116. Manus Shut Down, and I Had to Back Up All of My Information. Don’t Put Your Stuff on Rented Land

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Manus Shut Down, and I Had to Back Up All of My Information. Don’t Put Your Stuff on Rented Land

Right before I hopped on a call with the same people I’d just spent a week teaching to build their websites on it, I got the email that Manus shut down, and my stomach dropped. In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I walk through what actually happened when the platform I depend on for so much of my business hit a major shake-up, why it turned out okay, and the backup habits I’m building into my business now so the next platform scare doesn’t catch me off guard.

I’m not here to tell you Manus is bad, because it’s not, and I’m still using it every day. This is about what happens when you build your entire business on a platform you don’t own, and the simple habits that keep you protected no matter which tool shakes things up next.

AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:

  • Why relying on one AI platform for your whole business is riskier than it feels, even when everything is running smoothly.
  • The GitHub method that lets you pull your website’s code out and rebuild it on a totally different platform in minutes.
  • How a simple backup button built into your website’s admin dashboard can save you from losing everything.
  • Why custom GPTs are getting shaky and how turning them into portable skills protects your work instead.
  • The habit of keeping your brand voice, frameworks, and stories separate from any single platform, so a shutdown never means starting from scratch.

Connect with me:

Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries:www.heyberries.com/therapists
Sponsored by Auralink Pro: Start your free trial and use code KYMTOLSON for 20% off www.auralink.com/pro

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI. Uh, so I think I told you guys last week that I’m getting ready to plan a trip out of the country. Some of you probably know my other brand is The Traveling Therapist, and I have a Facebook group for The Traveling Therapist. But generally I was living in Airbnbs for… you know, every two weeks we’d move to a new Airbnb for at least the last four and a half years we were doing that.

[00:00:23] But then we had a grandchild. It’s my stepdaughter, his daughter, and we had a grandchild in Florida, and we are obsessed with him. And literally we keep saying, “Okay, we’re just gonna extend this like short-term lease just a little bit longer.” And we’ve been doing that for a while now, so we’ve actually been here for quite some time, so I’m not quite the traveling therapist these days.

[00:00:43] However, I am getting ready to take a three-week trip to Switzerland and Italy. I’m taking my nephew, who just graduated high school. He decided that he wanted to like backpack through Europe, and my sister was like, “Why don’t you go with your aunt first just to see how it goes, you know, before you just like go all in?”

[00:01:03] He’s never been to Europe or anything like that. So anyway, I’m going with him, and then we’re meeting up with my sister in Italy, and then we’re gonna send him on his way. So it should be fun. I’ve never really been to Switzerland except for maybe one time, I think short, like really brief. I just was kind of in Switzerland.

[00:01:19] But this one is we’re taking like those glass trains that go through the Alps and everything, so it should be a really cool trip. But all that to say, I’m recording a bunch of these episodes back to back, so I have stuff to give you guys before or while I’m gone essentially

[00:01:34] And this is really, what it’s all about, or at least in my mind, like having this business that’s location independent. I can work and wander. I can like take time off if I want to, which is super cool. I’m not stuck in that one-to-one model where I’ve gotta see clients, like 20 clients a week or something like that.

[00:01:51] I only have two clients now, which I love. I never thought I would say that. Years ago, I was like, “Okay, I just think I’ll see clients forever,” but that changes over time. You get burned out new passions come up, that sort of thing. And multiple income streams. You guys may or may not know, I’ve got 15 income streams.

[00:02:09] I’ve got a team now, and I have AI doing a ton of the heavy lifting in the background, so I don’t have to be online every single day, like doing a ton of stuff. So AI’s doing a lot of that, And my team has become AI integrated. So just the other day, I was telling Christina, my business manager, she’s like, “I cannot figure out how to do this thing on Zapier.

[00:02:31] I don’t know what to do. I’m gonna have to reach out to customer support.” And I was like, “Just pull it up,” like I showed her, “Pull it up and open the Claude extension on your computer and ask Claude, the Claude extension how to do it.” And she’s like, “Oh my God, I never thought of that.” I’m like, “Yeah, so do that for everything,” you know?

[00:02:49] Especially ’cause she has access to my Chrome browser. I’m like, “Just do it in mine. It takes my credits.” And she’s like, “Oh my God, I love you.” You know? Like, yeah. People don’t think of this stuff, but just these little teeny things, especially if you, you have like a VA or a team, being able to train them in how to do this stuff is gonna save you time and hours that you’re paying somebody to do stuff, but they can do it more quickly for you.

[00:03:11] So I bring that all up really because what I wanna talk about today is kinda like the shadow side of that dream, like building a business built on AI. It’s the side that nobody really warns you about when you go all in on building your business with like specific AI tools, and I learned that the hard way like three weeks ago.

[00:03:31] So let me tell you what happened So I’m sitting down to hop on the call with the Clinical AI Club Thera AI Hub Clinical AI Club. We’re merging the two, so soon it’s just gonna be the Thera AI Hub. But I hop on a call– I’m getting ready to hop on the call. We have three a month And about 20 minutes before we start, I got an email, and this email is basically telling me that Manus, which if you don’t know what Manus is, is one of the AI platforms that I use constantly. I’m using Claude a lot, but Manus has been my go-to for years now for a ton of things. I’ve built websites on it.

[00:04:04] I’ve built apps on it. The whole Thera AI Hub has stuff running through it. My skills directory runs through it. And this email is telling me that Manus and Meta, who had merged last year, have now had this huge falling out basically, and the merger’s been broken. It’s more complicated than that, but the merger’s been broken and because of that, they’re refunding everybody’s subscriptions and telling every single user in the world that they have to back up their data by a deadline or they could lose it.

[00:04:31] Okay? I’m like, oh my God, this is like right before the meeting. And this is also right after the week before I had taught, I mean, at least over 100 therapists access to training how to use Manus specifically to build out your website. So all these therapists had built these beautiful, gorgeous websites through this thing we did in the Thera AI Hub, and Manus is saying like, “You better back it up or you’re gonna lose it,” okay?

[00:04:58] So I’m like, oh my God. I was kind of in a panic. Even the members were like, “It’s okay, Kim. This isn’t your fault.” I was like, “I know,” but it’s just like super stressful. Anyway, I just sat there. I didn’t even really fully process the whole thing. They had already like refunded me in my email, like the rest of my annual plan.

[00:05:16] They were just like, “Here’s the rest of your annual plan back.” It was like $400 or something like that that just showed up back in my account. I didn’t ask for a refund, but they did this automatically for everybody. They had to, I think, to break that merger with, with Meta. My first thought was like, oh great, free money.

[00:05:32] That’s cool. And then my second thought was like, oh my God, I just did this three-day workshop last week, you know, over 100 therapists, a bunch of them built their actual site on Manus during that workshop, and now I’ve got to walk them through on this call we’re getting ready to have to tell them the platform we just used and they spent money on, all of that is like gonna be going dark essentially for a little bit.

[00:05:54] Like I didn’t even know what it really meant. It’s like can we not use Manus anymore or what? What’s happening? Anyway, so I hop on the call and Michelle, what I remember, she’s like, “Everything’s gonna be okay, all right? You’re gonna be okay.”

[00:06:04] And it was like, “Y’all are gonna fire me because I just had you build this thing and now this is happening.” And they were like so sweet about it. “No, it’s not your fault,” all that stuff. But anyway, it landed on me, you know, because I was like, “Trust me, use this platform.” So it, it felt heavy and it feels heavy like teaching AI all the time because, you know, people trust you to give them good systems that work and then AI, like something happens, right? It craps out. So it’s a little bit stressful when you think about it like that, and especially if you’re building your business on it.

[00:06:31] But in the meeting, I, I love these meetings because in the meeting, one of our other members, she was like playing around with it in the background while we were talking about it. She’s like, “Well, it’s free right now, and it’s free for the next 12 days, so how can we make this work for us?” And I was like, ” You are a genius,” right?

[00:06:48] ‘Cause it’s– I mean, it’s kind of expensive. You have to spend credits and all of that. So, anyway, she’s like, “I’m just gonna, like, use this as a blessing really and build out a ton of stuff.” And I was like, “That’s so smart.” So I’ve been doing the same thing. As of today, I think today is the last day of the free trial.

[00:07:02] Of course, I’m giving you guys this information too late. But anyway, I’ve been building out a ton of stuff. I built out a Shopify store using Manus. Manus built the whole thing for me that basically will, like, sell each of my skills that I’ve created for the Thera AI Hub, but like individually instead of in that Thera AI Hub, AI Hub package, which is really cool.

[00:07:22] I mean, it literally did the whole thing for me, which is it packaged up these little zip files and put them in together and made the store and everything, set the pricing and all that. It was really awesome to watch

[00:07:31] Okay, so getting over all that I just said, I wanna tell you why I really wanted to record this, because it’s not really about Manus. Manus is gonna be fine. Honestly, I’ve already downloaded everything. I’ve restored it, backed it up, everything’s working great, thank goodness. It wasn’t the huge loss that I was, like, catastrophizing about

[00:07:49] And I think they’ll probably come back better than ever. They were already better, in my opinion, than Claude and ChatGPT, and that’s why I use them so much, ’cause really you can just do anything on Manus and it just like blows your mind the stuff that it can do for you. So I’m excited to continue using it and hopefully it’s gonna be fine

[00:08:02] So this isn’t like a Manus is bad episode. This is more of a like, what does this teach us all episode. So what it taught me and really reminded me is do not build your entire business on rented land, so to speak. And I’m s- I’m saying this, but I’ve also got, you know, most of my business is on Facebook through free Facebook groups and that sort of thing.

