246. Health Insurance Tips For Small Businesses with Chris Carter

Hey.

Hey. Welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. I am excited to have anytime I get to have a former athlete, especially a pro athlete, join Bullpen Sessions, who also now finds himself in the same industry I do, the insurance industry. It is a pleasure, and today is going to be one of those days. So, Chris Carter, welcome to the Bullpen Sessions.

I appreciate it, Andy. I've actually followed you even before we got connected. Of course. And I appreciate having an opportunity to at least have a. A conversation with you.

You bet, man. No, that was looking forward to this one, you know, and if you're listening just on the audio, you can't see the video. I do want to make a clarifying point. This is not the wide receiver from the Minnesota Vikings.

Yeah, you do have to make that.

Statement, which I was thinking about the other day, Chris. I'm like, he was probably the greatest sideline receiver I'd ever seen when it comes to, like, dragging your feet in for the first down.

Well, people don't recognize this, but he was not a little guy. He was. He was every bit of 220 while he was playing at 6, 2, 6, 3.

Yeah.

So in terms of what you see now in the game of receivers being, you know, jiggle bunnies that have a lot of speed, a lot of agility, he was more of a tight end type receiver, but it didn't matter. He was always open because he really knew how to position his body.

Yeah.

So those catches that you saw, he did that inside the field as well because he. He knew he wasn't necessarily going to break away from the defender, but he was going to position his body just like an elite rebounder would to where he was going to catch the ball and you couldn't get to it. So that was. He was one of the first to really. Well, one of the first of, you know, our generation that really, really took that to home.

Well, good segue, because we just kind of gave it away. Now, Chris Carter, whom I'm speaking to, his job was to defend these guys. And so we'll get into that. But let's start with. Start. Let's start with the childhood. Chris, where'd you grow up?

East Texas. Born in Paris. Most people don't even know that there is a city in Texas called Paris. So there is a Paris, Texas, not Paris, France. So I'm a country boy, Born there, grew up about 100 miles south of there in Tyler, Texas.

Actually. Great, great program, great football school, a lot of great connections, great contacts. I really. I really had a good, nurturing community around me. And really, to be honest, everything that happened after that really came from that nurturing community that supported me there.

Yeah, we're going to talk about that. I'm curious because I'm sure there's some people listening who would love to get this perspective. What was it like to play football, high school football in the state of Texas?

Oh, it's.

You know, I want to say it's unique, but I only know high school football in the state of Texas. I'll say this. I have, after playing in an NFL, of course, I have a number of colleagues who are now raising their kids with me and my kids here in the state of Texas. They come from California, they come from Mississippi, they come from Chicago. I have another colleague that actually comes from the east coast, Pittsburgh area. And they all say the exact same thing, is that it's insane. They say it's insane. Which for me, it's just normal. But, yeah, it's. That's what. That's kind of what. When you grow up in that society, when you grow up in it, it's kind of expected. So when you don't see that, you really get a bad taste in your mouth for the program. So it's. Yeah, it's hard for me to describe it because I've always been inside of it.

Yeah. And I remember, you know, was it Allen, Texas, when they first unveiled their $60 million high school football field?

Right, right.

It is at a different level. So.

The people who know you say, all right, Chris, was a D back. What led you, you know, playing football as a kid? Did you play multiple positions or did you always gravitate to the defensive backfield?

Yeah. So not just football of itself. Of course. I played multiple sports. Baseball was my first love, actually. Still is the top love for me. Spent a lot of time playing baseball, basketball, running, track, football. When it came to football, football was interesting in that where I grew up in Tyler.

