Get to Know Our Employee Benefits Consultants – Risky Benefits Podcast: Season 2, Episode 15

Rick Farris: 0:01

Hey, thank you for listening in to Risky Benefits. A podcast that informs you on all things benefits. We’ve got to saying around here. Benefits isn’t your main business. It’s ours. Hey, everyone, thank you for listening to risky benefits and welcome to this week’s episode. This week, we are virtually opening the doors to FBMC, so you can get an inside look into how we work. We’d like to start off by introducing two of our employee benefits consultants. The first interaction many of our clients have is with our consulting team, their job is to develop an understanding of the client’s needs and find high quality innovative solutions that help our customers essentially reach their goals. So today, we would like to dig a little deeper into what our employee benefits consultants do with team members, Kevin McCarthy in Texas and Schands Bussey in Florida. But before we learn more about a few of our employee benefits consultants, let’s overview today’s discussion. First thing we want to go over is just learning more about Schands and Kevin, what are our employee benefits consultants, teams doing for our clients, and then some advice from our consultants to those out there who are listening that said, without further ado, let’s meet the team guys. How’s it going? Good. It’s going great. Happy to be here. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on today. And in the vein of just helping you know, some of the listeners out there, learn more about our consultants or some of our consultants and just get a better feel for, for what an experience with one of our consultants is like, sometimes it helps just to get to know people a little bit better. So maybe, let’s just Kevin, Shands, let’s talk about yourselves what you did before you started working with FBMC, a little bit about your history and, and why you’re passionate about what you’re doing.

Kevin McCarthy: 1:47

So I live in Austin, Texas. I am a proud graduate of the University of Texas and I’ve been an actor and a musician in Austin going on 30 something odd years moved here in 87. And I took the lengthier approach to college and a bachelor’s degree I got an Associates Associates Degree in acting and I got a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and then started teaching at Anderson High School in Austin, a part of Austin ISD. And I was there AP economics and AP government teacher for a handful of years, started to have our family and started to realize that that was a little tough to pull off economically. And so I was recruited at that time to an insurance company called Horace Mann doing a more traditional insurance approach to things back in 1999. And then promptly was recruited to first financial where I worked for the next 20 years. And actually, I share all of that, mostly because it’s still, it doesn’t seem that long ago that I was teaching First off, and it still informs a lot of what I do for our clients, a lot of our clients, our school systems. And so when it comes down to their benefits, a lot of my conversation with the superintendent or the business manager, whoever the decision makers may be is with the idea that I’ve been in the shoes of a public school employee, and we got to figure out how to make these things work for folks trying to basically handle our children and their education. So that goes deep for me.

Shands Bussey: 3:15

So my name Shands I live in Tampa, Florida, actually graduated from FSU, and then I started working for a third party logistics company that resold DHL. Then I moved on to ADP where I worked for about five years and kind of got a close pretty close look at the Employee Benefits side of things. And I found it extremely interesting. I love ADP. Now I was mostly dealing with small business payroll. So at a certain point, you know, it was a great learning experience overall, cuz you got to see so many different aspects of the business. You know, I work with bankers, I work with insurance agents, we did workers compensation, we did payroll, we did taxes, etc, etc. But I had a I actually met Lee, our former VP of sales at a conference that I just attended about two weeks ago, and we had a great conversation. And we was just one of the smartest guys in terms of business that I ever met. And I thought, you know, I want to continue learning about the Employee Benefits space, I think there’s a huge opportunity there. And I decided to come to work at FBMC because I thought it was a great opportunity for me to grow as a professional, you know, and continue my career here.

Rick Farris: 4:35

No, that’s awesome, awesome, guys. And just talk to us a little bit about fbmc culture. I mean, what is it about fbmc that you guys so far, have really appreciated and or, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you’re like, you know what, I’m happy I work here.

