The Biggest Opportunity in Payments 2026: Why Distribution May Be Your Last True Advantage | PEP113

What if the real moat isn’t your software, but your distribution? James Shepherd breaks down why vertical SaaS is exploding in payments and why agents can win if they bring the right solutions to market.

AI is not your new coworker. It is a high powered math engine that rewards clear thinking, good inputs, and enough compute, and it punishes shortcuts. Christopher Dryden, Esq., sits down to talk with CCSalesPro legend James Shepherd (https://www.ccsalespro.com/) to get real about why so many teams feel disappointed by AI, then zoom in on what actually changes outcomes: using stronger models, giving tasks time to run, and feeding AI the right context instead of hoping the free tier will solve complex problems.

• AI as a computer driven system that reflects your inputs
• why using a free model often guarantees weak results
• James’s shift from agent training into building software companies with payments baked in
• the problem of agents getting locked out of best in class vertical software
• how CC Storage found traction in self-storage through timing, recurring billing, and a frictionless pricing model
• what “vertical sales mastery” looks like for agents picking profitable niches
• why vertical knowledge matters more than coding as AI accelerates development
• MCP servers and giving AI read access to core business data for better decisions
• why AI boosts productivity now but rarely replaces humans end to end
• distribution, relationships, and reputation as the lasting moat when software gets copied faster

From there, we connect AI to the bigger shift in the payments industry: merchants do not just buy payment processing anymore, they buy software that runs the business. James shares how his work evolved from CC Sales Pro training into building vertical SaaS companies with integrated payments, and why agents often get stuck selling second tier tools while the best platforms block distribution. We walk through the self-storage case study behind CC Storage, what makes that vertical more complex than it looks, and how a “free software” approach paired with dual pricing can unlock adoption and create real residual income for the agent channel.

AI isn’t “smart” by default. If you treat it like magic, you’ll get garbage back. We talk models, compute power, and the workflow that turns AI into real leverage for payments teams.

We also go deep on operational AI, including the idea of an MCP server that lets tools like Claude or ChatGPT analyze your database, calendar, Drive, and email to surface trends, priorities, and blind spots. Finally, we tackle the uncomfortable truth about intellectual property and software: as building gets cheaper, differentiation shrinks, and distribution becomes the moat. If you sell merchant services, run an ISO, or build integrated payments into vertical software, this conversation is your roadmap for the next wave. Subscribe, share this with a payments pro, and leave a review. What vertical do you think is the biggest opportunity right now?

Self-storage software turned into $30k monthly residual for one agent. Wild? We unpack the model: free software, integrated payments, dual pricing, and a channel that actually closes.

**Matters discussed are all opinions and do not constitute legal advice.  All events or likeness to real people and events is a coincidence.**

PEP Links:
https://www.globallegallawfirm.com/podcasts/

A payments podcast of Global Legal Law Firm

Transcript

AI Is Powerful But Not Smart

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, I probably have a very kind of contrarian opinion about AI. Like, I use AI so much, but I also feel like the way that people use AI is not super intelligent in a lot of situations. And so, like, here's the thing AI, a couple of things about AI that it's important to understand. Remember, AI is still ultimately run by a computer. And by definition, remember, computers are stupid. So computers can only do what we tell them to do. And AI, you know, despite a lot of reports to the contrary, is not conscious. Uh, it is a math equation, right? It's a very complicated math equation, but it's a math equation. So, what you have to remember is the AI is only going to be as smart as what you put into it. And then it's also only going to be as smart, meaning the meaning the result you get out of it is only gonna be as good as what you put into it. And then also it's only gonna be as good as the compute power that you allow it to utilize. So, like, as an example, I cannot tell you how many times I have someone on my team come to me and say, James, we are trying to solve this problem with AI and it's not working. And I'm like, okay, what model are you using? Well, we're using the free version of ChatGPT. Yeah, exactly. Are you nuts?

