Mic Drop #12: Scammed, Banned, Deleted - £30k Later, His Business Survived | Will Brown

In these ‘Mic Drops,’ I’ll be spotlighting my favourite, most impactful moments from past episodes of No Bollocks with Matt Haycox. These are the moments that hit hardest, offer the most value, and deserve to be heard again.

Will Brown built and sold a £16.4 million online education business, then built a second one doing over a million pounds a month teaching others how to do the same. The same week he was celebrating his biggest month yet, he lost access to both his Instagram and YouTube — years of followers, content and customers, gone overnight.

In this Mic Drop, Will breaks down the £2,000 scam that started it all, why his own account got flagged and deleted, what he's paid in the past to get a platform back (£20,000, seven weeks of waiting), and the shady telegram network quietly offering to "fix" account bans for a fee. If you don't own the platform, you're just renting your business from someone else.

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:05 - Losing YouTube, Instagram & the Danger of One Platform

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Connect with Matt Haycox, No BS Business Podcast Host & 8-Figure Entrepreneur.

I’m Matt Haycox, entrepreneur, investor, and your straight-talking guide to building a business that actually works. I’ve raised over £750M, built (and rebuilt) 8-figure companies, and learned the hard way what it really takes to win.

On No Bollocks with Matt Haycox, I cut through the bollocks to bring you raw conversations with 7–8 figure founders, investors, and experts who’ve been there, done it, and got the scars to prove it. No hype, no theory, just actionable strategies you can use today to start, grow, and scale your business.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

How do you find platform dependency or you or what do you see with you know with people who are um again like the the fitness guy was talking to you this morning, I mean you know 100% of his uh his clients are coming from Insta and I know you've had some horrendous luck of late uh with it with the YouTube channel going that you've spoken publicly about and I know I don't I don't know whether you've talked about it or not, but I just know as a follower of you on Instagram that uh multiple times you've just you've disappeared. Disappeared. Has he fucking blocked me?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Now everyone says that to me. Everyone says that to me. Ah well, I mean, listen, I've learned the hard way again recently. It is so dangerous, man. You know, like it's so dangerous to rely on one platform, it's dangerous to rely on two or three. What's your what's your what's your split in terms of percentages? Yeah. How we get customers right now, it's number one ads, number two Instagram, number three, the setting team, number four YouTube, number five email. And when you say ads, but are they just meta ads or are you running ads on different platforms? Yeah, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, so that's the foundation of the business. Have you tried LinkedIn in your space? Not yet, but but we're we're gonna get to LinkedIn soon, just for the diversity. But yeah, dude, I never I never thought I'd lose my YouTube man. I never thought that would be deleted. I just it's just mad. We're in the process of getting it back, we almost certainly will, but it's just mad. And then uh I don't know whether you saw this, but then we lost the Instagram as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I know the other day, literally it was I'll tell you when last Thursday. Yeah, yeah, last Thursday, and the reason I know it is because I'd just seen you in the morning and in the afternoon I wanted someone on my team to make a story in a certain way, and I thought, who makes a story like that? I thought Will does it. I went on to send her a picture, you're gone all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

You weren't gone four hours ago. But you but you but you're back again. Dude, I'll tell you what happened, right? So about two weeks ago, someone messaged me on Instagram and they were like, Hey dude, I can get you the name at William.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I'll get you at Matt.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah. And normally I just delete this shit, but I don't know what was going through my head that day. I must have been in an egotistical mood, right? But I looked at the profile and he was uh had a few mutual followers, he had a tick, all this stuff, and I thought, alright. And it was pretty cheap, it's two grand. I was like, well, you know, it's fucking two grand. So I gave him half, set him off, and then the next day he was like, Oh, there's some shit wrong with your account. Like, we need the other half just to sort it out, and then we'll definitely like half an hour you'll have the username. I was like, I think I'm getting scammed here, but fuck it, it's a grand. So I sent him the other grand, blocked, disappeared, right? Blocked on WhatsApp, blocked on Instagram. I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. Alright, never mind. This shit happens. Fast forward two weeks, right, to last Thursday. I'm at Omni celebrating the million month with some buddies, having the the time of my life.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

A coconut and a bit of a card, eh?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah, and then um I went on my phone on Instagram, and it was all weird, like the messages weren't there, my followers weren't there, but my name was, my pictures was. I was like, this is weird, must be the internet, must be bad internet connections. I was like, never mind. Hour later, checked it again, it was the same. So I said to Lauren, can you find my Instagram right now? And she was like, No. And I knew what had happened. I was like, Oh, it's it's gone down again. Mad stressful, man. Um, how did you get it back? Well, I I know good recovery guys, so I messaged one of them, and then he started looking into it, and then he replied and he said, Will, I've just spoken to the rep, and have you tried to change your username? I was like, Yeah, two weeks ago I got scammed trying to change it, and he was like, Well, actually, I think they tried, but they just couldn't do it because it looks like it says something about it on the back end uh Instagram, and that's why they've closed your account because they thought you were like illegally swapping usernames or some shit. I was like, right, so basically I paid to get my own Instagram deleted, right? It was back in 24 hours. Right. Thankfully. But what you're typically paying for recovery nowadays depends on the seriousness of why it was deleted. Last time I paid 20,000 to get it back.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

US.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Uh USD. Yep, so at 20 grand last time it took seven weeks, which was annoying. Uh this time it took 24 hours and it was free, thankfully, because it was so easy to do this time. He didn't charge me, which was nice of him. But uh, yeah, and for to get the YouTube back, we'd paid uh 10 so far. When I lost my YouTube, I got added to a weird Telegram group, right? This always on Telegram. Black hat stuff. And I'm in some kind of group, and every few days they'll post something like, right, guys, we're getting banned fucking Facebook ads accounts back today. Let me know if you need it. A few days later, right? Let us know if you need an uh uh Instagram deleting its three grand, you know. And all I'm seeing all the shit that can be done now. It's just mad.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

But I'm also convinced that these are their sales funnels as well. That you know, that the that once once you you know, like they'll they'll find that they've got a contact route to you and they'll see how valuable those things are to you, and and and you know they have got the ability to fix your problems if you get them, but I think they create the fucking problems for you.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

I th yeah, uh well the truth is you never know. You know, like to be honest, when the Instagram went down, my first thought was right, it's the day that I've announced I made a mill a month, someone doesn't like me and they're pissed off at the progress and they've deleted it. That was my first thought. Obviously, that didn't turn out to be true, but it could be the case, because it's not that hard to delete accounts, you know. But I just want to do my own thing and fucking get on with business, you know, and stay out of this shit.