Chapter 16: OOPS and Buy Me Out Oh Baby Buy Me Out

July 2, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

Safety Announcement

Before you embark on the journey that is Chapter 16, may I please draw your attention to some of the safety features on board this blog. To hear the safety announcement, click below. If you are in a public place and don’t want people looking at you wondering what the hell you are listening to, you can read the announcement instead. If you want to do both, you can do that too:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. You are welcome aboard this Steno Airlines flight today from OnlineGrinds.ie to nothing. In advance of this instalment, can I please ask you to ensure that your seat belts are securely fastened for take-off, and that your seat backs and tray tables are in their fully upright and locked position. We may experience some turbulence in today’s chapter, so in order to ensure that you don’t fall off your chair, we recommend that you keep your seatbelt loosely fastened throughout the entire duration of this instalment.

In the highly likely event of your reading something which may make you want to curse out loud, there are two main hands located on your body, one to the left, and the other to your right. Immediately pull your left hand firmly toward your mouth to stop the flow of cursing. Make sure there is some room between each finger on your hand, and breathe normally. If you are travelling with an infant or small child today, secure your hand first then assist your child with your other hand.

Without further ado Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to wish you a very pleasant read, and we hope to see you again on Steno Airlines at some point in the hopefully not too distant future.

Many thanks,

Goodbye.

OOPS

Giving no more of a shit than I did before, and pretty much for the craic, I asked Sean if he could send me over the option agreement. I wanted to have a quick goo at it and pass it on to my solicitor to get her take on the situation. Efficiently as ever, Sean emailed me over the agreement. He said he would email me the next day with instructions as to where to sign and how to return the document (if I could simply scan and email, or did I have to physically go in to the offices of Everyone Shites where there would be a grand signing ceremony, followed by a champagne and strawberry reception). I told him I would standby and await further instructions.

When I downloaded the document, I was expecting a one pager; the fucking thing was about ten pages long. The document itself made about as much sense to me as the rationale for creating the agreement in the first place. In fact, if the agreement had been written in (shorthand) Mandarin, I would have probably understood it as much (if not more). So, I emailed the document to my unintelligible drivel interpreter (lawyer) and made paper airplanes out of the hard copy I had printed. I had as much intention of signing the document as I had inviting BS over to mine for tea and cakes.

The next day I got my email of instructions from Sean, which he had just been sent from his lawyer. But here’s where it gets incredibly juicy!

Sean was obviously busy and rushed that day. He didn’t send me a personalised email (which he would normally do), he simply forwarded the email his solicitor had sent him outlining the instructions for me. But what Sean didn’t realise was that he wasn’t only forwarding me one email; he was forwarding me a trail of emails regarding the option agreement and the rationale for drawing up such a malevolent and meaningless document in the first place.

Sean’s quick message telling me to look at what his solicitor had written below. Sean was obviously busy that day and was unaware of what was further down the page.

I received the email early in the morning, it was before I had my shower and my Nespresso, and my eyes were still half asleep. The ‘hit’ I got from one piece of information in the email trail was as strong as knocking back ten fortissio lungos (the strongest nespresso available), in one go. Take a look at the following extract from one of the many emails in the trail that Sean sent to his solicitor:

Part of an email from Sean to his solicitor (that I wasn’t supposed to see)

Did one word from the above sentence stand out for you the way it did for me? In fact, to say this word simply stood out and smacked me in the face would be the understatement of the millennium. The word jumped out and head-butted me smack bang in the centre of the nose, with extreme force and ferocity.

It all made sense to me now; this is exactly why they wanted me to sign the agreement. They had started talks long ago (note that Sean says they were in final talks) with Ashfield College, a significant player in the grind school world, and Ashfield needed to know that I was out of the equation before a deal was done. Having me sign the three month agreement would give them this comfort, and if the deal didn’t pan out, the lads could still sue me (and Learnology). I was REALLY going to sign it now.

In all seriousness however, if Sean & Co. were now in final talks with Ashfield, this meant that talks had probably begun many months prior. It was now early November and they still hadn’t accepted my resignation on the 19^th October as ‘it didn’t suit them’. So, for all intents and purposes, I was still a director (and obviously a third owner) of the company. Indeed, even if they had accepted my resignation, they had probably been in talks with Ashfield long before I had tendered it.

I had no knowledge of these dealings with Ashfield, let alone being included in them (which was my right as a director and third owner). It’s quite possible that I would have never found out, if Sean hadn’t sent the ‘oops’ email.

Around the time of the option agreement controversy, Sean mentioned that they were in ‘casual talks with a guy who was also called Paul’ about replacing me. He never mentioned anything about being in talks with one of the largest grind schools in Ireland.

This news brought the expression ‘double edged sword’ to a whole new level. If what I had done with Learnology was a sin, the sin they were committing was most certainly of the mortal variety. I did nothing illegal whatsoever, but what the lads were doing was actually against the law. They were excluding me, a third owner, but far more importantly, a director, from their dealings. Maybe the brownies got a hold of both BS and Sean and gave them both sufficient doses of amnesia potion to forget that it was BS who had resigned, not I.

We all know that the letter they sent me amounted to nothing more than a ‘shot across the bow’. These guys didn’t deserve something as nice as that, they deserved a torpedo up their holes. Not one that would simply enter the anal orifice and then make a quick exit through the skull, one that would enter the anus and explode midway through the body. Around the solar plexus region would be perfect, thanks.

If I had a Saul Goodman type of lawyer, I am sure he could take the lads to the cleaners (if he could manage to locate BS, imagine the GPS he would need for that). No doubt he could argue that there are strong grounds for minority oppression here? And that I would have a strong case against the lads under Section 205 of the Companies Act, or something like that? Saul, if you are reading, gimme a call please. Good man, Goodman.

I must admit however, that when I heard about this deal, I did hear the following sound playing somewhere in a teeny weeny area of the deepest recesses of my dark mind. Click play below to hear what I heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj_OmtqVLxY

Buy Me Out Oh Baby Buy Me Out

Having no intention of signing the option agreement (I didn’t anyway) and now equipped with this new piece of information in my back pocket, I decided I would make the lads sweat a bit, while I concocted a plan for my next move. One thing was for sure, they needed me gone.

The longer I waited, the more desperate they got. I started getting bombarded with emails asking when I was going to return the signed agreement, which I duly ignored. In fact, I went to ground completely.

During this period of radio silence, I hadn’t a bull’s notion what to do. So I decided I needed advice. But not legal advice. Business advice. I needed some sound business advice from a savvy businessman (or woman). But not a businessman I went to college with, I needed advice from someone who had been around the block. An aul fella.

On recommendation from a close friend, I met with a wealthy businessman in south Dublin. This man was old school. He had a very grand, old fashioned office with no computer on his large mahogany desk. He wore a rope stripe (not a pin stripe – there is a difference) suit, with a bright red hanky hanging superfluously from his left breast pocket. His hair was slicked back and greasy.

charcoal-grey-pinstripe-business-suit-39938-1-1

Pin Stripe – Understated, Modest, Inconspicuous

Luca-Rubinacci-pin-stripe-suit-red-tie-wrist-style

Rope Stripe – Loud, In Your Face, Obnoxious

He exuded an aura of ‘you don’t want to mess with me or I’ll sue your fucking ass before you can blink’ tinged with an air of ‘I am so filthy rich I could buy your house with my loose change’. This man meant business. There was no time for fucking about or messing. He wasn’t the kind of guy who did pleasantries so I didn’t dare mention the fine weather. I felt compelled to listen to this man in a similar way to how Fredo Corleone would have listened to Vito. For the purpose of this blog, I am going to refer to this man as Vito.

114385__marlon-brando-godfather-godfather-don-vito-corleone-style-classic-movie_p

Vito Corleone AKA The Man I Met

Vito didn’t talk much. He simply asked me to tell my story. I explained it as best I could, although there was a slight tremor in my voice while doing so. I wasn’t used to dealing with men like this. When I got to the end of the story, Vito replied with six words, and pretty much nothing else. These words were as follows:

(1) Tell (2) Them (3) To (4) Buy (5) You (6) Out.

Note the word ‘tell’. I don’t think the word ‘ask’ actually featured in this man’s vocabulary.

After a deep gulp, a face that would have suggested ‘is that it?’, followed by a nervous smile, I shuffled backwards towards the mahogany office door, never once turning my back on the man (as if he were the queen). He looked at me with an impassive, blank face until I reached the door, without blinking an eyelid or moving a muscle in his leather chair. He then gave me a brief, but confidence-inspiring nod, to which I replied with the words “thanks a million, I really appreciate this”. I then mustered up the strength to open the door (it felt like it was made of lead) with one hand, made a half-hearted attempt at a nervous wave goodbye with the other, and exited the room.

Equipped with these 6 words of supreme wisdom, I left Vito’s stately office premises and headed back to my car. I was going to TELL my colleagues in OnlineGrinds.ie, not ask them, to buy me out. I didn’t have a spring in my step, I had a fucking trampoline.

Next Chapter – Chapter 17: This Means War, Ignore The War

Chapter 15: I Accept, We Don’t and The Stool Pigeon

July 1, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

After our meeting with Sean, the three of us (PWD, MBB and I) walked up towards Harcourt Street to perform a post-mortem. It took us approximately 23 seconds to come to the conclusion that bringing Sean & Co. onto the Learnology train was not an option. It was my job to break the news to Sean, and here is the email I sent him:

Sean was not a happy bunny when he received my mail, and a few days later he replied with the following:

As you can see, reading an email from Sean is a pleasure compared to reading one from BS. Not simply because it could take you the same time to read a PhD thesis, backwards, as it would to read one of BS’s emails, but also because Sean’s emails were emotion-free. He was always very composed and level-headed.

