John Barnes, CEO of Pendleton Street Business Advisors, cut his health insurance premiums by nearly 30% after switching to Guru's PEO. He gained new benefits like identity protection, legal insurance, and pet insurance that his company couldn't afford before.
Hey, I'm John Barnes. I'm the CEO of Pendleton Street Business Advisors. Well, just as a business owner, just honestly, the, like, the yearly process of handling our benefit renewals, haggling with the agents, reviewing policies, looking at the differences, It just took a ridiculous amount of time to work through all those things just to provide competitive benefits for our team. I got tired of it. The biggest difference was we are paying less for our benefits. The first year we started working with Guru with PEO, we saved almost 30% on our health insurance premiums. I just know that they're doing what I used to do. They're just better at it, and I end up just getting the results. Literally how much money we saved just by using a different method, I guess a PEO, and kind of going to the market together as a, as a larger group made a shocking amount of difference for our very small firm. I would say you're probably on the fence just because you want to be on the fence. In other words, if you're a small business, you will save money by joining a bigger group. Also, one of the things that we got out of it is we are able to offer more benefits. In other words, identity protection, legal insurance. I think even pet insurance is, is in the suite of products now that we just would not have been able to offer our team had we not joined up with Guru and using their PEOs. One example just is, is the cost savings itself. We were seeing kind of in the afterworld when we were going as a PEO as opposed to just a small group just approaching the market. I think another thing was just the variety of benefits that we were able to offer. Those are two that come to mind right now. I really haven't tried a variety of solutions. I mean, we have been approaching the markets on our own for about 6 years, and every year was the same old thing. You know, August rolls around, we have a September renewal. So August rolls around and, and you start the, the dance with the big carrier here in our state. That's the only game in town for us to deal with. You know, you're working with an agent that you think is trying to do their best, but in fact you have to go to them and tell them 3 or 4 times to do better. It's another Another process that as a business owner I have to deal with in addition to trying to grow my business and deal with all the other things to serve our clients. Matt Vadie's big, beautiful bald head. You know, honestly, we worked with them for payroll and all of our HR things since day one of our firm's inception. And when they said, "Hey, we can do more stuff for you the Guru way." we were all in. I mean, I didn't need to shop around. I didn't need to look around because I already had a lot of experience with Matt and his team. It had been really, really good. And so when they said they could do more stuff, that's all I needed to hear. Well, I guess what I would tell that person is it really can get better. You're gonna have to change some stuff. I mean, we had to change the old way we were doing it, which was just approaching the markets on our own, trying to find the best deals, shopping around and and all that stuff. You're gonna have to change probably some renewal periods and things like that that have to get resynced. Essentially, you're gonna have to change some logistics, but I think what you get in return is just peace of mind, ease of use, and just better benefits. It's a good trade.
