The troll knight returns

Many years ago, I remember watching a guy — in real time — go from having success, a solid reputation in his niche, and a growing audience... lose it all because of a single emotionally damaged troll who got in his head. Watching that play out was a formative experience for my business. It was what made me realize some trolls are so broken they really will ruin you if they can. And I also realize that you can’t be nice or reasonable with them. It also taught me you can’t try out-troll them either, by trying to fight their broken emotions. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the comicbook that, from what I understand, literally saved the main Batman title from being cancelled due to low sales and engagement in the 80's. The comicbook was: “The Dark Knight Returns” by Frank Miller. It is about a 55-year old, retired Batman who is pulled back into the game. And one of the threats facing the city is a brutal gang leader who is stronger, faster, younger, and overall tougher than Batman - as well as a thorough savage, and basically a human monster who wants to literally cut off Commissioner Gordon’s head, put it on a stick, and parade it around the city to show his dominance. Very deranged guy. Completely emotionally unhinged and devoid of any humanity. So Batman goes to fight him. And Batman then gets his ass thoroughly kicked. And when it is time for a rematch (there is always a rematch in combook-land…) Batman has a totally different strategy to bring the gang leader down — realizing, as he put it: “My mistake was to try to match his savagery. To fight like a young man” I won’t spoil all of how he does it. But I will spoil some of what happens: Batman wins and the entire gang now follows him. And he wins precisely because he doesn’t try to match the emotional and savage and unhinged state of the gang leader. If anything, he does the exact opposite, uses his mind more than his body, and wins by kicking the gang leader’s ass by fighting him in a muddy pit to slow the gang leader down, making the gang leader's strength & speed a non-factor, with one of my all-time favorite lines: “you don’t get it, boy…this isn’t a mudhole…It’s an operating table. And I’m the surgeon” Then Batman breaks several of the gang leader’s limbs. Ooh... Back to how this relates to trolls: Should your business, your brand, or YOU get trolled personally… as trolls ultimately always make it personal… the very first thing you might want to do is try to match their savagery by getting emotional, angry, lashing out back — and especially publicly on social media or in your emails or somewhere else. Don’t. You can’t match the unhinged state of an online troll and win. They count on you to do that, and feed off it. Just like the guy I saw who basically lost all relevance in his niche found out. You can’t fight them as if you’re as emotionally broken, full of rage from probably a lifetime of rejection, seething with jealousy, and with nothing to lose like they have. If you do, you will lose. And you will not only lose the fight in the eyes of those who watch, but you could lose a lot more than that — including taking hits to your reputation, your sales, and long term leads/clients/prospects. People — good people — often learn this the hard way. And they learn it the hard way because they think it won't happen to them. And when it does they are totally blindsided by it, wondering what happened. And it is all because they don’t understand the troll’s pathology. Nor do they understand what motivates them, what makes them tick, and what drives them. This is why I wrote the March Email Players issue specifically about their pathology. It is short on “how to” tactics and long on the psychology of the troll. Because I believe — and have experienced many times — that by knowing this pathology, which I have learned from a couple decades of dealing with them and probably even longer than that (before business I used to argue with trolls online in forums, etc), you can better and more efficiently monetize them. You can also prevent yourself from making mistakes and handing them victory. And you can better take their unhinged emotional state (especially their self-loathing and emotional projection — which literally all of them do, that’s their entire game) and profit to it from now until you decide not to. I mean that literally. Just one troll outburst can be monetized for years and decades. And to prove it the March Email Players issue shows a turn-by-turn case study of exactly how I have been doing just that with one my all-time favorite troll who I guesstimate by now has been worth nearly six figures in sales across my businesses and still counting. I also show you how FDR did something similar to his trolls. (To win landslide elections while making his trolls look stupid) As well as going deep into teaching a selling philosophy that makes it a lot easier. So that’s that. If you want in on the March Email Players issue you’ll have to hurry. The deadline to subscribe in time is tomorrow. Here is the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA