EP 55 Disrupting Benefit Management with Rhonda Nerenberg and Jacob Davis

The guys sit down with Rhonda and Jacob from Weltrio and talk maximizing effective use of benefits.  Rhonda and Jacob give the history of Weltrio and how they are helping companies manage their plans.  What would happen if you didn't have a group open enrollment meeting this year and instead sat down and had a personal conversation with every employee?  Why are HR people so afraid of change or rocking the boat?  The discussion also turns to the recent DisruptHR event in Salt Lake City and reviews that said only vendors and consultants were in attendance. 


Learn more about the team at Weltrio at: https://www.weltrio.com/
Find the Behind the Premium podcast at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3UMiw6juj5ZWZcuA9gm7eQ
Learn more about Fantastic Tony Benjamin at: https://www.thegrangellc.com/
Learn more about Steven "Big Deal" Smith at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/
Learn more about the Books mentioned on the podcast at: https://thehiringtreebook.com/hr-life-podcast
Learn more about Dyno Outfitters at: https://www.utahviaferrata.com/
Learn more about MegastarHR at: https://www.megastarhr.com/
Learn more about Pucks for Autism at: https://www.pucksforautism.com/


Tony's "Robot Voice" courtesy of The Internet.  

Creators and Guests

Host

Fantastic Tony Benjamin

I am a unique HR leader with more than 20 years’ experience working for some of Utah’s oldest, fastest growing, and most well-known companies. My experience includes Superior Drilling Products, Air Medical Resource Group, Control4, Ovivo USA and Deseret Book. I am a regionally recognized authority on building successful cultures and am an alumni speaker at DisruptHR SLC and DisruptHR St. George. I have earned an MBA from the University of Phoenix, a Bachelor’s degree from Utah State University, and am a certified Professional of Human Resources (PHR). I'm married to a woman out of my league, have three brilliant kids I doesn’t deserve and, although I travel a lot, live in Vernal, Utah.

Host

Steven "Big Deal" Smith

Steve will be the first to tell you that recruiting is marketing. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance at Brigham Young University and started his career in recruiting in Feb 2005. In 2008, he took a risk during a recession to help start a new company with Ryan Kohler, called ApplicantPro, a full suite HR platform for small to mid-sized businesses. In March 2025, ApplicantPro became iSolved Talent Acquisition, now serving 177,000 clients and close to 9800 employees. Before the merger, ApplicantPro made the Inc 5000 list 12 years in a row, Top Places to work in Utah 3 years in a row, and Steve was named the Small Business Utah HR Achievement Award winner in May 2024. iSolved was also named an Indeed Platinum Partner in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and is one of only ten ATS platforms in the country to obtain that designation. SHRM-CP & PHR certified, Steve currently volunteers on the Utah SHRM State Council as the immediate past State Executive Director. His book, The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction, was released in early 2023, and has helped thousands of organizations across the country rethink their approach to hiring. If you need help understanding the principles and role of SEO, marketing, and AI when it comes to attracting job seekers, Steve provides a solid framework for hiring effectively.

What is The HR Life Podcast?

The HR Life Podcast is a show about the work-life experience of those of us in Human Resources and business leadership. This long-form podcast is a conversation, casual, and not always the corporate line. Hosts and guests touch on everything from serious or even controversial topics to the absurdity of modern American business practices. Your hosts are Tony Benjamin, owner and founder of The Grange Strategic HR Consulting, and Steven J. Smith, Author of The Hiring Tree: Laws of Applicant Attraction and all-around important guy. Guests include the best minds in the HR world. Join the show weekly.

Tony Benjamin (00:12.415)
Welcome to the HR life podcast, a podcast about the work life experience of those of us in human resources and business leadership. Your hosts are fantastic. Tony Benjamin owner and founder of the Grange strategic HR consulting and Stephen big deal Smith, who is so important that both Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump call him for advice on how to recruit. Hey Steve.

Steve-o (00:36.942)
Wow. I hope they don't, because if that's a reflection of my skills. But you okay, so I do have a story with Trump. So did you know? So yeah, so years ago I lived in Conchaha, which is just outside of Philadelphia, and I was a recruiter there. And one of my one of my interviews was was a woman who was actually on season two, I think, of of

Tony Benjamin (00:40.435)
You

Rhonda Nerenberg (00:42.531)
Okay.

Tony Benjamin (00:46.819)
I here we go. knew you would I was stretching it this time. knew you'd come through

Steve-o (01:05.282)
back when he was doing that, what was it? He was doing the the apprentice. Yeah. So he was doing the apprentice. And so she asked me to come and and audition. And so I went to the auditioning things in out there in Philly when they had the auditions. Her name was Emily. And and when I went out there, the only reason I didn't make the next cut, because I made a couple of cuts and then they had a a f one of these final cuts, at least for me, what was a final cut?

Tony Benjamin (01:07.463)
of The Apprentice?

Tony Benjamin (01:19.314)
Wow.

Steve-o (01:33.218)
was because I had never started a business or done anything entrepreneurial. And so when I ended up moving to Utah and met Ryan and we decided to start Applicant Pro, I was like, dang it, I want to get that experience. And there we go.

Tony Benjamin (01:46.057)
awesome that's awesome

Steve-o (01:47.224)
But there you go. Yeah. So so I never got to meet Trump. but I definitely was in one of his little tower buildings and and we went through that whole process. It was I don't know. I I was pretty young at the time and and I don't want to say bold, but I was a little bit fearless back then. when you live in Kanchi and you're you're just surrounded by a bunch of professionals like that, especially the recruiting field that I was in, you're just I don't know, you're younger, you're bolder, you just you take you know risk.

Tony Benjamin (02:08.839)
Right, right, right. Yeah. We all we all know we all know all the great recruiters come out of conchie. That's that's just the norm. It's just the norm. Well everybody.

Steve-o (02:15.286)
Is that what it is? It was fun. And I just, you know, it was it was one of those things where it was it was an interesting experience to say the least. And back then, this concept of you know, joining organizations like that or or TV shows like that was like a big deal, right? Because it was kind of fairly new. Survivor was fairly new, like all of these types of TV shows, they were just fairly new. And and honestly, I just wanted Trump to fire me.

Tony Benjamin (02:37.426)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

the reality stuff.

Steve-o (02:44.844)
I just wanted to have that feeling of Trump saying, You're fired 'cause I knew it was it was gonna happen for me no matter what, right? So 'cause there's so many things I don't agree with with him that I I just knew he was gonna fire me. So

Tony Benjamin (02:48.317)
You're fired. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I always thought too.

Okay, everybody one more time. That's proof. I can make up whatever I want. It's true. Just saying I can make up anything I want. Okay, everybody joining us today from well trio is Jacob Davis and Rhonda Nuremberg. Welcome to the podcast you two wait. There it is. The crowd goes wild.

Steve-o (02:59.917)
Yeah.

Jacob Davis (03:00.932)
Ha ha ha.

Jacob Davis (03:13.892)
Hi Tony, thanks.

Rhonda Nerenberg (03:15.286)
I can't.

Steve-o (03:16.642)
Yeah, the crowd goes wild and our live studio audience right there.

Jacob Davis (03:17.754)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (03:19.517)
That's right. That's right. Well, welcome in guys. We're happy to have you and

Jacob Davis (03:27.92)
Thanks. I didn't know I had to wait for the crowd. I didn't realize we had a crowd. We have a crowd.

Steve-o (03:31.074)
Yes, yes. Now you know.

Tony Benjamin (03:31.463)
Well, yeah. And the crowd is poorly edited. We'll just say that. Tony's on a roll today. He's not very good with the sound effects anymore. But see, wait. There you go. That should have been quicker too. Right. So Jacob and Rhonda, welcome to the HR Life podcast. We're happy to have you both.

Steve-o (03:44.342)
Well, it's not a surprise, but okay.

Rhonda Nerenberg (03:54.819)
Thank you. Nice to be here, Tony.

Steve-o (03:57.742)
I'm excited because we had a conversation with both of you last week and you got some really fun stories we're gonna delve into today. So I'm excited. I know.

Tony Benjamin (03:57.988)
I,

Tony Benjamin (04:04.883)
Oh yeah, I can't wait to hear all that. Yeah, so the two of you are from Well Trio and I have just a little bit I've learned about Well Trio. I'm impressed that I think you guys are filling a huge gap in the market. I think it's really fun. somebody told me that Jacob does stand up routines on the side for a side gig. So, oh, well, OK. That's

Steve-o (04:16.92)
So am I. Yeah.

Jacob Davis (04:25.648)
Somebody lied to you. But was it Steve not d you know, setting you up? There.

Steve-o (04:31.48)
Somebody lied to Tony, that's not shocking at all. So

Tony Benjamin (04:34.791)
Right. It probably was. Now, well, look, it could it could be much worse. I'll tell you this. So we I have a band. It's called Two Weeks Notice. And we played at Battle of the Bands here in Vernal last week. And I thought it was going to be pretty cool. The other the other band that was playing that night was a newer band and their singer is only like 20 years old.

Steve-o (04:36.642)
No, it's totally Cody. We're gonna blame Cody.

Tony Benjamin (05:00.947)
thought we got this. We're going to go out there, we're going to have lots of personality, we're going to do it. And she's an incredible singer, but you know, hasn't quite learned the stage presence stuff yet. But anyway, she goes out there, she does a good job voice really all that good. And I thought, oh, we got this, we're going to do this good. We got going, we got the crowd into it, they were singing along, we were playing hits like we opened with Eye of the Tiger, and then Just What I Needed by the Cars. We did I Love Rock and Roll by Joan Jett, and I'm feeling really good about this. And we slide into some stuff that's newer.

And then my left hand cramped up and that was the end of our good performance. So I went down hill from there. So it was it was the song Love Stinks by the Jay Giles band. And I don't know the blues riff down at the end of the fretboard. I don't know. It just it made my hand cramp and then it was all over. So we lost. It was terrible.

Jacob Davis (05:35.492)
Ha ha ha.

Steve-o (05:35.786)
But Tony

Jacob Davis (05:52.593)
Well I just gotta ask, a a battle of the bands in Vernal. I mean how many bands are there?

Steve-o (05:59.862)
That's a great question, Jacob. I am really glad you brought that up.

Tony Benjamin (06:00.97)
Right. So, OK, I'm going to say something that will surprise you. This surprises a lot of people. There is so much music and art talent in Vernal that it would blow your mind. and I can't remember. I can never remember the guy's name. There's a guy who lives here who's had something like 40 top hits in the top 10 over his career of songs he's written. There's somebody else who is a professional opera singer who has been here.

There's several people who have been like national news anchors around the country here and they do plays and art and stuff like that as well. And like there's people that give voice lessons and some really, really incredibly talented people here. And so the answer to that question is I'm aware of about 12 or 13 bands that are here in the Basin area. But I will say we play more than the rest, probably more than all of them. But that's because we're also the cheapest. So.

Steve-o (06:53.454)
Yep.

Steve-o (06:57.72)
That's right. They're all all ancestors from dinosaur teamers.

Tony Benjamin (06:58.013)
There you go. Well positioned. That's what it is. Rhonda, have you ever been to Vernal?

Jacob Davis (07:03.184)
Ha ha ha.

Rhonda Nerenberg (07:09.027)
I have not been to Vernal.

Tony Benjamin (07:11.037)
Wow.

Steve-o (07:11.074)
Are you from Utah, Rhonda? I'm curious. I I guess we never Okay. Okay. You're like me. I'm not from here either. So cool.

Rhonda Nerenberg (07:13.037)
I'm not from Utah.

Tony Benjamin (07:20.827)
OK. Let's let's do as long as that good intro happened then let's it. Rhonda and Jacob why don't you guys tell us a little bit about you and Rhonda since you're the founder and the chief health innovation officer and Jacob if I got it right you're the CEO. Right. OK. Why don't you start and then Jacob you jump in but tell us your story. Tell us about how you got into this how you founded well trio and and why you got into this space altogether like.

Rhonda Nerenberg (07:21.635)
I agree.

Steve-o (07:31.736)
Yeah, let's let her go first. Mm-hmm.

Jacob Davis (07:36.762)
Yeah. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (07:50.279)
Let us know about you and your story.

Rhonda Nerenberg (07:52.557)
Yeah, happy to. So I have always been fascinated by nutrition. Understood before it was popular that nutrition was an important part of maintaining good health, kind of like food is medicine. Figured out kind of how to use food as medicine before the internet even became popular. So that was a passion. And then I became a nurse. My specialty was surgical nursing.

Steve-o (08:08.92)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (08:22.367)
and I would take care of patients and it was super frustrating because I knew that there were things that could have prevented what brought them in. There's plenty of things that you can't prevent, but many of the things we were operating on were things that could have been prevented had they understood the process, the disease process earlier in their careers, even 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s. So it was really frustrating. We did a lot of amputations. We did a lot of eye surgery, which is the downstream

effects of diabetes, kidney surgeries, things like that. So having a patient come in during pre-op, taking their blood sugar, blood pressure, and having their blood sugar be 600. So clearly not well-managed. Having a blood pressure 160 over 120, clearly not well-managed. Having to send them, and they're there for an amputation, having to send them back to the floor in the hospital to get stable.

so they can come and have yet another toe removed, was just so frustrating. Like why with all that we know and understand, can we not help stabilize this person prior to surgery and why do they continue to have amputations? Like as a diabetic, once you get into the amputation arena, you're there annually, it feels like for the rest of your life, always a little bit more until eventually you don't have feet or legs or other body parts.

So was super frustrating and I knew that there were things that could have been done. So we moved to a small town in Eastern Oregon and I had an opportunity to have someone come to me and present a problem of health in the workplace. Insurance rates were going up ridiculously high. It was gonna put this little company out of business and the

Tony Benjamin (09:57.592)
for small towns.

Steve-o (10:00.237)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (10:17.517)
health of the population of that company was just so not well managed that I said, hey, what you need is someone to come in and help manage the health so that, and then by doing that, your workforce is gonna get healthier and your insurance rates are gonna go down as a byproduct. So it was kind of this, well, let's see if this works. And they were desperate. So I came in and started working with the employees one-on-one just to understand who they were.

where they were, what they were concerned about, what health concerns they had, and then slowly help them find ways to become unstuck, because often we get ourselves in that situation and we just feel a victim and not knowing that we have, that there are levers we can pull to change that situation. So helping them understand what those level levers were and then move.

they started to get well and then insurance rates was not being utilized as much and insurance rates went down and the company was able to stabilize their health insurance premiums and then keep them flat for 10 years. And so it was incredibly beneficial for the company but the downstream effect to the employee was that they, all of them, like across the board, improved health on some level and it was just so rewarding to kind of interrupt that

process of disease and change it where it actually mattered in there before it was too late. So that's kind of how it started.

Steve-o (11:44.92)
That's cool. That was a cool story.

Tony Benjamin (11:47.303)
Wow. So what made you come to Utah then? Because it sounds like you're figuring it out up there. What drug you here?

Jacob Davis (11:51.642)
Ha ha ha.

Steve-o (11:53.324)
Right. And and Oregon is a great place to do that too, so

Rhonda Nerenberg (11:53.396)
we were-

Rhonda Nerenberg (11:58.443)
Oregon, loved, we were there. We had kind of found our, we had downsized from having a big family. So we were, we had the last one in high school. He was a senior and my sister died and she had five kids and they were, her oldest was a senior in high school and her youngest was eight. And so we couldn't get guardianship across state lines. So we packed up and moved to Utah.

Steve-o (12:26.668)
Even a honorable event too. Yeah. Wow.

Tony Benjamin (12:27.155)
Okay, tip of the hat, that's cool. Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (12:31.415)
doubled the size of our family overnight.

Steve-o (12:34.038)
That's wild.

Tony Benjamin (12:36.697)
at least wow okay there's a whole bunch of things going through my head right now about how brave that was Jacob tell us about you

Jacob Davis (12:46.35)
Yeah. So I'll start at the beginning. I was actually born in Buffalo, New York, but mostly grew up in Pennsylvania. So Steve, you were talking about Pennsylvania and Conchahaken and I'm very familiar with that area. So I I actually mostly grew up in

Steve-o (12:58.83)
It's a hot, yeah.

Tony Benjamin (13:04.391)
So wait Jacob before before we talk about anything else we got to get to the important question right here. Are you a Steelers fan or an Eagles fan. geez. OK that's it. We should stop the call right now. I'm not sure how I can handle that. Yeah. It was go ahead. I'm just kidding.

Jacob Davis (13:09.744)
Eagles. Sorry. Cut it off right now. Play that what's yeah. No, actually I I was a huge Steelers fan when I lived there, but after moving to Utah it was it was hard to see a game and I had a lot going on, so I I I drifted off. So I don't know if that's helpful or not for your emotional

Steve-o (13:16.078)
Tony's a huge Steelers fan, but he's never from there, so who knows what there where that comes from.

Tony Benjamin (13:34.823)
Okay, well, I can, after the show, let's stick around for a few minutes. I'll help you fix that and we'll get you, we'll get your hook back up. That's right. That's right.

Jacob Davis (13:40.113)
Get me straightened out. All right. yeah, so I I grew up in Pennsylvania, went to Penn State for mechanical engineering, decided I didn't want to work at a desk for a living, so I started a construction company and I did construction work. I did like punch list for contractors, home builders. You know, there's always a long list of little things that need to be done. Did that for a while, got into carpentry, was a carpenter for a while.

Got married, had a kid, realized I was like 21 or something and had no idea how to run a business. I couldn't collect money, you know, and nobody would pay you. If you can't collect money, nobody's gonna they don't volunteer to pay you, you know. I know I was as surprised as you are. And it was it w it was a problem. I I couldn't figure out.

Tony Benjamin (14:24.179)
Shocking. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (14:30.493)
Right.

Steve-o (14:31.116)
Wow. That's frustrating though to learn at that age, you know.

Jacob Davis (14:35.702)
I just I mean looking back, I was young, I had no idea what I was doing. I could do the work, but I I didn't know how to run a business. So joined the army and I was in the army for nine years. the Army National Guard. in the meantime, I

kind of had to figure life out because now you know I'm a little bit older, a couple of kids, starting to not feel like I'm going anywhere. my my parents had moved to Utah. my dad worked at IMFlash on the base build design. So he was a contractor doing what he calls the little wires. So it's all like the fire alarms, life safety systems, basically any wire that's not power.

Steve-o (15:03.758)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Davis (15:18.478)
all those signal wires, that's what he did. And so I got a job there as a security guard while I finished college. I finished my business degree, online at University of Phoenix. And

Ended up getting hired directly at IMFlash as an operator on the production floor through a series of of different events. I ended up kind of falling into tech. So I as a supervisor I would get really frustrated with my inability to predict product coming into my department. And I'm held accountable for the output of my department. And I need to the changeover, the tool changeovers were kind of expensive from a time and resource standpoint. And

Always get caught by surprise and I hated it. So I started building spreadsheets and trying to predict what was going to come in so I could plan for it. that got the attention of some of the planning teams and the software teams, and so I kind of fell into software there and started working on projects in obviously Lehigh, but Manassas, Virginia for Micron, Boise for Micron,

Singapore, Japan, China for Intel and kind of rolling out a lot of these software systems that that our teams had built there at the Lehigh site. So I worked there for twelve years and then got the entrepreneurial bug. I wanted to do something more meaningful. And so I started a I did a startup. that I would say failed miserably, like spectacularly. It failed spectacularly. Yeah. I mean

Tony Benjamin (16:54.771)
That's the technical phrase. That's the technical phrase, right?

Steve-o (16:56.11)
Ha ha.