Shands Bussey: 4:47

Well, I just love how supportive everyone is. I mean, so I actually started the exact same day is Jim Philmont, who’s our trainer and now VP of sales. And if you guys haven’t Had Jim on? Yeah, he probably should. But I mean, as far as him being able to articulate the nuances of the healthcare industry, and what it is exactly we do in a much more articulate way than than anybody else I’ve heard. I mean, there’s you can go down a rabbit hole and in every single different way, exactly, it is what we do. But then being able to articulate those things, to me easily, a lot easier, especially being a relatively neophyte in this industry. That’s awesome. And then, I mean, being able to basically chop it up with like I said, Kevin, it’s been super helpful and just bouncing ideas and ideas off. I mean, it really honestly took me about six months to figure it out exactly what it is that that I’m supposed to be doing for our clients, as far as the culture aspect of it.

Rick Farris: 5:57

I mean, it’s been awesome for me. No, that’s awesome. So so good people. It sounds like in support people internally willing to invest themselves in each other. I mean, is that kind of what I’m picking up Shand’s?

Shands Bussey: 6:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s just the team aspect. I know, we’re all hunters. And we all want to go out there and get business. But, you know, especially like I said, being new to the industry, there’s just so many things going on. And it really was I’m still kind of drinking through a firehose at this point. You know, but it started to slow down the flow a little bit when I started getting, you know, grasp some of the main concepts of it, of everything. And it’s helped a lot having support, you know, throughout the team. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. How about you, Kevin?

Kevin McCarthy: 6:40

Well, in contrast, so I’ve done this kind of work, I was doing this kind of work for first financial for going on 15 or 16 years. So the kind of work we do was something that I’m very familiar with, especially in the K through 12 space in Texas. So last year, you know, figuring a global pandemic is a great opportunity to make a career change. Because I’m strategic like that. I was thinking that, you know, I look at this group, and I saw you, we were using words like honesty, integrity, accountability, respect, and these are all things that I’m like, you know, I love that at the core, I mean, and it’s not just something that’s printed somewhere, it’s something we repeat every time David Felker Barry gets on a team wide or company wide call, we go back over these, these are core values to fbmc. And these are all things that resonate for me, and that I identify with directly. And I, I didn’t, I think Lee was one of the folks who put it this way, I love this, I wasn’t running from something I was running to something, when I came to fbmc, I had a very good situation with first nature, they’re a very good company, a quality company, and they treated me great, they put me in a wonderful position, to raise my family, to put them into good schools to put them in shoes. You know, that’s where all the essentials. And you know, when it came to the opportunity to move to fbmc, this is, you know, the last the latter third of my working career. And here, I see an opportunity to work for a company that holds those things as almost a mantra, I can grow in what I know and understand about my business, specifically getting involved in things like health insurance, consulting, working in other sectors, like municipalities working in the private sector, these are all things that are different for me that I can grow and learn in and, and continue to develop in my business, I get very bored if I’m not growing and learning and I’m not very good once I get that point. So huge opportunity for me.

Rick Farris: 8:45

Yeah, and just something that’s interesting to note. I mean, in for those listening, I mean that there’s a vast kind of gap between schanz and say, Kevin, that chances are on the newer side of the spectrum in the industry, even though he came from a parallel industry, whereas Kevin’s been in the industry in excess of 20 years and has really been spending a lot of time there. And so one might ask, Well, when I’m dealing with a broker slash consultant in the Employee Benefits industry, clearly we’re going to have new people up and coming within the industry. How do organizations handle that? You know, shadowing mentoring, I feel like some of the things you should be asking for from some of the consultants out there would be, you know, what’s your shadowing program? Do you have a mentoring program? Do you have a close connection between some of the newer people and some of the more senior people and from a servicing perspective, when you have a newer person coming in? Maybe one of the questions to ask is is do you immediately surround the client with the service people who have been there for years so that when you’ve got a newer consultant, that there’s everyone’s getting the support that they need, and conversely, on on on the more experienced side with someone like Kevin, I mean If we had a newer servicing person, Kevin can counter that and or a senior service person overlooking those people just making sure that you’re doing your best to bring up the future. But also make sure that the client’s needs are met because let’s be honest, guys, the reality is, is we constantly need people coming through and and learning our industry bringing like new perspectives lenses, like Shan does, from other parallel markets, and then also the people like Kevin, who have hit the brick wall a few times and figured out, hey, here’s a better way to do this. Right. And so just bridging those two worlds and in getting, you know, innovative ideas and neat things out there on behalf of the customer. So, I love the the kind of the dynamic duo that we’ve got on here today, guys. Um, so Robin to my Batman. There it is. There it is. And we all should have one, we all should have one. So let’s talk a little bit guys about your lenses. And when when when somebody says, What do you do for us? If I hire you? You know, what do you guys do for us? Why don’t we start Kevin with you and just maybe give us kind of a range of of how you might articulate that and then Shands, maybe just round it out at the end.

