The next thing Davis knew, he was submitting a resume. While reading over his new employer's benefits plan on his first day of work, he realized he didn't understand it. From then on, Davis vowed to be one of the smartest guys in the room.

“I'm a teacher,” Davis says. “If I hear of a new concept, I learn it well enough to teach it. And I can teach a business owner or a rank-and-file employee. Being able to teach at all levels means you have to understand the plans. I have the mind of a teacher.”

Today, Davis — a finalist for Benefits Selling's 2016 Broker of the Year — currently serves as an owner and partner at Wraith, Scarlett and Randolph Insurance Services in Woodland, California, where he's responsible for around 125 mostly small-group clients. In February 2016, Davis was made a partner in the 40-person firm.

Davis, 41, has become known as “the broker's broker,” mainly due to his high profile in the local media and his work helping out his fellow brokers — even if they're competitors. “A lot of people have called me that because I teach,” Davis says. “I teach employees about benefits. I teach brokers about benefits. I teach employers about benefits.”

The 10-year industry veteran has appeared on his local NPR station and in local newspapers explaining Obamacare. He also serves as a circuit rider of sorts, visiting seminars, chambers of commerce, lunch-and-learns, and even hospitals to talk and teach about employee benefits. Oftentimes, other brokers bounce ideas off him after one of his talks.

“It feels like the right thing to do,” Davis says. “If I look back, my book of business has grown every year. I've just been doing the right thing. I can't pinpoint specifically why working with my competitors has helped me, but I've gotten a ton of business.”

Davis also attributes his success to an ability to stay on top of regulations affecting the industry; He routinely makes trips to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to find out what's in the legislative pipeline. He also serves on the California state board of the National Association of Healthcare Underwriters.

“If I pay attention to regulation and that stuff, it's a crystal ball into the future — even if it's legislation that doesn't happen,” Davis says. “I know what's going to happen six months before other brokers. Most others are in a reaction mode and respond to legislation after it comes out. I help shape regulation and get an idea of what the regulations are before they're passed.”

Fred Garfield

After 37 years in the employee benefits industry, Fred Garfield is in a position to think and talk strategy with his clients. But he's not averse to rolling up his sleeves and using his know-how to score a tactical win for his clients, either. He once saved a company on a self-funded insurance plan from bankruptcy by getting a stop-loss carrier to release funds the same day the firm was hit with a $350,000 claim.

“The company was in no position to absorb it,” Garfield recalls. “They had no line of credit. Literally, the payroll would have bounced.”

But there's a lot more that explains Garfield's success. The 2016 Benefits Selling Broker of the Year finalist admits to being a lifelong student of the industry, but he's also the first to say that he relies on a strong support staff that allows him to focus on the part of his job he's best at — strategy.

“Our philosophy is taking clients with complex needs and limited resources to a higher level of performance,” Garfield says. “We're not product-focused; we're performance focused. We're big on drawing a battle plan. Know the goal, know how to get there, make sure the client understands.”

Garfield, a senior vice president and practice team leader for The Horton Group of Orland Park, Illinois, oversees a staff of 11 that is responsible for 45 accounts and $3.7 million in business. Clients range from 300 to 6,000 members and Garfield works closely with 16 of them.

“I think I'm really good and very passionate about doing what I do,” Garfield says. “I love to see the results for our clients. Our retention and loyalty is rewarding — almost more than anything else. We've built an honest, ethical business.”

The Chicago native, 61, got started in the industry in 1980 after he answered a newspaper ad. He started working for a company he calls “less than reputable,” but soon left to start his own firm, which grew to 20 employees before merging in 1996 with The Horton Group, a company that today has 330 employees with 11 offices in five states. Horton services around 2,000 clients with $65 million in business across the entire company. Garfield has moved most of his clients over to a private-exchange model, which has helped them manage health care costs.

“My personal philosophy is that I want to do for my client what I would do if I were in their shoes — but knowing what I know,” Garfield says. “I want to know what's driving their business decisions. And I want them to know that I would do things the same way if I was sitting in the office next to them.”

Garfield worked in radio at the beginning of his career and introduced some of the great musical acts of the day, including The Grateful Dead, Journey, and Genesis. And believe it or not, he continues to use some of his broadcasting skills to this day.

“I have no fear of public speaking,” Garfield says. “I did a lot of concert hosting — getting up in front of 18,000 people to introduce a band. After that, how hard is it to do an open enrollment meeting?”

Nathaniel Garfield

Nat Garfield can connect today's employee benefits industry with the fate of his great-great grandfather, President James A. Garfield, who was assassinated by Charles Guiteau in 1881.

“There's a correlation between our industry and what happened to him,” Garfield says. “In the end, it wasn't the assassin's bullet that killed him, it was the doctors. He died of sepsis, but he probably could have lived with a bullet in his back. Today, it's the doctors that are killing our business — the costs are so high.”

A 25-year veteran of the industry, Garfield has survived the twin bullets of high costs and intensive government regulation that have claimed the careers of other benefits professionals. In fact, as vice president and director of employee benefits for Team APFS of Rochester, New York, the 2016 Benefits Selling Broker of the Year finalist helps oversee a company that has experienced growth every year since its 2005 founding, employs 35 professionals, and draws 95 percent of its business from within 25 miles of the home office.

Garfield attributes much of his company's success to a basic approach to business: Doing the right thing. As an example, Garfield once convinced a client to hold an evening open enrollment meeting for night shift employees. Until then, the employer had only held daytime meetings. During the evening meeting, Garfield heard from an employee whose wife was sick. Garfield helped shift the spouse to a Medicare program, which led to a savings of $5,000 per year for the employee — effectively a 10 percent raise.

