Complaint Review: NAQ Games / Nick DiPaolo - Laguna Hills California

We appreciate your final thoughts. We are true believers in constructive criticism. We will always tweak things in hopes of creating the best program for everyone. We are striving to create the best boardgames and best team behind them. We understand that no company is perfect, however, we will try to be as close to perfect as possible. We would like to thank everyone out there that has embraced our innovative ways of doing things. We promise to continue to work hard to make all of our customers, retailers and employees happy. We would also like to thank Jon for his input.

I must say that my objective has finally come to fruition. My goal was initially responding to this venue was to raise awareness about NAQ Games. I believe people now have a much more detailed employment breakdown about NAQ compared to before. Nick has been eloquent in explaining and defending his vision. I told you that I wasn't against the company, I was just trying to get the info I had out to the public to help you all with interest make an educated decision. Nick, I truly appreciate you responding to my responses with respect and information. I truly wish you the best. Since you have taken the time to read my responses and comment on them, please take this bit of advice from me. I'm not trying to step on your toes, and revamp your system, but I'm truly trying to offer you suggestion that I feel will aide in your recruiting process. Have a list of Sales people (District Managers or Entertainment Directors) that are open to speaking to prospects about NAQ Games. Also, I understand your out of the box approach at enforcing loyalty, I too agree that it's important for any company to have a strong front line; however, I suggest that you rethink the current process. By that, you can simply include more info inside of the emails, and explain your vision thoroughly, so when it comes time to ask for an interview, you wont have to waste time with people who are not interested in financially committing for 6 months. Also, I think lowering the commitment price is important. I know that you will take payments of $25/month, but the total is really high in $1000. I know that these people will get it back, but that might just force a person into staying with the company long enough to get their money back. Also, I wouldn't advertise your recruiting my saying "$40.00 per hour". Because from what I understand the only time that happens is when a person is involved in a tournament, which is a smaller fraction of the job, at least initially. Also, the hyped up titles: District Manger (after 30 days), and Entertainment Director. They definitely sound great, but they mislead prospects. Please take these suggestions in consideration. These things could help a little. thank you.

In our opinion, the old-fashioned way of hiring does not work for any company. Other companies use the old-fashioned way because they do not know any other way to recruit. They always lose thousands of dollars when they hire an individual and two months later that individual gets an offer for slightly more money and jumps ship. The company just passes those expenses off to the consumer by raising the prices of their products and services. We do not think the consumer should have to pay the price for an employee that does not believe in loyalty. Loyalty and commitment from employees was very common during the last century. It was not unusual to see employees staying with one company for 30 plus years. Nowadays it is very rare to see traditional employee loyalty. Our goal is to find those rare people that believe in loyalty. We mentioned in an earlier comment that a SMALL percentage of people did not work and did not return the materials. Most people did work and continue to work for us today. Everyone with our company is relatively new and we consider a seasoned rep someone that has been working with us for 1-2 years. We already have a top-notch team working and are proud of the quality talent we currently have on board. Our six-month commitment is really geared at seeking top-quality talent that believes in loyalty. Most top-quality people understand the simplicity of honoring a simple promise to work at least part time for six months. All companies are most vulnerable to losing top-quality talent because those are the individuals that usually receive multiple job offers. In today's business climate, many people jump ship if they simply receive an offer for a small increase in income. We want to hire quality people that want to grow with our company and have a career that they truly enjoy. Jon is simply speculating with his comments/opinions with no data to back up his theories. We have tested our recruiting method and it does attract the most talented individuals. We foresee having one of the best teams in the boardgame business. In regards to Monster, we are not offering a business opportunity/investment required. Nobody has ever paid to be an employee with us and never will. If someone chooses to get the promotional flyers, they will receive a contract that includes a six-month refund offer. We have mentioned this several times in previous responses. We do appreciate Jon's words of encouragement. We know that NAQ that will be huge and have a great team behind it. We had one of our retailers in December sell 380 NAQ games out of one location, which was a single-month store record. NAQ surpassed their store sales of Monopoly, Deal or No Deal, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Cranium, Apples to Apples, Settlers of Catan, Scene It and all the rest! We are constantly getting praise from customers and retailers around the world about our innovative ways of doing things. We will continue to break new ground in the future and have FUN at the same time. Do you have the Knack, to do the NAQ?

