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Episode 2025 Transcript:

00;00;01;14 - 00;00;06;01

Announcer

And now America's Healthcare Advocate, Cary Hall.

00;00;06;04 - 00;00;25;14

Cary Hall

Hello, America. Welcome to America's Healthcare Advocate show, Broadcasting Coast to coast across USA. Here on the HIA Radio Network. My producer behind the microphone microphones, Mr. Darren Wilhite. Behind the camera, as always, Mr. Dave Thiessen. All these shows are posted on 15 podcast platforms and YouTube. YouTube numbers up to about 450,000.

00;00;25;14 - 00;00;45;19

Cary Hall

Now, thanks to all of you out there in the audience. We appreciate you watching the show as we videotape these and put them up. We also appreciate all of you listening on radio 238 affiliates across the country. I want to say hello to all the folks at KKAM in Lubbock, Texas, 1340AM. We're very happy to have them on board.

00;00;45;19 - 00;01;04;08

Cary Hall

They've been on board for a while. We get calls and emails from folks down there, and we're happy to chat with them. So once again, we appreciate you at America's Healthcare Advocate for having us on the air at KGNC in Lubbock, Texas. If you're chronologically challenged and you're looking for Medicare insurance, whether it’s a Medicare Advantage plan or Medicare supplement plan?

00;01;04;10 - 00;01;30;26

Cary Hall

The lovely Carolee Steele at RPS Benefits by Design is happy to help you anywhere in the country. You can call them, at 877-385-2224. And if you're an employer looking for health insurance, Maria Ahlers at RPS Benefits by Design is the person you want to talk to. You know, I just spoke to her yesterday and they just did a case for 400 McDonald's employees.

00;01;30;26 - 00;01;54;16

Cary Hall

So and these franchises happen to all be in Texas, by the way. That they are going to do health insurance for so they can help you anywhere in the country, whether it's employer sponsored group health insurance or you're looking for Medicare, individual health insurance, ACA. 877-385-2224is the number at RPS Benefits by Design. All right. Today's show, which I've been looking forward to doing.

00;01;54;19 - 00;02;13;06

Cary Hall

I'm going to title this working on the business, not in the business. Because in studio with me today is Chad Simpson. He is the CEO of G&A Partners. They are a PEO. So we're going to talk about what PEO’s do. And I'm going to tell you why I think this is extremely valuable especially for the small business owner.

00;02;13;13 - 00;02;18;07

Cary Hall

So we're very happy to have you welcome. You came in from Texas today to do the show. We appreciate having you here.

00;02;18;13 - 00;02;21;20

Chad Simpson

Thank you. Thank you. Quick correction I'm vice president sales.

00;02;21;23 - 00;02;26;16

Cary Hall

Oh, well, I made you the CEO. You just got a he got a promotion. He didn't even know this was going to happen.

00;02;26;17 - 00;02;35;00

Chad Simpson

A little bit of anxiety with that as well. That's a much bigger job than, that I have. But no, thanks for having me. Thanks for, ordering some cool weather.

00;02;35;03 - 00;02;37;07

Cary Hall

Yeah, yeah, it's a little hot in Texas.

00;02;37;09 - 00;02;43;07

Chad Simpson

It is. You know, it's August in Texas. If you live in Texas and you don't like the heat, you need to move.

00;02;43;07 - 00;02;53;20

Cary Hall

It's usually how it is here. But we're very fortunate right now, so hopefully we'll be able to stay that way. And, you're going to eat some, Kansas City barbecue. See how that compares to north to North Texas barbecue? We'll see.

00;02;53;22 - 00;02;56;05

Chad Simpson

Yeah, yeah. I'll, I like it all.

00;02;56;08 - 00;03;10;18

Cary Hall

That's all right. So, Chad, why don't you just start out by explaining what a PEO does? And, and the functions that they handle for small business owners that allow them, as I said, to work on the business, not in the business, Chad.

00;03;10;26 - 00;03;40;12

Chad Simpson

Sure. A PEO stands for professional employer organization. That's a mouthful. But the concept has been around for several decades. It kind of started out there's a couple of accountants in South Florida that realized if you could lease someone employees, you could also take their employees and lease them back. So the concept came out of employee leasing, and then it became something, you know, way bigger, way more complex.

00;03;40;15 - 00;04;07;20

Chad Simpson

And the primary goal of all of it was when you look at small businesses, you got to think about everything that a small business has to do, right? There's their core mission. So it could be a nonprofit, it could be a doctor's office, it could be a machine shop, right? They didn't get into business to be employers, but they typically have employees because by, law, the Department of Labor has a very narrow definition of someone that is an independent contractor.

00;04;07;26 - 00;04;32;01

Chad Simpson

So in this day and age, most of the time if you have a small business, you're going to be forced to classify people as employees. And when you do so, you get 180 federal employment laws, 180+ federal employment laws and there’s state regulations, local regulations. There's tax issues and everything that comes along with that. So for the small business owner, that can be very overwhelming.

00;04;32;09 - 00;04;53;14

Chad Simpson

And so you can categorize categorize them into three categories. They're either, ignorant and willfully ignorant and have been, you know, in business for years and nothing bad has ever happened. They’ve been really lucky. They've been really lucky. You've got those who have a, a firm grip on it, they feel, but they're investing in that. So they have employees that handle that.

