We got a DEATH threat… How to deal with haters

Summary

• I'm Leila Hormozi, co-CEO of acquisition.com, which generates about 85 million per year in revenue through a portfolio of businesses.
• I've built multiple companies to over eight and nearly nine figures and waited to share advice until I felt credible enough.
• Dealing with hate and criticism is inevitable, especially when your content reaches new audiences and your profile rises.
• The more you stand out and strive to be extraordinary, the more hate you'll receive—it comes with the territory of being rich and famous.
• You can't make the hate stop, and trying to do so means you may become inauthentic. If the hate stops, so does the love—you have to be true to yourself.
• My mental frameworks for handling hate and criticism involve resetting expectations, being curious, and expecting hatred as part of success.
• The "50/50 Principle" means that with increased love comes increased hate. Realized this when facing backlash from high Facebook ad costs in our Gym Launch community.
• "Curiosity Over Criticism" turns initial defensive reactions into attempts to understand the critic's perspective, like when an ex-client made a death threat.
• "Expecting Hatred" means understanding that success brings both admiration and hate. You must expect both and prepare for the negative to handle it well.
• Ultimately, hate is a reflection of the hater's issues, not a testament to your actions, so focus on your own path and keep moving forward.
• Use these frameworks to build your resilience and anticipate challenges as you aim for higher levels of success.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing a few strategies to handle hate and criticism as you grow your business or work on personal development. First, reset your expectations. Know that as you stand out and become extraordinary, hate is part of the journey. Remember the "50/50 Principle": with increased love comes increased hate. For example, when experiencing backlash, I realized that it wasn't a failure on my part, but just a balance of success.

Another good way of doing things is to use "Curiosity Over Criticism." Instead of getting defensive, try to understand where the critic is coming from. When I received death threats from an ex-client, I didn't retaliate; instead, I wondered about their life story and why they were projecting hate towards me.

You should also "Expect Hatred." When you achieve something great, expect both admiration and hate. Plan for how you will handle the negative reactions as well as the positive. This mindset will help you prepare and not be caught off guard.

Focus on what matters to you and your path. Hate often reflects the hater's issues, not your actions. Keep moving forward by building your resilience and anticipating challenges. Implement these mental frameworks to help you stay true to yourself and your goals as you aim for higher levels of success. Remember, the hate isn't about you; it's about them. Keep your focus on your actions, your growth, and the love that comes your way, too.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"The price of love is hate"

– Leila Hormozi

"Life is 50 50"

– Leila Hormozi

"Curiosity over criticism"

– Leila Hormozi

"Expecting hatred is so important"

– Leila Hormozi

"No matter how good you are, you have to expect the hate"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