Jacob Davis (16:59.758)
You if you there's not a worse way for a startup to end than how mine ended. Multiple lawsuits from I mean just crazy. It blew up, imploded. yeah, it was it was a wild, wild ride. so so that was like my you know

Tony Benjamin (17:06.624)
yeah.

Steve-o (17:08.182)
Wow.

Jacob Davis (17:20.16)
I had an MBA by that point, but that was my my second NBA in business is like what not to do. So make sure your contracts are airtight is is the key thing. so yeah, one one startup to another. I've done some pretty big projects and

Tony Benjamin (17:26.227)
Right.

Jacob Davis (17:39.298)
started talking to Rhonda. I've known Rhonda for a long time. We are distantly related. And I don't remember exactly how. It's my wife's cousin's son is your husband. Okay. Yeah, all right. So I do remember how.

Rhonda Nerenberg (17:52.803)
My husband, that's right.

Tony Benjamin (17:55.411)
Wow, okay.

Steve-o (17:56.59)
So for those of you listening right now, I hope you're taking notes 'cause we're gonna quiz you later.

Tony Benjamin (17:59.944)
That's right. That'll be on the test later. That's right.

Jacob Davis (18:00.003)
If you have a graphic of like a family tree, that would be helpful to kind of map out. so we when they actually moved to Utah, we sort of reconnected, right? 'Cause there wasn't much family in Utah for them and

Tony Benjamin (18:07.431)
Right, right.

Jacob Davis (18:17.282)
So we reconnected and started talking Welltrio and Rhonda said, Okay, I I think I want to figure out how to grow this. I think your kids had been trying to talk you into it and you know, mom, this is so cool. And so so we got together and I have kind of this strong tech background and of course Rhonda just has this clinical clinical experience and the passion and the really cares about people and cares about making them healthier. And so

We put that together and and here's Welltrio. so I officially Yeah. So about a year and a half ago we we solidified it and and here we are.

Tony Benjamin (18:51.973)
I was going to say I think the word is Shazam, Isn't that what they say? Shazam. There it is. Well, that's...

Steve-o (18:55.874)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (19:04.157)
Very, very cool. All right, this is this pre we'll take it we'll take a quick break here to do our read. Looking for a team building experience your employees will actually talk about. Dino Outfitters in Vernal Utah offers guided trips on the epic new Ashley Gorge via ferrata. Help your team your team build trust, confidence and real connection, all while hanging on out on the side of a cliff. Reach out to build a custom experience at Utah via ferrata.

Steve-o (19:04.27)
Nice.

Tony Benjamin (19:34.352)
com. Shout out to Amber and her team at dino outfitters, man, they do some cool stuff.

Steve-o (19:38.102)
Yeah, and if you need a business venture there just to get your team going, there that's a good way.

Tony Benjamin (19:42.587)
Yeah. And and you guys if you've never seen or heard about the via ferrata, you should look that up. Wow, cool stuff. Another reason to visit vernal

Steve-o (19:48.622)
Okay, so so before we got the call going, I'm wearing a shirt that says Wicked Fast on it, which is actually from I am Flash, because I did a tour there. There were the they I I've been in the world a long time. I have a lot of clients all over the country. I know a lot of people, but but I was there and and we happened to have this event where they did a active shooter thing. So I'm curious, Jacob, because you had mentioned you have some stories there. It was probably one of the funnest experiences I've ever had.

you know, cause typically an organization we watch the video and you see, you know, you talk about situations and stuff like that. But it and and here's why this is it kind of important to me. My daughter and wife, and those of you who have been listening to the podcast know this very heavily because it it was happening when we w recorded several months ago. But my wife and daughter were were 40 feet away from Charlie Kirk when he got shot. And when it first happened, I still have the voicemail from my wife when she called me.

They weren't sure if it was just one shot or if if there was an active shooter actually shooting people up at the same time. it was there there was a lot of chaos when it first started happening. And so when you brought this up about the active shooter and and my experience with I Flash, I thought, well, this is kind of interesting. So anyway, I'm just curious that your some of your experiences are there. I it was a fascinating experience that I had when I went over there. So so I'm just curious if you were involved in that, if you got to experience that too. And

Jacob Davis (21:09.274)
Yeah.

Steve-o (21:12.856)
kind of go through that. I know it's a scary thing. Like I said, my my wife and and and daughter have gone through that. And so very important to learn. But yeah.

Jacob Davis (21:21.572)
Yeah, important to learn. And I mean those kinds of things are extremely unique. Like you said, it's not like watching a video. It's what do you do? Where do you go? when there's a shooter and fire is another real big one. yeah, so I've been through a number of those down there at that plant. There's some interesting things. it's

Steve-o (21:44.226)
Have you g have you guys ever ever actually had an active shooter over there?

Jacob Davis (21:49.529)
Not that I'm aware of, but we have I mean there so I worked sec as a security guard there for a little while before I got hired full time. And we had all kinds of like people would bring weapons on site, you know, because they're they're pissed off at their boss or whatever. A lot especially, you know, we there's a lot of trades that we're working there and they're they're a little bit more transient, right? Like they move around to these big projects, these big semiconductor, and they they

Steve-o (21:51.106)
That's good. That's good.

Tony Benjamin (22:05.052)
wow.

Jacob Davis (22:15.47)
will go in and do their work and then move on to the next project. So there's a just a lot of kind of transient people and yeah, tempers run high sometimes and and it got a little wild.

Tony Benjamin (22:25.905)
So did you guys do the dots on people that the quote unquote active shooter would come through and act like they see people and put dots on them and stuff? Did you do that?

Jacob Davis (22:35.758)
I I wasn't a part of that if they did. No.

Tony Benjamin (22:37.261)
Okay, you didn't do the drill part of it

Steve-o (22:37.858)
They I don't think they did, Tony, 'cause I we we had a little demo on what it looked like when we were there. And it was more of a when it happens, where are the safe places, what is the goal? you know, things like that where where it's really teaching internally at an organization when an active shooter actually enters and what what what should you do?

you know, and part of it is you know, not panicking and getting crazy and you know, some people freeze, like literally, there are people that will freeze and not move at all, and you almost have to drag them. and so so there's just some interesting situations. The the concept of of fight or flight, it's real. Like there there's some real emotional things that happen at that time. So I I think in organization I used to work for an insurance company, we would get bomb threats and all kinds of stuff all the time. And so we we had way too many trainings.

Tony Benjamin (23:02.227)
Gotcha.

Steve-o (23:30.604)
On that kind of stuff.

Tony Benjamin (23:30.844)
sounds like another intro right there. Sounds like another intro. So I want to I want to I want to get into this. So Rhonda, let's have you tell us a little bit about well trio and what it does for companies. And and I and I want to so you gave us great introduction up to that point. I want to kind of talk about let's talk about what you do and how you saw that need. So you you explained a little bit about it right about preventing stuff and all that. But what made you decide to do the company other than family or kids or whatever.

nagging you to do it.

Rhonda Nerenberg (24:01.283)
so initially going into this, this ground zero company, I went in with a primary care physician and he put a primary care provider on site on Fridays and we built a little clinic. And so I was there working one-on-one with each of the employees. And then as they needed primary care, primary care was in the office next door. And so that was, it worked well.

the contract with the company was with the doctor and then I worked for the doctor. So that was like year one at the end of year one. We, I really had started to have a lot of momentum and was making a lot of changes and finding where the pain points were for the insurance company or the, the, which downstream is the company, what they're going to have to pay and what the pain points were for the client, for the employees and, and wanting to make changes to their health plan.

Steve-o (24:53.955)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (25:00.259)
even recommended taking them self-funded, which we actually did at the end of year two. So the doctor kind of saw it going a different direction. Like he just wanted to have a nice, happy clinic. And I was seeing that I'd actually didn't need the clinic in order to do what we were trying to accomplish. In fact, just sending people to their primary care provider in town was turning out to be a better option. And actually I've learned a lot about onsite clinics and where they are useful and where they are not.

So the doctor and the company parted ways and I started, you know, got the LLC going for WellTrio and contracted directly with the company to carry on. So that's kind of how I, the company was created. And then there kind of became a word of mouth and we started to have additional clients. started to, I hired my first employee who's still with us and

went from there. So just kind of word of mouth and grew organically. didn't, I loved the one-on-one with the individual. I loved solving the pieces of the puzzle that were creating high claims because I was going to prevent and mitigate high claims at all costs because that was where the company ended up having to pay. And so just coming up with strategic, there you go, drink.

Tony Benjamin (26:25.203)
There it is there it is

Steve-o (26:26.23)
Everybody get your drink.

Rhonda Nerenberg (26:26.988)
Enough.

Tony Benjamin (26:30.547)
I was waiting for it, I was a little thirsty.

Rhonda Nerenberg (26:31.009)
way, so those strategic ways to reduce costs. And there were a lot of creative ways to do that. And that just didn't align with what that doctor was doing that first year.

Tony Benjamin (26:44.317)
That's really cool. you, form well trio and now you tell me if I got this right. That's what you do for companies. Now you go into those companies and you spend one-on-one time with them and you help them understand their benefits and how to manage their individual health cases. Is that right?

Rhonda Nerenberg (27:00.141)
That's right. That's right.

Steve-o (27:01.518)
And I think I think what I what fascinates me the most about this and and and Rhonda, you can chime in here and kind of fill in the gaps. Yeah, because I'm always wrong. But but you know, when you look at total rewards and you you think about benefits in general, when I have an issue going on, it is rare that I am comfortable to go to my HR person and say, Hey HR.

Tony Benjamin (27:08.871)
Yeah, correct Steve anytime you want, please.

Jacob Davis (27:11.15)
Ha ha ha

Tony Benjamin (27:12.977)
Yeah

Steve-o (27:25.9)
I just got, you know, I just had a heart attack, or I just, you know, this and that is happening, or I'm I'm feeling weak. I've gone to my doctor and and now they've told me that I have such and such and I've got to make these adjustments. I'm I mean, there is no way that that the average employee is going to feel comfortable to go to HR or or anybody at the organization to talk about some of these very personal situations. And and you know, during open enrollment every year, where the

Benefits are introduced and sometimes the plans change and all these things happen. It is rare that employees are even going to bring it up during that time either. They're just going to simply listen, say, okay, those are the plans. I'll pick the one that seems to make the most sense for me and go from there, right? and so, so fill in the gaps there because I feel like this is where well trio really comes in and has an incredible impact on organizations.

