Featured Podcast Guest “Trust Builds Businesses”

Video Transcript:

Steve Stump: [00:00:00] Hey welcome everyone. My name is Steve Stump. Today, I’ve got Mark with Revolt Healthcare Alliance and we are on one of the first few episodes of a hundred percent on not in your business, where we focus on helping business owners make that transition, from working in their business to working on their business.

You know, when you can work on your business, as a business owner, you’re going to be able to drive sales. You’re going to be able to reach your goals. And so we all know how important that is. Mark, welcome today. I’m so glad that you’re able to be here and I’m really stoked that you’re one of my first guests.

Mark Geiger: [00:00:40] Thanks, Steve. Happy to be here. Happy to help.

Steve Stump: [00:00:42] Cool. Well, Hey Mark. So you’re with Revolt Healthcare Alliance, but for the guests, tell them your backstory. How did you get to where you are now, as the co-founder and managing partner of Revolt Healthcare?

Mark Geiger: [00:00:57] Okay. It’s a long story.

I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. Growing up, I was always active in sports. Weightlifting and exercise, have always been important to me. When I went to college, I wanted to do something in the health field and I ended up getting a kinesiology degree. After that I actually fulfilled a lifelong dream – I owned and operated a couple of health clubs over 12 years.

The first part of my career was on the preventive Healthcare side. But, after 12 years of doing brick and mortar, that’s a tough business. It’s a grind. I had a family and I sold those and found myself more on the health insurance side of health.

I ended up working for Cigna for about eight years. During that time, I worked with them on product development for preventative Healthcare type stuff.

Towards the end of my tenure there I started to see the cracks in major medical -the predatory nature of health insurance as it’s set up in the US. A personal example of mine is, during that seven years I worked for Cigna, I paid over $23,000 in premiums.

In the seventh year I had a shoulder injury from weightlifting. It was pretty nagging and debilitating. Now in the first seven years I’d never met my $3,000 deductible. So I was paying all this money and all I got was a few free generic drugs and an annual physical.

But in the seventh year, I had to have so much stuff done on my shoulder that I actually hit my $3,000 deductible. I was really excited, and relieved because my PA had been telling me that I was going to need an MRI.

Now, most people hear MRI and think thousands of dollars. Right. So I was super excited to have met my deductible. So my PA writes a script for the MRI, but Cigna has to pre-authorize it. They had to approve it. So now they’re managing my Healthcare and they ended up denying that MRI.

Come to find out later on that an MRI only costs $400. That didn’t sit well with me and at the same time my $400 MRI was being denied by Cigna, my best friend Gary had bought this insurance product – this health indemnity plan – from my now partner Ben.

Unfortunately Gary came down with stage four esophageal cancer. During the last six months that he was here with us. He was using his health indemnity plan and I was his caregiver.

I saw, first hand, how this health indemnity plan not only took care of his medical bills but also sent him $59,000 back in what we call “excess indemnity” checks.

Gary had only made three premium payments before he was diagnosed. This insurance company paid for his chemo and then sent him $59,000 in money back!

So you compare the bad experience I was having at Cigna, trying to get a $400 MRI covered with how this health indemnity plan was taking amazing care of my friend and I just knew that this health indemnity product was something that people needed.

So I left Cigna, as I should. Ben, had already been selling this Health indemnity plan independently, so he and I joined together and we created Revolt Healthcare Alliance. That was only 14 months ago.

Steve Stump: [00:04:52] Wow. 14 months ago.

It’s been a ride for 14 months, but you definitely buckled in

Mark Geiger: [00:04:57] It’s been a blessing. And it has been a ride. You’ve been here with us for a good part of that.

Steve Stump: [00:05:05] I thought you’d be a really good guest for the audience, because what I’ve seen, is you’ve gone from working in the business.

You were literally taking phone calls, helping people understand the plan and getting them enrolled. Now seeing the growth that the agency had over the past year, you’re really focused on the future.

And so. Tell the audience a little bit more about that transition and what clicked in your mind that told you, “Hey, I got to flip this and I’ve got to get focused on the business and not in it.”

Mark Geiger: [00:05:34] As you said, it just started out with me and Ben. We had a third agent come on pretty quickly. Scotty Byers. He was one of the founding agents.

Starting out, we had to produce revenue, right? We didn’t go raise capital. We bootstrapped this agency and I was selling, Ben was selling, Scotty was selling.

I think a big part of our growth was our marketing. We’re not just selling a health indemnity plan, but we’ve created an Alliance to fight back against a corrupt and predatory system.

That’s what the Revolt Healthcare Alliance is and call me crazy but the message of what we’re doing must have resonated with folks – to your point, I’m now able to work on the business, instead of in it.

During that first 14 months, we recruited over 108 agents nationwide. Fastest growing agency in the history of the underwriter that we sell the product for.

We broke $3 million the last day of our fiscal business year. We actually beat it by $7,000.

So I would say about midway through, with all of these agents, we started to notice all these inefficiencies. We didn’t have standard operating procedures in place. We didn’t have the technology in place.

What we had was a good mission, a good vision. We had great marketing, we had passion and so about halfway through the first year me and Ben looked at each other and we said, “Hey man, we gotta divide and conquer,” and so he took over all production.

We had enough agents that I was able to take a step back and let Ben handle all production, while I focused on operations, marketing, and technology.

To your point, working on the business, now, I will say, It was hard to let go. And it it’s not that I didn’t trust Ben.

Ben, my partner, he’s fully competent. I trusted him a hundred percent. It was that, I had to have the faith to trust the overall process. Not the people, but the process of letting go and giving up control.

