Most owners see a wellness plan as a cost. Nate Hallums shows US employers how it can lift participation to 90%, cut benefit costs, and free up cash for growth.
GROWTH PILLAR: Health & Wellness
WHO THIS IS FOR: US small business owners, consultants, fractional executives, and leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A plain look at how a wellness plan works on top of health insurance, why participation matters, and how payroll tax savings can fund business growth.
Most owners think a wellness plan is a cost. It can be found money. Until that changes, your team skips care and your business skips the savings.
Nate Hallums is a corporate wellness consultant with nearly 30 years of experience, and he started his career inside a Fortune 50 company. He leads BYF Wellness Consulting, which helps US employers treat a wellness plan as a smart business investment. In this return visit, Nate explains how a wellness plan gives the work force fast access to care, mental health support, and low-cost weight loss drugs at no cost to them. He also shows how payroll tax savings can put money back into the business to fuel business growth. His programs reach up to 90 percent participation, while most wellness plans sit near 20 percent. This episode is for US small business owners, consultants, and fractional executives who want a healthier team and lower benefit costs.
Key topics covered:
Guest links:
Supporting persons: Thank you to Dave McFarland of FocusOPEX for the introduction.
— PARTNERS ON THIS EPISODE —
Next Steps
Bernie (00:18)
Question of the audience.
What if your company's health plan was quietly costing you more than it ever gave back? That's a question a lot of business owners never ask until the numbers hit the table. Today we're going back to a conversation that opened some eyes. And this time, Nate Hallums is back with more.
He's been helping companies make smarter decisions about employee health for almost 30 years. In fact, he started his career inside a Fortune 50 company, which gave him a front row seat to how broken expensive healthcare can get. Since then, he's built wellness programs that serve everyone from small shops.
With 10 employees all the way to state governments and professional sports teams. Over 90,000 employees in total. Through BYF Wellness Consulting, Nate helps businesses cut real costs without cutting corners on care. He speaks plainly, cuts through the noise, and shows leaders how to turn a wellness investment into a financial advantage. Outside the boardroom, he's still the same practical people-first guy who just wants to make things work better. Find him online at
SIMERP dot com spelt S I M E R P dot com and on LinkedIn at Nate Hallums H A L L U M S Nate, absolute pleasure having you back again. How are you, sir? How you doing?
Nate (01:35)
I'm doing well. Just, you know, trying to get the summer kicked off and and get all those things lined up.
Bernie (01:40)
You came out of a Fortune fifty company and it it taught you about systems being broken with healthcare. What was the story behind that? Well what what did it teach you?
Nate (01:49)
Well, you know, it was a great experience as a as a young person going through and and kind of cutting my my corporate teeth, I'll say. but one of the things that I was unfamiliar with was just how healthcare worked. And and this was a while back, it's much, much worse now. and it just illuminated the gap between what was offered be from your big company and actually accessible to you in your home.
And so just I was just, you know, made aware of that and have been constantly aware of not only the increasing cost, but that increasing gap where the employee doesn't really get access to the employee benefits unless there's something extraordinary that happens and they can blow through their four or five thousand dollar deductible to actually get to the benefits.
Bernie (02:35)
Or five thousand dollar deductible. wow. It sounds like sounds like a bad car insurance. what what helped guide you away from the corporate space? Because usually, you know, there's a certain level of safety, right? When you're in corporate, not that it's absolute because you know, you hear about restructuring all the time. And it doesn't matter whether you're working for you know for public service or whether you're working for a capital
based driven enterprise. What made you peel away?
Nate (03:01)
Well, I guess I always had an entrepreneurial bone. that was that was or itch or whatever you'd want to call it. When I was going through training for this for this company, I asked one of my classmates, I'll say, when he knew I was leaving the company. He said, when I met you. So ten years later I actually did leave. and but I I really got a full education that
know putting me in the boardroom of executives and you know at that time multi-million dollar decisions were being made which was a lot and so that was a a great great experience I I hung on longer than I thought I would just because I was learning so much and as a young person to be in boardrooms or or C suites that was just a great great experience but I wanted to do what they were doing.
