IAM029- Owner Focuses on Helping People Turning 65 or Getting Started on Medicare

Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:28

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Garrett Ball of Secure Medicare Solutions. Garrett, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Garrett Ball 0:38

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

Awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was just read a little bit about Garrett, so you can learn a little bit more about him and all the awesome things that he's doing. Garrett Ball is the owner of Secure Medicare Solutions, a national independent Medicare insurance agency, his company also manages 65medicare.org, an online information based resource for people turning 65 or just starting out on Medicare. Garrett, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Garrett Ball 1:05

Yeah, let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:06

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, what I wanted to do, which is ask you, if you had anything additional, you wanted to expound upon, when I read your bio about your CEO story, and what led you to start your business?

Garrett Ball 1:15

Yeah, sure. So yeah, I can give you the story in a nutshell here. So I was working in my early 20s. And sports management, basically, it was working from a minor league baseball team had been involved in that, since I, got out of college, I was working some really long hours during the very long summer month baseball season, talking 80 hours a week, that sort of thing. And just decided that was something that I didn't want to do forever, and started looking around and noticed that most of the other folks are doing what I was doing, were about my age or younger, and, and I knew it was time to time to do something different. And so you know, started looking for different opportunities to start my business was fortunate enough to make a connection with somebody who does basically, you know, exactly what I do now in Medicare, market insurance. And I made a connection with him and started kind of working with him. And he was kind enough to kind of take me under his wing for a few months. And then I went out on my own and haven't looked back since that was about 12 years ago.

Gresham Harkless 2:19

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah, to dip my toe in the kind of like the sports industry. And that can be extremely competitive and extremely hard working industry to be in. But it's a great that you got the opportunity to kind of make that pivot and decide to start your business. So what I want to do is ask you a little bit more about like, what exactly are you doing with Secure Medicare Solutions?

Garrett Ball 2:37

Yeah, so what we do is we really help people to navigate the complex waters of Medicare. So we, you know, ideally, start talking to somebody, three, four or five months before they turn 65 and are eligible for Medicare. And at that point, you know, we help them kind of understand Medicare itself, and then look at the other options that are available for supplemental coverage that would fill in the gaps in Medicare. So we ideally like to take somebody from kind of not knowing a whole lot about it. And that way we can help them understand, you know, kind of start from scratch, help them understand Medicare itself, and hopefully shorten the learning curve that they have, because it's a pretty big transition for folks as they go off of either, you know, route coverage, or people that are on and an individual health plan to go from that to Medicare is a pretty big change. And it's certainly a lot of complex terminology and things that people just don't understand.

Gresham Harkless 3:39

Yeah, I can imagine, you know, making that transition as any transition, there's a lot to kind of learn, but especially related to something like your healthcare or your medical, I imagine that there's a lot that kind of goes into that right to understand.

Garrett Ball 3:52

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 3:52

Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. So what I want to do is now ask you a little bit more about what like, what do you feel makes your organization maybe unique?

Garrett Ball 4:00

Yeah. So, I mean, there's, tons of companies out there now that do what we do. Just like other industries with the baby boomers, as they're, kind of moving through the, ages here, you know, the folks turning 65 an hour, baby boomers that has kind of driven a lot of industries, as you know, and really so that said, there's been definitely an influx of new companies that are doing what we do. What we think makes us stand apart is that, you know, we really focus on, being information based and not just low pressure, but no pressure. I mean, my philosophy, although we're in sales. It's just to give people all the information we can give them all the knowledge we can give them, help them feel comfortable with what they know. And then you know, use kind of an attraction based marketing philosophy where we want to be that experts and believe we are the experts. And then you know, when you're ready to talk to us, you'll call us and come to us to actually buy whatever you're going to buy, whether that's a supplemental policy or whatever other type of plan you need.

Gresham Harkless 5:13

Yeah, that's a, great kind of what I call a secret sauce, sometimes to where you're able to kind of create content and provide value to people. So that rather than them, you're trying to call them in order to for them to do business, they're coming directly to you, because you are the go to person because you provide so much value and information and you are a vital resource to those people that are just turning or over 65. Right.

Garrett Ball 5:38

Yeah, that's definitely our our philosophy and is to position ourselves as experts and be experts and continuously keep up with the changes and Medicare. Obviously, it's always changing, but and that has served us well. Well, I would say we didn't start with that being our unique selling angle. And but we have kind of over about the last five or six years have evolved that way. And that has really made a big difference. And in our business, and just the ease of talking to people and selling interest to people.

Gresham Harkless 6:09

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, it might be a book, but it is something that makes you more effective and efficient as a CEO. So do you have a CEO hack you can share with us?

