10/12 Billy Fowler, The Benefits Firm

10/12 Billy Fowler, The Benefits Firm

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Chamber Connection on Talk Radio ten eighty,
a program designed for small business owners, aspiring entrepreneurs, and
community members who are eager to learn more about the
intricacies of running a successful business, hosted each week by
the dedicated staff of the Chamber of Saint Matthews. Now
here's your host for this week, Virginia Hart COO.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to the Chamber Connection. My name is Virginia Heart.
I'm the CEO of the Chamber Saint Matthews. Today in
the studio we have with us Billy Fowler with the
Benefits Firm. Welcome Billy.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hey, how you doing, Virginia Great?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Great. I want to share some information on Billy his business.
We're going to talk chamber talk. We're going to talk
sexy stuff about insurance and tax laws today in small business.
So Billy, tell us a little bit about the Benefits Firm,
how it started and how you grew to where it
is today.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Well, we or I started it twenty one years ago.
Actually we uh it's legal to drink now, yes, yes,
uh the uh the business has grown quite a bit.
It just started ou as me. I was an independent
financial advisor and what I found was that I was
working with a lot of small business owners and a

(01:16):
lot of what they needed was health insurance. So I
got a lot of questions about health insurance, and over
time we were able to provide solutions for health insurance
for those small businesses and and it just grew in,
went from me to a lot of employees, and we
became the benefits firm and just worked with and we
continue to today work with small businesses with their benefits,

(01:38):
health insurance and all that, all.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of those things that seems to be where your heart
is is taking care of small businesses.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Absolutely. It's I'm a small business owner. You've been a
small business owner, We've we we know how hard things
can be for us. Uh, it's a it's a passion
for me. I enjoy helping the small business owners. I
don't care if you're one employee or fifty employees. Well,
I'll go through the same challenges and it's important for
me to try to do the best we can for

(02:04):
those businesses.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So let's talk about when you went to college, did
you plan to sell insurance or were you on the
financial advisor making six figures a year?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Well, that's actually funny. How I went to college for finance,
and I worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter out of
college and was an independent financial advisor with them, and
then eventually started my own firm. And I was not
planning on selling insurance. I was planning on doing investments
and bonds and stocks and all those fun things. I

(02:35):
still do that to this day. I still have lots
of clients I do that for. But health insurance is
my passion. I've just developed a knack for it. I
know the laws, I know how it works, I know
to how to help small businesses with health insurance, and
it's just grown to be my business.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Awesome. Let's talk about so you said twenty one years
in business, when did you find the chamber?

Speaker 3 (03:00):
So about three or four years into into the company,
I was looking for a way to connect and I
had a friend that said, hey, look you should come over.
At that point, it was the SMABA Saint Matthew's Association
or Area of Business Association, and it was a small
business association. It was very Virginia. You remember those days

(03:22):
actually that it was a it was a great opportunity,
well connected, everyone loved each other and we got we
got really along and that's how I got involved in
the chamber. Then actually we caught a break actually a
SMABA and it helped us grow is At the time,
the Kentucky Chamber had a health insurance discount plan with Anthem,

(03:47):
and the Kentucky Chambers based out of Frankfort. Obviously they
catered to central Kentucky eastern Kentucky. I was approached by
a friend of mine at Anthem and said, hey, we
need we need something in Louisville. A lot of the
businesses in Kentucky out of Louisville. And I said, let's
do something. Let's figure it out. And so I worked
with the board at SMAB at the time, and I

(04:09):
worked with Anthem, and it took about a year, but
we were able to establish a discount health insurance plan
for the Louisville area and we had to deal with
the Kentucky Chamber at the time. We would be Louisville
and the counties around it, and then they would take
care of the rest of the state to give a
discount plan through Anthem. And at the time, the competition
amongst carriers was really intense. There are several carriers in

(04:31):
the state. Humana was very big in Louisville, and that
discount plan meant a lot, a lot for both Anthem
and the small businesses and everyone involved. So that's how
we kind of got going.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
So that's the birth of our Saint Matthew's Trust associated That.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Was the baby, and then it grew and blossomed over
the years. And what you're alluding to, there was a
Obamacare came out about twelve years ago and changed the
health insurance industry completely. For there was hundreds of ways
that changed it, but for us, for our practical matter
here for this conversation was one of the things that

(05:11):
it did was it disallowed chamber discount plans. These plans
were all over the country and it said you had
to have uniform pricing amongst your clients. There was one
small exception, you could have what's called an association plan.
It's a very very small exception. It's basically his birthed
in the nineteen seventies through some human resource laws. We

(05:35):
were able to take advantage of that. My good friend Eric,
who's a genius when it comes to law, he was
able to create these trust that passed the test. They
passed the test for the state of Kentucky. They passed
the test for the FEDS and we became an association.

