Episodes

Jake Thompson started Compete Every Day as an inspirational apparel company, and over the course of a decade, has grown it into a vehicle for performance coaching, business consulting, and traveling the country to do public speaking. The mindset of getting 1% better every day, while viewed on a micro scale may not seem much, but the aggregate effect over time on your life will have a massive impact. Whether it is your health, your job, your relationships, focusing on the little things you can do...

Chas Fields is Senior Partner at UKG - Ultimate Kronos Group - and is also a fellow podcaster, a public speaker, a change management expert, a volunteer, and a baseball coach. Oh yeah, he's also a really cool dude! This episode covers what Human Capital Management is, how it works, and how technology is enabling companies to better manager their Human Capital. We cover topics like the merger of two giant organizations into an even bigger one, managing people through the pandemic, fatherhood, how...

Insurance Captives & Innovation in Healthcare with David Voorhees, CEO of True Captive Insurance. Insurance captives have been covered quite a bit on my podcast because: 1) They are perceived to be more complex (they're really not) 2) They are an interesting vehicle for smaller employers to successfully transition into being self-funded. David Voorhees sat down with me after the True Captive St Louis Summit, to discuss the motivations for the creation of True Captive Insurance, why they decide...

How Jumbo Employers are Solving Healthcare. This podcast focuses on the Health Transformation Alliance (HTA) - A Co-Op - that is fully owned by about 65 Jumbo employers, whose entire mission is to create superior outcomes for their health plan. Their goals are to save lives, and save dollars. These employer groups need to have about 5,000 lives on their health plan and pay $500k to join, and all own an equal equity stake in the Co-Op. This fee can be paid over time and can come out of your he...

What is it like to work for a TPA? Owen Paradis of JP Farley joins me on the podcast for a discussion on how he got into the insurance world after working as a Corrections Officer. Like most of us, he didn't intend to get into insurance, but has nonetheless found a home here and embraced the learning curve with open arms. Half of the battle is just learning the acronyms, and Owen even said he used my Stop Loss with Spencer videos to help him learn the industry lingo. Owen talks about how much he...

Have you ever wondered how to plan a conference? Tonya Crawford of True Captive Insurance sits down with me to share what it takes to put together a major event. The main thing she said is that planning a conference starts with having great partners. Not just from a sponsorship perspective, but to provide support, as well as help market the event. It typically would take 2-3 months to plan an event, but Tonya and True Captive were able to pull off a great event in St Louis within 6 weeks. Th...

Everything you need to know about Insurance Captives, featuring Stephani Manning of Innovative Captive Strategies. We discuss the Layers of Captive, how those layers interact, and which parties are responsible for each of the three layers of the captive. Stephani is a teacher by nature, and it really comes across in how simply she explains how captives work. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/spencer-harlan-smith/support

Have you ever wondered what it is like to MC (host) a big conference? In this episode of "Self-Funded with Spencer" on the road in St Louis at the True Captive Symposium, I discussed this topic with the host of the event - Kiera Hanselman. Kiera started to MC events during the pandemic at virtual conferences, and did such a good job that she kept getting asked to do it again. She talks about how her theater training helped her prepare to be on stage, but it really comes down to understanding t...

How Fasting Can Change Your Life. What is Fasting? What are the benefits of Fasting? How does a beginner get started Fasting? What is the difference in Fasting and Intermittent Fasting? What is Autophagy? What is a Water Fast? What is a Fasting Mimicking Diet?. Mark Testa is an expert at Fasting, as well as an expert in Stem Cells. Mark has personally gone through multiple 5-day fasts, and is a regular intermittent faster like myself. Personally, Intermittent Fasting has helped stabilize my ener...

The "PBM Princess" joins me again on Self-Funded with Spencer on the road, this time in St. Louis at the most recent True Captive Summit, held at Busch Stadium. In this mini-episode, Rachel highlights the convoluted supply chain in Pharmacy Benefit Management. So many different entities have a hand in the Rx supply chain, from payers, wholesalers, contracts with PBM's, marketing firms, insurance companies, etc, which makes it very difficult to uncover why prescription drug trends continue to in...

Your own Stem Cells can be extracted from your bone marrow, concentrated, and then later injected into certain areas to potentially eliminate the need for surgery. Many people just refer to it as "stem cells", but bone marrow concentrate which contains stem cells is the most accurate way to describe what Regenexx does. Regenexx can help self-funded employers who have employees which knee injuries, shoulder injuries, back injuries etc. as a possible intermediate step before the last hope is surge...

What is it like to be a Serial Entrepreneur? When you hear Mark's story it becomes clear that it takes someone with a combination of drive, intelligence, will, luck, faith, and a sense of humor! Mark Combs started his career in financial planning, moved into the employee benefits broker world, helped grow an agency into a successful acquisition, and after experiencing nothing but success in his work life thus far, that is when he said, "everything STOPPED working"! He talks about having to re-in...