Rhonda Nerenberg (28:21.731)
Yeah, so you nailed it spot on. Companies have found themselves the administrators of health care. That was never intended. I don't think it's a good place for health care to be administered at the insurance level. And certainly, I don't want to take my health concerns to my HR director. And I find that across the board. There is, and yet it's

Steve-o (28:42.85)
I mean, I feel like there's HIPAA stuff there too, right? I mean there's there's lines, yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (28:48.853)
And HR actually has to do HIPAA training because of that, especially if they have a self-funded plan. And they don't want to do that. They aren't trained for that. yeah, WellTrio provides this beautiful buffer between the employee's health and their company, where they have to get their health insurance from their employer, but they don't necessarily want to take their health concerns to their employer. So a clinical...

Steve-o (28:54.145)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (29:13.791)
expertise coming in and helping the employee navigate which plan is actually better for me and my family and my needs instead of trying to guess which and then what do do when I have you know how do I navigate a FMLA which is an HR situation but you have to bring them this personal information in order to get FMLA and we can bridge that gap so that there's there is a nice clean line between

what we want to protect and our employer.

Steve-o (29:47.022)
And and I feel that that that that brings an element of confidentiality for the employee so that they can feel much more comfortable about sharing some very personal situations with with your team so that the company is still making a great decision on their side, but they're the the employee has the ability to kind of open up and and really make sure they're taken care of for.

Rhonda Nerenberg (30:08.419)
Well, and we give them that time to do that in those quarterly, we have quarterly meetings with each employee and that those meetings over time develop this trust. So actually you're able to discuss in depth some of your concerns, which you can't even do with a primary health provider. Like you try to explain in 15 minutes, the number of, it would be unusual to have a day where an employee didn't share something with me that they haven't shared with their primary care provider.

Steve-o (30:25.72)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (30:27.345)
That's true.

Rhonda Nerenberg (30:37.761)
And then I can help them actually, and my team can help actually sort those things out and find out the important things to share so that when they do go in for their primary care meeting or if they're meeting with a specialist, they know what to bring up. Because even like when we're experiencing a health concern and we don't have that medical training, we don't know what's relevant and what's not relevant. We don't know that maybe sleep has something to do with migraines or blood pressure. So.

I understand while there's a blood pressure concern here and you just mentioned that you have insomnia, that's relevant. We need to make sure we share that with at your next appointment. So, and then they just develop trust and they have a confidant they can talk to, call, speak to not only at their quarterly meetings, but at any time 24 seven, they have access at clinical piece, which is just super helpful to the employee and their family.

Steve-o (31:33.656)
Well and I imagine it's way better than Doctor Google or Doctor Chat G P T.

Rhonda Nerenberg (31:38.453)
much better.

Tony Benjamin (31:40.381)
That's shocking. Shocking. That's right.

Rhonda Nerenberg (31:41.789)
much better.

Steve-o (31:42.232)
So shocking. It amazes me. So my wife is a nurse and it it amazes me how much and and so she deals with hospice. And so a lot of her patients are on their deathbeds and you know, she talks with the families, and the families have all these questions and concerns. But it amazes me how many of these families use Dr. Google to determine what should be done. And when it's not being done, the complaints that follow, right? And they're like, this is not being done at all.

And it's not even what the person even has or is dealing with. So I I appreciate something like this because I really feel like individuals need better, I guess, ability to really voice what's going on so that they can get a proper diagnosis and at a minimum, like you're saying, a proper plan to follow through with the doctor and actually receive the right type of treatment to begin with. I I I mean, what a beautiful concept.

Rhonda Nerenberg (32:40.407)
Yeah, and there's a layer deeper that's really beneficial for the company, but also helps the employees down pocketbook. I was just going through some papers and came across a receipt that I actually a prior authorization, a request for a company that I with their pharmacy plan. I became part of the prior authorization process, which is kind of a scary thing, but I was just not looking at it to determine if it was clinically relevant, but if it was cost effective for the company.

Steve-o (32:45.346)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (32:48.974)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (33:08.91)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (33:09.153)
And what came across is a drug. was $2,100 for one month supply of a really common medication used for HIV treatment. Incredibly effective drug, a miracle drug even. $2,100 a month. And I knew right away when that came through, like deny, send back, called the employee, hey, there's a program online. We can get this drug for 10 bucks. And...

Steve-o (33:17.454)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (33:37.921)
their copay was going to be, you know, 200 plus dollars. So they were thrilled to be able to get it for 10 bucks, saved the employer from paying the $1,800 remaining every month for an entire, you know, every, for the rest of their life. And not knowing that that's one example of one drug where, Hey, there's a better way to buy this than the system that's in place right now. And that's one of the things we do as well.

Steve-o (33:48.526)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (34:06.673)
That's cool. That's really cool. Now you said yeah. And that that's a great way to that. Exactly right. I just had a flash in my head of a couple of clients I want you to talk to. But so here I want to something you you and Steve were talking about a minute ago really touched with me and Steve will know why. But you guys are talking about

Steve-o (34:07.906)
Yeah. Surfacing cost savings like that is a huge deal.

Tony Benjamin (34:32.957)
the relationship there with HR and how employees don't feel comfortable talking to them about those things. And on one level, I kind of feel that's real. I want to say that that's not right. I want to say I understand that and can sympathize with that. The part that scares me, though, is that that is the case. Like it worries me that you said it, HR is often not equipped to handle that sort of thing. And that worries me.

This is something we ask everybody and I want to bounce a whole bunch of things off from this for the rest of our conversation. But this is something we ask everybody that comes on the podcast. And that is what is the state of H.R. And we'll I don't know. Jacob, why don't we have you go first. But tell us both of us what is the state of H.R. What do you guys see out there? What is its current standard or functional process or how what is it doing right now?

Steve-o (35:28.364)
Yeah, especially in light of what you guys do. Yeah.

Jacob Davis (35:28.548)
Yeah, so yeah, so I I I feel like I have an interesting perspective on this. I'm sort of coming into the HR world from like a tech and a business world, and it's it's different. So I I think there's two things simultaneously happening. HR is extremely hungry to matter, and and I think you see it everywhere. They want to matter at the executive level, they want to matter to the business in a long-term way.

strategically, I'll just say it. Take your drink. So HR is is very hungry to matter and they're making inroads there. At the same time, HR, what we see is they're very, very defensive. and I don't mean like defensive like they push back on you or something like that. Defensive is in change is scary. And

Steve-o (35:59.566)
Hey, I'm I'm good for that.

Jacob Davis (36:21.25)
And I think they they sort of carry that responsibility of like change to our employees is even scarier. Right. And so they kind of have this like this coat that they're wearing of, you know, we've gotta protect our employees and keep the keep their experience good, keep their experience positive, not risk

something bad happening. And so it sort of creates this situation where they're scared to make changes. And and so you have this interesting dichotomy of they they are really working hard to be relevant at an at a C level. And they're also still kind of learning how to manage change and how to manage risk in making their decisions. And and of course we see that with Welltree a lot because when we come in with with our plan

In our program, I don't know of anybody else that's doing what we're doing. So it's not a common thing, right? It's not like they could go talk to their HR buddy and say, hey, have you done this? They can't, right? They and so we're trying to describe a new thing and and it's kind of scary. So that that's in my opinion, this stated.

Steve-o (37:25.998)
So do you feel like they're guarded a little bit? Like are they guarded? Are they reluctant to have the conversation? I mean

Jacob Davis (37:30.302)
I think they're they're generally open to having the conversation, but they're very, very scared of doing something that's going to upset employees. and so I I I think they want it, but but they don't quite

Tony Benjamin (37:44.552)
Interesting, Rhonda.

Rhonda Nerenberg (37:45.155)
.

Jacob Davis (37:48.731)
They're not over the bridge yet to like understand how to implement it. Where if you talk to an engineer, you know, or or you know, somebody in tech, or there's plenty of other fields, change is how they live. If it's not changing, it's dying, is kind of like how a lot of other industries sort of live. and I I found HR to not be that way. you know, and I think they want to be that way and and learn how to manage the change and learn how to make it beneficial.

Steve-o (38:15.15)
Well and you you bring up a good point because the CEO, like the C suite as well, you know, they're focused a lot of the times on revenue and cost savings. And and so when you think about the total rewards, because this would fall into that package or part of total rewards, the CEO is trying to find ways how do we cut costs? The CFO just wants just wants to look at the numbers. The CEO is also trying to look at the numbers, but also recognizing, okay, we need people. And so then we involve HR.

And sometimes there's disconnect in that communication, which leads to some of that terseness, if you will. So it's interesting.

Jacob Davis (38:48.409)
Yeah.

And that's one thing we found. I, you know, I'm on a number of different podcasts, and one of one message I've been pretty consistent about is CFOs have to engage their health care. They have to engage their benefits and they have to understand where those dollars are going because what happens is you get CFOs who are who are, like you said, prioritizing the money. They're prioritizing revenue and they're they're prioritizing margins. Well, you know, HR often will report into a CFO.

Steve-o (39:11.758)
Just the money. Yep. Just the money.

Jacob Davis (39:19.472)
And HR is making decisions. It's real. I mean, sometimes it's a C R O, right? But it's it doesn't make s a lot of sense because HR is a hundred percent focused on what's good for the employee and they're not worried about cost at all. It's the last thing on their mind. And so now

Tony Benjamin (39:20.788)
Boo. Boo.

Steve-o (39:25.602)
That's one of Tony's biggest pet peeves. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (39:25.862)
It no it yeah yeah yeah but it happens a lot. Yeah.

