Colton Storla recounts leaving ambitions in strength conditioning after long hours and pivoting into health insurance through a college mentor. During onboarding he learned about benefits (401k, cafeteria plans) while lacking prior coverage, got licensed, managed a small book of business with major carriers, and became motivated to dig deeper into rising healthcare costs.
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I started my career out of college, wanted to get into strength conditioning and train college athletes. That took a very quick halt. It was long hours. And I just decided, you know, probably make this a hobby, should probably make that a hobby instead. And so just kind of took some chances on getting into, you know, health insurance or benefits and had a mentor from college that he's like, you know, I got this guy that would probably hire you. So I took that chance. And I remember, you know, during my onboarding where they're going through your health insurance. I didn't have any health insurance, by the way, and all the rest of your benefits and 401k, and they're like, yeah, we've got this cafeteria plan. And it was like, oh, yeah, free meals. I was like, boy, was I wrong. So I knew nothing. Was not licensed. Got licensed, and then, you know, they throw a small book of business at you, predominantly Blue Cross and Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare. You know the story. And I quickly realized I was not everybody's best friend around renewal time. And you, you know, try and communicate to your clients, you know, your costs are going up. You know, you can do some cost shifting, you can eat the cost. Either way, somebody was losing, whether it was the employer or the employee. So you try and turn to, you know, the BUCA type kids carriers and get answers on why costs are going up and they're going to throw all these fluffy words at you. So that kind of motivated me to start digging into this whole health care thing. It really perked my interest.