(05:55):
We became seven association plans to be exact, and the
Saint Matthew's Chamber Association Plan was reborn at that point
and there was a good two to three years that
we were the only chamber plan in the country. Now,
over the years we had several copycats and now they're
all over the place basically on the same model we

(06:18):
have basically as an association plan amongst small businesses. But
what it does offer is that it creates a uniform
I guess you're putting a bunch of small businesses together
to create a big business plan, and so when you're
dealing with Anthem or whoever the carrier might be, you

(06:39):
present ten thousand people as opposed to two people, and
you have more leverage with the carrier at that point.
So the Chamber Plan for us has really helped over
the years small businesses keep pricing down. Pricing's not low.
Health insurance is going up. Everyone knows it. And this
is one thing that we've been able to do to

(06:59):
call the waters a little bit and keep keep everybody insured.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
And I think people forget, you know, small businesses. You
think singular less than ten people. But when we band together,
we are stronger together, and we outnumber big business.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Absolutely, so we uniformally we are bigger than We're the
biggest company in Kentucky negotiating with ant well with that,
with the exception of the state, with the state of Kentucky,
we're the biggest plan in Kentucky. So we're we're talking
to Anthem with a little bit of leverage as opposed
to just being one or two five people.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
And it's been great to watch this evolve. What many
of you listening don't know is Billy was the former
president of Saint Matthew Chamber. I'm the former president of
the Saint Matthew's Chamber. What were the numbers of Do
you remember what the numbers were when you were president?

Speaker 3 (07:46):
We had three hundred and sixty two people, three hundred
and sixty two members businesses. That's a lot different number now,
Joshka cry Tell, you can probably tell us there's a
lot different now.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
We are seven away from eighteen hundred when I was president.
I think it was twelve hund Wow.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
We have grown a lot. But it's that healthcare plan
has been phenomenal and has been great to all of
our small businesses. It has been a true asset. I
can tell you that my husband worked at big business
Forward Mortar Company, and I compared our insurance to them,
and I was like, wow, we're competible.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah. One of the interesting things that's really helped us
is the coverage. We're on Anthem's Large Group set of products,
so we have the same products for a two person
group that they have at Ford or Ge or you
name the big company. So these are the exact same benefits.
One of the big challenges with health insurance is the

(08:37):
cutback of benefits, like going out of state for treatment
is a big thing. A lot of the plans and
off that we offer that so it's a great plan
because we're not only part of the state of Kentucky Anthem,
we're part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield network, which
is a national network. So you know, if you're having
a specialist treatment, whether it be Cleveland Clinic or something

(08:59):
like that, to be covered on our plan. And that's
something we're able to offer a two person business the
same as we would a five thousand person business.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
So let's talk about small businesses. The first thing that
they do is overlook healthcare because they think they can't
afford it. Yes, how do you talk to them and
how do you educate them on what they can and
can't afford?

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, it starts with the owner and we talk to
the owner about their personal needs. And typically we find
in small business Virginia, you know this, you know, actually
know very well. It's not just the owner. It's his
brother working there, and his dad, and his mom and
his cousin and so you have a ten man company
that's all family. And you start with that, you say, look,

(09:42):
let's figure out how to cover your family, because that's
you want to cover your niece and nephew, you want
to cover your son and daughter. And then it starts
there and if it goes out from there, and I.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Will say, you know, it is a big pill to
swallow when people start thinking about how much it costs
per month for one, two, ten, But when you start
breaking down what you save in the long run, you
can't go back.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, for the business owner, it's kind of a no
brainer because you get a duct that off your taxes,
so that they're they're looking at that as a cost
savings it. You know, premiums are their premiums and we
can talk about how how much it costs, and we
will talk about that a little bit of the changes
that have happened unfortunately, but the reality is you need
the coverage. I mean, when something goes wrong, and things

