Law & Business

In Episode 19 of the “Law & Business” podcast, I am joined by Angel Quintana.

Angel is a business advisor who helps business owners be tastemakers, rebels, or visionarys, which might not be the get-rich-quick guide that all those other marketing experts are using to promote their businesses, but it produces everlasting results, dissipates the boredom and lack of creativity that many seasoned business owners are feeling today, and it removes all the competition.

We talked about how businesses should market themselves, the importance of e-mail marketing, and the legal issues involved.

Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the episode:

Anthony Verna:
Welcome to the Law and Business podcast. I am here with Angel Quintana. Angel, how you doing?

Angel Quintana:
I’m fabulous. Thanks for having me.

Anthony Verna:
No problem. Thank you for calling in and hope you like our fancy setup where you get to call in. So, Angel, I know that you are a business advisor but, I’m never really very good, so why don’t you describe your business to everybody who’s listening.

Angel Quintana:
Okay, great. So, I have a business that’s called holistic fashion needs and it was actually born from the lengthy time that I’ve been a business mentor for the past, I don’t know, 10 years or so. I started holistic fashion needs said to basically support my clients, give them exposure online, let them write bomb magazine, to do their advertising campaigns. We promote them in a podcast, or our HF TV shows that we do on online. So, there’s just lots of different ways where we’d just basically promote people that we think are amazing. I normally just work with holistic leaders, people that really want to help people get to the root of their problems, not just a quick fix or a bandaid solution but really dig in, ask those hard questions and get people really to a place of transformation. So, I’m really kind of grandiose in my endeavors here that I want to change the world. I want to help other people change the world. We all live in this, you know, energetic field together. And if we can make it better than what it is today, you know, I’ve done my job.

Anthony Verna:
And the fashionista part comes in. You dress really well.

Angel Quintana:
Oh, thanks. Well, I was a clothing designer before I started basically a little coaching and consulting other entrepreneurs. So, there’s always just a huge place in my heart for looking amazing and feeling amazing. I think they kind of walk hand in hand.

Anthony Verna:
Yeah, you need to help us schlubby guys. You know, my wife loves it when I put on a suit, but, other than that I kind of find it hard to…

Angel Quintana:
I got it easy though. I mean girls have so many options and it gets a little overwhelming. You know, guys who just have a great pair of jeans and a collared shirt and some cute, little tennis shoes and they’re still like looking sharp, you know.

Anthony Verna:
I know what you’re saying, but you know, we still need to be careful too because  even when I’m just  wearing a polo shirt, I will say that when I buy like a nice Polo Ralph Lauren shirt versus a cheaper one, the, the difference shows very well. So, even us guys need to be a little careful when we’re on the casual side of life. So, let’s move onto to our businesses. And a lot of the listeners out there are entrepreneurs, are solopreneurs. And recently we’ve been talking about why small and medium businesses fail here on the podcast with other guests. And I would say what tips do you have for the small business, the medium size business to help market those businesses? And, and of course I’ll be jumping in and talking about some of the legal ramifications of the marketing.

Angel Quintana:
Well, I actually have had a failed business, so I definitely can relate to this topic. And one of the biggest things that is the biggest lesson that I learned is you’ve got to be good at sales and marketing. Even if you’ve got a great product, you’re creative, you’ve got an awesome website, if you don’t have the sales and marketing down, it’s not going anywhere. And I think a lot of people get uncomfortable with the idea of selling. They think that marketing is just throwing some stuff up on social media. It’s so much bigger than that. So, I think that really nailing down your sales funnels, and really having a marketing plan that takes people on a voyage to not only get on your list, but to buy products from you that solve problems. And, you know, this old age saying goes, you know, you don’t have to be the best at something to have a profitable business. You just have to know how to market yourself, market your products in a way that is attractive to the client that you’re actually going after. So that would be another task, is to actually know who your market is.