what is up my name is laila hormozy i'm co-ceo of acquisition.com which is a portfolio of businesses that does about 85 million per year in revenue i don't sell coaching i don't do courses i just put this content out there to hopefully help and kind of get past all the crap that's out there that's fake you know i've built multiple companies to over eight figures and nearly nine and so i feel like i have enough credibility to put things out there now and i didn't do so along the way because i didn't feel like i had the credibility at that point and that being said that kind of ties in with the video that i wanted to make today which was my mental frameworks around dealing with hate and criticism and the reason i want to make this video is because a lot of people have asked for it and a lot of people have asked they asked me that all the time right but it actually became more relevant to me recently and so i think that the reason for that is i had a few pieces of content on separate platforms that really took off and because those pieces of content took off i was exposed to like a new level of audience and people that i hadn't been before and all these things came pouring in all this hate that i hadn't seen in a long time and i felt like now is the time to make this video because it's relevant to me and honestly i'm just like not apathetic at this point in time what i wanted to start out is just explaining what the three mental frameworks are and how i apply them to dealing with criticism and hate because here's the reality is that like if you want to do big in life people are gonna hate you and the cooler you are the more unique you are the more different you are than others which is often required to become extraordinary then the more people are going to hate you and i think that a lot of times we expect the love to increase but we do not expect the hate to increase it's like everyone's like i want to be rich and famous and they want to be rich and famous because they think that there's a feeling behind the rich and the famous that they want to acquire and it's love and admiration and inspiration all these things and the reality is is that rich and famous comes with all the opposites as well which is hatred you know demeaning cruelty all these things right because people see you and all of a sudden you create so much insecurity within themselves right because they see you and you would you have all of these things that they want and that maybe even go against the reality of what's possible and so therefore they project their hate on to you and so if you want to do big in life which i hope if you're watching my channel you do you're gonna have to learn how to deal with it it's not something that you can try and i think a lot of people they're like how do i get the hate to stop and i'm like dude what the you can't get the hate to stop like you don't get the hate to stop and you don't want it to stop because if the hate stops love stop which means you aren't doing something correctly which means that you're not being yourself you're probably not being the authentic version of yourself that you are because you're probably pushing out because you're afraid that people are going to keep hating on you and you're like i can't take it i can't read the comments i can't get all these messages like yes you can't and so i tell you that because i take it it's first person i'm partially just telling myself because it's something i work on every day and particularly right now in my life it's not going to work on consistently you know like alex will walk in he's like what are you doing i'm like building new mental frameworks to deal with this he's like seriously and i'm like yeah like i i have to because if you want to be able to get to that level which i do i want to be a billionaire and like the only reason i want to do that is to show others it's possible i know that it's going to be way harder than it is now so this the stuff that i'm dealing with now the stuff that you're dealing with now that's just the beginning and so if you know that what you're dealing with right now is only the beginning what can you do to ensure that you have a healthy way to process this so you can move on and actually do big with your life because this doesn't matter and so there's three frameworks that i use and honestly these are not frameworks that i got from someone else who youtubed these are like i was thinking to myself like what do i do in my own brain to deal with this stuff because like one thing that i talk about a lot and that people know me are like you have a really healthy sense of self in the sense that like i don't rely on outside opinions to dictate how i feel about myself like if i complete a task i am proud of myself and i'm my own best friend and if nobody else notices i don't care but because of that i've never felt like i'm super affected by other's opinions but each level you get to if things get louder things become new there's all this new stuff that's coming at you it's something you have to acclimate to and so i hope that this helps you the first is the 50 50 principle okay and this is for life in general but it especially applies to criticism hate so i had a coach and this was about six years ago it was right before we started gym launch the coach was like he started talking about success and what the price of successes and i said well okay what is success right and he's like success is love and love and admiration from others and all these things and he said the price of love is hate and at that point in time i've never really had a ton of hate from people like maybe from like my hometown and like people who knew me and you know whatever but not like real hate and i was like ooh that like rings really true that makes sense to me and i was like why he's like well the more people that love you the more people that hate you it's the 50 50 rule of life everything is 50 50. to everything that is good there is something that is bad right for every person who something is good for them to somebody else is bad for them and so i think that was something that really got me through uh i want to say it was 2019 actually which was when we started to launch in 2016 and everything was going hunky-dory into 2019 when the cost of facebook ads is becoming so so high that people in our community literally started to turn on us and they're like this is insane like you aren't doing your job the cost of your ads is too high and alex and i are like dude like we know that's only you all watching this i'm sure you know you're like that's how platforms work they get more expensive over time but if people have never used a platform before and if they're just now using it with your company then they expect that you should keep those costs low at all times and over the years as it continued to rise and we beat our asses into the ground trying to figure out how to get it lower and lower and they were honestly as low as they could possibly be people still hated us for it and i remember like walking into facebook one day and there was an entire group of people that was like ex-gym watch clients and it was like 110 people that were just talking and the crazy part to that was those people had been our biggest fans three years prior two years prior one year prior and i remember just thinking myself like holy it's so true like the price of love is hate and those who deeply deeply love you many times end up hating you later on and the reason they did that with us is because they viewed us as heroes right like we came and saved the day for them which you know what that means when the day gets gloomy outside is they look at alex and layla and say you you ruined my day right they didn't take personal responsibility and so that was probably the first like real dose of hate that i got seeing that those everywhere getting messages from people saying like you know people hate you right now do you know me people are talking you know people are leaving the program i remember this big dramatic thing and i was like i just honestly at the time like i can be really friend with you like my mind was like i don't give a anybody who talks like that like if you join a hate group you i will like you you're not my people which is what i think today as well but that being said the 50 free framework is one that works for me and it's because i think that we have to reset expectations of what we believe to be true about life itself which is that life is 50 50. and there's nothing you can do to