Exclusive Interview With Donovan Pyle, Health Compass Consulting

Donovan Pyle is passionate about improving the financial and physical health of businesses, employees, and communities.

After working on both the Carrier and Brokerage side of the insurance industry, Donovan identified a fundamental misalignment in the market.

Although the primary job of employee benefits brokers is to mitigate risks by optimizing their client’s health and welfare investments, traditional brokerage firms make more money when their client’s unit costs go up.

This misalignment inspired Donovan to found Health Compass Consulting — a next generation employee benefits consulting and brokerage firm whose transparent performance-based business model aligns with employers to deliver measurable value to stakeholders.

Today, Pyle holds the highest designation awarded by the National Association of Health Underwriters, is one of twenty consultants in the U.S. certified by the Validation Institute.

Here is an exclusive Interview with Donovan Pyle:

What motivated you to start Health Compass Consulting? How did the idea come about?

I joined the employee benefits industry to help improve the physical and financial health of businesses and communities, but throughout my tenure at an insurance Carrier and a traditional brokerage firm, I discovered that the financial incentives between us and our clients were completely misaligned. In the traditional model, the more an employer’s healthcare costs go up per employee, the more money the brokerage firm makes.

I couldn’t go on in good conscience that way and had no choice but to create a new business model that enables us to align ourselves with our clients and their goals. This alignment is a major reason why our clients are able to deliver more value to their employees while saving $500 to $5,000 dollars per employee, per year, in the process.

What was your mission at the beginning of starting your business?

Most people intuitively know this, but healthcare inflation is one of leading causes of wage stagnation and bankruptcy in the United States, and the financial stress it’s creating is fuelling much of the political unrest we experience today. The average American currently spends 30% of their lifetime earnings on healthcare and health insurance, and what’s really shocking is that 25% of everything spent on healthcare is considered waste, and medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S.

Since employers provide healthcare benefits to over 150,000 million Americans, our mission at Health Compass is to partner with employers and help them scale solutions that predictably and measurably solve many of the cost and quality issues mentioned above — while delivering more value to employees.

What do you attribute your success to? Is there a trait you have or a person who helped you along the way?

For better and worse, I’ve rarely taken safe or predictable paths in life. I believe we all have a civic and moral responsibility to identify and tackle complex societal problems with whatever gifts God gave us, and I try to keep my “why” at the center of everything I do.

When times get tough, what would you say motivates you to keep going?

To not hit the snooze button and to keep fighting for your goals. – As benefits consultants and brokers, we have a profound opportunity to improve the financial and physical health of employees, their families, and communities. It is a serious responsibility and one that we do not take lightly. We owe it to clients, our community, and our country to keep going when things get tough — which they often do.

Employees are one of the most important players to succeed in business. What do you look for in an employee?

The first things we look for are character and soft-skills. Without those, nothing else matters. Our industry is highly dynamic, so the second thing we look for are a candidate’s hard skills and their ability to adapt and learn as the landscape changes.

What is unique about your business? Is there a competitive advantage that you have over the rest?

Our business model gives us the financial freedom to solve our client’s problems without investor or vendor influence. The solutions needed to solve most of our country’s healthcare problems are readily available, and our biggest advantage is that we have the freedom, expertise, and experience needed to scale solutions that actually work.

Have you ever gotten a disappointed client or customer? If so, how did you handle the situation?

Health Compass is a general contractor for benefits, and we’ve certainly made some mistakes along the way. The worst ones happened when we placed clients with vendors who over-promised and under-delivered. It was an awful experience, but it taught us a couple things:

1. we had to improve our vetting process for vendors and
2. we need to be very intentional with respect to how we manage expectations with clients.

Is there a type of marketing that has worked amazingly for Health Compass Consulting? If so, how did you stumble upon it?

There is so much sales pressure in society that people really just want to learn about solutions on their own or be referred to a solution by someone they trust. An opportunity lies in the fact that there is a lot of confusion about how the benefits and insurance industries work, so we’ve invested heavily in creating content that educates the market about these topics so they can make better business decisions. We do webinars, newsletters, and videos, and the market responds quickly when our messaging doesn’t resonate.

Is there any resource or resources that helped you on your journey to becoming a business owner?

I’m an information hound, so I’m constantly absorbing and synthesizing information that will help Health Compass serve the marketplace better. While Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and my parents laid a philosophical and moral foundation, I’m routinely inspired by my family, friends, and local community. The 6 years I spent working for a large corporation also served me well.

What are the three best pieces of advice that you would give to anyone starting a business? What do they need to know from the very beginning?

1. Make sure you identify a real problem people are facing and have a viable way to solve it…without that, you’re probably wasting your time.
2. Create a business plan to solve that problem, and make sure you know your numbers inside and out.
3. Protect your cash flow but be ready to invest heavily in your company when opportunities arise.