382 - How to Recover When Meta Shuts You Down

0:04 Good morning podcasting, morning Chat. Today is Monday, October 6th, 2025 and today social shutdowns are back in the spotlight and we're talking recovery, resilience and what to do next. Plus a possible detour into our mailbag. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast or YouTube, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds. We'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host, Mark Ronic, and on stage with me. We've got a packed stage with me. We have Rich Perry, Dr. Fey, producer Ashley Feller, Jonathan Howard, Nick Nalbach, Alex Baelish, Sid Meadows and Phil Better. What is what a crew we've got going on here today. Nine people on stage. And for those that may be new to the podcasting morning chat, you might be thinking nine people. This is going to be a lot of voices. All that coming at me at once. And I assure you we've got this down pretty well. We know how to navigate these conversations with lots of people joining in on stage.

2:05 So don't fret. We got this. We're all good. So today, well, really, let me even backtrack a little further. Let's say probably about two months ago, give or take, it was episode 344, and I actually even brought this episode up. This past week. We tackled what to do when social media suddenly shuts down your podcasts accounts, or your own account for that matter. That was about how to respond in the moment, right? What steps to take when you're locked out, when your shadow band were just naked from the platform.

2:46 But today's conversation picks up where that one left us off because the issue is not going away. We have two examples to discuss today, one being just last week. If you remember Dave Mannheim, my cousin by marriage, he is the host of Dopey Podcast, which started about nine years or so ago. It was a podcast, indie podcast, all about really the the road to recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Well, he lost his Instagram page. We talked about that back on episode 344. He did get it back, but just last week he had his Facebook page taken down.

3:36 And as a matter of fact, I'll just play you this short clip of him sharing a little bit about that. And I feel for him, especially being an event planner, if you will, with, you know, I just had Empowered podcasting last week that I hosted. Well, he last week had what he calls Dopey Con, which is a convention, a gathering for he and all of his audience. And then he's been doing it for a few years now, and it keeps growing. He'll explain exactly what happened. Let me play the clip for you. Hello. Everybody last night was dopey. Con was amazing. It was emotional, laughed and cried.

4:18 It was beautiful. So thank you to everybody who came and everybody who didn't come. What do you got to do? And somehow after this incredible, glorious emotional achievement, the great folks at Meta took our Facebook page down because we posted actually an informational conversation with brilliant clinician Jana Wu about kratom. So tell people that matter to put us back up. You're not going to tell anybody to do anything. But thank you for coming. Don't become as sick, hopefully. I'll see you guys soon. So kratom, just in case that's a new term or word for you, we'll we'll call it plant based medicine.

5:01 That's my understanding of kratom. I have no experience with it and that's what I believe it is. And this, But he was talking about it in a very clinical way with a clinician. Dr. Did you want to say something? Yeah. I just wanted to put it in perspective. Is this the drug that Matthew Perry? Passed. Me on no Matthew Perry. I believe that was fentanyl for Matthew Perry. OK, I thought it was something. What? Oh, that's. Right. Ketamine. I knew it. I knew it was AKI, knew it was AK, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Rich. I don't know where I was getting that from. Yes, ketamine. So anyway, Dave from Dopey is now dealing once again with Meta and losing his Facebook page.

5:48 Thankfully, I guess it's not his primary page, but it is a very active page that he's had on Facebook for quite a while now. And also joining us today, our new Co host and good friend of mine, Rich Perry, who's here today, who he's he's gone through the same kind of wipeout for different reasons. His personal Facebook account was disabled, and I'll let him share more about what he posted and why Meta decided that that means he should be taken down. And now he's lost 16 years of work and connections. But, and I'll let him again, I'll let him explain. But instead of sitting in frustration, Rich has a plan. And we're going to hear more about that plan. So this episode today, I don't want it to be necessarily about panic.

6:39 We're talking about what creators can do after a takedown, maybe how to protect your platform if there is a way, and what it really takes to bounce back when an algorithm decides you're a threat and whatever else comes up in between. So with that, I just realized I didn't have my my questions in front of me, but I do now. But let's go to Rich first. Let's talk to Rich. Rich, can you walk us through exactly what happened and what your reaction was when you got the notice? Because I believe this happened right before empowered podcasting began. Like days like it may be a day or two before. Hey, good morning, Mark.

