The History of Health Career Agents
It’s a story filled with accomplishment, failure, disputes, heroes, villains, personal responsibility and finger pointing. In other words, real life.
It’s about an entrepreneurial enterprise, launched by a small group of forward-thinking business professionals, that was brought to its knees by a handful of individuals who refused to take responsibility for their actions, or lack thereof.
This is the story of two very different types of people: one that takes responsibility for their own success or failure, works hard, and finds a way to make things happen, or doesn’t; and on the other hand, someone who isn’t able to punch the ball through to the end zone, but then looks for outside forces to blame.
If there’s a “happy ending” to this story, it’s that you may now be able to acquire a solid business, with serious earning potential, at a price well below its actual value. Interested in that possibility? Read on. You won’t be disappointed.
My name is Brian Marchant-Calsyn.
In 2004, I founded a company named Health Career Agents. Before launch, I assembled a team of experienced healthcare recruiters who helped me design the most nearly perfect business model, training, tools, software, and support system in the entire healthcare recruiting profession.
Over the following four years, we recruited hundreds of entrepreneurs who were interested in starting their own healthcare recruiting businesses. We provided them with great training --acquired and developed some amazing software tools -- pioneered and refined a unique “Agent” approach to recruiting -- created a virtual business model with remotely located sales people -- and built a collaborative network for “shared placements.” We had it all.
Many great success stories followed -- Owner/Operators who grossed $250,000 and up with low overhead, working from an office in their homes. Equally important, they demonstrated how people could balance hard work with the pleasures of enjoying life and family. At the time, I conducted a weekly radio show online where, almost every week, we welcomed guests who talked about their challenges, their successes. It was inspiring.
Before purchasing our program and joining us, every prospect read our business plan, interviewed some of our established recruiters, reviewed our materials and tools, and received a web demonstration of our software. All our new Owner/Operators were “dead even” at the start.
Beyond start-up, the hard-working men and women persevered, didn’t make excuses. They did everything they could to make their businesses succeed.
Unfortunately, some of the people who joined our program didn’t find success. That’s part of the entrepreneurial equation, of course, and most looked in the mirror and acknowledged that, for reasons of their own or beyond anyone’s control, it just hadn’t worked out for them.
Yet another, much smaller group refused to take personal responsibility. Some didn’t make the necessary phone calls, others didn’t follow instructions. Still others approached the business too casually, or assumed that clients would come to them. This handful of individuals faulted the program for their lack of success.
A seed is planted, set to explode, as one particular Health Career Agents Member violates his contract.
After becoming an Owner/Operator, an unscrupulous individual started selling a blatant knock-off of our Program, despite his signed agreement not to do so. He was using our collateral materials, training manuals, and even our contract to sell a stripped-down version of our business opportunity. Even worse, he was providing the intellectual property of our company, and its network, to unauthorized third parties. We were not amused.
We pleaded with the individual to cease, but he wouldn’t hear of it. The last thing on earth we wanted was to do legal battle with one of our own. It’s not the kind of publicity we needed. But we had no choice. Health Career Agents sought an injunction against this man to restrain him from distributing our intellectual property and confidential candidate and client information to outside parties.
The defendant felt so righteous that he filed a counter-claim. In the process, he dug up some dirt on me and distributed what he’d discovered to other Owner/Operators in the Health Career Agents network.
He had found a 10-year-old article about a 20-year-old incident in my past. In 1999, the Wall Street Journal referenced in a story about another company I helped start that I had a drug conviction. I had been arrested ten years prior in 1989, at age 24, “in possession of a controlled substance” and was subsequently convicted of a felony. I was sent to a “boot-camp” for first-time offenders for seven months, and then served an additional year and a half on supervised release. I had made a very stupid mistake, got caught, and paid the price.
As I told the Journal and still strongly feel today -- it was the most powerful, beneficial thing that has ever happened to me. It got my undivided attention and prompted me to straighten out my life. Today I am actively involved in counseling others through recovery and none of my four daughters have ever known a father who was anything other than a straight arrow.
Then, after continuing to attack me in an anonymous email campaign, the defendant unexpectedly agreed to a permanent injunction to cease his damaging behavior. He further agreed to a cash payment to Health Career Agents to settle the matter. At the time I wasn’t sure why he suddenly folded. Today I know he felt he had set a time bomb and just wanted to run away before it exploded.
Bottom line: the guy’s business was unsuccessful because he didn’t follow our instruction and he didn’t do the work.
He, like every other Owner/Operator Health Career Agents ever recruited, had gone through a detailed assessment process in which the requirements of the business were clearly communicated. He’d read our business plan and literature, which clearly stated that 80 to 100 phone calls a day, minimum, are necessary initially, and that he may not see any revenue for two to three months.
But prior to settling with us, this malcontent persuaded a half dozen other Owner/Operators (out of hundreds) to file lawsuits against us. This lynch mob was represented by the same contingency-based attorney from his earlier counter-suit. It’s human nature, I guess, or at least a lot easier, to blame others when things don’t work out, rather than acknowledging where you came up short.
Strangely, not every member of this new litigant group was quite as unsuccessful as the others. In fact, one of them had made more than $100,000 with his Health Career Agents business, yet he apparently agreed with the group that he, too, had been wronged because our company had not disclosed my arrest and conviction almost twenty years prior.
From the start, we didn’t feel they had a case. About half the states require the filing of some type of company registration or disclosure document before sales of a business opportunity like ours are permitted, but not one of them requires disclosure of a drug conviction by an owner or executive.
Besides, what does a drug conviction by a principle, two decades prior, have to do with an Owner/Operator’s business? Good grief. I’m starting to sound like a lawyer.
We won. They lost. Then we lost, too.
Our attorneys told us, up front, that their claim was fundamentally ridiculous. But because the plaintiffs’ attorney apparently thought Health Career Agents would pay hush money just to make the groundless suits go away – and winning something, anything would be the only way he’d get paid – we were forced to fight the claims for more than two years. Two years!
Finally, the showdown was over before it could begin. When we got into a courtroom, the claimants’ cases evaporated in pre-trial motions. For when the judge told them to their faces that, in his opinion, many of their arguments didn’t have enough merit to be heard in his courtroom, they walked away, glaring. We had won. They dismissed their cases.
Victory for us was short-lived, though, as the web-based press and a blog “mysteriously” received inside information on the case and ruling. Unfortunately for us, information about the dismissal of the cases was omitted.
Overnight, the sensationalism of it all put Health Career Agents in a position where we could no longer market and sell our healthcare recruiting business. A single blog post at the top of the Google rankings scared away prospective buyers.
We had lost in the court of unfounded public opinion.
With twenty-some employees and a high overhead, plus hundreds of hard working Owner/Operators counting on us, we had to make a move.
Even as our cash flow slowed to a trickle, we remained obligated to provide all Health Career Agents Owner/Operators with the same high-quality training and support they had come to expect.
Fortunately, Members of our management team had been considering buying the company for some time. When I confided in them that we could not remain in operation much longer, they agreed to purchase select assets of the company, hire many members of our staff, and support Health Career Agents Owner/Operators going forward.
Looking back, the transition has been almost totally seamless.
Where are we now?
Health Career Agents is still in operation but, today, we focus exclusively on helping Members market and sell their existing businesses.
Successful Owner/Operators continue to run their businesses, working hard and making it happen, while some are interested in selling for the right price.
Distressed Members have moved on to other things, yet their companies still hold tremendous assets for the entrepreneur who wants to start a healthcare recruiting business.
Entrepreneurs are in a position to acquire a quality business, with great assets, at a tremendous discounted price.
