NOTE: This is primarily directed at anyone who is interested in lessons or has already paid but not received them.
It turns out the idea of running a lesson site the way we (I say we because everyone was on board) wanted to doesn't work out so well. By handling all leads, scheduling, and book keeping centrally, what I expected to be around 30 hours of work per week turned out to be more like two full time jobs. Given that the site took very little (15%) of lesson income and paid the rest directly to coaches, you can see where it would be a problem to provide the resources to manage this work load.
It also turns out managing the scheduling itself is an extremely difficult process. It's quite hard to stay on the ball with each coach's individually availability, as it's rarely consistent, and match that to students desired lesson times. It's not nearly as simple as booking doctor's appointments where you know you're available for bookings form 8-4 every day and that's that.
Due to personal circumstances, and a few bad decisions on my part, we ended up in a situation where we had such a back log of email and scheduling that it simply became insurmountable, with many requesting refunds - and rightfully so.
Many of you have probably seen Incontrol's post in the blog section. I will admit I'm a little disappointed with that, but it's drama not meant to be hashed out in public. I'll simply say that he and I have not seen eye to eye on things for months, and a split was inevitable. Furthermore, there is only a very narrow window of days for which I am unable to pay the coaches - it's not a situation where the coaches are getting screwed out of their paychecks. I'll also say this: gosucoaching.com isn't dead, closed, or anything else. I have a lot of damage control to do, and I'm well aware of how unpleasant the current situation is, but a lot of work and love has gone into it, and I know it's something worth keeping - as many prize winners and satisfied students would attest to.
We will be doing some restructuring and there will be staff and process changes to be sure. But effective immediately we are no longer managing individual lessons for coaches. We will continue to provide a way for students to connect to coaches for individual lessons, and we'll be pursuing some other exciting ideas.
For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
I apologize to those students left hanging during the last week and a half and sincerely ask each of you to pursue lessons with the coach of your choice directly - and to keep an eye on gosucoaching in the future, as good things are coming. I consider this a learning experience (hard learned lessons, to be sure), and will put that knowledge to good use in the future.
Glad to see that you guys are staying open and transparent about your site, i have read a few blogs that seem to highlight a few infrastructure problems, and i am glad that you are fixen them. Good luck in your future business adventures louder, and thanks again for taking the time and effort to make this right. This is a great way to show that TL community members have a ton of integrity, and will do nothing but help our image for the better.
This style of business is really taxing on your organisational skills. I work at a tutoring company that operates on the same model, and we have the same problems and we're trying to work things out there too (it's its first year).
It seems to me that you need a custom-made site where coaches can modify their schedules on the go and people can book from a list of available times depending on what coach they want. This would probably help with the management end of things too...
If you need an old FuDD I am wiling to help here and there just to help.Or if you need a balloon guy let me know.Good luck all of you gosucoaches and speedy recovery.
i paid for lessons from incontrol MONTHS ago and he always ignores my facebook messages and the requests i do on gosu coachin site
you said to do this through paypal, how do i do this? i am looking for a refund t.t
edit: I just went to my paypal, i payed on May 8th, 2010
we originally were gonna do sc1 lesson but then he said r1ch never fixed his computer cuz he was ignoring him for some reason, so neither of us could host so he would contact me in like 2 weeks when he moved and we could do a session then...then i never got a return email
40 dollars (2 sessions im guessin that was what it was) gone :/
On September 02 2010 00:51 Sky.Technique wrote: i paid for lessons from incontrol MONTHS ago and he always ignores my facebook messages and the requests i do on gosu coachin site
you said to do this through paypal, how do i do this? i am looking for a refund t.t
I'm sorry to hear that. Please contact me directly, I will PM you my information.
Managing schedules is incredibly difficult and almost always underestimated. Sorry to hear things have gone so poorly, though obviously there is plenty of demand for a viable business, hopefully you've learned what you need to make it happen. Best of luck.
I'm sure a lot of people don't see themselves putting money into sports lessons or piano lessons or guitar lessons, who needs them after all when you can take more time and learn it yourself than have someone who knows what they're doing endow that knowledge upon you for a fee.
On September 02 2010 00:59 ZeeTemplar wrote: Why pay for lessons?
cuz its incredibly competitive and you can make money at it? people pay money for lessons in sports IRL and most of them have no chance at making money or being competitive at a high level either.
That makes sense. I just don't see myself putting out money for gaming lessons. lol
On September 01 2010 13:31 Malgrif wrote:
basically it's to get someone's nooby self into the right mindset and start building the right habits to become better. contrary to popular belief, most people are terrible at self learning, think about why there's a school system when everything could technically be learned through research. school is there so you can figure out what you want to know and get help when you don't know how to know what you want to know, and coaching is similar; it's there so nooby people can figure out how to improve and what they should improve on.
i estimate most people only do 2-3 lessons which is enough to teach them what they should be looking for to improve by themselves. at 20-30dollars a lesson it's probably a lot more efficient than going into rts cold turkey, griding hundreds of games in frustration, just to figure out something that a coach could of taught them in 5minutes. i think the reason why some players play like 10games and give up is because they can't handle that frustration, if they had a coach they'd probably derive a lot more fun out of the game.
i posted this in another thread, i think it sheds some light on paid coaching ^.^'
oh and on thread, GL to louder I hope gosu coaching get's their shit together and can recover from the huge blow to their reputation.
FWIW I paid for some time with Psyonic and it was delivered exactly as promised. Nothing but good things to say about my experience, so this kind of caught me by surprise. And this was in the last 7 days, so maybe I just got lucky.
GL Louder, don't be too hard on yourself. I've been there myself - Don't worry about what people are thinking, just gather what you have learned and move on, Im sure you will come out alright
On September 02 2010 00:51 Sky.Technique wrote: i paid for lessons from incontrol MONTHS ago and he always ignores my facebook messages and the requests i do on gosu coachin site
you said to do this through paypal, how do i do this? i am looking for a refund t.t
edit: I just went to my paypal, i payed on May 8th, 2010
we originally were gonna do sc1 lesson but then he said r1ch never fixed his computer cuz he was ignoring him for some reason, so neither of us could host so he would contact me in like 2 weeks when he moved and we could do a session then...then i never got a return email
40 dollars (2 sessions im guessin that was what it was) gone :/
That's pretty messed up. Hopefully InControl was simply too busy...
You definitely need a website capable of doing automatically what you were doing manually.. If you were making enough money on this you should think about hiring someone to create something that better fits you.
Or let them contact the coach themselves like incontrol said, thats the way most personal trainers handle appointments even when they work for a company.
On September 02 2010 02:22 ReTr0[p.S] wrote: You definitely need a website capable of doing automatically what you were doing manually.. If you were making enough money on this you should think about hiring someone to create something that better fits you.
Or let them contact the coach themselves like incontrol said, thats the way most personal trainers handle appointments even when they work for a company.
There's benefits to both ways, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Keep in mind that GC seems to have had bigger plans in mind than just coaching. It seems like they eventually wanted to get into hosting tournaments, events, etc including some with prize money. For this the company needs a kickback on lessons so it can sponsor the prize money.
Also, it's an incentive for coaches if they have to do absolutely nothing and lessons just come to them with no work. On paper, it looks pretty nice for someone to tell you "show up at 7PM thursday and make $50".
Also on paper, it reduces the risk of failure. When you're relying on every coach to maintain a certain consistent image, as well as level of responsibility, timely responses, and overall customer services, there's too many points of failure. With centralized responsibility this becomes less of an issue, with the one ever-so-important caveat that the central contact must be able to live up to his own expectation.
Ultimately, I think the point here is that GC wanted to be more than just a coaching site. Which is totally a great idea and would be a great service. The idea just needs more refinement and planning, and I think the people there realize that now and I'm looking forward to seeing the second incarnation.
@Louder: You should get in touch with ycombinator. http://ycombinator.com. They are typically geared more towards tech industry startups, but depending on how good of a salesman you are, maybe you can pitch the idea to them You'll need to come up with some revenue generating ideas outside of coaching though, because that won't be enough to get an actual investor to look at you. They specialize in funding startups who require an initial investment of less than $20k, which sounds perfect for you.
