Wonder if DNegs is going to make a video about this. Would be really fun if he did.

18 mins in, sounds like fernando got ****ed if what he's saying is true. he claims that he was promised 25% of gross revenue from the course ($1000 x .25 = $250)- after that, he says joey negotiated a deal with upswing as an affiliate to sign people up for the course, where joey was promised 25% ($250) for every sale converted through his link.

upswing then allegedly tried to compensate jnandez only 25% of $750 for every converted sale that joey made- in other words, they were deducting his affiliate payout as a marketing expense before trying to pay out jnandez for those sales.

first of all, it's pretty loltastic to offer the same compensation for an affiliate as you would for the actual content creator. but on top of that, gross revenue has a specific meaning (all of the money that comes in, no expenses factored in). once you start to deduct advertising/marketing expenses to get to $750, you're now talking about a number that is most definitely not "gross revenue"

edit: woops, looks like somebody already finished it all and sniped me with cliffs

But did he answer why he stiffed grandma on the scarfs?

also seems pretty OOL for joey to advertise his affiliate link by promising extra content (especially if he never actually made that extra content, as jnandez alleges/suspects), unless this was something that was agreed upon prior (nandez indicates that it wasn't)

Props for deleting your initial tweet at it, Joey! So GTOOOOO!!!!

?? Do tell what it said please.

If it's all true can Nandez successfully sue for liable?

I mean they must have some kind of contract?

ThIs shouldn’t be to hard to figure out who’s telling the truth if someone shows parts of it?

Precisely.

Watched the whole JNandez video... here are a few of my thoughts on it.

The affiliate deal that Joey Ingram got I would think is what is known in the boxing game as step aside money.

JNandez was told on day one that Joey was originally going to be the Upswing PLO coach, so it kinda makes sense that if you are Upswing/Doug Polk that you are going to need to smooth things over with Joey when you give him the bad news that the ~$250K per year he was expecting to earn has just evaporated into thin air.

Although Joey then going hard on podcasts on or near launch day of the PLO course did as JNandez put it cannibalize part of JNandez' revenue, this has to be balanced against the instant and guaranteed to be effective for sales additional exposure Joey was getting for the products. So IMO the gross being reduced by Joey's cut was likely compensated or more than compensated for by the extra sales he was bringing in.

Tentative verbal discussions about commission rates, affiliates and anything else are just that, tentative. What counts is what you sign in the actual contract, and only that.

JNandez appears to not fully appreciate the massive difference between receiving a percentage of *gross* revenue, compared to a percentage of net revenue and is pretty much overlooking that Upswing must have many costs themselves to bring the product to the market and to promote it. E.g. paying web developers, paying for Facebook and Twitter ads, staffing costs, etc etc.

So in general, when a business offers you 25% commission of gross revenue, you are almost certain to be earning a significantly higher percentage than this if you were then to see what the $ figure you have received is as of a percentage of net revenue.

E.g. If you take a hypothetical figure of Upswing having 20% costs (putting aside the Joey affiliate costs as a separate entity), then on $1M dollars of revenue from the PLO course they have netted $800K. JNandez receives $250K, which is 31.25% of $800K.

When you consider that the 3 main owners of Upswing also naturally want a cut of net profits and then have to pay tax on these, paying someone an effective 31.25% cut for making content and lending their expertise seems rather generous to me given Upswing are assuming all of the business risk and because they are the people that have built the whole infrastructure from the ground up that enables JNandez to earn a quarter of a million dollars.

They then increased the commission rate to 30% which as the equivalent net example equals 37.5%. For JNandez to have any expectations of a commission rate of "50% or more" of the gross is frankly ridiculous as it would equate to 62.5% of net for 50%, and for 75% of gross which he mentioned, equates to 93.75% of net!!! (both based on the example above of Upswing having 20% running costs)

JNandez' apparent lack of understanding of the huge potential difference between receiving commission of the gross compared to the net is very surprising to hear from an intelligent person.

Of course Upswing will try to negotiate the best deal for themselves at all times and so should JNandez have tried to too. If he lost in these negotiations as he stated he did, because Doug was a better talker, a better negotiator and had the native English speaker advantage, well that's just business, you just have to accept it and learn to become a better negotiator. Being in awe of Doug or of anybody for that matter, is not going to help either. Sounds like you gave your opponent too much respect "at the table" JNandez and folded the King High flush on the river (PLO) to three barrels by Doug with the bare ace, in some of those negotiations.

