Dealing with Haters. Extortion and Threats

We don't negotiate with terrorists.

We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just don't. And that was absolutely a terrorist type move, in my opinion.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch with your hosts, Ryan Deiss and me, Roland Frazier.

There I am.

Nice to see you guys again. What's going on, Ryan?

I'm good, but I understand that we had an exciting week last week with a little extortion attempt, and I thought it'd be fun to talk about that. You know, the whole point of this show, Ryan, is it's Business Lunch. It's what we're talking about. While we're talking business over lunch, this is definitely the kind of thing that we would. That we were talking about. In fact, I think I was eating when you called me, and we're like, you won't believe what happened. So I think we talk about the extortion attempt, what you did about it, because thankfully I heard about it. When it was all over, I probably would have freaked out.

And then how. Because you were going on like a webinar when I told you. I was like, by the way, we had this whole extortion thing. Talk to you soon. And you're like, wait, I'm going on a webinar.

Yeah. So that. And then just general like, how do you deal with negativity and stuff like that? I think would be. Would be a fun discussion topic because it's something that every brand should aspire to, right? Every brand should aspire to have some negativity out there. It sounds kind of weird, but if nobody's Talking crap about you. You either don't matter or you're not ever taking a stand for anything. And so I think it'd be fun to talk about. So tell the story what happened.

All right, so we have done for the last couple of years this challenge, this five day challenge, helping people find businesses and things like that. And over that period of time, we've had a lot of great people on. We've had some really cool content segments and we have recorded some of those. And sometimes we play some of those things, sometimes we play the whole thing recorded, but it is always live with four people that are answering questions and taking care of phone calls. And like, it's a very interactive experience.

Yeah. Can I set this up for people who don't know what a challenge is?

Yes.

Yeah. So a challenge. So just see if you don't know. A challenge is simply think about it like a five day virtual event. Right. So this was born during COVID and we obviously couldn't gather. And so what, an hour to two hours a day for five days. You know, Roland and the members of the Epic Network team get on, and our students. Yeah, yeah, and students get on. But basically, you know, people are getting on this challenge and it's. It's a live event that takes place a couple hours a day over the course of five days. And we do it once a month, change it up a little bit. And so it's people who are attending this live, but virtually. And so what you were saying is that having done this for a couple of years, there are times when, yeah, you're just doing the segment completely live, but there's also times when it's like, okay, this thing this person talked about last month was amazing, so we should just play that again because they're not available this month. Right. So that kind of sets the. Sets the tone. So it's a combination of just pure live, but then also everybody's on there live but playing certain recorded material. That's the setup. Keep going.

Yes. And how much of that happens each way? Like, there's always four people that are live so that you're never. Like, it's never not. But anyway, so I was in Utah at an event, speaking, and so I wasn't there Thursday and Friday. And we played. We played the thing. We had the recordings from the last time, which was really great, by the way. And somebody messaged. I got off the plane Saturday morning from. From getting back from Utah. And Deanna, who is the head of that, that EPIC department, was texting back and forth And I was copied on it. And she. She was texting back with our marketing director, and some person had sent her and one of our other people, Bailey, a WhatsApp message from a 5, 1, 2 number, which is. Which is a Texas number. I don't know if it's just Austin, but it's Austin.

Austin area.

And, you know, they had their picture on the WhatsApp and everything. So they said, this challenge is just a bunch of recordings, and I'm going to tell everybody that it's not live and that it's recorded. And imagine if. So I've made friends with a thousand people that are on the challenge. We have about 7,000 people on the challenge. Made friends with a thousand people on the challenge. And imagine the devastation if I talk to those people and tell them that this is just recordings. Now, it would be kind of impossible for it to be just recordings because there are interactive live components and conversations going on during the thing with the people who are attending. So I don't. Even if somebody's got software that does that, definitely let us know we would be interested in it.

But, yeah, we'd love to do.

