Should Your Small Business Employer Offer You Benefits?

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Recently the question was posed to me: should a small business (5 people) offer insurance to their staff? The person asking had an independent plan but wanted a greater peace of mind from employer sponsored health insurance. This person was 30 years old.

Yes, the business should offer it, but don’t expect great things.

I’m in Tennessee, attached is my rate schedule. As long as two employees have coverage, we are a group. Owners count towards those two people.

The image is a document page that appears to be part of a health insurance plan proposal. The page is divided into several sections with headings and tabulated information. At the top, there are two tabs highlighted. The first tab on the left is labeled "Current Plan" and underneath it, the details read "Silver 1165 ($3000/$4500/50%)". The tab on the right is labeled "Pharmacy Features" and includes pharmacy details "10 / 35 / 50 Copay after Deductible" and "Rx Formulary Essential". Below this is a section titled "Benefit Overview" with five columns: "Office Visit" with "50% after Deductible". "PhysicianNow" with "50% after Deductible". "Urgent Care" with "50% after Deductible". "IP Hospital" with "50% after Deductible". "Emergency Room" with "$500 + Ded/Coin". The next large section is "Age/Rate Information", which is a table with ages ranging from 0-64+ and corresponding monthly rates for the insurance plan. The ages are divided into three columns: The first column lists ages 0-14 to 30 with rates from $240.71 to $357.14. The second column lists ages 31 to 47 with rates from $364.69 to $491.81. The third column lists ages 48 to 64+ with rates from $514.47 to $943.98. The bottom of the image contains a "Commission Disclosure" note stating that the rates include standard commissions and may include additional compensation, and advises contacting a broker or BCBS representative for questions. The document footer indicates "Page 4 of 15" and includes a status/quote pending number "00082173". There is a footnote indicating that the plan includes "Essential Health Benefits: Yes", "Minimum Essential Coverage: Yes", and "Minimum Value: Yes".

A 30yo is free, $12/day.

The catch is that it is a high deductible plan (HDP) so out-of-pocket costs will be $4500/person if you max out benefits, or $9000/family.

If you compare plans on HealthCare.gov I think you’ll find the rates are comparable, but you can get worse-but-cheaper plans. The real upside here is risk reduction and tax benefits if you have an HSA compatible plan and you itemize, maybe $1600 in tax savings*.

Your overall risk profile isn’t likely to change much as long as you have some level of benefits — but check the details**. The ACA mandates minimum coverage for ALL plans, meaning the total-out-pocket costs (premiums + medical expenses) are within a set range.

Vision and dental, for whatever reason, are typically inexpensive.

Bottom line:

1. Insurance is a raw deal no matter what.

2. You may or may not be better of with an independent plan vs a group plan

3. IMHO, there isn’t a good reason for your employer not to offer a plan unless the costs are significantly higher where you live. And I say this AS a business owner with 6 employees and 2 owners.

*If you max out the family contribution limit of $8300, your potential tax savings are $8300 * [Tax Bracket]. You can also invest extra money in your HSA, allowing you to grow the money tax free for healthcare expenses.

**Prescriptions, specialties, coverage for your preferred doctor/hospital, possible travel for covered specialists depending on your location. Absolutely know what hospitals are covered no matter what, the “wrong” hospital can cost you thousands and thousands compared to the “right” hospital across the street.

Produce8

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Produce8 cold called me and managed to set up a 20 minute demo. I guess they caught me on a good day because I spoke for a few minute. Produce8 is a young company, a few months at most into their public launch phase.

The pitch is that the move to mostly-digital (not in office) work has made us less productive, prone to burnout, etc.

This isn’t a hard pitch for business owners to appreciate.

So they are out to help us fix it! Here is how they describe their benefits:

Produce8 uncovers patterns that represent focus, distractions, burnout, and the time it takes to reset after context switching. We use the interactions teams have with their applications to help them address the challenges of the digital workplace.

Cool. What does that mean?

Quick aside: I did get permission during the demo for a blog article

Let’s start with the insights: there are four and they are…

  • How much time you worked
  • How much of it was screen time
  • What your digital intensity score is, which looks like screen time divided by working hours.
  • Focus score

The first three are self-explanatory, I don’t recall the definition of the focus score but I assume it scores context-switching by frequency and duration of app changes.

