Monday evening was calling to me. I had about enough of the game for now and I was going to take it easy. I had watched some match highlights or some strategy play-by-plays. All I wanted to do was to get to the bottom of what was going on with Stacy and Amir’s star client, Mister Mean.
The entire system kind of made me scratch my head. The legal system, that is and where it intersected business operations. His operated in a space that was like a combination of a test prep center and a martial arts school.
There are a lot of pop-up businesses in Bergen County where a parent will pay somebody to get their kid better at a test like the SAT for the GRE. This is a thing where a parent pays for their kids while they're in high school. Or a college student will want to take a specific test for grad school.
They're paying someone who did well on the test to get their kids to do well on their test. I know, I've met some of these guys. You know how some people speak in high school? These people peaked at the SAT.
Somebody has a business plan where they hire a bunch of these college students or college graduates. Each would be great in the test and then they pay them minimum wage or as little as possible to tutor students. They take the jobs because they work with their college schedule, but only a few stay for more than a year or two.
In Japan they have cram schools where basically you're studying after school. It felt like overloading kids who are already overwhelmed and overstimulated to me. The parents in Ridgewood were notorious for overloading their kids with too many activities in middle school.
If you go to night school after seven hours of day school, what are you learning? Things you need to know to get into university? Just give them the course then. Send them straight to community college or something so at least they come out ahead, credits wise.
I think they do the same thing in Korea as well. I'm not a big fan of cram schools if you can't tell.
I feel like we ask a lot of our students anyway. There’s a lot of pressure coming from parents to their kids to achieve greatness and it manifests in these kinds of things.
I've heard of kindergartens giving out homework and parents being so curious as to why a kindergartner would need to do homework. Spoiler alert: they don't.
Homework in general was a hot topic at all of the teacher's conferences.
It felt like giving kids unpaid overtime.
There's no reason for that. Either they understand the material, or they don't.
Once a student is outside of our classes, we can’t help them. We have to do as much as possible to get them ready for a career.
What did this mean for me? My students need to leave my courses understanding some things. They need to understand how to run a business or how to make a business plan. They can't just get that without going through some steps.
Because the real world has a vote.
You might set something up and think it's the most perfect business plan ever. But then when it reaches reality then there's nothing to it.
If you don't know how to change a business plan to tweak it once, it's in process? You'll be dead in the water. This is why many of these parents are looking for these jobs where you have a steady paycheck, and you have a knowledge base to rely upon. That's why half of all small businesses fail in the first year.
If you're an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer, you have gone through a lot of work to be somebody who can give out a specific type of advice to a company.
You can't just replicate those skills through artificial intelligence. Sure, you can train artificial intelligence how to be an engineer or have them pretend to be a lawyer, but they can't do all the steps that a human can do. It's the same thing with these schools.
When they told me about Mr. Means esports academy I was interested. I was intrigued about the business model. Because on one hand you have the supply. There's only so many people that can teach esports. There's not establish location of these teachers, so they had to come up through their own way or the business must certify them or something.
Then there was the demand. Would a parent pay for them to basically go play video games? When they poor ones couldn't even afford it? There were way too many people around with more money than sense. See: the half of businesses that survive anyway.
I quickly did up a business plan for how to create an esports coaching certificate before I even looked for one online. The field was so new that I couldn't imagine that there was anything. They would be relying on the knowledge of pros and people that play the game a lot instill these lessons.
Lessons that I got through the patch. The intuitive understanding of the game state from hundreds of hours of play. The understanding of the meta.
If I could have, I would have let people know more of what I was getting into, but I felt like part of the patch was not telling people about it. I got excited to play the game. I got excited to manage the game.
I didn't want people to think that I had a mental disorder. That would lead to me getting locked up.
So, sue me I would prefer to stay out on the streets.
Because if there was no certification body, he would have to hire somebody and then train them. Or they would have to come to him already trained and back up their training with experience. Then he would pay them twenty dollars an hour or something to run his business. I didn't know what Benjamin did outside of this franchise but a lot of franchisees pay a lot of money. They buy a stake in say McDonald's or something like that so they can run it, according to McDonald's business rules.
What he had done was bought a franchise of larger esports academy where he had to follow their rules.
