Thirty-nine years on Schrock Road.

Rich Halstead opened Beacon Ridge in 1987 with one client — his cousin's auto policy — and a card table in a 200-square-foot office above Davis Pharmacy on State Street. Today the agency writes $6.5M in premium and the cousin's auto policy is still on the books.

Rich Halstead.

Rich grew up in Granville and went to Ohio State for accounting, then sideways into insurance because his uncle ran a Nationwide office and was hiring out of the 1976 graduating class. Twelve years as a Nationwide captive followed — three of them in personal lines, nine in small commercial. By 1986 he was the highest-producing captive in the Columbus North district and had decided he was tired of explaining to clients why their renewal had moved without their permission.

He opened Beacon Ridge on January 5th, 1987 with one auto policy — his cousin Tom's '83 Camaro, written on Westfield — and an appointment letter from Auto-Owners that took him eight months and four trips to Lansing to land. Marjorie, his wife, ran the front office and was the only other employee for the first three years. By 1991 the agency had nine appointments and Rich was on the founding charter of the Big "I" Trusted Choice program.

The 2008 pivot is the one Rich talks about most. He'd been writing mostly personal lines for two decades, watching the captives erode his book on auto, until the recession dropped a half-dozen Columbus commercial accounts in his lap because their captives non-renewed an HVAC company over a fleet claim. Rich wrote them onto Cincinnati Insurance. Within three years commercial was 38% of the book; today it's 52%. He earned his CPCU in 2011 at the age of 49.

The cyber-liability practice launched in 2017, after a Worthington CPA firm Rich wrote got hit with a $48,000 wire-fraud loss and Travelers paid the claim because Rich had pushed them onto a cyber endorsement the year before. He'll still tell you that's the second-best phone call he's ever made.

Emily Halstead-Garber.

Emily grew up at the agency. She filed paperwork for her mother in middle school, ran the postage meter and the carrier-rep coffee in high school, and went to OSU for marketing in 2006 with no intention of coming back. She lasted two years at a consumer-products agency in Chicago, decided she missed building relationships that lasted more than a campaign cycle, and rejoined Beacon Ridge in 2010 as a personal-lines producer.

She earned her CIC in 2013, her AAI in 2016, and took over personal lines as practice leader in 2018. Her book is now $2.4M of the agency's $6.5M and she's the producer-in-charge of the eight-person account-management bench. She handles every high-net-worth personal placement and most of the cross-sell between personal and commercial accounts.

The five-year buyout structure began January 1st, 2023. Rich and Emily wrote it themselves with a Columbus M&A attorney and a carrier valuation consultant. Rich stays on as Founder & Principal through year five; Emily takes over operations year-to-year on a schedule that should be complete by end of 2027. Her last name went hyphenated when she married Scott Garber in 2014, which she'll tell you with full deadpan was a branding decision because her email signature already had the "Halstead" in it.

"We compete on the second policy. The first policy you buy from us is rarely the cheapest in the market. The second one is the one that catches us — when GEICO won't write your teenage son or when your captive non-renews after a single basement-flood claim. That's when independent stops being a marketing phrase."— Rich Halstead, CIC, CPCU

Awards & memberships.

• 1991 Big "I" Charter Member, Trusted Choice program founding cohort
• 2008 IIAA Ohio Member of the Year nominee
• 2014–26 Cincinnati Insurance Diamond Agency
• 2018–20 CPCU Society Columbus Chapter Chair (Rich Halstead)
• 2026 Pursuit of Excellence Candidate (1.4% short of designation; pursuing in 2027)