Barry Davis - Run Smoother, Grow Faster, Make More Money

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Joining me now is Barry Davis. He's a senior certified business performance advisor with a group called Insperity up in Glendale, California, and Barry, welcome to the show. Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to have you here today. I noticed your, your, uh, title line that we talked about was run smoother, grow faster, and make more money. I like all of those things. Yeah, I haven't heard any any arguments against that any of those three things. Well, one of the things we like to do is to get a sense of who our guests are. Uh, if you could, uh, let us know, um, a little bit about your background and what brought you to where you are today? Well, professionally, I was in the insurance business for 30 years. I was with MassMutual for 10 years and I was their number one. Uh, disability insurance agent nationally. Great company. Oh, great company, and um as I say, I was with them for 10 years and then I actually retired for a while. Then I bought a restaurant, decided I didn't want to stay in that business. That's a big pizza, yeah, and after 3 years, got out of that, went into head hunting for 3 years and back into insurance and uh. While I was with insurance, I, uh, I got a call from somebody at Insperity, and they asked if I'd like to come in and interview and take a closer look, and I did, and the rest is history. So Insperity, that's an interesting name for a company. What's behind the name? Well, we used to be called administaff. We were started about 27 years ago. There you go. And the problem that we had with administaff after a period of time was that you would call. CEO of a company and they would say well I'm not interested in admini staff because I don't need any temporary staff and then I'd go into a whole spiel about how we don't do anything with temporary staffing and what it is we do and at the end of that 5 minute conversation they'd say, well, very interesting, but we don't need staffing so. Guys like me were complaining to the corporate offices. We're a great big publicly traded company out of Houston, Houston, yes, that's right. So, uh, we were complaining about that, and I think it took about 5 years for them doing all the studies that they do and they, uh, in the end changed the company name to Insperity, which, as I understand it is a com is inspiring, inspiring prosperity. OK, that, that makes sense. Yeah, so there Insperity has offices all over the country then? We're in all 50 states, yeah, so you must have a tremendous amount of resources from, from your, your home office area. Absolutely, and that's that's in Houston. That's right. And so what does Insperity do? What, what, how do you help us, uh, run smoother, grow faster, and make more money? We help companies in 3 different ways primarily. We're an off-site human resources department, so we keep them in compliance with all of the human resources regulations. We relieve them of certain liabilities that are currently on their backs. Literally we take those responsibilities off of their heads and they become our liabilities. Uh, we help them with the terminations and things along those lines as well. That's on the HR side. We also provide our clients with their employee benefits and workers' comp, and we will, we're not in the insurance business, but in the end we will end up saving them between 8 and 15% on both their benefits and workers' comp. And then that's the only insurance really that we get involved with except for employment practices, liability insurance, uh, which we provide to our clients and then the third thing that we do is help them on the human capital side which is kind of a highfalutin way of saying. Bringing them up to the standards of one of the companies that would be considered 100 best companies to work for. Our goal is to have the employees through the methods that we bring to love their employer so much more than they did before we came on the scene that they give their employer, let's say discretionary effort, therefore increasing the profit per employee without having to increase payroll. So it's a combination of those three things and it's much wider and deeper than that, but that's a pretty good overview. Well, employees look to their employer for taking care of them in ways other than a paycheck, right? And so this helps them to provide more. Um, resources and benefits and you, you do this for companies of what size, what's your, what typical sizes do you work with? Well, typically the smallest company we would work for with with is about let's say 8 employees, including the principals, and then we go up into the thousands. Netflix was a client of ours. We were, I think they had about 35 or. 40 employees when they first started with us, uh, then at some point they got just so huge they kind of outgrew us and we work with for-profits and nonprofits. The we have the, uh, the Reagan Library is a client of ours, a number of TV shows are clients of ours, a lot of tech companies, uh, professional, uh, firms too, such as medical and legal and accounting. Do you still, it seems like it would have a lot of applications, especially for companies who have multiple offices, locations in different states, right? Because you can It's one thing to provide benefits in one state, but then you look to another state and laws can be different or staffing rules or other other types of rules can be different, right? Yes, that's a huge it gets complex. Exactly. That's a huge bugaboo for the employers who have employees in different states. You probably remember when Al Franken was running for Senate and there was a big thing about how he didn't pay some taxes and it turned out he was. He was a comic at the time and he was going from state to state doing his act and there were some states that his accountant just messed up and he didn't pay the taxes in a state and it looked like it was, it was tax evasion. Well, the clients that we have can run into those kinds of problems as well. For us that's meat and potatoes. We can work with companies that I've got one client who's got uh employees in 13 states. Well, for us it doesn't matter for. Them that's a huge burden taken off of their backs or for a small regional payroll or HR or PEO type of a company, that'd be a little bit more of a challenge for multiple states, but you have the resources to take care of that. Yes, we do. In fact, I get referrals not infrequently from smaller PEOs who just can't handle the benefits in multi-stats or they can't handle the payroll in multiple states, and that really is our, that's our. That that's our wheelhouse. That's exactly where we shine. Well that sounds very, very interesting, and I've, uh, looked into the website and there's a lot of