Jacob Davis (39:39.181)
If the when the CFO delegates HR, delegates benefits decisions to HR, HR is making them in the way that they know how, according to what they prioritize, which is often not in alignment with what a CFO prioritizes. And so that's an interesting conflict that we've come across. I mean, almost every company we talk to it has that conflict. it's rare the company that we talk to that the CFO actually knows what's going on and benefits, or that the

HR you know, person has a good understanding of what's driving the CFO priorities. yeah.

Steve-o (40:15.502)
Yeah, and the EBITDA and all that. Tony and I talk about this a lot where the too many of us in HR, we have no clue what EBITDA is. One of the calculations Tony loves to calculate is is the revenue or the revenue per employee based on the EBITDA, right? And

Tony Benjamin (40:31.75)
It's a revenue per employee plus and you also track EBITDA per employee, right? So you can see the delta of what you're spending on them. Now let's get Rhonda shoot. I want to hear your take on this too. Before I get too far into Jacob's answer.

Steve-o (40:36.064)
Mm. EBITDA per employee. Yep. Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (40:39.299)
Hmm.

Steve-o (40:42.476)
Yeah, yeah, that was a good take on Jacob.

Rhonda Nerenberg (40:46.211)
I agree with Jacob. HR seems really protective to not rock the boat. So they, whatever they have to do to not have the 5 % of the employees that are going to complain, complain. The thing is those 5 % of the employees in my experience are going to complain no matter what you do. They're also the 5 % of the employees that are going to be.

Steve-o (40:52.631)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (41:07.092)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Steve-o (41:07.374)
I'm surprised Tony you didn't p do the surprise.

Tony Benjamin (41:11.796)
The little ding thing or yeah, right, yeah.

Steve-o (41:17.422)
I was waiting for it. That's a great comment, Rhonda. That's great.

Rhonda Nerenberg (41:22.307)
The other thing is that 5 % are also going to be the people who are bringing them all of their health problems. HR doesn't know what to do. I wouldn't know what to do with that if I was in HR. I was not trained to understand how to do that. And some of them, I mean, it's so irrelevant. mean, sometimes you know the bowel habits of their pet. Like, I don't want to have this conversation with you. So HR has got to deal with that. And I think we put a little, like,

Tony Benjamin (41:29.374)
Yep. Yep.

Rhonda Nerenberg (41:51.681)
When it comes to healthcare, I think we put it on the wrong group of people. We would never dream of putting the EBITDA calculation on HR or the lawyer concerns, legal concerns on HR. And yet what often for most companies is the second highest cost is healthcare is on the backs of HR, not trained for it, no clinical background. And they're dealing with, they're not dealing with all the employees.

They're dealing with the 5 % who are allowed and are going to talk about it. And they're trying to navigate the rocking boat situation of that 5%. So I can take the 5 % off of their plate when it comes to health stuff. I can take the brunt of the questions and understanding their pets' bowel habits. And I can also take the brunt or the understanding what's actually going on with the 95%.

And in the vast majority of cases, it's the 95 % that I need to be worried about, not the 5 % I hear from every day. So that's where WellTrio can really help a company take that off of the plate of HR. I'll manage your employees' health care, and I'll make sure that all of the company's being addressed, not just the squeaky wheel.

Tony Benjamin (43:03.38)
That's yes. Amen sister. Because that's that's that's it's I don't know. I've I've been I've ran the HR department for companies up to 750 employees and I don't care if I have 750 or I have 70 or even 30. There's three or four employees that drive your costs every year.

It's three or four. And maybe it's just because they engage with the health care more often. But yes, the overlap between them and the squeaky wheel people is is high. Right. And that's exactly it. And invariably, those are the people that come to me and say, it's too expensive, it's too expensive. We've got to do something about this. And to bite your tongue and especially when you get big enough, you can see the data to bite your tongue and say, well, if you if you or your spouse or whoever went and drive up the cost, then we wouldn't have this problem. But

Rhonda Nerenberg (43:24.013)
Yep, that's right.

Tony Benjamin (43:54.079)
But the you know it I have empathy that direction but I have I have what's what's the word I'm looking for. Steven compassion. Thank you very much. I feel your pain but I don't experience it and I try to fix it. Yeah that's right. Andrea anyways but the point is is that it's those people and they they're the ones they they evaluate which which plan to pick based upon the immediate out of pocket costs of their day to day interaction with their doctor or whoever.

Steve-o (44:01.07)
Compassion. Yeah. Thank you, Doctor Andrea, for that moment.

Tony Benjamin (44:24.686)
And and they'll they'll which inevitably ends up being the most expensive plan. And then they complain about it being the most expensive. But they don't want to take an active role per se. You you you you got that exactly right. I OK. So this this open we talked about this the other day when we were kind of getting ready for this podcast. And this is something that and I want to I want to run this by the two of you. We talked about open enrollment meetings and kind of how those things go.

I, Allison Nielsen, and I'll drop her name here again. She won't come on the podcast. I'm trying to convince her, but she just, she's, you know, scurrying me a little bit. That's, I'll have you call her Steve. She might do it. You're a big deal. That's anyways, but she, she taught me this when I was at control for it. And that is our broker at the time would offer to come in and do our open enrollment meetings. And she wouldn't do that. She went in, she talked about the plans each year.

Steve-o (45:00.078)
Tell her to come for me, Tony. That'll work. I will absolutely call her.

Tony Benjamin (45:20.048)
And she went through each one of the plans each year. And I thought it was really good. Since then, I've kind of taken that base that she taught me about, and I've done it now where every year in open enrollment, I explain health care. And when I first hire people and I bring them on, say to them, you need to understand that for most of us, not everybody, but for most of us, the number one financial decision you'll make between now and retirement isn't your 401k or saving money or any that. It's your health care.

It's figuring that out.

Steve-o (45:50.25)
at the end of it all, that's all you have left. Trust me, my wife is a hospice nurse and healthcare is literally all you have left at the end. Period. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (45:55.701)
Right, right. That's that's it. And so I go through one of those plans. And what I do, for example, is I say, let's say that in February, you know, we always put up a family of four as an example. And I say, little Johnny breaks his arm in February, and he goes to the doctor. And then I say, you pay out of pocket for this, this, this, here's your total what it is. And it's the same across all three in terms of the original cost, then I show what the employee pays under all those plans.

And then we get to the bottom. And then I say, now, if I add in your premium in February, who's ahead and who's behind on what they've done. Right. And suddenly those high cost plans that, you know, the traditional plans or whatever don't look so awesome. Now, as I, as I balance that out, I end it by saying in December, the family goes to Africa or something. They all catch Ebola and it's as bad as it can possibly get. And it's really horrible. And all these bad things happen.

Steve-o (46:48.204)
Wow.

Tony Benjamin (46:50.648)
And here is the maximum amount you're going to pay this year. And ironically, across all the plans that I've ever offered, traditional, high deductible, really high deductible, it comes out about the same. Your total costs and all those really bad things come out about the same. The question is, is how do we get there from here and where do you fit at somewhere in between those things? So that's how I do it. And it takes like a 90 minute meeting and I do those three times during open enrollment week.

You and I were talking about this and that most people don't explain their plans very well and at open enrollment employees don't get it. Like what are the things you're seeing that they don't get? That they just don't understand or the open enrollment meetings aren't doing for them the way that we normally do.

Rhonda Nerenberg (47:35.139)
So we like to do open enrollment individually and not we can do webinars and all of those things. It's hard to

And again, in those webinars, you're going to have 5 % of the people who are willing to ask a question and they monopolize all the question answer time. And the people who actually like could benefit from a question answer period, aren't even going to ask a question in that setting. They're going to have that question and they're not going to ask it. So we go, I want to sit down and have a one-on-one. It's just you and me. There are people, there's more than 5 % of the population who are going to do better getting their questions answered in a one-on-one setting.

Steve-o (47:52.12)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Rhonda Nerenberg (48:16.065)
So I'm going to go do open enrollment one-on-one. There might, can be a high level understanding of what's a deductible, what's a co-pay, what's, but, and what is their plan or the plan changes. But I'm going to help the employee make sure they get the plan that's right for them. And I can't tell you the number of times somebody has come in and said, well, I've decided to go with the, the gold plan, you know, the slightly more expensive, but look, the deductible or the deductible is a thousand dollars less. And I will do kind of the math with them,

And almost always, like, no, it's cheaper to do the less expensive plan at an HSA and help people take advantage of the tax benefit and really understand why it's the most impactful plan, the most wise plan financially for their, even their family, and then help them understand then throughout the year how to use that plan in the most cost effective way.

because there are many ways to enter the healthcare system and there is an expensive way to do it and there is an inexpensive way to do it. And so without that education, they're gonna feel the burden of that plan and take that frustration back to HR, which we don't want to have happen. it is. Yep. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (49:30.494)
Well, as HR, I don't want that to happen. That's for sure. Yeah, yeah. That's that's do you find do do the way you interact with HR people, do you find that most HR people really understand that financial aspect of it? Or do they just understand deductibles and stuff? Because it shocks me how many HR people will tell their employees not to go with a high deductible plan. Right. Stay away from those. That's

Steve-o (49:30.53)
And it's so true, that's where they take it. They take it to HR.

Rhonda Nerenberg (49:59.715)
I don't, so in my experience with HR is a little bit of a crap shoot. Sometimes they totally get it. They maybe even have a benefits person in their HR and they understand the plans. But sometimes I'm like, why are, this decision should not be in the hands of this individual. They are not equipped to make this kind of healthcare decision for their whole team. It's really frustrating. In fact, I went to a healthcare leadership conference

Tony Benjamin (50:18.132)
Yes.

Steve-o (50:20.041)
Amen.