00;04;53;14 - 00;05;22;01

Chad Simpson

So someone who handles HR or someone who handles benefits, and then you have those who are more outsource minded. They think of, kind of running their business, from a lean perspective, meaning we're going to have employees, but we'll have as few as possible, and we're going to outsource things that aren't core to our mission. So normally those are the people that we're looking for because they've kind of already decided that there's certain things that we have to do that we should do, but we're not good at them.

00;05;22;03 - 00;05;37;00

Cary Hall

Well, you know, and this is daunting, you know, like me, I had, you know, when we had Benefits by Design, which was our company, which is now part of RPS Benefits by Design, you know, we had about 15, 20 employees depending on, on what time of year it was, where we're at with doing Medicare or whatever the case may be.

00;05;37;03 - 00;06;00;23

Cary Hall

And, you know, handling all of the regulatory, responsibilities, 188 federal laws. And here's the thing that I don't think people understand you're guilty until proven innocent when the federal government walks in your front door, when the Department of Labor comes in and says, we're here to do an audit because you didn't handle your 401 K correctly or you didn't, you didn't do this correctly or that correctly, you're guilty.

00;06;00;26 - 00;06;20;26

Cary Hall

They'll find a crime to fit it, fit why they're there one way or another. And I have example after example of people that had small businesses. I had one business. It was a manufacturing facility. They did all of the railroad signs, you see that posted for railroads when they came in to audit their 401K, they were there for three months, three months.

00;06;20;27 - 00;06;48;27

Cary Hall

Okay. And then they and there was nothing wrong with 401K, but they still fined them $11,000. I never will forget that because him he and his wife ran that company and his wife was responsible and the level of stress that they had to deal with as a result of that. And and like I said, you know, ignorance you're not knowing doesn't mean anything as far as these people are concerned, they're from the federal government or the state government, and they're there to tell you that you're wrong.

00;06;48;27 - 00;06;51;14

Cary Hall

And here's what it's going to cost you because you are wrong.

00;06;51;14 - 00;07;24;08

Chad Simpson

And the other big issue is, you're in a position where you don't know what your rights are and you think that if you go along with them that they're going to you're going to get the best outcome, right? So it's like, I'm going to try to comply with their request, but they'll make requests that are outside of what you're obliged to do by law, meaning for an OSHA audit, for example, all that you are required to give them are your OSHA logs, but they're going to come in, they're going to ask for way, way, way more than that.

00;07;24;10 - 00;07;40;00

Chad Simpson

So you see how that works. Number one, if you're a small business owner, I don't know what they have a right to and what they don't have a right to. And I feel like if I am nice to them because they'll be nice to me, but they're really to really, you know, have an ulterior motive that it's all going to work out well.

00;07;40;00 - 00;07;46;14

Chad Simpson

And then, as you mentioned, they're going to have to come up with at least enough of a find to cover their costs for being there. Right.

00;07;46;21 - 00;07;52;29

Cary Hall

And to justify the fact that they're there. Yeah. Okay. And to justify their existence because that's what this really is all about.

00;07;53;00 - 00;08;05;05

Chad Simpson

Yeah. And, you know, not trying to poopoo OSHA or Department of Labor or IRS or whatever, they serve a purpose. But it's David and Goliath and you're always going to be in the wrong in some way.

00;08;05;09 - 00;08;06;13

Cary Hall

You're always going to be David.

00;08;06;13 - 00;08;08;12

Chad Simpson

And ignorance isn't a defense, right?

00;08;08;16 - 00;08;30;05

Cary Hall

No. So and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this today. Because, you know, how many of you out there listening this or watching this on the on the YouTube or listening to the podcast know there are 180 federal laws that you're required to comply with if you have W-2 employees. That's the whole point. And if something happens where they come to your business, they audit you for whatever the reason may be.

00;08;30;07 - 00;08;49;09

Cary Hall

If you don't have someone that understands this that can stand in for you and cooperate with them, do what they want you to do. At the same time, make sure you're protected as the employer and they're not phishing, which is what they do a lot of times, then that's what you're up against. And so that's why I think it's important to do shows like this and why we're doing this today.

00;08;49;11 - 00;09;08;04

Cary Hall

And the idea again is to bring you information so you can make decisions. You're going to fit your business. And I said, do you want to spend your time working on the business, or do you want to spend time working in the business, trying to solve these kind of problems that are outside of your purview? And that's the reason why Chad's here with us today, and that's why we're going to talk about PEO’s.

00;09;08;04 - 00;09;25;10

Cary Hall

So when we come back to the break, we're going to continue the conversation. We're going to shift gears. Now we're going to talk about customer service. This is one of my favorite pet peeves is customer service. In today's world. And the fact that the word customer has gone completely out of service in terms of customer service. We come back to the break.

00;09;25;10 - 00;09;45;22

Cary Hall

We'll talk about that, why that's important and why and how they handle it at G&A Partners. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate broadcasting here on the HIA Radio Network Coast to coast across the USA. If you want information on G&A Partners, go to the website g n a partners.com.

00;09;45;25 - 00;09;55;15

Cary Hall

Or you can call them at 713-784-1181. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after the break.