All correspondence from this point on was going to be with Sean. BS went to ground immediately after the Everyone Shites letter was sent. This was most probably because he was burying his head, but then again, maybe he was out of the country (for a change) and there was no internet coverage in Ulan Bator (he wanted to discover the other side of the world, he had already explored every nook and cranny that exists in the Americas, and that was during our 6 months of broadcasting alone).

A picture of BS in Outer Mongolia. As you can see, he’s been there so long that he’s beginning to look like one of the locals.

You may notice that Sean is still wearing his poker face in this email. He still makes out that he has a case against me, and more importantly, Learnology. He threatens to come after Learnology, if we didn’t ‘let him in’. I knew that this was a super bluff, but the guys in Learnology weren’t so sure. In fact, MBB was pretty shaken.

What did Sean want?

To get a clear understanding of what Sean wanted, I sent him an email in which I bluntly asked him what he wanted? He replied saying that there were a number of options, 7 to be precise. These were as follows (click to enlarge):

The were some similarities between these options and the options BS gave me in the last chapter. Having been given the option of relinquishing my shareholding in OnlineGrinds.ie and walking away from the company by both, and having been put under some pressure from my colleagues in Learnology, I decided that the time had come to take flight and get the hell out of OnlineGrinds.ie.

You would think that it would be very difficult for me to walk away from a company I founded and ran for two and a half years, with no return whatsoever. While I admit that it wasn’t easy for my pride, the truth is that my departure was somewhat tinged with relief. Relief that I didn’t have to interact with, or even see, BS ever again. Considering that the very sight of BS would make me gag and vomit incessantly for hours, I think it was best for my health that I departed (SL).

In addition, I was also acutely aware that OnlineGrinds.ie had no future. It had no hope of working, never mind success, for the following reasons: (a) Mammies are simply not ready to send Johnny up to his room to do grinds with ‘his computer’ (to that end, I’m not sure if online learning will ever work at secondary school level, if I’m honest). (b) Any company in which BS plays a role, silent, loud, present, absent, in the same country, in a different country, in the same galaxy, in a different galaxy, would not succeed. As long as BS was involved in a company, even in the most minute capacity, it would fail. If he walked into a company, stood in it for 6 seconds, breathed in and out, and walked straight out the door, the company would be cursed forevermore.

So, on 19^th October 2013 I wrote a very official ‘good luck’ email to the rest of the team in OnlineGrinds.ie.

We Don’t

My theory was that neither BS nor Sean thought that I would leave the pitch and hang up my boots. Even though it was an option they both gave me in their respective emails, I still believe the outcome they wanted, and thought they were going to get, was that somehow we would ‘let them in’ to Learnology. In the words of Alicia Silverstone, as if.

It turned out that my theory was correct. When I sent the email of relinquishment of shares, and my letter of resignation as director, I never received any acknowledgement. A number of weeks passed where I got no correspondence from them whatsoever. I’d say my resignation had literally gob smacked them and now they hadn’t a clue what to do without me, considering that neither of them had been actively involved in the company thus far (Sean because he didn’t need to be; he was simply the man with the money, BS because…… he was BS).

This now meant that someone would have to replace me i.e. be in the office virtually 7 days a week and be present for every single live broadcast. This was obviously not going to be Sean as he lives in the UK, and this was obviously not going to be BS (no need for qualification of the latter). They were rightly screwed. I suggest at this point they highly regretted giving me the ‘escape’ option (SL).

I eventually heard back from Sean in relation to my relinquishing of shares. In this email Sean states that he is ‘considering’ my relinquishment of shares, despite the fact that it was a clear option he had given me previously:

The Stool Pigeon

Approximately one month after sending my letter of resignation, I got a call from Sean. Sean basically reiterated that there was no real advantage (to them) in me leaving a company that had debts (why give me the option in the first place, says you). After a brief argument along the lines of ‘so it was okay for me to leave a month ago and now it’s not?’ Sean made a proposal to me.

He said he was going to get his solicitor to draw up an option agreement. The option agreement was a document that I would sign which would allow Sean and Co. to take my shares at any point over the following three months, at very short notice. If the agreement was triggered, they would take the shares and there would be no further threat of legal action. If the agreement wasn’t triggered, they could still take legal action against me (and Learnology) during the three month period.

At the time I hadn’t a clue what they were playing at. My initial reaction was one of non-description tinged with slight confusion, further tinged with not giving a shit. Having given the matter further thought and spoken to a few people who actually gave a shit about the whole agreement (a bit more than I), I learnt that this agreement simply amounted to Sean & Co. having their black forest gateau, and also consuming it.

They decided to renege on their original promise of allowing me walk away (without being sued) if I relinquished my shareholding, as they realised that the company couldn’t survive without me. They were now going to try and get another partner to replace me, and if they managed to find somebody within the next 3 months, the option agreement would be triggered, my shares would be transferred, and everybody would live happily ever after. I may go in peace to love and serve the lord, amen. In the case that they weren’t successful in finding somebody to replace me, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for them, as they would still have me (and Learnology) standing in the corner like a stool pigeon for 3 months, waiting to be sued.

A pigeon. Isn’t he nice?

The 3 month time frame was actually quite a clever move on their part, as it would give them time to see if Learnology was going to be successful or not. A lot can happen in 3 months, especially given that the school year only lasts 9 months. If they had seen that Learnology had done very well over the 3 months, they probably would have sued for damages and tried to claim Learnology profits.

When someone with much more sense than I explained the whole situation to me, I felt as used and abused as Solomon Northup. The kind of behaviour in which Sean & Co. were engaging brought me back to my days in the Merrion Hotel, a five star hotel in Dublin City. In any five star hotel you usually have a very special type of clientele. The type of people who walk around as if they are minted, yet they don’t have a penny to their name. The type of people who comment on the ‘beautiful nose and bouquet’ of a red wine, when it is probably corked. The type of people who eat caviar, yet they can’t spell the word. In other words, total tossers.

The feeling I experienced in relation to the option agreement wasn’t dissimilar to how I used to feel after presenting a bill to a guest in the Merrion Hotel. You would present the bill and then have to stand there like a complete and utter gob shite waiting for the guest to take money from his wallet, put it into the bill folder and hand it back to you. This process could sometimes take a couple of minutes, as the guest would continue to talk (bollox) to the others around the table, distracting him from the act of taking out the €50 note from his heavy-laden-with-other-clearly-visible-€50-notes wallet, and placing it in the bill folder, all the while without making eye contact or acknowledging your presence.

A waiter standing like a gob shite

If I had one very small request to ask of you, my beloved readers (all 7 or 8 of you): BE NICE TO WAITERS. They are, in fact, human beings. Don’t be an asshole when you are in a restaurant or bar. It’s already a demeaning job. They already feel like gob shites. Please make their work easier by treating them nicely. Before you make fun of a waiter or waitress the next time you are in a restaurant, put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Imagine how much of a twat they feel. Don’t make them want to call you a cunt. Respect them.

I realise that today’s chapter was a little downbeat. So to end on a lighter note, do you remember this video? Can anyone spot a Doberman?

Next Chapter – Chapter 16: OOPS and Buy Me Out Oh Baby Buy Me Out

Chapter 14: Let’s Get Dirty

June 30, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

Just when I thought BS had finished giving birth to a miniature BS, and his labour pains had subsided, he decided to let out another scream of pain. My initial reaction was that he was possibly having twins, and the second mini BS was about to pop. God, could you imagine a world with 3 BS’s. It really doesn’t bear thinking about, so I will shut up about that for now.

His second attack was far more powerful than his first. This time he had a full round of ammo in his weapon AKA his email account. Email was without a shadow of a doubt the weapon of choice for BS. He was very gifted and skilled in this form of weaponry. His email was like a semi-automatic firearm more so than a pistol, in that he wouldn’t simply fire one shot at a time; it would usually be a succession of shots, in very close proximity and at great speed. But when I say semi-automatic, I don’t mean an M16 or anything modern like that (contemporariness didn’t usually feature anywhere in his being), it was more like a vintage rifle such as the M1 Garand.

The M1 Garand

I am pretty sure that if BS had been in the hunger games and managed to get his hands on a laptop in the arena (with a pre-installed version of MS Outlook on it), not even Katniss would have been safe.

So, on 31^st August 2013, after a momentary lapse in correspondence from BS (which simply turned out to be an ammunition reloading period), round two of shots were fired. Below are some of the bullets.

Have a guess what he talks about in the first shot? You guessed right! Learnology!

In this shot, he gives me an ultimatum:

If you have read the previous chapter, you will know that a business plan was circulated to Sean. If you have read chapter 9, you will be aware that BS had no right to see the plan, as he had already resigned as a dickhead, I mean, director (sorry I keep making this Freudian slip). It looks as if the brownies had obviously poisoned BS again which resulted in a relapse of amnesia.

In this final shot he gives me a warning. A warning shot if you like:

Needless to say I stood my ground here and continued to advise BS that Learnology was not a competitive threat to OnlineGrinds.ie and that he had every opportunity to be part of it originally, but chose to turn down the opportunity. I also advised that his shooting down my ideas on how to further OnlineGrinds.ie on the basis of my starting Learnology was in effect preventing the course of progression of OnlineGrinds.ie.