That’s it for insights.

Then you have metrics. Which is essentially how much time was spent in what app and when, across a time range of your choice. You can view it for your team or yourself. You can choose a time range for both insights and metrics.

Here is workspace (aka team) view of metrics:

They have an official list of integrations, but it is a browser extension and desktop application you download to track. ConnectWise has an API integration, everything else is based off the browser extension and desktop application.

So, what makes this different than other solutions?

Their answer: They don’t “spy” on you. It isn’t screen recording. Browser history is optional, you can even filter by website. If I don’t want to report my Facebook activity I don’t have to, but I can still report my productive time on Slack.

The metrics are “un-opinionated” which is a marketing way of saying they only present the raw data. There is no analysis.

And, as they like to bring up, they have some of the same VC backers as IT Glue, Scalepad and Quoter.

That’s it. That’s the entire product.

My Thoughts

1. This isn’t marketed towards MSPs 1or all the screenshots would have Teams, Outlook, OneNote and the PSA/RMM of your choice. My understanding is that the backers have experience in the channel so they are selling (not marketing) there first.

I also don’t understand the real value prop to MSPs: we’re going to see that our day is spent in Teams, Outlook, PSA/RMM etc., and that context switching happens often. Super often, especially for anyone working support.

This doesn’t mean that there is zero value. In a very limited free trial we did I was surprised to see how much time one of my techs spent in Outlook, but the rest of the days I looked at followed the pattern I expected. A team member was surprised to see how much time he spent working.

2. They aren’t anywhere first to market — see Toggl Track which has been around for years. Produce8 lacks serious differentiation. Worse, Toggl and others include a richer yet of features for the same price ($18/user/month).

3. Their target should be enterprise, not MSPs. VC guys: when you realize I saved you 6 months and tens of thousands of dollars just send me a check for half the savings.

I don’t know how many MSP employees (users) there are in North America, out of 15,000-ish MSPs2 but under half a million seems like a decent guess. That’s an OK SAM, but the TAM will be much, much lower. On top of that, the average MSP is 4 or 5 people. Produce8 is looking at $100/mo/MSP for the average sale. That means they need 1,000 “average” MSPs to get to $100k in MRR3, a full 7-10% of the market. Ouch.

In addition, see point #1 above, they’ll have a very hard time demonstrating value to MSPs. Again, we know what our guys are in and that they context switch all the time. Welcome to the Channel.

As of 2019, the Fortune 500 employed nearly 30 million people. In addition, there will be a much higher need at the enterprise level.

Very few MSPs make it to the point where a middle-management layer is required. You must have a pretty high gross revenue before that is the case. I’d guess $3m-$5m for anything beyond an operations supervisor and a marketing coordinator. This means management and the owner will know what people are into just by walking around the office.

Enterprise is different: there are so many management levels that even midlevel management doesn’t have a clear view of what the people doing the work spend their time on. Produce8 can give them a window into that world. Even departments in a large company will require more monitoring if they want to keep tabs on everyone have analytical data of the workday.

The MRR potential is so, so much higher. Even cutting prices by 50%, the number of companies/departments they need to bring on board to match the $100k MRR is substantially less. 4 to 5 times fewer customers will bring in the same amount of MRR.

Maybe this is the long-term plan for Produce8, I suggest they make it their short-term plan.

And for the love of MRR, market that your app works with Microsoft Apps.

I reached out to Produce 8 for comment, I have not heard by back publish time.

Screenshots

Screenshots provided by the Produce8 media kit.

Produce8 Insights view. Source Produce8 media kit.
Produce8 Slack view. Source Produce8 media kit.
Produce8 weekly activity view. Source Produce8 media kit.
Produce8 Team view. Source Produce8 media kit.
Produce8 Team view. Source Produce8 media kit.

Screenshot sources are from Produce8’s media kit, which is wonderfully done. I was shown live data during the demo and it looked just like the screenshots.