Kevin McCarthy: 11:20

I’m going to bring a comprehensive understanding of employee benefits, how that relates to the employer and the decision maker from a recruiting and talent attracting tool. I also understand the the inner workings of making sure that that maintains a quality group of people that want to stick around for a while, you know, there are a couple of watermarks for school district employees, if we can get someone to be a faculty or staff member for three plus years, we have a really good chance of keeping them around for a long time. And his ties a little bit into what you were just sharing the the challenge of maintaining an institutional knowledge. While things shift. And when things continue to move and evolve with new folks coming in, especially in a in a labor market where it’s tough to keep somebody in that teaching position for that three years. Well, I go to a decision maker. And it’s my goal to say to basically approach it from the standpoint of if you’re going to have somebody come here and stay here and commit a significant portion of their lifetime to this employment, you are going to stand by your commitment to make sure that they have the tools necessary to retire from that district effectively. that’s ultimately what I think the exchange is. And I’ve been at it long enough to kind of know where those successes are, know where the pitfalls can be. And as I mentioned earlier, I’m I come from a place where my understanding of benefits is certainly informed from an educator standpoint, I spent and this is the I’m going to waste one of my best jokes on this podcast right now. But that’s the commitment I have for you. And the love. There’s a lot of love in this room. So I honestly, was a teacher for a year and a half before I realized that the cafeteria plan had nothing to do with food. Yeah, you’re not the only one there. I’ve started a support group. And there are many faculty and staff members. And we meet on a monthly basis. And we discussed the fact that this gets poorly communicated through a lot of employers, and especially in school systems, especially if you get stuck between the coaches who are just going to talk through the whole faculty meeting, you end up not knowing that this is actually a very powerful financial tool.

Rick Farris: 13:37

Wait, so Kevin, you’re telling me that section 125 isn’t the section of the book where we discuss rectangular pizzas?

Kevin McCarthy: 13:46

That is not the one. All right, how would that is? That’s geometry. I was never good at that part. No, I honestly I was like, I went about a year and a half and thought this was a discount lunch program for the teachers and and my wife was like, Look, I’ll make your lunch. And I was like, oh, man, that’s awesome. So yeah, that’s what I think I bring in it’s a comprehensive view. I’ve got a little bit of time on the clock, so I can share some of the places where I’ve made mistakes, and come to from that frame of reference. Yeah, how about you Shands?

Shands Bussey: 14:18

Um, so yeah, just to hop on, you know, the pop plans. You know, when I came here, I, I take a lot of pride. I think one of the explanations that Kevin gave in the beginning was that he enjoyed learning and, you know, expanding his his mindset to new things. And that’s, I’ve come to find out how incredibly complex our healthcare system is. And I everything is very siloed in terms of the information and being able to bring transparency to groups, I think is huge. Because I you know, I have a girlfriend, she’s, she doesn’t know what her deductible is she doesn’t know what in network out of network is she doesn’t know what plan to select, you know, she might go to the doctor twice a year maybe. So helping employers from a benefit benefits perspective, understand exactly how their employees are going to react based upon the options that they’re going to give them is huge. And then also trying to get those employees to understand the decisions they’re making in the marketplace. Because it’s not always a transparent marketplace in general whatsoever, which drives me crazy. But helping them to understand and make sense of something that’s has the complexity of our healthcare market is basically in my eyes, what we’re trying to do or what I’m trying to do.