Private Equity Explained What is it? How does it work? How do you get a job in private equity? When do you use equity vs debt? What types of firms should go public rather than stay private? What are the stages of growth that impact capital requirements? All of these questions and more are answered in Episode 44 of "Self-Funded with Spencer", featuring Kyle Coots, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Miramar Equity Partners. Kyle and I have known each other for almost 30 years, and we reconnected ...

Life Rewards Effort. Randy & I discussed Leadership, Faith, Family, Personal Growth, Managing Career Success, Being a Star Hurdler in High School, Moving from CA to TX, Advice for Young Salespeople, and the roles both of our Wives have played in making us the men we are today. From a random meeting at a children's play-place called "Cheeky Monkey" two years ago during the pandemic, to having Randy sit down this week for the podcast, it has been an interesting two years for both of us. --- Supp...

“Never Pay the First Bill” This is the title of Marshall Allen’s extraordinary book, which empowers working Americans to fight back against unfair medical billing practices and WIN. Marshall came on Self-Funded with Spencer to discuss: ✍️ His investigative journalism career 📚 His Substack newsletter 📽 His upcoming video series 👨‍⚖️ How to win in small claims court 🏥 His son’s recent ER visit ⛪️ His faith and time in ministry 🏛 His new job in the federal gov 📕 and of course, the book! “Never Pay ...

Allergy season, muscle cars, space shuttle launches...and Dependent Eligibility Audits? Keith Bird, VP of Sales for AmWINS came on the Self-Funded with Spencer Podcast to discuss the fiduciary responsibility that Self-Funded Employers have to ensure the dependents enrolled on their health plan are eligible to be there. Unless you have a good way of validating the eligibility of enrollees manually (you probably don't) then you likely have dependents on your plan today that are not supposed to b...

Captives, keynote speaking, employee education, client testimonials, problem-solving, and having skin in the game with your customers, were a few of the many topics Robert Gelb, David Voorhees and I discussed during the final installment of the Self-Funded w/Spencer podcast on the road at the True Captive conference. Here is the registration link for the next Future of Benefits in Business conference in St. Louis, MO at Busch Stadium on 4/12/22. https://truecaptive.com/st-louis-registration/ htt...

How much does surgery cost? How good is my surgeon? Sanjay Prasad MD sits down with me to discuss the answers to both of those questions and more. Sanjay is an Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon by trade, the Author of "Resetting Healthcare", and the founder of SurgiQuality. Sanjay is a brilliant man on a mission to create more transparency for patients around the ability of their surgeon, and the price the member will pay. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/spencer...

"Healthcare is Fixed" - That is the message Glenn Fisher, serial entrepreneur and Managing Partner of NavMD, is delivering to the employee benefits world. We talk data analytics, acting on these insights, FinTech, and why Glenn was attracted to the Healthcare space initially. Beyond the technical nature of his business, he stresses the importance of delivering value to your customer no matter what you do. We round out the discussion on pharmacy, consulting, reference based pricing, captives, and...

Rachel Strauss joined me in OKC to discuss the vital role of a transparent PBM, such as her employer EHIM. She has been a previous podcast guest (Episode 10), and she is one of the most knowledge people when it comes to Pharmacy Benefit Management. She implores employers to ask the simple question, "How does my PBM get paid"? Rachel also relates the problem of "rebates", to getting money back on your tax return. Is it really better to overpay, and then wait 12 months to get money back? She se...

Modern marketing is evolving, and Trey Hinson of Ocozzio shares everything you need to know about this changing landscape. We covered an array of topics from Self-Funding, Bourbon, LinkedIn Sponsored Posts, The Power of Video for Marketing, Personalized Prospecting, the Decentralization of Healthcare Solutions, Storytelling, and so much more! This was one of the most difficult episodes to edit because there was so much great content. I ended up making 4 promo clips instead of 1! --- Support th...

In installment 3 of my coverage of the True Captive Summit, I sit down with the CEO of Vālenz®, Robert Gelb. "Vālenz® simplifies the complexities of self-insurance for employers through a steadfast commitment to data transparency and decision enablement". Rob is quickly becoming one of my favorite people in Employee Benefits because of his charisma, his focus on company culture, and the "yes, and" mentality he brought over from studying improv to apply to the business he runs. In this episode...

In installment 2 of my coverage of the True Captive Summit, I sit down with Adam Berkowitz of Simpara, and his client Lance Young, of Shine Solar. In this mini-episode, we discuss Lance's experience working in Human Resources and how his partnership with Simpara inspired Shine Solar to transition from fully-insured to self-funded. Shine Solar went from experiencing annual costs increases with no ability to counteract this trend, to lowering their cost multiple years in a row, while simultaneou...

Episode 38 of Self-Funded with Spencer features Jorge Arzate, CEO and Founder of MAKINA BENEFITS. Jorge joined me on the show to discuss the role of a boutique-style independent TPA and his passion for helping small employers take control of their healthcare spend. We had conversations about discipline as an entrepreneur, focusing on growth over just setting goals, and even kicked the chat off with our mutual upbringing on #heavymetal. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com...