Search Entrepreneurs lists six items on their front page. Let’s add a few more that, in my opinion, make it more realistic and truthful (Disclaimer: My comments and opinion shown in BLUE):
- No Royalties (We are not a Franchise) Although they advertise in franchise opportunity listings, use every venue where people investigating franchises inquire, and skirt the law in every way possible by hiding behind the “business opportunity” loopholes.
- Comprehensive Suite of Tools Provided by third party vendors that you could find on your own, find out aren’t worth the price, and have inflated value. The “tools” these people provided in the scam they ran as Health Career Agents and then Career Agents Network were abandoned by virtually everyone.
- Outstanding Training via Industry Experts Experts that are trying to sell you additional stuff. Experts that are not staff resident. Recordings of Experts. Experts you can find on your own by using a simple google search. Experts that have blogs that you can read for free.
- No Geographic Restrictions No, because then they’d be under the same restrictions, rules, guidelines, and reporting requirements that are required as a franchise. They *certainly* don’t want to be bound by the requirements and consumer safeguards provided by franchise law.
- Low Start Up/Operation Costs Maybe $20,000-50,000 is considered low by some people. But for some of the 96% that failed in the previous escapade, Health Career Agents, it meant divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and financial ruin. Take into account that in addition to the upfront costs you’ll need living expenses for 6-12 months with no expectation of money coming in, and you better have a back-up plan for what you’re going to do when your money runs out and you haven’t made anything in recruiting.
- Virtual Operations For your Virtual Business and Virtual Profits. Don’t worry though, you’ll soon return to reality after they’ve cashed your check and it’s time for the deliverables. One question you’ll be asking yourself over and over is “I paid how much for this?”.
Let’s add a few more things to the list:
- Buying into a “business opportunity” that has a track record of changing its company name, on average, every 24 months since December 1st of 2008. We’re almost five months into this name change, so there’s still 19 months to go on this one. My estimate is that they’re already making the preparations to shovel any assets into the name they have “waiting in the wings”.
- A company whose corporate officers held the title of President and Chief Operating Officer of another company (Health Career Agents) that was sued for fraud. That company was in the same “recruiting space” as Search Entrepreneurs.