On September 02 2010 00:51 Sky.Technique wrote: i paid for lessons from incontrol MONTHS ago and he always ignores my facebook messages and the requests i do on gosu coachin site
you said to do this through paypal, how do i do this? i am looking for a refund t.t
edit: I just went to my paypal, i payed on May 8th, 2010
we originally were gonna do sc1 lesson but then he said r1ch never fixed his computer cuz he was ignoring him for some reason, so neither of us could host so he would contact me in like 2 weeks when he moved and we could do a session then...then i never got a return email
40 dollars (2 sessions im guessin that was what it was) gone :/
That's pretty messed up. Hopefully InControl was simply too busy...
i'm going to say what some others said... get more coaches. you don't need big names to coach people, just like the pros of major sports there are a ton of different coaches at different levels.
you can higher mid level diamond to teach even bronze/silver players and save the high level diamond for the mid level diamond etc.
On September 02 2010 00:51 Sky.Technique wrote: i paid for lessons from incontrol MONTHS ago and he always ignores my facebook messages and the requests i do on gosu coachin site
you said to do this through paypal, how do i do this? i am looking for a refund t.t
edit: I just went to my paypal, i payed on May 8th, 2010
we originally were gonna do sc1 lesson but then he said r1ch never fixed his computer cuz he was ignoring him for some reason, so neither of us could host so he would contact me in like 2 weeks when he moved and we could do a session then...then i never got a return email
40 dollars (2 sessions im guessin that was what it was) gone :/
Try contacting Incontrol by PM in TeamLiquid. As it has been said, the structure of the website didn't allow good communication, so he probably never got you'r messages by the gosucoaching website. As for facebook i don't know much about that.
I never took lessons from Incontrol, but i sent him PM's for some advise about several things, and surprisingly, i received quick replies each time, and he is really a nice guy, i would never imagined getting an answer as i was guessing he must have too much spam to deal with stupid questions, but i can assure you, he answered pretty fast and was really helpful out of pure kindness as i never took lessons with him. I'm sure you'll get an answer from sending him a PM in TL. And machine is pretty much as respectable and amazingly helpful as incontrol.
You guys have balls admitting your own mistakes like this. I've seen one too many gaming sites or people like this just shut down and say the people are screwed. I'm loving the SC community more and more, especially you guys.
This reminds me of a story, where my friend Lorenzo tried to start a company to make a quick buck selling shoe brushes but things didn't work out the way he imagined and his scheme backfired.
I can tell it's been incredibly stressful, and still is, knowing people are expecting something from you, with a monetary investment, and you have failed to give the expected results.
Don't let it bother you, we all understand. Everyone is going to get a refund. No harm done.
That's unfortunate, gosucoaching is a great idea behind it and I'm sure the demand is there. What exactly was the difficulty? Do you think that software could be used to help with the manual tasks you were doing?
For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
they just have no time for there paying customers man
I feel that this very well may be a case of inexperienced business owners encountering unforeseen issues, however, if you are trying to perform some sort of 'damage control', actions will speak louder than words. By forcing your customers to go through a PayPal dispute, (a nightmare for anyone who hasn't had to dispute a transaction) you are increasing the fallout of this bad situation, and making it worse. I feel that you should issue, if not a personal email, some sort of form email, and sort out the refunds process on your end. This would create good faith among a community, which I believe to be a major customer base. How a company handles errors speaks volumes about how they will conduct business in future ventures, and customers recognize this.
For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
I would prefer to be more proactive on this, I'm just dealing with a close family members death and the associated travel, then travelling for my day job next week. With the state of our organization this is the best and fastest way to get a refund. Obviously I won't be keeping money people are owes but fail to explicitly ask for, it may just take longer.
I think that its a classic example of some one trying to take a simple idea, and it exploding into something more then they expected/could handle. I hope that you can get every one their refund and have every thing sorted out.
I think you need to bring on people that their sole purpose is to do the logistics of the site, and not take on the burden yourself.
PM me if you are looking for help, or man power to aid with the admin of your site.
For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
That is unbelievably weak."We will be up and running for your future business but in the mean time everyone who has already paid has to get their money back on their own". Unreal.
I would prefer to be more proactive on this, I'm just dealing with a close family members death and the associated travel, then travelling for my day job next week. With the state of our organization this is the best and fastest way to get a refund. Obviously I won't be keeping money people are owes but fail to explicitly ask for, it may just take longer.
Can you say anything about why the coaches aren't getting paid, even if only for a "small window" (where by "small window" i mean up to 3 weeks)? Are they not getting paid for lessons that they conducted, or are they not getting paid for lessons that were scheduled but never delivered?
If the reason they're not getting paid is because you need to be able to cover mass paypal chargeback penalties, then I'm sorry but I feel this is unacceptable.
I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation.
This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
01 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation.
Personal biases are not anything new or weird. They are simply a fact. Objective truth cannot be percieved (even though it exists in theory). InControl has a great reputation that he did not gain by being useless and running poor businesses. His reputation is well deserved which is proven by the general support from this community.
The fact that they both have different stories just strengthens their claims of intra-communication issues.
I can't believe that you are getting this upset over a business failing it's administrative aspects, especially in a time where banks are going bankrupt left and right (I'm not misinterpreting the failure as bankrupcy just stating that bigger and more solid companies fall as well).
GoseCouaching with all of it's coaches including inControl and Louder has my full respect for attempting to create a successful business out of something we all love. Unfortunately it seems that good StarCraft players are not as adept businessmen. What I am trying to say is that the initiative in itself should not be discouraged.
Regarding monetary issues I have nothing to say really, I do not have a personal stake in this since GosuCoaching does not owe me any money but I understand customers being dissapointed. I just hope that the community is not as unforgiving as with other things (Combat-Ex) and acknowledges the effort put in by the staff.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
01 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't understand the general good will and encouragement in this thread. At this point in time, the founder of the company, and the company's second in command, have publicly announced different stories about the current going ons of GosuCoaching. As a consumer, it seems unrealistic to trust GosuCoaching at the moment, when they haven't even properly refunded every costumer for money put down in expectation of services to be rendered.
Incontrol, arguably the public figurehead has claimed GosuCoaching is in fact shutting down, while Louder, the manager of GosuCoaching claims a temporary hiatus.
If GosuCoaching did not have the members associated with TeamLiquid as it does, I'd personally bet the attitude would be completely and entirely different. Which is to say, personal biases and friendships are obviously shown in this situation.
Personal biases are not anything new or weird. They are simply a fact. Objective truth cannot be percieved (even though it exists in theory). InControl has a great reputation that he did not gain by being useless and running poor businesses. His reputation is well deserved which is proven by the general support from this community.
The fact that they both have different stories just strengthens their claims of intra-communication issues.
I can't believe that you are getting this upset over a business failing it's administrative aspects, especially in a time where banks are going bankrupt left and right (I'm not misinterpreting the failure as bankrupcy just stating that bigger and more solid companies fall as well).
GoseCouaching with all of it's coaches including inControl and Louder has my full respect for attempting to create a successful business out of something we all love. Unfortunately it seems that good StarCraft players are not as adept businessmen. What I am trying to say is that the initiative in itself should not be discouraged.
Regarding monetary issues I have nothing to say really, I do not have a personal stake in this since GosuCoaching does not owe me any money but I understand customers being dissapointed. I just hope that the community is not as unforgiving as with other things (Combat-Ex) and acknowledges the effort put in by the staff.
TL;DR A for effort.
I'm just personally surprised by the amount of support they're currently receiving. Mostly, I'm trying to bring up the point that the support seems misplaced in this particular organization. Maybe not the specific members. I suppose I disagree with you and I would prefer the community be less forgiving and generally more negative in response to their actions so far.
If you want to talk more, I don't mind talking in PMs, and I do understand your position, and don't necessarily frown upon it, it's just our particular argument is probably off-topic now.