00;09;55;17 - 00;10;25;18

Steve Kuker

The golden rule treat others as you want to be treated. I'm Steve Kuker, and this is one of the founding principles of my firm, Senior Care Consulting. Since 2002, our value statement has included honor our mother and father. Respect our elders. Care for those in need. And treat your family as our own. We've been honored to help hundreds of families make one of the most difficult decisions they could ever make.

00;10;25;23 - 00;11;01;21

Steve Kuker

Serving them in their greatest time of need. If you're looking for someone who can provide you experienced and objective guidance when searching for a senior care community, reach out today and discover the services of Senior Care consulting at 913-945-2800. Know your options and choose with care at seniorcareconsulting.com.

00;11;01;24 - 00;11;20;29

Cary Hall

Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate show, broadcasting coast to coast across the USA. As I always say, all these shows are posted on the 15 podcast platforms. We're on Spotify, we're on Audacy’s platform, we're on iHeart radio’s platform. But we're on a whole series. These things Rumble, you name it. We're probably on all of them.

00;11;21;02 - 00;11;41;19

Cary Hall

So you could always get us on a podcast platform, America's Healthcare Advocate. Or you can go to the YouTube channel and watch the show because Dave Thiessen, our producer behind the camera, puts all these together and they're up on the broadcast platform on YouTube, so you can actually see the show. So here's the deal. Maybe you're that small business owner and, you know, you're the one that's struggling with these issues.

00;11;41;19 - 00;11;58;04

Cary Hall

You've got a partner. Instead of trying to explain all this to the partner, have them go watch the YouTube. They'll get it, they'll get an education. And we cut this thing down to about 38 minutes, 39 minutes. We put it up on YouTube. So you can do that. They can listen to it and they'll get a clear understanding of what polls do.

00;11;58;04 - 00;12;17;15

Cary Hall

And more specifically, what G&A Partners does. So in studio with me, Chad Simpson, he's the VP of G&A Partners. They are a PEO. So as I was getting doing show notes this morning about 5:00 in the morning, I'm going through your your list of things to talk about here and on there is customer service. I'm like, oh boy this is one of my favorite topics.

00;12;17;18 - 00;12;36;16

Cary Hall

So yeah it's really funny because I say there is no service in customer service in this country anymore. It's like out the window. I example, I had to change some tickets on Delta Airlines this week. It took me an hour, an hour after I went through at least five voice prompts. Because they want you to do a text chat, they want you to go online.

00;12;36;16 - 00;12;57;08

Cary Hall

I don't want to do it. I'm 75 years old. I'm not interested in doing a text chat or going online. I'm interested in getting a human being on the other end of the damn phone and telling me, here's my problem, help me fix it. Once I got to the customer service rep, they were amazing. Did everything I wanted done, couldn't it worked out better, sent me an email, had my itinerary and it done deal.

00;12;57;10 - 00;13;07;04

Cary Hall

But to get there was like pulling teeth to how do you guys handle customer service so that when people call, they actually get to talk to a real human being?

00;13;07;07 - 00;13;29;09

Chad Simpson

Yeah. Now it's a great question and it's something that I, I've been thinking about a lot lately. Everyone talks about how great their customer service is. Right. So it's it's something that no one believes anymore because their personal experience, it doesn't matter. And I think a lot of it happened after Covid, at least with me. I noticed that because the economy just changed.

00;13;29;11 - 00;13;51;26

Chad Simpson

Right. And so your favorite local restaurant, it's never been the same since. And when you start to think about that, like G&A Partners has always prided ourselves on our customer service, family owned business for 29 years. And when you think about, you know, a publicly traded company, there's a vote, right? The street determines whether they're doing their job.

00;13;51;26 - 00;14;03;03

Chad Simpson

If they hit their quarterly number, that's the vote. Does this dog go up or down. So when you have a privately held business, it's your customers that decide that. Right. And if they were, you're.

00;14;03;03 - 00;14;03;19

Cary Hall

Not in business.

00;14;03;22 - 00;14;27;18

Chad Simpson

Or you're not in business. And so when when we get referrals, that's the biggest indicator that we're doing a good job. Before I get into kind of how we objectively measure that, the reason I bring that up is we're in a business that's highly competitive. There are a lot of companies that do what we do. There's a lot of Pos, there's a lot of companies that do payroll and just HR, outsourcing and things like that.

00;14;27;20 - 00;14;43;21

Chad Simpson

All of us say we're going to do a better job than the incumbent, or we're going to do a better job than, you know, somebody else that you're talking to. But there's a major trust factor for that small business owner. So the small business owner, that's their baby, right? It's it's the it's everything. Most of them, a lot of them don't even have a retirement plan.

00;14;43;21 - 00;15;04;01

Chad Simpson

Their retirement plan is I sell this business. Right. So it's it's their everything. And we've got to convince them that we're going to take really good care of their baby. And that's a that's a, it's a big thing to overcome and build that trust. So we objectively try to measure that with our current clients. We have about 5000 clients.

00;15;04;01 - 00;15;22;05

Chad Simpson

We service about 100,000 work site employees all across the country. Been doing that for 29 years. But don't take my word for it. Right? We want to be able to show them. So one of the things that we employ is called Net Promoter Score NPS. And while most people haven't heard of NPS.

