Keaton Marks

Keaton attended high school in Solana Beach where he played football, basketball, and lacrosse for the Santa Fe Christian Eagles. Although he loves playing all sports, when push came to shove, Keaton decided that he wanted to pursue a college football career. Keaton was accepted to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he played Division 1 football for the Cornell Big Red. Keaton studied hospitality and restaurant management at Cornell’s “Hotel School”.

After graduation, Keaton moved to Dallas, Texas to join a young rising company named Century Interactive. This budding company had created an amazing call tracking and call review software that helped businesses close more deals over the phone. During his time working with Reid Wakefield and Patrick Elverum at Century Interactive, Keaton learned as much as he could about sales and marketing. As the company was small but growing fast, Keaton was quickly given the opportunity to lead a new vertical: Patient Pursuit, Century Interactive’s dental office phone call software.

“It was my time working on Patient Pursuit that I realized I could start my own company and have the confidence to create something like HealthyMarks.” The Patient Pursuit product was a huge success and the team quickly grew from just Keaton to a team of 5. “I learned a lot about leadership, I learned how to do the gritty time-consuming work when nobody would notice but myself. I also failed often, but I learned how to pick our team back up and keep finding new wins.”

Keaton always knew that he would want to move back to San Diego eventually. Although he enjoyed his time in Dallas, Keaton found that after 5 years it was time to move home once more. “After seeing much of the United States… nothing can beat San Diego.” All in one year, starting January 2016, Keaton proposed to his now-wife Alexa, moved from Dallas to San Diego, started a new job working with Bill King at KingBenefits, and got married.

Keaton started his health insurance career as a business insurance broker. He worked with large companies to pair employees with the best plan for their family. “While at KingBenefits, I worked hard to learn everything I could about the health insurance industry, how to best serve my clients, and most importantly, I learned how to best communicate with employees who had never learned how insurance works.”

Keaton always knew he wanted to eventually start his own health insurance office, so he did so as quickly as he felt confident in his own abilities. “Even when I first started HealthyMarks on my own, I knew I was better than every other broker at one thing: Helping employees better understand their health insurance. If I could continue to educate the people around me, I would continue to have success in this industry.”

That is exactly what happened. Keaton grew his start-up to a highly successful North County Health Insurance brokerage. HealthyMarks has seen growth every year since its beginning on the business insurance side. The team working with San Diego businesses and their health insurance decisions is still the largest division within HealthyMarks.

When employees turn 65, it is best for the employee and the employer to enroll in Medicare. This was the biggest driving factor in starting the HealthyMarks Medicare division.

“I am very proud to have built a company where I was able to ask my wife to join and take the lead on our Medicare offerings.”