacho.”

Episode 30. Live from BrokerTech Connect. It got serious. It got... soupy? It got salty. Enjoy.

How does an anonymous podcast host attend and cover a trade show? We're spilling the salt.

The Salty Adjuster team had an absolute blast at BrokerTech Connect in Chicago Aug. 31 - Sept. 2, where we recorded minisodes with Omer Rimoch, CEO of Advance; his colleague Morgan Blocher, Director at Advance and long-time friend of Producer Brett; and the one and only Marissa Buckley of RevUp.

This tailer teases our forthcoming episode (our 30th!!! We can't believe it either), dropping first thing Monday, 9/14.

“You don’t have to be an insurance person to be successful in insurance. It certainly helps, but you should acknowledge what you understand and what you don’t understand.” — Chris Luiz

Chris Luiz has seen enough insurtech pitches to know the difference between a founder who has done the homework and one who thinks insurance is an industry just waiting for technology to come save it.

As the founder of Scout Insurtech, Chris has built a community around connecting insurance leaders, founders and emerging technology in a decidedly different way. Scout has no expo floor. You literally cannot pay Chris to put you on stage. And what started with buying insurance people beers has grown into one of the industry’s most talked-about events.

In “this episode,” Chris joins The Salty Adjuster for a wide-ranging conversation packed with advice for anyone building, buying or working with insurance technology.

Founders, take notes. Chris gets into some must-hear do’s and don’ts: know the specific problem you solve, understand where you fit in this enormous industry, be realistic about the carriers you can actually land, surround yourself with people who know what you don’t, and ask a LOT of questions.

He also takes on the current AI frenzy, explains why “we serve all of insurance” is a major red flag, talks about emerging areas of risk he believes deserve more attention and shares why he thinks technology could fundamentally reshape traditional insurance career paths.

And then there’s LinkedIn.

Chris hates reply bots. Like, publicly-threaten-to-eviscerate-them hates reply bots.

Naturally, Salty and Producer Brett relate.

Plus: hate mail, why insurance conferences need fewer sales pitches and better conversations, the future of human relationships in an increasingly automated industry, swearing at your LLM, and which dinosaur Chris would invite to Scout.

It turns out the answer to a lot of what Chris believes about insurance, technology and community comes back to one thing: Real Connection.

“What part of the industry do you serve? ‘We serve all of it.’ Okay, that’s a pretty aggressive stance. What problem are you focusing on? ‘Oh, we can do anything.’ It’s like, well, you’re literally dead in the water.” — Chris Luiz

If you've listened to any of The Salty Adjuster thus far, you know we love a claimstech founder who has done the work to understand the adjuster ecosystem. We don't so much love when outsiders come in uneducated with tech prescriptions for problems they have never had to face.

Chris Luiz sees a lot of InsurTech startups. As the founder of Scout InsurTech, he’s become one of the industry’s sharpest eyes for spotting which founders understand the insurance market, which ideas have real potential, and which pitches start falling apart as soon as you ask a few questions.

In this trailer for his upcoming episode of The Salty Adjuster, Chris gives us some of his biggest red and green flags.

🚩 “We serve all of insurance.”
🚩 “We can do anything.”
🚩 A target list that is basically the biggest carrier logos in the industry.

Green flag behaviors?

🟢 Founders who know what they don’t know.
🟢 Teams that bring real insurance expertise into the room.
🟢 Startups with a specific problem, market and path to getting their first customers.
🟢 People who ask a lot of questions.

Chris has spent years helping founders navigate insurance, building the Scout community and creating one of the industry’s most talked-about InsurTech events.

And as you’ll hear in the full episode, he has some thoughts about AI, insurance conferences, LinkedIn reply bots and what the next generation of insurance companies might look like.

Our full episode with Chris drops tomorrow, Tuesday, September 8. Enjoy the trailer.

What happens when two claims people meet on LinkedIn, become friends and decide risk management desperately needs to be more fun?

You get Riskfetti.

Sandy Avina and Angel Guerra both came up through claims before building careers in risk management, giving them a front-row seat to what happens when the textbook version of insurance collides with actual human beings.

They also discovered they make a pretty damn good team.

Angel is the big-picture, “why don’t we just do it?” half of the partnership. Sandy brings the details, the execution and some of the best comedic timing in insurance. Together, they wrote Riskfetti in six months and built something designed for the people actually doing the work, especially those who suddenly find themselves responsible for risk without a giant department or unlimited resources behind them.

They join Salty and Producer Brett to talk about their claims roots, why risk managers shouldn’t be the “fun police,” the pathway to yes, why insurance has such a hard time educating people and the realities of managing risk that rarely make it into a textbook.

