The Safe Connector
Keith E. Gregg
Founder and CEO
It is a known fact that small businesses suffer from a lack of scale and operational inefficiency from lack of technology. Chalice Network aggregates and integrates everything an SBO needs through an SSO digital marketplace and provides an average savings of 25-30% on much-needed business solutions for the entire life cycle of their business – Start, grow, run, protect, and monetize.
The whole premise behind Chalice was to help small business owners capture the elusive economies of scale, provide operational efficiency, and increase their enterprise value. By building a network of more than 60,000 members Keith E. Gregg, Founder and CEO of Chalice, and his team has significant clout and buying power when negotiating with vendors that the small business owner members want and need; and in return, Chalice can provide meaningful savings to them. “We created a SSO digital marketplace and e-commerce platform that has become a one-stop technology shop for them to get to the business solutions needed to run their business and this saves them time and money without having to log in and out of 4-6 different websites and systems. So the savings and recapture of time equals enhanced enterprise value,” says Gregg.
“Every small business feels like David versus Goliath – so we set out to assemble a group of like-minded entrepreneurial folks to build strength in numbers and enable our members to compete with the larger companies by giving them access to big company benefits and savings,” explains Gregg. “Not unlike the sling shot that David used, we provide our members with a state-of-the-art technology platform to give them access to a digital marketplace and e-commerce platform that provides real tangible savings and significant operational efficiency through API integrations.”
According to Gregg, with almost 30 million small businesses in the US and over 200,000 businesses serving them – there is plenty of room for everyone. “We take pride in calling our folks members and building a culture and ethos of inclusion,” he says. “We don’t just focus on selling them a product but provide more solutions to solve for the business needs where ever they are in their lifecycle. The key is understanding the market your serve, stay in your swim lane, and embrace innovation at every turn.”
The key is being open-minded and agile. Chalice has pivoted based upon the needs and demands of their audience. “You must adapt the environment you’re in. Pre-COVID and the go-go growth we were experiencing we were adding products and services based upon wants – post COVID we have been focused on needs,” elucidates Gregg. “It’s been said time and time again – its not where you start – its where you finish that matters. Never truer or more telling is the story about Amazon being the on-line book reseller the world’s largest e-commerce platform. We started out being a member benefit organization to solve for scale and deliver solutions as a PaaS.” Today, Chalice is a SaaS company with a white label’s digital marketplace and e-Commerce platform to digitally deliver savings and solutions to the Enterprise clients who license their software and platform.
Sharing an instance, Gregg talks about assisting one of their members to access affordable health insurance. The Affordable Care Act gave access to Health Insurance issues – but for most of the small businesses Chalice serves, it was anything but affordable. The horror stories one hears about small business owners paying for insurance than they do for the mortgage or rent for their business. Estimates are that between 60-70% of all small business owners who go without insurance are getting it from a spouse that has it through their employer. Most small businesses don’t provide health insurance for their employees because it has gotten so expensive, and it’s hard enough to insure themselves and their families. “What we did at Chalice was to package ourselves as member benefit organization for professionals’ services and sought out a company that would create a Chalice PEO and provide insurance at the group level,” says Gregg. “Today we provide our members with Fortune 500 benefits and affordable insurance coverage with savings as much as 35%. This has been our most successful and adopted offering and we have received some amazing testimonials on how we saved them money, that afforded the opportunity to not only cover their families but employees.” Chalice took this one step further – recognizing that many of their members are baby boomers and the ever-rising costs of prescription drugs was yet again another challenge. They met the challenge and created a discount prescription drug program for their members called Chalice CaresRx and can save the members as much as 80% on their prescriptions.
By creating their digital marketplace and aggregating and integrating everything the small business owners need to run their business and pass along savings between 20-30% on these solutions has been huge – Chalice has been called everything from Costco to Amazon Prime for small business owners. “At Chalice we believe the strength of we empowers a network of me,” says the steadfast leader. “We are big advocates of eating your own cooking. What we do for us – we want to do for others. Our members are small business owners and have clients that have the same needs as they do – access to affordable health insurance, discounts on products and services, and the need to be part of something.” In 2021 Gregg and his team empower members to take their platform and marketplace and make it available to their clients and customers. “This B2B2C will be a major milestone for Chalice and aids in our efforts to scale our business,” he adds.
“Every small business feels like David versus Goliath – so we set out to assemble a group of like-minded entrepreneurial folks to build strength in numbers and enable our members to compete with the larger companies by giving them access to big company benefits and savings.”