He had startup costs because he had to buy computers and he had to lease out the space. In his business plan, he spent about $50,000 on computers and I could see that that might be nice to sell. Then he had to spend a lot of money on the lease itself.
He also had to pay the franchise a flat fee of $10,000 a year. I saw that number and nearly blacked out. That felt like a ridiculous tax.
If you're operating a business with a physical space, you must think about paying for long-term or short-term or buying the place outright. Mister Mean decided to lease out the place, which was fine, but it also meant that he would have to keep generated revenue to do it. He was paying about four thousand a month to have this academy smack dab in the middle of Paramus. In Bergen county, where parents are paying top dollars to get their kids into the American equivalent of cram schools.
Of course, some enterprising youth would want to join the esports academy and see if they can make it to the top.
I had to look at his operating costs. With four employees, who only worked in the evenings 5 days a week, he was paying them about $500 a day to staff his esports academy. And this academy model kind of looks like a martial arts studio. I was expecting more of the individual tutor model like Kumon, honestly.
If you can get one person to tutor two people? That would be even better. One person tutoring five people, that's just efficient.
I’ve seen a martial arts school business plan. The preponderance of students are generally kids. I've seen business plans where it's one hundred percent kids. It's all afternoon and that means that the people that work at the martial arts schools must work in the afternoon as well.
There's usually one class during the day, whether late at night or in the afternoon. That's for adults. Everything else is generally for the kids. This is turned on its head when you're in a college setting and everyone is a college student and they're all doing a sport.
I didn't have a breakdown of the demographics of his esports academy students, but something told me that this was mostly kids.
Amir gave me a flyer from his folder which advertised an all-ages game with a prize of about $200 for the winner.
That was $1,000 for the winning team, split five ways. Because of course not only do they play DOTA they also played League of Legends and Hearthstone.
This meant that he had to have experts in each of those games. And let me tell you something I might have spent a lot of time in DOTA, but I did not spend a long time in Hearthstone. The game was interesting to me but that wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. Good on the kids that wanted to play it but competitively? I didn't know if there was a future.
Especially not when DOTA got me all hot and bothered.
I paced around the wood paneled living room in Amir’s third floor walkup. He lived in a mixed-use building in the center of town. Convenient to the rest of the group, it let to him hosting more than usual.
If Amir could get away with having milk crate furniture, he would have. But having us as his best friends meant that we wouldn’t let him do that. Instead, he just had exactly the amount of cups, plates and utensils that three people would need. Allegedly, he never had more than two guests at a time. His table was unpainted wood.
“You know what guys?” I said. “This would be a great thing for me to use my classes. I want to know if we could ask Mister Mean if he might possibly let us use his business plan.”
“If we redact parts of it?” Amir said. “I'm sure he won't have a problem with it. Plus you can just use the inputs and make your own plan on that.”
“Why don't we just use the materials that the franchise owner gives out?” Stacy said. “Or I mean why don't you do it.”
She wanted to play franchise owner manager or something like that. That might be something that the patch was going to unveil for me. If I had the time, I would make a franchise simulator game and sell that. I didn't have the skills, but I could work on that.
I checked my shop and no I didn't have a quest or an achievement about setting up an esports franchise. Oh well. It would have been nice to have something like that, but if it wasn't in the cards? It wasn't in the cards. Whatever the patch brought? I would use. And if the patch brought me a $1,000 prize for winning one of his open tournaments? I would do that.
“Do you think that we could win one of these open games?”
Stacy and Amir both looked at each other.
“You realize that we're representing him in a divorce proceeding, right? I mean you're sad. “Additionally, he had a workplace complaint because his wife worked before, she left. I don't usually represent the companies in these kinds of things, but in this one he asked for my help and Stacy’s, and we said yes.”
“What you're saying is its conflict of interest if we win and take his money?” I said.
“We are going to be taking his money by billing him for our time. Neither one of us is cheap,” Stacy pulled a piece of paper out of the pile.
She handed over to me. I whistled. They were charging the guy an outrageous fee. She handed me another piece of paper.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
I knew her hourly fee was high. I had told her to keep it as high as Snoop Dogg. I told Amir the same. Both worked on contingency, meaning that they had to win cases to get paid. Being paid up front to unravel this man's life for sale meant that they knew he could pay them.
“See this right here? These are his actual books right here. At least that's what it was for 2023.”