And not necessarily with, you know, thousands of employees or anything, but I wanted to one, help impact people's lives and and be able to say there was a tangible result from from my work. And so the closer I got to the person we were trying to help, then the more I felt that in terms of a a benefit to both them and me. And it was fulfilling it in that way to to be more of an entrepreneur.
And and just be closer to the ground and and trying to get stuff done that way.
Bernie (04:19)
So wellness plans, I I mean we kind of touched on it earlier, right? You have a four thousand or five thousand dollar deductible. What type of plans are out there? Like how are they normally structured and you know, what's best fit?
Nate (04:30)
Yeah, so it's it it actually they're constantly changing because the costs continue to go up. And what the decision makers have to deal with is that increasing cost, the legal requirement compliance wise, to to provide care or provide access to a a primary insurance plan. So there's there's there are a lot of challenges and and moving parts in those C suites that you know, where they're making those decisions.
as to what the trade-off is, what the impact is going to be on the employee base, and all of those things. The real thing that drives is is is the compliance side. And and they do the best that they can. A lot of companies will do the best that they can, but it's kind of out of their control. our system has continually increasing costs. premiums are continually going up. The average increase this year for health insurance
Is in the 17, 18% range. I've seen 25%. hopefully you're in the single digit, but most often, almost every single year, the health insurance agent has a difficult decision or difficult question or or or presentation to show that they're trying to serve their needs, but the they can't really help introducing higher cost. And so
We've just tried to address that in a way that not only lowers the cost, but also gives better access to the care. I mean, just to give you an example, most people that and that it's not uncommon. Four or five thousand dollars as an ad as a deductible is not uncommon. And that might be as a package of twelve thousand dollars a year for your family insurance package. So you're paying the paying a thousand bucks a month to
pay an additional four or five thousand until you ultimately get into the the insurance side where they're going to pick up the tab. because a lot of that, you know, all that money has to come out of my pocket. a lot of families don't do what they should be doing on a preventative basis. And it's not until you know Johnny breaks his arm or somebody needs you know a complete tooth replaced or some other emergency
operation or treatment that ex that's going to exceed that deductible and you still owe the money, but it it now I'm I'm in a place where it's almost a catastrophic care sort of a scenario. So what who provides the care in the gap? And that's what we try to address.
Bernie (06:49)
So what does a well designed plan look like then? Like i it it sounds like there's the insurance component, and I get that piece, right? You you gotta get fixed. And so you're covering the the medical expenses. But that there's more to it than that, isn't it?
Nate (07:02)
There is. and and this is where, you know, we talk about, you know, preventative care. One of the things, and there have been initiatives over the last couple of decades, you know, wellness plans didn't really exist maybe 20 years ago, 25 years ago. it was a rare op rare situation that you would run into a a wellness plan. But now, you know, corporations they they need to compete. sitting down and interviewing with you and maybe somebody else, and you have a wellness plan and the other company doesn't. So that's an advantage.
at least on paper, to be able to say that I I have a wellness plan. the same challenges exist though. It's access to that wellness plan, just like it's access to my major medical plan. So we come in, we sit on top of a of a of a major medical plan, your Aetna, your Blue Cross Cigna, whatever it is that you have, and and that's an in fact that's part of our compliance. We can't be the first line of defense. But
as it turns out, we can be your first point of access. So you can use us as your primary care doctor. So here's an example.
I had a problem with my knee. I needed to get a shot, a cortisone shot to be able to walk around. And so I had to go to my primary care physician. So that appointment, because it wasn't an emergency and it wasn't part of my routine annual checkup, I made an appointment two or three weeks out. So I've got to take off that afternoon to go to the appointment, got to pay my copay to go in to have my doctor tell me here's your referral.
And so now my referral, I get this referral to an ortho person who's gonna help me address my knee issue. Same sort of a deal, two, three, four weeks out, take another half day off to go out and sit in the lobby and do my copay and do all that stuff for him to say, here's your referral to your technician who's actually gonna give you the shot. So we'll do these MRI, we'll do this, all this analytical stuff, which by the way, will be a copay on that.
And then we'll get you ty finally to the place that you need to be. Well, at least one of those, if not two of those, referral checkpoint places, can be eliminated if I can give you direct access. If I know about your system, which is what we do, we'll come in, learn all about your primary care provider. And then we will make the referral directly.
