Mark Smith
Our company is a veteran owned / operated benefits consulting firm that specializes in helping SME’s understand, implement and manage the day to day tasks associated with an employee benefits program.
We do this through a combination of dedicated, hands on professionals and appropriate affordable technologies.
Our goal is to help small and mid sized companies remain competitive when competing for talent with larger organizations through the development of appropriate and well thought out benefits packages.
Tell us about yourself?
I served in the Marine Corps primarily in an HR role and then transitioned to the HR space when I got out in the early 2000’s.
At that point I began my civilian HR and benefits journey which included working in HR, TPA, ins. company and finally benefit advising roles.
I love helping people so we have built a model where everything we do here at Holloway Benefit Concepts is based on service.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Do more video and email out reach during COVID. I feel like we were the only local ins. agency working and we had tremendous growth in 2019 and 2020.
What problem does your business solve?
Most of our clients (1) do not have an HR department and (2) do not understand benefits. We help with both of those problems.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Everyone on our team has seen what happens when businesses get too big, even those with supposed great work cultures.
Times get rough or stock holders get upset, what happens? Layoffs start and employees are tossed out like trash. People are not treated this way in the small and mid sized employer segment.
More and more employees are starting to realize this, but oftentimes the biggest 2 hurdles are the salaries and benefits coming from a big organization to a smaller one. We can help with both of those by making sure businesses have the best possible, quality program that they are not overspending on.
We also help with the administration which frees up our clients and their employees to focus on core areas of their business, not benefits admin.
What is your magic sauce?
We focus on the smaller segment which is completely underserved. Most of the people who are willing to work in this space tend to only sell expensive policies that are quoted online but aren’t really providing any value.
A good portion of our competitors (large agencies and payroll companies) don’t even respect their small and mid sized clients enough to give them dedicated day to day contacts. What we see more often is SME’s being given generic email addresses and 800 numbers for them and their employees to use as their service contacts. This does not fly for us.
When people can hide behind generic email addresses and 800 numbers, there’s no accountability, so the client ends up getting the short end of the stick.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We are looking to double our company in size and triple the revenue, further expanding into other parts of Texas. The more we grow, the more good people we can help.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Our biggest challenge like everyone else right now is finding talent. As of late last year, we’re finally fully staffed and up and running on the service side, now we need marketing and sales professionals.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
If you are being sold on goods and service but then your agent / broker disappears on you and leaves you alone to deal with anything and everything that comes up, that broker and their company does not value your business.
Here at Holloway Benefit Concepts all of our clients are treated the same with respect and integrity and are never told to handle this complicated space on their own. Our team is alongside each and every one of our clients every step of the way throughout the benefits life cycle.