Make it so the coaches just give a 2 hour (or so) block that's open and have people schedule it in there. Consistence makes it easier to do it at you're scale. I hope it all works out!
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
You're kind of misrepresenting what happened. Nobody closes due to too much interest. They close due to not being able to HANDLE too much business. Plenty of companies, even large corporations, have grown faster than they were prepared to handle and suffered the consequences.
He claims he wants to rebuild with a more scalable business model. But it's difficult to make that happen overnight. Only time will tell if it's going to work or if the negative fallout from this event will have done too much damage.
Not that I'm taking his side or anything. Quite the contrary, I still want an explanation for why coaches didn't get paid for lessons delivered.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
On September 02 2010 07:47 xyos wrote: I love how everyone laughed at me, when I said they refused to contact me for weeks
we laughed at the fact you called it a scam website, not that they didn't contact you.
I think one flaw in the plan is people pay potentially days beforehand, sign up for a time slot to get coaching, and go on. With the overload of people signing up that just means people will have to wait weeks to get on. Instead maybe a small timeline of hours the coaches are avialable can be put up, and a little grey button that says "purchase this time slot".
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
I don't know. Normally you would just accept money with a "promise of services". In fact, that got me to thinking. Maybe instead of all these refunds, they should just cease accepting new requests, work with existing coaches to figure out availability and schedule all the outstanding lesson requests, and just get it done. That would the best thing for the brand, the business, the students, and the coaches. This paypal chargeback thing is for the birds. If Louder is busy, give iNcontroL access to the email account, put differences aside, and just get it done. After that they can go their separate ways, but it would show a sense of integrity from both parties and would probably be a confidence booster for people thinking about future services.
In the meantime, while they're getting all this sorted out, they can work on figuring out how to come up with a more scalable business model. I don't know how big the backlog is, but if the coaches are willing to hunker down and just get all of this crap knocked out, I would imagine they can push through the lessons in 2 weeks or so. But who knows, maybe they had way more requests than even I can imagine.
I too don't understand all the goodwill. Why would they take peoples' money without a set date for a lesson, at the very least? It sounds like they just took money in and then blew people off, which is closer to 'unethical' than 'well-intentioned'. Add on forcing people to dispute with paypal and this seems really obnoxious.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
You are right, I didn't realize their first emails that were with their client involved getting their money before scheduling or anything began.
I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
On September 02 2010 08:36 iEchoic wrote: I too don't understand all the goodwill. Why would they take peoples' money without a set date for a lesson, at the very least? It sounds like they just took money in and then blew people off, which is closer to 'criminal' than 'good-intentioned'. Add on forcing people to dispute with paypal and this seems really obnoxious.
Am I understanding something wrong?
In an ideal world, sure that's how it would work. But when you're dealing with multiple people in various geographic locations, some of whom may not always be immediately responsive to emails / contact, it's hard to always make sure there was an agreed upon date set before making payment. Unless of course there's a calendar / scheduling system built into the website.
In any case, I think the intentions were good, and Louder probably had too much faith in the coaches to be readily available and more easily accessible. People started scheduling lessons, and then he realized that the back and forth with the coaches and the scheduling was too slow to be able to keep up with the demand of incoming requests.
For example, I tried to schedule a lesson with LZ. I paid for a 2 hour block, went back and forth with Louder multiple times via email, and after about a week Louder was saying he just couldn't get in touch with LZ and he hasn't responded. That probably wasn't Louder's fault, it was more likely Lz. But right about the same time, they got PsyonicReaver, so Louder asked if I wanted to schedule with him instead. I said ok, Louder booked him for a certain day. Psyonic emailed me personally saying that Louder booked him for a day that he wasn't available on and he was confused because Louder didn't ask him confirm the time with him in advance. But I rescheduled the time personally with Psyonic and everything went fine.
Anyway, point being, I don't think there was ever any malicious intent. Just bad decisions, and lack of clear organization. The entire model of having a middle man, whom you can only communicate with via email, and that middle man can only communicate with the other endpoints via email, then you're just screwed right from the start.
He just didn't realize that, and learned the hard way.
Don't get me wrong, there's no good will coming from my end, and I still want an answer about why coaches didn't get paid for time spent coaching. If, for example, it's to handle the paypal chargebacks, then THAT starts to get into shady territory and demonstrates a lack of integrity and should be shunned. As the poster above said, MAKE the time. It's the right thing to do. When YOU are the one that fucks up, then YOU are the one that bears the burden of making it right.
i hate to say it but... its understandable why the DMVs are all horrible... hundreds of people wanting to get in contact / interact with a few. same case for gosucoaching i guess. This is just a case of good people with good intentions spreading themselves too thin leading to poor execution... not that there really is a "good" alternative to this situation that could be realised overnight.
I think the most shocking thing is that there were so many people willing to pay for coaching lol. I remember years ago it was like Rekrul+Elky and all those old school gosu trying the same kind of thing.I don't believe they ever got much going from it.They were like real pros living in korea at the time too. Louder should get a job in marketing because I don't know how they became so big so fast. It be interesting to see if they can get it going again.
On September 02 2010 08:57 InToTheWannaB wrote: I think the most shocking thing is that there were so many people will to pay for coaching lol. I remember years ago it was like Rekrul+Elky and all those old school gosu trying the same kind of thing.I don't believe they ever got much going from it.They were like real pros living in korea at the time too. Louder should get a job in marketing because I don't know how they became so big so fast. It be interesting to see if they can get it going again.
I don't think it's surprising at all. Are you surprised that people buy WoW gold, FFXI gil, or any other types of online currency too?
At least here people are paying to legitimately become better at the game, and not paying to cheat.
On September 02 2010 08:57 InToTheWannaB wrote: Louder should get a job in marketing because I don't know how they became so big so fast. It be interesting to see if they can get it going again.
The problem is, the entire thing was built on their reputation, and that trump card only works one time. There's a new reputation now, and it's not one on which to build a business.
On September 02 2010 00:06 Louder wrote: Also, since this was aired publicly, even though I addressed it in my main post, do not believe that coaches are getting shafted. They are not. There's a narrow window of time for which I can't pay them for lessons, which means a couple of them will lose out on a little money, but it can't be helped - and this whole thing will end up personally costing me hundreds, which I can certainly live with
Anyone think there will be a lot of coaches signing up for a similar arrangement with him in the future? Ever?
I hear Enron is hiring, and Bernie Madoff is hanging signs in the neighborhood looking for people to mentor. :D
I contacted gosucoaching 2 weeks ago to setup a lesson. I loved the idea and had heard good things about their coaches. After a few emails by myself to Gosucoaching to see how i could get the ball rolling and get a payment their way I was finally contacted. I was told that there had been a few hiccups but everything was alright and to send my payment to their paypal account.
Louder, I sure hope this "temporary closing" wasn't known about 8 days ago when I was told to send you the money. If that in fact is the truth, it's incredibly poor business ethics
If you do plan on re-opening Gosucoaching it would be in your best interest to refund your customer's money, making them do the leg work is an absolute joke. How do you think your customers feel? I'm sure if they're anything like me they've sent several emails and tried different ways to contact your company over the past few weeks.
Hopefully you'll rethink that decision if you ever want to have a clean reputation in the SC community.
I just want to re-iterate, this has nothing to do with the coaches as their reviews and reputations have showed them nothing but praise, I'm looking forward to contacting the Zerg coaches directly for a lesson.
You guys are really this shocked that a bunch of young gamers didn't run a company with thousands of inquiries properly? Jesus give them a break, there refunding the money, they have other shit going on im sure. This isn't BP, Chevron, Enron, or any other huge company so don't expect it to be as such.
Sounds that they are pretty good at SC, but bad at business. Maybe they should put somebody else in charge of the scheduling if Louder doesn't have the time?
From listening to LZ's stream, it's not a matter of "things not working out", it's got more with incontrol and louder having mutual issues.