As of March 2016, the Boston native, 52, still works with 60 to 70 clients — a book that covers everyone from large employers to sole proprietors. “I treat them all exactly the same way, it doesn't matter if you're the president of a 1,000-person company or it's just you and your wife,” Garfield says. “You deserve to be treated in a certain way.”

For Garfield, doing right also meant leaving a job that paid six figures to start his own shop. After a few months, though, Bob Bartolatta, who remains his partner, asked Garfield to form a three-person boutique firm that would become Team APFS. Early on, Garfield ground out roughly $300 to $400 per month, but today the company has 450–500 employee benefits clients, which accounts for 40 percent of the business. Team APFS still sells a lot of health insurance, but Garfield reports growth in voluntary and supplemental benefits.

Garfield also preaches doing right by his employees. For a firm of Team APFS' size and client roster, Garfield relies on his staff to keep client service exceptional — and that doesn't happen unless his employees are happy. So far, it's worked. Team APFS was voted one of Rochester's top workplaces in 2015 and 2016.

“We need our staff to be happy,” he says. “Our clients interact with our staff on a daily basis and if our employees aren't happy, it translates to the client experience. We've lost some business because of politics or a client who found a better mouse trap, but they've all said they miss us.”

Sallie Giblin

About three years ago, Sallie Giblin went to her bosses and asked them to hire her a project manager. At the time, Giblin says, she needed the extra help to manage her pipeline. She was told that the company would only fund such a position for brokers with much larger books of business than hers.

Giblin, a finalist for Benefits Selling's 2016 Broker of the Year, knew she needed assistance in order to grow her business, and began looking for a project manager on her own. Eventually, she found a great candidate on LinkedIn and hired her. In the beginning, Giblin paid the project manager's salary out of her own pocket. Within nine months, Giblin was able to write $1.5 million worth of new business.

“She started out as 'Saving Grace,'” Giblin recalls. “And now I've promoted her to 'Amazing Grace' and introduce her as my chief of staff.'”

Today, the project manager — Grace Bennett — is on the Lockton payroll, where Giblin serves as an executive vice president of Lockton's southern California benefits practice. She has become one of Lockton's top producers.

“It shows that I'm a hard charging female who doesn't pick up my toys and go home when I don't get my way,” Giblin says. “Sometimes when people get told, 'No,' they want to give up. Just because I wasn't getting the support I needed, I wasn't going to throw a fit or leave.”

The La Jolla, California-based Giblin, 42, currently has around 25 mid- to-large-size clients and 85 percent to 90 percent of her book comes from employee benefits accounts. She also serves on the company's executive committee.

In a 20-year career that began as an administrative assistant to a broker at another firm, Giblin now owns one of the most well-known personal brands in employee benefits in the San Diego market. She gives much of the credit to Lockton and the teams that work with her clients, but she's also figured out a key strategy for attracting and retaining clients.

“I think I can get people thinking more than another broker might and I can find out what's driving their thinking,” Giblin says. “I think it's about getting my clients and prospects to open up and talk to me so I can figure out what's going to make an impact.”

Because Giblin has had great success, she felt she needed to do something more. Giblin decided to create a mentorship program for other female producers at Lockton. The group, called Elite Women Producers, convenes once a month via a conference call and holds two in-person meetings a year. Giblin says the group has 15 members that represent 10 percent of the overall number of producers at Lockton.

“At our last monthly call, everyone put together their vision board and presented it to the group,” Giblin says. “It was cool to see what was driving their focus and where they're going. It's great that we have such a talented group of women who are helping each other. It's a network people can tap into that they can trust.”

Reed Smith

Ask a benefits professional about how the Affordable Care Act has affected the industry and you're likely to get more answers than there are carriers on your local exchange. Ask CoBiz Insurance's Reed Smith the same question, and he'll give you a perspective that not many people may have considered.

“We've helped employers understand that the ACA has created a landscape of change around health care,” Smith says. “And change in health care is hard. Culturally, people get used to doing things a certain way. But the landscape of change means consumers are expecting change and that provides a great opportunity. It's easier now to change than it ever has been. So we tell clients to leverage that as an opportunity to introduce some strategic change.”

And Smith, a 2016 finalist for Benefits Selling's Broker of the Year, understands change. He started off his career working on the other side of the employee benefits relationship, so to speak, as a sales representative, first for Great West Healthcare and then, via buy-out, for one of the largest health insurers in the country, Cigna. After around 10 years on the carrier side, he joined CoBiz Insurance in Denver and has been there ever since. Having a background on the carrier side, he says, has helped him forge relationships with many of his clients.

“I think we are able to connect and have very well-educated and informed discussions with the underwriters we work with,” Smith says. “Myself and a few others in our office began our career on the insurance carrier side of the industry. We can help the [client's] CFO understand how an insurance carrier works to meet its requirements by controlling their utilization patterns to beat inflation rates and then explain to them that we don't need to be subject to their increases because we are separating ourselves from the rest of the companies they serve. Unless you've been inside their walls, it's hard to understand their perspective.”

Smith, 37, now serves as senior vice president and practice leader at CoBiz, which has 300 to 325 clients on its roster, and has offices in Denver and Phoenix. Smith works with about 50 clients in the small to mid-size range. Since Smith joined CoBiz, the employee benefits business has grown from $2 million in 2009 to more than $6 million last year. CoBiz has helped clients realize health care savings through a variety of strategies, including telemedicine, wellness, and incentive programs. Smith also focuses on instilling a consumer driven approach to health care decisions by his clients' employees.

The Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, native helps coach his sons' sports teams and can translate some of the things that make successful teams to his relationships inside and outside his company.

“We've got to get everyone to agree and understand their role,” Smith says. “Showing up randomly to a practice or a meeting with no real goal leads to a random result. We want the opposite. Let's define the end goal and do the things that build to that result.”