And for anything else that that is needed, particularly on an emergency basis, we're in tick country. My wife got bitten by a tick. We weren't quite sure. It was early. so they said, Well, show us the bite. So we were able to do that. We we showed them the bite. They said, Yep, that's a tick. and here's your treatment. And you use the drugstore down the street. We see that's on file, we'll call in that that prescription.
And you can go down and do that by that what by the way, that prescription is free because you're part of the wellness plan. So take that to the traditional story, and I try to get into if I don't want to go to the emergency room, which for a tick bite, so I I I get in get in touch with my doctor again, maybe a week, two weeks out.
By then, if I have Lyme disease, it's if that's a Lyme disease carrying tick, I have Lyme disease. And so now it's really about trying to just minimize the impact as opposed to prevent the the the whole episode from happening. So being able to have the access, almost immediate access to care, in our case, we called the urgent care hotline. And and they were able to help us right away. And so that access could have saved our life. I I you know.
We don't we don't know, but that's the whole idea of the preventative care. So there's a whole series of things in our in our program that provide that. Wellness, I mean, the weight loss is another piece where it's a big deal and it's a it's a long term proposition generally to lose and people need to lose fifty, hundred pounds. So and and they would tell you this saved their life.
Kind of like we work, we don't know about the tick deal, we don't know about the weight loss, but pretty good odds that we improved your your life if if not saved it. And so with the ability to provide these Ozempic type GLP-1 access for roughly 10% of the cost in the marketplace, that becomes a major, major advantage in having the wellness. And truly it's wellness. So you get a coach, you get a nutritionist, you can have a dietitian.
And then you also have access to the the pharmaceutical. So it's a pretty comprehensive piece, but the whole idea is to bridge the gap at the employees desk to care that they might not otherwise take advantage of at no cost to them.
Bernie (11:29)
Your program hits a ninety percent participation and that's not the norm for the industry. N the norm for the industry is a little lower, by forty points. How do how are you able to hit that participation level so high?
Nate (11:41)
Well, we do a lot to encourage. So our our program, I I mentioned our the wellness plan at my at my wife's employer. I had to hunt and peck and search and and find resources. There was no one person to call. there was a website and and all kinds of different things, steps to take, which I pursued and I was able to get s you know some additional help, but it was it was definitely a while coming. In our case.
We are engaged. We want to be your first call. No matter what your need is, we want to be your first call. So I mentioned earlier, we'll understand what your network is providing. we'll address whatever needs we can address right away on an immediate basis. And we'll have that continuity of your case management, I'll say, readily available. You can have the same doctor or you can just get the first doctor that is available to you. And by the way, people will say, Well, we have telehealth already. Well,
Odds are you have telehealth from one two three year veterans in the in the medical field, and you're not likely to get the same person each time. If you do, it's it's an accident. In our case, you can say, I want that to be, I want that person to be my primary care doctor. I might have to wait a little bit longer to to get access to them, but we're talking about three or four days, not three or four weeks. And
Because of all of those pieces where I feel as a as an individual, I'm being taken care of as an individual, not as a part of a machine or a system. And because of the results that we deliver, kind of word of mouth spreads among the employee base and and our our participation goes up. And we we just provide because of the access, it's easy for us to to connect and and provide service.
Bernie (13:21)
When you're providing this service, if so the employer hires you to set up the plan with with the with the staff, right? What happens if the staff are travelers? In other words, they for the from the nature of their business, let's say, you know, maybe they're into drilling oil wells and they're no longer in you know, to Dorothy, you're no longer in Kansas. You're you're you're somewhere else, you know.
Pick a part of the universe that you're in. Does that follow? Does that is that something you can
Nate (13:51)
Yeah, that's a great question. So it's an app on your phone. And and so you've got access to those resources through your phone wherever you are. And and so you can you may not be able to get referred into the specialist in your network because you're in Japan and your employer is in the States. but you can get that emergency care, you can get that urgent care.
you can even get prescriptions yeah forwarded to you. So those sort of things are readily available. And I just you you you triggered something for me on the a participation level because so these are all additional benefits that people, you know, the travel benefits and all of that stuff are are there, but the average participation is in the 20 percentile range for wellness plans.
And yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing. But they could check the box and say we offer it. it's not uncommon to have you know 10 to 15 percent. And then you may you might even be in bonus territory at twenty-five percent. So I was at a meeting and and I was talking about this 90 participation, and this regional manager of a local bank said, 90 percent, yeah, because he's thinking about, I mean, his bonuses are tied to that. He said, I bribe my people and I'm at at
32%. We pay them to do this and walk around the block and do and and I still can only get about 32% participation. And and I'm patting myself on the back for that. So that began our conversation. And they're now in the 90% plus participation on the wellness side. So it's it's that participation is a big deal because that's kind of one of the only metrics that a lot of the senior executives have. Well, are people using this?
And and so if it goes from twenty to twenty-five, that's a huge jump for for them looking at what they're used to. But it's just out of this world for them to get into the ninety percentile range, then they're really happy. Because now everything that I was trying to do as a as a C suite person, making that those decisions for those benefits, now it's making sense to me because clearly my employees are taking advantage of the system. And then there's all kinds of other anecdotal evidence that
that they can see and and witness with with the employee base. So it's it's a big deal.
Bernie (16:05)
Is there an implication like okay, your health care, right? Like you bit by a tick, I get you know, you get the treatment immediately, you know, overt Lyme disease or you know, or you you break an arm or it's a tooth, you know, th that's the immediate consequence. Are there other ripple effects for the staff and the business that you that you see happening when when you have a really successful program?
Nate (16:28)
Yes, it's there's a peace of mind that happens. So it's not necessarily a measurable piece, but you can see it in employee morale. And if you do surveys, those things show up in the surveys. it's just that access to care. And I've I've got you know three minor kids at home and you know, particularly so the mental health piece, we have if we have fourteen thousand mental health counselors that
Completely certified, all that kind of stuff. And and they are kept busy with with our system. And part of that is, I mean, there's a there's, I mean, I think there was a big need anyway. COVID did a number on the world, and and I think there's a lot of PTSD, particularly if I was a teenager in that time. So now to be able to get access to mental health care for my 16-year-old who won't talk to me because I don't know anything, that
Yes. there's and there's just other issues that I just am not going to share with my parents. You know, I have to live with them every day. But I've I'll I will talk to a professional and I can have that same professional be the professional I talk to every month. So we've actually had businesses make that decision. One of my clients has veterans. They're a big part of his staff. He's a veteran, different era, but his it's an HVAC company, 250 people, probably 70% of his techs.
are Iraq, Afghanistan, he's purposely gone out and and recruited those folks. So he said to me, the money, he wasn't opposed to the quarter of a million a year he was going to pick up each and every year. But it wasn't really moving it to the top of his his his pile to make a decision on until we started talking about mental health. And so he from his view, and maybe for even from his experience, he said, you know, if if my folks can
Pull their truck off the side of the road and have a talk with somebody. And that's going to make their day better, or that's going to make their evening with their family better. I wanna have that. And so I think that moved the needle for him. Yeah. And then, you know, like I say, the ripple effect, you know, teens, it's a big issue these days for them to have at least some sort of an outlet. it may not be crisis, but it's an outlet and it can be a regular outlet for them. So
Those are two pieces that are huge, huge. people are adopting and adapting that into their life and and integrating that stuff as part of their whole overall care. So when you talk about how does it affect the employees and the morale, when I can feel more comfortable that things are getting taken care of and I have access to crit to what we I'm considering critical care, but had to really jump through hoops to be able to get access to it.
And once every three or four months is not good enough, which is what most mental health pieces, components of other wellness plans have, then this becomes a home run for them.
Bernie (19:08)
Wow. Size. Size matters sometimes, but if you're a small business and you have ten to fifteen employees versus someone who has maybe a hundred or a thousand or even five thousand, can you get the same level of of love from the wellness program or is is it or do you need or do the numbers make a difference?
Nate (19:26)
Well, it's because it's all essentially an individual plan, it doesn't really make a difference whether it's on a corporate wide basis. You're not going to get more resources from us if you have a thousand employees than if you have fifteen. But the challenge for the under fifty employer here in the states is I don't have to have a med I don't have to have health insurance.
