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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.
Louder
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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.
cheers!
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Croatia5282 Posts
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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).
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I took a pair of lessons when gosucoaching was brand new and they where a great help; hopefully things get sorted.
I would advise the use of spreadsheets or a simple appointment making app and things shouldn't take any time at all after that.
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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...
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Best of 7 match to decide where business goes to be cast by Chill and Day9.
And, action.
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I'm sure you'll be fine. Gosucoaching seems like an idea worth investing in, don't give up :D
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FuDDx
United States5015 Posts
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.
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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 :/
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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.
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I think you should hire more coaches to coach sure they might not be as good as you but if they are in bronze league anyone could teach the basics
with that said I am an 800 diamond Zerg player =D
I also was C in bw
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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.
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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.
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On September 02 2010 01:13 ZeeTemplar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 01:02 mOnion wrote: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.
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incontrol still owes me 6 hours from brood war from winning darkhorse tourney...
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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.
I do hope Psyonic got paid for his time though.
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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 
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EPT