There’s also Nick Fury, Darth Vader, a $2,000 vacuum cleaner, questionable mascot hygiene and perhaps the most convincing argument for starting the thing you keep talking about starting: “We’re on a floating rock hurtling through space. There’s no rules. We can write a book. Who’s gonna stop us?”

Raise your hand if you’ve found your person in insurance. The one who makes you better at the work, makes the hard days funnier and somewhere along the way became a dear friend.

Salty and Producer Brett built The Salty Adjuster on that kind of partnership, so we know it when we see it.

And Sandy Avina and Angel Guerra have it.

Between them, Sandy and Angel bring decades of experience across workers’ compensation, claims and risk management. Sandy is the Riskfluencer, known for making insurance make sense with humor, pop culture and the occasional question about whether Darth Vader is overpaying to insure the Death Star. Angel has built and led complex claims and risk programs and has made a career out of bringing strategy, structure and humanity to some very messy problems.

Now they’ve taken all of that experience, friendship and personality and poured it into Riskfetti: Risk Management for the Rest of Us, their new book designed to make risk management useful, understandable and maybe even fun.

In this trailer, we get into the partnership behind the book, finding your people in this industry and Sandy’s reminder that, at the end of the day, we’re all basically hurtling through space on a rock trying to figure this thing out.

Insurance gets weird. Find good people to hurtle through space with. This episode drops Wednesday 9/2.

“The shiny object syndrome is very real when you’re on your own.”

Meg McKeen has a folder in her Google Drive full of ideas. Some became real things. Some were completely built and ready to go before quietly dying. Some might come back someday.

That feels about right for someone who has spent the last eight years figuring out what she actually wants her career, business and life to look like.

Meg, founder of Adjunct Advisors and host of Bound & Determined, joins The Salty Adjuster for a conversation about choosing freedom, building confidence by actually using it, and accepting that there isn’t always a clear path from idea to success.

She talks about selling her house and taking her life on the road, turning a podcast she originally gave herself permission to quit after eight episodes into a 100-plus-episode show and live event series, and why bringing women together in coffee shops, bookstores and art galleries feels more like her kind of insurance event.

The conversation also gets into sobriety and insurance’s deeply ingrained drinking culture, why Meg intentionally creates alcohol-free spaces, and what it might take to make industry events feel safer and more inclusive for the next generation.

Plus: airport tofu, networking hikes, the dream of mailbox money, Salty’s questionable caterpillar-to-butterfly metaphor, a proposed insurance podcast roadshow and the eternal truth that 7 a.m. conference sessions should probably be illegal.

Because for all the freedom Meg has created, she’s refreshingly open about the Fridays she’s wanted to quit and the Mondays she came back anyway.

As she puts it: “It’s messy in the in-between, to put it mildly.”

Spaces are still available to join Meg's Bound & Determined Midwest Tour! Tickets here: Methods for Modern Insurance Professionals

“It’s messy in the in-between, to put it mildly.”

Meg McKeen knows the highlight reel is rarely the whole story.

Eight years ago, she stepped away from a traditional corporate career and started building something of her own. Since then, that has grown into a business, a podcast, a community and, eventually, a life on the road.

But there have also been SOS calls to old managers asking, “Are you hiring?” Fridays when she’s slammed the laptop shut and declared herself done. And Mondays when she got right back to it.

In this trailer for next week’s The Salty Adjuster, Meg talks about the tradeoffs behind the freedom she’s built and asks a question that stuck with us: “What is my freedom worth?”

Our episode with Bound & Determined host Meg McKeen is coming Monday. Be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss the drop.

What happens when an insurance pitch competition becomes a road to the Startup World Cup?

Stacey Brown, founder of InsurTech America, joins Salty to talk about the 2026 Innovation Challenge, where startups, innovators and students are competing for $30,000 in awards, carrier exposure, mentorship and, for one winner, the opportunity to represent InsurTech America at the Startup World Cup in San Francisco.

Stacey takes us inside what judges are actually looking for, why he expects AI to show up in the vast majority of this year's submissions, and what it takes to stand out when every pitch starts sounding the same. He also explains why the Challenge is making room for students and why building the next generation of insurance talent matters to him.

But this is The Salty Adjuster, so naturally the conversation eventually turns to the other thing Stacey (and Producer Brett, and Salty) take extremely seriously: music. The trio compare concert stories, debate the art of the perfect conference walk-up song and discover they may have finally found someone who puts as much thought and time into a playlist as Salty does.

Let there be tech. Let there be rock. And let the Innovation Challenge begin.

Submit your entry HERE: Insurtech America

“One winner from our contest will have the opportunity to go on and represent us, and represent InsurTech America, in the Startup World Cup.”

What if your insurtech idea could take you from Hartford to the Startup World Cup?

