Why do reclines call Dr. Jean the results queen? The name speaks for itself. Dr. Jean has been helping business owners achieve and exceed their goals for over 20 years. And now, she wants to help you get more results to your business and in your life. In fact, her mission is to leave you better than she found you. Join her as she dives deep into the world of business and entrepreneurship to provide you with actionable strategies and valuable insights and compelling stories that will propel you to greater success and ultimate results. Get ready to take notes, because it's time for getting results with Dr. Jean the results queen. Hi everyone, it's Dr. Jean the results queen and welcome to getting results with Dr. Jean. I have a very, very interesting person today that I am super excited to be interviewing and I'm going to say welcome Jeff Wiener to our conversation, I'm happy you have you here. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yes. I'm glad you are. So with that said, Jeff is going to talk all about benefits and outsourcing are all different types of stuff that we should be outsourcing in terms of our benefits, like those PEOs things that you hear about. And he's amazing at what he has to say. So I'm going to ask the first question. So we learn more about Jeff, Jeff, tell us about your journey, how did you get to where we are today? Sure. So up until first semester, senior year of college, I was going to be an attorney. I decided that do I really want to go to school for three boy years? And the answer was like, yeah, no. So I was like, okay, so what can I do? So a Delphi, which is a regional college, was up in my school, SUNY Albany. And it said, if you'd like to see what it would be like to be an attorney without going to law school, come to our paralegal program. So I said, okay, great. Kicks the can down the road. It's fine. You know, let me figure it out. I'll figure it out from there. So I went to paralegal school, became a certified paralegal, coincidentally an employee benefits and pensions and interviewed for a bunch of paralegal jobs and got actually to a fourth interview with Chase, and they said, well, we're not going to hire you because you're too entrepreneurial. We don't think you're going to stick around for our trading program. So I was like, okay, because I was always very entrepreneurial, you know, growing up. And, you know, I was one of these guys that, you know, during the gas shortage, I bought Dunkin' Donuts and so Coffee and Donuts on the gas lines, you know, kind of thing. And so I looked around to jobs and came across financial services that said, be your own boss. Sales help wanted. No experience necessary. We'll pay the train. I was 22 and I said, you know what, this sounds interesting. And walked in and I was like, do I want to sell health and life insurance? And I was like, yeah, I was 22 and you did a job. So I said, you know what, I'll take this still something better comes along and March was 43 years. And March was 43 years. Holy moly. 43 years. You just started and here you are. That's it. And that's it. That's my story. God, I love that. Oh, by the way, apply here, no experience required and 43 years later, you're still doing it. That's amazing. What have you seen changed in 43 years? Well, I built my business, what hasn't changed, I mean, the industry's obviously changed, but what hasn't changed is, you know, is my business is growing a business. You know, I did it through networking. I was doing networking before they called it networking. What did they call it? They didn't call it anything. It was just, you know, I'd meet people and say, Oh, Joe, you need to meet Charlie, Charlie, you need to be Joe and I'd introduce them to each other and, you know, and then when Charlie and Joe had a situation where they needed my products and services, they'd both think of me. And so I grew my business 100% by networking because there was no, I had no rich relatives. I had no rich friends, you know, I had no contacts, you know, because I was 22. What did I know? And so I just thought, yeah, a little over 10 years ago, I've set up my own networking group. Wow. You set up your own networking group? Tell us more. How did you do that? Yeah. So, you know, I've been, like I said, I've been networking forever and I got tired of going to these groups was the same 12 people or it was kind of a low end group and nothing I really, you know, really wanted to do. So I said, you know what, I think I can do this myself. So I called a couple of clients and I called a couple of an attorney and a marketing person and banker and say, all right, guys, I'm buying you breakfast and they're like, why? I said, well, I want to start my own networking group. And I always liked the idea of small, facilitated networking rather than 150 people in a room throwing around cards. Yeah, I hate that. And so I said, okay, and I started it with 12 people, 12 business owners. And the way the group works is we get together 12 to 15 people for lunch, business owners and decision-makers only exclusive by industry for the meeting, no fees, $35 for lunch. But since we're not meeting in person anymore with by Zoom, we're asking people to donate the $35 to the charity of the week and we click a different charity each week. You get to talk three or four minutes about who you are, what you do, who's a good lead, who's a good referral, company is trying to get into and mention the specific companies because more than one, somebody mentioned a specific company, somebody on the call knew the right person and they got business. Other group works different from every other group is that each time you come, you meet mostly new people. It's a rotating networking group. I grew to about 200 companies in person, Capital Grill, Long Island, Wednesday, Friday lunch group and then the pandemic happened and I sent an email out to everybody, said, okay, guys, we're turning this into a Zoom group. Some people said, no, I'm not doing Zoom. But other people said, well, I know people in Florida, in California and whatever. Now the group is over 350 companies, we're in 28 states, we're in three countries. The group has done over $14 million of business together that I'm aware of and that was a long time ago when I used the track. That doesn't count a company that was formed from the group five and a half years ago. That's a $40 plus million company by itself and probably will grow to $100 million. That's important to me, we've raised over $1.5 million for nonprofits. Wow. That's amazing. Okay, now the listeners are probably thinking to themselves, I want it. Can they get into the group or is it like, it's, it's, you know, it's got to be a business owner. You got to have a team, you know, and yeah, then we talk to people and if they have the right give versus get added, give versus, you know, get attitude. I have a conversation with them and if I have the category open because some of the categories are closed off, then we add them into the mix and to the rotation. Wow. That right. And the group has grown a hundred percent by word of mouth. There's no website, there's no master list, there's nothing to join, you know, I have, you know, I started the group, grew the group and now everybody in the group grows the group with people they know because they know the kind of quality of people that are in the group. So you heard it here, folks, if you're a quality person, just the guy I need to know, I will tell you that. So Jeff, what do you do for your clients? Let's talk a little bit about that because people want to know. So business wise, HKM Associates is my own firm, I've been a business assistant 43 years and we work is with companies, everything from international tech startups, small group, multi-state to hundreds of employees, licensed in 40 states, I can write business pretty much anywhere in the country. And where we start with is with companies is with benefits. And we're much different than a traditional broker. So what do we do? We sit down with a company, we take a look at their bill and benefits. We shop the market to see if there's something better or less expensive. If it's a different carrier, that's better or less expensive. We get a list of their doctors and their employees doctors and we do doctor searches on the doctors. This way, nobody has to switch doctors, even if they're switching carriers. Ooh, that's nice. People don't want to leave their doctors, right? Correct. Correct. Especially the wife's gynecologist and the kid's pediatrician. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Second thing we do that makes us unique is we run employee meetings for all our groups. And when I run the employee meetings, we tell the employees to pull out their cell phones and put my cell phone number on their speed dial. So we're available 24/7 not only to the owners of the company, but every employee of every one of my clients has my cell phones. So we service differently. We take care of adding people on, taking people off, getting them our ID cards, like most brokers. But we deal with all the claims and the billing and the service and the grunt work. So the owners like it because the employees don't have to spend business time dealing with their personal issues because we're available 7am, the 12am, 7 days a week. The employee is like it because what's the set of the phone and fight with the insurance company all day. And for the companies that have office managers and HR, they love it because we do all their work too. I love all that. And you've been doing it 43 years. So it's not like you're going any place now. And my direct team is three of us soon to before, but we have over 100 years of experience. And then I have a back office company called Benefit Mall. They're the largest general agency in the country. So they give me the clout to negotiate best rates for large groups, groups over 100, and the ability to service thousands of employees with everybody calling three people. I have a huge team at Benefit Mall that helps me service my clients. We also have, as part of it, with Benefit Mall, a PEO broker for those that know what the PEO is, where it's a least employee situation, well, we shop PEOs. So if a client has EDP total source, loves the PEO model, but once this hates ADP total source, we shop. So either put them into a PEO, find them a better one, or unwind them if that doesn't make sense. Well, I love that. It's like one stop shop. Right, so what are some of the things that business owners get wrong where benefits and PEOs are concerned? Well, people think PEOs, they're great health insurance rates, and they can be, depending on the size of the group, the age of the group. The problem is they charge very high admin fees. We had one client that was a 65-person group, an investment banking firm. They had an ADP