Another Love Letter, this time from Everyone Shites

That weekend I decided to fuck off to Spain for a few days to lie on the beach, swim in the sea and spot some local talent. You might think that going away to Spain would free me of the BS of BS for a few days. But no, in Spain I still got bombarded with his eloquent emails, all relating to Learnology. In one of his emails, he decided to call an EGM (more amnesia, says you). I replied by saying that I would be delighted to attend the EGM, but if the subject of Learnology was brought up at the meeting, I would stand up from the table and walk straight out the door, allowing the team to pay for their own tea or coffee, as well as mine. In an effort to enjoy my few days away, rather than be tormented by BS, I chose to ignore the onslaught of emails that followed.

As the Ryanair flight was taxi-ing its way back to the terminal building on my arrival back to Dublin, I switched my phone on to check emails. One of the emails was from a large legal firm called Everyone Shites. Below is the gem of a letter that was attached to said email (click to enlarge):

Part 1 of letter from Everyone Shites

Part 2 of letter from Everyone Shites

When I received the Everyone Shites letter, I felt confused, frustrated and conflicted. I hadn’t a notion what to do. The feeling of indecision made me extremely vulnerable. I was weak. I needed help deciding my next move. But who was going to advise me on the options that lay ahead? There were just so many of them. If I chose the wrong one, I could regret it forevermore.

Each of the 10 or so options available to me had their fair share of both pros and cons. This didn’t make the decision any easier. I needed to evaluate all alternatives and create a shortlist of the 5 most suitable ones. The resulting frontrunners were as follows:

Would I?

(a) Place the letter beside the toilet and leave it there for a rainy day when I ran out of toilet paper

(b) Fold the letter and use it to prop up a leg of my kitchen table – I HATE wonky tables!

(c) Try to disprove the theory that you can only fold something a maximum of 7 times

(d) Crunch up the letter and use it as a ball which would provide endless hours of fun and entertainment for my dog

(e) Create a paper airplane with the letter which I could throw down the garden for my dog to chase. Would it come back to me? Could I create the first boomerang paper airplane in the history of time and mankind?

After an extended period of painstaking vacillation, I came to the conclusion that the potential of option (e) was so vast that I could not but choose it. In hindsight I made the right decision. Both my dog and I had immeasurable fun that day.

Am I Bovered?

In all seriousness though, did I need to care about this letter? Not at all. You may have noticed that the letter was signed ‘Everyone Shites’ as opposed to an individual lawyer’s name. I later found out (I am very resourceful) that the letter was written by a lawyer in Everyone Shites who specialised in company law, not litigation. Company lawyers and litigators are two different breeds entirely. This letter should have come from a litigator. Something just didn’t tally. It was a bit like a medical doctor treating a dog. He would know a bit about general animal anatomy from having worked with humans (as our guy would know a bit about general law), but it certainly wouldn’t have been standard practice for him.

The gentleman who wrote this letter was probably the kind of man who would have been educated in Clongowes Wood College and wouldn’t have finally moved out of the family home until the age of 36, at the very least. He was most likely the type of guy who would wear tartan trousers on the golf course at the weekend, and would only have a glass of Guinness in the bar after the game, as he was driving. His first car was most probably a VW Golf. Going for after-work pints on a Thursday would have constituted living dangerously for this man. He probably lived in a comfortable, but by no means pretentious, negative-equity-submerged apartment in either Smithfield or the IFSC, with his girlfriend Jenny (who was training to be a GP), and their bichon frise Lola (who was groomed every other day). In other words, this was a nice, understated chap who worked as an ordinary, decent, company lawyer. Not by any manner or means was he a blood-thirsty, man-eating, Saul Goodman-esque kind of litigator.

There is a big difference between nice company lawyers and evil, fire-breathing litigators. Different kettle of fish altogether. Daniel O’Donnell or Francis Brennan would make perfect company lawyers. Mike Tyson or Jason Statham would make amazing litigators.

Daniel O’Donnell – The Company Lawyer type

Francis Brennan – Another Typical Company Lawyer kind of guy

Mike Tyson – The Litigator Type

Jason Statham – Another Typical Litigator

So, realising that the gentleman who had written the letter was from the Daniel O’Donnell School of Law, as opposed to the Law School of Saul Goodman, I didn’t have much to worry about. He was probably a friend of Sean’s and this was the only reason why he was momentarily dipping his (little) toe into the dark world of litigation. In fact, if you read his letter closely, you can get the feeling that he is completely outside of his comfort zone. For example, he keeps repeating the words “to the extent”. Surely he wasn’t repeating himself so much on purpose, and it obviously represented a nervous twitch in his writing? The man was clearly shaking at the time. But would you blame him?

The long and the short of it was that this letter amounted to nothing more than an idle threat. A threat which they thought would result in my ‘allowing them in’ to Learnology. I felt like the bouncer of a night club, and this letter was like a very poorly manufactured fake ID.

I guess you would think that I would be shocked to receive a letter like this. You might ask yourself how these fuckers could do such a thing, considering I had given them every opportunity to be involved in Learnology, and they had turned down my offer. And especially when BS had clearly indicated that his time was up, making it physically impossible to set up the traditional grind school under the umbrella of Stenson Institute Ltd. t/a OnlineGrinds.ie. If this is how you are feeling, I won’t stop you from feeling this way. However, please be aware that I am not imposing this feeling upon you, you are feeling it yourself.

Subtext of Letter

If you have a pair of eyes in your head that function normally, you will easily see that the subtext of this letter was “Okay, I know we said before that we didn’t want to be involved, but we now think that this could be a success, so please let us be involved and we promise we won’t sue you!”

As Sean wasn’t getting involved in the same dirty tactics as BS, I wrote him an email to see what his take on the whole situation was. Sean was always very neutral and indeed didn’t dismiss the possibility of even investing in Learnology. In actual fact, Sean agreed to carry out a Skype call with PWD of Learnology and I at one point to see how the venture was going, (with a view to potentially investing down the road).

Sean replied to my email asking me to meet him for a coffee. What he said to me at the meeting was consistent with what I believed to be the subtext of the letter. It was along the lines of, “you can proceed with Learnology in an unencumbered fashion, with no threat of legal action, as long as you let us be part of it”.

To be brutally honest, I got on very well with Sean and I was never against the idea of having him on board the team in Learnology. So, I arranged a meeting with Sean and the partners of Learnology to see if some sort of arrangement could be arrived at.

At the meeting, Sean reiterated that Learnology could proceed, with no threat of legal action, if he and the OnlineGrinds.ie team could be involved. He mentioned that he was aware of the communication issues I was having with BS, and advised that BS would be a silent partner in this new arrangement.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t entirely happy with the idea of having BS involved in Learnology, silent, loud or otherwise. I would have preferred to chew ultra-thin glass, walk across white hot-coals barefoot and have rusted barbed-wire shoved into my eyeballs than have him in the company. However, if I rarely saw him in OnlineGrinds.ie (where he was supposed to be hands-on, as opposed to silent) there was no way I would even get a glimpse of him in Learnology. If he spent all his time in San Francisco and Mexico up until now, you could be sure he would be in Jupiter or Mars from now on. All the same, I still wasn’t mad about the idea that he would receive dividends from the success of Learnology, for doing sweet fuck all. Regardless of how I felt however, there were three partners in the Learnology team. If PWD and MBB agreed to let Sean & Co. in, who was I to stop them.

Towards the end of the meeting, the partners in Learnology posed one question to Sean. It was along the lines of “So, what do you think of Learnology?” All Sean could reply with was “The website looks good”. He had no notion of the business other than the fact that the website looked ‘pretty’. Needless to say, the partners of Learnology felt that Sean’s motivation was misplaced, and that all he wanted was a return on the money he had put into OnlineGrinds.ie (which ended up in the Ballymun bonfire). As a result, bringing Sean & Co. on board was regrettably not a runner.

Next Chapter – Chapter 15: I Accept, We Don’t and The Stool Pigeon

Chapter 13: BS gets mad jeal of my new biz

June 29, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

BS found out about Learnology through the old reliable grapevine that is Facebook. I didn’t mind him knowing about it though. I wasn’t hiding it at all. He was (note the use of the past tense) a Facebook friend of mine, and I would share Learnology stuff on my page all the time, usually annoying the fuck out of my Facebook friends in the process. So, why didn’t I care if he knew about it? Because I had clearly asked him and Sean to be involved, and they turned it down.

However, as soon as BS saw the awesome, state of the art website that PWD had developed for Learnology, the line-up of teachers we had put together, the pictures of all the students in the classroom on our launch day etc. etc., he threw the biggest hissy fit ever known to humankind.

I received a barrage of emails and a torrent of abuse asking what the situation was. He claimed that I was ‘going off’ with the developer of another online grinds website and had set up a business that was in direct competition with OnlineGrinds.ie.

Here is one of the beautifully worded and stunningly formatted emails that BS sent me in relation to my starting Learnology (click to enlarge):

Learnology was no more in competition with OnlineGrinds.ie than Crayola chalk was in competition with Kilmeaden cheese. Indeed, according to the shareholder’s agreement to which he refers, the definition of the business of OnlineGrinds.ie was as follows:

As you can see, the definition of the business of OnlineGrinds.ie is as precise and to the point as can be. It doesn’t even mention the word grinds or grind schools. It relates solely to online tuition and broadcasting platforms. Quick question: Had I set up another business providing online tuition that had broadcasting platforms? I think not. I had set up a grinds school with no online or broadcasting elements whatsoever.