I actually probably was not even good enough to make the blue team, you know, seventh and eighth grade. As you're in ninth grade, you have the best of your ninth graders or eighth graders, and then you have another team. The blue team was that team. The white team was the alternate team. The only thing that I would say was because I wasn't the fastest, and I say this all the time. I could not. I literally, from where you want to talk about high school football in Texas, I literally could not be part of any of the four by one teams, the four by two teams, the four by four teams on our track team, because I wasn't inside the top 15 in my high school as far as speed, however, then I go to Texas and then I'm like literally in the top five of speed at the University of Texas. So that kind of tells you the type of talent that we had. The country boys in the country schools, we had, we had a lot of talent. So what led me to be a D back was the fact that my school didn't throw much. Actually started out being a quarterback, hence also the baseball career and all the other components I like to throw. I was a throwing quarterback and my school ran the ball 90% of the time. So I transitioned from being a quarterback to being a tight end, wide receiver and D back. So that's kind of how it happened. So I kind of was molded into a DB because of what was there around me and where the coach saw the best use of my talents for the program we were running.

Yeah, it's interesting. I love, I would love your take because you talked about playing multiple sports, right. And that was definitely the theme of the day back in the day when you and I were growing up. Today you see so much specialization, right? Because the travel ball and all these clubs that these kids have to be on. What are your thoughts as a parent of a, of a youth athlete? Should they still desire to play multiple sports or have we reached a time where it is? Unfortunately you're going to have to specialize. What are your thoughts on that?

So there are two rules of thought and I still am old school. I'm just going to give you my main point initially, but also will kind of issue that counterpoint.

When you're developing as an athlete, when you're developing as a kid, when you're developing as a youth, if you specialize too early, in my opinion, you're not able to develop all of the aspects of your body, physically, mentally, intellectually, understanding concepts, games. If you specialize too early. For example, and I do this with my kids now, I have a 16 year old and a 14 year old boy and a 12 year old daughter. They're all in sports.

My 14 year old absolutely hates football, loves basketball, but many of the footwork drills and he's a fairly large kid, he's about 6, 4, about 2, 20 now he's a ninth year. Wow. So of course they want to put him on the line, which is fine for me. From football, he hates football. But the footwork drills that he gets from being having to stay in front of somebody as an offensive lineman and block somebody, that's on coming to you that's trying to either bull rush you or go around you with speed. And all those other components, those drills where you have to do it with power are drills that you will not do in basketball. You just won't do them. So what has happened is he's been able to translate those drills even though he hates football. And I'm just really having him do kind of off season football, those sort of things. This actually might be the first year he plays football if he decides to not really forcing football on him, but letting him understand you got to do all these other things. So in so doing he's able to translate that into basketball, where now he's that size and it's hard for bigger guys to go around him because he's used to guys coming at him with force and smaller guys come around, go around him because he's used to moving his feet and having to stop speed. Those are things that are different that translate to the basketball court. He's been able to develop those. So I'm just using that as an example for, you know, for us. But also, again, I am, I'm pretty much, I'm very old school when it comes to that. I really think you want to develop all aspects of understanding the mentality of sports in and of itself. The competitive comport portion of that. Now the flip side of that is unfortunately, basketball is the best example. Of course, basketball recruiting goes. It's literally at the AAU level, the camp level. That's literally where it is.

So it's very rare that kids are found in their high schools for basketball. They're literally found on the courts of the camps and the AAU programs. That's where they're found. So if you're trying to move, you do need to kind of be a part of those programs now to be seen. Same thing with football. I have one of my best friends, has a son who is a sophomore in high school football. He has not played football. He has not played varsity football as of yet. And he was already discovered and now is already being recruited by Division 1 schools because they saw him at camps and he was throwing to other athletes that were, you know, already in a Division 1 situation. So he's not played a down of varsity football yet and already under, like under the radar because he was in those camps. So that's my counterpoint. But as far as overall development, I think you definitely want to do it all.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, you and I are very aligned there. I look at my nephew, just graduated from high school and big legs, baseball player, just powerful legs. He would not have had those legs without playing hockey. You know, he got that strength in his legs from playing hockey and skating, and it's bananas. I. I got a chance to attend a couple of his games at the end of his season this year. And I was talking to a friend of mine who also had a son playing and just talking about recruiting these days. There was a dad in the. At this game who has a son going into his freshman year who's already committed to a school to play college baseball. He hasn't even entered high school yet.

Hasn't even entered high school yet.

But what we talked about was, how about the kids that blossom late? What about the kid that gets really good his. His or her junior or senior year? It's almost like they don't have a chance now because all these kids are being discovered as freshmen or sophomores.

Well, the thing about those kids, and I will say this as a caveat as well, I was actually one of those kids. I blossom.

Same here.

Really late.

You think about Jimmy Butler in basketball. Jimmy Butler blossom extremely late. He went to Tyler Junior College, which is a junior college in Tyler.

Ended up at Marquette. Right over here, going to Marquette.

Now he's, you know, everybody knows about him at Miami. Even though he's had some stops along the way. There are a number. Giannis, even though you talk, you talk about him, he didn't even play basketball. He was doing soccer. And you think about Akeem Olajuwon. These are guys that didn't really play basketball. They played soccer, doing some other things, and basketball came later. There is a pathway, but you're exactly right. It's a smaller window. It's a smaller window, but there's definitely a pathway for those. So don't give up hope. It's definitely a pathway, but you're right. It's. It's. It's a small one.

Well, let's get back to your career, because one thing I'd love to know, I can remember still sitting on a bus in Helena, Montana, going to one of our games, playing in the Milwaukee brewers organization, and. And literally sitting across me in the bus was one of my teammates, a short stop who played at Texas, and he was giving his experience of playing at Texas, and I was like, oh, and I get a chance to interview a lot of athletes, college athletes, on this podcast. But you got a chance to play D back at the University of Texas, let's call it the wealthiest athletic department in the. In the country. What was that like?

It was, it was awesome. To be honest. The big thing about me when I was a kid, things are different now. Social media and everything else, we didn't have that. I was there from 93 to 96.

We had, and we, we had success when I was there. You know, Texas has had varying levels of success, high levels of success and then period of drought which we hope we're coming out of right now.

But the biggest thing for me while I was there wasn't necessarily the program itself, even though I understood the magnitude. Well, I can't really say I understood the whole magnitude, but I understood it was a big time program was the actual colleagues that I had there. So the people that I met, the individuals that I met who are now my best friends, some of them are business partners right now, that was the most awesome opportunity in the world that any athlete or any person could have ever experienced. Now granted, I'm pretty sure and I know those opportunities are available in other colleges. To answer your question, as we've grown and as we've kind of interacted with the university in different components now, we more so understand the magnitude of, of not only our compliment accomplishments while we were there, but what was really going on behind the scenes and what was available to us after the fact then that we knew when we were there. For example, when I went to playing NFL, I met of course members from every, just about every other high profile college and I'm not going to name any colleges because I don't want to make this sound like I'm poo pooing on other colleges. I'm not. But literally their experience in college almost to a T was not the same as ours and I didn't understand it. Again, just like we talked about before, about growing up in Texas and experiencing Texas high school football and so you thought that was the norm.

Being part of Texas, the University of Texas football, you expect certain things are the norm when it comes to that. And when you find out later that it's not the norm, you're like, oh crap, we had something special. So I'm answering a question I didn't really know at the end. It was really more the friendships and the relationships that we shared there were absolutely awesome. But you can bet believe that right now we understand that that was something special in the outset of everything that was around us.

I'd love to get your opinion because when I went to play baseball at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, we were more of a mid major. We weren't high power five baseball, but every kid that Comes in. And this is probably very. It's very true. At the University of Texas, every kid is a hometown hero, right? Every kid was an all state player.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, now you're putting a whole team together. And I sat there and I looked and I go, so we got a team of all state players, all stars here. What made some excel and what made some fizzle out because they all come in with talent.

Yeah.