Wow, I really did expect Nick to threaten me with legal action for explaining my interview process and comments received by SCORE, SBA, and Entrepreneur. Nick, I genuinely appreciate you allowing me to state my opinions without taking them as attacks to you or your company. With Nick's explanation of their "out of the box" recruiting process it allows us all to see the reasoning behind this recruiting model. "The old fashion way didn't work, so try something new". There is nothing wrong with that! My only gripe to that is why didn't the old fashion model work? It works everywhere else. Not meaning that one company has to adopt the same mentality as the next to be considered a Type A Company. I completely respect everything about NAQ Games, even the recruiting process, I just feel that it's not going to be so productive in acquiring real talent. I will agree that they have a good possibility of acquiring people who don't have a proven record or who don't even have much experience at all. The benefit in this is that NAQ might get lucky here and there in finding someone worth something. But for the most part, it's going to be extremely hard to find top sales people, or even moderately skilled sales people who are willing to put money down. One more quick thing I want to touch on. Nick mentioned that last year he tried the old fashioned way of recruiting and it didn't work. He experienced lost in materials and training. Well, why is it that no one has made it with the company. There have obviously been sales people for the company before, but they no longer exist. When I interviewed I wanted to speak to a seasoned sales rep with NAQ to find out how the day to day is, and just to get some feedback on the company from a salesman point of view. But I was informed by Nick that the company is brand new, and he is the only one who has really played any of the sales roles. That was odd to me. Because with a solid consultation with an experienced rep, I would have leaned much closer to giving this opportunity a shot. But the call was rushed; not in a bad way for Nick, but for me. Because Nick was all about getting me to commit, and getting my credit card info, and I was all about acquiring as much info prior to making a last minute, uneducated decision. Anyhow, the game has potential. With the right team, it can be huge. I do believe Nick is doing all he can to achieve his goal in getting a sales force established in major cities through out the US. I appreciate the effort and determination. Please don't let my opinions dissuade you , just use them as forms of education, because the company is new, which means there just isn't much solid information to make a good decision. Before I leave this, I want share a comment I received back from Monster. In my repose above I shared the comments I got back from SCORE, SBA and Entrepreneur, here is Monster's response: "Jon, thank you for bringing NAQ Games to my attention. We are the largest and most successful recruiting medium online, which makes it hard for us to closely manage every single job posting thoroughly. We do review each company that posts with us, but sometimes-somethings slip through the cracks. We are currently investigating NAQ Games due to a high number of concerned emails we have gotten from our members. It is not against our policy for companies to recruit on a financial commitment/contractual bases, but we strongly enforce that companies that do so to post these listings in the correct Job Category. From the information you have sent me to review, compared with their posting - this type of opportunity should be listed in our BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY/INVESTMENT REQUIRED cattery, only. We try to save our members time from having to deal with job offers that don't list all criteria upfront, which is important in any job search, for both recruiter and recruited. I will email you once we finalize our investigation of this company. This response doesn't side toward fraud, or any other negative claim. You are an important asset to Monster.com in sharing your experiences and concerns. Thank you Jon." As you see, there are concerned people all across the board here. It's not just me. Good luck!