00;15;22;05 - 00;15;23;08

Cary Hall

Oh I know exactly what it is.

00;15;23;08 - 00;15;43;00

Chad Simpson

Yeah, at least the consumers know when I explain it to them, like, oh yeah. So, you know, it's really just a simple formula. But it can be as simple as, happy or sad face. When you go into the bathroom at the airport. Like I see that little screen, like, was it clean or not clean. Right. So all you're trying to do is get an up or down vote out of someone.

00;15;43;03 - 00;16;08;21

Chad Simpson

And the way we do it is we'll set up a survey via email and send to our clients. And it says on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to refer G&A to someone else? And if they want to complete the second question, it's why. Okay, so there's a quantitative and then a qualitative. So really we're looking at the quantitative first and the way the formula works.

00;16;08;23 - 00;16;28;02

Chad Simpson

You take the percentage of promoters. And a promoter has to be a nine or a ten. So that bar is extremely high. I don't know about you, but when I fill out a survey, if it's 0 to 10, I'm thinking of maybe a 7 or 8 if you're pretty good, right? So to get a nine or a ten, that's an extremely high bar to start with.

00;16;28;04 - 00;16;58;11

Chad Simpson

But the detractors, anything from a 0 to 6 is a detractor. So more than 60% of the options are detractor scores that count against you. So we've got less than 20% of the options count for you, more than 60% count against you. The sevens and ace are considered passive. They get tossed out of the formula altogether. So to give you an example, if you had 100 respondents and you had 60, that gave you a nine or a ten, you had 20 that gave you a 7 or 8, you had 0 or 20 that gave you a 0 to 6.

00;16;58;17 - 00;17;24;02

Chad Simpson

Your Net Promoter score would be 60% minus the 20% detractor. So you end up with a 40. So your net promoter scores a 40. That scale goes from -100 to +100 because you get 100% negative or 100% positive okay. That was a lot of information. Short amount of time. But the point of the matter is, on a scale of zero, excuse me, -100 to positive 100 a 70 is considered world class.

00;17;24;02 - 00;17;43;25

Chad Simpson

So NPS is a universal thing. A lot of companies use it. Companies like USAA insurance have 70 or above world class. That is G&A's goal to be a world class service organization. We hit it occasionally, but we typically stay in the high 60s, which means that we're one of the best service companies in the world compared to others.

00;17;44;00 - 00;17;47;03

Chad Simpson

And we're at the top of the echelon when it comes to PEOs.

00;17;47;05 - 00;18;05;00

Cary Hall

The part that's important about that is that you are you're measuring it, you're paying attention to it. And it's not just something you're talking about, you're actually doing it. You've got a metric. We do the exact same thing at Detego the TPA that I own part of, with my three partners based in Omaha, we do exactly the same thing I do.

00;18;05;00 - 00;18;20;07

Cary Hall

We have a giant tote board, and we go in our offices. It shows you how many calls are active, how fast they're being answered, how many are resolved, how many are being sent over to a claims manager, customer service. That's how. So we're doing the same thing you're doing. It's interesting because not a lot of companies do that.

00;18;20;07 - 00;18;30;27

Cary Hall

First of all, they don't want to pay for it okay. Because it isn't cheap okay. But secondly, the what comes out of that is you improve your staff, you know, where you're having problems.

00;18;30;29 - 00;18;49;04

Chad Simpson

Oh yeah, it's the negative feedback is what we're seeking out. That's like the fine we know. We know what we're good at. But we all have blind spots, right? Right. So we can't improve unless we're getting the feedback. And I always say, I would rather you tell me if I'm doing something wrong versus telling my competitor who's calling on you, trying to convince you to leave me.

00;18;49;07 - 00;18;52;29

Chad Simpson

Right? But, I mean, we got to be honest with ourselves and then we can improve upon it.

00;18;52;29 - 00;19;11;15

Cary Hall

Yeah. And so that and that's critical. And so I think this is a big separator because the large PEOs that are out there don't necessarily do this. And they see there's a lot of churn and a lot of turnover. I mean, you know, a recovering broker for 26 years now, and I've worked with a lot of PEOs and I know how it works.

00;19;11;17 - 00;19;23;28

Cary Hall

And people go in there because they think it's going to work and they're going to save money. And it's they're going to do this. And then they find out once they're in, then I can't get anybody to help me. We got this problem. We got that problem. The difference with you guys is, like you said, you're a family.

00;19;23;29 - 00;19;45;09

Cary Hall

You're mirroring the very people you're trying to help your family owned business. So you've got skin in the game here. You're not. It's not. It's not what's a quarterly earnings report? It's a little different deal. Whenever you own the company and it's your baby like you just described. So I think that's important. I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to get Chad in the studio today, to talk about that and to show how they separate from the rest of the herd.

00;19;45;09 - 00;20;10;09

Cary Hall

We'll be right back after the break. When we come back, we're going to get into what services do they offer? We're going to talk about it so you understand what they offer. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Broadcasting here on the HIA radio network coast to coast across the USA. We've got more. Don't go anywhere.

00;20;10;12 - 00;20;30;29

Cary Hall

Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate show broadcasting coast to coast across USA. All these shows are posted on 15 podcast platforms and on YouTube. If you're not listening on the radio today, do you want to go up and search it out? America's Healthcare Advocate also the website AmericasHealthcareAdvocate.com. If you have a question to comment, send me an email.

