260,000 followers. Gone.

Read time: 3 min.

This week, my Instagram account got deactivated.

260,000 followers. Three videos flagged on the same day, account suspended, no warning, no appeal. Just an email and then silence…

I want to tell you how I'm sitting with that.

The email

The account was for one of my faceless social media brands. I'd been posting consistently for months, the same content across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. YouTube has 1.6 million followers. TikTok 1.5 million. Instagram had been stagnating for a while, not pushing content to new people, so I'd shifted my focus to the platforms that were actually growing.

Then the email came.

Three videos flagged on the same day. Account suspended. No opportunity to appeal, no chance to remove the content myself the way YouTube would have allowed. Just gone.

I won't pretend it didn't sting. It did.

But here's what I kept coming back to.

The thing that can't be taken

260,000 followers sounds like a lot. And it is.

But followers aren't the asset. The ability to build them is.

I've done this before. I know how content works, what resonates, how to grow from zero. That knowledge didn't disappear when the account did. It's not stored on Instagram's servers. It lives in me.

And that's the only kind of asset that actually matters in the long run.

Platforms change their rules. Algorithms shift. Accounts get banned. The creators who survive all of that aren't the ones who had the biggest numbers. They're the ones who understand why the numbers happened in the first place.

You can take the account. You can't take the skill.

The decision the ban made for me

I started a new account that same week.

Not the same as the old one. Better. More focused. Built specifically around the quote content that performs best and ties directly into the book. Instead of posting everything and hoping something lands, this account has one clear purpose.

The ban forced a decision I'd been putting off anyway.

That's the thing about setbacks. They remove the option you were comfortable with so you're forced to choose the better one

I'm not grateful for the ban. But I'm not angry about it either.

I just started building again.

What's keeping me going

Yesterday I got a message from someone who bought the book.

He drives a truck. Every night before he goes to sleep, he picks a random page, reads one lesson, and sits with it. One of 101. He said it's helping him live with more intention.

A truck driver, somewhere, reading one lesson a night before he closes his eyes.

That's what the book is for. Not the rankings, not the numbers, not the launch week.

That.

And as long as that keeps happening, I'll keep building whatever platform it takes to reach the next person who needs it.

Much love,

— Martijn