InsurTech America founder Stacey Brown joins The Salty Adjuster to make the case for entering the 2026 Innovation Challenge, where startups and innovators will compete for $30,000 in awards, industry exposure, mentorship and a chance to advance to the Startup World Cup in San Francisco. Submissions are open NOW here: Insurtech America

And this isn't your average pitch competition. The Startup World Cup brings together qualifiers from around the globe for a massive final competition featuring leading VCs, tech founders and judges from Shark Tank.

Think Shark Tank meets the World Cup, with insurance as the qualifier.

Hear Stacey explain what's at stake in this special preview. The full episode drops soon.

“If an adjuster’s thinking about metrics instead of serving the customer, don’t you think that the customer can feel that? They can feel that.”

Buster the Adjuster spent years adjusting mixes before he ever adjusted a claim. Then one claim changed the entire course of his life.

When a storm sent six feet of water into his basement studio, destroying recordings, equipment and keepsakes, the adjuster who showed up noticed something in Buster that he hadn’t seen in himself yet: a musician knows how to listen. Maybe that same ear belonged in claims.

Buster’s initial response? “The insurance industry does not need a Buster.”

Turns out, it absolutely did.

In Episode 26, Buster joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about the claim-inspired path that led him from professional musician to claims adjuster, why policies are a lot like sheet music, what adjusters lose when their work becomes too focused on production metrics, and why the most complicated part of a claim is often the human being living through it.

We also talk Earth, Wind & Fire, flooded guitars, desert-island album picks, Dino from The Flintstones, important Dairy Queen endorsement discourse and the beginnings of what we can only hope becomes the Buster/Salty brand partnership.

Sometimes life changes the arrangement without asking permission. You just have to adjust accordingly.

The Salty Adjuster has officially entered its international era, its game show era, it's video episode era, and its "recording through a tornado" era (Taylor Swift could never). And through it all, the team at Sydney's Ocean Underwriting met every challenge head on.

Welcome to our first-ever insurance game show. Inspired by their company's stellar Instagram marketing creativity, we invited Elizabeth Pace, Alexandra Merida and Seb Allison to compete in OCEAN’S ELEVEN: five rounds, questionable scoring, absolutely no prizes and one biased Salty host who insisted he somehow had seven points.

And because apparently our production needed a little Wizard of Oz energy, an actual tornado warning hit Salty mid-recording. He disappeared. He called back in from his mobile. The show went on as it must. Which was appropriate, because Elizabeth revealed she’s a massive musical theater nerd, Seb introduced us to the office tradition of “Garyoke,” and the whole thing occasionally felt less like an insurance podcast and more like a show that should have had an overture and an intermission.

Between AI slop, American insurance jingles, Australian translations, Nerds Gummy Clusters and dinosaurs, there’s also a real conversation here about why Ocean’s culture works. Their people genuinely seem to like each other, they know how to make complicated insurance approachable, and they’ve figured out how to have a personality without sacrificing professionalism.

The lights stayed on. The tornado missed Salty (phew!). And somehow, we finished the show.

Ocean Breathes Salty, indeed (that's Modest Mouse, for you kiddos in the audience). We hope you enjoy whatever it is, and we salute our favorite Australian insurance folks ever, the team at Ocean Underwriting, for being such good sports.

"Financial. Reality. Hit."

Buster the Adjuster spent years adjusting mixes as a professional musician, until his own claim led him to pursue claims adjusting as a career. At the time, he thought "The insurance industry does not need a Buster." He couldn't have been more wrong.

Now, Buster speaks about adjusting to unexpected changes in a way that only a musician turned adjuster could lay down.

“Just because it’s a total loss doesn’t mean it’s totally lost.”

What happens to all the stuff after an insurance company decides it’s not worth repairing?

That question takes The Salty Adjuster north of the border to Canada for a conversation with Ray LaMarche of BARGA about salvage, sustainability, and the enormous amount of recoverable value hiding inside property claims.

Ray breaks down what actually happens after a loss, why “write it off” and “throw it away” shouldn’t mean the same thing, and how smarter salvage practices can reduce waste while putting real dollars back into the claims equation.

Cameron and Ray get into the economics of recovery, the environmental impact of the way the industry handles damaged property, and why adjusters may need to start looking at the stuff headed for the dumpster a little differently.

Because sometimes a total loss still has plenty of life left in it.

Learn all about the great work BARGA is doing here: https://www.barga.ca/about/about-us and follow them on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/barga-ca

When season one began back in May, we never dreamed we'd be having these kind of conversations with the caliber of guest the show is pulling. It's been such a thrill. We are officially wrapping Season One on August 31 and we are working to get as many episodes to you before then as we possibly can before we take a week off to let Producer Brett catch some sleep and let Producer Daniel and Designer Quinn refresh our look and sound a little.

This look-ahead trailer includes tidbits from every yet-unaired convo we've got in the hopper.