On September 02 2010 09:11 ckw wrote: You guys are really this shocked that a bunch of young gamers didn't run a company with thousands of inquiries properly? Jesus give them a break, there refunding the money, they have other shit going on im sure. This isn't BP, Chevron, Enron, or any other huge company so don't expect it to be as such.
On September 02 2010 09:11 ckw wrote: You guys are really this shocked that a bunch of young gamers didn't run a company with thousands of inquiries properly? Jesus give them a break, there refunding the money, they have other shit going on im sure. This isn't BP, Chevron, Enron, or any other huge company so don't expect it to be as such.
I work at an electrical contracting business, scheduling service calls, and talking to angry people who are pissed that their electricity isnt working, or some other necessary appliance. This doesnt mean i tell them "send me your money... i dont have anyone available for the next 3 weeks.. but send me your money and ill just get to you when i can"
If we don't have the time/availability/resources to get to them we just say "we are sorry but we are just booked for X weeks, if you cannot wait that long then you need to contact another company" we dont say "um... send me your money and then we'll see if i can help you."
This is terribly terribly shady and just flat out wrong, regardless of what happened or how it started. Once you take someone else's money they are YOUR responsibility, not the other way around. This makes your whole operation sound like one of those scams where you get people to send you money and then "well its so inconvenient to get such a small amount of money back, maybe we will get to keep it"... just wrong.
On September 02 2010 09:26 mnofstl007 wrote: If we don't have the time/availability/resources to get to them we just say "we are sorry but we are just booked for X weeks, if you cannot wait that long then you need to contact another company" we dont say "um... send me your money and then we'll see if i can help you."
This is terribly terribly shady and just flat out wrong, regardless of what happened or how it started. Once you take someone else's money they are YOUR responsibility, not the other way around. This makes your whole operation sound like one of those scams where you get people to send you money and then "well its so inconvenient to get such a small amount of money back, maybe we will get to keep it"... just wrong.
Great SC people, terrible business people.
Yes, but now imagine that you don't even know if you are booked or not, because you've got 10 people wanting service from 3 contractors, and there's a 24-hour turnaround time between each question you ask the contractors, and there's no clearly defined working hours or "on call" hours.
It's not shady so much as dumb. The only thing shady would be not paying your contractors for work they already did and for which you were paid.
I hope these minor difficulties will merely be a speed bump in the road for you and gosucoaching. I think you guys provide a great service and would to continue to see it be an integral part in the community for the years to come. I personally know how much time you've invested in creating gosucoaching and have a great staff to teach Starcraft to people. Hang in there, and good luck.
You are right there is nothing shady about "send us your moneys..." and then a week later "sry, but if you want a refund you have to fight to get it back, im not going to just send back people's money that i took without providing any kind of service"
On September 02 2010 09:36 mnofstl007 wrote: You are right there is nothing shady about "send us your moneys..." and then a week later "sry, but if you want a refund you have to fight to get it back, im not going to just send back people's money that i took without providing any kind of service"
To be fair, he said he would, but it would take quite a bit longer than doing it yourself.
By phrasing it that way, you are injecting intent to deceive, which doesn't exist in the actual situation of what happened.
Should he do all the work of getting peoples' money back to them himself? Yes, absolutely. Is there any malicious intent or deceit involved? Of course not.
What *is* shady is not paying coaches for the time they already spent coaching. There is no excuse for that, period. He received money from students, it needs to go to the coaches. He's free to take his $12 cut or whatever it is. End of discussion. If people are not getting paid, that is shady because he ALREADY HAS THE MONEY.
Part of the reason the founders / leaders always make all the money and do the least amount of work is because they assume all the financial risk of the company. In this case, it seems like he wanted the reward without the risk. That is shady. Maybe I'm wrong. But I honestly can't think of a legitimate reason why people who spent their time coaching, and whom Louder received payment for said coaching, should not be paid.
Making people do paypal chargebacks and get the money themselves is, quite frankly, bullshit. And he's only shooting himself, his integrity, and his future business prospects in the foot by doing it. But it's not shady. Maybe he has RL shit going on. idk. But as cold as it sounds, it doesn't matter. When you're the face of a business, the responsibility is on you. And when you dont' deliver, customers and employees don't care about, and shouldn't be expected to care about, the reasons.
On September 02 2010 09:41 monad wrote: By phrasing it that way, you are injecting intent to deceive, which doesn't exist in the actual situation of what happened.
Should he do all the work of getting peoples' money back to them himself? Yes, absolutely. Is there any malicious intent or deceit involved? Of course not.
What *is* shady is not paying coaches for the time they already spent coaching. There is no excuse for that, period. He received money from students, it needs to go to the coaches. He's free to take his $12 cut or whatever it is. End of discussion. If people are not getting paid, that is shady because he ALREADY HAS THE MONEY.
Making people do paypal chargebacks and get the money themselves is, quite frankly, bullshit. And he's only shooting himself, his integrity, and his future business prospects in the foot by doing it. But it's not shady.
I do not personally know his intent so i cannot answer for that, i just simplified the situation, but maybe over-simplified it.
But ya, ripping the coaches is shady also.
LF coaches to start a similar business... >=)... jk... mostly.
to be honest I am amazed that they had enough people willing to pay for lessons, the first time I saw his advertisement I thought there was no way he could keep 1-2 coaches even semi-busy. Shocked that there was enough for him to become overwhelmed and just crash.
I can't go into too many details but basically a lot of people pay before scheduling. Its not a situation where the money doesn't come to us until we "allow" it. As for coach payments its not all sorted out yet and not really public info in any case
As for intentions etc xeris and i have both put in tons of time giving away our money and what the site made for prizes, and at bringing students to coaches. Process is definitely haeder to work out than we expected with twenty plus new inquiries per day
To clear up one detail, Gosucoaching was my idea, founded built and owned by me. Incontroll was a coach who didn't agree with the.goals of the site and has moved on , nothing more
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
This.
As a business owner, and as someone who has been on the bad end of plenty of business dealings, I can say with confidence that any time you pay in advance for a service to be rendered at a later date, you're setting yourself up to get screwed.
You never pay someone before the work is done. Not in full, at least. (And you never agree to put someone to work without a written quotation detailing costs!)
On a different note, plenty of companies have fallen victim to too much workload. This is actually a common downfall for new business owners.
You start out small, with minimal overhead, you see a little success, and then you're faced with this inevitable need to expand. Expanding costs money, takes time, and is really fucking stressful and hard. Companies break down in this stage every day.
Some famous rich guy who's name eludes me once said that the difference between a moderately successful business person, and a super successful business person is the chance they took when their company reached that threshold. Sometimes it just doesn't pan out.
Edit: And just because shit doesn't work out, doesn't mean someone is getting scammed. It's just impossible to predict with absolute certainty what's going to happen in the world of business. Starting a new company is hard. Most people try three or four times before they ever get it right.
I'm going to reiterate what Louder said - GosuCoaching was not about making money (in fact I never got paid). Up until the last two weeks, the tournaments and events we hosted were mostly privately funded. We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I would definitely agree that the model we used wasn't optimal for us, especially since none of us had any real business experience and we weren't equipped to handle such a high volume. Especially considering the fact that all of the coaches are actual gamers, the month of August was rife with LAN events and other things keeping people occupied. It was just a mess in general.
We just bit off more than we could chew, basically. When I was processing some emails weeks ago, there were maybe 15-20 in the inbox... last week when I went (before the shut down) there were almost 80. I was shocked by the increase in volume, I don't think anybody could have predicted it. The whole thing is simply unfortunate. However, it won't deter us, or me, from finding ways to do events and whatnot.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
This.
As a business owner, and as someone who has been on the bad end of plenty of business dealings, I can say with confidence that any time you pay in advance for a service to be rendered at a later date, you're setting yourself up to get screwed.
You never pay someone before the work is done. Not in full, at least. (And you never agree to put someone to work without a written quotation detailing costs!)