Anthony Verna:
If I can stop you for a second. What reminds me, what you said popped in my head. I had a conversation recently with a few other business owners and we spoke about the key of always be marketing. And it was funny because then, of course, we started joking around about Glengarry Glen Ross, the play and, and the movie where, in the movie, Alec Baldwin’s character comes in, basically says ABC –  always be closing, which certainly was a mindset, but in today’s world it’s not really about closing because the way that you can close and get those clients and get those customers is that you always need to remember that you’re always marketing regardless of who you’re speaking to.

Angel Quintana:
I mean, close, it just feels very impersonal, which is why I don’t really like it. I don’t like to call things like, Oh, who’s your target market? It just seems very cold. It’s like, who is going to buy my stuff? Like I am much more keen on the idea of building relationships with people, you know, getting to know them, finding out their needs, checking in with them. My whole philosophy is about selling high end products. I think that, you know, when you sell things of quality and give personalized attention, that’s where a real transformation can happen versus just purchasing an info product or you know, a dress that you’ll wear once. It’s something that’s really going to have a lasting impression on how you live your life. And, so there’s just a different way of thinking about who’s going to buy my product.

And I like to refer to this type of person not as a target market but as a kismet client. You know, really, who is that person that vibrates on the same level as you, or someone that’s just like you, but maybe just like you three years ago when you used to have that problem. So, there’s just a lot of just connection to your market that is someone that’s very similar to yourself. I’m  gonna just give this anecdote with you, Anthony, because I don’t know that you actually know this story, but when I was looking for an intellectual property lawyer, I had interviewed three different people. The first person, you know, spoke to me in a way that I was actually left in tears. Like I was like, oh my gosh, there’s no way I’m ever going to win this case.

Like I was just totally beat down. I felt like the victim. The second person that I talked to was just like, you know, I was actually going to hire him. He had a good, upbeat case that he wanted to approach in my case at and I felt very comfortable. It felt very natural to him. But then right after I hung up the phone with him, you called me and you vibrate on my level. Like very serious, like there’s no bs, , I’m going to give you the facts. I’ve already reviewed your case. It was like there was, “no, we’re not going to joke. We’re not going to be like, you know, chummy because this is a serious matter.” And I really, really resonated with how serious you took my case without even me hiring.  Yet, you had already done the investigation. You’ve already gotten to know, you know, a little bit about what it is that I do, what, you know, the importance of that trademark. So that was like, this is the guy I’m going with. I felt, I said feeling like a victim. I felt back in control. I felt like, wow, like I don’t have to, you know, cry about this. No problem anymore.

Anthony Verna:
Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean obviously I’m not going to into any details, you know, with your stuff specifically, but thank you so much for saying that, but, but I think that’s important for a lot of the small businesses out there that they understand that it is what you say, it is how you say it. And this is true, regardless of what the arena is. Part of, of my particular practice, and certainly, Angel, this is an area you’ve never trod into. But, part of my practice is reviewing marketing materials because there are limitations as to what states put on businesses and even the federal government. There are limitations on what businesses are allowed to say and how they’re allowed to say it. And, and you know what arenas, you know, not just professional services but all kinds of businesses.

You can’t promise what your product can’t deliver. For example,, and you might laugh at this, but years ago I met someone who had a product that said, the product was great as great for skin. You know, rub it in your hands. It will make your skin grand. It’s great for a sanitizer. I mean it was like, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait. The same product is going to clean my room and make my skin softer. And then she even goes, oh, it’s great for like Fibromyalgia too. I was like, wait, no, no, hold on.

Where’s your, where’s your scientific proof of what your great, great hand sanitizer, Fibromyalgia curing product. So, we need to understand how we say things in our marketing and its tone because we’re going to have our consumers out there and Angel, you’re on both sides of that equation. And I’m on both sides of that equation. We need to know who our consumers are, but as business owners, we need to also understand where our legal limits are and what we’re allowed to say. We kind of have to, to make this balancing act. How’s that sound in terms of how we do, do all of that? So, what are some of the things that you have done that you can give to business owners as good tips?