Rick Farris: 15:51

Yeah, and you know, for those listening, when we add fbmc, backup to kind of a 60,000 foot level, we have four major buckets. And if you’re out there shopping for broker slash consultant on the Employee Benefit side, this will probably help you guys frame, maybe what you asked for, or what you’re looking for, when you go through that process, the first thing you do is you kind of break it out into brokerage and consulting. And in a second year, I’ll have the guys just kind of talk through maybe the differences of the two. But that’s got a lot to do with setting strategy and meeting your business objectives. And in addition to that, actually going out and sourcing product on behalf of your employees. The next piece is is if you’re going to go through that process. There’s this communication, education and engagement bucket where, okay, we did the work to go get these products and we put these strategies together. But if nobody knows what they are, or how to use them, which is what chans was just articulating, even with his girlfriend, where what is the deductible, sorry. And in network out of network, a healthy utilization of the plan, what products do I have, and you know, all of these things that it’s we’re going to do all this work so that we can mitigate risk and make your employees mentally healthy. And also to just make sure physically that they’re healthy, etc. Like they need to know about them, right? And so what is that strategy? The next piece is, well, how then do we enroll them in those benefits? And there’s a whole bucket of things and Shan’s use the word rabbit hole earlier, I mean, it could feel that way. And Kevin, I know you, you know that experience, because a lot of times in the public sector market, it is a much more in depth enrollment process than say, on the private sector. A lot of times in the private sector, they’ll give you a web based enrollment system and say, have that pick what you want have a good year, or, hey, you want to you want to keep everything, don’t do anything, just click this button. Well, on the public sector side, they have really invested a lot of time, money and effort in actually having counselors Come on location and, you know, a multitude of other enrollment methodologies, all of which, you know, is a logistical process that has to be managed. So you’ve got that element of of actually going through the enrollment process, right? Is it paper? Is it electronic? What vendor? Do I all that stuff down to administration and compliance, which is, Hey, I paid for these benefits? Is it getting taken out of my paycheck and going to the insurance carrier? And is it in force? And then the compliance, which is Hey, guys, Welcome to the world of legislation, regulation? arisaka, you know, FMLA, all these things that are constantly changing COVID? You know, how does that impact your employees it? Can they work? Do they have to have a vaccine? How do we talk about whether people have had vaccines? I mean, you have

Kevin McCarthy: 18:44

that face to face engagement? That’s right, you’ve got this mass pandemic running around. Yeah, that’s right.

Rick Farris: 18:49

Because what’s interesting, and we use it as a tagline a lot, guys, but you know, companies don’t exist simply to provide benefits, right? I mean, the reality is, is they exist to provide a service, whatever that service may be. And that’s why we say, you know, benefits isn’t your main business. That’s why we make it ours. Because at the end of the day, all these things that we’re talking about our getting in the way from your company, doing what you need to do, and or it’s a tool as Kevin, as you said earlier, to retain and or recruit top talent, etc. So, so just just to put a little bit more of a framework around some of these things, as I guess, listeners out there that you should be asking for and if you’re looking to say what services do you provide, use that as a framework, because these are the things that Shanz and Kevin really delve into all day every day. And just real quick, Kevin, Shands, if you don’t mind, could you just articulate a little bit more for the listeners, kind of if somebody says, Hey, I’m a consultant or I’m a broker. How, what are the differences and how might you articulate to our listeners what that really means just in a nutshell,