I don't necessarily agree with this. When dealing with online lesson types of things, this is just always how it works. You always pay first and receive services later. It happened when I took online chess lessons with a grandmaster some years ago, it happened when I was learning a foreign language remotely with a native speaker who lived across the world, and I wouldn't expect it to be any different here.
On September 02 2010 08:10 GreatFall wrote: This is the only business I have ever heard of where they closed due to 'to much' interest and success. Also, Louder as I wrote in the xyos' blog I think it was pretty shitty of you to call out INcontroL as someone who is lying and trying to sabotage gosugaming. Real class act.
I was going to say how ridiculous this is as well because it is not exactly hard to set up a php/asp/jsp website that can handle something like this, and even automate scheduling and process payments. But you can't expect them to have anticipated thousands of people wanting lessons at a video game. I'm sure the workload expected was like 1% of what they received. I don't know how you can expect someone working a full time job and dealing with real life issues to possibly have foreseen or have been able to handle this.
It just goes to show how lucrative this market really is, or how good they were at advertising their brand.
The issue is that they still took their money though. Normally you wouldn't accept the money until the times have been arranged, instead of some vague "future date" commitment.
This.
As a business owner, and as someone who has been on the bad end of plenty of business dealings, I can say with confidence that any time you pay in advance for a service to be rendered at a later date, you're setting yourself up to get screwed.
You never pay someone before the work is done. Not in full, at least. (And you never agree to put someone to work without a written quotation detailing costs!)
I don't necessarily agree with this. When dealing with online lesson types of things, this is just always how it works. You always pay first and receive services later. It happened when I took online chess lessons with a grandmaster some years ago, it happened when I was learning a foreign language remotely with a native speaker who lived across the world, and I wouldn't expect it to be any different here.
You know, as I was writing that I had this thought in the back of my head that an online medium is a different kind of market, and I might have to eat those words, but if nothing else, this point should still stand:
As consumers, be leery of anyone asking for cash up front. As a business, try to operate in such a way as to guarantee your product or service.
Take and verify credit card info before a lesson, and run it after. I know this kind of stuff is hard in the beginning, but it gets a lot easier after doing it just once.
I wasn't trying to knock on the GosuCoaching guys at all. I totally respect what they tried to do, and have no doubt that they'll get it right eventually.
Thanks for the post, I was always intrigued by the whole gosucoaching thing. It is say to see it kind of on halt for a moment but hopefully it will pick back up. I realize scheduling and organizing must be extremely difficult. I hope when it starts back up you guy do not jack up the prices simply because you have to many people wanting lessons.
Seems to me like Louder and the rest of the guys just jumped into something without having any experience or clue what they were doing. If you are going to run a business like that you need reliable customer support, contact information, comprehensive rates, safe payment methods, and at the very least a very basic understanding of accounting.
Honestly, to put it in technical terms you basically just irresponsibly inflated your unearned revenues account without any regard for your clients or employees. You should have had a system in place to prevents double-booking/time slots and time-zone conflicts, not to mention a way to actually ensure the money was being rightfully transferred from the customers to the coaches.
I do appreciate your passion for the game and your vision to create this website where coaching from top players is readily available to anyone. but again, as soon as money gets thrown in the picture this turns into a business just like any other small business in America. Sorry to bring it to you but chances are you guys won't recover from this breakdown. Your brand name is pretty much tarnished. Advice? Hire someone that knows how a handle a business when you re-open.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
GC didn't take 12$ from every coach... it took 5$ of 30. When Louder had Future/Psyonic join he took 12$ from their 30$
He hasn't really told me why. I didn't know about it until I spoke with Future at MLG.
I doubt Louder will explain the situation to me either, he has had some pretty harsh things to say on MSN the last two times he has msg'd me. It would seem he thinks I made this happen or have some axe to grind.
PS: Up until the last few tourneys I had supplied the sponsorship for the gosucoaching weekly through one of my students. So what Xeris says is probably 100% true. The 5$ from each session was supposed to go towards the site, tourneys etc.. I think Louder was intending on using that to pay some of the staff that worked with him on booking as well. But again, he will be quick to point out, I don't in fact know so just take what I am saying as a bit more of an informed perspective.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
stuff
Definitely, I'm not trying to use your words to start an argument - even without your testimony, something doesn't add up to me, so I'm just wondering what the explanation is. I'm really curious here.
I just don't get what would make a site like gosucoaching have such high expenses that you have to pay $100 a tourney out of pocket despite a large sum not being paid to Machine and a significant amount of money coming in for coaching. I know webhosting costs and I can't see it being justified based on bandwidth costs, especially for the kind of hosting that crashed like it did. What other expenses does a relatively simple site with bad hosting have?
People only paid 30$ for a lesson...what a STEAL... was the lesson 30 mins and a basic tutorial?
I wish i knew pro level players to teach, cause i know i could run the other side of it haha.
If you had so many emails why didnt u just select the bottom 60 and say "sorry we are full now come back later".
sskkeettcchhyy is all I can say haha. Sorry, but once you accept money, or start receiving a service...
You have to make sure the service is provided, and that the service provider gets paid.
seriously tho 30$ is a STEAL. people would have payed more. I know but then everyone "this is not about money this is about getting people better and having tournaments" bullshit, as soon as ANY money is involved it IS about money to at least one person in the deal.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
stuff
Definitely, I'm not trying to use your words to start an argument - even without your testimony, something doesn't add up to me, so I'm just wondering what the explanation is. I'm really curious here.
I just don't get what would make a site like gosucoaching have such high expenses that you have to pay $100 a tourney out of pocket despite a large sum not being paid to Machine and a significant amount of money coming in for coaching. I know webhosting costs and I can't see it being justified based on bandwidth costs, especially for the kind of hosting that crashed like it did. What other expenses does a relatively simple site with bad hosting have?
Yeah im Thinking the Exact same thing.
I'm VERY tempted to set up a proper coaching System for coaches/students.
There is absolutely no reason for things to have got this bad at all....
Really seems like Alot of money was pocketed and/or very mismanaged.
For one the "e-mails" going from 16 upto 80 "suddenly" Makes me Think they they where just not checked Very often at all.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
stuff
Definitely, I'm not trying to use your words to start an argument - even without your testimony, something doesn't add up to me, so I'm just wondering what the explanation is. I'm really curious here.
I just don't get what would make a site like gosucoaching have such high expenses that you have to pay $100 a tourney out of pocket despite a large sum not being paid to Machine and a significant amount of money coming in for coaching. I know webhosting costs and I can't see it being justified based on bandwidth costs, especially for the kind of hosting that crashed like it did. What other expenses does a relatively simple site with bad hosting have?
Yeah im Thinking the Exact same thing.
I'm VERY tempted to set up a proper coaching System for coaches/students.
There is absolutely no reason for things to have got this bad at all....
Really seems like Alot of money was pocketed and/or very mismanaged.
For one the "e-mails" going from 16 upto 80 "suddenly" Makes me Think they they where just not checked Very often at all.
what he said haha... need a business partner? hahaha jk kinda ; )
On September 02 2010 16:18 mnofstl007 wrote: People only paid 30$ for a lesson...what a STEAL... was the lesson 30 mins and a basic tutorial?
Actually it was an hour, with 1 on 1 analysis of your gameplay. The rate gets cheaper if you purchase in bulk (for example purchasing 2 hours up front is less than $30 / hr). When I did it for 2 hours, we worked exclusively on my TvP on Stepps of War. I was shown a couple solid builds for those maps, and practiced them against an AI with the coach observing. He would point out things during the game like "you don't have any SCVs producing, you have an idle worker, buildings aren't hotekeyed, buildings aren't rallied", things like that. I normally average around 40 APM and I thought I just need more practice to make my fingers faster. When I was doing everything the coach was telling me, while watching the replay I was at 80 consistently. That alone was a huge eye opener. It felt really intense while I was doing all this multitasking too.