“This is the abridged version,” Amir said.
“This man is making way too much money on this,” I said. “Like this is ridiculous. I might need to get in on this kind of investment.”
Stacy sighed. It was four o’clock and she had a half full wine glass in her hand. We were pregaming before Amir went on his date tonight.
“All right guys. I need your help,” Amir said. “She wants to do a sip and paint class. She also wanted to meet you guys.”
I gave him a look that said go on. I sunk into Amir’s couch and got really comfy.
“It would really mean a lot to her to meet you guys. The only problem is that it's on Wednesday night.”
As of right now, I had my Wednesdays free. I would keep them available for him if he asked.
“This isn't going to be some sort of lead up to an MLM meeting right?” I said.
“Absolutely not,” Amir said. “Not after last time. She works in the hospital. I think.”
“After last time?” I always ask. “You think?”
“Jill was cagey. Apparently, her husband doesn’t even know what his sister does for work. She has scrubs but uh…”
“If you can’t ask your date what she does for work, then you have big problems.”
“I just haven’t really…”
Stacey and I placed our wine glasses down. The unpainted wood stared back at me.
We gave him the look.
“Okay, okay. I get your point. I will ask her.”
I pulled out my most recent acquisition.
“Is that… 'Reborn as a level 99 Villainess in a Yuri novel'?” Stacey said. “How are you reading that? Wait. Volume three?”
I had picked up the series in the bookstore on my way over. As it turned out, money could buy happiness. I might not like women like that, but hell if I wasn't going to read a manga romance.
“Look here guy. You need to learn how to talk to a woman like she is going to stick around for more than week,” I said.
“You want Amir to take notes from this lesbian villain?” Stacey said, flipping through the pages. She began to contort her body a bit. “How are they actually doing that? That’s kinda hot.”
“I know, right?” I said.
Amir got a bit red in the face.
“You brought hentai to my pre-game?” He said.
I brought out volume one for him and handed him the copy. I had read Esters one and left it in my office, this was my own. Unfortunately, the bookstore only had the first four books of the twelve in the series. Or they had had them until I cleaned out the only copies.
“It’s not hentai,” I said. “It’s a work of art.”
“I’ll say,” Stacey said, clearly looking at a spread of a woman going down on another woman. She was holding the manga sideways and wide open. It was like she was looking at an old school playboy. "That's hot."
You know what come in handy at this exact moment? A cell phone. I picked mine up and took a photo of her looking at a girl going down on another girl. Of course it was manga but it still had the same effects as I wanted.
"Don't you dare post that photo anywhere? I swear to God, Kelly," Stacy said.
That's when Amir brought his phone out but Stacy was too quick.
"I'm just going to put this in your bookshelf for now. So maybe your new girlfriend will find this out. Maybe she'll be interested in what you know about how to talk to a woman. I'll just take that back then," I said. "No sense in you keeping that around when I need to keep doing my research on this."
I didn't even make it to the bookshelf.
"You're doing research on girl love?" Amir said.
"Just so you know, one of my students is interested in writing this kind of smut. She came to me. She talked about wanted to be a writer or work in the writing business and she just happened to leave this in my office. No, she's not interested in me. But yes she wanted my counsel on this issue."
Stacy picked the book back up and flipped through it. "This is a great book. If she can do something like this? She'll be making money. I can't see why she wouldn't do something like this unless she was afraid to put herself out like that. She came to you so she must trust you at least a little bit?"
Esther had been a bit of a Tsundere. She pushed me away. She wasn't me amouto, for certain.
She was a little bit cold until she cracked out of her shell after the last game. Her being out of her broken shell? Meant that the floodgates were open. I would probably see her in my office the next time and she would probably want to talk about this at greater length.
"You know what? We didn't actually talk about this? She just had this book here and I just I'm kind of jumping to conclusions. But if you're going to leave a book like this in your book bag and take a publishing course... don't you think that she might be interested in making this type of book?"
I would think so, Amir said opening the book sideways and spreading it out to look at the same photo that Stacy had been looking at.
"I mean this looks gorgeous and I can't say that I wouldn't want to read this but I wouldn't bring it out in polite company like this?" Stacy said.
