Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - What You NEED To Negotiate With A Narcissist With Attorney Rebecca Zung Partner At Long, Murphy & Zung, & Narcissism Negotiation Expert Episode 163

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  Recognizing & managing covert narcissism  How to let go of seeking validation from external sources   Developing strategies to feel empowered, honored, valued, and respected, in a way that no one can EVER infringe on Resources: Website: www.rebeccazung.com  Read Negotiate Like You M.A.T.T.E.R: The Sure Fire Method To Step Up and Win & Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide to Achieving Emotional, Physical, & Spiritual Freedom Listen to Negotiate Your Best Life  Order the FREE ebook, Crush My Negotiation  Youtube & LinkedIn: @Rebecca Zung  Facebook & Twitter & Instagram: @rebeccazung Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!  To pre-order Overcome Your Villains NOW and get the bonus bundle click here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com Launching on November 16th!  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  You and you alone define your value! People will believe what you tell them, by the way you show up, the way you speak, and the way you project yourself. The truth is you are telling people how to treat you. Take back the power and define who you are on your own terms!   About The Guest: Today we are joined by Rebecca Zung, a narcissism negotiation expert, popular youtube host, and a renowned attorney recognized amongst the top 1% of all attorneys nationwide. She is the author of best selling books, Negotiate Like YOU M.A.T.T.E.R. and Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide to Achieving Emotional, Physical & Spiritual Freedom. I couldn’t be more excited for her to share her journey with all of you! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And you define your value, you and you alone define your value. And people will think what you tell them to think. You tell people what to think of you. You project that by how you show up, by how you speak, by the words that you choose, by the body language that you choose. When you decide that people will think what you tell them to think, that's how powerful it shows up.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close time. Hi and welcome back. I am so excited for you to meet my guest today and I was so taken aback by one of our many bios that's out there online that I just have to give you a little bit of insight into who we are sitting down with today. Rebecca Zhang is a narcissism negotiation expert beyond popular YouTube channel with millions of views a month, recognizes the top one percent of

attorneys in the nation in her past life by US News and World Report, best lawyer in America, legal elite, trend magazine, and on and on. She's the author of bestselling books, Negotiate Like You, M-A-T-T-E-R, Matter, the Surefire Method to Step Up and Win, Forward by Robert Shapiro, and Breaking Free, a Step by Step divorce guy.

She's got so much amazing content me. I'm super excited to talk to you. Oh my gosh, I'm excited to talk to you because we were just talking offline and it's really eye-opening how little any of us know, right outside of our own fields of expertise or what we're doing today. I'm excited to have you here with us today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm super excited to talk to you. Oh my gosh. I'm excited to talk to you because we were just talking offline and it's really eye opening how little any of us know, right outside of our own fields of expertise or circles we travel in. And you mentioned something to me that was really eye opening that you saw immediately that I'm just beginning to understand in this conversation. And that's that there's a really strong chance the woman that fired me. So if anyone's listening, you know the story of how I got fired up four years ago, that that woman is probably a narcissist and you've been the narcissist expert, I'd love to know how you're able to identify that because that thought never even crossed my mind. Well, I was just listening to, you know, because after we record here, I'm going to be recording you for my podcast.

And, you know, so I was listening to a bunch of your interviews to try to get to know you and your story, so I could prepare for our interview. And I heard your story about how you had started your own personal brand, like about a year prior to her firing you and you were starting to gain some traction and you were really excited about it. And here you were really really successful in the career. You had made lots and lots of money for the company and you'd been with the company like I think you said 14 years or something like that. And you were doing really really well for it and here she

comes in and she's your boss. And you're also starting this other personal brand. And it just seemed to me that, you know, here's a person who is super insecure. She has no sense of self. And, you know, that's what narcissists are. They're very, very insecure people. They have no sense of self.

