I honestly didn't see it coming. Had no idea. It totally took me by surprise.
It all started one morning when my business partner Chris called me on the phone at 7am and made my wife wake me up. I knew it wouldn't be good. He never does that.
"Man, one of our sales reps just called me panicking and told me everyone on staff is leaving us and starting another business and they are doing it right behind our backs!"
That one sentence announcement started a three month cycle of personal betrayal few have ever experienced. Despite my mind telling me this simply could not be the case, soon enough we learned it was true and less than 2 weeks later 90% of our staff had left us high and dry. Most of this occurred while I was away during our annual summer vacation on the Gulf.
In a matter of days my business world had turned upside down.
I was stunned, demoralized and frankly frozen in state of absolute denial. There was simply no way these people would do this and do so in this manner. No way.
What made the situation hardest to swallow was learning who the culprits were behind it all which turned out to be most of our upper level management team, nearly every key sales rep and most of our administrative staff. To add to it, the owner of this new agency was our own insurance MGA (Master General Agent)! An MGA is basically a mentor to a GA (General Agent) which is what he had been to us for the last few years. We had become good friends and even had a summer vacation planned together in Mexico. Needless to say, that trip was cancelled. Just two weeks before all of this he and I personally met to discuss some concerns and issues going forward. I even asked him if he had any intentions of competing with me and setting up his own call room. He totally denied the idea and reassured me he wanted no part of running one and that we in fact were the "marketing geniuses".
The other leader, was our Operations Officer who resigned suddenly just a few weeks prior to all of this. He and I had become personal friends and talked nearly daily about sports, kids and God. I considered him one of my best friends. He worked for us for nearly 6 years and lived right around the corner. When we got back from the gulf coast he was the first one I met with. At the time he acted shocked at all we had learned about this new business and claimed to have no part in setting it all up. Weeks later he became the president and co-owner of the operation and in fact, had lied to me about it all.
Following them were other long term employees, some with nearly 10 years of working with Chris and I. One of them was even Chris' brother-in-law. My wife put it best, when she said one night, "the only person you can trust in that office right now is Chris." She was right. Over the coming weeks, another 10-12 employees would leave assuming the "grass was greener". In total we went from nearly 50 employees to around 15 in about 30 days time. Sales went down the drain, morale was gone, fear was running rampant and Chris and I were in an emotional tailspin.
Shock does not even come close to describing the way Chris and I were feeling. Betrayed, hurt, angry, confused, worried and determined were all apart of the emotional pot being brewed each and every day. I hated going to the office, fearing what I would learn, who else had left and what this other new business was doing behind our backs.
A few employees involved in this scheme hid their involvement so they could remain on staff with us while working on this new business down the street. We later discovered hundreds of internal documents being sent from our offices to their personal email accounts for use at this new location! On top of that, they were calling the few employees we had left attempting to recruit them by telling them we were "going out of business" or that "this ship was sinking so get off now". It was unreal.
This new business didn't just started a competing location. That's just business. Rather, this new business had stolen nearly all of our people, all of our business contacts, business materials, training documents, scripts, marketing concepts and the like. Our name is Equal Health & Life. Their name is United Health & Life. Lacking any ability to be creative on their own, they simply took our "Coke formula" in an attempt to short cut a road to financial success. They were merely a mirror image of the company Chris and I had worked to build over an eight year period. Starting a competing business is one thing, but stealing nearly a decade of trade secrets, operational theories, documents, contacts and the like is a whole new level of deceit.
In a matter of days, they stole it all.
Now Chris and I were facing our biggest challenge yet. Our faith was really all we had left. Even the entrepreneurial spirit we had leaned on for years together was wiped out. There wasn't anything left but prayer.
And, that's when God stepped in and made Romans 8:28 come to life right before our eyes.
About three weeks into the ordeal we began to see a silver lining in the situation and He began to do and reveal things to us that still blow my mind. While reading through Leviticus one night of all things, a verse jumped out at me. God spoke as clear as day that He and He alone would make things right and, they would pay for their actions.
We recently learned our MGA behind all of this had been acting illegally in his home state and most others. He was acting without a license, his health insurance products were determined to be illegitimate and the state took over control of his operations and bank accounts. We immediately moved all of our customers to a new provider and things quickly improved. Customers began telling us just how terrible they had been treated by his company. Truth was coming out daily. A win-win lawsuit had been laid in our laps at the same time against a very large insurance company he was representing. After a month of them denying everything we had been telling them about him and them trying to come after us, they finally admitted we were correct. Sorry Charlie. A little too late. (Lawsuit City is likely a stop in our future.)
Not even 90 days later, our vision for the future is brighter than ever. We have renewed energy, a new office, better management, a stronger staff, a more cautious approach, leaner finances and a great new insurance provider in Assurant Health. Just last week we won a big contest for the numbers of new clients we have brought on over the last 90 days -during all of this! If we stay focused, 2010 can be our best year yet. Yes, God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.
I never knew how bad betrayal really was. I never understood how Jesus felt when his close and only real friends let him down and denied their connection to him. But, now I do.
I pray I never do the same to someone else.
I have a good idea, I never will.
"God spoke to Moses: "When anyone sins by betraying trust with God by deceiving his neighbor regarding something entrusted to him, or by robbing or cheating or threatening him; or if he has found something lost and lies about it and swears falsely regarding any of these sins that people commonly commit—when he sins and is found guilty, he must return what he stole or extorted, restore what was entrusted to him, return the lost thing he found, or anything else about which he swore falsely. He must make full compensation, add twenty percent to it, and hand it over to the owner..." Leviticus 8:1-5 (the Message)
© 2009, J. Brady
”I say it how I see it and I make no bones about it."