And we can't provide you our wellness plan unless you have health insurance. We can't be the first line of defense. So from a compliance standpoint, there's a deduction that happens. So this is all FICA savings. We're redirecting FICA dollars that you would have been sending to Uncle Sam. but Uncle Sam has said, if you structure things in this way, we'll let you use those FICA dollars for wellness. So the these
the FICA dollars or the the savings, I'll call it, let's call it a benefits bank for the employee. So that employee has roughly $300 a month to spend on benef on our wellness plan. And and our wellness plan cost about half of that. We've given them the money. They've given it back to us. The other $150 can either drop to the bottom line of their paycheck or if the employer doesn't have the ability to
provide them health insurance, then we can use that money to provide a minimally essential plan. So it's not going to cover hospital coverage or surgeries or things like that. But 85-90% of what your needs are going to be on the health health insurance side will be met by that plan. So with nothing out of pocket, that employer now can use that tax deduction to pay for everything. Wellness and
the health insurance that he wanted to provide or she wanted to provide, but couldn't afford it and couldn't figure out a plan that was gonna be for, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty people.
Bernie (21:12)
So if someone is going, Okay, I should I should have this plan, I should have a wellness plan built in here. And maybe I'm big enough that I might already have, you know, the you're not if they reach out to you, you're not the first line of defense, so to speak. Mm-hmm. What are the things they should do first, to figure out is that the direction to go? other than if this unless of course it's by law. But you know, if if they had choice,
What makes it the right thing to do? What makes it the f what are the first steps of the right thing to do?
Nate (21:42)
Yeah, well it's really kind of understanding your your workforce. So I don't know of any workforce that that wouldn't benefit from kind of our our our our list of of benefits that would that could be provided. Some will be more focused on the mental health as we talked about, some will be more focused on maybe the weight loss piece.
But it's really trying to do an assessment of the needs of your workforce and and trying to understand that. So pretty universal is wanting to have access to whatever it is I'm paying for. And and so that's not a not an unreasonable request. And so to be able to to look at your workforce and your plan your existing plans and say, if I could provide a bridge.
That's going to give my employees better access to what I'm trying to provide them, then that's a great start in terms of the analysis. It doesn't hurt that we have a financial component as well that delivers about $1,000 a year to the employer. We talked about the FICA savings. So on the employee side, those savings go into benefits. And then if there's anything left over, it goes into their paycheck.
On the employer side, they're paying half a FICA. So there's a small administrative fee for the plan itself, but the rest of it just drops to the bottom line. They can do whatever they want to with those dollars. And so in some cases, they're reinvesting in other benefits because it's found money for them. In cases where businesses are trying to increase their enterprise value or whatever that might be, then that just becomes an enhancer to that whole process. So
Pre cash flow is a great thing.
Bernie (23:18)
Just for the audience, what is FICA?
Nate (23:21)
yeah. yeah. So that's I I wondered that when I got my first paycheck from this Fortune fifty. Who's this guy? FICA and what is he lousy taking all my money? so that's your social security and Medicare payment. You know, you're gonna pay seven point six five percent on your side. It's a total of of fifteen point three percent, I think it is. and the other half of that's paid by your employer. That's why both both parties get to save.
When we reduce those taxes. other areas that that depending on what state you're in, you might also reduce your workers' comp as much as 20 or 30 percent. That can be a big deal. That can be more savings than the plans paying you in some cases. if you're doing the GLP-1 drugs that are making those available to your employees, those are so I'll I'll be talking to
a woman today that she's got three hundred and some employees. She's a county manager. 20 of those employees, because that's all they can afford, are able to access this weight loss, these weight loss drugs and they're paying a fortune for that. So that a lot of times those employers are what's called self-insured. So they're they've kind of run the numbers and they've said, well, for these benefits, we'd like to offer them, but we're gonna have to offer them from our own pocketbook.
And so in her case, she's got to limit it to 8% of her employee employee base. those that can add up very, very quickly when you put all those things together. It'd be two or three thousand dollars a year of savings each and every year for the employer. And again, they can add to the benefit pile, they can do whatever they want to with that money. There's no requirement as to what they do with the savings.
Bernie (24:55)
You mentioned in when you're talking about wellness, if you address certain issues ahead of time, you nip things in the butt. weight loss is one of them. What are the other major contributors that you're finding that you know if you take care of this, y you live longer, and not only longer, because longer is not necessarily the the sweetheart deal, it's healthier.