7:25 Good morning everybody. I'll give you the brief synopsis. You know, just any interest of time, one of my clients is a business service provider. I have a not, I have a confidentiality agreement, so I'm not going to say more, but let's just say this service is a very good service for businesses, especially those that deal with sensitive data. So read between the lines. I was posting on their behalf and for those that I was using their business page, but I had moderator, you know, privileges through my personal account. I made my post like I had been doing since I picked them up as a client. And then, you know, a couple hours later, I got that e-mail or that message saying, Hey, we think you violated our community service. And, you know, that whole nonsense, we're suspending your account.

8:18 And I'm like, oh, you got to be kidding me. Like, because any normal human being would have looked at the post and realized, oh, I know what they're talking about. This is a proactive measure or this is a informational post for businesses to protect themselves. But I guess some of the coffee triggered the robots and that's what happened, so. So did you, so did you try to appeal it and what was that process like? Yes. So that's the second part is I notified the client saying, hey, the page is shut down, I can't get in, we're going to have to appeal it.

9:00 So he appealed it on his end and then I appealed it on my end. However, when you submit an appeal for Facebook, it's supposed to prompt you for like it's supposed to give you the option of submitting a narrative of why you think they made the wrong call. I wasn't prompted to complete that narrative, that narrative part, that component. So it was basically me just saying I appeal no information whatsoever. And they were like, we'll look over the case and then we'll get back to you.

9:41 And yeah, that was the day before Empower Podcasting. And then a week later was when they got back to me and said no, you still violated the rules and we're shutting down your account even though they didn't give me an opportunity to explain what happened. Now my client is back on but I am not. And yes, I lost 16 years worth of connections and collaborations and contents on from my personal account. And were you a verified account? I was not. So that's another thing that I found out through the course of this is if you pay for that blue badge, you can deal with a real human being.

10:26 But for us plebeians who didn't have that blue badge, we had to deal with the robots. And in my case, I wasn't prompted to provide that narrative. So that was like, what's the word I'm looking for? It just shows that, you know, mistakes could be made. And because I wasn't given that prompt, that option to provide that narrative of what happened, then I got real. I really got screwed over. So that's that's, that's the everything in a nutshell. OK. Well, I see Jonathan wanted to chime in. Go ahead, Jonathan. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I'm just wondering, Rich, have you ever run ads off of your Facebook, your personal Facebook account?

11:08 No, when I first start, I mean when I'm sure many of us first started way back in the day, you couldn't run ads off a personal account. That's why you needed like a business page. But you know, in the years that since, you know, since we all joined Facebook, now they have like the professional accounts and you can run ads from your personal accounts and stuff like that. I'm not the Facebook expert. I'm just sharing from my experience. Yeah, no, I was just some because even if your account was an admin on a on a paid page, you can call your ads manager and they might be able to help you with the dispute. That's the only thing. Yeah, I have heard that as well, Jonathan.

11:49 Sometimes if, yeah, if you have some kind of business transaction with Meta, like running ads, at any point, you might be able to get in touch with an actual human and work through that. Yeah, Well, interesting. And I see, Jonathan, by the way, I saw Jonathan was suggesting to Dave from Dopey in the comments of the Instagram that I just played for you a moment ago. Jonathan, you were suggesting to maybe tweet or X whatever we call it these days and mention that. So can you dig into that a little bit more? Yeah, most of the social media platforms do customer service on X and they're quickest to respond to complaints on X. So I always recommend just tweeting them or axing them or whatever we call it now and letting them know that you have a complaint, making that complaint very public so that they have to deal with it because they get a lot of, that's something that happens a lot on Twitter. I don't know how we ended up doing that, but it's a good place for you to actually get customer service. Thank you, Jonathan.