Jacob Davis (50:21.648)
Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (50:29.439)
It was a cohort. were, were health leadership, healthcare leadership program at Duke. And I was in a room of professionals that were trying to understand how the claim to understand insurance. And they were talking about how to get certain things covered, like how to get acupuncture or massage or chiropractic services covered. And they were talking about it in a frame of, well,

Blue Cross Blue Shield is pretty good about covering this or, trying to go after the insurance. And I was like, wait a minute guys, Hey, this has nothing to do with the insurance carrier. The person making a decision on whether or not a plan is going to cover acupuncture or massage or chiropractic is actually an HR person sitting in a desk. So you're talking, you're barking up the wrong pole. So you've got to, so going into the company.

Tony Benjamin (51:06.366)
health.

Steve-o (51:21.336)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (51:27.031)
helping the company understand, your employees want this and it actually costs very little to add it to your plan. And then you have happier employees was just mind blowing to this whole group of healthcare leadership. It was interesting that they were trying to figure out.

Steve-o (51:44.194)
You bring up a great point though. My wife deals with this a lot where even the very doctors and the billing team on their crew have no clue how to properly submit it to billing. They're they're so focused on the codes and all these things so they can get that little payment from the insurance company without even taking a second to think about wait a minute, this really isn't about the codes and the, you know, making the money and all that stuff. It's about the individual.

And where they're actually at in their journey and are we educating them well enough so that they use the plan effectively, which is where the true cost savings come from.

Rhonda Nerenberg (52:22.467)
Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Jacob Davis (52:23.664)
hundred percent. That is why Welltrio exists.

Steve-o (52:24.322)
Yeah. I love this idea because like I said, my wife is in this world and I hear it all the time and I have to roll my eyes at the inadequacy of and honestly the uneducated people out there that that we deal with all the time. And I know some of it's on purpose. They don't want to get educated, but man.

Rhonda Nerenberg (52:40.643)
It's the wrong education.

We're expecting too much. have HR has education, not in healthcare. Why are we saddling them with these decisions?

Steve-o (52:51.694)
Yeah. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (52:57.192)
That's that's that's an awesome. That's a really awesome point. I and here's what I guess I would say is that I think benefits I don't think benefits came to H.R. for the right reasons, meaning that it was given to them to administer. And to your point, I think CFOs got a hold of it when it was just insurance back in the simple days. Right. And so now.

Some companies are pushing it off onto HR. Some push it off onto HR and then the CFO makes the decision as to what plan they get. It's one of my favorite situations. But it just strikes me as, to your point, they just don't.

Steve-o (53:29.23)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (53:33.07)
Fascinating, right?

Tony Benjamin (53:42.409)
I don't know. guess I think it's startling. I just think it's startling how we do these things because a lot of age, we don't want to spend our time in the benefits thing. We want to get out of it. Look, I used to back in the day when I was young and dumb and I was trying to be helpful to everybody, I would say, man, if you have a claim going bad, call me and I'll do it. My wife had some incredibly bad medical issues a long time ago. I learned how to work the system because I had to.

Like how do I get certain things covered? Who can I call? Who do I complain to about? How long does it take them to authorize something they wouldn't normally authorize? Like all of those things I figured out and so I thought I'm going to help my employees. But then I found out I have to read the EOB to know the specifics of what happened. And I was out. I was like, that's that's too personal for me. I don't want to go there. And I was just like, I'm out. So I understand that.

Steve-o (54:17.39)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Davis (54:32.175)
Ha ha ha.

Steve-o (54:37.974)
Educate some of our listeners what E.O. B is. 'Cause you know there's some out there that don't know.

Tony Benjamin (54:42.174)
Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Rhonda.

Rhonda Nerenberg (54:42.259)
EOB is the explanation of benefits. It's going to have the medical codes, a little brief description and the cost and how it was paid or how, if it was denied, why it was denied. And I'm very familiar with them. I did that for the employees. So HR didn't have to see those because it's detailed. I don't want to bring my explanation of benefits to anybody. Why would I, you know,

Steve-o (55:04.024)
Mm-hmm. It's very detailed.

Rhonda Nerenberg (55:09.953)
And most healthcare providers that you would interact with in a hospital setting, in clinic setting, don't understand EOB either. So your options are very limited when you really want to understand what's going on.

Steve-o (55:17.144)
Mm-mm.

Tony Benjamin (55:22.322)
That's that that's exactly right. They don't

Steve-o (55:23.374)
Well, and every time I saw the EOB, I remember one of my employers used to provide it to me and it was like ten pages. And I was like, This is like a dictionary. I'm not gonna sit here and read this. This is not attractive to me at all. So that that's why I always hand stuff to my wife when we we when we get the insurance stuff, paperwork. I just hand it to my wife and say, Here, you do you deal with this. And I feel bad because at one, I shouldn't probably shouldn't do that. And two, I can't expect her to know it all either, right?

Tony Benjamin (55:41.46)
Ha

Steve-o (55:52.052)
so I just I love this idea of having an individualized experience, the opportunity to actually dig deep into your personal life a little bit with without feeling like you're violating laws or giving away stuff that you shouldn't or that you don't want to. and so I just I love these these this concept, right? and so very exciting to me anyway.

Rhonda Nerenberg (56:15.075)
Especially because there are in fact things you could disclose in an employee's employer situation that could put your job at risk, but shouldn't. So why would you want like there you wouldn't bring it and then you're not getting your questions answered.

Steve-o (56:22.648)
Correct. Correct.

Steve-o (56:30.284)
Mm-hmm. Which is only to your detriment. I mean, that is that is to the detriment of the employer and the employee. And and yet we've built this environment in HR that almost forces that. So

Tony Benjamin (56:31.262)
That's excellent point.

Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (56:39.57)
You know, with the real...

Tony Benjamin (56:44.862)
Well, and here's what I would say, a highly competent person in HR should know the boundaries of those things and what is disclosed and it should never risk somebody's job, just the medical condition or whatever, right? But it does. Having done the legal stuff that I do on the other side of the aisle, yes, it absolutely does. And there's some HR people that miss that.

Rhonda Nerenberg (56:54.787)
You're right.

Steve-o (56:56.726)
Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (57:05.355)
Even if it's perfect and it doesn't, it still feels like it could. If they know this, could it put my job at risk? And I just don't want to do that to somebody.

Tony Benjamin (57:11.29)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Steve-o (57:13.336)
Yeah. Yeah. And who wants that anxiety and and just all that comes with that? I mean, then that just adds more to our health issue. So here you go.

Rhonda Nerenberg (57:23.549)
Thank you.

Jacob Davis (57:24.064)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (57:25.182)
That's right. So, Jacob, I want to ask you this, and we can do this really quick, but is your guys' service as PEPM then per employee per month? Is that how you guys do it?

Jacob Davis (57:35.31)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's P E P and we almost always have a performance clause in our contract. So if you don't save more than we cost you, you get the difference back.

Tony Benjamin (57:46.043)
geez. OK. That that right there just did it for me. So let me just say this back in the day, because I'm old. I'm really old. So back in the day, we all. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So but back in the day, we were trying to figure out health. We were trying to figure out wellness programs. And and it was a really cool idea. When I first heard I thought, we got to do this. Wellness programs are really cool. And but I could never find the ROI for them.

Steve-o (57:46.924)
Wow.

Steve-o (57:54.072)
Very, very old, ancient. Sorry. I just really wanted to emphasize.

Jacob Davis (57:56.771)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (58:15.412)
My boss, and I was pretty young in HR then, said to me, if you can show me that it saves me money, I'm in. But I don't want to do it unless you can show me that it saves money. And the deeper I got, the more I could not show it did. I could show thoughtful projections that it might save him money five years later, but I could not show him that it saved money or helped his business in any financial way right away. Right? It just wouldn't. And what you just said, Jacob, that

that piques my interest because I just got my ROI for an essence what is a highly technical wellness program, highly technical wellness and medical program that fixes that.

Steve-o (58:49.912)
Which we've been missing. Yeah.

Jacob Davis (58:51.343)
Yes.

Jacob Davis (58:56.484)
Yeah, I think our our program, I I love our program. I mean, just from a I love taking care of people. I think this is needed, I think it's the future. From a business standpoint, it just makes sense. So we can meet you, HR, at the intersection of you wanting to do what's best for your people and proving ROI to your executive team. We can meet at that intersection, right? And and I think it's absolutely incredible. I love it.

Tony Benjamin (59:19.782)
Yes, yeah, yeah

Jacob Davis (59:25.7)
We we, by the way, have never had to do any kind of refund with that guarantee in place in fourteen years now.

Tony Benjamin (59:31.284)
That's awesome.

Wow.

Steve-o (59:34.754)
That's a big deal. I mean that that's I mean, it's a huge yeah. Yeah, I know that's awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, and I'm saying it. So there you go.

Jacob Davis (59:36.954)
That's a big deal. That's a big deal.

Tony Benjamin (59:37.662)
Mm-hmm. That is... It's a bigger deal than Steve. Yeah.

Okay, that's a good place to pause for just a second before I pump him up anymore. We'll do the second read here. Running a business is hard HR shouldn't be Megastar HR is here to save you from bad HR with expert support and everything from hiring to handbooks compliance to culture need payroll help or recruiting power. We do that to fractionally and flexibly no overhead just results. Visit megastarhr.com and let's grow your business.

together. Shout out to Beck and the wonderful stuff they do at Megastar and for being with us for a while longer as a sponsor. We're very grateful for that. OK, there's a couple more things I want to ask you guys about. Well, trio, but I want us now to get into the HR life and. Right, right. And I think this is going to be a lot of fun. I I'm going to be a good boy in my comments about this and do it right. Here we go, Steve.

Steve-o (01:00:32.942)
Yeah, we're getting in our segment.

Tony Benjamin (01:00:58.162)
All right. All right. Here we go. Into it now. OK Steve why don't you introduce this to us. This is a subject near and dear to my heart.

Steve-o (01:01:03.79)
Dun

All right. How many of you have heard of Disrupt HR?

Tony Benjamin (01:01:12.694)
look, the crowd is out there. Some of them are raising their hand. A lot of them are.