And they don't have any sense of care or empathy for other people. And so they have to get all of their sense of feeling of value from external sources. So it's either that, you know, that sense of adulation where people are telling them how great they are all the time, or attaching themselves to people who are prestigious or something like that or having the right house or the right job or that sort of thing, or what I call the dark underbelly of it, which is that sense of control, devaluing people, that sort of thing, and they feel very jealous of people, they feel entitled, that sort of thing. And it seems to me like just from listening to your story that this person,

just a first blush person seemed very intimidated by you, jealous of you, and probably was threatened by you. And they got a sense of control by firing you and making you feel devalued. Here's, you know, this person who had a lot of success, who had made a lot of money for the company. And here you were potentially going to be overshadowing her. And so by getting rid of you and firing you, what better way to like devalue you,

make you feel small, all of those things. So it seemed to me like she was potentially an narcissist. That was the thought that went through my mind when you were telling your story. Well, it seems pretty spot on now that you're explaining it to me that way. I just never had processed it through that lens or thought about it, right?

So how did you become an expert on narcissists to begin with? Well, first of all, I have been a lawyer for a long, long time. And I only have practiced in the area of high-na-orth divorce, which I will tell you, the high-na-orth divorce is a very different area than regular divorce. So, the regular divorces where you're dealing with maybe the teacher and the cop or the general people who are making maybe 50,000, 100,000 a year,

those divorces, you can process pretty easily, they're not super complicated, there's not much going on with them. I mean, to be honest with you, that's why you see a lot of lawyers who kind of dabble in divorce, and they also do criminal law, and they also do wills, and you know, that sort of thing. They're not all that difficult if you're a general practitioner lawyer. High net worth divorce is a very very specialized area of the law. You have to be really really well versed at business valuation taxation law, estate planning. there's so much more involved with it. And I was, I don't know, fortunate, if that's the right word, but when I was hired, even back when I was still in law school, I happened to be hired into a practice

where the two lawyers who are the managing partners of the firm happened to practice in that area. And so I came up through the ranks, you know, and I happened to live in a very affluent community at the time. And every single person who came through our doors was affluent. I mean, pretty much at the time. And this was more than 20 years ago when I started in 1999 that we didn't even take any cases that had a net worth of less than two million.

And this was like 20 something years ago. So, I mean, that's pretty much how I came up through the range. So I will tell you that there were a lot of narcissists in the practice for sure. So for sure, I dealt with it a lot without even realizing that they were narcissists. I mean, at the time we used to joke that our next book was going to be my wife is crazy and my husband is controlling because that's what they always used to say. I mean, so those were the terms that we used to hear all the time. My wife is crazy, my husband is controlling. And it wasn't really until maybe three, four years ago, I'm gonna just say that the word narcissists

started being thrown around all the time. And so that was when I started hearing the word a lot, but to be honest with you, it wasn't really until I personally had to deal with it. I really was involved with a particular person who I had a very small business venture a couple of years ago that didn't make any money. It didn't last very long, but it was long enough to make my life a super living hell, living hell. And I also realized at that same time that my husband and I were dealing with a family member who was also a covert narcissist. And we had a friend, we have a friend who's a clinical psychologist. He's a, has a doctorate in psychology, a German guy who's super smart, probably one of

the smartest people we know. And he pointed out to us that these people in our lives were a covert narcissist. And I remember thinking when he said that, I was like, oh, I don't think they're a narcissist. I mean, because to me, when he said that word, first of all, I don't know why, no reason at all, but I thought a narcissist was always a male, I don't know. And to me, a narcissist was a big, mouth-ragging person who filled the room, told everybody how great they were. The person who went into the restaurant, demanded the best table, held court wherever they go. Yeah.

That was a narcissist to me. I don't know, but that was the vision in my mind. And so when he mentioned these people were a covert narcissist, I thought, what the hell is that? I never even heard that word before. So he recommended some books. And the first book I read, we happened to be on an airplane and I was like embarrassing my husband. We were actually on our way back to Naples

and I'm like reading this book out loud going, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, these are these people, oh my god, oh my god, my husband's, these are these people. Oh my god, oh my god. My husband's like, you need to be quiet. I'm like, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. These are these people. Oh my god, oh my god.

And it was so eye-opening for me that I ended up reading like a hundred books on narcissism and I just dove into it so much. And I realized, I had already been speaking on negotiation for many years. I had been the keynote speaker for the American Bar Association. I had already written, negotiate like you matter. I had already been doing this for years and years.