total source. They just renewed. They said, yeah, just renewed means nothing, because people think, oh, I just renewed, I'm stuck for a year. You are not. Health insurance is month to month. The insurance companies have to hold the rates for a year, but health insurance can be switched anytime. There's no pre-existing conditions, so switching is very easy. So we said, now we have to give them 30 days notice. Well, they were paying $18,000 a month with admin fees, because ADP charges a percentage of payroll as an admin fees. These guys are investment bankers. Well, we moved them to a different PEO, because they like the PEO model, and we saved them $300,000 in the first year. Wow. Wow. You know, I think as a business owner, most of us don't ever think about the admin expenses of our, that we have to be paying. And for any business, no matter how big or how small, their second biggest expense is now benefits. It used to be payroll rent and benefits, but so many companies have gotten rid of their rents. Yeah. That is payroll and benefits. So there's two biggest expenses. Oh, absolutely. Well, we start with education, saving people money, making sure they're serviced. I love that education, saving money, make sure you're serviced. Those are three beautiful things that I suspect most people are not getting from their health benefits people. Would you agree? Well, if brokers go in, go out, they want to, they tell you to renew as it is, we start our renewal process two months in advance. This way, if there's a better, less expensive option out there, it's a smooth transition, not three weeks before, oh, we looked around, there's nothing better. You kind of stalk and then you kind of feel like you have to renew because you only have three weeks left before you renew. Well, it's interesting. You said start two months in advance. How long does it take to get all of this, it's it really take two months to get all this stuff done or if I'm wanting to do it? No, depending on the size of the group, but, but we really, you know, want to do a proper job of shopping, shopping the market to see, you know, because we look at health insurance as annual renewable health insurance. Every year we look at every client and every client every year gets a renewal gets their renewal two months in advance and that's when we send out the renewal letters to them saying, here's your current plan, here's what your new rates are going to be, here's the alternatives within this carrier, here's the other carriers that are out there, is there a better, less expensive option that's available now and we do the doc to search as if we need to redo that again and, and if they would need to move, we will rewrite a group for less money if we need to rewrite a group for less money. I love that because again, most people are not kidding that kind of service or let me ask you this, I'm in the midst of shop, like, yo, I'm sure someone's saying, well, I'm in the midst of shopping already, but I don't think I can call another broker while I'm shopping with broker X. Is that truth? No, just we had a situation the other day, Massachusetts group called me said, we don't want our broker to know we're shopping, they're about 30 people. Okay, so do you have to become broker to shop? And I was like, no, you're 30 people. All I need is a copy of your bill I'll highlight you to the benefits and the senses. I can even get you your current carrier alternative rates within your current carrier if you want me to. And she's like, oh, because the other broker told me he had to become broker to, to shop and I was like, no, that's just a broker trying to get business. Really? Oh, yeah, it's just like, there's no, just like, oh, we were just renewed health insurance is month to month. You can switch your health insurance anytime you want brokers don't tell you that because they don't want you to shop. I think we've, I think we've all learned a lot here because I always thought you could not, you couldn't leave, you know, his month, look, just gone, he's shaking his head. You can't, if you're on, if you're listening to it, you can't see him. He's like, no. All right. So what are other, some other preconceived notions that we that are just wrong? I mean, I've already learned a lot on this podcast. I mean, we do a lot of work in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut with high deductible health insurance plans. People hear the term high deductible, they're not going on and I'm not looking at that. But they don't look at what's costing because when you're doing a comparison on your health insurance, it's not just premium. It's not just it's your premium. Plus your copays plus your deductible till you hit what's called your max out of pocket, which is the most you could ever pay. Well, in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, the difference in premium between a gold play because all plans are platinum gold, silver, bronze, the difference between a gold level plan and a bronze plan. Right now, the best case scenario under a gold plan is now worse than the worst case scenario under a bronze, meaning you cannot lose money when the high deductible plan, which is why we lead with a high deductible plan. If you're two to a hundred New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, you're not on a high deductible plan, you should look at it. But brokers don't show high deductible plans because it's more