Steve-o (01:01:16.386)
Yeah. So so Disrupt HR and and Tony, I guess maybe what I want to do is lean on you for just a second because I know you're passionate about this type of project. Yeah. Tell us about Disrupt HR in general. And and then I've got a a comment to share from Reddit for those of you that love reading on Reddit and all the fun stuff there. I found one that really stood out to me and I had to bring it up. Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:24.222)
lean on me when you're not strong.

Tony Benjamin (01:01:37.567)
You mean like AI, AI likes reading Reddit? Yeah, yeah, no, you're good. Okay, so for those of you who don't know, Disrupt HR for a number of years has been the hot ticket. Every year it's an annual event. And the idea is there are, I want to say there's 10, there's 10 speakers at each one. can't remember the exact number, but they are given, was there 11? There are five minutes per speech is all. You have to have 20 slides.

Jacob Davis (01:01:57.361)
I think there was eleven this year. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:02:00.215)
Nice, okay.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:06.502)
And the purpose of this of this is to very concisely disrupt HR to give new ideas to give disruptive theory or whatever to build up and and try to change our profession. And it is literally it in its early days, especially it was wild. It was out there and you were pushing ideas that people had not yet discussed about. Sometimes they were high, highly political. In other words,

Steve-o (01:02:12.91)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:02:30.381)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:02:36.286)
And other times they were highly controversial. You know, one guy stood up there and said to everyone in the room, most HR people suck. So that shows you how wild and crazy it was. So go ahead. Go ahead.

Steve-o (01:02:45.838)
I know that guy. So so with that being said, we recently had a Disrupt HR event here in Utah. And immediately after this event, there was a comment. I I followed this thread on on Reddit and the the the tagline says, attended my first disrupt HR event and probably won't attend another. Is this typical? And asks the question. So let me just

Read briefly what this person said. Now it turns out this person is actually a vendor at the event, but has been in HR for many years. I'm in HR, recently attended Disrupt HR in Lehigh, Utah, Salt Lake area, but came away pretty disappointed. I'm curious whether my experience was unique to this chapter event or whether others have seen similar things at other disrupt events elsewhere. The venue was nice, comfortable indoor, but within the first 10 minutes, all of the people that I met were vendors, attorneys, consultants, college reps, or simply service providers.

Tony Benjamin (01:03:17.844)
Briefly read.

Steve-o (01:03:44.258)
And before the you know presentation started, we were able to visit booths and prizes and things like that, but they hardly really met an actual HR professional. And he could tell that, or he or she, whoever this might be, said said it they were clearly outnumbered. The other complaint they said was the presentation quality was much lower than expected. you know, the impression is that that the room should be full of these engaging speakers, that they challenge ideas, they give you actionable insights that you can immediately take back to your workplace.

And truly disrupt your organization. But much of the content felt more like personal storytelling and self-reflection than professional development. And the host, a self-proclaimed introvert, ended up rambling on and answering half the questions without properly engaging the speaker panel. So, again, this is not my opinion. I was not there. I did not have the opportunity to visit the event. Jacob, it sounds like you were there as a vendor. So I, or at least there. and and so

I'm just curious what your experience was in in light of this, because this comment here, in fact, there there are over 20 comments on this. And for those that have also been, they're saying similar things. And so

Tony Benjamin (01:04:56.232)
And we'll get the link to this and Steve will put it in the show notes.

Steve-o (01:04:59.468)
Yeah, yeah, I'll I'll put the link in and and so but but it was it was sad because this individual, this was their first time ever attending an event like this, and that was kind of their takeaway. and so yeah, so I'm just curious thoughts and you know, how do we make these events better? Because the the goal here, I don't want to, know, necessarily knock the entire event and say we should do away with it altogether, but for those of us who'd had who's had these experiences at events,

What do we do? Right? How do we make this better overall? So Jacob, your comments, because I I know we had talked about this kind of before recording and this hit a hot button with you. So I I I appreciate your take on this, right?

Jacob Davis (01:05:35.345)
Yeah, it it kind of does. Yeah. So I'll I'll hopefully try not to offend anyone, but that might happen. So so first of all, I was a vendor. Well, we didn't sign up as a vendor, but I'm a we're a provider, right? We're a consultant for benefits. And so I was there in that capacity. So I'm one of those, you know, not HR people. My goal in going there was to see what are HR people talking about and how are they talking about it.

Steve-o (01:05:44.11)
Please yeah.

Steve-o (01:05:53.006)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Davis (01:06:05.348)
That was that was the questions I wanted answered because I'm a little bit new to sort of the HR space outside of, you know, having had those conversations with HR when I screwed up or, you know, whatever. And so yeah, so first of all, I think I think Dave could screen attendees. I think check LinkedIn and make sure you've got an HR title to be an attendee is probably a huge step he could take, right? Because

Steve-o (01:06:14.723)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:06:16.539)
Right.

Jacob Davis (01:06:34.656)
Most of the people I met were also vendors or contractors or whatever. my hot take on on the HR culture is it's pretty disconnected, I think, from from like operations people, you know, the way they think. So I've been to a lot of tech conferences, I've been to ops conferences, different things, and it felt very like feel-goody.

You know, a lot of it was was a lot of feelings and feel-goody, right? Vibes and and and that's not real, right? Like nobody's work and business is that feel-goody. It just not isn't the case. And so a lot of the presentations were like pretty hypothetical or pretty like kind of pie in the sky, right? Like here's we should be all friends. We should be, you know, doing this or that.

Tony Benjamin (01:07:05.108)
Aww, that's sweet.

Jacob Davis (01:07:31.254)
there were a couple presenters that I actually really enjoy that I thought hit hit pretty hard. they nailed it. So Baha Shhmate, Shmate, Khmate, I don't know how to say his name, Fight Culture. And then the other one was Kip Sorensen, who I actually worked with at IMFlash. Steve, you may have brenned him if you were there early. yeah, so he did enemy

Steve-o (01:07:35.736)
Yeah, they nailed it.

Steve-o (01:07:50.65)
yeah, I know Kip. Interesting. I'll have to go watch it because I know it's online, so

Tony Benjamin (01:07:52.712)
Wow, that doesn't surprise me.

Jacob Davis (01:07:56.655)
Yeah. He did the enemy in the mirror. I thought his was great. So those two I thought were great. but a and and the other ones it was a lot of you know, fake fun as a system not a cure, potential overproof, helping scared leaders. And so so what really brought it home for me is I actually talked to one of the presenters, and I don't I'm not gonna put him out there.

And I said, hey, your your talk got me thinking, because I've I've been in tech for a while, but I've been an executive for a while. I've been at the last company I was at scaled to 1.6 billion in revenue. I've been part of big high-level executive teams. And and the way it was presented that HR should approach this being relevant sort of topic, he pro he he presented it very softly.

Right. and kind of had like some little ideas for how HR can go be relevant or how to talk to a C level. And I said, you know, I my way of thinking that that's not how it's done. Like if somebody comes to me with any kind of sales pitch or any kind of idea, I need to see value in the first two minutes or so, or or the conversation's kind of over. Whether I end it or I just tune out, it's kind of over if I don't see value pretty quick. And that's the way most executives I work with.

Steve-o (01:09:12.11)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jacob Davis (01:09:18.884)
R, right? You have to see value pretty quick. So when an HR person or anybody, but you know, in the context of HR comes to me with an idea, they I need to feel like they understand what my priorities are and they need to have a plan to help me address those priorities from their position, you know, from their situation. And and those are two key things. Approach me understanding my priorities, approach me the right way directly, and and have an idea. Don't come with

Steve-o (01:09:25.24)
Yes.

Jacob Davis (01:09:48.057)
With you want an idea, don't have me think of it. And so that sort of example of how how kind of I think and how I saw a lot of the presenters thinking, I thought, man, this I I there's a disconnect, yeah. And I don't want to say we're doing HR a disservice by by sort of talking that way or presenting that way, but but I do think there is definitely a gap. And I think it's not

Steve-o (01:10:03.022)
So there's a disconnect, obviously. Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Davis (01:10:18.048)
healthy. You know, th this presenter's response to me was, they're not ready for that. They're here to they're here to be encouraged. They're not here to be challenged or or poked at. And I thought, man,

Tony Benjamin (01:10:26.154)
whoa.

Steve-o (01:10:28.184)
And that completely misses the purpose of disrupt HR. Like what you just said. Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:10:30.733)
Thank

Jacob Davis (01:10:31.438)
That's what I thought. That's what I thought.

Tony Benjamin (01:10:31.476)
Yeah, the purpose of HR is to poke the bear in the face. So so

Steve-o (01:10:35.751)
Exactly. Yeah, the whole disrupt concept is like k

Jacob Davis (01:10:36.814)
Right. So I several times I wanted to jump on stage and grab the mic and be like, no, when you if you're dealing with the business or a business leader, this is how you talk to them. This is what you say. You be direct, be rude, be blunt, because that's what they want. They don't want this soft speak. Don't talk around what you want to say. Say it, you know, and be direct. And if you're wrong, you're wrong. It's okay. You know, if if

Tony Benjamin (01:11:04.328)
Rhonda, you were nodding through a lot of that. have something you want to add to that? Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:11:06.561)
Yes, I was.

Steve-o (01:11:06.988)
Yeah, especially as a founder. You know, I and I'm a co founder. I get this too. Like I'm I am totally with you on this, Jacob. And so yeah. So but Rhonda, please.

Jacob Davis (01:11:07.728)
Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:11:17.251)
you have to address pain points when you're speaking to C-suite. And if HR isn't, they're making themselves irrelevant, which we talked about earlier. I actually think we need to create a way for HR to be incentivized for saving dollars from the bottom line. Like they need to have skin in the game, a commission for being able to save money.

Steve-o (01:11:42.786)
I love that idea. I love that idea. Imagine that. Because see, I'm a so so so here's my perspective on this because I've been in this world for a long time. I've been in the HCM space for the last 20 years, but I've been the salesperson. So my role has been to go to the executive, go to the C-suite, go to the Crow and say, Hey, here's why you need this system in place. Because what you're doing right now on paper or the process or whatever you you're doing right now.