00;20;31;05 - 00;20;45;29

Cary Hall

I do answer each and every one of them. I get a lot of them, but I do answer them. So please feel free to send me an email if you have a question or comment. If I can help you with something, I'm happy to do that. Please feel free to do that. My producer, Mr. Darren Wilhite, behind the microphones, Dave Thiessen, is the man behind the cameras.

00;20;46;00 - 00;21;04;21

Cary Hall

As we bring this show to you today in studio with me, Chad Simpson. He is the VP of sales for G&A Partners. They're a PEO. They're located in the Dallas, Texas Metroplex, but they service folks all over the country and we're very happy to have him in studio. Flew up here today to be with us. We're talking about what does a PEO do.

00;21;04;26 - 00;21;23;02

Cary Hall

How do you work on your business? Not in your business if you're that small business owner. So let's get into the menu now what what all do you provide? How much of that do they had? You know, what do they have to buy to get in the door? How much that it can be all ala carte, you know, what are the services to just kind of roll through that?

00;21;23;02 - 00;21;23;21

Cary Hall

Will you Chad?

00;21;23;24 - 00;21;24;04

Chad Simpson

Sure.

00;21;24;09 - 00;21;45;27

Chad Simpson

It can get a little bit confusing because it's a very saturated marketplace when it comes to HR outsourcing. There's companies that just do payroll. And there are hundreds of those. There are hundreds of Pos. There are companies that give HR guidance, compliance, salary surveys, you name it. When when we came into the marketplace, we came in as a PEO professional employee organization.

00;21;46;00 - 00;22;07;12

Chad Simpson

And our goal is to do everything soup to nuts for the small business owner. So that is a platform that is our primary platform. So we're seeking out the business owner that says, look, I probably can do this, but I don't want to do this, not core to my business. And if I'm going to outsource it, the reason I want to bundle everything together number one one throat to choke.

00;22;07;12 - 00;22;29;06

Chad Simpson

Right? I want you guys to do it right. I'm going to pay you for it and expected to get done. But the other reason is things it's very complex. I mentioned earlier 180 federal employment laws. You have taxes. If you're piecemealing stuff out to multiple vendors, you're doing certain things in-house. You're doing payroll over here, you're doing, OSHA training over here, worker's comp over here.

00;22;29;08 - 00;22;49;13

Chad Simpson

Things fall through the cracks because no one is communicating, No. Right? Right. You assume that things are getting done and they're not, and you don't know that they didn't get done. Like, I've had clients who move from another payroll provider, one of these big national companies, and they get a notice two years later that they did not have they don't have a quarterly filing for their payroll taxes from two years ago, right?

00;22;49;20 - 00;23;11;10

Chad Simpson

That that's extremely common. And then, of course, the former provider says not my problem. That was two years ago. You're no longer a client. Can't help you out with that. Right. So the PEO model is, you know, payroll, everything associated with that time keeping. It's going to be HR guidance handbook. It can include risk and safety. Some companies you know if you're all white collar you probably don't need a lot of that.

00;23;11;10 - 00;23;33;03

Chad Simpson

Your blue blue collar you need a little bit more. And then just the HR in. So HR meaning the employee relations side of things. Right. So there's kind of those buckets there. Employee benefits would fall under that. So health insurance health insurance worker's comp. But what makes you a different is we do not like have to take over worker's comp.

00;23;33;03 - 00;23;54;01

Chad Simpson

We don't have to take over the employee benefits. Most PEOs use that as a loss leader. Oh yeah. Right. So they'll either they either go after high risk worker's comp classification, someone who's about to get locked out of a job site because their experience mod is about to jump up so they can roll into the PEO, lock their mod. A lot of PEOs operate that way.

00;23;54;03 - 00;24;15;13

Chad Simpson

And those are usually small or regional PEOs more what I would say, honestly, they're kind of predatory. They're not really providing service. It's just, hey, you're out of other options. You're gonna have to pay us in order to get into our high risk pool. You have other PEOs that will use the medical plan like that. They will claim they have economies of scale to buy health insurance, which we all know does not exist.

00;24;15;15 - 00;24;20;04

Chad Simpson

That's that's by contract through the carriers with the networks and the providers.

00;24;20;04 - 00;24;41;02

Cary Hall

And it's and it's all federally controlled now. Correct. No longer is the marketplace what it used to be ten years ago, Obamacare changed all of that, both on the individual side and on the small group side. So all of that comes together. The other problem is, in my experience in the past, is it's a lot easier to get into some of those PEOs, especially the big ones, than it is to get out.

00;24;41;04 - 00;24;45;08

Cary Hall

When you try to get out, it can get really ugly. So that's a little bit about.

00;24;45;14 - 00;25;08;04

Chad Simpson

And that's what we tell people going in. So we're we're benefits agnostic. We're workers comp agnostic. That doesn't mean we don't offer those. We have our own master medical plans where we can co-mingle risk together. Same thing on the worker's compensation side. But because we're agnostic, we're it's really a litmus test for us to test the client as to what is their commitment level to PEO.