(10:29):
do go wrong unfortunately, that coverage it's priceless. It's I
have a nephew that had TBI. He was in a
car accident and he has the same coverage, and I
can tell you without that coverage through Anthem, he would
be my sister would be actually bankrupt. But he has
great coverage and it's been able to sustain him and

(10:51):
his family. So the coverage is the most important part exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
I will say too, we don't just have health insurance.
We also have dental and vision, which I was really
surprised when we added those two elements on how affordable
they were. I mean you're talking two dollars to ten
dollars a month.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, the vision's extremely inexpensive, and the dental. A lot
of people say, well, I don't need dental insurance, I'll
just cover myself. Well, I'll tell you what you kind
of do. And the one thing that you get out
of dental insurance, which is most important. Is it kind
of forces you to actually go to the dentist. No
one likes to go to the dentist. But you know what,

(11:29):
if you get two free cleanings a year, you're gonna go.
And you know it's covered, so you don't have the
excuse of I don't want to pay fifty bucks. You
can just go because it's covered. So I think dental
insurance is important. I personally have dental insurance and it's
the probably singular reason I actually go to the dentist.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I know your disc is just love to hear that.
You mean, you just don't want to come see me. Yeah,
So we're gonna take a break. Stay with us. We'll
be right back. We're gonna hear more from Billy Fowler
with the Benefits Firm on Talk Radio ten eighty.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Does your business need health insurance? The Benefits Firm is
here to help with a Saint Matthew's Chamber insurance plan.
We can help your small business with health insurance. Our
plants to the Saint Matthew's Chamber cover between two and
two and fifty employees. We offer high quality anthem health
insurance with the best statewide and national networks. You do
not need to wait for your renewal. If you're interested,
please contact me Billy Fowler, President of the Benefits Firm,

(12:29):
at five zero two four six eight one six ninety
four or email me at Billy at the Benefits Firm
dot com. Talk Radio ten.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Eighty Welcome back. We're with Billy Fowler from the Benefits
Firm talking about insurance in small business and how to
take care of your loved ones in the small business.
What are some of the hot topics this year on renewal, Billy.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
Every renewal is the same hot topic. It's cost and
and and and Unfortunately, really since COVID, we have seen
cost increase pretty pretty high. And with health insurance there
was there was a challenge for both health insurance companies
and for just health in general. Uh, doctors and hospitals.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
What COVID did was it prevented people from getting their
preventative medicine and they're they're going to their checkups and
doing things like that. So for like a year and
a half, no one went to the doctor. Well, the
unfortunate reality of that is if you don't go to
the doctor, things catch up on you and then so
then COVID ends, businesses open up, doctors open up, people

(13:46):
start flooding into doctors' offices and they're getting their checkups again. Well,
what happens is, uh, there's a lot more people going,
which is great. We want people to go see their doctor,
but unfortunately you also have procedures and things that you missed.
So the cost of medical was very, very high in

(14:08):
those couple of years following COVID twenty twenty two really
into this year. And then the other thing is we
just have inflation. We see it in every walk of
our life. We go in the grocery store, we buy
a car, we buy a house. Inflation is very high
now and that's reflected of in everything involving health as well.
So typically health insurance inflation has been or health cost

(14:31):
inflation has been five to eight percent. Now it's well
over ten percent. So unfortunately, those costs have to get
passed on because if you don't, you can't have an
insurance program in general, because it wouldn't succeed.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Let's talk a little bit about human pulling out of
our market. What has that done to the insurance industry
in our market.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Well, it's challenging because one of competition is good. We
like to have competition. We have a situation in Kentucky
where we have one big carrier, Anthem, and quite frankly,
Anthem has been very very good to me, has been
very very good to our customers, very good to the chamber,

(15:13):
and we love it. But unfortunately, without competition, there becomes
challenges within Anthem. We actually have several programs that we
compete against. So Anthem has done an excellent job of
diversifying their offerings, so we have many offerings within Anthem.
But without true competition, it's really hard to give customers choices.