work is less commissions. Well, also, I think a lot of us think, my God, I'm in a high deductible plan. That's that's no good. I have to shell out a ton of money. And how am I going to do that? Yeah, the way we typically set this up, we usually save a company $1,000 per month per family going from a gold level plan with a carrier to a bronze. Really? Yeah, the way we set it up so that employee ease when and company is a win, the employees pay the first $500. They put it on a flexible spending account pre tax. They can roll it over if they don't use it. So no risk for them. Company funds the next $7,000 on something called an HRA, which is basically pay as you go health insurance. Well, funds seven grand when and if an employee has seven grand worth of claims, which most people don't, because what counts is what's called the contracted rate, not what the hospital or not the charges. So a $28,000 surgery, contracted rates for a grand. So most people don't hit seven. But even if they do, they're saving $12,000 funding seven, which means our clients save $5,000 a family, $2,000 single worst case, assuming every single employee in your company gets sick all at the same time and all maxes out all at the same time, which is never going to happen. Because then you'd probably be out of business if it did. Yeah. But that's why we lead with high deductible health insurance plans in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Wow. Okay. So I'm just going to ask this dumb question too. If it's $7,000 per employee, let's just go with that for the moment. Do I have to come up with and I've got, I don't know, 15, 20 employees, do I have to come up with all that money in one shot or can I just kind of fund it over a period? You fund it as it happened. So I fund it as it happened. What does that mean? So in other words, if a client saving, let's say 10, 15,000 a month, because that's what we save a 10, 15 person group could save $12,000 a family. So if you have 10 families, you're saving 120 grand. Yeah, it's true. What we tell our clients to do is the first three months paying the same premium, just divvy it up, send way less premium to the insurance company, take the money put in a free account. And this way, if you have a rush on the bank, if five people get sick, you got all the money, pay for it anyway. Because, and when you do the bottom line numbers, you can't lose money. Companies cannot lose money nor can employees actually. Okay. How come I can't lose money? Because again, everyone's like, Oh, I don't use it. I'm going to lose it. There's that whole attitude around that too. How do I not lose money? So with an HR, the company's only funding it when and if it happens. So if they max fund, they save 12,000, they're funding seven. So they have to save 5,000 a family in 2000 a single company has to save money. But employee to save money too. Here's why three things can happen to employees. They can have very little claims. They can have surgery. They can have cancer. So the maximum claim, which is the biggest fear and the biggest misconception is high deductible is a good for young people who never go to the doctors. Yeah, not anymore. Really? The premium savings employees went to because let's say you have a $50,000 claim. Under the gold level plan, you're going to pay your max, which is $10,500. During a bronze plan, you're going to pay your max, which is 13,500. So it's a $3,000 risk. But if you have a $50,000 claim, the company is giving you $7,000. So as crazy as it sounds and a kind of defies conventional wisdom, it does. The bigger an employee gets, the more an employee he saves. It would actually cost an employee $4,000 less out of their pocket if they max out with the company still saving $5,000 out of theirs. You are like the health benefits, Miss Bithbusters because all of these myths that I have believed for so long as a business are, you've just absolutely taken the sledgehammer to and crushed. Are there any other? Yeah, because brokers don't, again, they don't show high deductible plans. The numbers are the numbers. You know, it's your, if your best case scenario under a gold is $37,000 and your worst case scenario under a bronze is $36,000, you can't lose. There's no more. What if? I love that. All right. One last myth that, you know, that you hear that the business owners come with you, that what, do you got one more? Well, there's a couple of things, ways we save companies money. Like, for example, okay, if you go to an in-network hospital and get a bill from an out-of-network doctor that you didn't pick, you have to call your, you don't, and they call you and say your insurance company didn't pay me. You have to pay me. Don't call your insurance company telling me you want to file an appeal. It's a one page for when we have our clients do this because if you go to an in-network hospital and see an out-of-network doctor you didn't pick, you are responsible for zero. Really? Yes. It's called a surprise bill. It even has a name called surprise bill? Yeah. Yeah. The other thing we tell everybody is if you ever get a bill from a hospital, negotiate. So if you get a bill from a hospital, don't do a monthly payment plan unless you have to. Here's what you do instead. Wait 60 to 90 days when you start getting the nasty notes. Then call the insurance company, I'm sorry, call the hospital and say, "Look, I know I owe you $2,000. I don't want to do $500 