12:55 Anyone else have any questions for Rich, by the way, before I take us in a different direction? Go ahead, Phil. Good morning everybody. Hope everybody's having a great Monday morning. Rich, my question to you is when you were posting, had you been posting a lot asked like prior to the event of you losing the the page or was this like you were just at a regular one day post or something like that just out of curiosity? The client that I'm referring to, they had kind of been absent from all marketing before. Like that's what I hired me was because they've been absent from marketing, especially on social media. And yeah, that was brought to my attention. But no, like I didn't go in there full throttle and just start making like multiple posts a day. We had like we were doing, you know, maybe like 3 posts a week from their social media page, OK, you can say, well, if they went from zero posts a week to three posts a week, yeah, that's certainly an uptick.

14:02 But I don't know that three posts a week would warrant that type of action. I don't know. I was just wondering because I, I know someone who posted went from like 0 posts to like 15 posts a day and obviously that seemed suspicious to Facebook for some reason. And they kind of like not nuke the account but pause the account and that was kind of like the reason they gave. So I was just wondering if you had been like massively posting over and they thought, hey, maybe it's a scammer or something like that, that's all. Yeah, no, I totally get it. And that was how it was brought to my attention.

14:43 But we didn't want to. It wasn't our intention to go from zero to 100 and just trip those triggers and warnings and like because I mean, that would look weird on any end, you know, that would look suspicious and we certainly didn't want to do that, especially with the clients type of business, you know. Yeah, OK. Just out of curiosity, I was just wondering because that's something I've seen that happen and it sucks that both Rich and Dopey have lost a prominent platform for them. But it kind of harks back to what like most of the big time creators are saying, Pat Flynn, Travis Stevenson and others.

15:24 You need a list. Like you can't trust platforms because it's all rented space and you need a list, an e-mail list that can be where you communicate and you have actual ownership of your fans that like even going to a school community or other types of communities like Patreon on that they're still not yours and they can shut you down. So I remember back when the Internet was first born, there was forums on every website and that's where your community was built. It wasn't built on Facebooks and stuff like this. And one thing that I learned back when Facebook first did their kind of game of throttling businesses, as if people remember way back when, maybe a decade ago, Facebook, you still get a lot of businesses used to get their traffic from Facebook by posting listicles or like short, short articles. And then it would be linked back to their website. And then Facebook went ahead and nuke that. A lot of businesses ended up dying. Like I think like wasn't Buzz Sprout or something like that ended up being hurt dramatically because they were getting majority of their their traffic from Facebook and then got screwed.

16:45 So I feel like that is going to be coming forward for all these, all these entrepreneurs, all the all of us entrepreneurs, podcasters that use Facebook to move or build communities. We're going to end up stepping on the wrong side of Facebook because or Meta or any of these platforms and they're going to just nuke us. So it's always wise to move people as fast as possible off. The. Platform. I feel like that's also thank you, Phil. And I feel like that's also to some people that may sound easier said than done. How do we really do that right? Because whatever, let's say you're like me and on Instagram you have or let's since we're doing Facebook on Facebook you have maybe you have several 1000 followers like me. How do you get them to really join you into your true ecosystem?

17:38 You're whether it's newsletter or what have you, Go ahead, Nick. Hey, good morning everybody. I think one way to do this, if your Facebook account is obviously still acting, sorry Rich, I think using the like this experience as an opportunity to reach your audience could be a very good post to put out there. Like hey, I had a friend, they just lost 16 years of connections and I don't want to lose connection with you guys. Do me a favor, join my e-mail list, join my community, whatever it is so that if something were to happen, we don't lose contact. I'm using the experience as a potential like if this happens to us and my account disappears tomorrow. Like that's it.

18:25 That might be a a decent approach to start at the very least. I like that. I think that people like to kind of cheer you on, be part of the solution. So I think for lack of a better way of putting it, playing into the situation and sharing, sharing what you're going through and what you plan on doing, I think that can help get people to get a little more engaged and to do the thing you're asking them to do. And I think that's well before I ask my next question, I'm just curious. I'm going to go to Jonathan and then I've got two more questions. Go ahead, Jonathan. I think one of the things that everybody needs is some sort of a lead magnet, something that is going to get people to sign up for your list.