resources on there. Um, I guess one of the things I, I wanted to ask you about is, um, how do you get these tremendous benefits for reduced costs for the business owners? Well, we work uh with the with our clients, we enter into a relationship with them that's called co-employment. Uh, it's a legal construct that allows the IRS to see us as the employer of record when in fact the regular employer as the employees would look at it, is really the person who's always in charge. They run the business, they decide who to hire, who to terminate. They also dictate the culture of the company. All we do is keep them in compliance with regulations, but because we are the employer of record according to the IRS that allows us now to act as an employer, so we take their employees and literally put them on our health insurance plan and we also put them on to our workers' comp policy so we are now, um, I think we're the 5th or 6th largest client of United Healthcare, for instance. We have about 200,000 employees and their dependence on our health insurance plan. And that really brings economies of scale into it. Typically if a client is working with us, they're going to find that their benefits cost is going to go down and the quality of their benefits is going to go up. That's a really big part. A company, it's like a tech company, for example, is going to want to be able to bring in those high quality people and offer them great benefits while they're a small company. That's fantastic. It sounds like a real. Uh, real benefit for a small company to think about it. We're talking with Barry Davis of Insperity from Glendale, California, and we'll be right back after this message. Do you want to make your company run smoother, grow faster, and make more money? At Insperity, we help our clients do all those things by reducing their cost of benefits and workers' comp, removing liabilities and handling government compliance, including health care reform responsibilities. Thousands of smart business people have made the decision to partner with Insperity. You really owe it to your company to do the same. To learn more, simply call Barry Davis at 818-546-3131. That's 818-546-3131. You'll be. Glad you did. Hi everybody, this is Spike Riel with the Exit coach. Business owners, can you name the eight key value drivers that you and your manager should be focusing on to increase the value of your business? Introducing the Sellability score index. Visit our website and answer 25 questions about your business, and you will instantly receive your sellability score, showing you how well you stack up in the 8 value driver areas. It's a great management tool. It's absolutely free for our listeners. Just visit exitcoachradio.com and click get my Sellability score. And now back to Bill's discussion with Barry Davis. And I'm back. Um, my guest is Barry Davis from Insperity in Glendale, and Barry, before the break we talked about, uh, some of the issues that you've been dealing with with your customers and how you do it. Now we'd like you to talk about some of, uh, your client's success stories and maybe give us an overview of how someone got in touch with you or why they got in touch with you, what their situation was, what you did when you came in, and what the end result was. Well, one of my favorite stories, although it's probably not a favorite story of my client. Uh, this is a client, a law firm, uh, with about 50, 55 employees, and they had, uh, been pushing me off. They weren't too interested in talking with me. They kept saying, Look, we don't need your liability issues. We don't need you to help us with that stuff. We've been in business for 30 years. Nobody's ever sued us, and then all of a sudden 3 of their employees simultaneously sued them. I got a phone call one day and said, Why don't you come on down and let's talk. So that was the reason that they ended up becoming a client and then not too long thereafter, two of their employees saw another one of their employees watching pornography at his desk on his iPhone. The HR director at the client. Well, she was planning on just getting rid of the guy right now, but she had the wherewithal to call her HR specialist at Insperity, and each of our clients is given a, uh, a team of specialists who they work with, and they get to know these people. It's a cohesive team, very little turnover. They really get to know these people and they get to, and our team gets to know the company as well. Well, the HR specialist said don't do anything yet. We're going to look into this. Three days later, the HR specialist called the HR director at the company and said, All right, we've done a thorough investigation. We've interviewed everybody, and the guy has now, after hearing what we found from the two women who saw him watching that, has said that yeah, he did that. So we suggest you terminate him. Here's some language to help you do it. We don't think you're going to hear from him again, and that's been a year and a half now, and they haven't. So they credited us with saving them probably about a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees and ultimately probably having to give the guy money whether they were right or wrong. So that's part of it. And then I have another client who was down in Torrance, who, uh, a lady died at her desk. And yeah, it's crazy and their HR, uh, their HR director thought she did everything correctly. She called the, uh, the EMTs. They came out, they pronounced her dead, took her to the hospital, and the lady figured that was all she needed to do, but the CEO said, Well, why don't you call our HR specialist at Insperity and just make sure there's nothing else that we need to do? Well, it's a good thing she did that. Because in California there's a law that says if somebody dies at your place and you don't contact OSHA within 24 hours, there's a $5000 fine. Yeah, crazy. I didn't know that, but I'm not the HR specialist. They get those folks from us. Yeah, so in the end we saved that guy $5000 just on a little technicality like that. Uh, that seems, uh, well, I mean, there's, there's tons of little traps for employers, aren't there? Yes, HR issues a loan and then you get into a lot more than that but you save them money and, and help them be able to focus more on what they do best, which is run their business. That's absolutely right. There comes a time when a business owner finds that they're spending more. Time dealing with benefits, workers' comp morale issues, HR things that they're not really able to spend the time doing what it is they went into business for in the first place. They're not they're more employers than they are business owners. We come in, take them out of the employer business, take them out of the benefits administration business, and we take all of that. We make