JNandez also mentions his own extra costs, his social media person and another person he mentioned. Again, you need to factor these costs into your own bottom line when negotiating your commission rates with Upswing.

Did Upswing behave ethically at all times? (based on the info JNandez gave in the video)

Maybe they didn't at all times, but did they act legally? For me it sounds like they did act legally. All that happened IMO is that they out manoeuvred him at certain points because he was a bit of a business fish, although he was able of course ultimately to out out manoeuvre them due to them having too short a notice period in the contract (3 months), and by them not thinking carefully enough in advance about the payment structure/schedule which in hindsight I am sure they now realise should have been structured to encourage loyalty, by paying a smaller monthly amount, and the remainder of pay being released based on sales performance much later on. This way it's hard for someone to leave, or for their performance to drop, if they know that by doing so it will lower or remove all together dividends that they are due to receive in 3 months, 6 months and a year's time etc.

The cyber squatting (RIO poker) thing he mentioned sounds like it was done as bit of fun as a troll and declared to RIO as such. If it was not a troll and done to gain commercial advantage or cause commercial disruption to a competitor, then yes it might be illegal.

Not recording Skype/internet calls when discussing anything mildly important seems ridiculous to me.

ultimately this issue is only going to be put to rest once specific wording contained in the contract is presented/verified. sounds like fernando agreed to a bunch of stuff he wasn't happy with and it also sounds like upswing generated a contract for him without properly scrutinizing or familiarizing themselves with it, and possibly breached it (if the agreement was actually for jnandez to have a cut of "gross revenue" and then jnandez was only paid a percentage of revenue after marketing/affiliate expenses).

noobs all around, lots of money at stake and probably not a single actual lawyer involved in any of this

should be pretty embarrassing for everyone tbh

No I mean without the contract, if they actually threatened to ruin his career and then they follow up on it with things like https://upswingpoker.com/fernando-ha...t-limit-omaha/ then he doesn't need to prove they owe him $90k or anything.

it's "libel" and it only applies if the things written about somebody are false

How do you figure ? He just posted a story and I don’t believe jnandez said it wasn’t true...

What else did he do to try to ruin his career? I honestly didn’t know if he’s done other things as well

Can confirm Fernando don't understand the implications between gross and net.

Upswing should have had a non-compete clause in their contract too.
(can't open or contribute to a similar business or service within 9 months of leaving our employ)
Something like that.

Yeah that is pretty key, how the affiliate payment structure to Joey Ingram and how it impacted on JNandez' pay was described in the contract. Presumably it was in the contract and clearly stated, otherwise it would be a very simple task indeed to sue Upswing for breach of contract.

Also important is whether certain verbal "promises" or statements of intent were made on both sides or on either side and how the law would view these in terms of them forming part of a binding contract. I think it is a grey area in law.

I am 100% not suggesting that either party or both parties were drunk during such discussions and I have no knowledge of how formal or informal the discussions or promises were or even if they actually took place, but here is a recent high profile UK case where the court found against the complainant.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...wcastle-united

Nobody actually wants to go to court, the expenses and hassle are just enormous in the US, why the mere threat of it is used as a leverage by bullies (h3h3 suit comes to mind)

On one hand Doug and Fernando are such obvious PR donks and you just wish for both of them to keep the fierce battles behind closed doors, you know how grownup businessmen do. And serve us some nice pile of steaming PR gunk as they should for their self interests

On the other hand we got to thank Doug and Fernando for this amateur-like mishandled approach because it's just so damn entertaining for all of us here who have a cold and can't grind *grabs more popcorn*

Have no fear, Dougie is a man of his word
and will make things right, if not today or tomorrow or even
a year(s) from now, he WILL keep his word!!!


Believe DAT

I think there's another side of this story. Why would Doug make a big deal out of the scarfs thing, if he knew JNandez could put this out there? Either way, LATB or PAD should have a Doug Polk week where they have Doug and Joey play against all of his rivals.

It's funny cuz pre 2011 all I remember from Doug and Fees was a certain amount of douchiness and when I came back to 2+2 they were NVG gods. Interesting to see the douchiness coming back strong.


Fees buying Galfond's URL is something else.

a bully will keep bullyling until the weak fights back



whoever owes,pay up

first time i saw ryan fee in la he seemed to be the definition of a douchebag.

guess my impression was right