"Free" Employee Benefits to Attract Top Talent

Affordable Employee Benefits with Brandon Smith of Combined Insurance

In this episode, hosts David Praet and Scott Merritt guide small business owners on the significance of employee benefits. They are joined by expert Brandon Smith from Combined Insurance, who shares insights into making employee benefits accessible and affordable. Brandon delves into his personal journey and the importance of supplemental benefits like accident insurance, critical illness coverage, and paycheck insurance. He offers practical solutions for small business owners to attract and retain top talent, boost productivity, and mitigate HR-related challenges, without incurring significant costs. Additionally, Brandon shares a special offer for the podcast listeners, underscoring the value of providing employee benefits to foster a thriving work environment.

·       00:00 Introduction and Hosts

·       00:22 Truth Bomb: Importance of Employees

·       01:41 Discussing Employee Benefits

·       02:24 Guest Introduction: Brandon Smith

·       03:25 Brandon's Background and Career Journey

·       08:35 Challenges for Small Business Owners

·       10:22 Supplemental Benefits Explained

·       11:53 Cost and Accessibility of Benefits

·       14:23 Role of Combined Insurance

·       16:36 Benefits of Offering Supplemental Insurance

·       19:31 No Medical Exams and Guaranteed Issue Options

·       20:23 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

·       21:35 Boosting Productivity and Morale

·       22:05 Decreasing Workers' Compensation Claims

·       23:14 Eliminating Liability for Small Businesses

·       24:44 Financial Gains from Employee Benefits

·       25:19 Steps for Growing Businesses

·       28:18 Overview of Insurance Policies

·       31:14 Critical Illness and Cancer Coverage

·       34:31 Disability and Paycheck Insurance

·       36:46 Benefits for 1099 Employees and Solopreneurs

·       41:20 Special Offers for Business Owners

·       43:35 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

www.combined.com

Brandon.Smith@combined.com 

Transcript

Brandon Smith: 0:00

So what we are seeing or what I, in 15 years, it's not really changed much. It's the same situation for most businesses when it comes from a benefit standpoint. They think there's cost associated with it and there isn't. They don't have to pay a portion of the benefits. So you do have to take time to educate the employees. But if it's done correctly, the value is so much bigger than that 15 minutes we need with each employee. Alright, the value goes way up. And so, although it doesn't have a direct cost, there is the cost of time. And so, most businesses when it comes to attraction and retention, they're trying to get that edge. And the best way to get the edge is either by increasing pay or by increasing benefits.

1:22

Welcome back. This is David Praet and to my right, riding shotgun, as always, your Denver Broncos didn't make it all the way this year, but good run. It was a good run. It was fun to watch. Bo Nix, rookie quarterback, do his thing first. Rookie quarterback since John Elway take us to the playoffs and he did not do so well, but that's all right So this is minding your business the podcast designed for small business owners where the goal is to help you not only survive but thrive and Scott I've got to just go ahead and drop a Business bomb truth drop it. This is a pearl of wisdom. I can't wait. You ready for this? Here it is the growth of your business will be determined by By the quality and the quantity of your employees. That is a truth bomb. So the HR guy can appreciate how important employees are to growing a business. Yeah. So like, like there's a great football coach that always said that. You're only as strong as your weakest link, and your employees are going to determine your success, because you can't be in front of your customers all the time. Nope. Alright. They're the ones. So let me put, put on your HR hat for a minute, and I'll ask the HR guy. So when talented employees are looking at, at employers, and trying to decide where they want to go to work, What are the things that they look for? What is most important? Well, I would say pay and benefits are right up to the top of the list. Bingo! Very good. So today we're going to talk about benefits specifically. And I'm really excited about this because a lot of the business owners that I speak with are just getting started and maybe they have a handful of employees and they want to take care of those employees, but at the same time they have to keep an eye on the bottom line. And, uh, they really have the impression that offering benefits to their employees is out of reach for them. And so, today we're going to talk about some ideas. That I think are really exciting that will help them put those, uh, benefits in front of their employees and it might not cost them any money at all. Oh, that would be great. Yeah. So we have an expert with us. Our guest today is Brandon Smith with Combined Insurance. Welcome Brandon. Thank you. for having me. So tell us a little bit about Brandon. Where are you from? Born and raised in Tennessee, but I currently live in the Chattanooga area. So, but work in middle Tennessee, work all over Tennessee, but I'm the weirdo that drives two hours a day to work. Wow. Yeah. So how do you do that? 70 miles per hour. So live in Chattanooga just for the next little bit. I've been there for about seven or eight years and started a new opportunity in Nashville. And 17 soon as he graduates. Well, be moving probably to the Columbia area. But you cover the entire area of Tennessee and probably can even go beyond that. Correct. Yeah, I'm licensed in all 50 states. I cover all of Tennessee except Chattanooga. Where you live. How weird is that? There was already someone in my position there. That's why he has to leave. So how did you get started in the business world? If we kind of go back to the young Brandon days, what are some, you know, maybe your first job, first W 2 job? Anything interesting? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess we'll go back pretty early to explain how I got here. I have been in benefits for over 15 years, but I, as a youth, I was raised a little bit different than most. I was raised in the hills of East Tennessee, so, you know, mom and dad struggled to provide. And so I wanted a better life, and instead of trying to work hard and go get it, I decided to take it. And I got in trouble when I was 15. I was placed in state's custody. And I was, it's more to that story, but I, at the age of 19, was released out of state's custody and sent to Johnson City, Tennessee, to a boys group home. And, uh, didn't have my high school education. I never made it to, I went 80 days into my freshman year and I think I went like five days. So, ended up at ETSU, or actually went to Johnson City. One of the, we'll call them guards, they weren't really a guard, they had a group home. But, um, one of the staff was, we had like interest, and so he helped me get a job flipping hamburgers at Crystal's. And on the way home from work one day, he said, Hey, I want to stop here. We ran into ETSU, picked up a FAFSA and filled it out. And of course, you know, took out loans and all that type of stuff. Well, there was a question that said, Are you or were you a ward of the court through the age of 18? And I answered yes. And so for a while, my schooling was free until they found out why I was a ward of the court. And so then I had to pay that money back. But I went to ETSU, met my wife there, and, um, we decided to Start a family, started a family, and to be able to raise that family, I, um, had to leave the flipping hamburger business. And a gentleman was, uh, a regular customer there, and came in, we started a conversation, he said, Hey, how would you like to come to work for me? He was in the death care industry, and so I went on to be an apprentice at a funeral home. So he was a funeral director, and the goal was then to go that route. His wife was diagnosed with cancer during the time I worked there. She had a cancer policy. With AFLAC and they decided to get rid of the funeral home or so they could focus on her treatment. And he gave me a business card and said go talk to one of my friends. And, uh, went and met with the hiring manager at iFLAC. And I left a close to an 80, 000 a year job to come into the commission based world. So, and I've been here since. Wow. That's a heck of a story. Yeah, there's more to it. More than we have time for. So, but yeah, I started in Johnson City, Tennessee, and I'd never been in sales before. I had worked over a summer doing telemarketing for Wyndham Timeshares. It was more of just a service based type situation. And they told me how I could, you know, change my life, change everybody else's life. It was going to be great. I'd make a million dollars. Life was going to be fantastic. And 90 days in, I hadn't sold a policy. So it was. It was tough. I went to turn my two week notice in. The manager that had hired me was like, I wouldn't think you'd make it this long. I was like, then why did you hire me? He