These recordings does not exist. And so it said. It said, I'm going to tell everybody this unless you give me access to your expensive program. And we have different programs. They're all several thousand dollars. And so I messaged Deanna and I was like, that's really interesting. And she's like, yeah, it's a. I've already looked up the numbers, a fake number. And the picture that he used on his profile is a stock photography image. And I'm like, well, why does that not surprise me? But I was like, there's no way that we're going to ever give into this. And quite the contrary, I think we address it head on and talk to him, because we don't. We don't say everything is going to be live, right? And sometimes parts are live, sometimes parts are not live. Sometimes the whole thing might be recorded, sometimes the whole thing might be live. And in the last few months, it's been like everything from a whole live to a whole record. But no, no, no, no. Circumstance has us not have live people responding. So anyway, so I just told her, I said, well, let's do this. Let's post in the Facebook group what. And on my social what this guy is trying to do. Let's put a screenshot of the. The blackmail, extortion demand, and let's explain to people why we have parts that are recorded and why we have parts that are not. And as Ryan explained so well at the beginning of this, that's why. Because not everybody can be there every time, and sometimes we have to travel and things like that. But what was really cool was, oh, and then in the meantime, he sent another one saying, apparently, you don't take me seriously. And also note, I'm not asking for money, I'm just asking for access to this program. Like, well, that's the same thing. Because you want a program that costs several thousand dollars.

And I didn't steal money, I just stole their car. Right, right.

Yeah, come on.

And he's.

Yeah, good, good point. And he's like, well, I also am going to notify Roland's. I'm going to send extensive direct messages to all of Roland's 25,000 Instagram followers. And I'm just like, you know, it's like, so here's the thing. The guy's asking. He's asking for deeper access to our programs after being a total scumbag and threatening this. This, you know, blackmail thing, which we're not going to ever give into that. And then he's going to be in our community with our members who we need. You know, we would never expose them to somebody like that. Like, I'm going to let that person be in there, you know, with our top people receiving coaching and interacting. I mean, God knows what he might try to do to those people. So. So I told the ana, said, let's post it. Post screenshots, let's get it up now. Don't respond to the guy at all and just put it up. And so we did, and we had the greatest response. We did not have a single negative comment. And people were saying, I can't even watch it live. I'm watching it recorded. And why would I care if it's recorded or live? You guys are the best. It's such a great program. The content blows me away. I mean, over and over, people are like, you guys are on top of it. You respond to everything. You answer the phone, you connect me to, you know, to the people I want to be connected to. You got the concierges that follow up with me and, you know, what could you respond in the chat? How could it be better? It was really awesome because you never know. I mean, you know, you could lose. You know, we could have. Everybody could have just decided, you know, we hate you because it's not 100% live. But that was really cool and I loved it, because then the guy deleted all of the messages out of WhatsApp which I didn't even know you could do, but, but he was basically ghosted. And because we took all this power away because screw that guy, that was to me the whole time was just, nobody gets to do that and nobody gets to bully other people and nobody gets to try to threaten somebody for something. And to me it's like, screw it, take the consequences, I don't care. That's not acceptable.

We don't negotiate with terrorists.

We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just don't. And that was absolutely, you know, a terrorist type move, in my opinion. But anyway, so that, that was what was happening. And the response was so great and so kind and supportive from all of the people that were out there. I thought was just really cool. And then immediately the next day we had one of our highest show up rates ever on all of the, all of the things and people were interacting. And so that's pretty good outcome I think, to some jerk that's doing that. And so if, to me it's like if anybody ever threatens that the, the giving into that versus just take the consequences of whatever is going to happen, that's the way to go.

What were your thoughts on it when.

You heard all that?

Yeah, I mean, so I think it's worth kind of unpacking. What would, you know? So if you listen to this, like how does this apply to you? Right. I think it's a, it's a fun story if nothing else. But I do think there's some really valuable lessons in here in terms of how do you deal with threats and how do you deal with haters?

Because I do think that there's kind.

Of two different things. Before we do that, can we take.

A, can we, can we take a quick break before we do that for our commercial sponsors and then we'll come back and talk about.