In your opinion, what do you think? You know, you're a guy that was able to go play at ut, then take it to the next level to have the opportunity to play in the NFL. What do you think separates those guys that went on to even get better and those that you're like, man, you have all the talent in the world. What the heck happened?

Yeah. Yeah. So I actually feel like I have a good understanding of that, only because, again, that kind of touches me and some of my teammates directly.

Before, the ranking systems were where they are now, we actually recruited three of the top five defensive backs in the country at that time. Myself, a colleague of mine, Trey Thomas out of Sugar Land, another colleague of mine, teammate Bryant Westbrook. We had a really, really good secondary, so. And we all played as freshmen. We had a real. I mean, it was. It was rare to get. At that time, it was rare to get that collection of talent for a specific position at one place. At the same time, the thing that actually made us really, really, really good was that, number one, we absolutely loved each other. It was. It was. It was a really good bond that we had, and we came from all diverse types of backgrounds. We did. But when we met on it, there was something that bonded us together, and it hasn't. It hasn't ended. The other component of that was we competed against each other like crazy, each and every last one of us. Our biggest competition wasn't against those that were outside of the organization. It was actually inside every day, nonstop. And we drove ourselves insane. To be better than my. My. My. My teammate, to be better than my roommate. Trey was actually my roommate. Bryant was as well. At one time, we were trying to be better than each other, and in so doing, we made each other better than what we would have been without each other. And I, you know, and I'll inject this other point. So we almost had four, and I'm not going to name a name or anything. It'll be hard for people, hopefully, to. To put this, because I don't want to bring there. We almost had four of the top five defensive backs in the Country. The other defensive back decided to go to a different school. A very good school, but a different school.

And because he said he didn't think. He thought it was going to be too much talent in a room he might not play. Literally. This was a. This was a quote from him. All right.

I won't stop right there because I don't want to give too many indicators to where people might figure out who first it is, because he's actually. Yeah, he's actually a really good guy, but where he went, he did not have that same drive inside of.

He lost it. Yep.

It didn't. It didn't. It didn't. It didn't catapult him to where it could have been. You follow me?

Well, what you're saying. Here's what you're saying, and it's true. In business, surround yourself with people who are at or better than where you're at, because it's going to force you to get better. If you come in and you are the star, it is easier. It's easy to lose your juice.

Without a doubt. That's exactly what I'm saying. You want to be surrounded by top talent. You want to be surrounded by top talent, and you want that top talent to share a common goal. We did share a common goal. We wanted to not only get better ourselves, but we were. We were about winning. We were about. We were about bringing it together. We were about. We fought for each other harder that we would have just fought for ourselves individually. So, yes, it was that common goal. So if you have that from a business standpoint, I know that's a segue we'll go into later. That's definitely what you want.

Well, and I think there's a big lesson there. I mean.

This is the problem I have with the transfer portal these days. There's a lot of good reasons for the portal, but I see a lot of kids use it as a. I didn't win the job, so instead of competing, I'm just gonna go somewhere else. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, they're doing that three or four times. And you wanna. What it's all about. What room are you putting yourself in? If you are in a room where everybody is killing it and they're as good, if not better than you, you're only gonna get better. But if you show up in the room where you are the superstar, how are you gonna get better from there? And that. I have seen so many kids who want to go that route, to be the star, and it they don't ever level up much after that because of the fact they did not surround themselves with the people who are going to force them to get better. This is a good. This is a good segue because you then had a chance to play, to live out a childhood dream of a lot of kids. You got to play in the NFL?

Yep, I did.

And I laugh because I. You hear this all the time. You think about some of the recent teams in the NFL, like the Lions or the Browns, those teams that went 1 in 15 and, or oh, and 16. And every year that happens, there's a conversation, could Alabama beat the Cleveland Browns? And it's like the level of talent, even for the worst team in the NFL is so much better than the best team in college football. What was that like for you going up? What did you see as far as the level of wide receiver talent? Because your job is to defend these guys. Was that a huge adjustment when you made it to the league?