Welcome And Who James Is

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Welcome to the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of global legal law firm. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

For anybody who doesn't know James, which would be, I don't know where you're hiding. Uh, James is really well known in our industry and actually sits right at the kind of the area that we sit in, which is the ISO agent and more so on the agent side. Um, big proponent of agents, big educator of agents. Usually has his hand on the pulse quite a bit. Um good to see you again. Uh just uh, you know, let's just jump right in. Um what's going on? How's uh how's everything going?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Man, you know, these days. Yeah, it's going great. Uh yeah, so CC Sales Pro has kind of been my the brand I've had around for like you know almost 20 years now. Uh more on the you know train

From Training Agents To Building ISVs

SPEAKER_01 2:00

free free content, free training side of things. Um lately, definitely been spending a lot more time on uh companies I own like CC Storage and Stackably and Full Stack Payments and kind of thinking about the the intersection of software and payments um and how distribution fits into that, right? So it's uh lately it's been a lot of uh a lot of very expensive software experiments uh to figure out how to how to, you know, my my big mission has always been making merchant sales competitive. And so trying to keep merchant sales agents competitive as the the speed of change just rapidly accelerates with AI and everything else and bringing them software. So yeah, that's what I've been spending most of my time thinking about these days.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Well, unpack unpack some of those other companies that you were talking about that aren't CC Sales Pro. I I think you mentioned CC storage, full stack payments. Um, tell us how those are intersecting with with what you've traditionally done.

unknown 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So when you think about kind of the storyline here, right? So CC Sales Pro, you know, training agents, free content. Then I started ISOAMP. So ISOAMP was the idea of bringing software to the agents in ISOs that would help them with, you know, statement analysis, proposal generation, uh learning management system. Um, and you know, then I realized, like, man, we we've really got to get more into like vertical specific software and providing competitive solutions. Because I felt like the agent ISO community, man, I always feel like they kind of get the leftover crap to sell. Like when you look at any industry, like any vertical, and you're like, what's the most cutting edge solution? You know, it's like, well, if you're gonna go sell salons, you know, or whatever, it's like mind body.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Right? Mind body doesn't allow agents to sell, right? You're like, well, what's the best restaurant solution out there? Toast. Toast doesn't allow agents to sell. You know, like it, like whatever the best is, the agents never get it. And it always bothered me, you know what I mean? So I thought, okay, I need to get into this. So I started CC storage. So CC storage was a basically an experiment of mine of saying, let me pick a vertical. It was the self-storage industry. So, you know, people that own these self-storage properties. Um, and I'm like, what does it take to build a an ISV, to build a software company, and then to expose that to a distribution channel like what I have? So we spent the first probably two and a half years and two million dollars like building like the solution, um, getting a lot of scale out of that. Then about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, we rolled that out to my distribution channel. Hey, you know, I know self-storage is not the main vertical that agents and ISOs typically go after, but like if you want to go after it, it's very profitable. Go ahead. And so now today we're getting about 50% of our growth. And CC storage, I believe, is the fastest growing self-storage management software in the country now. And we're getting 50% of that growth from the agent channel. And they're literally just calling or walking into self-storage properties, sending us leads. We're doing demos, our team closes it, installs it, we do everything, and then they get this big residual split on it. And we have agents that are making a fortune. I have one agent that's I think up to almost 30,000 a month in residual from that one.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

I was gonna circle. I was gonna say, I would have never thought it's interesting to me because uh to quote Alan Copelman, um, which we do often, uh, you know, if you're not selling software, you're dead. Uh yeah, and and I agree with

