If you’ve been waiting for the tea behind the internet bully who got me kicked off meta, but you need it spiked with some business tips – this is the email for you.

 

I have nothing left to lose, but the person’s name will be anonymous because I’m not a raging asshole.

 

 

She sent me an invoice for unpaid services from years ago.

 

Services I didn’t explicitly remember, but hey – we were tight, I hired her loads and our friendship sorta faded as I went through my divorce.

 

I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and my card number.

 

 

I go look her up… read her site… pull up my site… read my own copy…

 

Uh, what?

 

I asked for more information and she quoted a line of body text from my website that was semi-similar to hers, at best.

 

At this point, I’m just annoyed but I explain I don’t see the similarity but offer to change up my wording.

 

No biggie. Just a little type-y type, and we’d be good!

 

 

A few days later and someone had a specific need on Threads, so I decided to tag and refer K.

 

(That’s what we’re gonna call her, OKAY)

 

She blocked me! Rude. No more referrals for her…

 

Then, all sorts of my shit started to get pulled down from Instagram. Nearly every promotional post or me selling in Stories would get flagged, and I played Meta’s appeal game for MONTHS.

 

Internally, I blamed their AI system and being the unluckiest person in the world.

 

 

Sus or not, I let it go until the reports upgraded from generally flagging my content to being accusations of “infringement of another person’s intellectual property.”

 

My appeals stopped getting responses, and I racked up marks against my account.

 

I was under the impression it was the “AI technology” detecting my content incorrectly and I was confident I'd get it back.

 

I fought meta solo, hired an attorney and after I neared my 30-day deadline before my account would be deleted entirely, I wrote “Meta Suspended my Instagram on Launch Day 1 (How to prevent & solve this for yourself)” on July 22nd.

 

Then I met Isaiah Juarez on LinkedIn, who has close connections at Meta and won a large case against Facebook a couple years prior.

 

 

Yay Isaiah!

 

In August, we learned my account’s case was still open – very unusual for an account facing deletion.

 

We finally got our eyeballs on the reports against my account, since Meta requires anyone reporting content for IP infringement to provide personal details.

 

 

And there was so much.

 

Since I don’t stay still long, I created another Instagram account when our cases and appeals processed.

 

It was removed pretty quickly. We don’t yet know if it was due to repeated reporting like my original account, or an auto-suspension because of an associated IP address, but I called it quits.

 

 

Instead of freaking the fuck out, I like to practice separating truth from emotion.

 

 

I saw screenshots of people posting about my situation, using me as an example of why you “need to build an email list!”

 

Lol, because I regularly email my healthily growing list 3x a week.

 

But okay.

 

I was mad.

 

 

But none of it mattered.

 

(I later find out she’s pivoted into a humor-related market, so maybe a guilty conscience)

 

 

So I had to close the $4k gap.

 

I asked myself a lot of questions and I pushed back on a lot of internalized business “rules.” I analyzed how past clients bought and picked up on patterns.

 

My immediate, most impactful takeaways will help you control & grow your own business, so pay attention:

 

This is why “grow an email list” isn’t the backup plan to losing your social that people think it is.

 

My open rates average 62%, click through rates average 3.2% and I receive multiple replies per email I send out – but NONE of that matters if the sales journey is not designed to end in an email.

 

 

So when the DMs were cut out, it was like cutting off the tip of a hose and leads just started spraying everywhere.

 

Your marketing is full of touch points and it’s beautiful that a sale can happen anywhere, but if you don’t strategize and design where most sales are to take place – you don’t have a controllable or predictable sales strategy.

 

I decided how I would design the sales journey to end in email, and how I could “train” people to make buying decisions through an email.

 

Given the time crunch, I created more touch points WITHIN the emails. 

 

For example, I launched Stand Up Copy and offered different mediums to learn more about the program that re-routed to the email.

 

While obviously not an option, shifting 1:1 outreach and follow ups to email set expectations that buying conversations happen in the inbox.

 

And it worked.

 

When people experience me – they buy from me.

 

Call me cocky, but I knew if I needed to pull 2 high-ticket projects to close the gap last minute – I could just book a few sales calls and close them easy.

 

I’m great at sales and could literally sell dog shit.

 

But that is not my business model, and I didn’t want to deviate from my brand or offer suite.

 

 

Or 1:1 voice messages.

 

I needed to turn up the dial.

 

When I did follow-up and outreach from my CRM, I made casual Loom videos.

 

I also started to include 3-5 minute walkthrough videos for offers and shared sample trainings as a way to learn more about Stand Up Copy.

 

And even in my newsletter, you may have noticed I created a few off-the-cuff talking head videos of content I could’ve just typed.

 

I also introduced Queso Kikis, and personally helped people 1:1 for free. Out of the people I spoke to, only 3 people didn’t end up working with me in some way.

 

And 1 was already a student. ;)

 

$30 digital products aren’t for the faceless DiGiTaL mArKeTiNg girlies on Threads, and $500 offers aren’t for newbs.

 

Last year, I successfully leveraged a $34 offer to ramp up to a $17k launch.

 

 

I played with variations of this until I found a great upsell and downsell strategy for each offer so I’m not relying on isolated launches to hold me over.

 

If your offer suite is a mess, I highly recommend Ceels Lockley’s freebie, The Line Up, to map out yours in 10 mins.

 

She should charge you for it but whatever.

 

I leaned into my micro-offers to lighten the stress put on my launches to go PERFECT. I had a warm-up strategy, upsells, downsells and BTS offers as well.

 

After running my Revenue Timeline through ChatGPT, it showed I had sales coming in from 13 different sources.

 

And I can tell you: it didn’t feel like I was selling 13 things at all.

 

 

 

K: 0

Emelie: 1

 

– Emelie

 

ps – My next email is going to be significantly shorter (lol) and about what I learned being off Instagram/Threads and what I’m doing next.