Incidentally, as stated in an earlier chapter, a business plan entitled ‘Proposal for Survival’ was sent to Sean on Wednesday 3^rd July 2013. I guess BS was simply suffering from partial amnesia the day he sent that email, and the memory of him resigning as director of the company (which would result in him no longer having any say in the running of the company) had simply slipped his mind? Maybe our dwarves were plagued by a clan of brownies like in the movie Willow. Didn’t these brownies have some form of potion that could make you forget stuff? Yes, maybe somehow the brownies had come into contact with BS and had managed to put some amnesia potion into his earl grey tea. That MUST be the reason. It’s the most plausible reason I can think of, anyway.

The Brownies from Willow who carried a special amnesia potion

Just so you are sure it was BS who was given the amnesia potion, and not I, below is a screenshot of the email I sent Sean with the ‘Proposal for Survival’ Business Plan attached:

So what was up with BS? Why did he appear to be in extreme agony? Was he giving birth to a miniature BS? Were the Brownies attacking him with their teeny weeny spears? What ailed him, at all at all? My guess is that he was now beginning to regret not having listened to me about the traditional grind school idea, now that he could see that Learnology was going to be a success.

Going a layer deeper still, maybe he was really pissed off with himself for having stated that he was no longer willing to do any work in the company, making it impossible for us to set up Learnology under the auspices of OnlineGrinds.ie, in any case.

Whatever way you look at it, one thing’s for sure, BS was extremely, exceptionally, extraordinarily, exceedingly JEALOUS. On the count of three, everybody say awwwwww 1………. 2……….3 (click below):

At this point I want to reiterate one thing very clearly, and for emphasis I will make it bold, CAPITALISED, AND THIS TIME IN AN FABULOUS SHADE OF MAROON:

I HAD INTENDED TO CONTINUE WORKING ON ONLINEGRINDS.IE (AS WELL AS LEARNOLOGY.IE) AND WAS INTENT ON MAKING THE TWO COMPANIES SUCCESSFUL

Just because I was working away on Learnology.ie, this didn’t mean that I had left OnlineGrinds.ie behind. In fact, I was still intent on pursuing the next available option. Option B (the broadband provider deal) didn’t work out, Option D (the traditional grinds school idea) was turned down (but I proceeded in any case with a new team), but there was still one option remaining; Option B (the freemium model of online grinds).

It would work a bit like Spotify where the grinds would be free to all and made possible by advertising. Free grinds would work better because (a) parents wouldn’t pay for online grinds in the first place, and (b) the inevitable tech issues would be tolerated as the service is free. My biggest concern, which I made abundantly clear to my partners, was that we did not have the technical capability of developing such a site. BS would not be able to do something like this. It would be like an ant trying to climb Mount Everest (SL).

The various payment models of Spotify

How we would model ourselves on Spotify

I sent a proposal to the whole team this time (yes I guess I was feeling sorry for BS that day), but raised a serious concern that we didn’t have the technical capability to do something like this (which we hadn’t). A developer who specialised in websites of the vintage movement, fashionable and all as they may be, would not be able to come up with something like this.

The first person to reply to my proposal was BS. Here is his exact email:

The only acknowledgement of my new idea was that ‘technology wouldn’t be the issue’. There was no discussion apart from this. The focus of his email shifted firmly back to my association with Learnology.ie. This email amazed me to the point that I fell off my chair (again). I think ‘dumbfounded’ would be the most apt word to describe how I felt on receipt of this email. But why was I so gob smacked? Was it because his email was all about Learnology, Learnology, Learnology and because almost no attention had been given to the freemium idea? Meh.

The aspect of the email that I found much much much much much much more shocking (in a tremendously good, and most surprising way), was that BS had actually managed to write an email that contained only 2 lines. This was unprecedented. He had clearly beaten his personal best for the shortest email ever written in all time. What a feat. I was willing to buy this man a pint. This was an achievement worthy of celebration.

Realising however, that this email was very out of character, an aberration as it were, BS sent a second email a few minutes later. I can’t include his entire email here however, as I don’t think WordPress would have enough space on their server to include it all, but here is the general gist:

Yeah, I hear what you are saying, focus shifted back to Learnology again. As you can see, it got to the point that no matter what ideas I came up with to grow OnlineGrinds.ie, they were all shot down on the basis of my involvement with Learnology. Of course I have my suspicions that this may have been an attempt to cover up the fact that he would not be able to develop the freemium site. In any case, whether he had the wherewithal to develop the site or not is secondary, as he had already stated that he wasn’t going to do any more work for the company.

So, getting ever so slightly annoyed with BS now, I sent him an email saying that he needed to forget about my involvement with Learnology and that it was quite literally none of his business. I told him that we can’t let Learnology distract us from progressing OnlineGrinds.ie. Below is his response:

So, he had now confirmed a second time, that he was no longer going to carry out any ‘non critical work’. Note that he neglected to define exactly what non critical work was. As far as I was concerned, all his work was critical. He was the tech partner in a tech company, for fuck sake.

It now got to the point where BS was actually preventing me from furthering OnlineGrinds.ie. He had said he was no longer going to do any work, and whenever I came up with any new ideas for how we could get OnlineGrinds.ie out of the shit pit it was in, and into profitability, he would ignore these and perpetually focus on my involvement with Learnology. Needless to say we got nowhere with my idea of a freemium online grinds website. 3 options tried, 3 options failed.

Oh and guess what, in January 2014, an e-learning company called Alison entered the leaving cert grinds market with free online grinds, made possible by advertising. My freemium model idea was proposed back in the summer of 2013. Again, while I am not trying to blow my own trumpet, trombone or french horn, this was the second time that BS made the mistake of not listening to me.

Next Chapter – Chapter 14: Let’s Get Dirty

Chapter 12: Learnology – Say Goodbye to EGGS

June 28, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

Learnology was going to be the first grind school in Ireland to provide grinds at only €10 per class. But just because we were low cost, this did not mean that we would take short cuts in respect of teacher quality. In fact, Learnology was going to bring some of the best teachers and finest book authors in the country to exam students. Not only to Chloe and Greg from the leafy suburbs of D4, but also to Stacey and Jason from crime-filled Coolock. When I say low cost, in actual fact it’s not really low cost at all. It’s normal cost. There is no reason for Expensive Greedy Grinds School (EGGS) to charge any more than €10-15 per student, per class. Well……there is……GREED.

Take a well-known EGGS on Dublin’s Leeson Street. I won’t mention the name for fear of receiving another letter of love and affection from Arthur’s Cock. In fact…… fuck it…… one of my objectives of this blog was to see how many SL’s I could get, and I’m a man who stands by my word, so here goes: THE INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION AKA THE INSTITUTE AKA LEESON STREET AKA GREEDY BASTARDS (SL).

The IOE runs weekly grinds for secondary students who need extra help (and who obviously have cash to burn – must be related to the dwarves) on evenings and weekends. It charges its students approximately €35 per class. If you consider that there could be 60 innocent students sitting in (squashed into) a class, the IOE are pulling in €2,100 for EVERY SINGLE CLASS they do. Let’s assume they run 15 grind classes a week, that’s a whopping €31,500 A WEEK. And this is not their main business; this is simply the evening and weekend grinds I am referring to.

It is common knowledge that the IOE own their premises on Leeson Street. They have no rent to pay like other EGGS who have to pay hotels substantial rental fees for conference rooms to hold their classes. The main cost of running a class for the IOE is the teacher. Let’s assume, and let’s be generous, that they are paying their teachers €300 per class. This leaves them with €1,800 to play with. I realise of course that there will be overheads and tax to pay etc., but once these are deducted, you can be pretty sure that the IOE are making a healthy 4 figure profit on each class they run.

What do they do with all this money? Your guess is as good as mine. But I often have visions of the owners sitting in the basement of the building on Leeson Street, masturbating at the sight of the mounds of cash that surround them in whatever direction they look. Ben Dunne once said that Seanie Fitz was “addicted to money”, in my opinion the IOE have a fetish for cash. My premonition of the email from UPC came true, for all we know this could be true too.

One of the owners of the IOE playing in their basement. This is a mild form of playing.

A corner of the basement in the IOE

Considering that our school system in Ireland is so desperately shite that up to 73% of exam students need to do grinds (Student Enrichment Services Survey, 2010), the kind of rip-off strategy currently practiced by the IOE pisses me off no end.

My vision for Learnology was that we were going to charge a maximum of €10 per student to attend a class in our grind school. My strategy was that we would start off small in one centre in Dublin, and in 2 years from the date of inception, we would have centres in all the major cities (Learnology Regional) and towns (Learnology Local) across Ireland. We would start off with a universal charge of €10 per student, per class, and as we expanded across Ireland we would gradually reduce this to €5 per class, and still make a (moderate but by no means greedy) profit due to increase in volume. Learnology would be a national brand that would blow all the EGGS out of the water. Never again would a student, who had to do Irish or Maths grinds through no fault of their own, but as a result of a shite teacher in their own school, be ripped off by an EGGS.

Venue

Rather than locating somewhere in the Range Rover Vogue territory of south county Dublin, we needed to strategically locate ourselves in a venue convenient to all parties. Learnology was going to be accessible as much in terms of location as in terms of price. Having researched a number of venues, the one that seemed most suitable was the Alexander Hotel at Merrion Square. It was a short distance from the DART so that Greg could get to us from Dalkey, and Stacey could come to us from Harmonstown. It was a couple of minute’s walk from the Luas Green Line so Chloe could access us from Milltown, and just across the Liffey from the Luas Red Line so Jason could reach us from Fettercairn. We would also be served by the 46A bus which would bring Rory from Donnyrbook and Micko from Phibsboro.

Graphic from our website giving directions to Learnology at the Alexander Hotel from Leeson Street.