Why Agents Miss The Best Software

SPEAKER_00 5:10

that because software is so integral in everything that any business does. I mean, it's it's almost like this, and like you said, there's just this evolution in technology that just you have this intersection of everything happening where software has become the business tool. And it's you know, how do I actually distribute that to a business owner and then get them to plug into all the add-ons that potentially you could be doing through software? Like obviously, you need some oversight for it, and the software system needs to be um you know, well teller. But uh how did you get to self-storage? Because I would have never thought to like sell the self-storage. And it seems like honestly, like fish in a barrel a little bit, because I can't imagine a lot of people focusing on that. But how from a software perspective did you identify that as a vertical that may, you know, either have kind of like non-robust software solutions or just you know, right, nothing that was really there except what maybe people had built internally for their operation?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah, so so ironically, when you look at the self-storage industry, the first of all, the reason I got into it was because of one client. So I had a client that had reached out and they actually paid. Uh, so those that know me well know I also am a computer programmer, at least I used to do a lot of that. And so I had a client reach out pretty large, and they it was a self-storage, you know, company. And they were like, hey, we're doing payment processing with you, but we need a software solution to like do recurring, you know, billing for our the people that are staying there. So I built the first version of it, you know, which it was terrible, but I mean it did what they wanted it to do. Um and then uh as I got into that industry, just in research to build for that client, I'm like, wow, what happened is there's a company called Storable that's like at the upper end. So it's all these enterprise solutions, very expensive, very complicated. And I was like, man, there were there's really wasn't much on the lower to medium, you know, for these clients. Like they didn't, they didn't want to spend the money. You know, the software is too expensive, it was too complicated to use. So I thought, well, I at that at that point in time, I was already thinking about this. Like one of the quotes I have is like, you know, Steve Jobs used to say, companies that are serious about software build their own heart. Um, you know, the way I look at it is companies that are serious about payments now build their own software. You know, it's like, it's like I want my payment processing to be compliant, I want it to be flexible, I want it to do these different things. Then I need my own software so I control the ecosystem. So I was already kind of on that path anyway, and I'm like, what the heck? Let's go. Let's just build into this vertical. It looks like it's a wide open market. So we built the first version of it probably seven years ago. Um, total

CC Storage And Agent Driven Growth

SPEAKER_01 7:45

failure. Uh lost all that, you know, put all this, and I we ran with it for four or five months. Nobody wanted to buy it. Um, dual pricing wasn't out yet. So we were trying to charge for the software and the payment processing. Nobody wanted to do that. So then we put it on a shelf, COVID happened, and then all of a sudden, all these smaller to medium self-storage properties were like, people can't come and bring us a check. So we have to take payment online now. So I and dual pricing had come out, you know, I was the big proponent of that as well. So we said, well, hold on a minute. I can reintroduce this and being totally free. No software fees, no payment processing, net cost, dual pricing is our only model. So once we rolled that out, then it really took off.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

How much functionality did you throw into the as far as self-storage operations? I mean, I can't imagine that self-storage operations are super dynamic, right? I mean, it's they're not dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

They're not dynamic, but they're very complicated actually. Like you think about things like, you know, needing to have like a site map. Well, everybody wants a site map where you can see color-coded, here's the map of my property, and here's, you know, the green ones are, you know, up to date. The red ones are are behind or past due. These are vacant, you know, whatever. Um, you know, reporting, uh, move in, move out. There's a lot of complexity, online uh, you know, things. So again, to be clear, I hired a CEO. I didn't obviously build this myself, but but um, but I had a CEO building it, but but again, I uh when I when we realized, hey, we've got our core assumptions validated, people want this, they like the business model. I went out right away, hired Ben Shiry, um, and he built it from the ground up with a developer team and we put a lot of money into it. Um, and now it's like one of the leading solutions. I mean, we have a ton of functionality. It's actually crazy the stuff we have in there and all the AI stuff we built into it now. Um, so that was kind of my big, you know, validating the assumption of like I can build a software company that's direct to merchant that has payments integrated and that can be profitable and everything. So that was that was my kind of foray into that, my my experiment. And then again, can I get agents and ISOs to actually sell that solution when it's not a vertical they would normally go after? And the answer is yes. With enough training and support and partnership, agents will say, man, this is an opportunity that I normally wouldn't have access to. I'm gonna go ahead and take advantage of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I'm gonna say two things to that. Um, one is that do you well, one's a question. Do you actually the analysis that you did to identify this vertical for actually building a software and integrating a payment solution with it and making it cost effective? Is this something that you're teaching at the CC Sales Pro side as far as hey, it go look at verticals, try to identify within the vertical how the businesses operate, what software is out there, maybe go to look to talk to the software providers, you know, to identify ISVs. Because I look, I you know, I've had sales jobs in my life leading up to becoming an attorney, and and you know, you gather from every work experience that you have. Uh, but so some some things are kind of innate, and it's like, oh, okay, that's logical, that makes sense. But then, like theory to practice, sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not. So is that somewhat of the of the practice that you do in the in the sales platform?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