Angel Quintana:
Well, this idea of creating a sales funnel. So, all my clients, I helped them build their business online. That’s the area of expertise and we do it a using luxury branding and really a high-quality over quantity, good customer service, all those things. And so, basically creating a sales funnel, to find out not only who is the buyer, but who is your ideal customer, testing the market, those kinds of things. And I think people get a little confused about, you know, what exactly is a sales funnel? How can they implement one into their business model? We have several sales funnels. I usually, when I work with my clients one-on-one, we, we actually create three sales funnels. And what that really means is we’re going to take people on that adventure. We’re going to basically try to speed up the process of turning them not only into a prospect but into a hot or a warm lead.

Angel Quintana:
And we do that by creating pipeline products. So, pipeline products are basically understanding your market’s needs. What is the urgent problem that keeps them up at night and what kinds of little dabble products can you offer? So, upsells, down-sells, bumps, impulse buys, things like that. You know, you think about going grocery shopping and then you’re at the checkout sign and you know, there’s gum and candy bars and you know, floss and everything. So, what we want to do is take that philosophy and transform that and create a sales funnel online doing the same exact thing. So, they go into the market for one thing, maybe you’ve done an ad and you’re inviting them to come and download an ebook or a paperback book or whatever. It ends up being something free that you can give them to get them started.

And then the very next step is to basically offer them an impulse buy, something that they can throw in their cart and be like, you know what, this is something that is useful to me. I can get started today, but it’s not going to break the bank. And then from there, we take them to an upsale, a bigger product where they can actually start working on their problem, that urgent problem that they have right away. So that’s the whole thing. And I think a lot of people are marketing to people that have problems, but the people that will walk to the kitchen, go to their purse or wallet, grab their credit card, walk back to the computer, enter in the information. It’s someone that’s like, wow, like I want to get this problem solved like right now and for 200 bucks I can do that. Perfect. So, it’s also about understanding the language that we’re using. So you need to speak their language and that’s where sales copy comes in. And I think that also overwhelms people. I’m not a copywriter. How do I write good copy? And the metaphor that I use is that sales copy is like tea time. You know, it’s like I can basically just naturally speak like how I would, if I invited somebody to tea and I’m just going to put it on my sales page and I’m going to have a little chat with them. And if they speak the language that I’m speaking or if I’m intentionally speaking the language that would resonate with them, then that’s going to get them to the next stage. Now that’s like one funnel. We would do that over and over until we actually got to the high-end product, which could be anywhere up to like 25, $50,000.

But usually a high end product is anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. And you know, the way that you sell that is by taking them through multiple sales funnels to warm them up, get them to know, like, and trust you and then then you’ve got them. Now you’ve actually built a relationship and your business is basically automated at this point, which is kind of the beauty. I mean, I know a lot of internet marketers are, you know, really exploiting, you know, make money while you sleep. But if you’ve got some good sales funnels, it’s going to do a lot of the marketing for you. The only thing you’re going to be responsible at that point is to be testing and doing advertising.

Anthony Verna:
How does advice go over when you tell a business owner, “Hey look, it’s okay. You don’t need to be the copywriter. You don’t need to be the one that’s implementing this.. That’s what we’re here for.”?  Because a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of small businesses aren’t really itching to spend money in today’s environment. Would you agree on that?

Angel Quintana:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of free things out there and everybody’s trying to piece it together themselves. You know, trying to save a buck. But that’s the wrong way.

Anthony Verna:
The Internet economy of free.

Angel Quintana:
Yeah. But the thing is piecing those puzzle pieces together can still take a lot of money and it takes a lot of time. So that’s why again, they go back to, is the problem urgent? Do you want to just keep piecing it together yourself? Because that’s not an urgent problem. Someone who’s like, no, I want to get my business going now. I’m sick. I don’t want to piece it together into March. I want you to tell me how I should do this. I don’t wanna make it work. I don’t want to guess. I don’t want to read a million books anymore. I don’t want to download any more free reports, just help me. And that’s the type of client or customer that we should be going after regardless of what we sell.

Anthony Verna:
And one thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of small business owners, once you set up that sales funnel, part of that is writing newsletters. And I think a lot of people are, I would say, afraid of things like canned spam, which is a federal act. And I’ll talk about that once you’re done. And really the idea that there are that there’s too much email and that their email newsletters are going to get lost in the clutter. How do you get somebody over that fear?

Angel Quintana:
Well, we, wow, okay. This is something I learned. Earlier this year, we used to use a different email content management system and our open rate was like so low. And I’m like, oh my god, how can it be this low? And so, I get a little Weezer and I found out that email content management systems get rated. So, if they have a low rating, that means that your emails are probably going to spam. Because of the actual email content management system, they’re rating how many people push spam from people that use that management system. So, we ended up switching to a different email management system and now our open rates are much higher. So, the first thing I would recommend is make sure that the email content management system you’re using has a high rating. And so that would be, I mean, I’ve done my research. Ontraport is great. They have a high, high rating. Constant Contact has a high rating and MailChimp. Infusionsoft is like a science to me. It’s just way too complicated. But I think a lot of people have had success with them as well.

Anthony Verna:
I think that’s fantastic advice. I think that’s advice that a lot of people probably wouldn’t hear because where you send your email from isn’t necessarily something that a lot of advisors give out. As for the fear that I deal with sometimes, and I talked to a lot of people about the can spam act and the can spam act requires a few things: One, some kind of permission or really if somebody gives you their email address on a form, obviously that’s permission. So, it requires that kind of permission. It requires that there is a way to opt out and just about every email marketing system that I’ve seen has an unsubscribe button, has a spam button, you know, so they are compliant with the US’s CANSPAM requirements and you don’t need to be all that fearful.

My own opinion is that if somebody is going to click the spam button or click the unsubscribe button, as long as the system handles it properly, and look with every email that gets sent out there, there might be one or two unsubscribes. There might be one or two spam clicks. As long as there aren’t a lot of spam clicks, your email company’s going to just kind of say, look, it’s one or two, it’s not a big deal. But if you get a lot, you have to sit down and work with your email marketing company. How are you gathering these email addresses? And again, if you’re doing it all by opt-in, if you’re doing it all by, some other kind of permission because you meet people out networking, never, ever when you’re out networking, just collect a whole bunch of business cards and put them on your list. That’s going to be considered spam. But when there’s engagement there, you know, engagement further than that, make sure you get that permission to put them on your list. And you’ll be okay there. But to me, you can’t be afraid of putting out that newsletter, putting out that newsletter weekly and making sure that there’s always content to, to make sure that you’re in the eyes of customers, potential customers, and potential clients because it takes several times before you’re going to make a sale with most people.

Angel Quintana:
Exactly. And they can, if they don’t open it, they see your name in the inbox. So, there’s a reminder subconsciously. Right. So, I think just being in their peripheral until you’re in their face, it’s fine. You know, you’re getting to know them, you know, you’re building the relationship. And I think being in touch with them and having strong subject titles and having good content that’s not always selling them something on every single newsletter, I think is also important. Just checking in, asking feedback and, we, a lot of times at the end of our newsletter will be like, hit the reply button and let us know what you thought about that article, just for engagement purposes.
Anthony Verna:
No, I hear you. I understand. I understand completely. Angel, we’re really at about the end of time for the Law and Business podcast. So, thank you so much for coming. Again, tell everybody how they can find you.

Angel Quintana:
You can visit holisticfashionista.com. If you want to learn more about working with me, you can go to angelquintana.com.

Anthony Verna:
Wonderful. And if you’re listening on iTunes, don’t forget to leave a review of this podcast and we’ll see you next time. Angel, I hope you’ll come back.

Angel Quintana:
Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Anthony.

Anthony Verna:
You’re welcome. Thank you for coming.

Angel Quintana:
Alrighty, ciao!

Once again, Anthony sits down with social and interactive media strategist, Oz Sultan.

Oz and Anthony talk about Periscope.  It’s a great business tool, but are there some legal issues?

Oz Sultan

Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the episode:

Anthony Verna:
So that was, let’s pull it away. How can people find you?

Oz Sultan: I am Oz Sultan on everything except for Instagram where I’m ozsultanx. So, if you have questions about digital strategy or big data visualization, which we’re moving into soon and actually we can talk about that later, find me on Twitter or find me on Facebook. Find me on LinkedIn. It’s basically Facebook.com/OzSultan, Twitter.com/OzSultan. Linkedin.com/in/ozsultan .