00;25;08;06 - 00;25;26;02

Chad Simpson

Are they interested in H.R help? Are they trying to save a quick buck? If they're trying to save a quick buck, we're not the PEO because you don't make money in the first year. We’re just still getting to know each other. You're trying to stand up their platform. You're trying to basically fill in all the gaps in their HR infrastructure.

00;25;26;05 - 00;25;41;24

Chad Simpson

There's a lot of heavy lifting that the PEO does during that first 12 months. So we're looking for a client that's going to be with us long term. So if we win them on the medical, we'll probably lose them on the medical as soon as somebody comes in with cheaper medical. So that's another reason that we like to be agnostic.

00;25;41;24 - 00;26;04;12

Chad Simpson

We also like to allow the client to respond to the market, you know, through carrier consolidation. There's only a handful of carriers left. Yep. And there is cyclical as to who's selling and who's buying year to year. Right. So we don't want to lock our clients out from that. So if if United's buying and we're we have a Blue Cross master plan and for some reason they can get a really, really good deal.

00;26;04;12 - 00;26;27;14

Chad Simpson

And they understand it's maybe a short term deal, but they need it. Let let them have that will still work with them and do the payroll, do the HR, the benefits administration. So it is HR forward. What we do. We're really there about the client experience, the compliance and making sure their employees have the look and feel of working for a larger organization as it relates to just the employee life cycle experience.

00;26;27;15 - 00;26;47;23

Cary Hall

I'll give you an example. Someone call me off the radio show last week, a major corporation that had a Cobra issue and didn't know what to do. And I'm like, I'm not going to mention the company, the brand or national brand and you don't know how to handle. Well, this person's claiming they've got Cobra benefits, and we let them go and we don't know.

00;26;47;23 - 00;27;05;25

Cary Hall

I said you didn't do a registered letter to them. And it said, here are your Cobra benefits. You have to opt in. No, they hadn't done it. That's the kind of thing that you guys do. If you're handling the health insurance benefits, you're going to handle the Cobra. Okay? And they didn't even know they had a responsibility to do this, which floored me.

00;27;05;25 - 00;27;24;04

Cary Hall

Really? I named the company you'd fall over because you wouldn't believe it, but they didn't know that they had that. Their lawyer called me. They did not know they had that problem. They're like, well, you do. And here's what you better do. Here's how it gets resolved. So it's the it's back to that ignorance of the law. Ignorance of the regulation is not a defense.

00;27;24;04 - 00;27;41;27

Cary Hall

If they're going to be out, this guy's got a big ER claim. They're going to wind up paying it. There's no way around it. That's what I'm talking about. So you're there to protect them from whether it's health insurance or workman's comp or whether it's an OSHA issue or, you know, it's another issue with department. That's what you guys are there.

00;27;41;29 - 00;27;49;25

Chad Simpson

And helping maybe isn't the right term because under the PEO model, it's the ounce of prevention.

00;27;50;01 - 00;27;51;06

Cary Hall

It's the pound to cure.

00;27;51;06 - 00;28;08;23

Chad Simpson

And I try to explain this to people. So we have other models. So PEO requires co-employment. And that means that we become the administrative employer of record. Right. And what that does is that gives us the ability to perform these tasks on behalf of that employer. It's it's something, you know, greater than a power of attorney.

00;28;08;29 - 00;28;41;10

Chad Simpson

But we can we don't have to have co-employment in order to perform a lot of these services. So we can still perform payroll and, and help us a handbook and Cobra administration and those types of things because sometimes people aren't comfortable with co-employment. Right. We don't want to walk away from them. But what I try to to get them to understand is even if they don't do co-employment with G&A, the reason they still want to do that with us versus someone else is the people that perform those services are the same people that are performing them for the PEO, meaning our employees.

00;28;41;12 - 00;29;02;26

Chad Simpson

Right? Those subject matter experts, if they screw it up, we have 100,000 employees. You know, the fines are always like per per employee per day, right? Well, if we messed something up in our processes, if we don't perform something correctly, then we're going to get fined times 100,000 people. So guess what? We don't mess it up.

00;29;02;26 - 00;29;05;02

Cary Hall

You're pretty. You're pretty motivated, correct?

00;29;05;02 - 00;29;21;28

Chad Simpson

Correct. So if you're working with someone that's not a PEO and you're you're outsourcing these things to them, not only will they try to wash their hands of it like, hey, you're you know, it's not our problem. Yeah. They're probably more likely to have problems because they don't have skin in the game. They don't have any risk involved.

00;29;21;28 - 00;29;36;05

Chad Simpson

So we've got a great amount of skin in the game. Regardless of which model you go with, you can go with an ala carte model or you can go with a co-employment PEO model with everything included, you're still going to get the same employee experience, and you're still going to get the same level of compliance.

00;29;36;07 - 00;29;52;17

Cary Hall

And that that part is critical. The customer service experience experience for your employees or your employees? No, I can pick up the phone if I got a problem and I can call and somebody is going to help me explain the benefit. How do I, I, I just got a form from the insurance company. Says they're not going to pay this.

00;29;52;17 - 00;30;10;15

Cary Hall

What? What happened here? Okay, how how do I handle that? What do I do? There's somebody they can go to. It's not landing on the desk of somebody trying to do five other jobs inside the company, running with the hair on fire. That doesn't it doesn't have time or have the background to solve the problem. That's what you do.