Shands Bussey: 19:53

well for for me, a broker’s basically collecting a census. They’ll shop it out to the cares, they’ll come back and Say, here are your options, a consultant. And to me anyone can do that. You know, that’s not what, what I think at BMC takes pride in doing fbm mc and myself, we want to know what’s going on in the marketplace, what changes are going to affect the business, how we’re going to take, you know, the plans that we got, and we can construction, construct them, and basically work with them to be somewhat of an architect, and how they can personalize their plans, to their employee demographic, and how they’re going to get the most out of it, how they’re going to keep the healthiest employees, how they’re going to attract and retain new talent, you know, and make it the most efficient and effective, you know, benefits experience that they possibly can. That’s what a consultant does a broker, you know, obviously, I love playing golf, they’re out playing golf, but it’s going and being the in between as far as communicating information from the carriers to the employer, which is great. And we do do that. But at the end of the day, you know, you, I think that we take a lot more pride in being a lot more than that.

Rick Farris: 21:14

That’s awesome. Shands. Kevin, you want to add anything to that?

Kevin McCarthy: 21:17

Yeah, well, I think that sums it up pretty great. There’s, there’s a consultative approach that we take and being a broker is part of what we do. And brokering products and services, especially when it comes to things like what, at fbmc in particular, this is a place where, you know, we have different platforms available to us, we have different service models available to us, we have different product carriers available to us, we’re able to bring, we’re independent of any particular insurance company. So we’re able to bring best rated carriers, top shelf carriers and say you tell us which one you want to provide I, especially in Texas, I don’t know that this is the way it is in Florida. But in Texas, there’s an emphasis on cooperatives, you know, trying to get a lot of people into the pool. And, you know, I look at it as getting a lot of heads in the room, you know, the more heads in the room, the better. And, you know, the for school systems in Texas, the TRS active care system is a large cooperative of, you know, huge pool of folks. There are people that we compete with that really emphasize cooperatives. And this is all great. But there’s one element of the CO operative cat concept that gets lost. And that is the communication part of it. Sometimes it’s not enough to just get a lot of people in the room, they need to be making smart, informed business, buying decisions. And then the plan works. And then you get something really happening from your co operative standpoint. And if you’re only approaching this as a broker, and brokering something like a cooperative, or a cooperative set of plans, and then falling short on the consultative side and the communication side of things, the comprehensive side that I think the consultative approach actually really encompasses, you’re going to not hit the mark that you’re trying to get to. So here at fbmc, you got I’ve got opportunities to bring a series of different companies, I can make recommendations, and then my clients can tell me Yeah, Kev, that’s fine. But we want this one. Fine, that’s good. That works perfectly. And let’s go let’s go forward with it, we can carve out what makes sense to them.

Rick Farris: 23:24

And you know what, what comes back to if you you know, for the listeners out there, what you’re hearing here is, is this is where the market, having market knowledge is important. So as an example, in Florida, we’ve got 74 districts, there’s 67 counties, but you also have, you know, one school four, or one district for the four research schools, one for the School for the Deaf and the Blind and one for the virtual school, so on and so forth. So you’ve got a larger purchasing power from a benefits perspective within those districts because there’s a big population with less districts, Texas, there’s over 1000 school districts, right, and they’re in their ISDS independent school districts. And so putting together those those consortium isn’t putting together to create that same level of purchasing power. It’s just really understanding the differences and door, the nuances within each market and trying to accomplish similar objectives with the means that you have available to you. So, you know, there’s been a lot of creativity in Texas on how they go about that process. And Kevin’s been a large part of that. In Texas, you know, you see similar makeups in Georgia, where you’ve got a state run health plan, Texas has a state run health plan. Florida does not right. And so if you just knowing those nuances and really understanding how to advise your clients is key because you have to know these things. And it’s one you’ve got consultants out there that have compliance departments who help just keep up to speed on a lot of this stuff. But really, it’s your consultants on the front line with the service people on the front line who really know this inside now. And that is where You know, as a as a employer in the marketplace, you just need people who are who are really in tuned with the space that that you’re operating in. It’s going down that road. Sorry, go ahead, Kevin.