Garrett Ball 6:24

Yeah, I would throw out one book that I read about three years ago, that has really been instrumental and kind of a more recent kind of change to our business. And that would be book it's called the Pumpkin Plan. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But it's by an author and I'm probably gonna butcher his last name. Okay. I know you're talking about McCalla wits I believe is how you say it. It's Mike McCalla wits anyway, the book is, is really, it's an interesting book is takes kind of the analogy of what champion pumpkin farmers, the philosophies they use when they're growing these huge pumpkins that win whatever blue ribbons at state fairs and that sort of thing. The idea is that for your business, to make the most profitable parts of your business grow, you have to weed out the parts that aren't profitable, which is a pretty obvious thing, but I think it's difficult as an entrepreneur to, remember that you have to do that. And what that look like for my business is we started focusing instead of I mean, we still certainly can help people that are 70-75 years old that are on Medicare. But we've really made our focus people that are 64 years old, just like that's, our ideal customer, we want to talk to people that are between 64 and 65. And that's the most profitable client to us. And that's the person we ideally are going to serve.

Gresham Harkless 7:45

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yeah, I've heard a lot about that book. I haven't actually picked it up. But I've seen it and I wasn't going to jump in to save you on I don't know how to say his last name, either. So I think you did the best job that I had better job than I could have done. But it was great to see how you have been able to kind of implement that to be able to kind of figure out and kind of niche down maybe so to speak about who exactly is your avatar or ideal client?

Garrett Ball 8:05

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, it's been a it's been a great, transition. And you know, in any business, you have to know exactly who you're serving, or else you're going to serve no one.

Gresham Harkless 8:13

So there you go. I love that. I love that. So that kind of brings me to what I call a CEO, nugget. And do you have like a CEO nugget or a piece of advice or word of wisdom you can give for other entrepreneurs and business owners?

Garrett Ball 8:24

Yeah, I mean, I would say one of the, my first piece of advice that comes to mind would be is to as a CEO, or entrepreneur, it's easy to get caught up in trying to do a little bit of everything or do it all, you know, the one thing that's been very successful for me is using the gig economy. I mean, there's so many resources out there now, you can outsource everything from, content on your website to lead generation to data entry. I mean, to me, there's just so many ways to outsource. I mean, we're not a huge company without I don't have a lot of folks working for me. So you know, I use that gig economy to freelancer, which I think is Upwork now, all you know, there's so many different sites out there you can find really qualified people to do a job that really is an entrepreneur you shouldn't be doing I mean, there's, you know, you have to do, as a business owner, you have to do the jobs that create profitability, not the tasks that aren't going to bring you, you know, profitability. And so, I guess my hack, or my nugget would be to, you know, don't be afraid to outsource.

Gresham Harkless 9:28

I love that. I love that. Yeah, and especially with so many opportunities out there with the technology that you have to kind of leverage at your fingertips where you can say, hey, I need a logo done. Maybe I can go to this site, or like you said, Upwork is definitely a good site as well, too. So those are necessary, phenomenal CEO nugget that a lot of people can kind of take into account and I know you kind of touched on it kind of like what the goal of this podcast is, really to kind of redefine like what it means to be a CEO. You touched on how the economy in the world has changed and how you know, there's the gig economy around now. So we're hoping to have on different types of CEOs to kind of define what that means. But I wanted to ask you very specifically, like, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Garrett Ball 10:08

Yeah, mean, being a CEO, to me, I would say just means, you know, freedom and flexibility. First and foremost, I mean, it's just, for me to be able to wake up every day and decide what I need to do that day to make advance my business is complete freedom, first of all, and then it's also just the flexibility, not just, you know, what direction you're going to take your business, but also just flexibility of where you know, where you can work. You know, what kind of work needs to be done? It's very much a free freeing feeling to be running your own business, for sure. There's certainly plenty of stresses and burdens and the difficulties that go with it. But overall, at the end of the day, I mean, it's definitely a wonderful thing.

Gresham Harkless 10:59

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes you go through everything, so that you have that freedom and the opportunity to be able to do that. So sometimes you can go through the startup phase, or startup periods in order to kind of build your business and put it into place. And now you're able to kind of maybe delegate a lot of those things, like you mentioned before, or take those things off your plate, so you can focus on the highest level thing. So I think that's a phenomenal definition.

Garrett Ball 11:20

Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:21

Awesome awesome. Well, Garrett, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule. What I want to do is try to give you the mic so to speak, to see if there's kind of anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know about you and then also how best to get a hold of you.

Garrett Ball 11:34

Yeah, sure. You know, as far as other anything else to know about me. I'm certainly happy to talk to anybody that's starting a business or that has some related business that if there's connections to be made there, see if there's any synergies between our businesses. So yeah, I mean, to get in touch with me, I am on Twitter at medigapins is my Twitter handle. So that's one way. My, the easiest email address for me is probably garrett@65medicare.org and that Garrett is with two R's and two T's so those are probably the easiest ways to get in touch with me. I certainly would welcome any conversation, any anything I could help or offer to, to somebody just starting a business. I'm certainly happy to give back and help if I can.

Gresham Harkless 11:44

Awesome. Well, no, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule. I think you definitely have given back especially reminding us to niche down and be very focused on exactly who we're targeting. So I appreciate everything that you're doing. I truly appreciate the impact that you're having upon the world and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Garrett Ball 12:45

Thanks a lot. Nice to talk to you.

Outro 12:47

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Thank you for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai