Sarasota-Manatee Regional Winner

Sarasota-Manatee Regional Winner

John Williams

President, Gould & Lamb Healthcare Consutants

If John Williams were a chess player, he would be a grand master.

The 30-year-old president of Gould & Lamb Healthcare Consultants has consistently made his company an industry leader by anticipating changes in federal regulation long before competitors can prepare for them.

"You and I can probably see two or three moves ahead. But John can see 12, 14 even 20 moves ahead," says Nick Collins, vicepresident of strategic services for Gould & Lamb.

It's not an easy task, especially in an industry so young and unknown. The Medicare Set Aside field, made up of a handful of companies that provide consulting services to workers' compensation insurers, is less than five years old.

Take how Williams set up his company for the Medicare drug prescription benefit that took effect in January. The plan creates added costs to insurance carriers that settle workers' compensation cases.

"He had his ear to the ground," Collins says. "In 2003, when [President George] Bush signed the prescription drug bill, he got ready right away. So when it happened, we already had a team in place while our competitors were scurrying around."

That team included a division of pharmacists and pain management professionals that Williams hired to advise Gould & Lamb's clients on the changes.

"Timing is everything," Williams says. "I cannot fathom why [our competitors] didn't prepare for this legislation."

Being prepared has helped Williams capture 35% of the market share for his company. The prescription drug benefit alone resulted in a 65% increase in client referrals for Gould and Lamb.

Collins says, "I've never known anybody like John. He has the complete package. He's got the entrepreneurial vision skills, and he can execute."

Yet despite possessing qualities any budding entrepreneur would envy, Williams didn't start out aspiring to be a businessman or an entrepreneur.

Human interaction

After high school, he entered the mechanical engineering program at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His parents suggested that it might be a good field for him.

During his junior year, however, he decided to drop out of the program, saying engineering just wasn't for him. It didn't provide interaction with human beings, he says.

He didn't founder for long. In 1996, he took a job at CorVel Corp., where his mom had helped him get a low-level position reviewing medical bills for insurance companies.

He was there for only two years, but he advanced quickly, learning the medical billing and coding industry.

Then, at 24, his entrepreneurial skills, not to mention his dedication, were put to the test for the first time when he started work for HNC Insurance Solutions. The company hired him to run its St. Louis location. His challenge: Turn around the operation or HNC would lose a $50 million contract with its sole client, Fireman's Fund Insurance Co.

Williams had to fix staffing problems in less than a year, hiring, firing and managing employees many times his senior. In the end, he accomplished his task and the company was able to keep its client.

"What I like to say," Williams says, "is, 'If I'm not the best at what I do, then why do it at all?'"

That same philosophy has carried him through the rest of his career.

'Back to work'

In 2001, he joined Gould & Lamb, a company started by his mom and stepfather, Janice and Mike Gould.

The same year, the federal government chose to enforce the Medicare Secondary Payer statute for workers' compensation insurers.

Enacted by Congress in 1981, it had been an obscure law with no enforcement powers. According to the statute, workers' compensation insurers needed to ensure that settlements included any lifetime medical costs of the injury. It protected Medicare from having to shoulder the expense.

The change created the Medicare Set Aside industry almost overnight, because insurance carriers needed third party consultants to project future medical costs associated with workers' compensation claims.

The Goulds and Williams seized the opportunity. Gould & Lamb, at the time, was a fledgling life-care planning business.

"I told myself, 'I'm going to learn about this. I'm going to find out who the big players are. And I'm going to call them, and introduce them to who I am,'" he says.

"I was picking up the phone telling insurance carriers they had to comply with a law they didn't even know existed."

By 2002, the company had made a name for itself in the industry, landing big clients. Revenues quadrupled to $2.15 million. The next year, Williams became president.

Today, he is still the company's biggest salesman, serving as both vice president of sales and chief financial officer. In the last five years, the company has grown to 27 locations in 22 states.

"He's very intense," says Mike Gould, who has since retired from the company and serves as a consultant. "It's really phenomenal what he's done."

Even on vacation, Williams is known to keep a Blackberry with him at all times to manage his office from afar.

"My wife and I were just on vacation in Hawaii," Williams says. "And I kept on saying, 'When am I going back to work?'"

The birth of his son, Ethan, 2, hasn't slowed him down a bit, either.

Observes Gould, "If anything, it has made him go even faster."

There's hardly a chance to ease the pressure if the company is to stay ahead of a growing number of competitors and a changing healthcare industry, Williams says.

In the coming years, Williams says he has to prepare for Medicare's anticipated requirement of the same secondary payer statute rules for liability, product liability and auto insurance claims. Gould & Lamb is expected to exceed $30 million in gross revenues in 2006 and $42 million in 2007.

"If you're not planning at least five years ahead," he says, "you're definitely falling behind."

- Isabelle Gan

Revenues 2003: $6.4 million 2004: $11.96 million 2005: $19.8 billion

(86.8% increase) (65.5% increase)

Average annual growth: 76.15%

EMPLOYEES 2004: 140 2005: 155 2006: 219