🍁 Dropping tomorrow (or maybe even earlier if you're subscribed on Spotify 👀 ) is our conversation with claims adjuster and mechanical engineer turned salvage CEO Ray Lamarche of BARGA.CA, our first international guest.

🌊 Continuing the international theme is our game show style throwdown with Ocean Underwriting (and yes, there are Nerd Clusters involved). Elizabeth Pace, Alexandra M., and Sebastian Allison were the most fun we've had talking insurance in a long time. Go follow Ocean Underwriting on Instagram for even bigger laughs.

🎊 #Riskfetti has launched and we have co-authors and risk education phenoms Angel C Guerra, PhD Candidate and Sandy Avina, MBA together talking about so many topics you're passionate about, and plenty of humor in the mix

🎙️ She's Bound, she's Determined, she's embarking on her Midwest tour, and we're here for it. Meg McKeen let us turn the microphones on her as she sat in as our guest to discuss the similarities between claims deployment and hashtag#nomadlife, and so much more.

🎹 Buster The Adjuster might have the most interesting path to claims adjusting that we've ever heard, coming from a music production background and finding all the ways we've never thought of to liken policies to sheet music. Do not miss this one.

🫂 Rose Hall, PE sees friends and clients through the same lens, bringing authenticity and candor to every conversation in every room. Now at RH Business Ventures, LLC, she's leveraging a lifetime of carrier side experience as a consultant.

And before we wrap on 8/31, we've got interviews lined up with Chris Luiz of Scout InsurTech, Michelle Raue, Omer Rimoch and Morgan Blocher of Advance (live from BrokerTech Ventures in Chicago!), Walker Mullinix, AIDA, AIC, Josh Fischer of Kru Talent Group, Audry Torrence of best search., and Stacey Brown of InsurTech America on their upcoming Innovation Challenge. Let's make August the Saltiest!

Think about how much stuff is involved in insurance claims every year.

Farm equipment destroyed by fire. Machinery damaged by water. Hail-dented outdoor kitchens. Appliances. Furniture. Building materials. Commercial equipment.

The claim gets settled.

But the stuff doesn’t disappear.

Thirty-five years ago, Ray Lamarche was a heavy-duty mechanic who lost his job after an acquisition. Looking through the newspaper classifieds, he found an insurance company searching for a mechanic.

Ray says he “didn’t even know how to spell insurance.”

But the company understood something important: they could teach a mechanic to become an adjuster. They couldn't teach an adjuster to become a mechanic.

And Ray learned to look at claims through both lenses.

Where someone else might see a destroyed tractor, Ray saw a perfectly good loader on the front.

Where someone saw a burned piece of equipment, Ray knew there could be valuable components inside.

Where a carrier saw a hail-damaged $20,000 outdoor kitchen that needed to be hauled away, Ray saw something another family might happily buy for $5,000.

What looks like waste to one person can still have tremendous value to someone else.

That idea eventually became BARGA Insurance Salvage.

Ray saw an insurance salvage system that relied heavily on preferred contacts and closed networks. The public had little access to what was available, carriers were losing potential recovery, and usable property could end up being hauled away and dumped.

So BARGA built a more open, competitive way to give it another shot.

Sell it. Repair it. Reuse it. Part it out. Find the person who sees value in it.

Sometimes that person is down the road.

Sometimes they're in Argentina buying a burned 40-foot combine header from Canada because the parts and equipment are worth rebuilding.

Less waste. More recovery. More transparency. More usable property kept out of landfills.

So yes, we’re calling Ray the Captain Planet of claims.

Check out this trailer and stay tuned for Tuesday's fresh episode drop.

It’s 2026. We can track a burrito from the restaurant to our front door, but an adjuster can issue thousands of dollars in claim payments and still end up wondering where the check went.

Cody Eddings, co-founder of SnapRefund, is working to change that.

Cody joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about transforming claims payments for the adjusters sending them and the policyholders waiting for them.

We get into digital payments, mortgagee approvals, lost and uncashed checks, and the technology giving adjusters more visibility and fewer administrative headaches after they hit “issue payment.”

We also talk about where AI can actually make an adjuster’s job easier, what claims technology could look like ten years from now, and what Cody has learned building a company inside the wonderfully complicated world of insurance.

Then we discover Cody travels with Magic: The Gathering cards, spent four years DMing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and knows enough about dinosaurs to correct Jurassic Park.

Come for the future of claims payments. Stay for the dinosaur lesson at the end.

Learn more about SnapRefund at www.SnapRefund.io

“It’s no surprise that a lot of people feel frustrated by the insurance industry because these situations often feel like a black box… the average person is expecting, okay, well, when I need it, it’s gonna be there. And then when it’s not… it feels like broken trust.”