And I realized, oh, I can apply when I'm learning about narcissism. Would I've already seen this personality for years? I just didn't realize what it was. I can apply this to what I already know about negotiation and that's how it all came together. National security experts are warning. Our aging power grid is more vulnerable than ever.

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that hasn't had to deal with it or doesn't have these people in their lives. Whether it's a family member, whether it's a business, in your career, I mean, you have had to deal with them or you're going to have to deal with them again. And so you might as well know had to deal with them or you're going to have to deal with them again. And so you might as well know how to deal with them in a way that allows you to continue to feel powerful, allows you to, you know, to set yourself up so that you continue to feel honored, valued, and respected in a way that nothing and no one can ever

infringe on that ever again. Oh, that sounds so empowering to me. I want to feel that way. What are some of the strategies that you suggest we should employ in order to feel that way? Well, you just have to understand that I always say this, that the not-so-secret secret is that they are way more afraid of you than you are of them. Even though it does not look that way on the outside, because I'm thinking back to my own unique experience

and this woman tried to project that she was incredibly confident and in charge of everything and flying high above everything. However, I know this person extremely well, she was incredibly insecure, you know, eating disorders. So many issues behind the scenes that people did not know about. And again, I'm not, you know, going to get into that. But there were so many issues if you knew this person well, that it was almost comical to see how other people would be you heard. Correct. I always think of it as sort of like the Wizard of Oz. So you remember how the Wizard of

Oz had like built up this whole like Emerald City, this whole thing, this big facade. You get there and there's like this big projection of this thing, this talking massive head, scary looking thing, the talking, massive head, scary looking thing. But behind the curtain, it was this feeble little, you know, man who was like not scary at all, who was like actually super scared of everybody. That's what's really going on. So is the first step to take when you're dealing with a narcissist to reframe it as I'm dealing with someone who's incredibly weak and insecure? You just have to understand that what's driving them is always that they need to feed their ego.

I mean that they have this, there's only one thing that ever motivates them and that's what we call narcissistic supply. I mean, for people who are not narcissists, we're motivated by many different things. I mean, we can be motivated by wanting to take care of our children. We can be motivated by wanting to be healthy. We can be motivated by wanting to take care of our families or do good in the world. Whatever it is, right? Leave a legacy. I mean, there's many different things that motivate us.

They're not motivated by many different things. They're only motivated by narcissistic supply, feeding that ego, making sure that it's only thing that I think that I think that is that I think that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that

is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the only thing that I think that is the that made them believe that they have to survive and for them to survive, no one else can. And so they have to have. And so they can't give to anyone else because they have to have. Can't we just choose not to deal with someone like this?

Because as I'm listening to you explain this individual, I can't stand them. Already, I want no part of them. I want to fire them from my life. Well, that's what you have to do. I mean, I always just say, Namaste and walk away. I mean, that you just have to understand

that you have to have, I mean, if they have to be in your life, you have to understand how to have very, very strict boundaries about them. Because, you know, I mean, a lot of people say, can they change? Can they change? I mean, I've interviewed psychologists, psychiatrists.

I got to interview Dr. Bande Lee, who wrote that book about Trump, you know, the, the, the, where she interviewed, the 27 different psychiatrists and psychologists. And she's like this scooper expert on narcissism and you know from what I understand, I mean I'm not a psychiatrist just a psychologist but from what I understand in interviewing all of them, they can change but you know they have to really really want to, they'd have to sit in a chair with one of these mental health professionals and be very, very dedicated to wanting to change. And so that's the problem with them. I mean, I think the percentage of them that are reformed and changed is probably pretty small.

