No Background Check
After two weeks of research and too many phone calls to count, the business deal that I was working on fell through. The short story is, it’s extremely hard to start a background check business from scratch in two weeks.
Why did I think I could pull this off in two weeks?
Well, I have been in law enforcement for a dozen years. I’ve ran thousands of background checks over my career. But the best part was, I already had a potential client who promised me a meeting. Her company runs almost 1000 background checks a year.
This biggest hurdle I found was there is a difference between law enforcement background check companies and private background check companies. Private individuals don’t have to same access to the software that law enforcement has. And it’s expensive to get started with the established background check companies.
There are smaller background check companies out there who will bring you on as partners, but they want you to pay $200-$1500 to sign-up for their, “Affiliate Program,” then you have to pay $50.00-$100.00 a month to use their service. The kicker is, you have to give them your credit card and if for some reason your new clients don’t pay for the checks or drug tests, then the background company takes it out of your credit card.
Oh, and I forgot the best part, they have a 60/40 split—their way.
I called my business partner and told him what was going on, which was that I had done tons of research, talked to two consultants and people in law enforcement and didn’t really get any answers I was looking for. I let my partner know that was ready to sell our first client down the river with this, “60/40 split company,” in order to get this deal.
He sat and listened and then said, “You know, sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal. Why don’t we let this one go for now? We still have an inside person and it’s not like they’re going to sign a forever-contract. Why don’t we think long term and set this up right?”
By the second he was done speaking, it felt like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I agreed with him 100%. After all the research and hard work, sometimes it’s hard to let a deal go. But like my friend said, most of the times, “No deal is better than a bad deal.”