Cody Eddings knows more than a little about the build. $+ years into his journey as the CEO and Co-Founder of SnapRefund, The St. Louis native is a lifelong entrepreneur, engineer, and a third-time founder, helping insurers rethink one of those things that really should be easier by now: getting people their claims payment quickly.

Building technology for insurance also means learning insurance. And as Cody discovered pretty quickly, even if you've done your homework, this industry is quick to serve founders some humble pie.

In the trailer for Episode 23 of Season 1, Cody joins Salty and Producer Brett to talk about the legacy processes that still make parts of a claim feel like a black box, and what happens when those systems fail the person waiting on the other side.

Full episode drops Tuesday, August 11!

Learn more about SnapRefund here: https://snaprefund.io

"People don't ask for help because a company hangs up a poster. They ask for help because someone else had the courage to go first." – Cal Beyer

Content Note: This episode includes candid conversations about addiction, mental health, substance use, overdose, and suicide. If these topics are difficult for you, please take care while listening.

If you've been listening this season, you know we've spent a lot of time talking about trust.

Trust between carriers and policyholders. Trust between adjusters and contractors. Trust in technology. Trust in leadership.

This episode asks a different question. How do we build enough trust that someone who's struggling actually asks for help?

Our guest is Cal Beyer, a longtime insurance and risk management leader who now serves as Senior Director of SAFE Workplaces at SAFE Project, a national nonprofit dedicated to overcoming the addiction and mental health epidemic. He was also one of Producer Brett's first mentors in the insurance industry and quickly has become a dear friend of the show.

Cal introduces us to what he calls the Three V's of leadership: Visible. Vocal. Vulnerable.

When leaders make mental health visible, speak openly about it, and have the courage to share their own stories, something remarkable happens. Trust grows. Conversations begin. People stop carrying everything by themselves. And eventually, as Cal explains, a fourth V emerges: Vertical. A culture where compassion spreads from one person to the next until helping each other simply becomes part of who you are.

We also talk about burnout, stigma, psychological safety, recovery, and why the strongest leaders aren't the ones who pretend to have all the answers. They're the ones willing to start the conversation.

Whether you work in claims, underwriting, risk management, or anywhere else in insurance, this is one of those conversations that extends far beyond our industry.

Resources from Cal Beyer and SAFE Project:

• SAFE Project: https://www.safeproject.us

• #NoShame Pledge: https://www.safeproject.us/noshame/#pledge

• Treatment, Family Support & Recovery Locator: https://safelocator.org/en/help-selection

• Prevention Perspectives Webinars: https://www.safeproject.us/prevention/#Prevention-Webinars

• Naloxone Training Resources: https://www.safeproject.us/training/

• Goldfinch Health: https://goldfinchhealth.com/

• 10 Questions to Ask Your Surgeon: https://goldfinchhealth.com/10-questions-surgery/

• Billion Pill Pledge: https://billionpillpledge.com/

"If you give people a safe place to be reasonable, they will be."

Claims may eventually close, but the way we get there is changing fast.

This week, Salty sits down with Chrysa Jones, founder and CEO of StreamSettle, to talk about one of the least glamorous—but most important—parts of the claims process: getting people paid.

From electronic payments and digital settlements to attorney involvement, fraud, customer expectations, and the future of claims technology, Chrysa explains why faster isn't just about speed—it's about trust.

The conversation also dives into building a company from the ground up, navigating the legal side of insurance, and why innovation only works when it makes life easier for adjusters and policyholders alike.

If you've ever wondered where claims technology is headed after coverage is decided, this episode is for you.

Because in the end, as Chrysa says, "Everybody really has the same goal... they both really just want to settle and get a fair deal."

People don't ask for help because a company hangs up a poster.

They ask for help because someone else had the courage to go first.

That was one of the biggest takeaways from our conversation with Cal Beyer.

He shared what he calls the Three V's of leadership:

Visible. Vocal. Vulnerable.

When leaders acknowledge that mental health is real, speak openly about it, and aren't afraid to share their own stories, something changes.

Trust grows.

Conversations start.

People stop carrying everything by themselves.

And then, as Cal explains in this trailer, a fourth V appears:

Vertical.

The culture spreads. Compassion moves from leadership to every corner of the organization until people are simply helping people.

Insurance is built on showing up for people on some of the hardest days of their lives. Maybe we should be just as intentional about showing up for each other.

Watch this two-minute conversation. We think it'll stay with you. Episode drops Tuesday 8/4.