change that and i think that expecting that if you do good you will only receive good and that life is fair and that if you are only trying to help people people should be nice to you none of those things are true we would like them to be true but they're not true and i think that what causes us so much pain and what used to cause me a lot of pain is just thinking like if i'm just trying to help and if i'm really doing my best then why would people hate me people hate you because of themselves not because of you it took me too long to understand that now the second framework that i use when i'm confronted with some of this is really just curiosity over criticism like the first automatic reaction that we all get when someone says something really shitty about us right it's like you look at them you're like you piece of scumbag go die right at least that's what i think like if i'm really frank that's like my animal brain it's like it looks at you it's like you i'm gonna kill you we're like you i'm gonna be so good i'm gonna leave you so far in the dust and you're gonna eat your words that's what i think right that's the immediate reaction i have like i'm human i'm not like better than this but within five seconds i can change it to curiosity and the curiosity is why would this person hate me so dearly what kind of life situation is this person in that they have so much hate toward me and then i honestly try and understand it the first time i ever had to really use this was alex and i were hosting an event and we actually had a death threat and it was in a letter form and then also through social media and that person was saying that they were going to come to our event and they were going to kill us and i remember just like the first moment that i read it we were actually someone was at our house doing a video interview with us and i just felt sick to my stomach i should take that interview because i was just like so just like horrified that somebody would hate us so much that they would say they're gonna come kill us and they were counting down the days till they could come there and you know reap i don't even know what it was it was like you know judgment on us and i was like good lord like you're nuts you know i had to think to myself because this person had been an ex-client an ex-client which is crazy right like someone who did really well in our program and they hadn't been a client for like a year and so it made absolutely no sense to me or alex and so i really had to go through why would a person do this and honestly the reality i confronted with that was you know i put their paths together i looked at what they were doing nowadays i was like they used to be a drug addict they got out of drugs maybe they're back on drugs maybe it did some brain damage maybe this or that and they look at us and they have all this hate in their their body and in themselves and then they just say i'm gonna go put it on you because you can take it and i can't i am so weak that i cannot take my own self-hatred therefore i must project it onto you because you are strong enough to take it i'm serious people can't hold their own hate for themselves because they let themselves down all the time they aren't where they want to be in life they don't look how they want to look you know they constantly let themselves down their dreams that they say i have to put on someone else because i'm too weak to handle it that's seriously what people do and so if you approach it with the curiosity instead of the criticism right to say why would this person what kind of life must they have what kind of beliefs must they hold to hate me to such a degree for no reason then it becomes a lot easier and it doesn't mean you have to like those people like you can hear to my voice like i don't like these people i would never associate with these people is so far beyond my realm of comprehension that i don't get it you know and maybe one day i won't care at all and i'll be like oh i feel bad for them and i love them i don't feel like that you know and i have friends who are like you know mental health all this i'm like you know your mental health like i'm not gonna go like somebody who says these mean ass things like that's just not in my parts and you know what i don't want to that's just who i am and so that's the second framework is the curiosity is really just playing out what's the story of their life so that they would hate you so much because it has nothing to do with you ever just has to do with them right the last piece is expecting hatred and the reason this one is so important is because we expect that when we achieve these things in life that we when we achieve material success we achieve aesthetically what we want to achieve we achieve the marriage we want to achieve when we treat anything we expect only love and admiration inspiration we expect people to love us because that's most the time why we want to achieve those things because we expect it to come with a feeling and that feeling will take us out of whatever pain we're in which is just the human experience and instead when we get there there's the other side of it which goes back to the 50 50 rule which is that there's lots of hate there's lots of putting down there's lots of anger there's lots of frustration towards you and it's because you have to expect it the reason that it gets so much worse and the reason that if you get it it feels so terrible is because you don't expect it you think that it is one way when it is another it's just like you know you look at instagram you look at all these people and these famous people and actors and actresses and you're probably thinking like it must be nice to be rich and famous right like that's a lot of people look at and think but it's like you don't know what the other side is you know some people have to walk around with bodyguard all day often what we do is instead of expecting the hatred and i know that i did this in my past is that i was like i don't need to expect hatred because i'll just be perfect which is like i'll be in great shape i will be beautiful i will marry someone amazing i will be extremely successful i will have all these things and therefore nobody will be able to hate on me and i believe that for a long time that like if i built that armor big enough that nobody could penetrate it right and it's worked to a degree but here's the thing people who want to hate and who cannot bear it themselves will always find something to hate on it's the same with any artist out there right you always want to pick the one little flaw about them and extrapolate and blow it into this huge thing and so to think that by being perfect in your mind in all these areas of life that you're not going to get the hate it's not true so instead you need to expect the hate and anytime you achieve something anytime you achieve success any time you get to the next level don't just picture what the good is going to look like picture what the bad is going to look like and then ask yourself how you're going to handle it and i think that that has been probably my number one framework is to absolutely expect it like if i post a piece of content that i think is awesome i'm gonna expect that people hate it because people want to hate me just because they want to hate me because they have nowhere else to put their hate and so remember that no matter what you do you have to be able to expect the hate no matter how good the thing you do is no matter how great you are you have to expect the hate because how good you are has nothing to do with how much people hate you and in fact what you'll probably find is that the better you are the more unique you are the louder you are the more true to yourself you are the more people will hit you and you feel like you're doing right and that you should have more love but in reality is you have both love and hate you're just focusing on the wrong one and so those are my three frameworks for how i deal with this you can have all these mental frameworks to deal with hate but at the end of the day you have to remember it has nothing to do with you it has to do with their beliefs their character traits and their tendencies doesn't have to do with you and so with that i hope that that was useful for you i know that this is what helps me and so i will continue to you know share more mental tools as they come up because i'm sure it's never gonna stop and so that being said have a great wednesday tuesday thursday rest of your week i will talk to you soon