19:11 There has to be value that's offered. There's tons of things you can do. It can be checklist, it can be, you know, Mark you, you did something a few weeks ago, I don't even remember what it was, but you said you were going to put together a quick, you know, sheet on it. That's a lead magnet that will get your audience to sign up for. It has to have some value, but creating something like that and then an easy e-mail campaign that follows is I think a standard for business is now it has to be because that's one of the only ways you're going to get the e-mail addresses. Obviously, newsletter, all those things work. But if you add something value, yeah, give them something that's useful, then they're going to sign up for it and they'll at least stick around for a little bit.

19:53 Thank you. Jonathan yeah, I think a lead magnet, giving people more reasons to want to support you. I think that's a solid, a solid call there. And Janae is saying many chats helps bring people from your socials to the e-mail list. And Janae, I don't know if you're available or not, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about that if you know more about it. And I'm curious for those of you on stage, what would what would you do? If this happened to you, would you try to fight it like Rich tried to fight it? And he's feeling like he's not getting anywhere. So what would you do? Would you keep fighting it or would you immediately start rebuilding?

20:35 I had this happen to me, it wasn't my personal account, it was my business page and I put it in the chat. But this was several years ago now, and they basically shut down the whole account, wouldn't let me appeal it. There was nothing I could really do to fight it. And I just kept finding things online that was like, oh, if you go to this website, you might have the opportunity to chat with a live person. And that every time I went to that page, it didn't give me that opportunity. And it was probably a year and a half, two years of me just periodically checking like, oh man, I wish I had my Facebook page and that chat option appeared. So I clicked on it, actually got onto Facebook Messenger with a live person and they were able to overturn it.

21:20 But obviously this was several years ago. This was before Meta introduced the paid like verified badge tears, the little blue check mark. So I things may have changed dramatically since that point, but there could still be that option lingering out there that's like you might catch somebody just by chance to chat with them and be like, hey, this is what happened. And I mean, when I did that, it was a 10 minute conversation. They went and looked at it and like, yeah, I don't know how that happened. And then they just reversed it and then I was back. Like I said, stuff might have changed by that since then, but if you're wanting that account back it might be worth just periodically checking and seeing if that exists. Thank you, Nick, and I'm going to go to Alex and then Janae. Good morning, Alex.

22:08 Go ahead. I have someone that's in Facebook ad jail. I'm just periodically doing that. I may have to rebuild. On it because I got hacked on my ads and I can't get the authenticator app to work. I had Megan try to do it at Empire Podcasting. So. I'm either going to rebuild that particular one, have a second page for my business. I guess you have to just be diligent. Yeah, I'm with you. And that's The thing is, you know, yeah, I some people get a little bitter when they think about, well, Oh yeah, sure, Facebook's making me pay in order to get any kind of service. But at the same time, I do kind of understand that too. I mean, it is we are using the platform free if we're not verified and I don't mind that we have to pay. If I can't even get to that point, can't even get verified. But I'm assuming that's the same thing, that you're in rich where you can't even get verified to get the service. No.

23:06 Yeah, once. Because once you're banned or shut down, that's it. It's a real problem. So Janae, you mentioned in the chat something about many chat being helpful to help bring people over from social to many chat. What were you referring to? Would you mind diving into that a little bit? Absolutely. Good morning everyone. It's a really fun topic. I like what Jonathan said, Billy, I was before you invited people, but we need these social media platforms to get to the masses, right? And that's why we are here and that's why we're communicating on different platforms. I mean, we all met on Clubhouse, which is somebody else's party that we're putting the thing together. So many chat is basically like Adm chat automation where you, let's say you post a post and say, hey, comment this specific word and in the comment.

24:00 And that will then trigger the automation from many chat, which means that many chat takes over and then basically sends them a, let's say an e-mail list or not an e-mail list or a lead magnet, something that they're asking for, which will then get the process to, you know, now you own or now you get their e-mail address and can put them through different automations of keeping that e-mail warm, keeping that nurture sequence going. So all of those things, many have the ton of solutions to bring the audience to your place. Again, there's other solutions as well, like Stan's store that Gary had been pushing. That's another great platform where you build your store designed for social media so people can get directly to the things that you're offering.