said, because in the beginning you were promising, but then you just always tried to reinvent the wheel. You know, you tried to, I was going to be the Facebook guru or whatever, social media. I was going to have people calling me instead of me calling them. And he said, just give it two weeks, try it our way, see what happens. And I opened seven accounts that month, built my business off of there. So it exploded fast. And of course, if you're ever in sales and you are good at sales, what do they ask you to do? Teach other people and step into a leadership role. So. That's what I did. I was with AFLAC. I bounced around. I was at a regional coordinator position starting in 2014. That was Johnson City. I moved to Murfreesboro and took my first team. We exploded in growth, simplified the process of training new agents, and then went to Chattanooga, a team in Florida, bounced all over the place teaching the systems that we were using, which a fourth grade elementary school teacher named Jenny Earwood helped me put together. So you had a A very successful career with Aflac. You're now with Combined, correct? What do you like about Combined Insurance? What, what was it that kind of caused you to make the switch? Yeah, so nothing wrong with Aflac. Aflac's a phenomenal company, phenomenal product, but they're, it's like a shelf product. Nothing's really customizable for the small business owner. As you get into the large business market, it's You know, they'll customize anything to get a client that's large enough and it kind of felt pigeon holed and so when I found Combined that that did exactly the same thing But made it customizable for businesses virtually of all sizes and the premium was a little bit less expensive Which is more affordable for the client decided it plus I you know, I wanted a new opportunity So great company with Affleck. No, no issues at all, but absolutely Love the idea of being able to get back to the smaller business owners, right? The people who really need to understand benefits. And so combined was that avenue for me. So you're working with small business owners every day. Every day. Yeah. What are some of the challenges that you see as you're talking to the small, the small business owners out there? Many challenges, but going back to how you started this conversation, ultimately, you know, employees are the most important asset of any business. And to be able to find the best candidates, the best employees for their business, you've got to be able to be competitive, right? If someone comes in for an interview, they're there to get three questions answered, right? What would I be doing day to day? When would I be doing it, right? What and when? And then the second question would be what would you pay me to do that? And then the third question is, by the way, what benefits do you offer? You know, if someone's all of the things equal, if you're a hundred thousand dollar a year employer and another hundred thousand dollar a year employer, one offers benefits and one doesn't, even if you don't want to purchase those benefits, where are you probably going to go to work? Give me those benefits. Give me those benefits, just in case. So I would say that's probably the, the employee base and being able to find and not only find, but keep the most qualified candidates, especially with the competitive nature of almost every industry today. But as we kind of started off with the top of the segment, a lot of small business owners think it's going to be wildly expensive to provide benefits to their employees because, you know, typically the, the health insurance programs are. You know, five, six, seven hundred dollars a month per employee, and you know, they're, they're doing everything they can just to keep the lights on, right, and meet payroll every week. Absolutely. So, uh, I'm sure you probably hear that a lot when you start conversations with small business owners. Like, you know, we would love to do benefits, but. We just can't afford it. Yeah. So what's, what's your answer to them? Well, two things. There's no, there's no direct cost to an employer for combined supplemental products with, which let me, before I answer that question, let me briefly explain what, what supplemental products exactly are, right? So the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical bills, 60 plus percent of people that file bankruptcy every single year list medical as their primary cause, right? Medical bankruptcy. But over three fourths of those people have health insurance. So, why are they filing bankruptcy if they have health insurance? Well, who does Blue Cross Blue Shield or UnitedHealthcare or Cigna pay if you're sick or injured? Doctors. Doctors, hospitals, nurses. Right. The cost to get treated. But if you're at the doctor, where aren't you? At work. And if you're not at work, what don't you get? Money. Money. And so people are filing bankruptcy because they can't afford their everyday living expenses. Our supplemental products are designed to help with everyday living expenses. House payments, car payments, groceries. You know, you, you can make payments on your treatment. You can make payments to a doctor. They can't garnish your wages. But you are already on a payment plan with your house, your car note, groceries. You can't go to Publix, get 200 worth of groceries, and say I'll catch you up next month. It doesn't work that way, right? You have to pay. No, not in my neighborhood. But yeah, that's supplemental product. So what we are seeing, or what I, in, in 15 years, it's not really changed much. It's the same situation for most businesses when it comes from a benefit standpoint. They think there's a cost. associated with it. And there isn't. They don't have to pay a portion of the benefits. But there is a cost in the fact that you do have to take time to payroll deduct the product, right? So you do have to take time to educate the employees. But if it's done correctly, the value is so much bigger than that 15 minutes we need with each employee. All right, the value goes way up. And so, although it doesn't have a direct cost, there is the cost of time. And so, most businesses, when it comes to attraction and retention, they're trying to get that edge. And the best way to get the edge is either by increasing pay or by