(15:37):
And the thing with health insurance, it's not the costs
get driven up necessarily without competition, it's just the customer
feels like they don't have a choice. We love choices.
We're Americans. We love to go go shop. We love
to look at Oh we want that instead of that,
or this car instead of that car. Well, we feel
like we're kind of getting ripped off when we don't

(15:57):
have choices, But really it's not the case. So I'm
very thankful for Anthem and all that they do for
the insurance market. Quite frankly, this same thing happened in
the nineties, all the carriers pulled out because of some changes.
Anthem has stayed. They've stayed with the state and we're
very proud to work with them and they've done an
awesome job of insuring our customers.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Let's also talk about the state. You know, when we
started this plan, it was just in Louisville. We have
expanded to the state of Kentucky. You want to talk
about partnerships and how we did that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, it really goes back to a partnership that we
had in Eastern Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky has challenges that they
don't have the well, they don't have the agents, they
don't have the insurance companies there. So we reached out
to the chamber president there. This is going back, oh Man,

(16:49):
like about ten years, I think, and they were like, look,
let's partner up on this. And I was like, we
can make this work. So we figured out a way.
Eric came in on this one and he's like, we
can do this, and we worked out some arrangements and
it's been a great partnership. We've been able to cover
dozens of companies in Eastern Kentucky. Now it's expanded to
some other smaller chambers in central Kentucky as well. And

(17:10):
now we have customers from all over the state. I
mean we have I don't know the amount of counties,
but I would say we have about ninety percent coverage
in the counties around Kentucky, from far western Kentucky, literally
from the farthest reaches of West Kentucky to the farthest
eastern reaches of eastern Kentucky, northern Kentucky. We have a
partnership with their chamber. We have a really vast group

(17:35):
of folks from all over the state and it's been nice.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
It has I will say I know that we touch
over three hundred zip codes in the state of Kentucky.
That's age math, So that was really great. I will
say Jordan as Southeast Chamber, has been awesome to work with.
That partnership kind of catapulted where we are today. And
again it's it's again just to help small businesses. Our
goal is to help those small mom and pop businesses
afford insurance.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
I'll talk Actually Jordan and I were we met just
two weeks ago. I was up for their chamber dinner
and we were talking about some clients and and and
our agent out there. Sandy was talking about it and
we did a comparison about one of the businesses that
we ensure out there through our through our plan, and
their alternative was about twenty percent higher for the same coverage.

(18:22):
So we are insuring businesses at a at a very
reasonable price all over the state, but in eastern Kentucky,
very specifically Central Kentucky. We have a pricing advantage because
we are you know, we've been able to grow so
much and can we control the dynamics of the plan.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Which is excellent. Let's switch gears a little bit. I
want to talk about some tips that you've you know,
you've gone through small business, you've grown as a small business.
What is a tip that you can give somebody in
the insurance agency see that is just starting out. What
could you give them a piece of advice on how
to start? Besides don't do it, I would.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Say do it.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Get involved with the everything. Get involved with your local chamber,
get involved with the business associations, Go to five oh
five's the after hours, networking, go to lunches, go to breakfast,
meet as many people as you possibly can. Your personality
is going to be what drives your success. So the

(19:23):
more people that you can share your personality with, get
to know, meet, have friends, that's the number one thing.
And just be out there and just don't quit. If
you just don't quit, that's as simple as it is.
If you just don't give up. It's kind of like
the lesson in life. If you just don't give up
on anything, then you'll just eventually succeed.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
What is the hardest thing you have learned about being
a small business Oh.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
I would say that the hardest part is there's a
certain sense of loneliness being a small business owner. It's
you see so many different people that are employees at
companies and you have a different responsibility and so a
lot of times you're making hard choices for other people.

(20:07):
Sometimes you get questions. A lot of times you get
question so at being a small business owner, sometimes it's
very lonely. You tend to flock towards other small business
owners to give each other advice, to help each other out.
But if you know in a business that, say, has
twenty people, you're the person that makes those decisions, and

(20:27):
sometimes those decisions are hard, and sometimes you don't make
the right decision quite frankly, So that's the hardest part.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, you don't know what you don't know? Unfortunately, absolutely,
you just don't know. And I will say so that's
one of the things I say in orientation all the time.
I'm like, we are your boarder directors, we're your biggest cheerleaders.
Well you will stand there and cry with you, but
we'll also cheer you on. And I think that's the
greatest thing about the chamber is you do have a
support system. And that's the first place that when we
had a family owned business, you were one of the

(20:55):
people we go, what the hell do we do?