Resources from Cal you can use:

Description of SAFE Project: 

SAFE Project is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to overcoming the addiction epidemic in the United States. Established in 2017 by Admiral James and Mary Winnefeld after the tragic loss of their 19-year-old son Jonathan due to an opioid overdose, SAFE Project aims to save lives impacted by substance use and mental health challenges through overdose prevention and response, education on stigma, and development of prevention and recovery programs. SAFE Project also provides tailored guidance and training within its four key initiatives: SAFE Campuses, SAFE Communities, SAFE Workplaces, and SAFE Veterans. To learn more, please visit www.safeproject.us 

Selected SAFE Project Resources: 

#No Shame Pledge: https://www.safeproject.us/noshame/#pledge

Treatment, Family Support and Recovery Housing Locator: https://safelocator.org/en/help-selection

Prevention Perspectives Webinars: Registration Page and Links to Past Webinars: https://www.safeproject.us/prevention/#Prevention-Webinars

Naloxone Training Resources:  Separate links availablefor 3 versions of training: 60 second, Abbreviated (5-10 min) and 30-min: https://www.safeproject.us/training/

Goldfinch Health: https://goldfinchhealth.com/ 

• 10 Questions to Ask Your Surgeon: https://goldfinchhealth.com/10-questions-surgery/

• Billion Pill Pledge: https://billionpillpledge.com/

"They're both having an imaginary argument with the other side that doesn't even exist."

Most of us assume claims settlements drag on because one side refuses to be reasonable. But what if that's not actually the problem?

In next week's The Salty Adjuster episode, Chrysa Jones of StreamSettle explains why adjusters and plaintiff attorneys often want the exact same outcome—they just have no safe way to find out.

The result? Years of unnecessary litigation, millions in avoidable costs, and claimants left waiting while everyone assumes the other side is digging in.

Luckily, Chrysa and the team at StreamSettle are on the case.

Whether you've spent decades handling claims or you've never seen the inside of a lawsuit, this conversation is really about something bigger: communication, trust, and how easily we create villains out of people who may actually agree with us.

Check out the trailer for our upcoming episode with Chrysa (full ep drops Tuesday!)

"Unlike a claim file, there's no rush. There's no duty to close it out quickly." — Precious Norman Walton

"Grief is a ball inside a box. At first, every time it hits the side, it hurts. As time goes by, the ball gets smaller... but it still hits the sides of the box." — Salty

This is not the episode we planned.

We had a full page of questions for Precious Norman Walton about leadership, advocacy, catastrophe claims, and one of the most unique careers in insurance.

We asked exactly one.

Because somewhere between that first question and the second, two claims professionals who had each recently buried one or both parents stopped talking about insurance and started talking about grief. About what it's like to become the policyholder instead of the adjuster. About caring for the people who once cared for you.

About the grocery store aisle that breaks you. The song that catches you off guard. The impossible task of settling an estate while your own heart is still trying to make sense of what's happened.

As Salty says during the conversation, "Grief is a ball inside of a box. At first every time it hits the side, it hurts. As time goes by, the ball gets smaller... but it still hits the sides of the box."

So no, this isn't the episode we planned. It's the one we needed.

And judging by the conversations we've had since recording it, we have a feeling some of you might need it too.

Connect with Precious on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/preciousnwalton/

Follow Project55 for mental health resources for insurance professionals: https://www.linkedin.com/company/project55

Dial 988 for support.

Check out Salty's favorite band Touché Amoré and their beautiful lyrics on grief on Spotify.

Email TheSaltyAdjuster@gmail.com to tell us your story... claims related or not. We're here for you, always.

"Behind any one of our successes... it's a group of people that are pushing. Sometimes I'm pushing, sometimes they're pushing me."

That simple idea sits at the heart of this conversation with Bobbie Shrivastav.

We talk about what it takes to build communities that matter, why the most fulfilling work is fueled by joy instead of ego, and how the people who make the biggest impact are often the quickest to share the spotlight.

From launching initiatives that challenge the status quo to creating opportunities for others to be seen and heard, Bobbie has spent her career proving that leadership isn't about standing in front of the crowd. It's about bringing people with you.

This episode explores entrepreneurship, growth, mentorship, EmpowerHER, and the power of surrounding yourself with people who challenge you, champion you, and occasionally give you the push you didn't know you needed.

Because none of us gets there alone.

If you're feeling isolated, we invite you to email TheSaltyAdjuster@gmail.com, join us on Linkedin, or join our reddit community. We'll get you connected with mentors like Bobbie.

"When mom took her final breath, dad was sitting by her side, holding her hand. Eight months to the day, dad decided to join her. As an insurance professional, I think the hardest thing was getting into the mindset of 'I'm the insured. I'm the bereaved.' Their house burned down that July. I had to jump into that mode, going back and forth with adjusters." - Precious Norman Walton CPCU, SHRM-CP, AIC, AIS, AINS, ACS, TRIP

"I lost my mom last year. I came home from a CAT deployment and both my parents went into the hospital on the same day. My boss was texting me about a claim and I was like 'I'll call you back later, I just found out my mom is gonna die." - Salty

Note from The Salty Adjuster Team: This isn't the episode we anticipated it would be. We had a list of questions for Precious, one of the foremost leaders in our industry, about everything insurance-career-related. But Salty and Precious found common ground in recently losing one or both parents within the same year, an experience unlike any other experience. We let the mics keep rolling on a cathartic, heart-opening, real dialogue that everyone needed.