increasing benefits. But there's also a perceived value of benefit that's not there when it comes to a, a pay rate. I can say a 25 cent an hour. Pay raise. People can kind of scoff at that sometimes. But if I say, Hey, by the way, we're gonna offer some additional benefits to you and we're gonna pick up a life policy on everybody. You know, we couldn't quite do a huge raise this year, but we've added something to be able to say, thank you for being here. And uh, so there's a cost to it, attraction and retention of course. But more importantly, I think it's an understanding of it in most cases, if someone's worked for another company, especially large companies. And they're offered benefits, who is most likely doing the education or understanding of benefits? It's mostly HR. They may have some involvement from their major medical carrier, but it's not a lot. Not very many major medical carriers get and sit down with every single employee. And that's what we do. Alright, that's what a company like Combined does. Uh, we will sit down with every employee and we communicate benefits. Not just supplemental benefits, but we'll communicate everything. We call it the hidden paycheck. When I started in this business, I had no idea that if I was offered health insurance that the company was paying a portion of it. And maybe it was just because I was young, but I didn't realize that. And I found that most people don't. They don't understand that there's a cost to the business owner paying that. But again, with small businesses, they can't afford it. They can't afford that or anything in that case, but supplemental benefits are a little bit less expensive. They're about 4 to 8 a week on average for an individual. And so it's passed to the employee, the employee pays the policy and they're the claimant. They get the money and the business owner just gives it the convenience of having it through the company they work for. So what I heard was a lot of small business owners are not at the point where they have a full time HR person on staff. Which is why sometimes they use Exodus HR, they're outsourced. Payroll specialist. I'm gonna charge you for that. So what I heard was that you guys can kind of step into that role and be the de facto HR, at least as it pertains to explaining employee benefits. Correct, and not just explaining it, but then servicing it. Right, life happens in a year. And so employees have marriages, divorces, births, deaths. And so HR is typically the one trying to keep up with that and make the changes. People leave, there's terminations, people move to other cities, whatever the case is. And we help with everything. Again, from a combined standpoint, the employer's only involvement is giving us access to the employees and the convenience of it coming out of their paycheck. And so, so this should be an easy process for the employer, right? All they have to do is make the employees available and devote a little bit of time to the process. Correct. Okay. Yeah, and see the thing with most businesses, when they hear benefits, there's two things that pop in your head. When you hear insurance, what's the two things that pop in your head? One always is cost. Benefits are expensive. And the second is, is confusing, right? I'm in insurance and I still get confused by the stuff. So You know, a business owner looks at it, and they don't even take a deep dive into it because they think, I can't afford it, and even if I could, I don't understand it. And so the small businesses typically That they're the toughest to get in front of because they just don't, don't, don't know what benefits do or, or how to have access to'em. One of the thi, especially in today's environment, since the creation of the Affordable Care Act, right, so these small businesses are saying, you employee have access to a plan that I don't have to deal with, which often does what to that employee. or employer, removes them from that equation so the retention becomes impossible. Correct. Because if I'm going to buy my own insurance policy and you don't care enough to provide a combined opportunity, I'm no longer beholden to you. I can go find another 100, 000, well, hopefully. Hopefully. So yeah, so by having you involved, it kind of creates that glue, if you will, that stickiness with an employer. Stickiness, that's a good word. Yeah. Be the sticky employer of choice. Sticky. Employment. And much like taxes, right? Benefits, there's a necessity to it. And what most people do is when they make a benefits decision, they typically try to avoid having to deal with it again until it's too late. And so what we do is we do it every year. So when we sit down with an employee, we look at every situation. So it's not the benefit, it's not the product that keeps the stickiness. It's the access to information, someone that can help navigate benefits because, again, we enroll them in supplemental benefits, but we can, I don't have all the answers, but I've got an army of people, a network of people that can help me find out what the solution is. And if people looked at it as a, almost like a, a budgeting piece when it comes to benefits. You know, as a business, you have to make benefits decisions. As an individual, you have to make benefits decisions. Businesses would, the stickiness is, is based off of that. It's based off the education, the information, the ability to save money overall because all those supplemental policies pay cash to someone. They're really designed to fill gaps, and I'm not using the word saying it completely fills the gap, but it's designed to pay for things that other benefits don't. And so again, it's that information, that education that's more valuable than the product itself to the business, which is our audience, right? So the other thing I heard was cost. As we said before, major medical plans, five, six, seven hundred dollars a month. We're talking about 10 percent of that, a tenth of that almost. Yeah, for a family a tenth of that, for an individual it could be even a, a twentieth of that. We're talking four, you know, four dollars. Uh, we have some policies that are a couple bucks a week depending on age. The other thing I think of too when I think of insurance is, um, the price seems to go up every single year and, and sometimes by a lot of money. How do you guys handle that? So, uh, the best part is Our rates don't change. So our clients can change the policies on us, right? They can cancel, they can add, take away. But we can't. So the rates do not change. So once someone has a policy, they keep that policy. And they can keep it for as long as they're willing to pay the premium. And the benefits don't decrease. But again, over time, there's the value of having access to an agent. Although the price doesn't go up, neither do the Amount that are paid at claims time and so it's important to stay in contact with an agent so they can help as the you know as time change treatment change cost change when you apply when you sit down with an employee and They're applying for the coverage. Is there medical exams? Is there no no medical exams? We don't do any type of medical exams and all of our products when delivered through a payroll deduction We have guaranteed issue options on them And so there is, that means that even if someone is dealing with an illness or an injury right now, they could still get coverage. Now you, you can't cover something that's already happened, but as long as you had the policy beforehand, so there's no health questions. Now, it depends on the, the amount of coverage. If someone wants a 100, 000 policy that pays if they have a heart attack or a stroke, there's going to be some health questions. But just your standard policy, which is 10, 000 or 15, 000, guaranteed issue options, and no paramed, no health exams. You know, no blood work or anything like that. Good stuff. So I'm a small business owner. I can invite Combined insurance to come in, present to my employees, offer them supplemental benefits. Doesn't cost me any money. Yep. And it's going to help me hopefully attract and retain employees. Correct. So other things that it helps with too. So, but wait, there's more. There's more. Yeah. What, what else can it do? So, kind of a way that, that I. I teach agents who come into the business how to remember what the pain points, for lack of a better term, are for small businesses when it comes to benefits is ABCs, right? It's attraction and retention. You offer benefits to help attract and retain top talent, but then boosting productivity. And you may ask how do offering benefits boost productivity? Well, if I have a, you know, a sick wife at home and I know I really should be at home with her. That can't be because if I don't show up for work, how are we going to feed the kids? Having a product that will pay me while my wife is sick or injured, I can take that additional time off work to be able to help and, you know, fill in. Of course, I'm not going to leave work completely, but if I have a happy employee, they're a more productive one. And so, if they're not stressed out about how they're making payments, they're going to be more productive, or making their everyday living expenses. C is communication. So, we've got attraction and retention, boosting productivity, boosting morale. Communication and cost is the C. Again, communicating benefits effectively is, is, it's weight in gold when it comes to a small business because otherwise they have to do it themselves. And so having us at no cost will educate not just on the products we offer, but be a resource for every benefit that's out there. And then D, decreasing workers comp. So companies that offer an accident and short term disability policy in tandem. There's a reduction in workers compensation mods, which mean people are less likely to file workers compensation claims. And before you ask, we're not saying people are filing them fraudulently. But imagine you are mowing the yard on Sunday, you have to get out and move a log, and you boop, there's twinge in my back. Oh, am I hurt? Eh, I ain't got time to go to the doctor, it's late, I'll just go at the end of the day tomorrow. And I show up at work Monday morning, I bend over and pick up a box, I stand up and my back completely goes. Is that a worker's compensation claim? It's gonna be. It's gonna be. So if I had the ability to be able to take a little bit of time off or to go get that checked out because I knew that hey, I could miss an hour or two at work because I got a policy that's going to pay me cash for seeking treatment. I'm less likely to go there. Plus again, there's no Drug test or anything when it comes to taking care of our claims and so the process is shorter than a workers compensation claim So it does help decrease workers comp mods. There's been white papers on this. They can be found online Aflac colonial several companies have done but and then E is eliminate liability and I think this is the most overlooked benefit of offering Benefits as a small business and that's liability So, if you're sick or injured, can't work, most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Statistically, 72 percent of people have less than 1, in a savings account, right? Mm hmm. So, you're living paycheck to paycheck, and you end up sick and can't work. Major diagnosis, heart attack, uh, you, you, there's no savings, so I can't turn to your savings account. My family and friends love me to death, but they can't pay my bills and theirs. Is a bank going to loan you money if you're not working? So who are you going to ask? Uh, probably the richest man I know. The richest man I know, which is the business owner. Right, right. And so I've been here since day one, you know. Business owner will take care of me. Maybe he'll let me work from home, maybe. And so, the business owner, you have been. David, you've been here since day one. Yeah, I'll help take care of you. And then Johnny, who got hired three weeks ago, similar situation happens, and the business owner says, well, I can't do it for you. And there's a liability in that, right? And so offering supplemental benefits that pays cash if someone's sick or hurt, they can say, Hey, look, you know, legally, I can't, I can't do that. I just can't, I can't function as a business owner and pay people that can't produce for the business. But that's why we offer these supplemental products. That way, if one of these things happens, you're covered, you know, and it's your choice whether you take it out or not. Uh, and then F is financial gain, right? If all these other things stack up, if I'm saving money, attracting and retaining employees, my employees are more productive. They're happy because of their cost of their insurance and the communication of it. I don't have the liability or the workers comp issues and my business is going to be more profitable. And what's the number one job of every business owner in America, in the world? Be profitable, make money. Yeah. And how do you do that? You, you increase revenue. And you lower expenses. And that's called profit margin. And so benefits do help with that if administered correctly. So when you're working with a business, do you see that over time as they become more successful and they grow? Maybe the next step after offering benefits and letting their employees pay for them is maybe they start kicking in a little bit as they can afford it. Yes, for sure. We've seen that a lot more here recently, especially with businesses under 50. As they start to grow, they start looking at ways, because they see the big picture now. They've been in business long enough typically that they're like, hey. You know, there's a big cost to turnover and big cost to employees leaving and hiring and HR services. There can be a major cost to it. And so if, you know, a couple bucks a week for every employee is going to save me money in the long run. And then after that, maybe the next step as they get closer to that 50 employee number or they just become more profitable. Is, then they eventually take that final step where they're offering full medical in addition to the supplemental benefits? Correct. Yep. Yeah. And they can have broader choices because, you know, a 5, 000 deductible nowadays is common but when I first got into benefits I think the average deductible was 400. Don't quote me on that, but it wasn't 5, 000 or whatever the average deductible is now. And so an employer can say, Hey, I can, I can afford this because I can keep the cost down by having a higher deductible health plan. And then my supplemental carrier will pay, you know, help eliminate that deductible so I can show my employees the value of it. And also as an employer, I can also choose to pay for like a hospital indemnity plan. Which will pay a large part of that deductible, if not all of it, depending on the size of the company. And so, I can have a broader scope of benefits negotiation, right? I can look at different plans instead of just, you know, most people when it comes to benefits, they choose the least expensive or the most expensive. And, although they should probably fall somewhere in the middle, and business owners do the exact same thing, right? How can I, I want the best plan because my employees are amazing and I want them to work here. Or, I can barely afford it, so I'm going to go with the least expensive plan. There's ways around that by using supplemental benefits to, to help with the major medical. Question. Yeah. Do you, while you're with Combined and you offer the supplemental insurance, do you work in conjunction with a broker to make sure they get the best solution, Combined and, Combined. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, we do. And we prefer that when it comes to the employers that have more than 50 employees. That we work with a broker because, again, we want it to be in tandem and combined, pun intended. Again, we, we want to make sure that the benefits work in tandem and they work with each other instead of against each other. And if you have 50 or more employees in most situations, you're required to offer. Health insurance. Right. Absolutely. I, I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but could you briefly give an overview of the specific types of policies that, that you offer? Absolutely. So, they really fall into five categories, okay? Four of those categories are available to every company under 50 employees. So I'm going to start with the one that's not. It's only available to groups over 50, and that's a hospital indemnity plan. Now, companies like Combined will have it coming out where it's available under 50, but currently it's only available with businesses 50 or more. And we're talking small business here, which is our bread and butter, our 7 to 49 is what we say. But all they have to have is three employees to offer it, and they get an option of four benefits. They can either choose all four. Or they can choose one, or none, whatever the case is. But the one that we sell the most is called an accident plan. This covers any type of accident, on or off the job, everything from a chip tooth to a car crash. Think of it as if, well, I have six kids. My oldest is 17. My, my two oldest are boys. My six year old, my most recent claim, she's running through the house. I'm changing my two year old, or she was one at the time. On the bathroom floor, I got a towel down, my six year old Kacen trips over the towel, hits her head on the bathtub, gets a little, what we call, boxer cut right up the brim of the eye she ends up with. I think they gave her two stitches or whatever. Now our co pay out of that is, what we have to pay when we go to the emergency room, is 250. Don't quote me on the claim, I've got a picture of it, I think it was 280 bucks was the initial claim and we had follow up visits, I think it totaled a total of like 500 bucks. That we got paid cash, that's what an accident policy does. So it's any type of accident, a bump, a bruise, a scrape, a scratch, a cut, it's a bodily injury and it'll pay a benefit. So there's a different dollar amount payout based on what the injury is? Correct. Yeah, for a treatment there's, they take your body apart and put a dollar amount on it, as bad as that sounds. So a cut based off the length of it is going to pay, um, a broken finger is going to pay less than a broken leg, right? But it just depends on the injury, but at a bare minimum, there's what's called first treatment benefits. It depends on the level of the plan, but let's say it's 100 just for seeking treatment. And if it's done it at ER, it's another hundred. If it's done in a urgent care at 75, there's different levels, but it's. any bodily injury. We also have life insurance. Now I will say from a combined standpoint, our life insurance, we currently only have universal life policy. It's very niche based. And so when we partner with brokers, we typically prefer their life