Tony Benjamin (01:11:46.9)
think I do too.

Steve-o (01:12:10.146)
You are absolutely imp impacting your bottom line because you cannot see the revenue quick enough and it's not growing because you're doing it incorrectly or you're using a system that's outdated or completely discombobulated from your actual goals as an organization. So I've I've been selling this idea that HR needs to to actually be almost like a like a salesperson. I always tell people recruiting is marketing and marketing always looks at the bottom line and and you look at the ROI. And and if you don't treat your HR like that.

That's where you struggle. That's why there's this disconnect. So I I love that that concept.

Jacob Davis (01:12:44.08)
So if you if you if you go listen to some of those presentations, teen win, your people have a price, or thien win, your people have a price. That presentation, he put math to exactly what you're talking about. Tenure has there's a cost or or a value in tenure. There's a cost to recruiting, there's a cost to churn, and he puts numbers to all that. I thought that one actually was another really great one. Tien.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:12:44.224)
Only.

Steve-o (01:13:00.547)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:13:07.692)
And Tien, if you're listening this to this episode, Tien, yeah, I know Tien really well. Tien, we want you to be on the podcast. So if you would reach out to me, and I'll reach out to you as well on LinkedIn, but we would love to have you on on a on an episode. But yeah, yeah, Tien Nguyen. And and the cool part about Tien is he comes from that CFO background, right? He's the CFO over at at not Obra, but ISO right now, ISO talent. So, so yeah, that that doesn't surprise me about Tien. I know Tien really well. He's awesome.

Jacob Davis (01:13:12.836)
Okay.

Jacob Davis (01:13:19.822)
He was he was fantastic.

Jacob Davis (01:13:37.647)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:13:37.848)
That that's great. Yeah.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:13:38.916)
There's something I want to bring up really quick. a typical company, so much is focused on sales because sales is where you make your money. If you get a million dollar sale and you have 5 % margins, you just made 50 grand. We have to focus on sales, But if you save a million dollars in healthcare dollars, you have a million dollars in your bank.

Steve-o (01:13:41.944)
Mm-hmm.

Steve-o (01:13:49.39)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:04.276)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:14:04.299)
A lot more attention needs to be put on how we are spending our healthcare dollars because it's a much better profit center than sales team.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:15.432)
That's awesome. Thank you. The return is real. No, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. I just want to I want to throw this out at the end. I'm a big giant fan of disrupt HR have been for a long time. Don't always necessarily agree with the with the direction that that disrupt Salt Lake goes or whatever. But I respect it and all that sort of stuff. And here's here's a couple of things I will say as also as someone who ran the state HR conference for two years. So add that into this mix.

Steve-o (01:14:19.254)
It absolutely is real. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:14:33.422)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:14:44.924)
I understand the importance of vendors and sponsors and all that they bring to the event. That's how an event ends up making money because you spend money on the people who are there and the vendors enable you to do that. I understand all that. Here's here's what I would there are two things that I think always that I think goes to this person they're making this comment does it number one it has to be valuable a value to that person and it wasn't a value to that person and in Jacob's.

comments reiterate that the next thing I want to say is it can't be a value to me as an individual because most companies don't pay for disrupt HR for their HR people. And it's not like the state conference where people pay or companies paid mostly for you to go to that sort of thing. And this it's the individual. And and so the the piece of this that I want to

Steve-o (01:15:31.662)
Mm-hmm.

Tony Benjamin (01:15:43.093)
An $80 ticket price means that you're going to, it's a demand curve. It's a demand curve. And if you're going to, if you're going to put it at $80, that means a lot of people can't come. And then all you have in the room are the people who are sponsoring and vending it. The first Disrupt HR event in Utah was $6. $6.

So $80 is quite a jump. And look, again, I love it. I wish it well. I couldn't go this year. $80 is too much for me, and it was on a bad time. having said that, that's why. That's why.

Steve-o (01:16:23.342)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Jacob, that thank you for the feedback there. like I said, I follow this pretty heavily on Reddit. I follow a lot of stuff on Reddit, especially because of of where AI is headed. they use Reddit for a lot of their responses they give to applicant you know, to people that are using AI. And so I've just been paying a lot of attention to it lately and and have been trying to contribute as a true consultant.

real life responses that are realistic because sometimes what on what is on Reddit is not always real. I mean I see a lot of stuff out there it's just ridiculous. And so I try to put stuff on there that's actually realistic and helpful. And I just thought this was a very valid comment from whoever this Reddit person was that put it on here. And I'll I'll sh give them credit in the c in the comments later just so they know that there's gonna be a podcast episode on their very post.

But but thank you for your comments there. And and I I I just felt like this was a really relevant HR life thing because we are in the middle of the HR life, right? Those of us who are in HR, we do want to make a difference. And if we're gonna have those seats at the table, and and even and even though we're getting those seats a lot more and more, you bring up a great point, Jacob, that we have to understand that we sometimes only are gonna have your attention for the first two minutes. And we have really got to hone in when we present that solution.

to get to the bottom line and get right to it. So we're not wasting time and and and and plus it shows that we've done our research and actually thought about it instead of just coming and complaining. Because too often we just come and complain, right?

Jacob Davis (01:17:57.497)
And I'll I'll I'll even take my my observation a step further and say, I would be more than happy to to actually just meet with anybody who thinks, how do I present this to a C level? I understand you know, that's a challenge for me. Maybe I want to get some insight to how they think. I'd be happy to to spend some time with anyone. Connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. I'd go to

Steve-o (01:18:19.746)
that's awesome.

Jacob Davis (01:18:22.254)
go to coffee or, you know, video call or whatever. I'd be happy to do that. Cause I think a I think HR is important and I think it is important to have a seat at the table because there is a disconnect between HR caring for their people and their team. People ness, humanness, I think was one of the buzzwords this year. Humanness and budget. And those those two don't overlap usually. And so how do you bridge that? And I would love to help anyone figure out how to present their bridge.

Steve-o (01:18:25.56)
Yeah.

Steve-o (01:18:39.672)
Yeah. Yep.

Tony Benjamin (01:18:51.7)
That's awesome. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Really, really do. I want to, I want to be respectful of your guys' time and our listeners' time. I also know, so tell us what's coming up for Well Trio. What are you guys going to be doing? Where are you going to be at? And even how people can get a hold of you. And then I think you guys are going to be at the state HR conference this fall, right? In September. Did I understand that right?

Steve-o (01:18:51.854)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Steve-o (01:19:01.08)
Yeah.

Jacob Davis (01:19:16.356)
Yeah. Yep. We're we're making plans to be there.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:21.012)
Excellent and that's cool because you know that Steve and I I don't know what we'll have something nice for you or something It's just a handshake, but we'll be there. We're excited about that,

Steve-o (01:19:28.558)
Yeah, we'll be there. We'll see you for sure. So

Jacob Davis (01:19:29.018)
It's yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, that'll be great. yeah, so you

Tony Benjamin (01:19:33.011)
Yeah.

Okay, excellent. Go ahead. So what's coming up next for you guys? Tell us about one thing you want to promote or tell us about that. The well, trio is doing.

Jacob Davis (01:19:42.927)
Yeah, so that that conference coming up in the fall is probably the next sort of HR facing event that we have. We're kicking off a series of events for brokers right now.

benefit brokers because the first thing HR people do often when they hear about a program like ours is talk to their broker about it. And so we're trying to educate across all the all the channels. And so we have a two-month campaign kicking off with a bunch of lunch and learns and presentations for brokers just to get their their heads around what we're doing and how it can help their recruiting and retention for their clients.

Tony Benjamin (01:19:53.767)
cool.

Steve-o (01:20:19.406)
Yeah, that's great.

Jacob Davis (01:20:19.8)
So so that's the big thing. We do a lot of podcasts. We sponsor Well Trio is the sponsor for Benefits 3.0. Or I'm sorry, for Behind the Premium. Benefits 3.0 is one of the shows that we do. so we're we have a pretty heavy online presence and LinkedIn is an easy way to get a hold of us or our website, welltrio.com with one L.

Steve-o (01:20:43.532)
Awesome. I can't wait to see at the conference, so I'm I'm looking forward to that for sure.

Tony Benjamin (01:20:44.552)
Very cool, very cool. I know, I know, me too. Okay, well this has been great. Rod, is there anything else you want to say to top what Jacob said there at the end? Like, or something you want to straighten out or just make sure? We'll give you the last word.

Jacob Davis (01:20:47.418)
Yeah, likewise. Likewise.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:20:58.989)
No, I don't need to one up. Jacob nailed it.

Jacob Davis (01:21:00.676)
Yeah.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:05.14)
Okay. Perfect.

Steve-o (01:21:07.33)
Nice. I'm sure. I can tell, I can tell.

Jacob Davis (01:21:07.342)
R Rhonda's straightened me out quite a few times, so by now, a year and a half down.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:14.376)
good. Okay, well there you go. Again, thank you guys for being here. This is this has been been been fantastic. And I think that everyone here is very, very appreciative of what you've done. And let's see if we can't. There we go. It's going to say Yeah, the crowd goes wild for you.

Steve-o (01:21:19.63)
Yeah, enlightening.

Jacob Davis (01:21:34.766)
Ha ha ha.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:37.01)
There you go.

Steve-o (01:21:38.796)
And and it went a bit little bit longer than we probably anticipated, but I I just feel like that there was a wealth of knowledge in this episode. So we really appreciate your time today, for sure.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:43.86)
you

Tony Benjamin (01:21:48.456)
Yeah, thank you very much.

Jacob Davis (01:21:48.944)
Yeah, it was great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Rhonda Nerenberg (01:21:48.963)
Thank you.

Tony Benjamin (01:21:52.646)
Alright, well I guess that means that we will head out the same way that we came in.

Tony Benjamin (01:22:03.688)
Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Comments or questions for us? Email the podcast at thehrlifepodcast.gmail.com and we'll talk again soon.