Yeah, we should do that.

We'll be right back.

Hey, business hunch listeners, we're going to get right back to this show, but Roland wanted me to invite you to a brand new training that he's doing on acquiring businesses with no money out of pocket. It's something that he's talked quite a bit about on the show, but he's doing a free training where he's going to walk through the entire process. So if you want to get access to that, go to businesslunchpodcast.com epic that's businesslunchpodcast.com epic and you can get signed up.

And we're back. Okay, go ahead. Ryan, you were talking about your thoughts about this.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think it's a good thing to think about in terms of how do you deal with threats and how do you deal with, you know, with haters? Because there is. There is obviously a spectrum here, right? What we were dealing with was, I mean, I'm not an attorney, but I think that that level of, like, blackmailer extortion is technically illegal.

That is a criminal act. Absolutely.

That is a criminal act. And so to a certain extent, you know, there's obviously people who will. Who are themselves criminals and they will try to do something like, you know, whether it's a, you know, ransomware attack or something like that. I don't necessarily want to go down that path. I mean, if something like that happens, you probably need to involve the authorities.

Right.

I want to talk more like how do you deal with just outright flagrant, you know, you know, haters? Because, yes, this person, it is technically a criminal act, but at the end of the day, we're dealing with a threat. And what you'll see sometimes, a lot of times is folks saying, you know, you did this and this and this. I'm not happy. If you don't make it right, if you don't fix it, if you don't do X, Y and Z, then I'm going to do blank, right? So there's a threat. There's a threat of I'm going to go and I'm going to, you know, tell the world about all these bad things that, you know, that you did. So I think it's important to look at it. And the first thing that I'm going to encourage people to do, because what I thought about it when you first told me was, oh, crap, this sucks. This is bad, right? As soon as you told me, which is why I'm like, you bastard, I'm going to get on the thing as soon as I heard that we've been threatened, right? And it could also be that somebody said something mean about you, true or untrue. If you feel threatened, if somebody says something mean about you, that is going to produce a fight or flight response, right? You are going to have just an absolute dump of chemicals into your body that you're going to feel it. And so the first thing that you got to do is you got to breathe and you got to give yourself some time. You need to actually pause and do absolutely nothing for a period of time. Because if you respond in that moment, you're not going to be responding with the particles of the brain that you actually want to be utilizing. So I wanted to ask, like, how long because you're, you're amazing and I don't know if it's because you're an attorney and you've just developed this skill set over time. I know, like professional athletes, they're able to, you know, basically control their own adrenaline release so that it doesn't get them all shaky and stuff like that. You're really good at this. You don't get overly emotional. You don't let the adrenaline, you know, impact you. But I'm just curious, when you first saw that, did you have an initial, like fight or flight response and did you pause or were you kind of cool as a cucumber right from the get go?

Yeah, I mean, it, it wasn't, it would have to be a whole lot. I have fortunately or unfortunately been through significantly more challenging things in my life. So I kind of look at that as a ha. You know, it's like, yeah, this is a, this is not.

So this one right here, it was like a, you know, a two or a three out of ten at most. Right. But for some people, like, I remember the first time somebody said something mean about me online and it was literally somebody from like, you know, a no name Twitter account. They didn't even have an image on there and they had two followers, but they said this. And I remember just being like enraged, like, I must, you know, write this injustice. And so what you need to do, first step is just to pause. Because if, if it's not a two or a three, you got to pause until, you know, you come down off of that. So I'd say that's the first thing. The second thing is look at it critically after you've come down and say, is there any truth to what they're saying? Right. Another way to ask it is like, are they right? Right. Are they right? And in this case, I mean, obviously no. Like, it was, it was, I think one, the threat was kind of mad. But also when you looked at it objectively, you're like, no, dude. Like, this is, we are, you know, it is being run live. Our people are on there live. You know, the interaction, the interactions are all live. You know, if we record something that's no different than a teacher coming in and saying, hey guys, I'm going to click play on this and then we're going to talk about it. Right? That's how that goes. So in this case, the person was absolutely wrong. There's going to be other times where somebody is absolutely right and there's going to be most of the time when it's somewhere in the middle. So I think you need to look at it, because I'll tell you, there's times when people have said things and they've. And they've criticized, especially if we dropped the ball as a company and they're threatening you, like, I'm going to expose you to this and this and this report. You do this and this and this, and you did, in fact, mess up. And in those cases, the best thing you can do is to reach out to them and say, oh, my gosh, I am so, so sorry. Yep, you're right. I'm so sorry. And apologize. Because at that point, they're not a hater. At that point, they're an appropriately frustrated person. Now, you could be upset about the, the way that they're going about it, the language that they're using. Fine. You get to kind of criticize that once you've owned up to your end of it. So let's set that aside. Right. Obviously, if you did something wrong, you should acknowledge it and you should fix it. These times, though, when you're just getting hate and you're just getting the threats and there really isn't that much truth to it, you kind of have a choice to make, right? Am I going to engage or am I going to starve it of oxygen? So I don't know what your approach to this is, Roland, but for me, I look at it and I go, okay, calm down. You know, let, let, let the chemicals, you know, go through my body. Are they right? Any truth? Do I need to own up to something? If I do, I'll do that. Okay?

No.

This person, they're either completely wrong or they're. They're largely, you know, irrational, unreasonable. I'm not going to. No, no. Now I got a choice to make. Engage or don't engage. And my first response is, you know, generally to ignore it, to just starve it of oxygen. Because in my experience, the worst thing that you can do with a hater, the worst thing you can do with somebody who's threatening you, is to give them additional voice, to give them additional platform, to give them additional power. For most of them, it's what they want. So as hard as it is to do because you want to go point, counterpoint with them, you said this and you're wrong. You said this and you're wrong. That's not right at all. Go look at this thing over here.

Right?

The best thing in the world that you could do is absolutely nothing to click delete, to ignore Right. I oftentimes won't even, like, block them if they don't have a following, because I don't even want to give them the pleasure of that. I want them to think that I never saw it.

Right.

I don't even want them to have the pleasure of, like, blocking them on something. That's kind of my approach initially. What do you think about that?

So, a few things, I think. One thing is that if you can find a way to not take it personally and understand that most of the hate comes not from anything to do with you at all, you are simply the thing that it is. You're the vehicle for the hate to get projected upon. It has nothing to do with you. So I read a YouTube comment the other day, because I answer my own comments, right? And one of the comments was, I don't read the comments on the ads because those are just terrible. Just don't even read those. Any ad you put out, it's. It's just going to be awful. But it was like, let's see, I think I mispronounced Nikola Tesla. Nikola Tesla's name. And I said Nikolai, I think. And oh, man, there were like five people that just were roasting me from some clip I'd had. And it's like, you know, what a moron? Can't even pronounce Tesla's name correctly. And then I had somebody say, yeah, and he looks like he's drunk. Looks like my drunk Uncle Percy and with a big red nose and, you know, rosy cheeks from drinking too much. Probably drinking all day. Probably can't remember it because he's drunk. And it's just, you, you can take that stuff personally or you can let it roll off of you. And, you know, if you see truth in it, you know, and you want to do something about it, then be proactive and say, I don't want to have a red nose anymore. Or, I was drunk that day. I wasn't, but, you know, or whatever, right? But it's like none of it just matters. I think that's like all of it's. It's just if you can let that stuff roll off of you instead of. And just understand it's not about you at all. It's all about them.

I can't do that as easily as you can. Here's the only thing, the only trick I found because just like, letting it go, I haven't been able to pull that one off. What I can do is replace my negative feelings about them and how I'm allowing it to project on myself. I, I transfer it to pity for them. So I have to actively decide to pity them for being so small and, and pathetic that they would take time out of their day to do this right. And if I can get myself to a point where I feel sorry for them, then it no longer impacts me. But boy, it takes a while.