So.

Let me. Let me try to explain their answer. Dance this this way. So you go into rookie camp, right? So you go into rookie rookie camp initially. That's what all. When you, when you get drafted, everybody's going to spend a week with just the rookies. And you're playing rookie camp with already some elite receivers because they were drafted as well. And it's kind of cool, you know, like, like, man, you are. You know, this. This guy really is pretty good. This guy's really is. You. You see them in practice, it's a little bit different. Then you go into preseason camp with all the veterans, and at that point, from rookie camp to preseason camp, it goes up a notch already. And you're like, oh, okay, this is what we're dealing with every day. Now, granted, these two matches that we going on are already exponentially higher than where we were even in a championship game of college. Okay, so these two levels are already higher. Then you actually start playing preseason games, all right? And now people are engaged even more. They're in it even more. Some people are battling for jobs, and you're like, okay, this is even faster than what we thought it was. So before you've been in the NFL for six weeks, you've already graduated up three levels in terms of the level of competition. Then you go into regular season, the first regular season game. The level of competition is already extremely higher than the highest level of competition of preseason, which was already extremely higher than the highest level of competition from. From college. Then if you're lucky enough, which we. We were lucky enough to Do. So we had some pretty good teams. You go to the playoffs, and it's just a whole new ball game. It's. It's a whole new level. So to answer your question, the level of competition.

When you talk about talent, remember I was telling you before going all the way back to my high school days, I literally couldn't get on the field if it was just about talent itself. Speed, size. I couldn't run for my track teams. I mean, I was running four threes, but I literally couldn't run for my track teams that tell you level of talent. There's. That level of talent follows you throughout your career. So I do want to say that the speed that we had at the University of Texas, we had a guy named Lavelle Pinkney that was running four threes, and he was 240. He played wide receiver. We had another guy named Mike Adams, he was running low four threes. I mean, we, we, we. We had talent. There was talent there. But as you keep going up, the level of talent does not change. It gets. It gets a little bit better. So you do have those guys that are. You actually, you have more of it. That's. That's one thing. But their level of being a pro changes. So instead of having a guy that says, okay, yeah, I can run 4, 2, 4, 3, and I can run by you, remember, we're elite two on the defensive side. We're used to that now. So instead of doing that, this guy knows that if you open up with your left, that's how specific it goes. If you open up in your backpedal with one step one way, he knows that he's going to give you one movement one way, because he knows you're a little bit slower turning from your left to your right than your right to your left. That's how specific it gets. In an NFL, you know, each step you train to review, you do videotapes, you're saying, on tapes. For example, I played with Bill Belichick in New England. We wrote a book report on receivers and their releases. We wrote book reports. That's how specific it gets. So then you see people like Tyreek Hill, who is extremely fast, but he knows that if you open up a certain way, he knows which way he's going to break to give a certain move to then break into his own route to give you, to make it the best advantage for him and the most disadvantaged for you. That's where it changes. That's where it gets. That's where you see this is, this is not A game.

Well. And I think what you're saying is you hit a point where the gap in skill set gets so small.

Yeah.

It becomes a game of strategy.

It comes.

It's those little nuances, the steps, the how they open. You know, this is what I think makes pro baseball a little different. Right. You get drafted or you sign as a free agent, you start at single A, then you go to double, then you go to triple, and then you make it. Where in the NFL? It's like you get it, you get drafted, you're right into training camp and then you make it. You know, it's a huge jump right away. So before we wrap up the football career, and for the folks who do not know, you spent, you know, your NFL career with the Patriots, the Bengals and the Texas where he retired.

Two questions I have just as a sports fan. Number one, fastest receiver you ever had to cover?

Oh, let's see. Fastest receiver I ever had to cover. Oh, there are a number of really, really, really, really fast receivers out there that I had to recover.