insurance. But there are some cases where we use ours because we don't do a paramed or blood work or anything. And so we do have life insurance. Again, that's a pace upon death of the policy holder or the Benefit the owner of the policy and then critical illness. This is your catastrophic coverages. Think like heart attack stroke cancer We have a lump sum policy that pays a benefit anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand They can pick the level that they choose. It covers other things, but the three main ones are heart attack, stroke, and cancer. And then, in my opinion, the most So, hold on there. Sure. So, you said lump sum. Lump sum. For critical illness. Correct. So, that would mean I get I get diagnosed as having a heart attack. So when that event occurs, I'm going to get a payout or is it going to be monthly payments? A payout, a strict lump sum benefit. So, yeah. So let's say you elected a 20, 000 amount. You get the test result. We just had this happen. You get the test result. The doctor has confirmed it is a heart attack. That combines going to send you a check or direct deposit a 20, 000 check into your bank account. And you can use that money for whatever you want to use it for. So that's going to cover me having to miss work. It's going to cover me having to travel for treatment. My spouse may be traveling for treatment. Correct. Okay. Before we leave critical, probably the. The biggest one in that is cancer. Correct. So can you maybe talk a little bit about what type of cancer is covered, not covered? The only thing from a cancer standpoint that's not covered would be skin cancer. Any internal cancer diagnosis based off of the pathology report, which is a required time of claim, uh, is the lump sum benefit is paid out upon that. Okay. Again, skin cancer is covered separately, but if it is an internal cancer, not skin cancer. It would pay that lump sum benefit upon diagnosis. Now, this is important because some companies, and we do have an indemnity based plan, nothing wrong with it, but a lot of times in today's world, cancers are caught really early. And so treatment isn't as expensive as it used to be. And sometimes people don't even miss work. And so they can still get that lump sum benefit. And although it's not going to cure their cancer, it gives them access to better care sometimes. Or they can even get a second opinion, which is huge. And again, it's lump sum benefit paid directly to them. If it is a terminal cancer and they choose not to get treated, the claim is still payable at 100 percent of the face amount. So as long as they are diagnosed by a pathology report, claim will pay regardless of treatment. Boy, the cancer rate percentages are crazy scary. One in two men will end up with some form of cancer in their lifetime, and one in three women. So statistically, 50 percent of men and 33 and a third percent of women are going to end up with some form of cancer. That's scary. And we all know someone who's been diagnosed with it. I mean, it's just a common occurrence in today's world. Okay, so we've got hospital indemnity for the over 50 employees. We've got accident. We've got life insurance, we've got critical, what else do we have? The most important insurance on the marketplace today, in my opinion, which is paycheck insurance. So, disability. People insure their homes, they insure their cars, but your most valuable asset is your ability to earn an income. Why in the world don't people insure their paychecks? And that's what a disability plan is. I'm a firm believer in saving money. We're in Nashville. Dave Ramsey is an important part of our community. I think you would agree that six months worth of savings is important, but very few people have that capability. And so a disability plan, even if they are trying to build to that, a disability plan will pay them up to six months or three months, depending on the benefit amount they choose. And with Combined, we can customize. What their payout is up to 60 percent of their income, and that's the case with most supplemental carriers or carriers that offer disability, and we can do so in seven, so if they're out seven days, 14 days, it kicks in. There's many things that they can choose from, but again, the most important piece is it's paying them a portion of their income if they have to miss work. And this can be not just a normal, you know, sickness. Let's say, you know, we all got out of COVID. We're out of that. situation, but right now it's flu season. And, uh, I've got agents that are missing. Some of them have been out for three days and they're back. Some of them have been out for a week. We've seen, you know, long periods of time, and so our policy will pay them for being out of work based off of their income. And then the one that we don't think about often Of course, you have terminal and sicknesses and injuries is pregnancy. So, a woman who Wait, pregnancy is an illness? It is considered an illness. Mental illness? Yep. It is both. Although you're not sick when you're pregnant, it is considered a sickness from a claim standpoint. So, you pay up to six weeks on a standard delivery, up to eight weeks on a C section. And so, for a woman, you have to have the policy at least ten months. But, uh, as long as you've had it for at least 10 months, so a couple of months in, you get pregnant, you'll be covered at the time of delivery. And that's huge. You know you're going to be out of work. Because most, most insurance plans do not cover. You get FMLA, but you're limited to your time off that you have in your bank. So Brandon, a lot of our business owners are 1099 employees, solopreneurs, massage therapists, Uber drivers. How does that work for them? Because they don't have any employees. But these benefits obviously could help them. Do you have a solution there? Absolutely, and so this is in my opinion combined greatest Asset in the marketplace today. There are other companies out there that do strictly work site benefits There's other companies out there that do strictly individual benefits and there's companies that dabble in both But Combined is a 102 year old company, and we started with kitchen table sales, selling supplemental products at people's homes. Chubb purchased us. Chubb is the largest publicly traded insurance company in the world. 