They Nuked My Substack

Yes—Substack Deleted my List of 15,000 People. Did I Deserve It? You Decide.

Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,

I felt like a God…

23,520 Subscribers…

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.

What an incredible milestone.

One click…

Twenty thousand emails sent.

And within minutes—boom.

They NUKED 90% of my subscribers.

Gone.

Substack? 15,000 Nuked.
MailChimp? 23,000 Gone too.

Go to Jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Twice in one week.

You ever build something for a year, spend every dollar you’ve got, finally reach the promise land…

And then watch it go up in smoke instantly?

On the first fucking send?

That’s where I was.

👉 Wiped out almost everyone…

👉 Without warning…

👉 OVERNIGHT.

[Figure 1: Crossing 14,000 Subscribers on Substack]

[Figure 2: Big Brother Deletes 13,000 Subscribers without warning overnight]

Forget about the thousands of dollars I invested in my list.
Forget about hours I can’t get back.

Turns out, sending an email to 20,000 people isn’t like sending one from Gmail.

If Gmail = paddling a rowboat...

20,000 subs = a nuclear submarine

Imagine being that fisherman who bumps into the sub and climbs into it.

You start pushing buttons because the lights are pretty, and before you know it—you just started World War III.

Lights are flashing red…

Russia and China are “responding”

No take-backs.

You done fucked up.

That’s what happened to me.

I’d never sent that many emails all at once.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect.

I felt like I’d gotten the death penalty for J-walking.

Even though I’ve written for titans like Tony Robbins and Neil Patel…

And my words have been seen and read by millions…

I didn’t have the first clue about email deliverability.

I tripped every spam filter, every compliance alarm, every internal red flag. Substack saw the smoke, panicked, and hit the kill switch.

At the time, I was furious…

Like “Big Brother” was all up in my business—poking their nose where it shouldn’t be.

But now, I see it differently.

If I’m being frank with you…

My first thought after losing the list was…

“I’m finished.”

This was an extinction-level event.

I was wrong.

Just a speed bump.

They didn’t destroy me…

They exposed a weak link in my business.

And, this could have been way worse if it had happened later on.

Say, when my list hit 100,000.

Yikes.

I’d built a machine on shaky ground.

But the good news is…

I got a crash course on list hygiene.

But man — what a kick in the nuts.

I learned the hard way that your empire can vanish overnight.

So I’m rebuilding.

From scratch.

I’ve got a new lead generation system.

It consistently grows thousands of real subscribers every month.

Almost nobody knows this Substack growth trick, and it’s working exceptionally well.

You can delete my subscribers.
But you can’t delete Permission to be Powerful.

I can’t be broken.
(LOL — 2025: The Year I Joined a Cult to Save on Rent?)

I’ve cut all my expenses down to the bone to keep this going…

Because that’s how much I believe in it.

There aren’t too many people with this kind of vision and commitment.

I’m all-in.

I keep telling people: starting a business is like skydiving with a sewing kit. You jump out of the plane, fabric flapping everywhere, and try to stitch your parachute together before you go splat.

That’s been my entire year—needle between my teeth, wind in my face, praying the thread holds.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy.

Until next time,

Dancer, Writer, Buddhist.

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