Just living life: A Q&A with Heather Bowers
Heather Bowers is president of Lone Star Benefits, brings a servant's heart to the benefits industry.
Heather Bowers is president of Lone Star Benefits, where she uses creative plan design and funding options to create strategies that help employers control their health care costs.
Paul Wilson: How did you get your start in the benefits industry?
I stumbled into it. I was working for a company that was going to change my position and pay me less, so I quit. I was happy at home for a while, but then I needed to find something else to do. My dad has been in the benefits industry since 1970; he owned an agency and said, “Why don’t you just come and work for me until you find something else?” Almost 21 years later, I’m still here.
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My dad turned 70 this past March, and we’re actually in the final weeks of the transition where I will take over from him. My husband left the corporate world late last year to join our agency and run the back office, so I can keep selling and focusing on the areas I need to, since it’s hard to grow an agency and run it at the same time. My sister and sister-in-law both work here, as well. We have eight of us here full-time, along with some other partners we work with.
PW: How has your background in the industry shaped your mindset and the way you do your job?
My dad was with a national agency that merged with another large agency back in the 90s. He stayed for a couple of years but realized it was becoming all about chasing sales goals. He realized he was losing his close connections with clients, so he walked away to join Lone Star.
When I came over, I didn’t start immediately in sales because I was helping him with the agency, but I think what drew me to staying here was the relationship he had with his clients. I have a servant’s heart; I serve on nonprofit boards and I’m plugged into the community. So while I’m in a sales role, my passion in this agency is just being able to serve my clients. When I put my head on my pillow at night, I like to know I made a difference in someone’s world that day.
The question I hear most often is “How can you work with family?” I’ve been very blessed to be born into a truly great family. Through the years, I only remember one situation with my dad where we both needed to cool off, and it was about an issue with the copy machine.
Even crazier, when we moved our agency in 2007, my parents moved next door to my family. So not only do we work together, we’re next-door neighbors!
PW: How have you adapted to counter rising costs and other challenges when it comes to plan design and benefits strategies?
I’ve always tended to work with the small- to mid-sized market. I’ve never turned down a referral, and we’re pretty much 100% referral-based. I’ll work with any size client, because you never know. A five-life company may be neighbors with a company that has 200 employees. Because of the market we work in, I have a few groups that are self-funded, but I mostly work in fully insured and level-funded.
In Texas, we have a really hot job market, so I’ve had companies call me and say, “We’ve never had to offer benefits, but that’s the only way we can attract talent now.” While insurance costs here are very high, employers feel you can only get so creative with some of these new concepts in the market. They’re often afraid to rock the boat because they have a great team working for them and they’re trying to attract new talent, so they’re often more hesitant to look at reference-based pricing, for example, which will require more employee education and a more hands-on approach from the employers.
While I certainly look at those options for some of my clients, it hasn’t been a big part of what we’ve done so far. Do I think it’s coming? Absolutely. We just haven’t had any clients yet who have jumped on it.
PW: Given the limitations of working largely in the fully insured space, how can you battle the out-of-control costs your clients are facing?
I’d say one area where we’re seeing a lot more interest from clients is in HMO markets. Back in the 70s and 80s, HMOs in Texas were huge; then they went away and no one was interested. But three or four years ago, the main player in the individual market here, Blue Cross, pulled their PPO network. So now if you’re with Blue Cross, you only have the HMO network. A lot of providers have moved in, and the HMO is starting to become much more accepted.
When you’re looking at some of the fully insured PPO rates versus HMO rates, the HMO is about 30% lower in premium. It’s substantial savings. I think those groups that are hesitant to do something more extreme right now know that big changes are coming; they see their rates continue to go up, but if they’re not ready for RBP or something like that yet, what can we do in the meantime? The majority of our clients are offering a range of PPO and HMO options.
I feel like my role is to discuss the differences with employees and explain the tips and tricks of navigating in an HMO network.
A lot more of our clients are also offering HSA options and more are offering worksite, but even on that, we haven’t had tons of clients who are even ready for it yet. It’s one area where I’ve gone back and forth with some clients: “There’s no way my employees can also afford this.” But we tell them, “that’s what you’re assuming they can afford, but they might not be able to afford that $5,000 deductible you just gave them, so why don’t we put in a cushion to help?”
PW: How are you adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic? How has it affected your business and your life?
