The ShiftShapers Podcast

Today, we’re talking to Craig Lack, CEO of Premium Reduction Strategies. He is a best-selling author and nationally-recognized health care expert and an expert on self-funding who has appeared on ABC, CBS and FOX as well as in a number of national publications. Craig’s 25-year experience in the industry has given him a deep understanding of the challenges facing benefit advisors in a post-ACA worl...

Our guest on the program today is Mindy Lamont, the creator and founder of The Insurist. The Insurist, as Mindy calls it, is a down-to-earth approach to insurance and employee benefits. After her 14-year career in one of the largest insurance companies in the world, Mindy decided to walk away from the big corporate life and start her own insurance business, selling to groups online. Her more authe...

Your existing groups are a perfect place to prospect for Guaranteed Standard Issue individual DI. The market is wide open, the underwriting is more accommodating than writing a single DI case and you can be creative with constructing the benefit for your clients. How do you do that? This week we decided to do something a bit different today and invited Bob Tretter for our first in-studio interview...

In may practices and organizations, the laser focus on strategy overshadows another critically important component of business – our culture. Rick Bauman, our guest for this episode, will explain why culture defines your organization, and drives brand, customer satisfaction and has a direct correlation to productivity. In an age where differentiation is a huge challenge for many organizations, cul...

Today, we are very pleased to speak with Phil Wilkins, director of Partner Development at GuideSpark. Phil is an expert on the subject of modern communication strategies and he shares his thoughts on new strategies to communicate important benefit concepts to employees. In this era of communication immediacy, multimedia strategies have begun to replace paper booklets and often, enrollment meetings...

This week on the ShiftShapers podcast, we are very excited to bring you a great conversation with Shane Wolverton, senior vice president of Corporate Development for Comparion Medical Analytics. Shane’s research shows that despite the constant historical focus on “cost”, the real opportunity to drive down medical spend is to focus on quality. Drawing on 20 years of experience in the field, Shane d...

Private exchanges are evolving into a “version 2.0, Health Care As A Service” model. In this week’s interview, we chat with Taylor Pechacek of Maxwell Health, a company that had its beginnings in wellness. Today, the company is changing its focus and is helping to shape the employee experience by shifting the way employees can shape their personalized healthcare dynamic and elect and manage a much...

Jonathan Anders, the Executive Vice President for Business and Corporate Development at HealthJibe, joins us on the program this week. HealthJibe is a tool for modern internet-connected devices that helps consumers stay on top of their well-being and physical health. On this episode, Jonathan shares his insight into how internet-connected devices are going to start shaping the health and wellness...

On this episode of ShiftShapers , we welcome Dr. Erika Bliss, President and CEO of Qliance, a Seattle-based pioneer in the Direct Pay Primary Care (DPPC) practice model. Established in 2006, Qliance is delivering impressive results by focusing on an on-demand primary care model. With the increased personal responsibility consumers face with today’s plan designs, DPPC is becoming increasingly signi...

This week, it is a privilege to be speaking to a principal of Bottom Line Solutions, Nelson Griswold. Nelson is a prolific public speaker and columnist whose audiences know him as a thought leader and authority in the area of consultative selling. He is also the author of the industry best-seller book, Do or Die . I invited Nelson to the program to talk about the shift that PPACA has brought and w...

Today, we welcome the founder and CEO of miEdge.biz, Mark Smith, to ShapeShifters . The miEdge application is an affordable and easy to use service that combines an intuitive interface to a database and search engine of Department of Labor Health/Welfare Employee Benefits information. I invited Mark to the show to discuss how data can be an effective prospecting and service tool while also serving...

This week we are speaking with Gustav and Eric Hoyer, brothers who have created a start up named after the ancient Roman physician Galen of Pergamon. Galen is a start-up organization whose goal is to empower individual consumers to find quality medical care within certain pricing restraints. I invited Gustav and Eric to talk about how the shift in the delivery of healthcare (progressively less per...