It actually is funny you bring that up. It's that if you go to ccsalespro.com right now, actually, I think uh I think the banner on it is vertical sales mastery. So vertical sales mastery is like a one-on-one coaching uh and consulting program that I do for ISOS or agents. And yeah, we meet uh on a regular basis and I basically help them identify a vertical to go after um and then figure it out. And I I I when I rolled the program out, I joked about it. I said, you know, the problem is I'm personally going after like seven verticals right now. Like that's as many as I can do. But then I get bored. I want to I want to go after more, but I'm like my developers are busy enough. So then it's like, hey, let me help some other people go after there's so many vertical opportunities right now, it's insane. Um and so I did that program actually specifically for that purpose of like let me consult and work with ISOs and agents who, you know, one I'm I'm doing one right now with um uh kids' camps, like kids' summer camps. And so I have a one of the participants in the vertical sales mastery is doing that. Another one's going after liquor stores, you know. So it's like there's all these other verticals out there, and I love it. It's so fun to like find that right partnership between the software and payments model and the distribution and pulling all that together. I think that's where all the money's at today.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well, I was also gonna say, like, you know, we get to see a lot of things in the industry. And and one of the platforms that I've looked at that I'm like, okay, well, that's a super smart idea for agents, is MyCamp's MyPOS platform. I don't know the economics to it, but to have somebody else populating

The Pivot That Made It Take Off

SPEAKER_00 12:21

ISV opportunities for sales agents and having those be available and they don't have to manage the relationship with upstream, they only have to manage the relationship with the merchant. I thought that was a really smart concept that Micah put together. And I think that and and and to go to what Alan says is like, you know, if you're not selling software, I mean, I agree with him. Like, you know, we've had internally, even in our in and I will tell you, you want to get into a good area, come talk to me and James and get us a software system that really speaks to operations for a law firm. Every single time that we get one, it's each of them has their own robust benefit. Sometimes, like the last one that we had was really good for timekeeping and reporting for financials, but for case management, it was awful. Yeah. And then the one that we have today, I think is better for ops, but then it's got its own particularities. And I'm all in no matter what, I'm always stuck with one payment processor, no ability to plug in anybody that I know and actually do it. When they give us a cash discount program or a surcharge program, right? They they they basically confine us. Well, I shouldn't say cash discount. When they give us a surcharge program, they tell us what they we can surcharge and what we can't.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

And as you know, like no surcharge is actual cost, um, even though they try to like buy ball it, you know, and target a number or a percentage. But you know, it's interesting to me because we've had our own issues and we even talked to some developers about trying to develop our own software, particular to what we do. And we've actually had some discussions with AI companies to do the same thing, not necessarily for ops, but right for for like service providing and and what we're doing internally. We've talked to some consultants and AI, and it's it never seems like I get anything that really fits. So I think that's you know, there's potential there. It's it's kind of a hard lift. Um, you know, another question I had no, no, go ahead. I'm sorry if you had comments.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

No, you're fine. I was gonna say, I mean, what you have to understand too though, Chris, it's so interesting is development of software today versus six months ago is like a different world. And six months from now, it'll be a different world again. And so, you know, like when you're when you're describing this to me, you know, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, give me two developers and probably five months and that's done. You know, like in other words, it's just not that hard anymore to, you know, the the hard part now is just the idea of understanding what software needs to be built. You know, the hard part is the vertical knowledge. It's not building the software anymore. The software is like, is almost a commodity now, which is crazy. Because like 24 months ago, you know, like if I if you told me today, like James, you need to rebuild CC storage from scratch, I probably spent now again, we've, you know, now we started to make a lot of money with it. It's you know, the the burn's been offset. But as far as RD, probably I've got three million into that, you know. If you told me to rebuild it today, I would say 300,000.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, totally. So this leads me to where I'd really like to talk to you. Because dude, you're so far on the front edge of certain things that I having a normal to me, having this conversation with you is a conversation that I would have not just on a podcast, but anytime, because to me it's educational. Um, AI. Because what we're really talking about when you're talking about software development now is AI and how you can do machine learning to actually build things much quicker. Obviously, there's you know, there's the testing and the going back and forth, but you're having more of an automated process, do some of the debugging and and and kind of developing what needs to get done, and you're more of an architecture. I've seen some some my my brother told me this. He he works as an uh electrical engineer, and he works in a big chemical plant in Florida, and he does reliability and maintenance for the entire plant. And it it has undergone a it was in bankruptcy, it came out, private equity bought it. Obviously, everybody has to justify their job. Right. He comes with like some real solutions, and so we got into this conversation where he was talking about data sets and the accuracy of data sets, right, and getting getting all of his customers

Picking Profitable Verticals To Sell

SPEAKER_00 16:50

on the right data set so that he can use AI. And then we started talking about like the volume of the data set and how you actually teach AI. And what he told me that I didn't understand previously was that I would just give AI like all of the information that I think that it would need to do to go out and like handle a project. And he was like, No, man. He's like, what you have to do is you have to go step by step with it. You have it do step one, yeah, and then you you you have it explain to it step one, have it do step one on a small data set, and then once it gets the exact answer you want, go, hey, label this step one. Step two is, and he kind of took me through the process of using AI, not from a voluminous standpoint, but from a more process-driven standpoint, to actually get consistently the outcome that you're looking for in a process, but looking at different data sets. How has AI in that kind of context come into your world as a professional, either with existing existing um processes and entities and and and operations you have, or where do you see it going? Because that's what I'd really love to know is yeah, where do you see this happening?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

You know, I probably have a very kind of contrarian opinion about AI. Like, I use AI so much, but I also feel like the way that people use AI is not super intelligent in a lot of situations. And so, like, here's the thing AI, a couple of things about AI that it's important to understand. Remember, AI is still ultimately run by a computer. And by definition, remember, computers are stupid. So computers can only do what we tell them to do. And AI, you know, despite a lot of reports of the contrary, is not conscious. Uh, it is a math equation, right? It's a very complicated math equation, but it's a math equation. So, what you have to remember is the AI is only gonna be as smart as what you put into it. And then it's also only gonna be as smart, meaning the meaning the the result you get out of it is only gonna be as good as what you put into it. And then also it's only gonna be as good as the compute power that you allow it to utilize. So, like, as an example, I cannot tell you how many times I have someone on my team come to me and say, James, we are trying to solve this problem with AI and it's not working. And I'm like, Okay, what model are you using? Well, we're using the free version of ChatGPT. Yeah, exactly. Are you nuts? Like, no, no, no. I'm like, go go get Reddit,

How AI Changes Software Development

SPEAKER_01 19:10

by the way. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, go get, you know, use Chat GPT Pro extended and enable deep research and then see if it can solve this problem for you. And they're like, because and and they don't want to do it because that's gonna take 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And I'm like, this job used to take us a week. I'm fine if it takes us 10 or 15 minutes. Be patient.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

It's making people busy, yeah. And then the other how do you how do you feel like your and I, you know, like, and when I say yours, the pejorative you, right? Yeah, sure. How do you feel like you're using it in a in an effective way that pushes forward the either the sales process or the servicing process or the analysis of you know, how do I want to market? Like, where do you feel it's effective for you?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

