Colton Storla fell into employee benefits almost by accident. A former college football player who had planned to become a strength and conditioning coach for a living, he took a job in benefits because the timing was right and the boss seemed solid. Nine years later, he is one of a growing number of advisers working to move employers away from the status quo and toward self-funded, community-driven health plans. In conversation with Mehul Agarwal, Founder of HealthCompiler, Colton traced the arc from his first years learning the industry to the work he does today: helping employers take control of their healthcare spend.
An Accidental Career
Colton played multiple sports growing up, played college football at Coe College in Iowa, and fell in love with strength and conditioning. He interned with the University of Iowa football program after graduation and seriously considered pursuing a master's in exercise science to make it a career.
Then came the fork in the road. A college mentor connected him with a gentleman who worked in employee benefits. Colton knew him loosely; this gentleman's wife had been one of his psychology professors. It was a small-world connection, but the job was available, and the timing was right.
"I didn't really know what I was getting myself into," he says. "I didn't even have health insurance myself at the time. Being 22 years old, it's just not something I worried about."
He got licensed, learned from the advisers around him, and started writing business. There was no formal playbook. "You don't read a book and figure things out," he says. "You learn by doing."
The Moral Dilemma
Two years in, the work started to wear on him in a different way. The mechanics of selling were fine. But every renewal cycle brought the same conversation: costs were going up, benefits were getting worse, and the person on the other end of the phone was not happy to hear from him.
"I was just having that moral dilemma," he says. "Why do people pay me to do this? I'm just delivering bad news on behalf of the insurance carriers I represent."
He could see what the numbers meant in practice. Employees rationing medications because of co-pays. People avoiding care altogether because of the financial burden. Coverage that was supposed to provide access was instead creating barriers to it.
Rather than chase the next commission check, Colton started looking externally. That search connected him with a David Contorno article in Benefits Pro, Health Rosetta, the Free Market Medical Association, and the Ortho Forum, a network of advisers who were approaching employer health plans differently. He asked questions, collaborated, and learned from people who had already broken from the status quo.
"Fast forward nine years," he says, "I'm still continuing to learn every single day."
What Employers Still Get Wrong
Most employers, Colton says, have been conditioned by their brokers and insurance carriers to believe they are seeing all available options at renewal. They are usually seeing all the options that particular broker knows about, which is not the same thing.
The default assumption is that brand-name carriers offer the best networks, the best pricing, and the greatest discounts. Employers worry that if the logo on the insurance card changes, the coverage will not be as good.
The other common hesitation is around self-funding itself. Some employers have heard horror stories, and Colton acknowledges there is a right and wrong way to do it. But most of the employers who had bad experiences simply treated their self-funded plan like any other health plan. They did not change the culture around it.
"When you self-fund, it's a culture shift," he says. "You need to make sure that everybody is buying in and knows that you're paying your own claims." Employees still walk around thinking insurance paid for their surgery. It did not. The money came from their paychecks and their employer's profits. Without the right tools and education, no self-funded plan will succeed.
That is where the cost containment mechanisms come in: nurse navigation, direct primary care, pharmacy programs, and the infrastructure to help employees become better consumers of healthcare.
The Shift Happening Now
Four or five years ago, Colton estimates maybe one in ten employers was open to looking outside the box. That number has changed considerably. Record increases from insurance carriers and stop-loss carriers in January 2026 have forced the conversation. There is no sign of it slowing down for 2027.
At the same time, the conversation is being shaped by voices outside the brokerage world. Mark Cuban has been vocal. Physicians are speaking up. Social media has put a spotlight on corners of healthcare that were previously invisible to most employers.
"We've basically optimized every single expense in our cost stack as a business," Colton says, "but we haven't seemed to figure out this healthcare piece."
More RFPs are going out. More employers are asking questions they did not ask before. The door that stayed shut for years is finally starting to open.
Why DPC Resonates with Employers
For the employers Colton works with, direct primary care is increasingly part of the conversation. The logic is straightforward: employers are paying significant premiums for access to healthcare, but their employees are waiting two, three, or four weeks to see a physician. Many resort to urgent care or the emergency room, which drives up costs further.
DPC changes that equation. Employees get same-day or next-day access to a physician who knows them, listens to them, and is not operating under the pressure of a fee-for-service model. The ROI shows up not just in claims reduction, but in productivity, employee satisfaction, and retention.
"They finally have a relationship with a doctor that they feel is listening to them," Colton says.
Some of Colton's best referrals come from DPC physicians themselves. An executive discovers DPC, uses it personally, and then asks how to offer it to all employees. DPC practices connect that executive with Colton's team to build a plan around it.
Building Community-Connected Health Plans
Colton and his colleague run a podcast called Community Connected Health, and the name reflects their broader philosophy. Built on the Health Rosetta mindset, the idea is to construct health plans around local resources: independent orthopedic groups, independent radiology, direct primary care, direct specialty care, and direct pharmacy options.
"It's how we can remove as many middlemen from the equation as possible," he says, "and create this community-connected health plan mindset. We believe the best healthcare is local."
When employers work with traditional carriers, much of the capital spent on healthcare gets extracted from the community. Colton's approach is to bring employers, healthcare organizations, and employees to the same table, keeping dollars circulating locally rather than flowing to publicly traded insurance companies whose interests are built around profitability, not patient outcomes.
He brings DPC physicians and direct specialty providers into discovery meetings and proposal presentations, reinforcing the concept with employers who may be hearing about it for the first time.
Advice for Those Entering the Benefits Space
Getting licensed is not the hard part, Colton says. You study for a test, pass it, contract with vendors, and you are in. The barrier is not entry; it is impact.
The industry has its share of large established players, and many advisers within those firms do solid work. But there are also plenty who are on autopilot, recycling the same fully insured renewals year after year without questioning whether there is a better way.
"There's a good way to make a living in this business for sure," he says. "But do you want to be part of the problem, or do you want to be part of the solution?"
Nine years ago, Colton took a chance on an industry he knew nothing about. Today, he is helping employers redesign their health plans from the ground up, building them around local providers, real-time data, and the belief that the people paying for healthcare should actually have a say in how it works.