00;30;10;17 - 00;30;12;13

Cary Hall

So that's that's very, very different.

00;30;12;13 - 00;30;26;04

Chad Simpson

Every employee within our company, every subject matter expert is truly an expert. It's not somebody that they we plugged in there to fill a hole. We recruited them because they're an expert and they're good. And they do it like they would do it if it was themselves.

00;30;26;06 - 00;30;51;20

Cary Hall

And that's what we're looking for. So it just sounds interesting to you. You want to find out more about these folks? The website is gnapartners.com. You can call them at 713-784-1181. They'll be happy to chat with you. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after the break. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Broadcasting here on the HIA Radio Network.

00;30;51;24 - 00;30;58;22

Cary Hall

Coast to coast across USA. We've got more.

00;30;58;24 - 00;31;15;10

Cary Hall

Welcome back. You're listening to America's Healthcare Advocate show, broadcasting coast to coast across USA here on the HIA Radio Network. If you have a question, if I can help you with something, go to the website America's Healthcare Advocate. Send me an email. I will get back to you if you're interested in learning more about these folks.

00;31;15;13 - 00;31;37;13

Cary Hall

G&A Partners, as you can reach them on their website at gnapartners.com, that's G is and George N is a Nora A is an Adam partners.com. Or if you're old fashioned you want to call somebody and talk to somebody. They actually answer the phone there and they'll be happy to chat with you. 713-784-1181.

00;31;37;13 - 00;32;04;19

Cary Hall

They'll be happy to talk with you. You can actually ask for Chad if you want to talk to him. I'm sure you'd be delighted to chat with you. So let's talk about what is it? You know, where we see in on the on the TPA side and where we see the market having employers that are having the biggest problem are typically employers running like ten lives to like 150, that they're they're not the conglomerates that have got, you know, like for example, QuikTrip a great company, totally self-insured.

00;32;04;19 - 00;32;22;02

Cary Hall

They even have their own clinics all all over the country where they have employees that they service. I've been to their I've been to their headquarters, have met with their people. I actually did a little radio with them. They got a great model. Well, they're big enough. They can do that. But if you got 20 employees, even if you got 100 employees, that becomes a much more difficult process.

00;32;22;02 - 00;32;27;05

Cary Hall

So talk about how that what does your median mean employee look like? How does all that work with you guys?

00;32;27;11 - 00;32;47;27

Chad Simpson

Sure. Great question. And you always try to think, well, anytime you're trying to go to market with something, right, you got to figure out, you know, what is your ideal client look like? What's your ideal client profile? The ICP. With PEO, it's it's kind of difficult. We already explained that they have to have an outsourcing mindset.

00;32;47;29 - 00;33;05;09

Chad Simpson

They have to think about, well, is this is costing me money or making me money, right. Performing these functions in-house. But from a size perspective, a lot of our clients are going to be probably under 20 employees. And because a lot of times we'll talk to companies and they'll say, well, we're not big enough for you guys.

00;33;05;09 - 00;33;31;10

Chad Simpson

You know, I only have 15 employees, right? And we'll say, well, guess what? That's perfect. Because the way we price is per employee, per check. Okay. PEPM, yes. And so the beauty of that is if I have a client that has 100 employees, now granted that 100 employee client may get some discounting because of their size, right? But they're still going to pay, you know, ten times more than the client that has ten employees, right?

00;33;31;10 - 00;33;35;11

Chad Simpson

For the exact same service. They're identical service models.

00;33;35;11 - 00;33;37;01

Cary Hall

That’s critical to understand that.

00;33;37;08 - 00;34;01;15

Chad Simpson

Yeah. Yeah. So when you when you think about hiring someone right. It's hard to hire part of a person. There's fractional H.R consultants and things like that. But it's hard to hire fractional people. So our ideal client is a small business who says, look, we need these things. We don't like running payroll through our accountant anymore. Well, we've run the nepotism well, dry, right?

00;34;01;23 - 00;34;05;27

Chad Simpson

I'm hiring people now that I don't really know a whole lot about. Yeah, because.

00;34;05;27 - 00;34;11;15

Cary Hall

The second, third generation typically don't want to do the business. These kids want to go off and do something completely different.

00;34;11;17 - 00;34;29;25

Chad Simpson

So you're going to start hiring people who are virtual strangers. So when you hire people that you don't really know a lot about, you're going to bring a lot of risk to the company, right? So they could report you to Department of Labor because, you know, they they think that they should be paid hourly and you have them as salary exempt.

00;34;29;29 - 00;34;49;17

Chad Simpson

That's just one example. So if you look at those, you know, small employers, 15 employees in the past, you wouldn't think, well, I really have a lot to worry about. But now with the more regulations, the more that the smaller the federal. Yeah. So and then if we if we look at the other other side of this thing.

00;34;49;17 - 00;35;09;20

Chad Simpson

So we have a lot of clients in that, you know, 15 to maybe 25 employee space. If you get into those employers that have 40, 50, 60 employees, a lot of times they'll go hire someone because at that point, for 40 or $50,000, they can afford it. They can afford it. They can find someone who claims that they're in HR professional.