Anthony Verna: Maybe you’d like to endorse 75 people now. So, I saw that you went to the Periscope.

Oz Sultan:  I did go. So, um, the past two days.

Anthony Verna: So, this is on Periscope right now. Hi People.

Oz Sultan:
Yup.

Anthony Verna:
Can I find you on meetup?

Oz Sultan:
Yeah, I think I have meetup.com/OzSultan. Although I don’t use meetup as much as when we used to throw the, well, the web 2.0 tech meetups like that. So, the periscope conference, this was great. So, one thing for your listeners here and for everyone that we’re scoping with right now. So this was actually quite interesting. There were folks there. One thing that I think, and no one is really aware of, your periscope following is completely different from your Twitter following, even though they’re connected.

Anthony Verna:
Okay.

Oz Sultan:
So, I have, you know, 6,000 some followers in Twitter. I only have a hundred and some followers in Periscope. They literally just started using Periscope.

Anthony Verna:
Everybody just started using periscope recently. But a lot of people say that those followers on Periscope are really more concentrated.

Oz Sultan:
So, they are. Well, I’ll even give you this. So, one Alex Kahn, who I put a picture up, I met him.  He’s German. He touts himself as the number one Periscope consultant. He has about 160,000 followers on Periscope.

Anthony Verna:
How did that happen?

Oz Sultan:
Well, Periscope has only been around for a very short period of time, but what he does is he does short pieces, really, on what to do, how to build your follower lists, how to build interesting content, that sort of thing.
And what we’re doing here is probably a little bit longer form than most scopes, but, you know, I think we’re covering legal issues and digital issues and the like. Well, what a lot of the content is, it’s almost the translation from snapchat being short form, maybe comedy content, maybe just engaging content that you want with someone else to somewhere between a couple of minutes to a couple of hours-worth of content that kind of covers a place where people weren’t before. And I think one of the magical things about Periscope is so that…You’re familiar with Twitch, right?

Anthony Verna:
Oh, sure. I have a Playstation 4, so yes, I’m familiar.

Oz Sultan:
So for anyone who’s not necessarily familiar with Twitch, what it used to be is that gaming, you know, gaming used to be something you played, but now it’s something that you’ve stream and you can watch.

And so what Periscope kind of gives you is the ability to actually go places that you couldn’t be previously and engage with people that you couldn’t necessarily engage with while they’re communicating back to you in live time via video. So, it’s live streaming. It’s interesting in it’s a complete change of Delta, I think, social because if you build a Periscope following, you’re actually building a following that is separate. It’s like hinged, so that hinge is the connection in between Periscope and Twitter. But it’s a separate base and the same thing goes for Meerkat. MeerKat you can push stuff to Twitter saying, “Hey, I’m hopping on Meerkat.” And so, go and look through Meerkat. But they don’t necessarily have to do that and Meerkat in itself is a separate livestreaming community that’s removed. So, livestreaming is significant, I think, because it is a great way to engage not just millennials and bottom Gen Xers, but it’s a fantastic way to engage Generation z. And if you look population density wise, about 35% of the population in the US is millennials, about 36% is generation z. So, this is everyone up to the age of 19. That’s kind of coming up. So, you know, we’re seeing quick shifting demographics, we’re seeing quick shifting engagement opportunities, and I think Periscope’s great for that. You know, a bunch of the speakers were really cool. We did it during a challenge while I was there, which was eat durian, which kind of, if you were to take brie cheese…No, if you take blue cheese and an onion and soak it in orange juice, that’s what a durian tastes like.

Anthony Verna:
So let’s talk about some  periscoping. Like, people are taking their phones, logging under Periscope and pointing them at a band during a concert. And straight, strictly speaking, that’s copyright infringement.

Oz Sultan:
Some bands are giving you notice ahead of time and saying, we are happy for you to do whatever you want to do with this content. It’s, you know, either it’s a creative common step license, which is an open license to share it as long as you’re not using it for profit. Or you know, they’re just saying you’re okay to syndicate this content.

