The bridges had been burned.

Yeah, I had been doing real estate full time for two years, and on the back end of that lawsuit, essentially, we got- we're able to cut loose all the properties, and net at the end of the day, we're like, "Okay, cool.

We made it out alive, kind of." We had close to $300,000 in debt at the end of that.

That was basically personal debt of, like, business credit cards and private lenders that we still had to pay back, and this was right before I came out to the two-day.

All of that had just happened.

My wife comes home.

Can you talk about, like, your mindset there?

Yeah.

Lady, that makes it worse.

I have hired you, so you will do as I say.

I have awaited this day for so long.

I will savor this moment.

And besides...

I just don't like her methods.

Look at that cop car over there.

That's what he did to us.

But, um, yeah, definitely a first for me.

Freshman year I was set up on a formal date, uh, to a sorority formal with a girl I'd never met, a girl I had no idea who she was.

And the way it works here is, like, the sororities have, like, big buses, like, fun party buses that will, uh, take you to the venue.

And this venue was about an hour away for some reason, and I got put on the last bus.

That was me, my date, and then two other couples.

So there's only six of us.

Okay.

The formal, the, the venue was in San Francisco.

[laughs]

... um, with a laptop [laughs] connected to the receiver, and it plays it to every headphone.

And you can even set it up where there's channels, where, like, they sle- select what channel they wanna be on, and whatever color their headphone is is what channel they're on.

Okay.

Like, I would say, like, yeah, I would say, like, they probably identify more often with their Black side because their skin color's not white, but...

Uh, Cole, you gotta go UPC Pentecostal.

No, can't do that.

Yeah.

I...

Yeah.

I mean, we've talked about it.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, I'm trying to...

It's not about, like, trying to prove each other right or wrong.

I'm just, like, trying to see her, and she's trying to see me.

Going around the room, what is the most important thing everyone has learned about love and relationships from this process? Let's start with you, Cole.

Do you agree with-

with-Yeah, from what I remember, yeah.

It's just something like that.

I think it was kinda like me going like, "Let's try it out," go through, like, the process, which is so long, you know, to even get on a show like that.

And it just kept kinda snowballing to the next round of interviews, and before you know it, we're on, like, a family trip in Lake Tahoe, and we're sneaking up to the bedroom upstairs to do an interview.

Honestly, a little surprised to hear that you had the reluctance and you were the one who almost kind of encouraged you guys to go.

I don't think I encouraged it or it was reluctance.

I think it was, like, she...

Which was?

It, it was very abusive, like, emotionally and, um, mentally.

So I learned...

I mean, I've learned recently through a, a lot of, a, a lot of counseling in, in the past couple months.

Like, I, I would go right to my head and deal with, or I would try to deal with a lot of things without really, like, addressing how it was making either one of us feel, me or Leah.

And, like, I think, like, the fears and, and, like, the trauma from the abuse, it was enough for me to pretend like everything was all good on that side, and I didn't want it to show up in the relationship with Leah.

So I would, I would talk it down a lot, though.

Like, when she's at mom's house, can she watch different movies than, than when she's... or eat different things? Or are, are you guys at least communicating about, like, "Hey, we hate each other, but, like, we both want the same thing for our kid," so, like, what does that look like? Or is there compromises there?

[laughs]

... and came outside.

I wanna let you know no one was harmed.

The, the, the situation was completely cleared up.

I mean, the guy learned about the game, went back inside, you know, made sure to put the gun away.

Your kid is completely safe.

We just wanna let you know this won't be happening again.

[laughs]

Can you talk a little bit more about, about the kind of the, the actual effects of the understaffing and how that sort of drove people into the campaign?

Yeah.

I, I would be more than happy to.

I mean, one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats.

So when I first started working at the shop, it was around two years ago.

They had just recently introduced DoorDash.

So previously, you know, obviously it started, it was just a cafe.

Mm-hmm