After I practiced those builds a couple time against AIs, I played 2 matches against the coach, where he doesn't hold anything back and you try to use the builds just learned against him. First time I got stomped, second time I did fairly well and only lost in the macro game. I feel much more confident about my TvP after that session, especially on that map. Afterwords I fired up a custom game with a friend of mine who completely stomps me every single time I've ever played him, and I beat the shit out of him, hands down. It's well worth the money, I'm not gonna lie. Some people can't understand why you'd spend money on a game, but I was sold even before I bought the lesson, and even moreso after.
My issue with the whole setup is that I don't think most people that are trying to charge money for lessons understand how to properly teach. Teaching can be surprisingly complicated and can require an innate intuitive knack for it and/or a good understanding of psychology. Just because you're a known name doesn't mean you have any idea how to make people improve. Kind of off topic, but whatever. Doesn't mean I seriously doubt the good intentions of anyone involved, but charging money makes me skeptical.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
stuff
Definitely, I'm not trying to use your words to start an argument - even without your testimony, something doesn't add up to me, so I'm just wondering what the explanation is. I'm really curious here.
I just don't get what would make a site like gosucoaching have such high expenses that you have to pay $100 a tourney out of pocket despite a large sum not being paid to Machine and a significant amount of money coming in for coaching. I know webhosting costs and I can't see it being justified based on bandwidth costs, especially for the kind of hosting that crashed like it did. What other expenses does a relatively simple site with bad hosting have?
I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to say, but how it worked was that coaches were paid from Louder's paypal, and the rest was kept for expenses and hosting the events. However, due to the complaints and disputes filed with paypal however, they froze his account and took the money that was in it. Louder didn't pocket anything, even if he had wanted to (he didn't) - paypal gg'd him.
On September 02 2010 16:18 mnofstl007 wrote: People only paid 30$ for a lesson...what a STEAL... was the lesson 30 mins and a basic tutorial?
Actually it was an hour, with 1 on 1 analysis of your gameplay. The rate gets cheaper if you purchase in bulk (for example purchasing 2 hours up front is less than $30 / hr). When I did it for 2 hours, we worked exclusively on my TvP on Stepps of War. I was shown a couple solid builds for those maps, and practiced them against an AI with the coach observing. He would point out things during the game like "you don't have any SCVs producing, you have an idle worker, buildings aren't hotekeyed, buildings aren't rallied", things like that. I normally average around 40 APM and I thought I just need more practice to make my fingers faster. When I was doing everything the coach was telling me, while watching the replay I was at 80 consistently. That alone was a huge eye opener. It felt really intense while I was doing all this multitasking too.
After I practiced those builds a couple time against AIs, I played 2 matches against the coach, where he doesn't hold anything back and you try to use the builds just learned against him. First time I got stomped, second time I did fairly well and only lost in the macro game. I feel much more confident about my TvP after that session, especially on that map. Afterwords I fired up a custom game with a friend of mine who completely stomps me every single time I've ever played him, and I beat the shit out of him, hands down. It's well worth the money, I'm not gonna lie. Some people can't understand why you'd spend money on a game, but I was sold even before I bought the lesson, and even moreso after.
Sorry, but do you really need to pay money for this. There's alot of tutorials on the internet, starting from Day9 and ending with commentators like Husky and HD. Trump for example explains how to review your replays here: . As for build orders just check out Liquidpedia and try out things that feel comfortable with you.
On September 02 2010 13:40 Xeris wrote:We only started getting enough revenue to host the events ourselves without paying in the final two weeks.
I don't get how this makes sense. iNcontrol said Machine did $700 worth of coaching in a 3-week period alone that wasn't paid to him and he also mentioned taking $12 on every $30 of another coach. Then there's also all the money coming in from people who never even got lessons.
What expenses did you have besides website design and bandwidth? I don't understand how the website design + the site's bad hosting could be more expensive than that income.
How can you be taking in all that money and not have a significant surplus?
stuff
Definitely, I'm not trying to use your words to start an argument - even without your testimony, something doesn't add up to me, so I'm just wondering what the explanation is. I'm really curious here.
I just don't get what would make a site like gosucoaching have such high expenses that you have to pay $100 a tourney out of pocket despite a large sum not being paid to Machine and a significant amount of money coming in for coaching. I know webhosting costs and I can't see it being justified based on bandwidth costs, especially for the kind of hosting that crashed like it did. What other expenses does a relatively simple site with bad hosting have?
I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to say, but how it worked was that coaches were paid from Louder's paypal, and the rest was kept for expenses and hosting the events. However, due to the complaints and disputes filed with paypal however, they froze his account and took the money that was in it. Louder didn't pocket anything, even if he had wanted to (he didn't) - paypal gg'd him.
Ah thanks, the paypal freeze explains it. Refunds for the lessons which weren't given makes sense, but I was curious about the missing money from lessons that were.
On September 02 2010 16:18 mnofstl007 wrote: People only paid 30$ for a lesson...what a STEAL... was the lesson 30 mins and a basic tutorial?
Actually it was an hour, with 1 on 1 analysis of your gameplay. The rate gets cheaper if you purchase in bulk (for example purchasing 2 hours up front is less than $30 / hr). When I did it for 2 hours, we worked exclusively on my TvP on Stepps of War. I was shown a couple solid builds for those maps, and practiced them against an AI with the coach observing. He would point out things during the game like "you don't have any SCVs producing, you have an idle worker, buildings aren't hotekeyed, buildings aren't rallied", things like that. I normally average around 40 APM and I thought I just need more practice to make my fingers faster. When I was doing everything the coach was telling me, while watching the replay I was at 80 consistently. That alone was a huge eye opener. It felt really intense while I was doing all this multitasking too.
After I practiced those builds a couple time against AIs, I played 2 matches against the coach, where he doesn't hold anything back and you try to use the builds just learned against him. First time I got stomped, second time I did fairly well and only lost in the macro game. I feel much more confident about my TvP after that session, especially on that map. Afterwords I fired up a custom game with a friend of mine who completely stomps me every single time I've ever played him, and I beat the shit out of him, hands down. It's well worth the money, I'm not gonna lie. Some people can't understand why you'd spend money on a game, but I was sold even before I bought the lesson, and even moreso after.
Sorry, but do you really need to pay money for this. There's alot of tutorials on the internet, starting from Day9 and ending with commentators like Husky and HD. Trump for example explains how to review your replays here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ZfJGXfcAg. As for build orders just check out Liquidpedia and try out things that feel comfortable with you.
Lol. The point here is that people were not looking for 'tutorials', they were paying for private lessons. There is a big difference from sitting down and watching day9 daily and sitting down with someone like day9 and having 2 hours of private lessons where all your questions are answered and all their attention is devoted to your personal improvement.
It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
On September 02 2010 16:18 mnofstl007 wrote: People only paid 30$ for a lesson...what a STEAL... was the lesson 30 mins and a basic tutorial?
Actually it was an hour, with 1 on 1 analysis of your gameplay. The rate gets cheaper if you purchase in bulk (for example purchasing 2 hours up front is less than $30 / hr). When I did it for 2 hours, we worked exclusively on my TvP on Stepps of War. I was shown a couple solid builds for those maps, and practiced them against an AI with the coach observing. He would point out things during the game like "you don't have any SCVs producing, you have an idle worker, buildings aren't hotekeyed, buildings aren't rallied", things like that. I normally average around 40 APM and I thought I just need more practice to make my fingers faster. When I was doing everything the coach was telling me, while watching the replay I was at 80 consistently. That alone was a huge eye opener. It felt really intense while I was doing all this multitasking too.
After I practiced those builds a couple time against AIs, I played 2 matches against the coach, where he doesn't hold anything back and you try to use the builds just learned against him. First time I got stomped, second time I did fairly well and only lost in the macro game. I feel much more confident about my TvP after that session, especially on that map. Afterwords I fired up a custom game with a friend of mine who completely stomps me every single time I've ever played him, and I beat the shit out of him, hands down. It's well worth the money, I'm not gonna lie. Some people can't understand why you'd spend money on a game, but I was sold even before I bought the lesson, and even moreso after.