Anthony Verna:
So let’s talk about someone who likes to sue people. Prince. Here’s, scoping is doing two phones. What Ustream did to computers.

Oz Sultan:
This is true and I actually was involved with Ustream earlier on and had done, we actually did the Bill Cosby launch with  Evan White and a bunch of other folks.

Anthony Verna:
You want to admit that these days?

Oz Sultan:
It was called Coz Yourself. You just put a sweater on things.

Anthony Verna:
Wait, wait, wait. It was called C-o-s Yourself cause you’re salesy.

Oz Sultan:
Coz. Yeah, but you would basically…

Anthony Verna:
So wait, it was Cos cosplay.

Oz Sultan:
It was Cos cosplay. This, it was so ridiculous.

The newest trend is daily fantasy sports.

Taking a step back, what makes a game used in promotion not gambling?  And what, then, makes a daily fantasy sports business model not gambling?

In order to use a game for promotion, the sponsor of the game must remove one of three key elements of the game:

So, daily fantasy sports like Draft Kings and Fan Duel must be able to do that in order to run a non-gambling game.

But those games also must have a set of rules and must also be run fairly, with a level playing field.

Would you like to run a game in order to promote your business? Call or send an e-mail. 914-358-6401 or [email protected].

Hi there, this is Anthony Verna and on this episode of the Law & Business Podcast, I am flying solo.

You can reach me at [email protected]. If you’re listening and you have any comments, I’d love to hear those comments there on iTunes. So please leave some feedback.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about DraftKings and FanDuel.

So let’s talk about daily fantasy sports.

But in order to do that, I want to take a step backwards and talk about games and contests in general.

Games and contests, in general, are not gambling and they’re excellent promotions for businesses. However, there are lots of rules that you need to consider and, frankly, you have to remember that there are 50 states, 50 separate ways of doing this. There’s also DC, there are territories, Puerto Rico, Guam. If your business is reaching to all 50 states, DC, territories, that’s over 50 separate jurisdictions on how games can be played, but they’re excellent promotions.

Here’s what I would recommend and for you to remember: a game is gambling if there is a chance, and a prize, and consideration.

So the key is that, for most of you out there, you’re not going to want to run a game without giving a prize. That’s the point of playing the game you, as a business owner, want, in exchange for a chance to win, for phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, names, maybe some demographic information, and the business will give away some money or a product and that’s perfectly acceptable.

You don’t want to give up the prize.

For most people, a game of chance is just easier to run, especially in consideration of the difficulty of running a game of skill.

The third part for most businesses that run a game, the business wants to make sure that it can avoid that consideration.

That’s what you really need to avoid as the consideration.

How do you avoid one of these three topics? Consideration is the requirement of something that requires effort. So if it takes a couple of minutes to fill out a form, it’s not really going to be consideration, though there used to be a time when requiring Internet access was deemed consideration.

Having a web only game was considered consideration because not everybody had the internet, but today everybody has the Internet. Therefore, you can require a web only game. I would still say you need to require an alternate means of entry and I think you’ll be in compliance. A web only game is going to be okay in most jurisdictions, but that’s not everything you need to do to try to avoid heavy entry forms. When I say heavy, I mean a form that takes a lot of time.

If you have an entry form that takes 15 minutes, if you have a game that takes 15 minutes to play, even if it’s online, you know that’s going to be consideration. If you are requiring somebody to mail it in, that stamp might be consideration even though it’s only less than 50 cents. So you need to avoid consideration or if you’re trying to avoid only consideration, that’s how you would do it.

If you are trying to create a game of skill, you really need to make sure that that skill is what’s highlighted. And that’s going to be, I think, the big issue here.

The way that some games get around those requirements to have some questions, some trivia questions that can be asked. So it’d be skill since knowledge is a skill.

What we have here in daily fantasy sports is basically a game-based business model. And that’s why for many people it feels like gambling.

And I would say that’s not necessarily correct. If this is a skill, and that’s really going to be the key, how do you turn that game of chance into a game of skill?

I would say that’s going to be the hard part.

