Meta (Facebook) Business Owners Worst Nightmare

Howdy, I’m Jen, creator of Jen Country Strength, along with my crafting business “Stronger Together Mother and Daughter”. My personal Facebook account was Jen Roberts, and I’m about to tell you a story on how Facebook (Meta) became my worst nightmare as a business owner and how it all went wrong for me.

On Monday, Jan 5th, 2026 I started attending a webinar held by Valerie Elhurr on the “Irresistible Offer Challenge” on Facebook. If you ever have a chance to attend one of her webinars, she is awesome on the material she shares. This webinar was a five-day challenge going over the ways to find your niche and come up with an irresistible offer and a program price that really suits what you are offering. On day three, which was Wednesday, I was feeling really confinement about the material that I had come up with.

I created an ad through Zeely which gave a nice little hook video with a dog, then followed by an AI head talking about the services I offer with my website JenFitCountryStrength.com running in the background. I thought it was the cuties little ad, and it had a joke line in it too. So, I put it on Facebook and wrote my ad with my irresistible catch line. Since I’m a non-big business, I only selected it to run for five days at $2.00 a day. So, the total cost of the ad would have been $10.00. I finished creating the ad around 1am CST or 2am CST. It was early morning. When I woke up, the first thing I did was go to my website that I had just created this past week to see if it was getting traffic since the ad had a “Book Now” button that took them to my homepage of my website. I was shocked, I had 67 visits from the US (which lets be real when I was creating my website to make sure my links worked allot of this could have just been me.) but then I also had 7 views from Canda, 7 views from France and 7 from Poland. 13 of the views came from social media and 7 came from direct searches. Could this mean that my ad is going to work and it's going to be pushed to a lot more since I have it scheduled to run for five days! I was feeling excited and hopeful but then I got a message from Facebook that changed everything.

I got a message from their bot team that states “There is higher than normal activity on your page” I responded with “yes, I’m running a paid ad”. Which shortly after that, which is the morning right after the ad which is January 8th 2026 at 7:51am I receive an email from Facebook that there was a log in to my account from Los Angeles CA on a Chrome device (I’m located in Aggieland College Station Tx) “If this wasn’t you, we’re here to help you take some simple steps to secure your account” I quickly click the “This wasn’t me” button but before it takes me to anything I get another message directly from Facebook in the same previous chat that that they mentioned about the unusual activity that my account has been disabled and that people cannot view it. And if I felt that this was an error, I needed to appeal it. I quickly click the appeal button (which their appeal process is absolutely stupid, it's just uploading your government photo ID or passport and selfie, no option to know why they are disabling you and no option for you to write) upload my ID. I then get the message of “Jen, you submitted an appeal Check back here for results, if we find your account does follow our community standards you’ll be able to use Facebook again, if we find your account does not meet community standards, it will be permanently disabled and you won’t be able to appeal again.” So, because I was never able to say “This was not me” on the hack, whatever the hacker posted in the short time frame that they had my account was, you guessed it. AGAINST FACEBOOK COMMUNITY STANDARDS, and if you remember the sentence above, it states if we find it against our standards “ YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO APPEAL AGAIN” So they took down my personal Facebook account which if you do business on Facebook you know that they do not allow you to have your business account as a standalone (I have never understood this since the whole point of creating an LLC’s is to septate the personal from the business so they don’t effect each other.) so my photography business just lost access to that account, my crafting business that I had with my daughter I lost that business account, and the newly created fitness account I lost that business access too.

I start panicking; this can’t be the final thing. I google like crazy to only learn, yes this is the final thing. I have lost my personal Facebook account which is losing all my photos and videos of my kid's memories growing up, photos and videos of my deceased grandparents, photos and videos of thier deceased father, uncle, and grandmother of my children. Realizing everything I had lost, I started to full on cry actual tears, while I’m writing this blog my eyes are watering again over it, I felt every emotion you could feel... I felt. I was angry and sad that a hacker violated my account and stole my memories, I was angry that they posted something that disabled my account (I still don’t know what it was) I was furious that Facebook the big company that they are has no customer service, no AI bot to talk to, no phone number and no email address to write your case to. I was furious that their AI bot only looked at the most recent content and didn’t look at the account in full to see that it was unusual and that it was hacked, and what should have happened was the recent content should have been deleted and the account given back. The worst part, since they have your photo for the appeal process on the account that was against community standards if you attempt to make a new Facebook with a different phone number or email the last step is “Lets check to see if you are human” and you have to submit a photo. Well, the AI bot then matches your image to the account that was band and loops you right back to this account has been disabled. I went into a major depression the two following days since I kept thinking to myself. “How am I going to make an online coaching business without access to the platform that allows private rooms for fitness challenges or groups.”

I was depleted....Back to the challenge I was doing with Vallerie, lucky for me she also was sending them via Zoom links in her emails. I missed day four of Valeries challenged, but I attended her day five, and it was a message that I needed to hear. She talked about the story of Sylvester Stallone, how he hit rock bottom before creating “Rocky”, how he was turned down multiple times, but he never gave up on himself! He believed he was worth the star role in the movie, and he believed he was capable. So, I am not allowing this hacker to take my life, my mental health, and my passion to help others. I believe in myself, I believe I’m meant to help people, I believe I can make my business work on just Instagram and TikTok. I believe that if you have made it to my blog that you might have been a business owner that has felt the same thing, and I am here to tell you. DON’T GIVE UP! Try other media, do it the old fashion way by talking to people in person with real conversations.

If you are a business owner and this has not happened to you. I have some advice to prevent it. If I was able to access Facebook again this is how I would do it differently, I would start with having the two step verification set up, I would change my password every 60 days, I would give access to my spouse or children in the business suit where if I ever lost access someone can still manage the business account. I pray that this doesn't happen to anyone else, and I pray that this reaches business as an awareness to set this up. I pray that Facebook learns to have a customer service center for their business accounts. If this has happened to you and you are currently in the depression state I was, I pray that you find guidance and I pray that you become successful without Facebook.

My last plea as a small business owner, if you are reading this and you want to support me even if I’m not your niche. The best thing you can do to support a small business is follow them on their social media, so for my small crafting business that I have with my daughter our Instagram account is : @StrongerTogether_md and our TikTok is : @strongertogether_md my fitness please bear with me since this is the account I completely lost and having to start up from scratch. The Instagram is : @JenCountryStrength the TikTok is : @JenFit.Country.st

I hope to meet you virtually or in person as your personal trainer soon, to my fellow business owners who are going through the same thing I did, stay country strong we’ve got this!