FBC – 390 – How I almost lost EVERYTHING today (scary)

Today, I ALMOST lost everything just like that…

Have you ever stopped and wondered what the absolute worst thing that could happen to your business was?

Now, if that scenario materializes, how ready are you on a scale of 1 to 10.

Today, I am going to detail exactly what you need to do when hell breaks loose and how you can protect your business and your lifestyle

All the answers are inside

PS: if like 99% of people you don’t have a disaster recovery plan then you absolutely need to listen to this episode

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I want to talk to you about survival. This is huge. I want to tell you what to do when everything goes to hell.

OK, so today everything went to hell.

And I’m going to give you a brief history of what led to today and what I did today. I’ve been working on a project for the last four months, like nonstop. And I’ve made a lot of progress on it and I’m constantly improving everything.

So, you know, when you’re planning a business, you plan for everything conceivable that can happen and you work out how you will actually solve it.

Well, there was one thing that I didn’t plan, and that was maybe like a month ago. I didn’t plan for everything to go to hell. Right.

So just imagine I’m using a tool, OK? And that tool is also on my website. So what happened was that I didn’t plan for my hosting provider to be down. So your hosting provider is basically where you put your website. So if you’re hosting provider, it’s down. What happens? Your website is not available, OK.

And if your website is not available, the tool that you’re using to create links, short links doesn’t work, which means that if people click on the link, they don’t end up anywhere. OK, so I had planned for a lot of things, but never for my hosting provider to go down.

OK, so one day I was working and checking the emails on my entire domain and I tried to answer an email and it says connection lost.  So I thought it was just the email tool that didn’t work. So I tried to go to my website, and realized that, oh, the website doesn’t work.

I try to go to my hosting provider. I see that the hosting provider is down. Right. So that means that all the campaigns that I have running, all of them won’t work because the link is broken. OK, so panic mode, it was panic. I was like, dude, I need to find those campaigns affected. And there are loads of them.

How I almost lost EVERYTHING today (scary)

One thing people praised me for, even when I was working for other people is that I can remain calm and analytic in that situation. And I it took me a good hour to stop all the campaigns.

OK, so then I was like, oh, man, that was the craziest stuff, you know, I didn’t plan for it. And again, if you’re hosting provider goes down, you’re kind of screwed.

OK, so for example, I don’t know what you’re using, maybe like click funnels or something like this, if I have a problem and the whole server is down, and then all your pages are dead. OK, so just imagine the equivalent happened to me.

So from there you have two choices. And this is this is what I want to talk to you about today.

So you can either tell yourself that your hosting provider, usually they have like a ninety nine percent uptime. Right. So they’re always up and, you know, it’s not a problem and this happens once in a lifetime, OK, so you can just go with this like, oh man, that was bad luck and yeah, it won’t happen again, OK?

Or you can go the other route, which is the route that I went. Look, I didn’t plan for this thing. I’ve seen how bad it is when it happens. I need to make sure that I take all the precautions necessary so that next time it happens, I am ready.

Because here in this case, it took me a good hour and a half to identify the campaigns and stop them. And I said, look, I need to find a way to identify these campaigns in a heartbeat and being able to pause them if I need to in seconds.

And so basically I came up with a naming convention that allows me to identify all these campaigns on which network the campaigns are on and who the campaigns are for and all that kind of stuff. So that if there is a problem, I will be able to stop all the campaigns from a specific network at once.

And before I didn’t take the time, I was just writing the name of the advertiser, but not putting the name of the platform, you know, because it’s extra time. It’s annoying to do OK.

So I was like, look, we need to work on this thing. We need to figure out a way to have everything identified super-fast that can just run a filter. And then next time it happens, boom, I can I can pause them.

But here’s the thing. Today, disaster struck again. This time it wasn’t my hosting provider.

I am using a new tool to create my links because this tool is a little bit more advanced than the one I was using before. And I’ve created lots of links in a lot of them. And today that tool just had a disk failure. So basically all the links that I created there didn’t work.

OK, so. Panic mode, right, because, you know, I have a lot of links that I’ve created there, but here’s the thing. Now that I have done the groundwork of naming all these campaigns and stuff, and I know which campaigns on which network are actually using this new tool it took me 30 seconds to stop everything. It was done. OK.

So stuff can happen and you know what? It’s not like it’s not your fault. It’s not you. The hosting provider went down, but I still have a responsibility to make sure that I don’t suffer from the same kind of outage twice.

OK, so, you know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice. Shame on me. OK, so I put everything in place and upgraded my processes so that next time it happens it was a breeze for me to stop this.

OK, so that’s what I want you guys to understand are the processes that you have in place. They’re not set in stone. You can always make them better. And you should always make them better.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened in FBC Episode 390?

In this episode, Martin Ebongue shares a deeply personal story about a day when he nearly lost everything in his business. The episode covers the emotional and practical challenges of facing a potential business catastrophe, and the critical decisions made under extreme pressure to survive.

What lessons can entrepreneurs learn from near-failure experiences?

Near-failure experiences teach the importance of emergency planning, maintaining cash reserves, and building resilient business systems. Research shows 90% of entrepreneurs who survived a near-failure made significant changes to their risk management afterward, leading to stronger businesses long-term.

How do you protect your business from catastrophic loss?

Key protections include maintaining 3-6 months of operating expenses in reserves, diversifying income streams, having proper insurance coverage, and backing up all critical data. Regular risk assessments help identify vulnerabilities before they become emergencies.

How do entrepreneurs cope with the fear of losing everything?

Successful coping strategies include building support networks, separating personal identity from business outcomes, and maintaining perspective through journaling or meditation. Studies show entrepreneurs with strong support systems are 50% more likely to recover from business setbacks than those who isolate.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue has been building automated online businesses since 2013. He runs The Vault, a six-figure system covering Etsy, lifestyle design, AI automation, and growth hacking, without a personal brand, without filming his face, and without selling courses. He coaches solopreneurs on building durable income streams that don’t require a team or a 60-hour week. Find him on YouTube and LinkedIn.

Related Reading

• FBC – 4 Part 1 – This is the story of my life: Success, Failure and The Hurdles.
• FBC – 3 – Escape your life of sacrifice! Don’t settle for less than your dream lifestyle.
• FBC – 8 – The Weirdest Challenge To Boost Your Confidence
• Other really cool tips that will give you an unfair advantage

Further reading

• LinkedIn Newsletter (Diary of a Virtual CEO): operational tactics covered weekly in the LinkedIn Newsletter (Diary of a Virtual CEO).
• Martin’s story page: the full origin story on Martin’s story page.
• HubSpot Blog: sales and marketing benchmarks on the HubSpot Blog.
• Harvard Business Review: research on solo and founder-led operations from Harvard Business Review.