If you’re running a promotion, in this particular instance we’re talking about a game based business. So therefore that game of chance must not really be a game of chance. It must be a game of skill. And the argument in daily fantasy sports is that the skill is understanding what the conditions are so that a person who chooses athletes on a team understands that certain athletes are better than others and that certain athletes are healthier than others. And that therefore that knowledge turns into the ability to figure out under certain rules what team is going to amass the most points under a certain, you know, under that rule scheme. And that’s what the skill is.

That’s really how these daily fantasy sports are being turned into businesses.

Now, once again, yeah, you only have to take away one thing of chance or prize or consideration and you’re putting up money. So there’s consideration. There’s obviously a price. There are obviously lots of prizes that are given away and these must be considered skills. Now the one thing that is going to be tricky is that they also must be run fairly and that everybody must have some kind of equal ability in winning.

Again, understanding that these are skill-based games. Some people have better skills than others, there’s no doubt about that. And I wonder if these sites are going to be very quick to stay or not. And that’s going to be the real issue under American law.

We see that the New York State Attorney General has issued a letter to both DraftKings and FanDuel and we know that Massachusetts is looking into the issue as to whether these are skill or chance kinds of games.

The New York letter though has nothing to do with this being chance, price or consideration. It has to do with how it’s run totally. Because if you’re going to be running a game, you as the, the creator, the sponsor of the game have to make sure that it is run fairly and that everybody who enters has the same chance of winning. If this is a game of chance or that it’s the skill that matters. And as we are seeing, there might be some insider information from one competitor that is then used in on the other competitors, uh, site in order for an employee of the competitor to, to win and beat out most people. And therefore that use of insider data means that even with this skill, other people are unable to win. And so that’s going to be an issue is that people who enter really don’t have a chance of winning because of the type of information that’s, that’s, uh, had by one particular employee. So that’s going to be a big issue as well. If you’re running a game, you need to make sure that it’s run fairly. And if there’s going to be an issue like this, you need to nip it in the bud very fast, very quickly.

One thing I think you’ll see the cynical lawyers say to the business that wants to run games or be some kind of game-based business model is that these state attorney general’s attorneys general, let me use the proper plural are politicians.

The attorneys general are politicians. They’re there to enforce the law. But more than that they are politicians who are there for big splash.

And if your business intent on trying to make money through a game that’s going to attract attention and since the money is flowing, I mean both fan duel and draft kings have sports leagues as investors and our advertising everywhere. When the money gets that big, you are going to see that the state attorney’s general are going to scrutinize your business and therefore you need to really, you need to make sure, no matter the size of the business that you’re adhering to rules, not just from the jurisdiction, but also the rules that you’ve written in your contest. The game rules are important. The game rules must be public. There are lots of regulations.

I mean you, you have to broadcast winners. You don’t have to, put their name and their last name and an address and things like that, but, but you have to broadcast through the winters are, you have to have a means for people to ask who the winners are. There are checks and balances in there so that the state realizes how the game is being run and making sure that game is being run fairly. People can’t have advantages and that really the key, if you’re running a game, remember, in order for it to not be gambling, you got to get rid of chance or prize or consideration.

The claim is that these are games of skill, but now that somebody has insight information, now those games may not be run fairly. And so you have to run the game fairly after run the game under the rules.

What I would also add to this my own opinion, it feels like gambling, doesn’t it? You know, what an athlete does on a certain day, one particular game isn’t indicative of, of an athlete’s total worth that. That’s my own opinion. And so one particular game is really gambling, but why are brief restricting things like this? That that’s my own opinion is that I wish we were a little more open as a society on gambling. And I think that people earn money and they have a right to do what they pleased with the money. And uh, that, that’s my particular thought on this now that said, if you’re running a game, games are great promotions for your businesses and I wish more people did it and you still just need to make sure that you follow the regulations and that you run the game fairly understand when you need to be bonded for your prizes and understand that there are companies out there that will run the games for you so that therefore there’s a separation there.

But if your business model is based on a game, you have to make sure that, that their skill involved in that particular game. I’m Anthony Verna, Managing Partner of Verna law PC. If you have any questions, my email address is [email protected].

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