Sorry, but do you really need to pay money for this. There's alot of tutorials on the internet, starting from Day9 and ending with commentators like Husky and HD. Trump for example explains how to review your replays here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ZfJGXfcAg. As for build orders just check out Liquidpedia and try out things that feel comfortable with you.
why do people keep saying stuff like this, like people just didn't know about replays or commentaries before and this is going to be some earth shattering revelation? If you can't see how one-on-one private coaching is light years more effective than watching replays and reading online strategies, then there's something wrong with you.
I still think the concept of getting instruction from pros is absolutely brilliant, and I also think the rates are great.
How much do you think it'd cost to get an hour of batting practice from Barry Bonds? How about an hour on the mat with Randy Couture? Or working on your swing for an hour with Tiger Woods?
I really hope to see a new GosuCoaching soon, as it's something I wanted to invest in before, but didn't because, frankly, it seemed disorganized, and asking for cash up front was sketchy to me.
On September 03 2010 01:45 MrBitter wrote: I still think the concept of getting instruction from pros is absolutely brilliant, and I also think the rates are great.
How much do you think it'd cost to get an hour of batting practice from Barry Bonds? How about an hour on the mat with Randy Couture? Or working on your swing for an hour with Tiger Woods?
I really hope to see a new GosuCoaching soon, as it's something I wanted to invest in before, but didn't because, frankly, it seemed disorganized, and asking for cash up front was sketchy to me.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
Read my post.
I did, it doesn't explain much. Specifically why coaches aren't being paid and where all this extra money was disappearing to. You can say you couldn't afford things but unelss you say where that money was going then it doesn't mean anything.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
Read my post.
I did, it doesn't explain much. Specifically why coaches aren't being paid and where all this extra money was disappearing to. You can say you couldn't afford things but unelss you say where that money was going then it doesn't mean anything.
I think they aren't being paid because Louder's paypal account got frozen.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
Read my post.
I did, it doesn't explain much. Specifically why coaches aren't being paid and where all this extra money was disappearing to. You can say you couldn't afford things but unelss you say where that money was going then it doesn't mean anything.
You have a Paypal Account, which you pay your employees out of.
You tell your customer base to file claims against your account to get their money back because its easier than addressing everyone individually.
Paypal freezes the account due to a claim filing, you can't access it to pay your employees.
Where was your business model in all of this? First off, the website needs to be more organized. Secondly, your "partners" aka your trainers and staff all need to be on the same page. You need set times for organized meetings, as well as specific SET weekly schedules. It needs to be like a doctors office, not on a "we'll come this time blah blah blah" Thirdly, finances need to be kept perfectly. I suggest using a basic program like microsoft excel to organize your appropriate finances. For example, Each row is your partners...With their X amount of hours at X pay totalling to X dollars subtracting 10-15% which turns over your total amount per person per week. In the columns, simply add up your total per person to your overall total. Then subtract all business expenses (website cost, profit toward improvement/backup funds) That's a simple model of course, but it's a jist of what needed to be done Next, you need more organization in how to contact and be contacted. A phone number would be perfect...Just a simple "google voice" account can suffice for this mission. Link the account to all your staff. This way you will all be able to tell who called and what not. Also, set up another spreadsheet which lists the schedules. Keep the schedules SET. If there is a cancellation, or an issue/no show you charge them. Much like a doctors office would charge you for a no-show without a call. Always inform your clients the day before via cell about their scheduled practice...
Sounds like you guys got wayyyyy ahead of yourselves without thinking this through.
I don't know InControl or Louder at all, and I have no positive bias for them. Just based on the fact that Louder is being transparent about what's going on and assuring to pay everyone back, though, I'm pretty confident there was no ill-intent.
They messed up. There's no reason to hate on them. Really. Someone might be out 60 bucks temporarily. Oh noes.
On September 03 2010 02:46 Buddhist wrote: I don't know InControl or Louder at all, and I have no positive bias for them. Just based on the fact that Louder is being transparent about what's going on and assuring to pay everyone back, though, I'm pretty confident there was no ill-intent.
They messed up. There's no reason to hate on them. Really. Someone might be out 60 bucks temporarily. Oh noes.
Have some empathy, imo.
Thing is all this "transparency" comes after Incontrol posted what was going on. Louder was going to "announce" this days before and kept putting it off. I came into this clusterfuck without bias towards either party, but it's becoming clear that something shady was going on, and I'm glad Inc got out before the shit hit the fan.
P-p-p-ponzi scheme p-p-ponzi scheme. (alright, maybe not that extreme, but still)
You need to have a compete and organized schedule, if you plan to do something like this. All transactions need to be handled with an e-mail. You need to have an email all staff can access, so that everyone can just check the e-mails, and respond as soon as possible. I think you underestimated the amount of work that needed to go into it, and that's brought you into this situation. I respect GosuCoaching, and I see no fault in them. It was all just a huge mistake. Even if I haven't paid for a lesson (As I see no real point for me to do so) I trust that they had a system, that was working well in the beginning stages, but was beginning to fail, when it got bigger. The thing is, is that, it is really hard to have an online business, the person who is selling it wants to see the cash in their paypal account first, and the person buying it, wants to have the product first. It's a huge deal. Maybe this would have gone better if you had say, a center somewhere in California, where someone would visit, pay for a lesson, or book a time for one, then once it is time for the lesson, the lesson goes on, and the person pays, although this is kind of weird, because of the fact that it's for a video game, and all that.
That should still be the system though. Book a time, have them respond with an e-mail, then pay them, then have the lesson, that was how it should be going. As far as I know the way GosuCoaching went about it was. The person books a time, and pays for lesson, Gosucoaching responds with e-mail, lesson happens. That works, but when there is so many people it begins to fail. Hopefully this can be resolved soon. Good luck guys!
I just feel sorry for the poor noobs you took money from.
User was warned for this post
With all due respect of course, maybe my choice of "took" was wrong, obviously the consumers gave them their money voluntarily. I'm blanking on what it is called when someone asks a consumer for money for services, but they don't have a means or the resources to fulfill that service. Lying? Cheating? Scamming?
On September 03 2010 01:45 MrBitter wrote: I still think the concept of getting instruction from pros is absolutely brilliant, and I also think the rates are great.
How much do you think it'd cost to get an hour of batting practice from Barry Bonds? How about an hour on the mat with Randy Couture? Or working on your swing for an hour with Tiger Woods?
I really hope to see a new GosuCoaching soon, as it's something I wanted to invest in before, but didn't because, frankly, it seemed disorganized, and asking for cash up front was sketchy to me.
I doubt much of that stuff would help very much. Most sports are based on repetition, consistent practice, muscle memory, etc. An hour with somebody very good at a sport would hardly do you anything, not to mention they might be really awful teachers.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
Read my post.
I did, it doesn't explain much. Specifically why coaches aren't being paid and where all this extra money was disappearing to. You can say you couldn't afford things but unelss you say where that money was going then it doesn't mean anything.
I actually explained it. Paypal froze the account which means they took the money that was in it.
On September 03 2010 01:45 MrBitter wrote: I still think the concept of getting instruction from pros is absolutely brilliant, and I also think the rates are great.
How much do you think it'd cost to get an hour of batting practice from Barry Bonds? How about an hour on the mat with Randy Couture? Or working on your swing for an hour with Tiger Woods?
I really hope to see a new GosuCoaching soon, as it's something I wanted to invest in before, but didn't because, frankly, it seemed disorganized, and asking for cash up front was sketchy to me.
I doubt much of that stuff would help very much. Most sports are based on repetition, consistent practice, muscle memory, etc. An hour with somebody very good at a sport would hardly do you anything, not to mention they might be really awful teachers.
An hour/few hours with a professional can give a bloody lot. This is from personal experience. Assuming he's a good teacher, of course.Saying it won't help very much is bullshitting.
On September 03 2010 01:45 MrBitter wrote: I still think the concept of getting instruction from pros is absolutely brilliant, and I also think the rates are great.
How much do you think it'd cost to get an hour of batting practice from Barry Bonds? How about an hour on the mat with Randy Couture? Or working on your swing for an hour with Tiger Woods?