Nate (25:16)
Right. Healthier, better, being able to actually you know, experience more of life in the way that you want to. The I would say the mental health is probably, I mean, if you think about that at the extreme, that can be literally a lifesaver. So if I can address that in kind of incremental pieces on a consistent basis over time, then that can make for a much more complete.
way of living and help me in so many other areas of my life.
Bernie (25:43)
You find you have third parties bring you into the space, like a consultant or a financial advisor for a business, and then that just becomes part of the overall in other words, you know, they're the middle person, middle man, middle woman, whatever the case might be. do you have that type of arrangement that happens also, or is it always directly you're directly with the employer and that's it?
Nate (26:04)
Yeah, no, that's a great question. we are generally because it's it's a little bit of an unusual decision and and experience and opportunity, for us to get to the decision makers can take a while. And so if somebody already has that relationship, and that's normally how we get introduced into a business. So I'm working with a group of consultants now that two of them are actually including us in their bids. So if I've got a
quarter of a million dollar consulting engagement with you. And I've got a, you know, I'm working this company has a hundred employees, I can package that with the wellness plan and it becomes a hundred and fifty thousand dollar engagement. So it's something that should stand on its own and have its own return on investment. But if I can make that investment lower and ultimately be zero, even if you do nothing as the consultant in two or three years, that's all paid for.
So it reduces the risk from the consultant's client. So we work primarily with professionals that have what call the relationship capital. And if they'll invest that relationship capital, we partner with them on the on the wellness plan. And it's a great, you know, there are some consultants or or fractional executives that would like to have an an early positive experience with their clients. Our savings start.
basically month one. And so they can come in on a twelve month engagement and know that in month one, they're gonna be delivering positive cash flow to their client. And so it soften the blow for everybody. It may it packages the the relationship a little bit better and more positively because nobody's yeah, everybody wants to to they they want to invest in the right stuff.
but if there's a way to offset that investment with something that they know is gonna help elsewhere, maybe completely unrelated, then they're more than willing to take a take a look at it.
Bernie (27:53)
If someone goes and sets this program up, you know, the wellness and and you know the the services you provide, does it enhance their valuation of their company? I I know it's it's not like you know, I'm gonna put I'm gonna put another building up here or you know, like a hard asset, you go, I can touch that. It's gonna be there tomorrow at two in the morning, right? Right. Not that you're not your services are gonna vaporize, but does it provide
an enhancement to the value of the business. Not on not from an operational side, but let's say someone is looking to, you know, at a certain point they're looking to scale up or you know and get investment into the business or they're looking to sell the business perhaps, you know, in five to ten years.
Nate (28:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, it's that's a great question. And and in in some cases, that is why some consultants will bring us in, because they are helping, I've got business brokers that are helping package that business in the best light to be sold. So if I can pick up an extra $100,000, extra million dollars a year, whatever it might be, then when I'm selling that on a private basis, it's worth two, three, four times that.
On a public basis or maybe a private equity basis, it might be worth seven or to ten times that. So if nothing else selfishly is the business broker, I pick up an extra five percent of that additional value. That's one thing. But I I also am able to a lot of times if if a if an owner is selling and there's someone new coming in, they'd like to leave their family, so to speak, of the small business in
Better shape than when they found them and or what how they built them, how you know how it it came about. So yes, there's a there's an enterprise value enhancement. There is it can be well, so this county manager, she's got a budget shortfall. She's just looking at us to say, not only do we get all this other stuff we would like from the employees side, but financially, I can make my budget.
And I can do the keep do I don't have to cut programs because I'm able to to do that. So maybe I'm not in those in that dire straits, but I may be in a situation where I want to do where everything else is taken care of, all my operations are are humming, but I'd like to hire a sales team or I'd like to spend money on marketing to grow the business. Where do I find that money? I can't find it right now, I don't want to borrow it. And so here's a way.
Let's just drop it into your pocket on a monthly basis. So all kinds of uses for the capital. And the because there's no requirement for what they do with those with those dollars, then it's just readily available for business growth, business enterprise value increases, or saving the business.
Bernie (30:35)
So the next five to ten years, where do you see the the corporate wellness space going?