it run right. So there are adults minding that end of the store while there are adults minding the other end of the store too. Yeah, and that's sad because we see a lot of business owners that are just tired of, they they love what they do and they love who they help and their customers, but all the rest of it just gets to be overwhelming after a while, the the the technical and administrative, and it seems like every year there's another batch of, of another, you know. I don't know, 50 or 60 laws to throw on top of everybody. What's happening this year? What's going on in the legislature so far this year with regards to all this stuff? Well, of course right now health care reform is on everybody's mind. Those clients who have 50 or more employees can sit back and just not worry about it at all, and Sperity handles all of their responsibilities and the client has to do nothing. Um, we handle every issue that has to do with that. We've been working in Massachusetts for years, so Romneycare is something that we learned from and now we can take that nationally, and that's been working tremendously. In fact, uh, we had, uh, I was talking with a couple of business owners in Massachusetts at one of our, uh, annual retreats in Houston retreat in Houston, great place to go. And these people were saying that the one thing that they have to do when they're at a party with other business owners in Massachusetts is just keep their mouths shut when the conversation turns to Romneycare because those people are all complaining about the reporting and all the things that go along with that, and these folks don't even know about it because we handle everything, which is of course what we're going to do with Obamacare. Well, that's just the uh transition alone as a lot of people wondering what they're going to do, who they should turn to so here they can just come and turn it over to your company and pretty much let you handle all of it from from here on forward. Exactly right, we've become real experts in that. I give seminars on health care reform now. Uh, to different groups, and the reason that I'm able to do that is because we at Insperity have formed a group that is our healthcare reform group and they're Always working on that. All their work hours are just uh working on what is it, what's it going to be, and what can we do to help our clients deal with it. Can you give our listeners three tips or ideas, things that they should be thinking about as they're thinking about their overall, um, running of their company and their benefits packages and ways ways that you can be of help. Yes, one of the things that we want to make sure of is that as our clients are getting to the point where they want to be going on to the next phase of their life is succession planning. So Insperity will help them with succession planning. That's a big part for for clients in that stage of life that we can help them with. Other pitfalls that they want to be careful about are making sure that their health insurance plan satisfies all of the requirements of health care reform, especially among those being that that they offer a plan to their. Employees that doesn't cost more than 9.5% of their lowest paid employees W-2 wages. That's part of of health care reform. And then of course workers' comp is another thing. Costs for workers' comp are going crazy and if they've got issues with workers' comp, that again is another thing that we can help them with. All great reasons to call you and um. You mentioned that you have a blog called Beyond HR Solutions. BeyondHRSolutions.com is the website for my weekly blog. Uh, every week there's a blog that I have written that has something to do either with HR or recently I've been taking healthcare reform and breaking it down into bite-size pieces. Yeah, and I looked at that today actually. There was an article called What You Can and Can't Do When Employees Discuss wages. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, there are regulations about just about everything now. Um, one of the funniest ones is what does a business owner do if somebody's complaining about one of the people in the office's, uh, perfume is too strong. How do you address that without offending that person? And if that person is thin skinned, next thing you know you've got a lawsuit on your hands. Well, the way you handle it is you call your HR specialist at Insperity, and they walk you through it. That's great. Yeah, I know. Well, it's been a real pleasure. How do people reach you or find you on the, on the internet? On the internet they can simply Google Barry Davis Insperity or they can go to beyondHRsolutions.com. Uh, and they'll find my blog and all my contact information there and of course my number is 818-546-3131. Very good, thank you, Barry Davis from Insperity in Glendale, California. A lot of resources for small business and we sure hope you've been listening and you'll pay attention to him. Uh, my friends, that's gonna do it for us today. I want to thank you for listening in. And I hope you learned a thing or two that'll help you in some way with your future planning. A big guest, a big thank you to my guests and our sponsors, Exit and Retirement Strategies, the Values Institute and Olive Crest, and to listen to the replays of our guests including a 1 minute highlight. And to find out more about our sponsors, visit our site online at exacoachradio.com. I'd also like to thank our station engineer Paul Roberts, who has done as usual outstanding job with the board, uh, OCtalkradio.net for hosting us at their beautiful Coast and Mesa Studios, and my show coordinator Julie Tabazon. Who tirelessly handles the many details of coordinating this show. So my friends, visit us often and tell your friends to find us at Exitoachradio.com. We're here to help you, our hero, the private business owner with tips, ideas and precautions, and stories so that you are well planned. You've been listening to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners. Join us live every Wednesday at 1 p.m. Pacific time here on OCtalkradio.net. And don't forget to listen to the Audible, our daily one minute tip of the day on Exit Coachradio.com. The Exit Coach Radio show is brought to you by Exit and Retirement Strategies. We'll help you find your exit. For Exit Coach Radio, I'm Spike Reel saying so long for now. Some matches are temporary, but your privacy shouldn't be. With line 2, you get a second phone line just for dating. No need to share your personal number until you're ready. You can chat, text, and even block numbers, all while keeping things fun and private. It's perfect for online dating. Blind dates, or just keeping things light. When you're ready to move on, line 2 lets you cut ties without any drama. 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