Franchisee Voices: Rick Van Laan of ARCpoint Labs

*After 25 years of working in corporate human resources, Rick Van Laan moved from working behind a desk to serving those who are responsible for his former area of expertise--job screening, hiring and resolving employee issues. Van Laan has worked closely with Kalamazoo business owners and human resources professionals to provide drug and alcohol screening, among other services through ARCpoint Labs. Van Laan used his healthcare background to offer an array of clinical services including over 750 types of blood tests, TB tests, Flu Shots and prenatal DNA testing.

He has expanded the wellness offerings with a program called ARCpoint MD. The program provides telehealth and is intended to serve the growing need for remote medical services that are a growing resource for people in the U.S.

as healthcare policies change. He also offers Pharmacogenetics testing that uses an individual’s DNA to help physicians determine the optimal medications for patients.

I have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from Michigan State University in Human Resources and 25 years of exerpience with the corporate environment in human resources – 19 years of which was in healthcare.

After 25 years of experience in HR, my position was eliminated at the hospital where I had worked for many years. At age 49 and after all of my experience, it was really time for decide what to do with my life. I interviewed for several other corporate human resources positions and explored starting my own consulting business, but I loved the support, direction, proven models, marketing help that I could get from a franchise.

I was drawn to ARCpoint because it isn't a typical franchise like Subway or McDonald’s. ARCpoint gives you a ton of freedom to explore the kind of services that you want to perform. I was able to develop a lot with the clinical side and I loved that I had freedom to pursue services that matched my expertise.

My perceptions of franchising were not very good when I was in the corporate world because I believed that I had autonomy and creativity in my current position that franchising couldn’t offer. I considered being an HR consultant and the advice I got was that it is awfully nice to have a tangible service to offer and why would you want to start from scratch. My perceptions really changed when I started to look into franchising. Franchises have a much lower failure rate; and there are a lot of areas that I realized I wasn't an expert in that the corporate team can help make a success.