down to $50 a month for the next three years. That's a pain in the neck for everybody. Would you take $800 this payment in folk?" And then the hospital will come back and say, "No, absolutely not. We'll take $1,500 because the hospital will negotiate against themselves because they know if they give it to collections, they lose 50 percent. That's going to take them three years before they're going to get their money." And more importantly, medical no longer counts against credit like it used to because if people would be afraid, "Well, if I pay the hospital, that's they're going to ruin my credit. I'm not going to credit for $1,000." Well, the law changed a couple of years ago. So they cannot do that. So they don't really have any power to do anything to you. They're not going to sue you for $1,000 paying an attorney. So negotiate. Wow. I have to tell you, I chuckled because when I went to buy my first house that was 20 years ago, we didn't pay our $30 whatever fee on whatever medical bill and we were in collections and we had no idea. And we almost didn't get a mortgage because of that, but that sounds like that doesn't even happen anymore. Nope. That's crazy. Oh my gosh, you've given us such great, I mean, like this has been such, we're calling this the health benefits myth buster episode. I'm just going to tell you that right now. I think it's a great, yeah. You heard it here. So many things that Jeff has told you that is just not truth. Jeff, I hate to say this, but I got to ask this next question. What, and I know you've given us a lot already, so you got to give us a little bit more. What should the listeners do to get results as soon as they finish listening to this podcast and you call me or email me my cell phone number, which I give out to everybody is 516-316-1255. That's 516-316-1255. Available 7 a.m. the 12 a.m. days a week or email me at Jeff@hkmassociates.com. Happy to have a five or ten minute conversation with somebody that could save you thousands of dollars on your benefits without switching doctors. That's what we do. And we don't charge any fees to do the analysis. If you buy a product or service from us, we get paid. If you don't, you don't. I love that. Oh my God, it's so different than whatever Mel says that I love. Here's your access action step. Email call. No matter what your health care plan, if it's our email call, when have we had someone say that in their action steps? We've run over 50 episodes. No one has said email call me as part of the action steps. And now you all know, I love that. What is your favorite quote and why? My favorite quote is from Field of Dreams, which is one of my favorite movies. If you build it, they will come. And that's kind of the way I run my practice is that people need help. I help them. They call me. I'm there. I'm there for them. I love that. You're there from what is it? 7am to 1159.59 p.m. sort of seek. Yeah. Yeah. Seven days a week. Seven days a week. My gosh. So I can even call him Saturday and call on a Sunday. That's insane. We will answer the phones on Saturdays and Sundays. So why is it that that's your favorite quote that they build? The ability that it will come is because just your philosophy of life. Just my philosophy on life. Yeah. Yeah. My philosophy on life is is helping people, helping nonprofits, helping people educate and save money and make sure they're taking care of. We have clients 20, 30, 35 years. I could see why because look at all the wonderful things that you do. I'm very impressed. I was impressed with you. When I met you before and I'm impressed even more now. Jeff, any final words that you want to tell the audience? Yeah, we're just happy to. I mean, we do life insurance as well. So if you haven't looked at your life insurance policy recently, you should because rates have come down and underwriting is simplified. But yeah, it's just really about, you know, just reviewing what you have and questioning what you have because most brokers don't and most hospital bills and doctor bills and a lot of those bills are just wrong because somebody presses the wrong button. Well, you heard of here, folks, it's wrong. Wrong buttons. And we have had a lot of misbusters. I can't say that very fast. So with that said, Jeff, thank you so much for being on our show today. My pleasure. And yeah, oh, thanks. I mean, I learned so much. It was so great. And people think that health benefits is boring. It's not, especially not with Jeff. So I have your action step. Go call him or email him and all that information will be in the show notes as well. So thanks so much for listening. If you know someone who needs to listen to this podcast, please forward it to them because Jeff has had so many wonderful things to say. And if you liked us, please like us on your favorite podcast platform. And as I always say, when you're ready to get results, come listen to the results, Queen. I'm Dr. Gina results, Queen. Go out and get results. Thank you for listening to Getting Results with Dr. Jean the results, Queen. If you like the show, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We appreciate it. And it really helps your fellow business owners to find the show. Go to Getting Results with Dr. Jean.com for more information on how you can achieve better business results with caveman brain business growth system and the entrepreneurial operating system. Here's to you getting results. [BLANK_AUDIO]