24:53 There's many solutions like that, but again, those are other ways where you're providing value. Like Johnson said, you're providing value to them so that they want to give you your your e-mail. Thank you, Janae. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Good strategy to use something like many chats to help you. And obviously that's a more proactive approach, right? If you've already lost your account, that may not be the most helpful thing, although you probably have other social media accounts you can start diving into and get people to join you through many chat. Well, but yeah, let me check in with Rich because I one thing I will say is one of many things that that I was impressed with with Rich and granted, I wasn't seeing all the behind the scenes, but AI thought Rich was really handling this situation. Well.

25:45 I know that when I got hacked several years ago and basically lost my whole Instagram and had to start over, I was not a happy camper. I was kicking and screaming initially, having to start all over again. And Rich. I'm curious A, what was really behind the scenes like and B what's the plan moving forward? Behind the scenes, I was definitely mad, you know what I'm saying? Like I was not a happy camper, thankfully. And I'm not just blowing smoke Mark because it happens right before EPC. Like I think it was a blessing and a curse and that it was a curse because I couldn't document what I was doing on Facebook. I, you know, did my daily recaps on LinkedIn and Instagram, but I didn't have Facebook to do my daily recaps. But because I was so just having fun with EPC and just, you know, bouncing here and meeting folks and having a good time. I think that really just.

26:44 It was a distraction. It was a much needed and good distraction. That's what I'm going to say about that. But. Big picture, what I decided was, well, I can sit here and you know, piss and moan about it and just woe is me, or I can just be proactive and bounce back. So what I came up with was my 90 day rebound and today is day one of the 90 day rebound and it's just going to be 90 days of just sharing really great stuff and trying to connect with my old friends and just reaching out to people like how I reached out to you, Mark, through text message and I reached out to a lot of the people on stage here through other channels like, hey, I didn't delete you.

27:29 I'm I got my account was taken away. Please try and find me. If not, I'll try and find you. But just know that, you know, I didn't delete you and I'm just going to do what I can to, to overcome. And I'm, I'm going to model what I preach to people about being resilient and bouncing back and having a good mindset. And maybe this experience will inspire someone else who's going through the same nonsense or unrelated nonsense. But they're like, this guy bounced back. He inspired me to do the same. So maybe it'll have a happy ending in that regard. Yeah, OK. I want to dig into that more and I want to check in with Nick and potentially Jonathan because I see there's a sidebar conversation going on in the chat and I saw Nick being pretty strongly opinionated about some of the situation.

28:21 Nick, would you care to dig into what you're sharing in the chat? Yeah, well, I've always had a a grape with Meta from the beginning, but I kind of think that it's BS. They launched these products that are meant to help support, quote UN quote, the businesses by saying, oh, if you pay us and you have an issue, like you'll be able to get in contact someone. And it sounds like that's not even a guarantee to me. It's no different than the free accounts as they were a few years ago before that even existed. Like it's basically if you get lucky, you'll get a support person. Like if I'm going to pay Meta money to have support, I better get support. Yeah, but I also said in the chat that's also why I don't put any more money into Meta than I have to. Why is that?

29:07 Because you don't like the idea of that? Is that what you're saying? I just don't like the one, the lack of support, but then the lack of control that you get if you're paying them money to use their service, but yet they just decide, Oh no, we don't like your money. Your money is no good here, but we'll take it. But we're not going to keep up our end of the deal. Yeah, I get it. And I'm sure there are a lot of people that feel that same way, Nick. So Rich, I applaud Rich for doing this 90 day comeback. And do we have any suggestions for example, like I, Jonathan already threw out a suggestion prior to even knowing what the comeback was, right? And that was maybe creating some lead magnets to get people more involved in Rich's comeback.