Probably the biggest asset my husband brought when he joined us late last year was that he’s always been corporate, so he came in and started working on internal processes. We’ve basically revamped how we do everything. It has led to increases in efficiency, accuracy and consistency within our agency, and I feel like we were already moving in the right direction prior to COVID. So when it hit, the way we were doing things in our office really didn’t change very much. Our team started working from home, but everything was already digital for our agency, so there wasn’t any kind of a freakout period.
Our biggest change, which ended up being a really good thing, was that a lot of our clients started reaching out with questions. “What do we need to do?” The CARES Act passed and things were coming at everyone from a million directions, so we partnered with a local law firm that’s more of a boutique shop like us. We were able to work with them and move really quickly to get information out into clients’ hands. Because of that, we had many clients leaning heavily on us and referring other businesses to us because they saw we were there to guide them through it.
That’s the beauty of being a smaller boutique shop; we can move more quickly and don’t have to jump through as many hoops. We were very proud of that and we got tons of great feedback from clients. That was something positive out of this whole situation.
Going into the summer, we were anticipating how open enrollment might work this year, especially as we got closer to fall and realized it wasn’t going to be a normal year. Probably the biggest thing we’ve implemented is open enrollment videos, which have been the biggest hit of anything we’ve done during my 20 years of working here. So many employees have reached out to us saying how much they like them and how great it is that they can reference them throughout the year.
Instead of going in and leading a meeting, we’re creating videos for medical, dental and vision. They’re longer than TikTok videos, but we all know how short people’s attention spans are these days, so if they can watch a three-minute video and learn about their vision plan, they’re much more likely to do that. And we can track all the stats to see how they’re doing. It’s been a very smooth enrollment for us.
PW: As you look back at 2020, what changes from this year will have long-term or permanent implications and what will likely fade away?
I don’t think the old-school benefit meetings will ever happen again. As with so many other parts of life, it’s just so much more convenient and efficient to jump on a Zoom call. A prospect reached out to me last week and said, “We’re all coming into the office, but why don’t we just jump on a video call and save you a trip?”
I just don’t see our clients in the future saying, “OK, we’re putting everyone back in a room and Heather’s coming in.” I think employees would push back and say, “Those videos were great, though; I could watch them whenever; my spouse at home who actually makes the decisions can watch them.”
So how do we take what we’re doing now and improve upon that process? We don’t currently have a recording studio, and I’ve wondered if that might be something worth looking into in the future; find a way to make even more professional videos for our clients.
As far as our day-to-day, our biggest challenge and blessing is our white-glove service. How do we keep growing and keep the right amount of staff here to handle those requests while making it even more efficient? And how do we revamp what we’re doing internally to ensure we can continue to provide that same level of service?
PW: What skills and other qualities do you look for when building a team?
It’s very hard, especially in a smaller office, to hire more people. It has to be an exact fit for everyone. While we were interviewing our most recent hire, she asked, “Will this be weird since I’m not part of the family?” But we view our team as family; once you join our team, you’re part of it. Grandkids come in and out, my oldest drives now, so she’ll pop in. We’re all just one big family.
As far as personality traits, I go back to the idea of a servant’s heart. If someone comes here, they can’t be bothered by daily requests. We have clients who are very resourceful, but there are some who still email with all types of requests, so we need people here who don’t mind saying, “Sure, let me get that to you.” When I look around at our team, I see people who are willing to serve in all areas of their lives, not just when they’re at work.
And we definitely don’t micromanage in our office; we all wear a lot of hats. We need people who can come in, take a task and just run with it, while also always looking for ways in which we can improve. Because we all own part of it; every member is a huge part of keeping our agency going.
PW: What are your favorite things about your job?
I truly love my clients. Because we build such strong relationships with them, they’re like friends. I’ve worked with my largest client for 18 years now. When I started working with them, they had 92 employees, and they now have 3,000. The HR director has been there for 17 years; I’ve had two babies since we met and her boy is now in college. We have relationships like that with so many clients. We’ve gone through so much together in business, but also just in life. I love going to the office; it’s work, but it’s also just living life with people. It’s fun to celebrate the successes with my clients and see them on the news or in the Dallas Business Journal. That’s what I love most.
PW: Finish this sentence: The key to success in this industry going forward is…
To embrace change and then confidently lead our clients through it.
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