I really hope to see a new GosuCoaching soon, as it's something I wanted to invest in before, but didn't because, frankly, it seemed disorganized, and asking for cash up front was sketchy to me.
I doubt much of that stuff would help very much. Most sports are based on repetition, consistent practice, muscle memory, etc. An hour with somebody very good at a sport would hardly do you anything, not to mention they might be really awful teachers.
The only problem with this rationale is that it's complete speculation. On the other hand, people who have actually done it have had nothing but good things to say, and claim that they have learned a lot. I don't see what there is left to discuss.
On September 03 2010 04:13 PROJECTILE wrote: I doubt much of that stuff would help very much. Most sports are based on repetition, consistent practice, muscle memory, etc. An hour with somebody very good at a sport would hardly do you anything, not to mention they might be really awful teachers.
I suppose sports team coaches should be fired then, no? School teachers? Drivers Ed teachers? How about conferences for learning new technologies?
Sports are based on two things, repetition and COACHING. Someone there to watch your practice/play and analyze it, so that you have a clearer understanding of what you can do better. That is what these people and others do - they analyze your play and provide very constructive feedback on how to get better.
Why it works is because they approach it the same as a sports coach or a teacher - to educate the student. One thing to note with this - many sports coaches were never actual players, pro or otherwise. Belichick as an example, has never played a game of football in his life (that I have found in research) - but he has been coaching for his entire career. Being a pro gamer does not make one the best teacher, but NOT being a pro gamer does not discount one from being a great coach either.
They had issues with scheduling - it happens to every business based on schedules, just not on as large a scale as often. How many times have you been to a doctors office and gone in to see the doctor at anywhere close to the scheduled appointment time? How about calling a cab, or a limo? A barber/hairstylist appointment? For us girls, nail appointments? All of them are prone to scheduling issues, conflicts, and events. The concern is how they are handled pre- and post- issue.
I believe this will hurt GosuCoaching, iNcontroL, and Louder more than the other coaches because of the drama in the two threads, but coaching as a whole should be largely unaffected, and rightly so. How iNcontroL and Louder act and react from here out will determine how badly this event will affect them.
On September 03 2010 01:30 Dragonsven wrote: It would go a lot better for everyone involved if you laid the cards out on the table and explained exactly what happened. This back and forth with hints of what happened but no explanation just makes you guys (Louder in particular) look more shady.
Read my post.
I did, it doesn't explain much. Specifically why coaches aren't being paid and where all this extra money was disappearing to. You can say you couldn't afford things but unelss you say where that money was going then it doesn't mean anything.
I actually explained it. Paypal froze the account which means they took the money that was in it.
As far as account freezing goes why did it happen? Because multiple people filed disputes? Where these disputes older than 60 days where you can't give refunds? Any disputes under 60 days means you have a direct link to a refund button - this overrides any and all frozen/locked accounts and allows for the user to refund a customer.
When an account is frozen/locked there are different levels of this. All of the levels make it so the user cannot make any withdrawals until the business (in this case) is verified to be a legit business, and many of the levels are set up so the user also cannot receive funds. I have someone that works in the account management/limitations department and I can see what I can do to help you guys out if you want.
On September 03 2010 05:50 CagedMind wrote: Paypal can "take money"? Isn't that illegal. I know they do stuff like freezing a account but to just go and take out all your money?
Actually taking the money as profit for themselves is illegal, yes. I would assume what Xeris is trying to say is that after they froze the account they have put the funds in a safe account while PayPal sorts out who paid what and how much so that PayPal can themselves refund the customers that require refunds. This means that GC.com will never actually see those funds again but the customers will get their money back from PayPal directly.
On September 02 2010 00:21 Louder wrote: For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
Hmm wonder why the PayPal is locked? Louder is too busy to issue refunds so he'll let PayPal clean up after his mess - also provides a convenient reason for not paying coaches?
On September 02 2010 00:21 Louder wrote: For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
Hmm wonder why the PayPal is locked? Louder is too busy to issue refunds so he'll let PayPal clean up after his mess - also provides a convenient reason for not paying coaches?
How is it convenient? It is what it is. It's already obvious why the paypal is locked. When that many people complain about lost services paypal is going to lock your account, you can't access the funds anymore.
On September 02 2010 00:21 Louder wrote: For students on the list of those who have paid but never got scheduled - please file a dispute, with your details, through PayPal. I realize it would be far more courteous and professional to gather those details and contact people individually, but along the lines of the scheduling work and other mentioned above - I simply do not have the time.
Hmm wonder why the PayPal is locked? Louder is too busy to issue refunds so he'll let PayPal clean up after his mess - also provides a convenient reason for not paying coaches?
A PayPal account will get locked if a large amount of disputes are filed against the account owner. This means that even if Louder had the time to personally address each customer with either a refund or a hold on the payment until the scheduling is fixed, there's nothing he can do about it without first getting in contact with a PayPal Account Limitations representative. Even then, the process would go like this:
We'll call PayPal Account Limitations "AL" for short.
1. Louder would have to tell AL what payments need refunding / holding. 2. AL would take 3 full business day to check the customers and amounts to confirm that it is what Louder says it is (AL has to check with a higher up in the Account Limitations Department). 3. AL would call back the next day to re-confirm the payments. 4. The refunds / holdings would be made.
Since (I'm guessing because they are saying their account is frozen) multiple people have filed disputes Louder cannot do a single thing with his PayPal account without getting permission from AL.
As far as paying the coaches, until the whole business is verified to be legit (this takes forever because of the speed at which PayPal works) he will not be able to take out a single cent from the account.
PayPal suspended us because we had a lot of disputes filed in a small period of time when people were paying but scheduling wasn't happening (while I was moving). But that's not really something I feel compelled to go into. I was a little ignorant about some of PayPal's finer points obviously. I learned after this that it's not wise to keep all our cash in there!
Let me clear the air right now. As I've posted before, the coaches are getting paid. There will be a few cases where I won't be paying them directly they'll have to work it out with students who have been refunded in full (for example, they paid $200 for 8 hours but only used 2, then got a full refund). That's all I'm saying about that.
As for Machine, he's done plenty of coaching for sure. Someone was going around at MLG saying I (gosucoaching) owed him over $1,000. Machine's pay isn't public information, nor is his lesson volume. Coaches will be paid, Machine included. What Incontrol or any other speculator says about it is irrelevant.
As for "taking money from coaches", let me be clear. This is a business. Coaches were paid for work they did for gosucoaching. Students paid us, we paid the coaches an agreed upon rate. It's not the public's business, nor any individual coaches' business, what everyone made. I don't owe anyone other than each individual coach an explanation as to what I am willing to pay them. If the lesson market supported $100/hr but people would work for $15/hr, then I'd have been considered very generous to pay them $50/hr (50%). As it was, the original coaches were all being paid at 85% of the lesson cost, which is generous to the point of being business suicide
This is a difficult situation for a number of reasons, one of which being that this community in general expects an unrealistically high degree of openness and detail from private persons and organizations. I've been as open as possible, and I will continue to do so - but just accept that some information is private and will remain so. It's in no one's interest for me to argue with every troll who jumps into the debate pretending to know what's what. It's also in no one's interest to assume anything more than differences of opinion and communication breakdown are at play with myself and Incontrol, regardless of how it's being portrayed. It's not unusual at all for people to part ways in business, and messily. I'll leave it at that.
The fact that our approach didn't work out and we have damage control to do is what it is, and I'll see to it everyone is paid what they are owed, and that's that. And of course, we're not going anywhere, just making changes
On September 03 2010 07:12 kOre wrote: Louder, any chance I can help out with this stuff? I have good experience in all of these areas and I can definitely help the relaunch.
EPT
its unfortunate that a business has to close down because it was TOO successful
You'll need to come up with some revenue generating ideas outside of coaching though, because that won't be enough to get an actual investor to look at you. They specialize in funding startups who require an initial investment of less than $20k, which sounds perfect for you.