Nate (30:40)
Yeah, great question. So I view this structure, I'll call it. I mean, we're the we're the fastest growing. I've I've looked at a number of other we have other competitors. and so I think we've got the best solution. But that that aside, I think the structure will be kind of like the adoption of 401k plans.
So you may be too young young for this, Bernie, but back in the in this back in the 70s, 401ks were introduced. So we were coming out of a defined benefit world where everybody had a pension and you worked for 20, 30 years and you got your pension. Well, that became unaffordable, kind of like healthcare is becoming unaffordable. So this solution that says the government's going to help you, they're not going to write you a check.
But they will, if you adopt this program, because they know so the government's paying for Medicaid, the government's paying for you know other benefit programs. You in the in the if you go to an emergency room, they cannot refuse you care. And you may be stacked up for hours, but they cannot refuse you care because you can't pay. So to bridge the gap of what is actually needed.
by the workforce of America, this I think will ultimately be the preferred solution and be adopted in the way that the four. So now if you're even a solopreneur, you can have a 401k. So we went from what is this? This is too good to be true in the mid 70s to if you don't have it, who are you? I think that'll be the case with with this wellness structure.
And the focus on delivering benefits, I'll call it to the desk of the employee, bridging the gap to the major medical programs that are out there. And there can be less strain on the system. And just like it's a great idea for us to address mental health and weight loss and all the different pieces before they get completely out of hand. It's the same thing with our medical insurance system. If we can address
the wellness, the true wellness side and preventative care, then we have less of a burden on the other elements of the system.
Bernie (32:47)
someone's listening to this podcast and they're going, hang on, I should you know partner up with Nate, who would that be? Who would be your perfect partners for for for making making this more successful?
Nate (32:59)
Yeah. Well, I work a lot with fractional executives and with consultants. I work with so to just think if you think about their either agenda or you know business objectives, you've got private equity people that are trying to increase the value of their portfolio as much as possible. You have fractional executives and other consultants.
Who are trying to not only improve the business, the business has identified an area that they need help in. and they're trying to do that with the least amount of cost. And the consultant's trying to provide the most amount of value with the least amount of cost. So that's a nice marriage. We're a great tool in their kit to be able to be introduced. It can save businesses. so people in that field where they're trying to add value.
we're nothing but value in my view. And we we love to partner with those folks. It doesn't you know, for smaller businesses that don't have the HR staff, we again we want to be your first call. We don't necessarily want you calling the HR manager to figure out how to use your benefits. We will know that. So we can actually lighten the load of a more skeleton HR staff.
and generally this is a financial decision. So you know, we're being introduced to CFOs, CEOs, COOs, and and so the people that are playing those roles on a fractional basis are the perfect people to see the the ultimate benefit for the business long term and short term.
Bernie (34:27)
Continental US or anywhere US territories in two or or the North America or your global? Like how far yeah how far is your reach, Nate?
Nate (34:38)
Yeah, yeah, great question. If you're paying FICA, and that actually applies to, you know, places or entities in the US, because not everybody pays into FICA. they are there a lot of times government employees are in a retirement system at the state, and so they're paying an alternative a similar amount, but it but into an alternative program that's ultimately going to be their retirement income. So
if you're paying into FICA, then we can we can help. So that generally is a continental United States and and US territories.
Bernie (35:11)
So folks, if you you know you're looking for a wellness plan that can save you some money, keep your crew healthy,
head to SIMERP.com or S I M E R P dot com to learn more about what Nate's team does and how a wellness program might work for your business. If you're not sure where to start, well the first step is knocking on the door and finding out more. big thank you for to Dave McFarland of of FocusOPEX.
For making this introduction between Nate and Knack 4 Business. We appreciate that. And Nate is coming back from season four, episode 95, where we dug into why so many health plans cost more than they deliver. And that conversation covered the basics. And today we went a little deeper and into the overall picture. So Nate helps companies stop guessing about their health care and start making decisions that actually protect their people and their bottom line.
Lots of different ways to approach it. And it's not just a matter of just the companies are saving money, it's the people are healthier. And when you have healthier people and everybody's on the same page, going the same direction, far better, far better results. And reach out to Nate for a conversation that is worth having. to connect with us, we're at knack4business.com. That's K N A C K, the number 4 business dot com.
To reach us and use our chat bot to find out about other podcasts or book a call.