The room rental fees the hotel was charging were not cheap, but we managed to negotiate a deal. Under no circumstances were we going to increase student’s fees because of expensive conference room rates.

About a week before our official launch, the Alexander Hotel decided to fuck us over. I won’t go into detail here, but it essentially meant that we really didn’t want to locate there anymore. We decided to continue shopping around and contacted several colleges such as the American College Dublin (ACD) on Merrion Square (where I had been lecturing part time), DIT Kevin Street, DIT Aungier Street and finally, DBS on Aungier Street. ACD didn’t work out as I would have inevitably ended up strangling the lady we were dealing with, neither Kevin Street nor Aungier Street were suitable, as the classrooms weren’t good enough to put a pack of dogs into them, but at DBS, we struck it lucky.

We met with a gentleman in DBS called Tony. He resembled a security guard more than a business man, but who was I to judge, as I would have been wearing my usual mix of shorts and t-shirt that day (it was August). He showed us the best classrooms he had, and was willing to drop the price to whatever we said we were willing to pay. I have never done a sweeter or easier deal in my life. Shooting a sitting duck would have been a far greater achievement than doing a deal with security guard Tony. In fact, I was nearly going to ask him to put on my pink lycra tutu to greet students when they arrived on day one, which I am sure he would have done without any hesitation whatsoever. Such were the lengths to which he seemed willing to go to get our deal across the line.

DBS were looking for ways to generate extra revenue in periods of down time, and this seemed to be a perfect option for them.

The Learnology classroom at DBS

Teachers

During the summer of 2013, anyone who was anyone in the teaching world would have been contacted, if not hounded, by yours truly. Anyone who had written a textbook, who had outstanding ratings on ratemyteacher.ie, who had taught previously in EGGS, was targeted. Noone in the ranks of Ireland’s teaching elite was safe.

Having met and interviewed a long list of teachers, PWD and I arrived at our final line-up of teachers. Below is an image of our teachers, in addition to a short bio on each of them:

Far left: John Morris, HL Business – 25 years teaching experience. Blackrock College teacher. Former IOE teacher. Contributor to RTE’s “Countdown”.

Second from left: Dervla Murphy, HL French – 7 years teaching in Loreto Beaufort. Lived and worked in Paris for 5 years. Master’s Degree from Sorbonne University. Author of one of the most popular Leaving Cert French textbooks, ‘Tout Va Bien’.

Third from left: Peter Jackson, HL Chemistry & Biology – Head of Science at St. Columba’s College. Former IOE teacher. Over 30 years teaching experience. Corrected Biology papers and appeal papers for the SEC for over 25 years. Author of ‘Essentials Unfolded – Chemistry’. Has written Biology revision notes for mocks.ie. Teaches other teachers how to teach Chemistry in PDST.

Centre: Brendan Guildea, HL Maths – One of Ireland’s Top Maths Teachers. Has written both ‘New Concise Project Maths’ and the new ‘Less Stress More Success’ revision books for Project Maths. Taught maths, applied maths, and physics to both Leaving and Junior Cert students since 1973. Corrected Maths papers for the Dept of Education and various Universities. Appears regularly in the media leading discussions on maths teaching, exams and syllabus.

Third from right: Declan O’Neill, HL English – Examiner at both Junior and Leaving Cert Higher Level English. Chief Advising Examiner in Higher Level English at Leaving Cert Level. Has written and set state exam papers. Education Officer for the NCCA.

Second from right: Richard Barrett, HL Irish – Head of Irish Department in Blackrock College. He is a state examiner in both written and oral Irish.

Far right: Noel Cunningham, HL Physics – 20 years teaching experience. Teacher in Kings Hospital. Owns website http://www.thephysicsteacher.ie. Over 1 million hits on his YouTube videos. Corrects Leaving Certificate Physics Exam Papers. Awarded the Institute of Physics Teacher of the Year award in 2009. One of his students achieved the top mark in the country in Applied Maths in 2010.

RIP Joe Reville

Up until approximately one week before our official launch, the Biology teacher at Learnology was going to be Mr Joe Reville. However, one morning a few days before our launch I received a phone call to say that Joe had sadly passed away. Of all the setbacks we could possibly anticipate, this was never one of them. As I mentioned in a previous chapter, Joe was an absolute gent and a legend when it came to Science.

As you can see from the above, our show had a pretty stellar cast. And now, for once this calibre of teacher was going to be accessible to students of all socio-economic backgrounds.

Pricing

Having originally intended that we would charge €10 per student, per class, MBB managed to pull my arm and convince me that is was still ok to charge €15. After a bit of a scrap, we agreed on the price point of €15. Even at that it was still 60% better value than some of the EGGS.

Below is one of the flyers we sent to homes around Dublin which included our price comparison graphic. Said graphic featured extensively in our marketing campaigns:

One of our flyers which included our aggressive price comparison table

iNotes

As PWD was a wizard, who had worked in the area of eLearning for quite some time, he came up with the idea to make our class notes interactive. All other EGGS would provide boring, printed A4 notes, but we would be the first grind school to provide notes in a format that could be accessed on a tablet or smartphone. Elements of the notes would be animated, videos could be integrated, the answers to questions could be hidden and then revealed at a click etc.

Marketing

When it came to marketing and advertising, we usually used our price point as a weapon. We launched a full blown attack on EGGS, nearly to the point that we actually threw eggs at the EGGS. For example, one evening when an EGGS in south Dublin was running a free grinds evening, I sent our mascot, a cheeky monkey called Learnology Louis, down to stand outside the school and wave at students as they walked in. Below is a picture of Learnology Louis with his lovely t-shirt, taken right outside the EGGS by another one of our team on the evening of the free grinds:

Learnology Louis, our cheeky monkey, waving at students as they walked into a free session at an EGGS

The Co-Founder of the EGGS, trying to block Learnology Louis from students as they walked into their grinds

When the directors of this EGGS saw Louis coming, they rang me and started screaming down the phone. They even threatened to call the Gardai to get our poor little monkey removed. The problem was that the monkey was under strict instructions from me to stand OUTSIDE the hotel on the footpath and not to set foot on the grounds of the hotel itself. However, when the taxi driver was dropping the monkey to the hotel, he naturally dropped him at the hotel drop off point, which is technically on the hotel grounds. That’s where Learnology Louis was spotted.

The abuse that the monkey endured from the owners of the EGGS was traumatising. So much so that the he had to ring me and ask me what to do. When I received his phone call I was furious. I think I actually threw my Café Sol paper cup, half-full with extra strong, hot coffee, against the wall in anger.

The monkey had called me. Did this mean that he had removed his mask to make the call? If so, this would have been disastrous, the element of theatricality would have been completely ruined. But alas, he informed me that he was still wearing the mask and was speaking through the slit in the monkey’s mouth. Phew. Panic averted. What a relief.

The feeling of concern I experienced in relation to the lads from the EGGS abusing the monkey, and threatening to call the Gardaí, was about as significant as the feeling I experienced when BS told me he was resigning. In other words, non-existent. My only actual concern was that the monkey had taken off his fucking mask. That would have ruined my day and made me a very unhappy bunny indeed. So the general gist of my reply to Louis was “whatever you do, under no circumstances do you take off that fucking mask…… and don’t stop waving at the kids”.

The event was so profound that I actually ended up making a little video about it. In the video you can see footage of what actually happened that day.

Incidentally, the gentleman in the white shirt is actually a director of the EGGS in question, not an actor as most people think.

The Big Launch

Learnology launched officially in DBS on Saturday 7th September 2013. With some classes reaching up to 100 students, we were very happy with the turnout. The idea I had back in May, a mere 4 months prior, that I wanted my partners in OnlineGrinds.ie to create with me, which they declined, was now becoming a reality. From what I could see, this idea looked like it was going to work. And guess what? It would all happen without Sean and BS.

Some students waiting for their class to begin on the first day of Learnology

Yours truly, minus Sean and BS, on the morning of the launch of Learnology.

Next Chapter – Chapter 13: BS gets mad jeal of my new biz

Chapter 11: Back to Basics

June 27, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

When the deal with UPC didn’t pan out, I contemplated putting out a contract on BS. The quotes were vastly more expensive than I could afford, and represented very bad value for money, so I scrapped the idea and went back to the drawing board. Option B (the deal with a broadband provider) didn’t work, but there was still option D (the traditional grind school idea).

Being acutely aware of the quantum of cash a south Dublin grind school was making, I decided I wanted a slice of this pie. I therefore proposed to the partners in OnlineGrinds.ie that we go back to basics and develop a traditional grinds school where we would hire the best teachers in the country to come into a traditional classroom setting to deliver low cost, high quality grinds.

Online vs. Traditional

Having given one-to-one French grinds for over ten years, it is very easy to distinguish the student who is doing grinds because the mammy wants them to, from the student who is doing the grinds off their own bat. The ratio is approximately 4:1, in my humble opinion. Therefore 4 out of every 5 students doing grinds are doing them because of their mammy. The mammy has never, and will never, be in favour of online grinds. Why? To some extent because of cyber bullying, to a greater extent because of social media, and most importantly, because of internet porn.

There is a lack of control when you send Johnny up to his room to learn. You might think he is getting a lesson from stentorian Dr Clarke, but in actual fact it could just as easily be Miss Johnson:

Miss Johnson – The New Maths Teacher on OnlineGrinds.ie

The mammy would much prefer to rock up to Leeson Street or the Stillorgan Park Hotel in her SUV and drop off the kids, thereby offloading the control to a professional human (as opposed to computer), for an hour or two. They would be much more prepared to pay for this than they would for an online grind. So, if online grinds are to work, it is only for the 1 in 5 student. Considering grinds are not a necessity, and given the broadband we have in this country (not to mention the technical incapability on our end) (SL), this made for pretty slim pickings when it came to the online grinds business model.