Controversy is usually part of the initial steps of introducing a new way of doing things. Hopefully, other innovative and well-established companies will hear about our very fair and streamlined approach to finding quality talent. We are simply seeking individuals that believe in loyalty and commitment. If someone is being honest about providing a six-month commitment; they have no problem putting down a deposit for promotional materials. They know they will get a full refund as long as they honor their contract. We have some very big plans for the next 5-10 years and do not want to waste time with individuals that are not truly passionate about our company and product. We are happy that some people do not understand our simple six-month commitment, those are the types of individuals that we do not want to hire. It is such a basic concept that is easily understood with basic logic. Simply keep your promise and you get your deposit back. Our product is simple yet innovative. NAQ is already in stores nationwide. We are a groundbreaking company with a team of winners. I became a World Champion because I think outside the box. Winners always do things a little different than the competition. We look forward to seeing well-established companies in the future follow our footsteps in recruiting a top-notch team that is truly passionate about building their company. Recently, we have all seen very well-established companies modify how their benefit programs work. We have all seen the airline industry charge for meals and other things that used to be complimentary. Very well-established companies made all of these changes and in the beginning were very controversial with the public. Of course, most of us have learned to accept these changes and that is how the business world works. We look forward to being a trendsetter in simplifying the recruiting process. Our method saves everyone time and money. The old-fashioned way is to spend countless hours and hundreds if not thousands of dollars investigating a prospect and trying to create a crystal-ball-picture of whether or not this person will be loyal and productive. The bottom line is that know matter how much time and money you spend investigating a prospect, you can never predict their loyalty and commitment. Last year, we tried the old-fashioned concept. We shipped hundreds of dollars worth of product and promotional materials to reps without a deposit. We also had a much more extensive interviewing and screening process. We do not have the luxury of supervising our reps and ensuring that they work each day. Unfortunately, a small percentage of reps never even worked and also never returned the product or promotional materials. We did not want to waste time, money and energy chasing down these individuals to get our materials back. We learned from that experience and created our new six-month commitment policy. Our concept is simple. If we like you and you like us, then lets try a part or full time commitment for six months. We will keep our promise to you. If you keep your promise to us, then we will cover all hiring costs. Business 101, Keep it simple.

I wouldn't say that NAQ Games or Nick Diapaolo is in any type of fraudulent activity. I think the company is trying its best to be outside of the box, and innovative in its recruiting process. I will admit that I feel like an offer for employment with conditions based on an initial 6 month investment, is a little too outside of the box, especially when it is not a proven system. I too went through the weird interviewing process, and spent all the time to answer 40+ questions, in which roughly 37 were elementary, and spent an hour or so researching this company. I was actually thinking that this company was going to be more established, but it appears to be fairly new(at least to the public, I'm sure that the conceptual part of the company has been around for a little while), which is not a bad thing, but it's a risky thing, especially when you have to put money down to work for them. I'm not here to put the company down, nor Nick, this is my personal opinion of the process I went through, I want to make this clear since the other two reports I have seen on this site; Nick has threatened legal actions. I'm not fearful of this, but I'm just trying give all the info I can on NAQ Games / Nick Diapaolo that I can. with that said..... I interviewed with Nick, and yes it was short and to the point. Very generic, but I really didn't expect more. Usually, only companies looking for first class individuals have a strenuous interviewing session. They have to do this so that they find a person that is a perfect fit, and they are willing to invest into that person. Yes, they still may battle with retention issures, but they do their best to find a person that is the right fit, and then they offer then the right compensation/benefits. This is a model that has always worked, and is and most likely will always be followed by top notch companies. Sales based jobs usually cut to the chase; like Nick said; "time is money". I knew within the fancy title of Entertainment Director and/or District Manager that it was basically a sales position, and I knew it would be 100% commission based, which is okay. I was fine with this, I was actually looking for this type of situation. Where I found a problem was making a financial commitment to a company that didn't have any track record. Yes, I believe in risk, but only calculated risk. I was not even given the opportunity to calculate my risk with NAQ. I asked to speak with an established District Manger or Entertainment Director, and the response I got back was basically: "we don't have any established people in these positions, I'm the only one (referring to Nick)". Well, that is understandable, cause the company is new, BUT - how could they expect me pay them a commitment fee/marketing material fee, if they can't even prove to me that their system works and that thier product sales. Prior to interviewing with Nick I was sent info pertaining to what a typical job description would look like.... But, Nick told me after I made a payment that I would be sent a itemized list of daily duties. So basically, I would have been investing blindly, in a company with minimal info, and an unestablished sales force, and unestablished biz sales system. Of course I used my common sense on this one - I choose to