And so for those of you out there who are listening, who are in these relationships, I think that your chances of happiness are probably a whole lot better by moving on and finding somebody who's actually healthy, then spitting in this and hoping for change with the person that you're with. I mean, that's my take on it because I just kind of doubt that this person probably will change. So, a lot of people listening right now are wondering or whether you're thinking about

a personal relationship or you're thinking about a business relationship, they're wondering, I wonder if my person actually is a narcissist or maybe I'm misreading this, especially when it comes to the covert narcissist, are there specific things that you can say, okay, if this person exhibits A, B, or C, then they definitely are a narcissist. see then they definitely are in narcissists. Yeah, I mean, there's a list from the DSM-5 that the psychiatrist and psychologist use and it's entitlement, no boundaries. I mean, they have like seven different things that they look at. But I look at it as kind of like a spectrum, to be honest with you. I think that probably all of us have exhibit traits of it

sometimes, you know what I mean? But it's the people who are the pathological. They're like on the end of the spectrum that they're just like that all the time where they just have absolutely no ability to have any care or empathy for other people ever, and they only ever care about themselves because they are in that survival mode at all times. Those are the people.

All of us are sometimes selfish. I mean, that doesn't mean that we're a narcissist, right? All of us as humans want to feel seen, heard, and know that we matter. That doesn't make us a narcissist. That just makes us a human being. And it doesn't make you a narcissist. If you say something good about yourself, if you are proud of an accomplishment that you've had, I mean, that doesn't make you a narcissist either. That could actually make you more confident. I would think that if you are willing to stand up and feel good about the things that you do that are positive. Yeah, confidence doesn't make you a narcissist. It's when you're entitled and demanding and jealous and petty and and you're lining up the flying monkeys against people and you you know it's that deep sense of insecurity and you're really just only for yourself and never for anyone other than yourself. Then that's really what the narcissist is about.

You just remind your back of something so funny that, and I believe, and you'll tell me if this is correct, that narcissists might attempt to trick people occasionally. And so let me give you a specific example of the woman that fired me. I remember a couple years before she fired me. She started advocating and asking me, oh, can you introduce me to the people on the woman's network or the women's this or that. And I would, of course, you know, she was someone I worked with. Of course, I would

make the introduction. Next thing I knew, she's buying her way onto these boards. So suddenly, she's a leader of the women in media, for example, initiative and starting to show up as an advocate for women in business. And I remember saying to myself, that's so funny. It doesn't seem like the person that I know, but okay, you know, I guess this is a new initiative for her. And great, you know, and then we all know how it plays out. So almost creating this fake persona so that other people outside in the world would see and perceive her one way that didn't align with what people who were very close to her knew who she was. Oh yes, absolutely, because how they look to the world is always that diamond level of supply. You know, I always call that the diamond level supply versus, you know, what I call the coal level supply, these are my words, you know, which is the dark underbelly of supply, which is controlling people, devaluing people, debasing people, which is what, you know, they

also get, that also feeds their ego, but that's not what the world necessarily sees, you know. I mean, so there's kind of two sides of things that feed their egos. That's the top level of what feeds their ego is what the world sees. Both feed their ego, both sides feed their ego, and both are important. And by the way, when it comes to negotiating with them, that's where the leverage is going to come in. You know, so when you talk about my slay methodology, developing strategy is number one,

which is the S, and then L is that leverage, and looking at what's actually motivating them, you have to look at that narcissistic supply. That's the key to the kingdom right there because it's all driven by their supply. So you look at the diamond level supply, the coal level supply, which is that what was driving her, which was controlling you, making you squirm, intimidating you, making you feel bad, devaluing you. She got supply from that. They enjoy that.

They get off on that. You know what, so funny, you just gave me a visual yet again in my head. This is so crazy. You are so right. And then I'm just gonna say that this is like an awakening moment for me. Again, I never thought about this.

However, the day that she actually fired me, she put two pieces of paper in front of me. One said, Heather's been fired. The other one was a beautiful letter about how wonderful I am and how, you know, I basically am going on to do my own things and the company supports me and loves me. And if I sign that one, I would get a big check, which she knew money drove me, right? And hope that it would. And then I'd have to sign off on a non disparaging agreement so I could never speak to any experience I had in the company

Never say anything bad about the company once I left so obviously she wanted me to sign the beautiful memo take the big check and She was hoping that she was gonna leverage my want for cash, you know in order to do that or maybe for ego She thought that I'd want the beautiful memo to go out however I was so sick of being bullied by this woman at this point in time in that moment. And she was all smile. She was so happy. I was so sad. I felt like I was losing everything I had worked so hard for.

