Turbulent times for Agel team members as company terminates their founder Glen Jensen
It’s never easy for remaining associates (distributors, IBOs, etc.) of a company when high level people leave for any reason. In this case, it was Glen Jensen, the founder and CEO, who was terminated and sued for the following alleged reasons that I have excerpted out of the pertinent part of the lawsuit:
Termination of Jensen’s Employment and Jensen’s Actual and Threatened Breaches of Contractual and Other Duties
30. Prior to November 17, 2010, Jensen had breached the Employment Agreement and had caused Itsumo to breach the Operating Agreement by the following non-exclusive actions: (1) discussing and planning competing opportunities with team members and other Agel employees; (2) refusing to follow directives of Agel’s Board of Directors by failing to terminate employees, failing to notify the Board of significant expenditures beyond those permitted under the Operating Agreement, and sharing confidential company information; (3) making unauthorized market licensee proposals and commitments and product royalty commitments; and (4) making unauthorized use of company funds.
31. On November 17, 2010, Agel terminated Jensen’s employment.
32. Upon information and belief, prior to and after Jensen’s termination, Jensen has been in discussions with other Agel executives or employees concerning a potential division of the company for the direct purpose of competing with Agel. Upon further information and belief, such plans include an attempted division of the Southeast Asia and China markets from Agel.
33. Jensen has contacted several current Agel employees and/or team members for the purpose of soliciting them to join Jensen in a new venture to compete with Agel – all in violation of Jensen’s fiduciary duties to Agel and his contractual obligations under the Employment Agreement.
34. Upon further information and belief, Jensen may have misappropriated Agel’s property, including, without limitation, trade secrets, formulas, team member contact information, vendor information, and pricing information.
35. Upon further information and belief, Jensen has used his influence to manipulate commission payouts to give friends and family financial benefits.
36. After termination, Jensen has failed to return electronic equipment containing trade secrets and other proprietary information of Agel, including a computer, iPad, and cellular phone and has further instructed others to retain similar equipment and proprietary information.
Since the opening of Agel in early 2005, the company has had it’s share of successes as well as it’s tough times, as reasonably can be expected. They opened an enormous number of foreign markets (10) very quickly, probably more quickly than had ever been done before.
Agel “busted the cap” of their binary comp plan in early 2005 necessitating “adjustments.” Later that year, though not necessarily for that reason, top leader Randy Schroeder left to join MonaVie. See Related Posts below.
It is reported now that top leader Eric Worre is also now building a business with a different company also, SendOutCards (SOC).
Editor’s comment:
In my Special Report and Course on MLM, I teach that one of the key things to try to understand when evaluating the potential longevity of a new MLM company is who the founders and officers are so that you can try to get a feel for whether or not they are in it for the long haul. When Agel opened it’s doors in 2005, I noted that Glen Jensen had already founded one company (Synergy Worldwide) and then sold it (to Nature’s Sunshine) in 2000. After the sale he was retained until some time in 2002.
At the time, I wondered, “If he sold one company when he was ready to move on, what would prevent him from doing the same thing again and might that be a red flag?” If, in fact, Jensen does start a new company, whether here or in Asia, as he is allegedly planning according to the suit, I would caution people tempted to follow him there to ask that same question again with even more weight assigned to the importance of getting the answer right.