  1. I really think they think like a SaaS company. Their media kit is on Notion, which is basically OneNote for developers and creator types. The integrations highlight products, like Asana, G Suite, Zoom, QBO, Jira, Trello, Mailchimp, Monday.com, Github, Basecamp, Zapier and Dropbox. The productivity ecosystem outside of the M365 platform. ↩︎
  2. I’ve heard estimates from 10,000 to 40,000 on the number of North American MSPs. The lower bounds seems more believable to me, although if you count every microbusiness that does monthly contracts maybe you will move higher, but that isn’t my focus here. ↩︎
  3. What’s special about $100k in MRR? Nothing, it’s just a round number that both MSPs and SaaS companies already have a conception of, and what it means. ↩︎

Patrick Stewart on how Fictional Characters Can Make You a Better Person

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Earlier this year I began ever-so-slowly working my way through Les Miserables. The first section is devoted to the story of Monseigneur Bienvenu1, the bishop who will later give Jean Valjean some silver — the only place you see Bienvenu in the musical.

But in those first 80-odd pages you might think that the book was only going to be about Monseigneur Bienvenu. The character is so good in such a believable way it made me want to be more like him, which raised the question: what does it mean for you to want to become a better person, in the way of a fictional character?

Bishop Myriel aka Monseigneur Bienvenu, depicted by Gustave Brion, 1862. By Gustave Brion – Maison de Victor Hugo, Public Domain,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74553495

Bishop Myriel, depicted by Gustave Brion, 1862. By Gustave Brion - Maison de Victor Hugo, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74553495
Patrick Stewart speaking at the 2019 San Diego Comic Con International, for “Star Trek: Picard”, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.
By Gage Skidmore

In an interview with NPR, Patrick Stewart is asked if his iconic character from Star Trek — Jean Luc Picard — made him a better person, his answer:

It gave me an idea of how I might become a better person, yes. I was able to absorb that and make those feelings a strong and firm part of my life.

Emphasis mnine.

I love that idea. For me personally, I don’t need to become more like Victor Hugo’s imaginary character, but I can use the character as an ideal to light the way to being a better person.

  1. Bishop Muriel is the character’s name and formal title. He is known to his community as Monseigneur Bienvenu, which can be translated as  “My Lord Welcome” or “Welcome, My Lord,” where ‘My Lord,’ is a title in the sense of a bishop or king. ↩︎

⚠️ 🤔

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Alt text: Screenshot of a news article from "The Washington Post" titled "Election 2024: Some Democrats worry Biden's team is ignoring political warning signs." The subtitle adds, "Of particular concern to the president’s allies are indications that his support among Black voters, who were critical to his victory in 2020, may be softening." The article is by Tyler Pager and Dan Balz. Below the article headline is a link to "MORE COVERAGE" with a related story titled "Analysis: An ominous poll for Democrats, and what it says about a Biden alternative." The time at the top of the screen indicates 7:50, and there is a Wi-Fi icon with the signal strength and battery indicator showing 47% remaining.

They worry because this is clearly true. The D political machine is ignoring the risks, or burying them, out of fear of rocking the boat and losing the election.

Nothing But the Truth?

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Politico has a medium-length article out today that reports testimonies and verified emails that contradict President Biden’s stronger denials regarding his relationships with the family businesses.

None of it would be the smoking gun that congressional Republicans are looking for to impeach Biden. However, it does cast a negative light on Joe Biden and will impeach the character that he and Democrats more broadly have built up of himself.

The allegedly false denials will cause way more of a headache than the actual events denied1. I think he could have come clean in 2020 and these things would 1000 news cycles ago, nearly forgotten. It isn’t just Joe Biden’s denials: the long-term insistence that the stolen Hunter Biden laptop is a big nothing-burger is appears untrue.

I don’t imagine that there is any Democrat who went on record refuting the importance of that laptop care to revisit those statements now.

Drip drip drip of small-lies and half-truths are a problem for any campaign2 but it is potentially disastrous for a campaign where the winner will be chosen by those on the margins. The handful of Americans who — somehow — have not made up their mind up either candidate.

I think Joe Biden is poor candidate for president and the Democrats would fare better if he decided not to run again and endorsed someone else.

  1. I don’t see anything in the article the promotes the allegation that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor looking into a Ukrainian company with ties to Hunter Biden. That would be a guaranteed impeachment. ↩︎
  2. Except, possibly for Trump, where bigger is always better. ↩︎

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