On this episode of the ShiftShapers Podcast , we are very pleased to be speaking with Dr. Gerry Herbison. Gerry is the Director of the Chartered Leadership Fellow designation and Assistant Professor of Management at The American College. I invited Gerry to talk about his expertise in the management of, by and for Millennials. Tune in to learn about the generations shift that is happening in the in...

This week, we are talking to Eric Raymond, co-founder of BenefitVault. Reconciling and paying bills for benefit arrays with a multitude of carrier bills creates a huge hassle for employers and HR departments.  The post-ACA emphasis on voluntary and non-insurance benefits has exacerbated an already nettlesome problem. BenefitVault shaped that shift into a simple and elegant solution that advisors c...

We decided to change things up a bit this week and asked Meghan Dotter, founder of PorticoPR to share her expertise on how to “present better”, which is the tagline for her company, Portico PR.  A veteran of several high-profile communications and PR positions, she decided  to build her practice on the one thing most people find so difficult – the presentation. With the increase in complexity in o...

This week, we are speaking with Bill Whitley. Bill is a nationally-recognized speaker, author and sales trainer. He is also a successful serial entrepreneur and researcher who specializes in helping insurance professional attract more clients, close more sales and deepen client relationships. Tune is as Bill tells his story of how he ended up in the insurance sales and marketing field after buildi...

This week on the Shiftshapers Podcast , we are talking to Dr. Jeff Rice, the CEO of Healthcare Bluebook. Dr. Rice is a physician and attorney who was Director of Managed Care for Duke University and CEO and president of a large health plan created by New York Life and Duke University before starting Healthcare Bluebook. Listen in as Dr. Rice shares the story of how a very personal interaction with...

In this episode we are pleased to welcome Von Burba of IAG to the program. Von is a seasoned insurance professional who saw companies in the large group market shifting to payroll services and discovered the opportunity to shape that shift into a new conduit point for delivering employee benefits. Tune in as Von shares his story of how he shaped his business to adjust to the shift in the benefits...

Today, Kevin Trokey joins us on the program.  Kevin is a founding partner of Q4Intelligence, a consulting firm dedicated to removing the barriers that keep independent benefits and insurance agencies from reaching their full potential and becoming feared competitors. Kevin reveals how his extensive experience as a broker and a principal helped him develop the firm’s unique approach.  Tune is as Ke...

It is my pleasure to welcome Ben Geyerhahn to the program. Ben is the CEO and founder of Benestream, a company that helps identify employer’s Medicaid-eligible employees and makes it easy for them to enroll in Medicaid. This provides a more appropriate plan design for that population while taking them off their employer’s core plan. I’ve invited Ben to talk about how Benestream has shaped the shif...

This week, we welcome Reid Rasmussen, co-owner and president of Texas-based Freshbenies.  Reid is a former Canadian whose background informed his insight into the future of American healthcare reform and helped him to shape the shift by creating a unique product offering that provides help to those dealing with today’s health care designs. Tune in to learn how Freshbenies helps brokers make “big c...

On today’s episode, we are pleased to be speaking with John Spann of Spann Insurance in Nashville. I invited John the program to discuss innovative conversations he is using to position more traditional benefits in a post-reform market. A 63-year old third-generation property & casualty insurance agency with an internal benefits practice, Spann Insurance was created by John’s grandparents in 1...

On this episode of The ShiftShapers Podcast, I am talking to Jimmy Parrish. Jimmy has had a 15-year career in employee benefits focusing exclusively on non-insured plans.  He markets legal and identity theft protection plans to groups and has been among the top 20 producers since he began his practice. I invited Jimmy to the show to share how he was able to build a successful employee benefits bus...

It is an honor to welcome the Chancellor of the American College of Financial Services Dr. Larry Barton to the show this week. Dr. Barton holds the O. Alfred Granum Chair in Management at the college and is an instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Over the course of his career, Dr. Barton also served as Motorola’s Vice President of Crisis Management and the President of Herald Colle...

This week, I am pleased to bring John Garven on the program. John is the founder and president of Benico, an employee benefit brokerage and consulting firm based in the Chicago area. I invited John on the show to talk about the shift he made from a traditional commission-based model to his current fee-based practice. John shares the details of his transition, as well as the key elements of a fee-b...