Speaker 3 (20:57):
I don't know how to do this, and we're still
doing it to this day.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
How do we work through this? How do we navigate
through it? And every small business owner is in the
same boat. Yep, you know, let's be in there together.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
I will say this for the Saint Matthew's Chamber, it
is a it's a family of it's a family and
so any member in there, whether you're on the board
of directors, whether you're a past board member, whether you're
just in the chamber itself, you can go to anybody.
It's a support system. Just go to the office. You'll
see it. You guys work there. Every time I walk

(21:29):
in that office, there's ten people in there talking and
laughing or crying or doing something. I don't know, but
that support system is important.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yes, I mean we even talked about Roz here at iHeartMedia.
She's been around forever. Yeah, and like when I first
started out, she was one of the very first people
I met. Yeah, you know she's still out there.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, I remember working with Roz fifteen years ago. So
I just it's amazing the people that you will meet,
not only within the chamber, but around the chamber. It's
so it's a good place to be.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
I didn't understand it when I first started out, and
my mother said it was very important to build your
network and have key people in your network. I was like, Okay,
what does that mean, you know as a small business owner.
I understand it today. Yeah, but that was probably one
of the biggest pieces of advice my mother gave me.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yeah that did you listen to her? Because I kind
of feel like you, well, now you're your ear correct.
The engaging with people and being around people is really important.
I'll tell you that one of the biggest challenges that
happened for small business was the COVID year, a year
and a half, whatever it was. I think that you

(22:43):
have a lot of people working from home. You've always
had that, you have more today. But the community of
going into the office and seeing people, especially in small
when you only have five people at the office or
ten people at the office, if you don't see those people,
that's that's who you like hang out with, and then
you're not only missing out on the people you work with,
but you're also missing out on the people you hang

(23:03):
out with. So I think the coming back to the
workplace that's happened over the last couple of years has
been really important. It's been really important for small business
as well. Well.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
And that's exactly why we started the coffee chat during
COVID because we still needed a way to connect. So
we got crazy on Zoom because that's what we had
to do to get through the week.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah, I mean that was peeking in on those Zoom
calls and doing those things. That was something that you
almost had to do for your mental talk about mental health.
I mean you had to do that just to just
to feel relevant. My wife works with me, so I'm
around her all the time, but sometimes sometimes we need
to be a part a little bit. And and those

(23:43):
work friends are so important, and not only work friends
but chamber friends. You know, your work colleague. I consider
those work colleagues as well, and that's just such an
important engagement on a daily basis to see those folks
and to say hi and everything.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, definitely. Is there any pieces of advices that you
would give people that are just getting a job for
the first time that they've never signed up for health
insurance because they've been on their mom and daddy's health insurance.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
You need to do it. The very first thing that
my dad said, and the very first thing that my
wife's mom said, was you need to get on a
health insurance plan. When you're in your twenties. You think
you don't need it, but here's the reality. Accidents happen,

(24:33):
Things happen, and your parents can't support you. So you
need to do that. That's an important thing. It is
a cost, but that's part of the deal. I mean,
you have to do that. And when the fortunate thing
is your employer is going to sponsor that, they're probably
paying half of the premium or more. Take advantage of that.
Go ahead and sign up because you will use it.

(24:56):
You will at the preventative, even start the preventative when
you're younger.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Most definitely, and it can be confusing to young kids.
You know, ask questions. There's no stupid question when it
comes to insurance because everything changes all the time.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, my daughters ask me all the time. They're in
their early twenties and they ask us about their health
insurance plan. We talk about it and it's really important.
So it's just ask questions. There's people, there's resources out
there for you.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
All right. I would like to thank Billy Fowler, our
guest today with the Benefits Firm, educating us on more
insurance talk. Stay tuned with us if you're interested in
more in the chamber, check us out on Facebook or
our website. Join us next week when we hear from
Chris Wise with Wise Law on Talk Radio ten eighty
Saturday at eleven am.