29:53 And why I applaud Rich is because you know, you can actually make this take, bring it, make it. What do I want to say here? You can bring this, make this to your advantage. Why does that not sound right? Anyway, I think you know what I'm talking about. And I guess it's still Monday morning at 7:30 and I'm having a hard time getting my words out. But I love the fact that he's taking advantage of this and I and the fact that he's turning a negative into a positive and he's making it a thing, right? He's calling it the 90 day comeback, so I'm curious what kind of suggestions we have for him to help make that 90 day comeback even more successful. DRI saw you had your hand up. What did you want to add? I actually want to ask Jonathan a question. So let's say that he does come up with a really great lead magnet.

30:43 He gets all of his current Facebook people to go over to, to be on the list. And then every month, would you revise that? Because you're getting more people on Facebook right during that month. So would you revise that with the same lead magnet? Would you come up with a new lead magnet for the new people who have joined Facebook? What would you do to get like, would it be every month? Would it be every other month? Do you know what I'm saying? I would keep your basic lead magnet. I have used the 9 central post for social media forever. That is an existing lead magnet that I've had for seven years and people still sign up for it every week. So you, I would keep a standard like something that is a good lead magnet that's getting people on. I would keep that consistent.

31:40 And what I, what I do is I have a, an existing e-mail sequence that goes out every time somebody gets that goes through the different posts and then they go on to my newsletter, which gets an e-mail every week. So once they're done with that, that drip for the first lead magnet, then they get a new e-mail every week. Now, you're never going to get all your people onto your e-mail list. And you know, I think you do need to add some new fresh things and some opportunities for other people to get on, even just to sign up for the newsletter that you do need more than just the one lead magnet. But if it works, keep working it. OK.

32:20 Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Thank you, Jonathan. So Rich, do you, what are some specific things that you're planning for the 90 day comeback? And you know, I recognize that, you know, this is all happened quickly, right? So I'm I'm don't expect you to have a full-fledged game plan with everything you're going to do over the 90 days. But do you have some things figured out yet and what are your plans for that? One of the things is I did lay out, I built the structure for the 90 day comeback and you know, it's thematic. So every day will have its own theme based on the for the content that I'm going to be posting. But it's not only just going to be my insights and tips and all that kind of stuff.

33:07 Like the one thing I'm really looking forward to to build back the collaboration component is on Fridays, I'm going to, I'm going to launch a limited series live stream where I'll be interviewing people that have demonstrated their own resilience. You know, maybe they didn't lose a social media account. Maybe it was, you know, bouncing back after business failure or lost their job or toxic relationship, whatever the case is, right? Just people that have bounced back in some way, shape or form because I want to learn from them. And this will be another way of just building that collaborational collaboration component. Mark, I know that I'll be interviewing you.

33:48 I appreciate it. And as far as like the nitty gritty details, no, I'll be totally honest with you. This is something that I just really put together the structure of it, the skeleton. But over the next few days, I'll be really fleshing out the details as I go further deeper into the probe into the into the 90 days. I basically just started with the first two weeks and said OK, this is the template and I allowed myself room to pivot if needed. If I find OK, this is working instead and I'll change how the 90 days is going to look after the first two weeks. Awesome.

34:29 So it sounds like Rich, you're going to take it and build it more from your with your business or creator hat on, not necessarily your personal hat on, right? Then I know that for most of us, many of us Facebook, we started our page really mainly for personal. And I know for me, I still have a hard time finding what I prefer being the right balance for me, posting both personal and professional stuff. So are you, is this going to be also kind of a, a rebrand, a rebuild as to the type of account you're going to have out there on Facebook or is this really more of the same of what you have been doing?

35:14 No, great question. And yeah, it is kind of like a rebrand in that I would say much like many of us here when we all joined Facebook years ago, Yeah, it was that personal place to hang out with your college buddies and, you know, watch your aunts, you know, what are the kids doing and seeing the photos of the family gatherings and stuff like that. But I would say in later years, I really started focusing more on using it just as another business tool. So when I created my new account, I did go right into the professional settings and I created the, you know, digital creator profile. And also to remember when many of us joined years ago, you needed that business page in order to have certain types of business activity, like Jonathan was saying before running the ads.