00;35;09;23 - 00;35;27;22

Chad Simpson

HR is a weird kind of job to have because a lot of the people they didn't get trained in HR, they they were put into HR, right? So they are administrative person. They could have been working the front desk. This is typical on a small business. They were hired as the receptionist. And five years later they're the quote unquote HR person.

00;35;27;24 - 00;35;51;28

Chad Simpson

They they've never had any HR training. They're just really good at onboarding and off morning people. So we, we, we sell against that all day long. But you usually don't win that, right? They feel like, hey, we're we're we're comfortable. We have an HR person have it covered. The ones that we really help, once you get above that is the 100 to 200 employee companies, because they may have one hr professional who can be strategic HR.

00;35;51;29 - 00;36;19;16

Chad Simpson

They can look at growing the organization, employee morale and things like that while we do all the transactional HR. So one HR professional, a true HR professional plus G&A Partners is more efficient, less expensive than trying to hire a team of 3 or 4 people internally to service those 102 hundred employees. So it's kind of a bookend thing where we have smaller employers, 15 to 25 employers that, you know, 100 to 200, and not a lot in the middle.

00;36;19;19 - 00;36;37;07

Cary Hall

Yeah. And the problem is, especially with the small employer, is they're responsible for doing all of this. If you've got 20 employees, you know, it's a husband and wife, they're running a machine shop. They got 15, 20 people on the floor. They're trying to do it. They're trying to deal with all those issues plus grow their business. Somebody has got to go out and do sales.

00;36;37;07 - 00;36;57;15

Cary Hall

Somebody's got to service the clients, somebody who's got a handle on customer service. And oh, by the way, you're responsible. Make sure the 401k is done properly. And if it's not, then in comes the Department of Labor and you're in for a big audit. The difference here with what we're talking about with you guys is you stand between them and the government regulatory agencies, and help them stay on track.

00;36;57;15 - 00;37;03;05

Cary Hall

So you're like the preventative medicine, the the ounce of prevention worth a pound to cure, right?

00;37;03;07 - 00;37;15;29

Chad Simpson

Yeah. And what's weird about HR is it's the last sacred cow. For some reason, businesses try to hang on to it. They don't they don't have some. They don't have a kitchen where they cook for their employees right then, but their employees eat lunch.

00;37;15;29 - 00;37;18;03

Cary Hall

So they use Grandma’s Catering here in Kansas City. Yeah.

00;37;18;06 - 00;37;37;15

Chad Simpson

And they they don't, you know, they have somebody that comes and cleans the office. They don't clean their own office. They outsource their IT. But for some reason they can't get over outsourcing HR. They think that they can still be professionals at HR even though that's not what they do. Right. So that's the hardest thing that we have to try to get them to overcome is like, you're not good at it.

00;37;37;15 - 00;37;40;23

Chad Simpson

You don't know how to do it. You shouldn't be doing it. And we can do it better and for less.

00;37;40;24 - 00;37;55;19

Cary Hall

Well, and the other the other part of that, the other side of the coin is, you know, like you said, these people that 50 to 70 that think they've got it nailed, they think they have a nailed till the phone rings. Yeah. Okay. And they said, hey, we're in the Department of Labor. We're going to show up at your shop on tomorrow morning at 9:00.

00;37;55;19 - 00;38;15;14

Cary Hall

Or here's the better one. They don't even they just show up. They don't even tell you they're coming. OSHA. They just show up. They don't tell you they're coming. We're here for an inspection today. Boom. That's it. Okay. You know, those are the kinds of things that are so difficult for these businesses to manage, because if they don't, it's like like you said in the earlier segment, they don't even know their rights.

00;38;15;14 - 00;38;35;21

Cary Hall

Do they have any rights? How do they know that they don't? Okay. Yet in, in in the case of G&A Partners, you've got somebody standing, if you're the employer between you and whatever that agency is that you've got to deal with on a day to day basis, the other thing is that it helps with employee retention for people to know that you've got company in place where they've got a problem, they've got someplace they can go.

00;38;35;23 - 00;38;53;19

Cary Hall

Yeah, but you give a damn about your employees. And that's a big message in today's world because there's a huge shortage of qualified people do almost anything in this country. So having somebody like you guys makes a big difference. That's why we do the show. That's why we do these shows. We're trying to explain to you there's a better way to do business, something that may make more sense for you.

00;38;53;22 - 00;39;14;27

Cary Hall

If you want to know more about these folks and how they do what they do, you can go to their website. G&A. George, Nora, Adam partners.com. gnapartners.com. Or you can call 713-784-1181and they'll be happy to chat with you. You might even get Chad on the phone. You can always ask for him. So again the purpose of doing these kind of broadcasts is to educate you.

00;39;14;27 - 00;39;32;26

Cary Hall

If you're a small business employer, you're struggling out there. Give these folks a call. They could probably make a difference for you. Thank you for coming in today. Greatly appreciate your coming. And now I leave you to this tought from Albert Einstein, the one who follows the crowd, will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

00;39;33;02 - 00;39;54;04

Cary Hall

Remember friends, it's a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the very best. You most often get it. Thank you for listening to America's Healthcare Advocate Show. Broadcasting coast to coast across USA. Goodbye America.

00;39;54;06 - 00;39;56;12

Cary Hall