The Range Rover Vogue. The vehicle of choice for moms dropping their kids to grind schools.

Listen Up

What I am going to say next is exceedingly important. Possibly one of the most important things you will read in this blog. It was my intention that we, i.e. Sean, BS and I, set up the traditional grind school TOGETHER. I gave them every opportunity to embark on this journey with me. I repeat, this time in bold, CAPITALISED and in an odd shade of violet:

I GAVE THEM EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO EMBARK ON THIS JOURNEY WITH ME.

As Sean was the only other director in the company, I sent him a business plan entitled ‘Proposal For Survival’. The basis of this plan was that we would go down the traditional route of human teaching, and broadcast the grinds online. Effectively, the money would come from the humans, and as we didn’t make any money from the online wing before, we probably wouldn’t here either, at least not for the next 80-90 years or so.

If I were to sum up Sean’s reaction in one word, I would use the word ‘meh’. For those of you who don’t know what this word means, here is the urban dictionary definition:

Given the fact that BS had unilaterally taken the decision to resign as director only a few weeks previously, I decided not to send him the business plan. Business plans are a privilege for directors only, and as BS had resigned, he was undeserving of this privilege.

When he got wind of the idea, he reacted in a similar vein to Sean, although his reaction was a little less indifferent. It veered more towards the negative. He did not want to divert from the business model of live and interactive grinds. He thought that this model worked just fine. But sure, why would he think any differently? If he had actually been present for more than one live grind, and actually in the country every now and then, he might have seen the light. But no, for some reason the Chief Technology Officer does not have to be present in the studio for live broadcasts (SL).

Another obvious reason (in my opinion) for his reluctance to embrace the new model was that it would most probably require extra work on his part.

Despite the fact that he wasn’t a director of the company, he still made his opinion on the traditional grind school be known. As you can see below in another one of his enchanting emails, he tells me I “need to park this offline school plan” and concentrate on “getting more money into the company”. He must have thought that the dwarves were bored shitless and needed something to do. In fact, I was convinced that his motivation for getting in more money was to keep the Ballymun bonfire alight and the dwarves in gainful employment. Surely he couldn’t have been as deluded as to think that there would be any other destination for this money???

Incidentally, he also reiterates that he has no intention of doing any more development work. See below (click to enlarge as usual):

Excuse me for a minute. I just need to pick myself up off the ground and settle into my seat again. Did I just read that he would be able to meet up at some point the week later? I mean, we wouldn’t have to wait a couple of months before we were graced with the presence of one of the most important partners in a company? The tech partner of a tech company?

Anyway, I am now left with a decision. Not an easy one. I founded a website. Took on a loser to develop it. The concept failed. We lost 64 grand. I now needed to start something new and get a return on my investment of nearly 3 years sweat equity as well as a return for our investor Sean, who put in €80k of his own money. A return for BS wasn’t top of my priority list, as a return implies that something was invested in the first place (SL).

So, my partners do not want to go down the road of a tried and tested model and start to actually make money for a change. They want to continue along the path of futility. What do I do? What I do is I truck on with the idea. If I can’t get my own partners to start the school with me because (a) they are not interested and (b) BS has clearly advised he is no longer willing to work, I find other people who are. Please note however that this did not mean for one minute that I was abandoning ship. I was intent on starting a traditional school but was not going to let my partners prevent me from doing so. Just because they didn’t want to join me didn’t mean I wanted to leave them. I had absolutely no intention of leaving OnlineGrinds.ie. Its success was still as important to me then as it was the day I founded it. Even if the lads didn’t buy into the traditional school idea, and despite the fact that BS was no longer willing to work, I was sure there were other avenues to explore with OnlineGrinds.ie, and miracles that could be performed therein.

But let me reiterate one more time, and my sincere apologies for my repetition, but it has to be said:

Regardless of whether Sean thought it was a good idea or not, given the fact that BS was not going to do any more work, there was NO WAY WHATSOEVER that the traditional grind school could be set up by Stenson Institute Ltd., trading as OnlineGrinds.ie. I had NO CHOICE but to look outside the company for help to achieve this goal.

So, I met with an actual web developer who shall remain nameless. For now let’s call him proper web dude (PWD). There was one main difference between BS and PWD; PWD was actually good. He was the type of guy I should have taken on in the first place. He was a hoody-wearing, idea-generating, beard-inhabiting, intelligent, bright, articulate guy. He was excited about challenges and could always find a way of developing whatever website functionality you wanted, regardless of the technical scope. He relished the challenges I gave him, and the ones he gave himself. He was an owner of the business. Its success was as important to him as it was for me. Whenever I gave BS a task to complete, he would reply with two words, “Phase Two”. Everything we wanted him to do was put on a list called “Phase Two tasks”. He would not work on any of these tasks until we entered Phase Two of development (SL). Needless to say Phase Two never came. With PWD, I would give him a task and it would usually be done sometime that afternoon.

So now that I had a PWD for the traditional grind school, we needed money. We put up a proposal on a number of investment networks and within a week or two we had an investor on board. He was younger than us, but had brains that were literally bursting out of his head. His head was a rather odd shape, but I always put this down to an over presence of neural tissue within his skull (SL). For the purposes of this, let’s call this man Mr Brain Box (MBB).

MBB was relatively square, certainly not the type of bloke you would find off his head at Electric Picnic. But where he lacked in his ability to let loose, he made up in multiple measures in his ability to compute and develop complex spreadsheets. He was an ace when it came to finance, and as tight as a granny’s crack. He would never pay a bill until at least the second demand. Even the money I spent on my lunch would be scrutinised and examined with a fine tooth comb. Gone were the days of going to Canal Bank Café for my usual staple lunch of chicken wings. It was a €3 chicken fillet roll in Spar from here on in. MBB was just what we needed.

A gentleman not dissimilar in appearance to MBB

This line up of PWD’s technical expertise, MBB’s financial competence and my semi-dangerous marketing skills, made for a pretty stellar team. Having come up with a number of different names for our business, we decided in the end to call it Learnology.

Next Chapter – Chapter 12: Learnology – Say Goodbye to EGGS

Chapter 10: New Ideas and a Possible Deal with UPC

June 26, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

New Ideas

Despite all the negativity I have asserted in relation to the live and interactive online grinds business model, the company DID generate SOME money. In fact, we made the guts of €16,000. Not bad considering we invested €80,000……or……wait a minute……that’s a loss of €64,000……hmmmm……perhaps not so good after all.

One of our Junior Cert students could probably tell you that a business model such as ours was not sustainable. So, something drastic needed to be done. We needed a new plan. Rather than drawing up a plan as to how many hours I would work and how many I wouldn’t, I decided to come up with some new ideas for the company. These were as follows:

A – Review the model of live and interactive grinds – develop a freemium model

If you remember back to our free trial grinds, we got 70-80 students logging in to watch each class. This was partially due to some students logging in to extract the urine from their own teacher, the most eminent, stentorian doctor, but largely due to the fact that these grinds were free. Free grinds would work wonders. Why? (a) The mammy is not going to pay for them anyway and (b) the multitude of tech issues that will inevitably arise would be tolerated, as the service is free. So, if you have paid to watch a geography grind, and it cuts out half way, never to return, you can simply leave the site and go have much more fun on Xtube. Everything is hunky dory; there is no real worry, as the service was free in the first place.

So, if we could make all our classes free and monetise with advertising revenue, this could potentially work, in fact I was pretty sure it would work. If we started with 70-80 students logging in, we could potentially end up with thousands watching for free. But did we have the technical capability to develop something like this, tech-issue free? Even if we did have the capability, was our tech partner willing to put in anymore work? Both of these questions are rhetorical, obviously.

B – Set up meetings with broadband providers and do a deal along the lines of Eircom Study Hub

For those of you not familiar with Eircom Studyhub, it’s a service available to Eircom customers where exam students can access video tutorials as part of a bundle. The videos are provided by a company called Exam Support (hi John if you are reading, big hug) but they are recorded as opposed to live (the sensible approach). Students who are not with Eircom can pay a small fee to Exam Support to watch the videos.

Could we partner up with another broadband provider? The obvious partner at the time was UPC. They didn’t have anything education-related in their portfolio, they were the only provider of fibre power broadband (at the time), and most importantly, they wanted to be ahead of Eircom at every bend. And what better way to achieve this than to enter the education space with live online grinds where students could ask questions in real time, as opposed to recorded videos with no interactivity.

C – Focus on other disciplines – the grinds industry was limited to Ireland – TEFL online, adult learning, corporate training

No matter what we would do to try to make our business work, or what we would be restricted from doing technically, one thing was for sure: the grinds industry was a limited pot. It applied simply and uniquely to Ireland and was only worth €40m p.a. If we wanted to really make money, our business would have to reach further. Our focus needed to be global. But given the fact that BS had put a limit on his time commitment already, and was not willing to put in any more work, we were stuck with the IT infrastructure he had already developed. If we were to enter new global markets (such as TEFL online), we would need to use the website framework already in place for OnlineGrinds.ie. For those of you who have read the book The Lean Startup and who are familiar with the term Minimum Viable Product, we didn’t have an MVP.

