Mark enjoys the great outdoors throughout the year while biking, camping, and skiing, but is also a lover of home improvement projects. With a firm handshake, he has an interest in politics. Mark spends time attending church and traveling as well. Above all else, Mark’s greatest love is his family.

What is your background and how did you get into this line of work?
I’ve been an entrepreneur at heart since I was a kid selling fruit from the plum tree in the yard. I was in college headed for a degree in chiropractic when I was influenced by my big brother who had embarked on the insurance career some years earlier. He suggested I meet the sales manager at New York Life just to hear him out. I took the LIMRA test, scored well, dropped out of school, and headed down the road of being the captain of my destiny with unlimited income potential. That was in 1986. In 1993 after years with NYL, I moved from California to Idaho for a better quality of life for my young family. I hung a shingle selling life and health insurance, annuities, and group insurance. Having a greater appreciation for building a service business, I dropped all the personal lines stuff and settled on working the B2B market with group insurance as an exclusive scope of service.

What are your leadership principles?
You find what you look for. I look for the good in people, whether customers or employees. Having this outlook helps me assume the best in people’s motives. It helps me to recognize them and reinforce excellence in operations and execution.

People are complicated. Find ways to empathize and help them find what they are looking for through win/win solutions.

Employees want to do a good job. Helping employees become all they can be at work helps them be the best they can be for their families.

Why are you passionate about BAN? What value has it brought you/your business?
BAN is a collective of like-minded entrepreneurs trying to build better mousetraps for their clients and their agencies. Being able to assemble annually and connect regularly through electronic mediums, I find that there is no better host for free-flowing intellectual collaboration among some of the country’s best solution-oriented benefit agencies.

With ongoing inflation, higher interest rates, and a shaky economy, are you worried about the economy? If so, are you taking steps to prepare for a recession?
I don’t worry. There is always opportunity in the chaos of economic and regulatory uncertainty. An axiom I constantly remind myself and my team is, “If it were easy, they wouldn’t need us”. All we have to do is stay one step ahead to win.

Where do you see the industry headed for the balance of 2023 and 2024?
That depends on the market sector. I think hospitality and senior care facilities that traditionally have struggled to afford benefits will begin to migrate to ICHRAs to satisfy the penalty cost and still provide access to insurance for those that see the value. Across all industries, we will continue to see the rise of virtual primary care as the gateway to healthcare. The provider community will need to adapt to the new expectations driven by the digital natives and those of us getting lured into concierge medical options. More and more mid-market employers will continue their adoption of self-funding. Meanwhile, the medical captives mitigate some of the inherent risks of self-funding.

What are the industry’s biggest challenges?
The change value mindset of the younger generation of employees toward benefits. The ever-increasing cost of therapeutics for a plethora of health maladies affects only a few but drives up the cost for all. The hospital system / big pharma industrial complex.

What are one or two lessons you’ve learned that you can share with younger generations?
Work hard and be patient, especially in the sales role. There is so much to know, and it is easy to give up thinking you can’t get your head around it all. Align yourself with seasoned mentors in business in an established agency that has resources and provides opportunities for personal and professional growth, bolstering a broader exposure to people just like you trying to make it. That’s what BAN has done for me in the last 13 years.

Mark can be reached at mark@trustab.com or (208) 664-3482.

Follow Mark on LinkedIn