Saying to myself, “okay, if I back away and I give up control of the customer experience and the need to make sales so that I feel safe and comfortable, then I can work on the business,” and it was a process.

In fact, there were a few times where I caught myself going back and selling a few policies here and there. Then it just got to the point where it wasn’t sustainable.

So I would say for the end of last open enrollment, since January 1st, or mid December, I’ve done nothing but work on the business.

Steve Stump: [00:08:29] So that’s a great story. And so as you’ve made that transition, how have you seen that it’s going to position you for the future and what is that return on that investment, if you will, of now getting on the business versus in it?

Mark Geiger: [00:08:39] Yeah. So that’s really exciting, right? When you asked me that question, I get amped up inside.

As hard as that transition and process of letting go was, it’s also been great. If you go to our website one of the core beliefs that we have is transparency. And I’m being transparent with you on this podcast. We started out and didn’t have the SOPs in place. We didn’t have any kind of automation.

In the last three months, I think we’ve taken on another 20 plus agents. But the thing that’s so exciting is during those three months, I’ve been able to reduce the inefficiencies. I’ve been able to use technology to automate procedures that we were doing manually.

By working on the business we’re now rolling out a CRM – a custom built Salesforce, CRM that automates the entire sales process and shows the agent where they need to be, providing them success, guidance every step of the way.

We have our legacy agents, our seasoned agents, that Ben had to do that training manually and he will still provide training, but now, because I’ve been able to work on the business we’ve been able to put automation and technology behind the process. Those pieces are going to reinforce the initial training that Ben does. When new agents come in, they don’t have to do manual contracts anymore, that’s now automated, that cuts down on time.

The contract gets approved faster. They can start training faster. So Ben trains them. We get them in the CRM. We get them in the system. Then they have that as a tool. They have that to carry off from the initial training.

Steve Stump: [00:10:42] It almost sounds like a flywheel. You know, with a flywheel, you get it going, but it takes time in the beginning and then it’s the momentum itself that propels you forward.

So that’s pretty exciting, what’s coming for 2021, 2022 and beyond for you. So as you’ve made this transition and you’ve got more focused, what is the one thing that you struggle with when you get pulled back into the day to day and then how do you balance that?

Mark Geiger: [00:11:16] Great question. You must be reading my mail. The thing that I’m struggling with is perfection. What I have to do is have the faith and trust that even though things are not perfect it’s okay.

Launching a CRM, as robust as it is, and connecting the marketing to it, connecting the entire sales process to it, and contracts and doing all kinds of data migration; there are a lot of moving parts, so I’ve had accept that fact.

It’s not going to be the way that I want on day one. And that’s okay. I think there’s a book or something out there; “go from from good to great” or “perfection is the enemy of a Sultan.”

Steve Stump: [00:12:15] I’m not familiar with that. Perfection is the Enemy, but Good to Great I’m definitely familiar with.

Mark Geiger: [00:12:20] What I’m learning is that it’s okay that we don’t have all the answers and everything in place. We can still move forward with best practices while we’re learning and course correct along the way,

Steve Stump: [00:12:37] Right! Yeah, it’s an incremental approach, getting better and better and better, each and every day, versus going away into a closed room and then big bang.

You have a big, big improvement. So incremental is the way to go, because you’re definitely learning along the way.

Well, Mark, this has been fantastic. So how would people get in touch with you and get in touch with Revolt Healthcare Alliance? If they wanted better health care coverage or maybe they’re an agent looking for a great agency.

How would they get in touch with you?

Mark Geiger: [00:13:06] Well, they could go to our corporate website of Revolt Healthcare.com. But you are one of our one oldest agents and the most successful agents.

Steve Stump: [00:13:20] Did you just call me old?

Mark Geiger: [00:13:30] Oh yeah. Soon as I said that, I knew you’re going to give me heck for that, but no, I’ll tell you what Steve instead of putting up the Revolt Healthcare.com corporate site, why don’t you put your landing page on there? Show the people that are interested, they can hear directly from you, because I don’t sell any more. You do.

Steve Stump: [00:13:41] Cool. Well, Mark. Thank you again for your time. I’ll let you get back to it. I know you’ve got a busy day and week ahead again. Thank you very much. Have great, great Wednesday.

Mark Geiger: [00:13:52] Okay. You too, Steve. Appreciate you, buddy. Bye.

Steve Stump: [00:13:56] Well, a big thank you to Mark Geiger, the co-founder and managing partner of Revolt Healthcare Alliance.

I hope you enjoyed listening to his story on 100% ON not IN Your Busine$$, where we help business professionals learn from one another on how do you make that transition on to your business and a way from being in it focused on the day-to-day. You know, the things that Mark talked about, the big takeaways that I heard was really learning to trust the process.

When you let go and know that. Perfection might not be the most important thing on day one, but incrementally getting there to perfection is really important. And the key that triggered it for him when he realized he needed to be on the business and not in the business was when the inefficiencies really started to put a drag on their continued growth.

And so was his focus. He started addressing those inefficiencies with technology. So I’m really excited to see the continued growth with Revolt Healthcare Alliance. And perhaps we’ll have Mark on as a future guest, just to give us an update on how the agency has continued to grow with his focus on the business versus in the business.

My name is Steve stump and remember. When you can focus on the business, you can achieve your goals. One of the key ways to do that is attract and retain motivated employees. If that is a challenge for you, adding health insurance benefits is a great way to get and keep fantastic employees so that you can develop them and they can focus on the day-to-day helping you achieve your goals in your business.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned next week. I’ve got another great guest.