Kevin McCarthy: 25:14

I was gonna say and I think in some cases, some employers seed their uniqueness as an employer and their benefit program as an example of or a way of showing their uniqueness as an employer to the idea of let’s get better pricing to a cooperative. And if through a consultative approach and an independent brokerage, you can actually bring that leveraged buying power, by virtue of the size of the business, you had the book of business you actually have, rather than actually the CO operative that someone’s getting into, then I can actually still get to a place where I’m achieving that leverage buying power for you, but you’re not giving up your uniqueness as an employer, when you’re trying to attract that science teacher to your district, instead of the one that you neighbor, who is also part of that cooperative, at least in K through 12, that’s a big part of our advantage and fbmc, we can still carve something for that school system that is unique to them, and still bring them buying power that they’ve been getting from giving up that uniqueness, giving up that identification or that identity.

Shands Bussey: 26:17

Now I add at 100% agree with that, but it for me as well. It’s structuring, you know, the benefits plan, but it’s also following through. and disseminating the information to the group members is huge, because, you know, Rick said, you can put together the best plan of all time, that’s gonna, it’s beautiful, everything looks good. from, you know, an actuarial standpoint, it looks phenomenal, from, you know, even behavioral, you know, economics, it looks great. But if you’re not done, especially now, with the way people’s minds work, if you’re not talking to them, and staying in front of them at all times, they will forget. And then, especially in a market, you know, like healthcare out there, if people have, they don’t have all the information that they need, when they need it, they’re going to make irrational decisions nine times out of 10. And so with that BMC being able to disseminate and market information, I’m, oh, we have a fantastic marketing department. So I really seen that, that is huge for me, because, you know, especially me up people go online, they have 25 ads that are hyper personalized towards them, you know, and that’s where I would like to see healthcare go, in general. And that’s where I see fbmc moving, which is awesome. So it’s, to me, it’s not just it, putting together a great benefits plan is awesome. But it’s also following through on a benefits plan as well, too.

Kevin McCarthy: 28:01

And Rick, you alluded to it earlier, too. I mean, in keeping with what schanz is talking about, and that’s something else. I mean, aside from all of the other vocabulary terms, I rattled off fbmc has a service first approach and puts their money where their mouth is this, this group, I joke about it being, you know, service forward with notes of sales, because in this company, the emphasis on service is what other companies place on sales, almost to a place where it’s like if you’re, if you’re a sales person, like schanz, and I are, you know, we hate saying things like no, it’s more of a, you know, your improv Yes, and kind of moment, right. Whereas the service folks here like now that let me talk to these folks, and they square it up, and all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, yeah, the business folks are talking to the service folks. And they understand how this all is working. And they understand that each other speaks the same language. And suddenly, you’ve got no garbage in, you’ve got quality product coming out the other end, and it’s, it’s hugely impressive to watch. It was a little bit, you know, of a cultural difference for me a cultural growth curve for me. Same Same here. Yeah, I mean, I was used to being the one guiding everybody through this thing with velvet glove. And, and frankly, I handed it over to people who had just as much experience as I did, if not more, and knew how to get the job done. And I just leaned back and said, that I can mark it that this is these guys are awesome.

Rick Farris: 29:32

That’s great. Well, so guys, as we start to round this out, and you know, we’ve had I think we’ve had some good conversation just given given the listeners out there a good feel for what some of our team members are like and the perspectives we have and what it is that we feel like we do on behalf of our customers. I guess one of the things I’d ask is, you know, what do you think it is that makes our team unique? Any success stories and or what helpful tips and or comment Might you give to some of the HR, co CEOs CFOs out there that are looking for a Health Benefits Administrator or Consultant/slash Broker?