200 billion company. With the funniest name in the world. With the horrible insurance name. But, when they pay like they do from a claim standpoint, nobody cares what you call them, right? So, Chubb purchased Combined, and Chubb was predominantly an employer based coverage I'm sure in one in three businesses in America, and so they bought combined to access the worksite company, or the worksite avenue, but we still can pivot and work with both. So if I'm talking to someone who's an Uber driver, which they are a business owner, right? They're a 1099 independent contractor, you're a business owner. And we can offer benefits to them at, built individually that are almost identical to our worksite products. It's the same style products, a few different benefits. And they can, as they grow, they can pivot that into a payroll account. If they choose to start a fleet of, you know, a hair salon, they open. A business can have a couple of chairs. They can offer it to their 1099 girls as a individual product, but it looks and feels and tastes to the other 1099 people like a worksite benefit. That's probably a great example because you mentioned hairdressers. I know one of the things that's very common in that world is the, what do you call it, the carpal tunnel. Yep. And, you know, if you have to be out for the carpal tunnel, you're not cutting hair and you're not making money, probably same with like a massage therapist. Absolutely. You know, if you sprain your wrist or break your arm. You're not massaging anyone. You're not doing your job. Yeah. And they're on their feet a lot, too. So we actually have a, a lady who came to work for us recently, and she was a hairstylist for a long time. And so she, uh, came to us as an employee or as a, a representative of Combined to do the exact thing, is to offer it to hairstylists, hairdressers, because she had been standing for so long. She's been through carpal tunnel and some other things. And she just can no longer do it. So not only she has those risks, the cuts on the finger, but she's also got the issue of the back pain and everything else. And so it can, depending on the industry, I mean, everybody lives or works for a paycheck, right? That's their importance. And so we, as a company, pay them if they miss work. Due to a sickness or an injury and so companies like hair stylists who wouldn't normally have access to that benefit because they're not a traditional W 2 employee we can still access them. Wow, that's big So if uh, if business owners individuals want to learn more about products Um, where can they go to find more information? And where can they go to get in touch with you? Absolutely um, so we're We have an office in Nashville over by the airport, but the best way to reach us, of course, is by email or by phone call. If you go to combinedinsurance. com, you're gonna, you know, put your information in. It's gonna come to me anyway. But brandon. smith at combined. com is my email address. That's C O M B I N E D. and Brandon dot Smith. Send me an email. I'd be happy to come out. There's no cost to come and look at your business as a whole and see where we can provide value. And if we can't, we may be able to put you in contact with someone who is a better fit. Uh, but it doesn't matter if you're an individual about to start a business, you've got hundreds or thousands of employees, it's worth the 15 minutes it would take us to find out more about your business. And the first step is just asking a bunch of questions. And you told me earlier that, uh, I'm going to twist your arm a little bit here. You told me earlier that for the Minding Your Business podcast listeners, the business owners out there, you've got a special offer for the business owners if they will. Allow you guys to come in and talk to their employees? Absolutely we do. And so we will just simply by allowing us to educate the employees and if they choose to participate in the policy or not, but you allow it to come out of their paycheck, every single employee, whether they buy a policy from us or not. We'll get access to one of what we call a value added service. So this is a, your choice as a business, you get to pick one for every employee. It's a 12, 000 accidental death and dismemberment policy. And again, they don't have to buy any of our products just simply because you offer this service to them and we've educated them. Or a telemedicine product that has 0 copay. So again, that's Teladoc. If you've never used telemedicine, it's an amazing service. It's typically in your health insurance, but there is co pays with ours. There's no co pay. And this is every employee, whether they choose a product or not. Or identity theft protection. So this number one growing crime in America is identity theft. And it's completely paid for for a year. And as long as you allow us to educate the employees the next year, you can pick another one one at a time, or you can keep the same one you have. So we'll do that for every single employee. Regardless of size, now let's talk about those ones that aren't W 2. Legally, we can only offer the accidental death and dismemberment, but if you will allow us to see your other 1099 employees on site, or even W 2 employees, but you can't offer benefits, let's say you're a manager at a store, you make good decisions there, but you can't handle payroll, we will offer every single person, whether they choose to participate in a product or not, a 12, 000 accidental death and dismemberment benefit as well. Wow. That's huge. It's huge. It's very generous. So everybody immediately needs to get a hold of Brandon and get a meeting set up and, and at least at the bare minimum, take advantage of the free offer. Absolutely. Very generous of you. Thank you for coming on and spending time with us today. I think we all learned a lot and I think it's going to be a great value to the small business owners out there again who want to provide, take care of their employees. But really didn't think they can afford it. I think you've provided a way for them to make that happen. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. We'll see you next week when we have another exciting guest, Scott. It's good and we look forward to the Broncos doing better next year. We can only hope. All right. Goodbye, everybody.