So.

Marvin Harrison would probably be. I would put him at the top of one of the. He's definitely one of the fastest. Steve Smith as well. But I'd say Marvin, for the routes that they used to run, it became a game of speed because they used to run some match protection with Indianapolis that gave him the full feel to run on. And they gave Peyton a whole lot of time. I'd say Marvin Harrison.

Okay. Then he brought up Chris Carter. You said six to all of 240. It made me think of David Boston with the Chargers, similar size. Who is the most physical receiver you have covered, where you're like, this guy is going to give me everything it got. From a physical standpoint, I'd have to.

Say Terrell Owens is one of the. Yeah, one of the more physical guys. He wasn't. He wasn't the fastest, but he was. He was about 220 as well. But he was. He was faster than Chris Carter, a little bit more athletic than Chris Carter, but he was also physical.

He played physical and he was a chiseled 220. David Boston. Yeah, right.

Okay. David Boston as well.

I think he was 240 or 250.

He played out in Arizona. Exactly.

Yeah. Just insane. Okay, so whoever thought, here you are, Nice NFL career. You decide. I'm gonna go sell health insurance. So today you're the founder of Benal Oil Insurance Agency in Houston, Texas. For the folks listening in, you know, there are a lot of advisors listening in.

What.

What Made you decide to get into insurance.

So insurance itself, as a particular subset of what we're doing now, came as more of a need versus me pushing myself into the insurance. So started out my career actually owning staffing firms. I founded a staffing firm. This was 99 when we started a staffing firm. And I also owned at that time a gym. So start a personal gym. So to kind of get to where we are with the health insurance.

Transition from those components into working and training and assisting with teams within peos. And the biggest component to everything that I was dealing with within small businesses was health insurance. Health insurance reared its head daily, yearly, quarterly, and it was. It was nonstop issues with making sure that things were not only provided, but they were kind of provided at a level that could be afforded at a certain. At a certain level. So the specific transition to starting Benny Loyal, which actually, you know, recently happened, was to address.

What I saw was initially a drop that became a poor. And now it's just. The bucket is just being launched on small business owners in terms of what's happening in the health insurance market and their employees and cost and actual value for that. So that's what kind of got me to say, hey, we gotta address this one issue right now which can be addressed and it's available to be addressed, but let's go ahead and address this.

Yeah, I mean, that's where we were gonna spend the rest of our time here is talking about small business. You know, when you look at small. Small businesses still make up the vast majority of America. Right. Where do you see limitations? So for those small businesses, I'm one of them myself. You're one of them. Where do you see limitations when it comes to something like providing affordable health insurance for a small business?

Yeah. So. Oh, that's. That by itself is its own podcast. Right. I mean, literally, we could talk for hours on that. I've been in the small business space for over 20 years. When I say you've been in the small business space talking about the things that we're talking about.

Provider and operator.

Exactly. Exactly.

When you talk about what. What's really the hindrances and the areas of which. There's a lot. There's a lot. The first one I want to say is really talk. It's just knowledge. It's really the biggest component that is hindering small businesses is knowledge. Because nobody. Let me change that. Very few are catering to small businesses. For example, you just said small businesses are a large subset of the population. Yeah. Over 40% of employees in America work for companies that have less than 200 employees. So almost half of America are in small businesses. That's, that's, that stat by itself is like, okay, wow, we didn't really know that. And then when you see that most of the resources for marketing are being spent on that other 55, 60% of the market, you recognize why small business owners aren't able to cater to their employees like they should. In 2022, there was over $22 billion of digital digital healthcare spend for, for businesses. Guess where? Well, digital healthcare, investment, vc, private equity, guess where, where that went to that population that was not small businesses. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. So some of the things that are available, they are available to small businesses and they just have no idea about them. Some of the other things require a little bit of automation, a little bit of proactivity from brokers like ourselves to actually bring those to the market.