Sawmills native helps grow family’s business

Dec. 26--Cameron Annas has been with the Granite Insurance Agency since 2014, but his ties with the company go back a lot longer than that.

His grandfather purchased the business, which was established in 1936, in the 1950s and the company has been with his family ever since.

Annas said he saw how much his parents enjoyed going to work every day while he was growing up, and he wanted to follow in their footsteps in the insurance business, except for a brief stint in high school when he thought he wanted to be an accountant.

"I saw what my parents did and saw them enjoy life and enjoy what they did and be rewarded in life for the work they did, so this seemed like a natural thing to do," he said. "The unnatural thing to do was probably coming here and working right after college."

When he graduated from Appalachian State University he had job offers from companies across the country, but he wanted to work where his heart was.

"The passion I had for helping this company is greater than the passion I would have had for helping any other company," he said. "If I had gone somewhere else, I would have almost been doing them a disservice because I would be thinking that two or three down years down the road I would end up back here."

Since he joined the company he has worked his way up to vice president of business operations and has helped grow the company, particularly the adventure sports division -- an opportunity he said he might have missed out on if he was working somewhere else.

When he first started he was stumbling around niches and trying to find an area he could grow when an opportunity in the zip line industry presented itself, he said.

He realized that adventures sports, like zip-lining, ropes courses and rafting, was a growing industry that needed to be served, as well as something he was passionate about.

"It is a growing industry and one that I love and matches up with my passion," he said. "Anything that involves outdoors and adrenaline or nature -- who wouldn't want to deal with zip-line and rafting companies or rock climbing companies? It is a lot more interesting."

Since then he has been able to establish and grow the adventure sport division at the company, along with fellow 26-year-old Chase Keller, and the company now insures more than 100 adventure sport companies across the country. He said eight years ago the company didn't have even one client outside of Caldwell County.

"It is literally the dream job, how many people get to do something this cool," he said. "The thing that makes it a dream job is that I get to help people be successful each and every day and with people who have the same passion that I do."

That growth is what got him noticed by the national publication Insurance Business America as one of the executives on the "hot 100" list heading into 2018.

"It is humbling," he said. "But what I think it is a true representation of is the awesome team that we have here and built here and a representation of the excitement for what we can continue doing in the future."

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