And I refer people to our ESLA versus Beatles conversation of let it be versus Let it go. That this, this would be a good reference back to you guys, to you check that episode out. But yeah, I think that's, I think that's cool. I don't really want to even give them the effort of pity. I think it's just, you know, it's just, that's interesting. You know, it's like.

So there's people that said that you, you, did you leave the comments there? Did you delete them? Did you respond to them?

I left it. Yeah, I think you always leave them. And unless there's some like, you know, rises to the level of something that's attacking the people that are out there because generally the more comments that are on there, the better for you and people can look and decide. I don't think anybody ever really reads them anyway, you know, but, but that's, I guess that's it is, is and, but I definitely agree with you. So I have been through slam pieces in the newspaper. There's a guy that used to just hate business people here in San Diego and he would write negative profiles about people in the business in the newspaper. I had a, of those slam teams do a, you know, an investigative thing on one of our companies one time and it was just, it was almost hilarious how they like they, they made it this eerie creepy camera going across a document with, you know, music. It was like, you know, and so I mean I, I've kind of had it said and done enough that, that really it's always potential best not to respond. Don't respond to the news, don't give them a comment, don't answer the cop when he tells you that. When he's like anything you want to say about me pulling you over today, son? You know, or any of that kind of stuff. There will be nothing in any of those conversations that will help you in any way. It will only hurt you. It will only cause them to be higher level attention to you or you'll be giving information that you shouldn't give or you give them more, more things to feed off of. I had a stalker that showed up at our gate of our neighborhood and same thing with the stalker, you gotta starve them. They never get to talk to you, they never see you, they never get to have any interaction, you never respond, you just don't acknowledge it. And so I'm with you 100% on that for all of those situations.

Now there are a couple of distinctions though, because I think where it will rise and where I will. So first response is always, you know, don't respond, don't engage, starve it of oxygen. Now there are a couple of scenarios where, you know, either you have no choice but to engage or you know, you, you really need to engage from the beginning. And I think the difference is are they saying what they're saying on their platforms? Are they saying what they're saying on third party platforms? And it's starting to get traction, are they or are they saying what they're saying on your platform? So for me, you can have whatever opinion, I'm not going to stifle free speech or anything like that, but you don't get to lie about me on my own platform, right? So we've had people come into, you know, the digital marketer engage community and you know, just flat out just lie about crap like, oh, you know, you did this and this, this and then it's like, okay, delete, right, delete, like delete block. No, you're like, you're done. Like we're not going to put up with and tolerate that. The only time when we will leave it there is we will take a screenshot or engage and just say, here's where this person is wrong. And then they don't get to continue with the conversation though, like they're done. I made it one sided because this is my sandbox, right? And so that one's pretty easy. If they're just in their own world and they're yelling into their own void, then definitely don't go into their world. But there is a time. And you mentioned YouTube, right? And this, you know, for that one people are just being immature and making kind of, you know, me mean personal ad hominem kind of kind of things. But there is a time when somebody says something and it's on a third party channel and it starts to get traction and starving it of oxygen is not really doing the trick. And I've had that happen before and it's like, okay, this has taken on a life of its own and at this point my silence is starting to look like I'm guilty. And when that happened, kind of my, you know, my approach, I'm curious about yours is I will draft up a statement that I will post on one of my channels. Now this could be, you know, my website, a website that I control. This could be a community. So it is something that, that I'm going to put it in my area that I control and I'm going to link to it from these other places and I'm just going to say, hey, here's, here's kind of my, my official statement on that. You know, happy to engage, you know, with a conversation over there, but I'm not going to engage in, you know, this kind of activity on this one. So there's a statement, I've gone on the record, but I'm not going to do this tit for tat back and forth. I'm not going to engage with the person directly. I'm going to have my statement over here, I'm going to post it over here and just refer people back to it. I found that when it's a one way conversation, it dies pretty quickly as well. Every time you engage in a two way conversation, it just keeps freaking going. So if you just say, here's my statement, say what I'm saying. There you go.