So, and again, my my use case might be a little bit of an outlier because I have a big team of developers, but I I will tell you the the biggest game-changing thing that ISOs could implement is something called an MCP server. Most of them won't even know what that is. But what an MCP is, uh it's not as hard as you might think it is. Um, an MCP basically is you giving something like Claude full access to your database. So I don't know yet if uh like let's say if they're using IRS. I don't know if IRIS has an MCP yet. For full stack payments, we have an MCP server. So as an example, I can pull up my Claude and I can say, what is my volume month to date versus last three month-to-date uh roles? My, you know, look at look at my overall business, my number of applications created and approved, review the ticket notes from my underwriting and give me the common trends that I should pay attention to. Look at the demos and appointments that we had yesterday and look at the notes from those and tell me what I should be paying attention to. So I'm on a daily basis, I'm asking these like big macro questions, and AI is giving me back the three or four things I should focus on that day. Um, so again, remember garbage in, garbage out. If I'm giving AI full access to my system, not to change anything in my system, but just for the data, then my AI also has full access to my Gmail account, full access to my Google Drive, full access to my calendar. So I ask things, for instance, on a weekly basis, I have a recurring uh in ChatGBT Pro, a recurring task that says, analyze all my emails from the last week, look at my calendar. It already knows what my objectives are right now that I want to accomplish in my business. And it's gonna say, rate me as a leader. Where should I improve? And what are the three things I should be paying attention to that I'm not? So when you give AI enough context and let it do the compute, it's pretty crazy what it can, you know, what it can actually give you. Now, where people are trying to push it is they're trying to say, how do I stop paying people and get the AI to do the work instead of the people?

MCP Servers And AI With Your Data

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Well, yeah, currently there are some jobs that fit that description, but that's a tough fit. Making your current people more productive, absolutely. But AI is still very magical. It's it's not as like logical to the point of like I can depend on it 100% of the time. So those that you know that has not come to fruition. If you look at the overall job market, we haven't seen this huge job loss from AI yet. And that's because AI is not good enough yet. It's good enough to make everybody more productive, but it's not good enough to do this in a full-on, like, I'm just replacing all my people. You know what I mean? I I can make people a lot more productive, but but actually like fully replacing, like I'm still gonna have to have a human in the loop for a lot of things. And and maybe in six months I'll come on here and say something totally different. But that's that's the way it is today.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Well, and at least you recognize like the progression and it may be different in six months. It may be different next month, right? I mean, most logically. You know, here's an opinion uh question, totally off base. But how do you see this affecting intellectual property rights as far as AI progressing? And if software is not so I guess to say unique, right? I mean, I think it's very easy to build or construct software in a way that creates uniqueness to it to protect it. But now, if we're not really focused on that process of it being, you know, protectable or people being able to duplicate, how do you see um because I to me, what you described earlier is at some point there's gonna be this watering down of software and everybody and their brother is gonna be trying to do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It is. So let's talk about it because it has a big impact on ISOs. I actually think ISOs and agents are in a fantastic position right now, and I'll tell you why. I believe one of the only truly valuable things that will be left in two years is distribution. So when you think about it this way, if building software is basically free, which it's not, but let's just assume, right? So it's gonna get less and less expensive to build software. And and and I actually I don't think it's gonna be easy to build software that differentiates at all. I think it's gonna be impossible. So, in other words, the only way you're gonna build software that somebody can't replicate is if they can't log into it. So if you have anybody that's a paying customer that logs, I mean, again, if somebody got it got access to a CC storage account today and they went in and took screenshots of every screen, downloaded every report, pulled everything, described every button and every feature, and made a 16-page document, and they uploaded that to Replit and they said, build this software. It's not there's gonna be a lot of bugs, there's gonna be a lot of work, but give them three, give a real developer three months with Claude or Anthropics

Software Becomes A Commodity Distribution Remains

SPEAKER_01 24:10

tools, absolutely they could replicate it. So what's left? What's left is my brand reputation and my distribution. And that's what they can't grab, right? So when you think about ISOs and agents, it's like, well, what do they do? Well, it's distribution. So in other words, AI is not gonna be, it's gonna be a little while before robots are going and selling businesses, you know, walking in. Like it's like, so they have something unique, but they have to understand that software is gonna develop rapidly. And so the expectation of the business owner is gonna go up, you know, very, very quickly exponentially of what they want from software. If these ISOs and agents can actually offer the cutting edge software, they can bring something to software companies that they don't have, and that's distribution. Distribution, relationships, reputation, these are things that have long-term value if and only if you're leveraging that distribution to bring solutions to market that people really want and that are kind of in line with where we're at today in this kind of cutting edge, rapidly changing market.

Final Thoughts And Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Payments Experts Podcast, a podcast of Global Legal Law Firm. Visit us online today at Global Legal Law Firm dot com. Matters discussed are all opinions that do not constitute legal advice. All events or likeness to real people, and events is a coincidence.