36:09 But now you can do that from your own personal account. You don't even need that business page. So it's kind of like, why am I creating more work for myself? And because I was in later years using my Facebook page, my Facebook profile to talk more business related things, that's just where I'm going to focus my attention right now. OK, fair enough Like that. All right, So anyone else have any suggestions for Rich what he could do with the 90 day? And if not, I'm I'm going to open up the mailbag and move on from this part of the conversation other than saying best of luck to you, Rich And I do really, again, appreciate the fact that you're turning this around.

36:55 You're turning this into something very focused and intentional and in and with without putting a lot of the negative energy around what happened. I think that's so important and and key. So I'm going to go to Dr. before we do officially wrap this up because I see she had her hand up a couple times there. Go ahead, Dr. Rich, I wanted to know if you have chosen a platform for like, you know, to get your community going. Outside of the Facebook you mean? Because that's. Outside. Outside of Facebook, yeah. No, I have not yet. And as I said in the chat, it was a hard lesson learned for the longest time. You know, I've heard that suggestion that I think Jonathan said before about, I don't know, I think it was, it was someone that said about, you know, this is rented land and you know, I have not been as active with my e-mail list as I would like, but this is certainly going to be the catalyst to building a new e-mail list and being regular with it. So thanks to those that suggested that I will be doing that.

38:06 Lesson learned. Don't do what I did, folks. But, and it's so interesting to the timing of it all and because Rich was at a full time job for over the past year or so actually maybe yeah, year Rich, two years, something like that. And yeah, year and a half, I think. And he left to go pursue his own business, pursue his entrepreneurial endeavors, and then boom, right after that. Then he loses the account and, and I can't help again. But to think that you know what this is an opportunity more than a disaster because it's giving him now a chance to really reframe and and refresh. Well, good luck to you, Rich and Rich. We will put a link to his Facebook page over there so that you can follow him friend request him there. One of the things I do know from Rich is that because it's a new account, Facebook is also a little restrictive to their new accounts.

39:05 You can't just go on a friend request fury and invite as many people to refriend you as possible. They are only giving him like 10 requests at a time, but you can request him as he can have as many people asked to become friends as possible. So we will encourage you to go do that and help Rich rebuild. And we're going to wrap up the show digging into the mailbag. I still need a Jingle or something for mailbag to create that nice smooth transition. Here's. Challenge to the listeners thing to come up with our your theme song. I love it. OK, there you go. There's a challenge. Thank you Phil. And interesting because I was going to come to you and ask you this question first from the mailbag.

39:50 But yeah, great idea. So here is the question. Well, it comes from someone named Samantha P and Samantha says I've been thinking a lot about solo podcasting lately. I currently have a Co host and we often bring on guests and it seems way more challenging to do the solo thing than. Co hosting with guests. What are your thoughts on that? So Phil, what do you think? Is it harder do you think to be a solo podcaster or do you think it and do you think it's easier to have a Co host and or guest? What are your thoughts and why? That's a good one. They're both difficult but they're both also simpler. With my first podcast was a Co hosted and then I went into an interview style podcast with the Co host. I found it super difficult just to schedule time to record. So for that aspect I was like, oh, solo podcast is easier because I can just sit down whenever I want. With when I transitioned to an interview podcast, I made it even simpler.

40:55 I just said, here's my schedule, bulk your time and then we record. So I made it that super simple and it's less work for me because I just have to ask like one question, let the guests speak. So I really enjoyed the interview question podcast because it's an opportunity to learn. But the solo podcasts have that ease ability of just sitting down whenever you want to record like the 567 or even 4 podcasts you need that month. And so you get all your content done. But then on the flip side, you have to come up with all the ideas for those episodes by yourself and do all the talking, which as a podcaster, normally we don't have that problem, but some people do.