"I think what you both are getting at is that this is a geek thing and it's kind of embarrassing unless you're somebody else in the same in crowd. So if I let her know that I'm into reading this kind of thing, do you think that she would see that as a good thing or a bad thing?" I said. "Plus if you feel like you have to hide your stuffed animals from them, they're the wrong person."
Stacy blew some air out of her lips.
"If I found somebody with that was interested in the same things I was interested in? I'll be overjoyed. That's why I love doing yoga with you guys and playing DOTA."
"Like it's great to have friends but it's also also a lot of fun have planned activities. Like. Thank you guys for coming over here so we can talk about this date and I could really get prepared for this."
"You going to tell her that your boyfriend now right?" I said
"You need to DTR! Define the relationship,, bro!" Stacy said.
"I know I need to DTR," Amir said throwing up his hands. "I want to do that!"
"I don't know that she wants me to do that!"
"Have you tried talking to her sister-in-law about this?" Stacy said.
"Jill, absolutely does not want to get involved in any of this drama. I just want to have a nice state and see where it goes," he said. "And why aren't you seeing anybody right now?"
The silence was deafening. Whether he meant Stacy or me, I didn't know. I knew it was an attack. I knew he was just trying to play around but I was single by choice. Stacy, the divorce lawyer was also single by choice.
"Maybe the next time Bridgerton comes on, I'll find someone to cuddle up to," Stacy said.
"Do you think that Renee Jean page leaving really fucked it up for them?" I said.
""Well it messed everything up for that Daphne character. She got really shafted just because one guy made a terrible decision. Not like I know any men who do terrible decisions that fucked a woman's career."
"What is everyone looking at me for," Amir said
Satisfied, I finished my wine glass. There haven't been that much left.
Now I just need to figure out how to the rest of this week was going to line up.
"Kelly, who are you guys playing this week?"
"Is it Passaic County? I swear I thought it was Passaic County," Amir said.
"It's Passaic County."
"Is it going to be in Paterson?"
"I'll have to check." If it wasn't Patterson I wasn't too enthusiastic about going there. Patterson had a bad reputation but it was near not nearly as bad as you thought. It definitely wasn't as bad as Newark or the way the Camden had to be had been.
Despite our generally acts with performance so far, they hadn't just handed us the title. This meant that we had to keep going. There were only about eight weeks of this until we had our finals. Or was it ten. I had to check.
"Are you guys playing Ramapo or William Patterson University? What about Fairleigh Dickinson?"
"I'm going to have to get back to you on that," I said.
Fact 1: We are supposed to be playing against other community colleges.
Fact 2: They weren't at that many in the region and our our College didn't really have to budget to send us that far.
Rockland was a bit of a stretch but it was an easy drive. Manhattan was technically next door but an even worse drive. Hudson County and Essxy County? They were next door . Passaic County was also next door.
When it got to be more than an hour and a half of a drive? It got to be a real struggle trying to get people to come to a non-obligatory thing. Like yes the kids wanted to play but they're in college and they need to be studying. A lot of my students had full-time jobs a part-time jobs they had to go to and some even have children or families. If someone had a small baby and they were trying to get into an esports League? That might not be the right combination. Maybe when the kid was five or older.
Even still, that kid was a lot of work. I knew because my mom had me help raise my brothers and sisters. Part of the reason why I didn't want to have kids myself is cuz I had raised some. Cats were fine. Even a dog would be fine.
"Now just so we're clear, Amir said. "You guys are not allowed to come and eavesdrop on our date. Okay? You have to promise me."
"You know we promise we're not going to do that. We're very proud of you for finally getting out of your shell and letting us know that you want to actually be with a girl for more than one night. Stacy said.
"We're so proud of you for finally getting the courage to tell somebody how you really feel, I said.
"Ladies please, I can only take so many compliments, he said.
It was getting to be too late in the day for us to stick around and we knew that Amir's date was about to get off work and she will be getting ready herself.
If you're good, we'll head out then. I said. Stacy, did you pack your bag right?
The only thing wrong with my bag is that finding it, she said. There clearly needs to be more wine in it.
All right, well we're only three blocks away from my house so let's head out of midtown and get to the Thomas residence.
Stacy lived above her law practice. She shared an office space with Amir. Amir lived in midtown or at least in that area where everyone is always looking for parking. This meant that we could have gone back to her spot or my spot and was about the same. We just couldn't have glass bottles on display when we walked.
