My experience with this company was more personal than the first report. I began working at Georgia Medical Massage as a massage therapist independent contractor after having worked on my own for about 6 years up north. I came back to georgia to finish school and get my license after the changes to licensing here, and this company was the first Massage Clinic that I worked at. I had never been an independent contractor before and although I didn't get to find out until I was on my way out, they entirely took advantage of me, and of every other therapist that they have contracted.
I started out on good terms with the owners, Mark Gilpin and Madison Gray. Up until they dismissed me, I considered them friends, and considered Madison a valued colleague. The first year and a half was fine, I enjoyed working with my clients and eventually started continuing the education of some of the therapists there. I did take issue with having an unlicensed therapist working there, but they contracted me before my license cleared the state so I tried to overlook that. I worked without a license there for around 6 months though when there were holdups. The therapist in question had been working there for a year already, and is still unlicensed to this day.
My experience with this company turned sour when my contract was nearing expiration (unlike the previous report, I signed a 2-year contract term). I had decided that it was time for me to start making plans for my own future, and wanted to pursue my own clinic and a different county. Although I had many regular clients there, in a city where they were unlikely to follow me, I chose to open up far enough away from them that I would not encroach on their market out of respect for them as friends and colleagues. When I informed them openly about my plans, and explained why I wanted to move on, our relationship immediately disintegrated.
They felt hurt that I would want to go and establish my own business - and as an indepenent contractor, there was every reason to assume that I would want to do this one day - and even more so that I and another therapist there, who had not been working for them full time for over a year, were planning on doing this together. However, they had, so they told me, planned to let me take over and manage their clinic when they launched a new product that they were hoping would become their full time occupation. I admit that I was flattered by this proposal, but wanted to begin working on my own future in terms of long-term goals like retirement. You don't retire from managing or working at a small business like this, and my suggested compromise was that we discuss a possibility of partnership between myself and my partner and their company.
This discussion took place over the course of about a month, during which I had the opportunity to hear how Mark and Madison talk about their therapists, what they thought about them - hard working and well meaning individuals who were, when I was there, had their hearts and minds in the right place as far as I could tell - and eventually began to criticize my own decision to start my own business in the first place. I spent this month being constantly undermined, lied to, and misinformed. I offered my sincere advice and ways to improve the company, from their image and decoration, right up to client relations. I even GAVE THEM MY BUSINESS PLAN to read over both for their input and to use my own ideas in any way that they were able to. I did not keep any secrets from them, and openly told them that I had not yet made up my mind about the partnership idea.
Eventually, I determined that I would rather build a new company than attempt to fix Georgia Medical Massage to be what I envisioned. This was out of both a desire to build my own legacy, as well as out of respect for what Mark and Madison had built - they did not want to change their company and I did not want to force a change where it wasn't wanted.
The day that I told them I had made up my mind, they fired me. First they asked for my written notice, which I tried to give them as a courtesy, and included in it additional restrictions ON MYSELF indicating that although there was no non-solicit agreement in my contract I would reassign my clients to other therapists, and would not invite them to find my at my new clinic. I indicated that I would work one-on-one with the newer therapists to get them up to speed at evaluating medical massage cases and writing medical soap notes, and that I would do all of this in order to not leave a vacuum behind so that the transition could be easy.
Instead, they threw away my notice, accused me of trying to buy time to steal 'company secrets', told me that they did not believe I could have made and executed a business plan in the amount of time I had worked to do so, yelled at me, and attempted to intimidate me. After I had been so open with these people, after I had put so much of myself into their company, after having respected them enough to tell them about my plans and even let them read my business plan, I had been hoping that I would have their support and happiness at my move to make something more of my life and career, and I was incredibly hurt that they would treat me this way, with so much anger and mistrust.
It was about this time that I began to learn more about what being an independent contractor really entails. They pay their new therapists $18 per hour. As an independent contractor this means that you pay your own taxes, and you pay more than you would as an employee. This means you are really making approximately $10 per hour on average, and you are unable to afford any kind of health insurance, barely able to afford cost of living, and taxes are going to level you at the end of the year. It is unthinkable to pay a massage therapist so little. Additionally, although the contract is written to protect the Mark and Madison, the therapist agrees to exorbitant damages if they violate various parts of the contract - with zero protection for the contractor in the event that Mark and Madison decide to fire you on a whim. This is an entirely draconian contract for this profession or any other that requires a contract for an independent contractor.
While I was there, they fired several therapists on the basis that they didn't like them personally, that they did not have enough availability (the contract indicates that you only have to be available when you want to, in plain writing), and because they would not sign additional contracts. All of that is entirely illegal in business contract law. How they have not been ruined by breach of contract suits I have no idea.
They have treated their clients poorly, and i was personally told several times that one client or another was 'lying about their pain', that "their pain is really their own fault", and saw time and again that Madison Gray - which, by the way, is not her real name - is in this healing industry for nothing more than a paycheck, cares nothing for her clients or those of her therapists, and will step on anyone, cast anyone aside, if it means she can make another dollar. The company hardly makes any profit, and no one gets rich running a small massage therapy clinic like this.in my estimation, she is basically a sociopath. Mark Gilpin, probably has a spark of good nature in him - but Madison wears the pants, and he will never show it to you if she doesn't want him to.
For Therapists - stay well away from this company; other clinics and spas will pay you better, treat you like the valuable resource that you are, and respect your relationship to your clients. Prospective clients - it may be cheap, but that doesn't make it good. This is not the place you will find a regular therapist, because they'll likely be gone as soon as they realize they're being duped, and the hassle of dealing with the owners (and you will, there's no way to avoid them), makes the psychological cost a lot higher than the monetary one.
This is not a personal attack, and for me personally, everything turned out fine in the end - my new business is doing fine, and I learned a LOT about what NOT to do from working at Georgia Medical Massage. But they put out a very different front from who they are behind the doors of their business, and no one else should have to be duped into thinking that this is a positive work environment, or a positive place to find rest and relaxation.
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