I was wrong there. But in that moment, I felt like I was at loss. And she was so happy to be doing this. And in my mind, I remember processing for one second and saying, don't react, respond. No, I'm not going to take her money. She's bullied me. She's held me over, you know, her demands, her commands for money long enough. No, I'm not going to let her anymore. This is my moment that I'm going to change everything. And I just remember pushing the papers and saying, not signing either one. I didn't write either one. And if you have nothing else to say to me,

I'm leaving. And Rebecca, in that second, she went from all smiles and excited to her face almost crumbled. She can beat red. It was like a cartoon. And in that moment, I took all my confidence back. I stood up so proud of myself. Granted, I was super scared about where do I go next? How am I going to make money?

And, you know, I'm not going to minimize that. That was horrible feeling. But for that one split second, when I took all the power out of that situation and room, I just felt so proud of me. I knew it was the right thing, even though it was super scary. And when you were explaining the narcissistic behavior,

I could just see how in a moment, I really had her there. Yeah, you took that supply from her because she was going to be so happy that she was able to like, you know, intimidate you with that. There you go. It's a perfect example. Perfect example. You grab that leverage from her. But when people are dealing with a narcissist that they have to for whatever reason, maybe it's a short business deal or, you know, something that they have to get through, How do you recommend people typically leverage knowing

it is a narcissist to their benefit? Well, it's always gonna be tied up in narcissistic supply. So the perfect way, there's always gonna be some balance between figuring out a way to threaten a source of narcissistic supply that's going to be more important for them to keep or maintain than the supply that they got from jerking you around. If you're struggling with swelling in your legs, ankles or feet, you're going to want

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you're going to cater to them. Is that a strategy that you use? Well, that's more of a battle, not a war. That's a battle strategy, not a war strategy. So I call that bartering. If you want them to do something that I give the example sometimes like can you do the quick books today? You're so much better at math and I am so you know something like that, you know, get them to do something. You want them to do. I call it narcissistic fluffing. You fluff up their ego to get them to do something. So that's more of a battle strategy, not a war strategy.

So but for sure, that's a great strategy. I call it bartering. So for sure, when you are setting people up, you mentioned you've done so much work on negotiation, becoming an expert negotiation, even if someone's not dealing with a narcissist, they're just going into negotiation, what are some of the basic tips that you give people to set them up for success? Oh gosh, there are so many. I would say the main thing for sure is mindset. I mean, I used to say 80% of winning a negotiation

is mindset. And then I interviewed Bob Proctor and he corrected me on my own podcast. He said, 99% you know, and in some ways, maybe it is 99%, but I don't want to discount, you know, research and all that sort of thing, you know, but definitely mindset is so important. And you wrote a book on confidence. I mean, and confidence is really, really important. And you define your value, you and you alone

define your value. And people will think what you tell them to think. You tell people what to think of you. You project that by how you show up, by how you speak, by the words that you choose, by the body language that you choose. Rebecca, will you share that story of your coach? I love this story of your coach around how you flipped around a situation where you had been in law, you were leaving law, you were coming back to law. So, yeah, I had been in law and then I went and I did a couple of years as a financial planner

and then I went back to the law because I, a friend of mine, she was leaving her law practice and so she basically said, here's my law practice. It was a very small law practice and she kind of dumped it in my lap and I was like, okay, no one is ever going to dump a law practice in my lap. Like, this is really great. I get to have like, it was like 12 clients. It was a small practice, but it was enough for me to like have a runway to get started with a practice. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to do it. But then, you know, it was in Naples, Florida, which you were familiar with. And, you know, it was in Naples, Florida, which you were familiar with.