We're presenting this raw, unflinching trailer without edits and will also present the full episode this week without commercial interruption or production announcements. The song at the end of the trailer is by the band Touché Amoré, whose heartwrenching songs and lyrics about the death of his own mother are favorites of Salty.If you need support managing grief or loss, call 998, check out friends of the show Project55 (Brenden Corr and Justin Goodman), The SAFE Project (Cal Beyer, CWP, NAC) or visit The Salty Adjuster reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSaltyAdjusterPod) where you can interact directly with Salty and Producer Brett . We promise you're not alone.

THANK YOU Precious for the love, candor, and vulnerability for this upcoming episode of the show.NAAIA - National African American Insurance Association Insurance Nerds #SandwichGeneration #Grief #MentalHealth #loss

"What you're now doing is you're not teaching adjusters how to adjust. You're teaching them estimatics... when you remove the elements of being able to let adjuster adjust claims, you run the risk of that bad reputation: 'X carrier doesn't want to pay claims.' A lot of that spans from moving away from adjusting."

We're counting down the end of Season One and Beginning of Season Two (September 2026!) by revisiting some of our favorite moments from Season One so far. This was a big one for us.

Back in the beginning of June, we sat down with the one and only Andrew Norton, CPCU, ARe, SCLA Gold, for a conversation we wish could've gone on another full hour or two. We'll be bringing him back for more wisdom in Season 2, but ICYMI/if you're new to the show, head back to episode 9 this weekend and treat yourself. And while you're at it, treat the hardworking Salty Team by rating and reviewing the show, please and thanks!

Available on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gMQb5qGbInsurance Nerds #insnerds #insurancenerd CoVerse The Salty Adjuster

"Now it's our canvas to paint. What are we going to do differently?"

We love a leader in this industry who takes the time to kick the door open for others to follow. A trailblazer who takes a dirt road and paves it so that it's easier to bring people along. In our upcoming episode next week, we sit down with someone who embodies that spirit: the accomplished, collaborative, inclusive and brilliant Bobbie Shrivastav ☀️

Despite founding multiple insurtechs including Solvrays, building EmpowerHER - Leading the Future with Lucy Graham and Stacey Brown, co-authoring the Momentum Series books with Renu Joseph, cohosting the Insurance Sync podcast with Laurel Jordan, AND mentoring and sponsoring dozens (if not hundreds) of insurance professionals, Bobbie doesn't think she's the story.

For her, the story is the joy of creating something with people you believe in. Building communities that didn't exist before. Watching others step into the spotlight. Having so much fun doing the work that the accomplishments almost become secondary.

You can hear the smile in her voice when she talks about her work. We hope this trailer for Tuesday's episode brings a smile to your face. #TheSaltyAdjuster InsurTech America InsurTech Carolinas The Salty Adjuster CoVerse Communications

Every once in a while, someone comes along who completely shatters your assumptions about what an insurance professional looks like.

Austin Lewis is one of those people.

Austin is an economist-turned-life insurance broker, Army National Guard member, husband, dad, and conservationist who has built an audience of more than 120,000 people by doing something you don't see every day. Before he starts talking about insurance, he's usually knee-deep in the Chesapeake Bay pulling out shopping carts, tires, fishing line, and whatever else doesn't belong there.

That's how we found him.

What started as a Facebook rabbit hole turned into one of the most unique conversations we've had on The Salty Adjuster.

We talk about why someone told Austin he'd never make it because he showed up on camera dirty, sweaty, and wearing chest waders instead of a Rolex. We talk about building a business around purpose, why authenticity attracts the right clients, and how social media can be about something bigger than selling.

If you've ever wondered whether you have to fit the industry's mold to succeed, this bonus episode might change your mind.

Grab some Old Bay chips and maybe a pair of waders and enjoy this refreshing conversation with The Bay Life Broker himself.

Check Austin's work and brokerage out here: https://www.baylifebrokerage.com/

🦀 SUPER. SPECIAL. BONUS. EPISODE. INCOMING. 🦀 We've found a guest unlike anyone you've ever met in insurance for a conversation unlike any we've heard on this (or, candidly, any) insurance show.

Be honest... When you hear the words "life insurance broker," what comes to mind? 🕴‍ A tailored suit? ⌚ Fancy watch? 🚗 Nice car? 🏌‍♀️ Golf on Fridays? 📸 Filtered LinkedIn posts from a sleek office?