Kevin McCarthy: 30:10

Gosh, what advice would I give to human resources person, I would say, candidly, this is what I’ve shared, you know, what we do in exchange for being able to be the the agent or broker on these voluntary benefits that are in a given employer is we bring a whole lot to the table at little to no charge to the employer, right. And so from an HR standpoint, take advantage of that you have at your fingertips, something that is very valuable, and you should be shopping it around periodically to say, am I getting everything I should be getting, in exchange for the the opportunity to represent the benefits in my employment, you know, take that out, take it for a walk every once in a while, make sure you’re looking around and seeing what else is available out there. Especially in a very competitive market. These are their opportunities to really enhance what you’re getting and take a lot of the heavy lifting off of your shoulders. If you’re finding yourself still reconciling your own Billings and chasing down all these service issues. That’s that’s a, that’s your first hint that you should be looking around and shopping it around, there are a lot of folks who would work very hard for you to, to have the opportunity to represent those benefits for what were the other two prongs?

Rick Farris: 31:28

Things that you think make us unique and possibly success stories are the other two.

Kevin McCarthy: 31:32

Well, one is the service forward nature of this company, honestly, I’ve sat through, I sat through the year end celebration, and there was a series of awards, and it was about an hour long. And it was 95% Service Awards. And that was when I looked at that, and I went this, this is awesome. You know, this is a company that is about getting it done for the client, not about selling the client and I it’s the kind of group I want to work with. That’s the kind of group I can get behind. And so that to me, unfortunately, is a uniqueness. Where I, the folks that I get out and compete with on a regular basis, there’s a lot more emphasis on the sales, and then the back end of that gets lost. With this company, I feel very strongly that if we’re going to be anything, we’re going to be service forward, if not to a fault. So that’s a good thing for me. success stories. Yeah, I think I’ve had some I’ve had a group come on board with us that flat out was looking at us going, the service I’m getting is so bad, can I fire them early? And I said, well, as a matter of fact, you can, yes, I will be glad to help you with that process. And my folks are taking care of business. And the reviews I’m getting back are an amazing service team, you know, outstanding service team. That’s that stuff that I can I can work with that all day.

Rick Farris: 32:53

That’s awesome. Shands, how about you?

Shands Bussey: 32:55

Yeah, I’ve got a quick success story. Actually, we we met a purchasing organization. At a recent conference that we’re at that has a parent company that represents over I think it’s 45 to 50 different pediatric or excuse me orthopedic offices, and they were on a PEO. And so basically they had 45 to 50 of their clients on a PEO encompassed into one Ei n number for purchasing power. And so they looked, they have about 500 lives, they’ve looked to leave, they look, they actually left five years ago. And they had just a maelstrom of problems trying to leave the PEO, which I can understand. So one of the cool things that we did is, you know, obviously, we collected all their information, and we’re going through the process of getting, you know, the benefit plans back. But we also stopped ourselves and our tracks and said, Listen, like, we don’t want this to be like it was five years ago where you guys left and went back to the PEO because you had all sorts of problems outside the health and benefits. So what can we do as an organization to make exiting this PEO for you? And all of your offices as easy as possible? what they said, Okay, well, you know, here were the issues that we had before it was payroll, it was finding an HR person, it was trying to do open enrollment, it was getting all the information consolidated into one area. And so now we’ve been reaching out for the past two weeks to different experts in our fields and trying to figure out exactly what we can do from an organizational standpoint in order to make facilitate that move. Because obviously, you know, at BMC is bread and butter is benefits, employee benefits. We weren’t good at that. But we’re willing to put ourselves out there and say, Hey, listen, you know, we understand that we want to retain your business for you know, not two weeks, not Two years, but forever. So if we can help you, and put you in touch with the right people and help you develop a plan, in order to make this exit as quick as possible and as easy. You know, let’s do it. So that’s what we’ve been doing for the past two weeks is trying to help them figure out exactly what they need to do. And in order to make that exit as, as efficient as possible, which has been, and I know, they’ve been super appreciative, they’ve been extremely communicative, which has been awesome. And so it’s, it’s also been a great learning experience for me in general. So…

Kevin McCarthy: 35:37

See, and that’s why I love Shands. And he’s illustrating something, I mean, first of all, because he uses words like Maelstrom in a sentence, night, you know, if you’re a broker, you’re not gonna find brokers who do that only someone who can consult is gonna be able to use. So I love this guy.