Yeah, I agree with that. And that, that is, I mean if you think about, that's kind of what we did. If something is being disruptive on your platform, then they're gone, they're, they're abusing the platform, trying to, you know, do whatever. You know, any legitimate comment is going to stay even if you don't like it, even if I don't like it. But somebody that's just being disruptive or bullying or disrespectful, and that's a great thing.

If somebody is just saying like, hey, I'm mad about this because I didn't get this thing going, that's a time to engage again, apologize, hey, I'm so sorry. Or if, yeah, if it's a legitimate comment, even if you don't love it, you know, leave it there, address it. If they're a customer but somebody doesn't get to, you need to get rid of it for the sake of your customers, for the sake of your people, you know, your audience. Yeah.

And then with respect to this other thing, to me it's always just get ahead of it. So if somebody wants to write a slam piece in the newspaper or something like that, or online or elsewhere, probably not going to respond because it's just like you said, it's generally on their platform or even if it's on a third party platform, if it's something that like this could have gotten traction if it hadn't been responded to. And it never actually got out there. Like we just killed it by hitting it head on before the person could even, like taking all of the power away of the threat. And so, so if it's like, if it's something like that, to me, you got to get ahead of it. And if you know something is going to come out that's going to make you look bad or something like that, again, to me it totally makes sense. As you said, like, put your statement out. That's really what we did. Put your statement out. Own what you need to own. If there's anything to own, which we did. And then, and then explain, you know, or apologize, even if you need to, if you did something bad, just own it. Say, you know what? I thought about it. In retrospect, I was wrong and I've rethought it and I appreciate the opportunity to continue to evolve as a human being. Right. And that's it. And then you're done. And then don't interact past that because it will peter out. It's only going to be relevant until the next news cycle, which happens about every five seconds.

Yeah, I think that's important to think about. Think about some of just the absolute scandals that have occurred. Right. And my guess is you can't think about any scandal that occurred last month, much less last year. So I guess that, that, that's a great point to make. Like the remembering in the moment, this too shall pass. Right. I mean, I've been through some stuff that I thought was like, I'll never recover from this. These people are slandering me and it's not untrue. And people are going to believe it because I can't get out to everybody. I can't follow up with everybody. I don't know who's seen this. And there's people that are going to believe this and you know, a couple days went by and it was gone. You know, maybe there are people that still to this day want to have nothing to do with me because of something they read online. That's a good filter probably. You know, I mean, but look at me just going on living my life. And so I think if you can remember in the moment when this happens, you know, number one, pause, right? Step one, pause, step two, you know, look at it critically, objectively. Do you own some of it and do you owe somebody an apology? If not, are you going to starve it of oxygen or are you going to engage? If you choose to engage, make your statement, engage in your platform. And I love what you said, try to get ahead of it. Haters don't always give. You don't always say, like, I'm going to post this. But I love the idea if somebody's going to make a threat because this has happened to us. Also in legal matters, people have said, if you don't do this and this, I'm going to sue you. And so we've said, that's adorable. We're suing you, right? And it's like, now look, we're, we're first there, so we get to dictate the timing of this stuff. Like you're going to threaten. We're going to take it pretty seriously. So if you have the opportunity to get out ahead of it. I've known some people who, because the media will often give you a heads up. The media will often say, we're going to run this piece because they're technically required through journalistic integrity, as though that's still a thing to give you the opportunity to speak to it. So they can say it was balanced and say, have that little line at the end that, you know, you didn't want to give a comment, so they're going to give you a heads up that it's coming out. You want to, you want to beat them to the punch. And you and I both know some people, I'm not going to name names, but big names who just had some stuff come out that unfounded, in many cases, completely untrue. Media didn't care. They went out with their side of the story and they broke their side of the story before the media came. And when the media went, it was just nothing. Everybody's like, oh, that thing, they already explained, it went nowhere, so come out ahead. And then lastly, remember, this too shall pass. The world is an interesting place, way more interesting than any of us. And there's always going to be some greater idiot coming along doing something stupid that's going to get everybody's attention or doing something really cool that'll hopefully get people's attention.