pass. There were too many uncertainties. I would have gladly taken the position; went through all the training, put hard work and effort in helping NAQ penetrate the market deeper than it's current standings, but not under a financial commitment based employment model. I'm not bad mouthing NAQ or Nick in anyway, for I can understand why he has chosen to take this difficult method in acquiring a sales force. I know it's tough to find people who are really willing to commit, especially on a commission based job, for a new company who is not nearly as established as its major competitors. So, outside of the box to Nick would be to create a system where people will show their commitment in the one place that matters: "money", and if they stick around for 6 months, they will get re-compensated, and if they choose to leave, they are out roughly $1,000. I'm not sure if this recruiting tool, and ploy for commitment and longevity will really work for NAQ. I'm sure Nick would say: "well, you aren't out of the box enough to conceptualize our biz plan and ideas"...but SCORE, Entrepreneur, and Small Business Administration(SBA) basically said the same thing as I did. In fact, I emailed contacts at all three of these organizations to get their feedback on employment with a company that asked for money upfront... I was very detailed in my explanation, and also provided them the emails that I received from NAQ, so they knew exactly what I was talking about. All three organizations gave me the same feedback(basically), here are portions of their comments: SBA: "Don't risk money for employment, especially when a company is not well established, and a well established company would never take such a approach to obtain talent anyway. From the emails you sent, it briefly describes your prospective role in the company. Do you even know what you would be doing day to day? It seems like there are too many holes. Not that NAQ Games is anything other than ethical, the most intelligent strategy that SBA can advise would be to consider this situation strongly and to find out what your role would be from at least 3-5 established salesman and to get a strong idea of what the companies retention rate is. I'm sure the retention rate would be pretty high, at least for the first 6 months. Good Luck Sam" SCORE: We have had a lot of individuals asking for our consultation about employment with NAQ Games. We are a organization who focuses its time on helping small business in the developmental and growth stages. However, there is no way I can eliminate your request for advise on this particular occasion, due to the fact this opportunity really reaches out to the entrepreneurial spirited person, who sees risk as adventure, but always takes measures in each risk he takes. So, I will be brief, but firm in my opinion on the information you have sent me on this company. I did some research on the company and the founder myself. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find much. I found the website and a brief bio of the founder. One thing that alerted me was some info I found on a website that I can release to you, but it was in tune with bad business practices, fraud and complaints. I'm not saying that this company has any of the topics I previously mentioned, but I'm am saying that there was an issue listed of a prospective employee who had a situation related to the 6 month commitment money. The president responded to this person several times and threatened legal actions for her comments. I didn't believe her comments were degrading either, they were simply her explanation of what happened. In my opinion and the laws, we are all entitled to have an opinion and express it freely. I'm not able to fully advise if you should pursue this opportunity or not, but I believe I have granted you the sufficient information based on my research to help you make this tough decision. Please let me know what direction you choose." Entrepreneur: "I believe that it sometimes takes money and sacrifice to make money. I have not found much info on this company, but they appear to be the real deal. The forwards you sent me of your communication with them seems professional and ethical. I do understand your unsureness; their ways in recruiting are definitely not attractive. For this, I would simply say to move on to the next opportunity. My gut feeling tells me this, and I always go by my gut, if I don't have anything else to go by. I'm curious how this company pans out. I think the website is cool, and their potential is high, but I'm not so sure how they are going to achieve this without a top notch team...and it's hard to get a true top notch team these days, especially when they have to make a financially based/time commitment up front. Hope this helped." I was familiar about purchasing flayers at $.49 each, but I didn't think it was contingent on me working with the company. That did strike me as odd. Nick justified this method in obtaining employment by stating: "we are out of the box". Well, I understand that concept, but I don't think it is intelligent justification for everything. All in all, the product is awesome, at least has the potential to be. Unfortunately the admin side of the company does not mimic the product, at least not yet. The game isn't out of the box... It's a board game! It's actually basic, but not in a bad way. It's going to be really hard, even harder than expected, to get that game to really make it's mark. It's also going to be really hard to find talented sales and management employees who are willing to make that 6 month commitment. I really do wish the game and company the best. I really hope they make it big. I'm sure Nick is going to say that I'm slandering the company, committing libel, and all other type of stuff. I'm sure that he's going to have his legal team/dpt look into this deeper to analyze my opinions. Well, I actually had my a old college friend of mine, who is now a corporate attorney take a deep look at this letter and the emails, and he says that it's fine, and all a matter of opinion. I'm not calling any of this fact, other than it is factually my opinion of my encounter with NAQ. Remember, I'm downing the company, and if you are willing to pay for a job, I really do wish you the best, but I know there are talented people out there that want to avoid having their time wasted, I'm just trying to help them out. Thanks.

