Building Brands Podcast · Building Brands Marketing

No BS, You Get What You See

October 21, 2025·21 min·2 clips

Allison's on-site clinic strategy saved an employer $267,000 in productivity—here's how they tracked it.

This episode features host Brayden Pope interviewing Allison DePaoli, founder of the independent health insurance brokerage Alteak. DePaoli explains her firm's modern approach, which focuses on customizing employer health plans without the financial ties to specific carriers that constrain large brokerages. She identifies high costs and long patient wait times as major industry pain points that drive up expensive emergency room usage. DePaoli shares that her team creates three-to-five-year strategies guided by client needs and teaches employers how to analyze plan performance data. A key case study involves helping a 700-employee company install an on-site clinic staffed by a physician, which yielded an estimated $267,000 in productivity savings in its first year. Another example details sourcing a specific medication for a new client, reducing the cost from $16,000 to $7,000. DePaoli reveals that one of her highest-performing content pieces was an impassioned video rant about an insurance company contract issue, which resonated even with the sound off. She notes her audience engages most with topics like lowering prescription costs and uses unconventional imagery, such as a pink skeleton, to capture attention. The founder admits her early attempts at a polished, corporate brand persona failed and that growth accelerated once she embraced her direct and sarcastic communication style. A pivotal moment was a client's compliment that DePaoli "gives a shit" about them, which she considers a top achievement. She argues that while AI tools will proliferate, they cannot replace authentic human connection in marketing and client service. The conversation is educational and conversational, blending specific business case studies with broader marketing philosophy. DePaoli's tone is candid and opinionated, often leaning into snark as a deliberate brand element. Service-based business owners and marketers in traditional industries would appreciate this episode for its practical lessons on differentiation through authenticity. Listeners seeking a highly formal or purely data-driven discussion on insurance might find the personal branding focus less relevant.

As heard by us

A practical case for letting operations, not slogans, do the talking.

Building Brands treats Allison DePaoli's conversation as a practical look at brand positioning in health insurance and marketing. She presents Alteak as a more modern, forward thinking alternative to traditional brokers, and that idea carries through the way the firm speaks to…

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Why you'd press play

You want a plainspoken look at how a modern health-insurance business turns real savings into a stronger brand story.

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