And I think it's just there are a lot of times that somebody said to me that they're afraid of something because of what other people are going to think about them. And the truth is, like, if you could ever get to the point where you understand that other people are not thinking about you at all, other people are thinking about themselves. And so if you spend your time worried about what other people are going to think, you're going to Live a false life. And you're going to be living a life of building an image that isn't you because you are you. And so as long as you're happy with yourself and you're in integrity with yourself, yourself and your own values and your own morals, then screw what they think, screw what they do, screw what they say. None of that matters as long as you're living congruent to who you want to be. And if you can use the occasional hater to help you keep yourself honest with who you are, maybe look at it and say, is there any truth in that outside of the nastiness? And if there is, can I make a change that will make me a better person? And if you can't find that, then it just doesn't matter because you're never going to have that person as your friend. You never want that person as your friend. You don't want them as a customer. So what do they matter? Like, they really don't. And so I think that's, to me, the place to kind of, to end up is I can be true to myself in integrity with myself, person and whatever anybody else wants to say, do, hate, etc. It just doesn't matter.

Yeah, doesn't matter. And when you, when you say that, it does. I love what you said. It's. It's really more of an ego play, right when, when, when you say it's, it's your ego talking, it doesn't actually come from a place of being, you know, humbled. It comes from a place of, like, if you will just remind yourself that you, you don't actually matter that much in the grand scheme of things. I remember going and speaking. I'll tell this quick story and we can wrap. But I remember speaking early in my kind of career. Not that I'm a career speaker, but do a lot more speaking right now. And early in my career, I was terrible, as most people are. And I remember giving this talk and it sucked. It really did. It was bad. And I knew it was bad. It was one of the things I knew it was bad, you know, a couple of minutes in and it only got worse. And I remember coming off that stage and I was thinking, I really, really need to go to the bathroom. I really got to pee. But I'm not going to go to the bathroom because I know people are just in there. They're going to be in there talking about, about me. And so I like held it, held. And finally like, no, this is going to happen. But I went into the stall you know, and, you know, if you're a guy or if, you know how, you know, men's bathrooms are, you know, there's all the urinals. And I was like, I'm not going to go there because I don't want to hear people. So I'm in the, in the stall and two guys walk in and I can hear me like, hey, so what'd you hear about, what do you think of the last session? I was like, yeah, seemed like he wasn't really all that prepared. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Anyway, so what'd you think about the game? And they instantly moved on from me to talking about the game. And that was the moment that I realized, oh, I don't actually matter that much. Right. I wish that I had done a better job for them. Right. I own that space. I took that time. I need to own the fact that I wasn't prepared that I should have done a better job. I can learn from that, but at the end of the day, I just don't matter that much. And so my impact, while it could have been greater, the downside of it wasn't such that I've ruined somebody's life or mine. And so this too shall pass.

Love it. Well, with that, shall we wrap?

Yes.

All right. Well, it was nice having lunch with you guys today and talking some business and hopefully you'll find some of this stuff helpful. I think it could really be helpful if you're getting stressed out about it and if you're feeling bad or you're allowing people to, to bully you. Listen to this a couple times because I think there's some good stuff in there.

So if, by the way, Roland, people want to, want to experience this, you know, lie of a challenge where occasionally some recorded stuff happens, how would somebody, if they wanted to, to do that, how could they experience that for themselves in all of its, you know, semi recorded but still live glory?

It is. That's a great question. It's at get epicepic getepichallenge.com where we go through and help people find, find ways to acquire five businesses with little or no money out of pocket over a five day period. And also we start talking about consulting for equity and things like that too. So check that out. If you guys found this valuable, would you please share it with anybody? Anybody that's experiencing this hater stuff or going through something where they're feeling bad about themselves or they're allowing themselves to get down or not even go out there and have a voice because other people are shutting them down down because of what might be said about them. Maybe this will help them. Please share and let's pay it forward and help some other people out and we'll see you on the next episode.

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