Standing up, I really wasn't that drunk. Honestly, I could barely fear a feel a buzz. That was probably the perfect time to cut myself off.
Stacy was either pretending to be more drunk than she was or was actually having some vertigo issues as we walk down the narrow staircase.
"Are you all right?" I said on the second floor landing.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," she said just feeling a little bit off today.
"Was it because of Mister mean? Or is Amir actually getting serious about somebody making you feel some kind of way."
"It's not him. I'm just thinking about the future right now and when you said that we should Play and win that esports tournament. I was really thinking that you had something there."
Stacy is not that bad at DOTA. In fact, with a little bit of encouragement for me, I could see her going professional or winning a regional tournament or something like that. She was also super supportive and super communicative. But she had other goals.
"Stacy, if you want to go in on an esports academy with me, you just say the word and we'll talk to those franchise guys."
We reached the bottom floor and let ourselves out. We were a couple blocks south of the train stop and I saw one of the commuter trains pass on by.
Most of the buildings around the center of town were two or three story and there was only a few bars that were open at that time. Monday was not a big day to go out in Ridgewood but some people made it work.
We began walking towards my apartment. I could see Stacy patting her bag making sure that her computer was there.
"Honestly the way things are going? You should probably have a second computer set up at your place. This way we could just both play together in the same room."
"Stacy, that's brilliant but the only place that really makes sense is at the law office. And if we're playing over there, since you guys got that fiber optic cable it makes sense for us to have Amir with us as well."
"Do you think that I want to leave my successful law of practice to win DOTA games with you?" Stacy said. "Girl. Yes."
"See I knew you were a sucker. That's why in my five-step multi-level marketing plan, you're going to be the first one to sign up for my DOTA learner course."
She laughed all the way to my apartment.
---
We were in it that night. Stacy and I were taking over the bottom Lane.
We swaggered back and forth with support and bottom Lane. I would support her and build her up and then she would take these crazy ganks against the enemy that let catapulted our entire team to Victory. Honestly it was a toss-up between her or me who was MVP every time just because we supported each other so well.
One minute she would be in a bush hiding and they would think that I was the only one there. Then it would come in and I would draw them out and then she would push them under the tower. Once she pushed them, I would lock them down and that was about the extent of how our girl power worked that day.
There were too many things going on for us fully do a two versus five team kill but we got pretty close and we came on top when it was two versus three. There was only one time when we did a two versus four and we voluntarily departed. Having her in the room with me was excellent for our communication.
Every so often we get a text from Amir. We had told him not to text us or text the group chat because he was in a date. It was going so well, though. He was prepared to give us the most minute of a play-by-play every time she got up to order another round.
Now they weren't getting drunk because his date had the day off tomorrow. They were drinking a lot of water because she was the kind of person that would make him drink water. The texts were every time he had to get up and take a piss. Honestly, the man probably needed to see a urologist due to the frequency alone.
"That's how relations really work, right? You have one person who doesn't drink water and another person that brings water to you?" I told Stacy after we got that message. "The water bringer and the water avoid-er?"
"That's how it worked with my ex."
"And then when they stop carrying water for you that's when it's over?" I said.
"Oh it's over long before they stop carrying water for you. It's over when you guys stop communicating. Honestly, I would just love for people to realize what they're getting into when they get married."
"You think that people will be prepared for what marriage entails when they say feel death? Do we part," I said.
"You would think so right?" Stacy said.
After our fourth game, Murph and Raquel came online and I saw them. We invited them to play with us and they took over the bottom Lane and support position and after that? We dominated every single game. It was nearly a shutdown except that our our fifth kept getting killed.
"Really good," Stacy said after that second match with them.
"All right? I know, right?"
"No like they are really good. You should be talking to four-year colleges about how much money they are we going to throw with these kids."
This whole esports as an actual business is such a new thing that it's hard to get colleges to get their brains around it. But once they realize that it' would be a draw for the school? Maybe they'll make a program just for it. I'll have my dream of moving from being a business school Professor to being an esports Professor.
Wouldn't that be the dream though?
So even if we got a bad fifth player, the four of us would more than make up for it. It was when we faced a team with an ELO of higher than us that we had trouble.