We think outside the box and are proud of it. That is why NAQ is such a successful game. We immediately tell prospective reps not to continue in the recruiting process unless they also think outside the box. Most intelligent business people admire our out of the box thinking. We have strategically figured out a way to weed prospective people out by requiring a six-month working commitment. We are confident that more companies will start to implement innovative screening procedures to hire the most passionate employees. We live in a country that is all about innovation and change. Our company represents that philosophy in everything we do. The old-fashioned way of doing business no longer works. You must be creative, innovative, and cutting edge to be successful in today's business climate. Our goal is that every person we hire remains with our company for years. We increase our chances of acheiving that goal by requiring a minimum six-month working commitment. Those that choose to break their six-month contract may forfeit some or all of any deposit put down. Any forfeiture of a deposit simply goes to cover the turnover costs and materials. Our deposit is similar to a security deposit for an apartment rental. Our turnover costs include advertising, screening, reviewing resumes, email communication, human resource wages, interviewing, material costs, packaging, shipping fees, time, and lost revenue. In addition, we do not have the luxury of supervising our reps, therefore, we are much more vulnerable to turnover and the material costs of turnover. Companies across the world are struggling for ways to increase retention and decrease turnover. Employee-turnover costs some companies millions of dollars a year. Some companies may actually charge more for their products to help cover costs of employee-turnover. That ultimately hurts the consumer. We have discovered that a six-month refund policy is extremely ethical and fair. We cover all the material and hiring expenses as long as the individual honors the terms of their six-month contract. It's that simple. We don't push anybody into anything. However, we are not going to waste time beating around the bush if someone says they are ready to work. Time is money. We do not believe in wasting time massaging people's egos until they feel good. Any successful businessperson is extremely busy. Highly emotional people may misinterpret a conversation with a successful businessperson as feeling rushed. Rony obviously wanted to go through a 4-8 week recruiting process versus our 1-2 week recruiting process. We ask the most important interview questions with prospects. We use some of the same questions that most Fortune 500 companies include in their standard interviews. We also realize that individuals that apply with our company are also applying with potentially dozens of other companies. It is very common in the business world that an individual accepts a position with one firm and then two weeks/months later gets an offer from another firm. Most people will quit their new position if the new offer pays a little more. Our contract does allow a person to change from full-time to part-time if necessary. We are always flexible and are simply trying to avoid turnover. Our product is a very FUN and social product. Our reps have a very friendly relationship with our customers/accounts and we do not want our customers having to start all over in developing a new relationship with a new rep because the old rep took some other job offer. Our goal is that our rep stays on at least part-time to continue to service their existing accounts. Nobody has ever paid to be an employee with us and never will. If someone chooses to get the promotional flyers, they will receive a contract that includes a six-month refund offer. Once the contract has been agreed upon, then those are the terms of relationship. We respect and admire everyone that works with our company and their appreciation for out of the box thinking. Our legal department is closely reviewing Rony's comments to see if there has been a violation of law with his character assassination and distortion of the facts. We will not tolerate anyone slandering our company and will pursue them to the fullest extent of the law. We have learned that some people are uncomfortable with change. Innovators usually have some resistance in the beginning. Eventually, most people realize the changes are fair and necessary for a progressive future. People that think outside the box and try new things are the ones that have made our country successful. Please do not apply to work with our company unless you truly think outside the box.