D – Do away with the online element, go back to basics with a traditional grind school

Being acutely aware of the quantum of cash being generated by south Dublin bricks and mortar grind schools, and being equally aware of the Irish-dancing dwarves fucking our cash into the Ballymun bonfire, I decided that maybe online grinds wasn’t the way forward. Maybe we needed to go back to basics and start a traditional grind school, with human being teachers as opposed to computers. Could we start a traditional grind school and possibly broadcast the grinds online? This was an eminent possibility.

Possible Deal with UPC

Of all the above options, some seemed more feasible than others. B and D seemed to be the most doable. So, I began with option B. I approached all the major broadband providers single-handedly. I am not saying I did this alone because I want to blow my own trumpet, or because I am looking for praise, I simply want to point out that BS had no involvement in approaching these companies, or coming up with any ideas on how to further the company generally.

Having made contact with all the major providers, I heard back from one a day later. It was QSAT broadband, Niall Quinn’s company. We met with a guy from QSAT out in the Red Cow hotel and had a very interesting chat on how our two companies could work together and how we could potentially enter the North African market and bring online education to the folks down there. This was exciting. So, all QSAT needed were log in details so they could see how our system worked. We gave them a log in, but alas we never heard back from them. I wonder why. Could it be that there were tech issues? Your guess is as good as mine, but I distinctly remember around this time that there were major issues with our archive. The user kept getting the error message ‘Error Loading File’ and no video would play. Absolute disaster. To this day I wonder is this why we never heard back from QSAT.

A few weeks later, I was paying for a few shirts at the till in M&S on Grafton street and I heard a dog barking. It wasn’t a poodle shopping for slim fit shirts, it was the ring tone on my mobile. I answered the phone and there was a gent called Kevin from UPC on the other end. He wanted me to come in to UPC HQ to have a chat about a possible deal.

Despite much of an urge to pee in my pants with excitement, I managed to hold it in. However, I am sure the girl behind the counter thought I had just received a phone call saying that my lotto syndicate had just struck it lucky, or something along those lines. Such was the message the grin on my mug would have given off.

Kevin asked me to bring my tech partner along on the day, and as I don’t have a degree in email writing and feel much more comfortable relaying messages over the phone, I picked up the mobile and called BS. The appointment was entered into the diaries on my iPhone and BS’ Samsung Galaxy (he doesn’t do Apple – another reason why he was never a real developer).

On the morning of the appointment, suited and booted, BS collected me in his convertible Audi, roof down and all. We were men about town and we were going to do a deal with one of the biggest players in Irish broadband. We were invincible. And for a number of minutes, I was able to put the BS of BS to one side and concentrate on what lay ahead; riches beyond our wildest dreams.

We met with Kevin and showed him what we did. I spent the majority of the meeting worrying that he may not have been au fait with the vintage website movement that pervaded the industry at the time, and that he may have been unimpressed by the fact that our website looked like it had been designed back in 1992. However, he seemed to like the look of the site and the concept generally. Luckily he was aware of the new trend.

After about a 20 minute chat, Kevin announced that he would go and pretend to be a student for a while, watch a few live and archive grinds, and get back to us in a few days. With this declaration, something in the pit of my stomach began to feel very heavy. I began to feel quite unwell. The feeling of déjà-vu I experienced was so intense that I think I actually had a black out, with no drink taken. When I woke up from this momentary, hellish-nightmare-filled black out, the voice in my head was shouting at me (it normally spoke). The crux of the message was: “Remember what happened with QSAT???”. “Oh fuck”, I said (to myself).

Low and behold, a few days later, we received an email from Kevin in UPC. Below are his EXACT words along with the screen shot he sent via email:

Exact email from Kevin in UPC

Screenshot attached to Kevin’s email

I really wish I could say I was surprised and taken aback by his email. Unfortunately, I can’t. During my black out in the UPC offices, I had a premonition. In this premonition was a vivid vision of this email. The email I received from Kevin resembled the vision so closely, that I’d swear I have clairvoyant tendencies and am considering taking up a new career as Mystic Mike.

Premonitions, visions and hellish nightmares aside for a minute. For a student (the user) to get an error message like this, or worse again, their parents (the customer), with no reasonable explanation given, is catastrophic. But for a guy from one of the biggest broadband providers in Ireland getting this error message? The word doesn’t exist; at least I am not familiar with any word which would appropriately describe the gravity of this kind of fuck up.

Needless to say the deal with UPC never panned out.

Next Chapter – Chapter 11: Back to Basics

Chapter 9: Tits & Ass, “I QUIT” says BS, Even More Money, Even More Money, Even More Money

June 25, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

Tits & Ass

One evening in early March 2013, I was sitting in the office watching a live feed of a maths grind on my laptop which was being streamed from our studio next door. I liked to do this. If I saw that the feed was coming smoothly to my computer, I could assume that it was also running smoothly on the laptops of all 6 or 7 viewers across the country (out of a potential 55,000 approx.), who were tuned in that evening.

I always loved being in the OnlineGrinds office in the evening, as there were life drawing sessions taking place in the Trinity Arts Workshop (TAW) just across the road. The window of the TAW was boarded up so that innocent passers-by wouldn’t be greeted with images of tits and ass (sometimes saggy, other times hairy) as they were walking through Pearse Street. But there was an area at the top of the window that had no boarding. They obviously couldn’t reach that high from the inside. But why would they need to? There were no black NBA players in Dublin and all the offices across the road would be empty in the evening time when the models would bare all. So they thought :).

It was through this gap we could get a bird’s eye view of the models. The trajectory from my chair to the podium was no less than perfect. Pity what we saw wasn’t always as perfect, however. The naked beasts were also in an eyeshot of the teachers as they were presenting to camera. We ended up having to put curtains on the studio window so our male teachers wouldn’t become distracted (and erect) during the grind. We left the office window clear though.

One of the male models across the road from OnlineGrinds.ie. Girls and Gays can click to increase size of image.

One of the female models in an eye-shot of the OnlineGrinds.ie offices. Men and Lesbians can click to increase size of image.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I remind you that if you have an issue with any of the content I am posting, you are more than welcome to follow the complaints procedure which can be found in the Preface section of this blog.

“I QUIT” says BS

So, there I was sitting watching the live feed of Pythagoras theorem on the laptop and the live feed of boobies and balls across the road (in equal measure might I add), when I got a ping on the laptop. It was an email from BS.

It was not unusual to receive an email from BS around this time. It would be incredibly unusual (to the point that I’d fall off the chair I was already sitting on the edge of, lest a tech issue arose) to receive a phone call from him, but not an email. In fact, BS was quite gifted in the art of email writing. I am pretty sure he must have had some form of qualification in the discipline, particularly when it came to punctuation and CAPITALISATION of words. In any case, the email went as follows (click on text to increase size):

(Another) email from BS

So, BS ‘wanted out’ in terms of his capacity as a director, but still wanted to remain a third owner of the business. For all intents and purposes, this did not make a blind bit of difference in practical terms, as he was perpetually absent from the office in any case. But in terms of my motivation levels??? …… Nah, no difference there either. In fact, the feeling of non-description I experienced when I received this email would make me wonder why I am writing about it at all. However, the truth is that there is a very good reason why I am mentioning it here, and this will all become apparent in a later chapter.

Even More Money, Even More Money, Even More Money

We went through the €10k at the same speed it would take a school of piranhas to go through the carcass of a horse. In fact, not a horse, more like a Shetland pony, or a pygmy goat; an animal of that kind of magnitude. Having launched the site officially in mid Jan, it was now March and we had savaged our way through a whopping €50k. So, what was I going to do? There was only one option; I had to go back to Mommy and Daddy (Sean), looking for more bread.

This time I was a little more sheepish, but hey presto, after a lot of persuasive coaxing and genuflection, I got another €30,000. It took a considerable length of time to physically get this cash, however. There were detailed heads of terms sheets (that I didn’t understand at all – it was as if they were written in some obscure dialect of Swahili) which required careful and cautious study. It also meant a dilution in our shareholding at the time, and an increase in Sean’s.

At this point BS had resigned as a dick, I mean, director, and had no desire to continue doing any work for the company free gratis. He wanted to remain a third owner with no more input from his end. Why should he? The slopes of Chamonix and Val d’Isere were of far greater importance to him than a company set to democratise the grinds industry. He had no interest in improving the site, creating any new pages, adding any new logic which would allow us to capture more information on our customers for re-marketing, the list goes on. For example, we asked him to put a live chat widget on the site and he made up some story about how long this would take and how difficult a task it would be. It was obviously never done (SL). The guy who developed my new www.FrenchGrinds.com site was able to put a live chat widget on the homepage within the space of 10-15 minutes. No exaggeration.

The long and the short of it is that BS treated the company as if he were a contractor, rather than an owner, and this pissed me off to the point of wanting to torture him slowly. I didn’t want to throw him to a pack of lions or tigers with razor sharp canines who would rip him to pieces violently and quickly, I wanted to throw him to a flock of man eating sheep or goats with blunt teeth who would gnaw away at him slowly and painfully.

So, realising that BS was not acting like an owner, but more like a contractor (in other words being a complete asshole), Sean recommended that his shareholding be diluted more than mine. I was company founder and I was acting as such. Despite the fact that BS and Sean each had 1/3 of the company, I still owned 1/3. At no point did I ever put a line under my commitment, or even enter a date into the shareholder’s agreement stating when my time was up. This kind of behaviour didn’t enter my thoughts. Why? I’ll tell you why:

OnlineGrinds.ie was mine; I was going to work on it tirelessly until it became a success.