What if we told you to instead picture a guy in the water just outside Baltimore city, in fishing waders and a cut-off tee-shirt, hauling trash and handling wildlife every morning before clocking in at the office? Austin Lewis, owner of Bay Life Brokerage, is an economist-turned-life insurance broker who starts most mornings knee-deep in the Chesapeake Bay pulling shopping carts, tires, and fishing line of the world's third-largest estuary. While he works, he talks via reels to his 67,800 followers on Facebook and his 58,400 on Instagram about insurance, conservation, and leaving the world a little better than he found it. In fact, that's his entire value proposition for Bay Life Brokerage (https://lnkd.in/gjUPg8ag).

When The Salty Adjuster stumbled across one of Austin's videos on Facebook he asked Producer Brett if she thought there might be a chance he'd do the show. And when she crossed her fingers and hoped that someone with more than 100K followers on social would even bother to reply to her DM, Austin responded to Brett within minutes (and waaay after business hours), more than willing to jump on the pod. It isn't like he has a ton of free time. A member of the Army National Guard, volunteer with the BACK RIVER RESTORATION COMMITTEE INC, husband, dad, and yes... #insurancebroker... Austin is living proof that sometimes the best way to make a difference is to stop trying to look like everyone else.

"I'll never forget, I had one friend...," Austin told us, "he's an investment advisor, and he told me that he did not think that it was going to work well for me because I was showing up on video dirty, sweaty, in waders, cut-off tee. I mean, looking like I was a bricklayer or something... And the point he was making was, in this industry, people want to do business with people who appear to be successful financially."

Watch the trailer, then get ready for this BONUS EPISODE DROP (coming Thursday!) for one of the most unexpected conversations we've had on The Salty Adjuster.

Have questions for Austin? Pop them in the comments or email TheSaltyAdjuster@gmail.com.

"Silence is the worst. Silence is a trust killer."

Hey friends.

If you've been listening this season, you've probably noticed a theme.

We've talked with Michael Balarezo and Arvind Sontha about restoring trust through technology. Heather Blevins reminded us that claims is the promise. Bryan Falchuk challenged us to rethink how we use AI without losing our humanity. Curtis Goldsborough showed us what trusting across claims and underwriting silos could look like.

This conversation ties a bow around all of it.

Leslie Sapienza has spent her career helping some of the largest organizations in insurance rethink how they communicate with customers. And after this conversation, you'll probably never look at a claims letter, text message, or status update the same way again.

We talk about why silence is often more damaging than bad news, why policyholders don't need perfection as much as they need clarity, and why communication has earned a seat at the executive table instead of being treated like a "soft skill."

We also dig into the role AI should play in claims, the difference between informing someone and reassuring them, and why every interaction either builds trust... or quietly chips away at it.

Whether you're an adjuster, a claims leader, or anyone who has ever wondered why one claim leaves a customer singing your praises while another ends with an angry LinkedIn post, this episode is worth your time.

Learn all about Leslie here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lks-strategies

Bad communication. No communication. Slow communication. Confusing communication. On a claim, which might be the worst day of a policyholder's life, the way carriers communicate can make or break trust. In our upcoming new episode on Tuesday 7/21, we have strategic communications expert Leslie Sapienza for a frank and timely conversation about how insurance stops failing claimants through comms.

Get a taste of the episode in this fresh teaser trailer and please subscribe and follow on Apple and Spotify so you don't miss a single episode drop!

CoVerse Communications The Salty Adjuster Brett McKenzie LKS Strategies

Bryan Falchuk has spent decades challenging insurance to think differently. As President & CEO of PLRB, a best-selling author, celebrated speaker, and one of the industry's most prolific voices and educators, Bryan joins The Salty Adjuster for a conversation that covers just about every corner of claims. Leadership, burnout, AI, fraud, recruiting, and the future of the industry are all on the table.

What makes the difference between an Insurtech that changes the industry and one that flames out? Bryan says it starts with humility, not hubris.

Can AI actually support empathy in claims? Bryan thinks it can, if we deploy it for the right reasons.

What happens when we treat every claim like fraud? Longer claim cycles, higher costs, and less trust.

Why are so many adjusters burning out? And why supporting claims professionals takes more than another wellness initiative.

Who are the "dinosaur hunters"? Bryan explains what separates the InsurTech companies that last from the ones that don't, and why curiosity will always beat certainty.

Which state has more tornados in 2026 than any other and how is that changing the market? The answer is gonna surprise you.

Salty has benefited immensely from the resources that PLRB offers adjusters striving to continue learning through their career. Nearly two-thirds of the insurance industry's carriers are PLRB members. If you're an adjuster, there's a good chance you've benefited from PLRB's conferences, educational resources, or technical expertise. If you're not sure whether your organization is a member, you can check using your work email here: https://members.plrb.org/login

Follow Bryan on LinkedIn, and be sure to check out The Future of Insurance podcast.