Rick Farris: 35:53

That’s awesome. Well, guys, as we round this out, and I guess the one thing I would add on to it is, if you’re running your HR department and or your benefits strategies for your place of employment, couple things that you may want to think about, and then I’ll tie it into kind of one of the things that I think makes fbmc unique, which which largely speaks to Kevin and Jan’s and our service teams, and, and and the other people we have in house and the services that they bring to bear, you really need to make sure that whoever you hire can connect organizational issues, and your goals back to Okay, here’s how we can help you meet those objectives with your benefit plans, right. And you need to whoever you hire needs to be able to educate your team on both benefits, but on the regulations surrounding those benefits. And really make sure that you bridge the gap between here’s what benefits we have. And here’s how you effectively utilize them. Here’s what our strategy is, and here are the right ways to deploy this. Risk Management is a part of that. And I would even say that the service support teams making sure that that’s a part of what you’re getting expert advice on the marketplace, what’s happening out there, what do we need to know about what are the new innovative solutions that are out there? You know, the whole communication education and engagement bucket, I just can’t hit on hard enough. And even some form of health and or claims management whereby they’re looking at your claims data telling you what they’re seeing and giving you strategies on how to make your population healthier. And just to tie all that in, you know, obviously, there’s the brokerage bucket and the consulting bucket, I think that a good solution should provide both. And ultimately, just to kind of tie that into I think what makes fbmc unique is that we came from the administrative side of the house, as well as the voluntary benefits in the enrollment, and the communication, education and engagement house and then worked our way into the medical consulting arena. And here’s why that’s important. Our focus has historically been on how to effectively engage employee populations and communicate the benefits packages, make sure those benefits packages get in place are paid for, etc, right. And I think a lot of other consultants just came in, they wrote up a great strategy, handed it off, and they left. And people like us came in and figured out how to actually deploy them. Because in a lot of scenarios, there was a separate consultant from the broker. And each one was kind of doing separate things. Well, when fbmc started to do everything, what we started to realize is, we would have the same strategy that maybe one of our competitors would have, but we would have greater fulfillment within that strategy and execution within that strategy. And then you have to take a step back and ask yourself why. And a lot of it had to come came back to our roots, and our roots in that communication, education engagement, deploying our people to the field, working through the enrollment process and tying back the strategies that were created in the strategy timeframe, to the enrollment window. And really saying at point of enrollment, hey, let’s articulate what we’re trying to do here. Oh, okay. Well, when you go to this doctor, you know, the cost for knee procedures, this versus when you go to this doctor, it’s a lot lower end, by the way, it has higher quality. So if you do this, it’s going to be better for the plan, which is going to drive your premiums down. And you know, you don’t get those types of results unless you’re engaging and having these conversations…

Kevin McCarthy: 39:23

Is the difference between an educational strategy and a sales strategy.

Rick Farris: 39:29

That’s right, which ties back you know, to Kevin’s roots and a lot of the different people that we have. And so if you’re listening out there, don’t miss out on that. Make sure that when you hear all the bells and whistles that there is a solid execution strategy for communication, education and engagement beyond just going out and finding the right strategy and beyond just going out and finding the right partners. Otherwise, you’ll you’ll have a great solution with with no follow through and you won’t get the results. You’re looking for. Thank you very much for coming on today. It’s always great spending time with you. Kevin Shan’s Yeah, you thank you guys. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And to all the listeners out there, thank you for coming and listening. If you have any questions about this program, please contact us or look for us at www.fbmc.com remember you can find us and subscribe on any podcast app and from the team. Thank you and have a great day.