So, when Sean devised a proposed new shareholding structure, meaning BS would have less equity than me, BS hit the roof. World War III had graced the OnlineGrinds.ie offices. Only momentarily however, as BS’s visits lasted a duration of approximately 15-20, every couple of months. The rest of the war was conducted via the medium of email. As I said before, perhaps if BS spent as much time working on the project as he did writing emails, we would have gone somewhere. Then again, no, you can only go places if you are actually a good developer (SL).

Below is an extract from an email where our investor Sean proposed that BS’ shareholding be diluted more than mine on receipt of the further €30k. Sean’s wording is in blue, BS’ is in black:

(Yet another vomit-inducing) email from BS

A close friend of mine said to me yesterday that he wretches every time he reads BS’ emails. Do you wretch too?

Sean eventually backed down (which I was little put out by, if I am being honest) and our shareholding was diluted evenly. I’ll never forget the number of conditions that were set by BS at that point. He was going to do x number of hours on this and y number of hours on that but by no means go over z number of hours on the other. Again, he was supposed to be an owner of this business. What an absolute loser (SL).

Published tomorrow – Chapter 10: New Ideas and a Possible Deal with UPC

Chapter 8: Press Coverage and A Love Letter from Arthur’s Cock

June 24, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / Leave a comment

Press Coverage

I have always contended that the reason OnlineGrinds.ie never took off was due to technical challenges beyond our control. As much as I’d like to, I can’t point the blame fully at BS. There were tech issues at our end for which he was ultimately responsible, but there were some at the user end too. Students don’t get the concept of download speed, contention ratios and all that shite, for example. If a live stream is stalling regularly, they don’t for one minute think that this could have anything to do with brother Johnny hogging the bandwidth by beating off to amateur interracial porn in his bedroom next door.

However, according to BS, it was my entire fault. The finger of blame was pointed most emphatically in my direction. I’ll never forget him using the word ‘failure’ in about 3 separate emails to me over the course of our 6 month’s broadcasting. Here is the exact wording of 2 emails he sent yours truly (I can’t find the third as it was sent to a gmail account that I can no longer access as BS illegally took control of it during the war) which both included the delightful verb ‘to fail’ (click image to increase size):

So in BS’ opinion we didn’t get the word out enough to the public. We failed when it came to marketing. The business side of OnlineGrinds.ie was flawed.

I guess this is the point where I should say how awesome I was when it came to marketing and advertising. I should probably now point you in the direction of the press page on the OnlineGrinds.ie website where it says we featured on Joe Duffy (twice), Ryan Tubridy, Ireland AM, the Irish Indo (twice), Sunday Business Post, Business Plus magazine, reviewed in the Irish Times with an average rating of 8/10, the list goes on. But….nah….that’s not really my style. If you really want to see our media appearances, features and articles, go to the OnlineGrinds.ie website and click ‘Press’ (Under ‘About’). But please note the absence of my holding a revolver to your temple.

Instead, I think you might get a better idea of the impact we had on the grinds industry from the viewpoint of one of our competitors; no less than the Institute of Education (IOE). When the IOE heard about OnlineGrinds.ie and our intention to make grinds affordable to all, they didn’t simply poo in their pants; they had a violent eruption of diarrhea.

A Love Letter From Arthur’s Cock

One of the goals of OnlineGrinds.ie was to provide students with the best teachers in the country at a fraction of the price of traditional grind schools. Each teacher had their individual biography in the ‘staff-room’ section of the website. All teacher bio’s included where the teacher had worked previously (obviously).

One morning in early February 2013, I arrived into the office, 4-shot latte in hand, to find this beaut of a love letter (click image to increase size):

As you can see, this was not a matter for a trainee solicitor called Sandra who was straight out of King’s Inn feeling uncomfortable sitting in a D2 office wearing a mini skirt when she would much rather be snorting horse tranquilizer at the electric picnic. No no, this was a matter for the big boy, big Arthur’s Cock.

Such was the bout of trots the lads in the IOE were enduring. There was NO amount of Arret that could put an end to this so they called on Mr Cock to write me a billet-doux. Sandra would have been too much of a softie, but Mr Cock was as hard as they came.

The truth is that the teacher had actually taught in the IOE for 30 years, but it wasn’t for the past 30 years, it was for 30 years up until a few years ago. But it wasn’t simply an issue of semantics for the IOE, the way they made it out to be. The real issue was that they felt severely threatened. For long enough they were able to charge students exorbitant fees to access excellent teachers, but now OnlineGrinds.ie was going to bring the same quality teachers to the laptop on the student’s kitchen table, for only €10 per grind. This was what struck the fear of Alla into the IOE, causing the eruption of Mount Anus, not the misplaced word or two.

Unlike the other solicitor’s letters I later received (which usually ended up being eaten and excreted by my Doberman), there was no vacillation whatsoever when I received this one. This letter was destined for one place, and one place only. It was going to be framed and placed on my bedroom wall where I could throw sugar at it. It was a letter of pride. I was tremendously proud. I had set out to disrupt the high cost grinds industry, and it was working.

(P.S. The teacher they were referring to in the letter was our biology teacher, Joe Reville. Joe was an absolute gent but sadly passed away last year. He was ‘the dude’ when it came to Science. Some man. RIP Joe).

Next Chapter – Chapter 9: Tits & Ass, “I QUIT” says BS, Even More Money, Even More Money, Even More Money

Chapter 7: Burn Baby Burn, More Money More Money More Money, €10k Loan

June 23, 2014July 7, 2017 / PaulVStenson / 1 Comment

Burn Baby Burn

Broadcasting live and interactive grinds was by no means a cheap affair. In fact, it was fucking expensive. We would pay teachers up to €110 per hour to come in and deliver their grind. Paying this kind of money would be fine if we had 15 or so students tuning in to watch every live broadcast, each paying €10 for the service. The problem was that students rarely purchased the ‘pay-per-grind’ €10 package. Instead, they bought the ‘pay-per-month’ deal where they would get access to all live and archived grinds for the month, all for €50. This was what EVERYONE went for. So, this meant that you could have a teacher delivering his grind, with only 2 students tuning in. This was a common occurrence in our physics grinds. Now, you don’t need to be Einstein or Newton to realise that we weren’t making money with this business model.

The cash burn rate was mega. I have never seen a business burn cash as quickly. It was like taking €80,000 in €5 notes, putting them into a wooden barrel, getting a group of dwarves to do an Irish jig in the barrel, dousing the compressed notes with airline fuel, closing the lid, getting the dwarves to roll the barrel to Ballymun on Halloween night and fuck it into the nearest bonfire. In fact, no, you would be pushed to burn cash as quickly this way as you would by broadcasting live and interactive grinds.

A bonfire in Ballymun

Our team of dwarves. Yes they like to strip occasionally. Especially when they are around fire.

More Money More Money More Money

Remember that every grind we broadcast on a live and interactive basis would be put into an archive to be viewed at a later point at a cheaper price (€5 as opposed to €10). It was for this reason that we took the gamble of losing money hand over fist with the live and interactive element, as students could still watch and pay for the archived grinds in their own time. Did this ever happen? No sir.

The archive element never really took off. Although, the most money we ever made was over the Easter holidays, where we packaged all of our archive content up for the attractive sum of €30. This was a big hit. And guess what, no liveness, no interactivity. This was the first time I began to question the live and interactive model. The fact that nobody had ever attempted this before was now beginning to make so much sense to me. I’ll never forget a man called Philip O’Callaghan from the Super Generation (hi Philip if you are reading!) telling me that I would be pissing in the wind if I were to embark on a journey of live and interactive grinds. I should have listened to Philip. Hey Philip, (I KNOW you are reading), pints on me next time!

€10k Loan

Realising that we were (figuratively speaking) walking a short distance down to the River Liffey and fucking about 6 €50 notes into the beautifully clean water on a daily basis, I had to give Sean a ring. Ringing Sean asking him for more money always reminded me of asking my parents for more pocket money. I would have to convince them that I wasn’t simply going to buy sweets, but something much more healthy. Fortunately Sean was a little more forthcoming with the cash than mum or dad. My sweet story seemed to work a lot better for him.

A kid with his hand out looking for more pocket money. He is using the piggy as a prop to suggest the money will be saved. Smart kid.

So, having convinced Sean that our need for about €10k more was for purposes much more important than Skittles and Moro bars, the money was transferred, along with a very comprehensive loan note (another differentiating factor from my sweet dealings with mum and dad). This brought Sean’s total investment in OnlineGrinds.ie to €50k; the original €40k investment funds, plus the €10k loan. It was only late January, a mere 2 weeks after we had officially launched.

You need to listen up now very attentively and carefully to what I am about to say:

One of the conditions of the loan note was that if, for any reason, the €10k could not be repaid, Sean’s company would have the right to take the assets from our company. A much more sinister condition than any loving mammy or daddy would attach to a sweet deal, says you.

Please don’t forget what you just read in the past 5 seconds. It is imperative that you remember this information.

Next Chapter – Chapter 8: Press Coverage and A Love Letter from Arthur’s Cock

Paulie's Bog

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men"

Author: PaulVStenson

Chapter 16: OOPS and Buy Me Out Oh Baby Buy Me Out

Chapter 15: I Accept, We Don’t and The Stool Pigeon

Chapter 14: Let’s Get Dirty

Chapter 13: BS gets mad jeal of my new biz

Chapter 12: Learnology – Say Goodbye to EGGS

Chapter 11: Back to Basics

Chapter 10: New Ideas and a Possible Deal with UPC

Chapter 9: Tits & Ass, “I QUIT” says BS, Even More Money, Even More Money, Even More Money

Chapter 8: Press Coverage and A Love Letter from Arthur’s Cock

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