And, you know, it's a small community, but it's like a few hundred thousand people. It's not like small, small, small, I mean, but it's small enough that, and it's a very affluent community, and everybody pretty much knows each other. And I just thought, oh my God, the people around here are just gonna think

I made super flake. Like, she was in law, now she's, you know, was a financial planner, and now she's back to law again. Everybody's going to think I'm such a flake. And I remember my business coach who's still one of my very best friends, and I still go back to her when I need, you know, to get my head like readjusted. And she said, people will think what you tell them to think. And I looked at her and she said, well, you can tell them to think that you're a flake or you can tell them to think that you're the only family law attorney that

has a financial background. So you're actually more qualified than any of the other family law attorneys. So which story do you want to tell? Oh, that lot of attorneys. So which story do you wanna tell? Oh, that's so powerful. Yeah. And I was like, oh, okay.

I'll tell that story. And so that's how I decided to show up. And I ended up creating a business plan for myself. And not only did I crush my numbers, I did way better than my numbers. And I ended up creating the largest family law practice in Naples. And I mean, it was so busy that I mean,

I literally didn't need to even step outside my doors to do any networking. By the time I decided to merge my practice four years ago, I had people showing up in my office to like hand me $25,000 checks to my receptionist to say, I'm retaining Rebecca. Here's the check. My receptionist came back and said, this guy just dropped out of this check and said he's retaining you. And I was like, no, I get a say.

I'm like, people don't just get to retain me. I get to choose. Like it was that unbelievable. So when you decide that people will think what you tell them to think, that's how powerful it shows up. That is such an amazing example of going from feeling flighty and flaky and discouraged and doubting success to literally flipping it on its head,

completely reframing it and leveraging that to be your unique value proposition. Absolutely. I mean, and becoming top 1%, top 1% attorney, which means, you know, and how that gets measured, by the way, is best lawyers in America by US news and top 1% by National Association of Distinguished Council and legal elite by trend magazine, you know, if you look at all of those, it's the top 1% of attorneys in the country. And these are percent of attorneys in the country. And these are federated magazines. I mean, these are not like fly by night things that you pay. You don't pay US news to like choose you or anything like that. No, but it's good that you differentiate because these days, and I actually did a post recently about this,

there are opportunities in certain outlets that you can buy your way. And so I'm glad that you said that sometimes media can be misleading. However, somewhere in the article, it is disclosed that it is a paid opportunity. And yes, the articles that you're mentioning are no one can get in there.

No one can buy their way in there. It's not happening. It's only from hard work and success. So congrats on that recognition, because that's massive. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Rebecca, I know everyone's massive. Thank you. Thank you. Well Rebecca, I know everyone's wanting to find out more about you. They're going to want to get more information.

And I know you have a free ebook that you're going to be offering everybody as well. Can you tell us about it? Yes, absolutely. So I have a free thing. Go to winmynegotiation.com. It's a free ebook. It's my Crush My Negotiation, Crep Worksheet. It's 15 pages. It's super cool. And you can just

download it. WinMyNegotiation.com is the URL that you go to, grab it. I've had literally thousands and thousands of people get it and win their entire negotiations on it. So definitely make sure you get that. And check out my YouTube channel for sure. I mean, if you go in and you just type negotiate with a narcissist, you will most definitely find me. But the URL for it is youtube.com forward slash Rebecca's ESQ, if you want to find it directly. But for sure, I am the only attorney on the planet that's teaching people how to negotiate with narcissists. So easy to find me.

And thank goodness you are. I had no idea I had been dealing with one for years. I could have used all this information Rebecca back then, but so grateful to have it. Now, I will put links to everything in the show notes. Rebecca, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. No one succeeds alone in the distance. You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You can miss it. I'm on this journey with me. I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. I'm Jennifer Cohen, host the top ranking business and entrepreneur podcast, Habitson Hustle, apart the YAP media network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. So most people live the life they get

and not the life they want. And I'm here to change all that. My goal with each episode is to give you the habits and hustle tips you need to show up to your life better, bigger, and bolder. Tune in now, and I'll not only help you answer the questions like what do you want most in life and why don't you have it, but we'll also help you make the questions like, what do you want most in life and why don't you have it,

but will also help you make it a reality. I also pick the brains of top thought leaders on how they've gone to the top and the advice they have to help you get there too. Head over to Habits and Hussle once you've done listening to this episode and get one step closer to boldness, one episode at a time. get one step closer to boldness, one episode at a time.