41:38 So I would say, hey, if you want to learn, do a guest based podcast with a specific day that you record on or at least multiple times that you can record your episodes. So you can batch it. But if you're doing solo, make sure you are at ease talking with no one listening and no, no one get any feedback. Because I've done a few solo episodes and it it, it's very, very different mindset that you need. Yeah, agreed. I want to ask and thank you, Phil. And I want to ask Sid because Sid, I know for the most part, and we haven't heard from you, that's another reason why I'm coming to you. And I'm curious for the most part. I know you do interview based episodes, but I know you've done some solos as well.

42:21 And correct me if I'm wrong, but what what of the two do you prefer? And I'm curious why. I do both 90% of my shows interview based, and I find the interview based easy because it's literally just a conversation with somebody talking about their business and their life and our industry and what's going on. And I enjoy that. So that's super easy for me. My solo podcasts are called Tend to Win. It's a little subset series inside of the show and indicating it's a 10 minute episode or less. They're usually about 11:50 minutes. But anyways, I keep the name, Tend to Win, and typically it's a professional development related topic.

43:04 And I use an article that I write for industry magazine, which is also pretty much professional development related. And I typically just repurpose that article in a way that sounds like me talking and giving insights or advice about how to move your life forward. And I like both of them, but the interview 1 is so much easier to do. OK, so there's a vote for the easy, easy doing the interview based podcasting and I will share. I'll weigh in as well. I mean, I'm thinking about it as long as I've been podcasting, I don't think I've ever done a series where it's just me. I think I personally find it much easier to podcast when I've got at least one person with me. I like conversation and I like bouncing off people. I don't know, maybe it's the way that my brain works, but I tend to find that I, I'm much more comfortable and can I find that I can be much more insightful when I'm, when I have somebody to bounce thoughts and ideas off of. So that's the biggest challenge for me. And it's really because it does take more time, right? If you are doing the quote UN quote more organic conversation, I think that there's a little less planning to do. And if you know me, you know that I do like to plan things out in detail.

44:26 I like to have questions prepared, even if I tend to not use them all, but just having them by my side, it eases my my mind. Ultimately, I find it easier to have a conversation, have somebody else with me than to sit and really plot out full episodes that are just going to be me in front of the microphone. Or behind the microphone, I should say. Does anyone else want to weigh in? Guess what is? Janae says guest episodes are also much more accountable because you're leaning on someone else to help. Yeah. And the accountability thing, I think, is helpful to me, too, having somebody that I know is depending on me to show up.

45:07 And I'm not even referring to my audience in this instance. This is if I've made a commitment to somebody else, then I'm going to be sitting down with them at a certain date and time to press record and record that content. That means I know I'm going to show up. If I'm doing it by myself, sometimes I can find other things to prioritize and I might fault start falling behind. So I think the real answer here is, is know yourself, know what works for you. And I think if you're somebody like this person, if you're starting to question solo episodes, maybe start incorporating some solo episodes into what you do and see how those go, see how that feels, see how your audience responds to it.

45:54 And if you're getting any traction in any or all of those cat specific areas I just listed, then maybe you want to build on that. Yeah, Dr. go ahead. I. Just wanted to acknowledge what Ashley wrote in the chat and she says that she's putting a solo episode out today. First solo episode in over a year. So Ashley, what is it that made you, you know, go over the fence, basically get off the fence and go to one side. The type of solo episode I'm doing today is a preview for a music festival. So that kind of format probably wouldn't lend well to an interview anyway. And I'm sort of realizing that I need to start incorporating the solo episodes because in this probably would work for anybody is at the end of the day, your show is an extension of who you are.

46:50 You know, it's great to have all those guests, that you're the nucleus. And yeah, that's the reason that pushed me over the edge. Love that. I'm glad to hear you sounding better, Ashley. I don't know that for sure. I'm making a big assumption. And it sounds like you're on the mend, feeling better. I know you had a little rough patch of random illnesses. So yeah, I hope you are feeling better and thank you for your insight, your explanation on that. As for the rest of today, I think we're going to call it a morning and remind you that we're back tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern Time talking all things POS, podcasting and content creation. We we have a couple of more mailbag questions we're going to probably want to get to this week. So stay tuned for that.

47:35 We might be able to dig into that more, some of those more tomorrow. And until then, make it a great day. Everybody take care.