Perhaps your right, but I don't think it matters much.

The point remains, okay, you find out your contract wasn't written the way it was supposed to have been and you can exploit this, but do you do that if you know it will negatively affect people who call you a friend and who have only ever tried to support you on your various platforms?

The platforms didn’t give Fernando a forum to be nice or because they were all pals. In the case of the contracted agreement, they were two parties in a business arrangement, with a standard clause (again, in a contract written by the company’s lawyer) that could have benefited one side as much as the other.

If a contract specifically allowed me to do something, but the other party suggested I shouldn’t because they didn’t even know that was in the contract they wrote...well, that wouldn’t really be very persuasive.

And what is your basis for declaring them all such good friends anyway?

I kind of doubt you can even have a legal employment contract where an entity has the right to fire a person, but the person has no right to quit.

Jnandez with some new insights. He claims that Doug blatantly lying. It's just a disagreement where they couldn't progress any further and he had to make a tough decision.

People have a really hard time understanding that just because you *can* do something does not mean you *should* do something.

Not sure of the exact details as discussed in the older thread before it was deleted, but it seems like the point of contention is the conversations that took place before they launched the long term membership - where nando allegedly gave some kind of assurance in conversation with doug (possibly) in exchange for an increased stake in operations.

Hard to evaluate without knowing the details of the conversation and what consideration was given or not given. Should be easy to solve though since im guessing most of their correspondence was done online.

This should make it obvious that this is the wrong model for a coaching business.

Upswing/Nandez:
1a) educates a mass audience for relatively low price, making games much tougher
2b) doesn't share in upside at all for students who become good mid/high stakes regs

Nandez specifically:
1b) has a massive incentive to get out from under Upswing, so he can get ~100% of the revenue he generates working on his own, but model allows coach to coast off of Doug's/Upswing's brand to get his first N subscribers (these are the most important ones)
2b) needs to be handsomely compensated because he makes his own games harder, which is hard when Upswing has to make money/take a cut
3b) generally sub-coach is getting an unfair deal since brand owners get some of the revenue generated by him for doing nothing -- eventually gets sour, realizes he is better off on his own, leaves. Cycle repeats.

As for Upswing:
1c) incredibly hard to retain contracted talent because of point 1b above which leads to high turnover for coaches
2c) can't pay someone who is actually really good unless that person is just a massive idiot who accepts way less than he/she is worth


Better model -- coaching small number of people for profit share.


Cliffs: This is/was inevitable.

Doug lying for his own benefit and / or to save face? I will not believe that.

idiotic modding and really diff to discuss when the original thread was deleted


agree 100%, there are a lot of misaligned incentives here that make the long term arrangement dubious.

however, Jnandez was already very well known in his own right before he joined Upswing, so while your point about gaining the first N subscribers is true in general/in theory, I'm inclined to think it's not a huge factor here. Tacking himself on to Upswing to get his name out there would make a lot more sense for a wanna be coach that wasn't too well known. Then again, Upswing prob doesn't wanna hire someone who doesn't already have some built up following.
Both parties benefit from diff things and when **** goes south, everybody loses, tho Upswing a lot more so.

Isn't that even worse incentive wise?
For the student:
-once they are good enough to beat the game comfortably there is huge incentive to go alone
For the coach:
-there is incentive to hold back so the student keeps coming back and the coach still have more to offer; preferably the student should just beat a game but shouldn't become too good

There is also the elephant in the room: a lot of coaches are just not good at poker and definitely not good at improving others. It's easy to sound smart though but that only fit training site model, not individual coaching done for profit share.

i generally like Doug but this is absurd. Nandez added a clause to the contract that allowed him to opt out. Doug agreed to said contract. Nandez opted out, then Doug claimed he didn't read the contract carefully enough?

zzz

If I understand it correctly Upswing claims their own lawyer put in the clause without them knowing.

Honestly I believe they put it in, if nobody buys the course they could get rid easy of the best paid coach in 2017(according to Doug).

for 250k / year they might be able to secure Joey Ingram, poker author.

Do you think Hastings will also be part of the deal?

Both sides felt that each had to live up to a certain level of obligations. If either side did not, within the terms of the specified written contract, they then can opt opt. Not sure why that's hard to see.

Looking at the perspective of treating Fernando as "just an employee" is not the answer. This seems to be the case with people arguing he shouldn't have opted out. Better to look at it from the view of sports athletes. They have the option to take that extra year or opt out. Is it their ethical duty to opt in?

Jnandez is an excellent teacher. I like his content a lot.

Maybe

You've added wonderful insight to this thread per usual, nice work

PAPI

SHOW US THE WAY!

LOL!!!! Don't get all technical on us!!

Long-term contract (~2+ years). Coach earns amount directly related to the value he gives/creates.

Not sure if this adds much, but for those of you who don't know, Jnandez was streaming on twitch and making great content well before Upswing.

Fwiw I don't have a dog in this fight. I love both of their content.

As for Nandez already having audience/subs, I get that of course and what I said in my first post sold that short. What I meant is that he was able to capitalize on Upswing exposure to get to a critical mass where he could really start up his own thing. He has the first N subs, but he multiplied that by a huge number because of Upswing and then wanted to leave. Which was inevitable. Because business model.

You think its ethical to join a business in order to gather a client list and then leave to start your own business with the exact same clients? Cause that's pretty much what he's doing.

Big difference between legal and ethical.

So you think it would still be unethical if he had stayed for the full 12-18 months and then started his own business?

Just like banks and anywhere else that is worried about customer retention... You need to release Jnandez right away. You're allowed to if they've given notice. You're just required to pay him throughout his notice. You're very likely to save a substantial amount by doing this since you won't need to worry about the "in-between" period of him marketing his website on your platform.

That's California law any way for Employee/Employer W2 earner. If you made Jnandez a 1099 employee than it's likely different.