They Nuked My Patreon
No More Asking Permission.
Dear Permission to be Powerful reader,
Don’t you hate when you make the same mistake twice?
After months of hard work…
You’re making progress…
Sometimes in leaps and bounds…
And then something suddenly pulls the rug out from under you?
Two steps forward…
One step back.
Most people are living the same day…
Over and over…
Like Groundhog Day.
But most of us don’t realize it.
Once you figure out what the cycle looks like…
Other people become way more predictable.
But more importantly…
You can break the cycle.
And be free.
I bring all of this up because...
On November 9th of last year, I released a post called…
“They Nuked My Substack.”
It’s one of my favorite posts.
So surely, seven months later, I wouldn’t be coming out with a sequel.
Surely, not so soon…
Surely, I learned my lesson...
Surely, I would not find myself staring at another platform that nuked my work overnight…
Unfortunately…
No.
Here’s what happened:
This is what my Vacation Vault now looks like.
Gone overnight.
Months of work.
Vanished.
For about ten minutes, I just stared at the screen.
This almost broke me.
Almost.
I refused to let it.
I crossed 1,000 free subscribers…
Closing in on my 60th paid member...
In entrepreneur language, that’s validation.
It means people want what you’re making.
It means you’re not crazy.
There is demand.
That part was undeniable.
The funny thing is, Patreon didn’t shut me down because people hated my work.
They shut me down because my whole thing revolves around vacation giveaways, and that’s against their terms of service.
I didn’t know.
Did you?
Like most people, I don’t read the fine print.
Whatever.
It turned out to be a blessing.
The good news is I preserved all 1,040 free subscribers.
Nobody vanished.
Nobody got lost.
But I had to start over from scratch with paid memberships.
And honestly?
That was another lesson.
If I had owned the data from the beginning…
I wouldn’t be in this position.
That’s another reason I’m obsessed with ownership.
No more renting.
No more hoping somebody else takes care of what’s mine.
The second they shut me down, I made up my mind.
Fuck these people.
No waiting for permission.
I’m building my own site.
Just like I built my own email system.
Open source.
Hosted on my own servers.
Integrated with Substack.
Nobody gets to pull the plug overnight.
And honestly?
The final product is better.
Much better.
With the Vacation Vault merging with Permission to be Powerful…
Permission to be Powerful is starting to look beautiful.
The Vacation Vault.
Two new serials.
12 distinct newsletters.
Downloads.
Archives.
The whole thing feels like a real publication now.
This thing is starting to give me Vanity Fair vibes.
And lately, I’ve been rediscovering something funny.
I spent an hour listening to old articles the other night.
I had forgotten most of them.
After a while, you stop remembering what you’ve created.
So I got to experience them almost like a stranger would.
And I was hooked.
Every article slapped.
Not because I’m special.
Because I put fifteen years into learning this craft.
I put my heart into every piece.
And suddenly I realized something.
This is working.
Even at my meditation retreat last week, I looked at my blog archive and thought:
Holy shit.
This isn’t a blog anymore.
This is a body of work.
It took less than two days to turn some of those articles into a book.
Because the raw material was already there.
That’s what I failed to understand the first time I got shut down.
Nobody can take your work from you.
They can only take away the building you’re renting.
You just move somewhere else.
And rebuild.
Stronger.
I’m militant about owning infrastructure.
No gatekeepers.
Nobody who can shut me down overnight.
I spent too long building inside other people’s kingdoms and acting shocked when the king raked me over the coals.
That’s on me.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
But this time is different.
The Vacation Vault is back.
Permission to be Powerful is stronger.
The book is real.
The serials are real.
The archive is real.
The audience is real.
The demand is real.
And the infrastructure is mine.
Not rented.
Not borrowed.
Not dependent on any platform.
No more building castles on someone else’s land.
If they can take it from you overnight…
It was never really yours.
No more begging for permission.
Take what’s yours.
Tony V.
Editor-in-Chief
Permission to be Powerful