[00:08:23] So I’m still on rented land, but it’s just like making me rethink this whole thing. Like putting, putting all your eggs in one basket that could go down tomorrow is probably not the best idea or the best way to do things

[00:08:35] And I’ve heard this for years, right? In the online business world, especially with like having a lot of my business on Facebook, like in Facebook groups that could shut down overnight, and they do. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people

[00:08:47] It’s basically like you’re building on a rented land. The landlord essentially could change the locks. They could kick you out. They could, like, demo the building. Yeah, I mean, you just, you know, for an analogy, you just never know what’s gonna happen And in this case, right, a giant corporate breakup and telling everyone, “Just grab your stuff and get out in a few days.”

[00:09:06] I mean, that’s essentially what happened. Thank God they came back, but they could have not come back, you know? And then I’ve got all these apps and everything that I don’t know what to do with

[00:09:15] In another example that’s happened this month, some of you may have built out your own custom GPTs. You may have sold your own custom GPTs on ChatGPT. The TheraAI Hub started as a custom GPT hub because I built out all these custom GPTs for therapists that you just click the link, you go over, you use it, right?

[00:09:36] Well, guess what? ChatGPT just made some major changes with custom GPTs, and there’s still rumors that they’re just gonna eliminate them completely. So now you have to be on a business plan, which thankfully I already was to be able to build custom GPTs and then to be able to share them with others, you’ve got to be on that level business plan.

[00:09:57] And I’ve heard some other rumors about other things happening. I don’t know when or if, but that’s another example. Like my whole business is through custom GPTs, so of course I had to pivot, right? I had to use Claude. I had to ask Claude to develop this amazing skill for me that can go over to my custom GPTs and extract all the information and files and all of that and basically turn it into a skill, and that’s what I’ve done for the TheraAI Hub.

[00:10:22] All those custom GPTs have now been repurposed into skills that you know, you can use essentially through the TheraAI Hub and put them into your own AI now. So the, the power of skills really takes us off that rented land, right? So I don’t have to depend on custom GPTs anymore. I’ve got my intellectual property wrapped up in these little packages now that I can give to anybody to use anywhere, which is pretty amazing.

[00:10:47] And that might change too, who knows? But the world of AI and a business that’s, you know, based on AI, you’ve got to be able to pivot like this and use different tools. Thankfully, there’s new tools coming out all the time that can help us pivot and adjust to things like this that are happening

[00:11:03] And I’m not saying don’t use these tools. Just start thinking through, like, how can you back this stuff up, right? So with Manus, for example, they gave us that, that backup that we could do, right? But instead of just backing them up, I also went to this thing called GitHub. If you guys don’t know what GitHub is, it’s kinda like, you know how with like Google Docs, right, you could just like, you could push information to Google, like through your AI and that sort of thing.

[00:11:27] You push them to Google Docs. I can open a Google Doc. You could open a Google Doc. We could be working in it together. It k- kind of like functions like that, but it’s for code. So if you’ve got an app or a website or anything that, that is like based in code, you can go to GitHub, and you can push that code to GitHub, so it kinda lives there.

[00:11:47] And then you could go to another AI, connect that, that AI to your GitHub, and you could pull the code back out. So it’s sorta similar like that, like a Google Doc that just could travel with you wherever you wanna go. So what I did do before I did the big Manus backup is I went and pushed everything to GitHub first to keep it there.

[00:12:04] So now all of these apps, everything of Manus goes down tomorrow, which I’m still using it, but if it goes down tomorrow, I’m gonna have all of this stuff backed up on my GitHub, where I could go over to a new platform similar to Manus and just you know, say connect GitHub and say I wanna install this file on my GitHub.

[00:12:23] I wanna install it over here and make it a fully functioning app over here. And you can do that with like Base44, Lovable, Claude, a bunch of different things. So that’s like another workaround for something like this. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff built out on ChatGPT or somewhere else,” Claude, go push it to GitHub.

[00:12:40] And any time that you update it, update it to GitHub. It’s very easy to do. You can tell Claude now or Manus or whatever, you can just say, “I want you to push this to GitHub.” It’ll do it for you. I don’t even need to know how to do it. It just does it for you.

[00:12:52] And thank goodness for that website workshop that if, if you guys wanna take it, I’ll put the link down below. But in that workshop website, in that website workshop, I basically showed everybody how to build an admin dashboard in the back end of the website. You know, with like WordPress or whatever, you could log into the back end, Squarespace, all that.

[00:13:11] Well, with this, you can create an admin dashboard that you can just log into yourself, and you can upload pictures there, you can put your blog post there, you can manage comments there if you want to. There’s all kinds of stuff you could do with it. But one button I had everybody build into it is a back up your site button essentially.

[00:13:28] So if you’re updating stuff or anything like that, you can go into this admin dashboard now and just download all the files, and you’ve got them backed up on your computer just in case, you know, God forbid something ever happens to these websites that everybody put up on Manus during that workshop that I did

[00:13:42] And I actually did that that day on the Clinical AI Club. I was like, “Here’s, you know, what I’m gonna do,” and I demonstrated it. I showed everybody how to do it, and downloaded the code from one of the websites I built out during the training, took it over to Claude, uploaded the code again, and I said, “I want you to recreate this website.”

[00:14:00] Claude did it beautifully, and I said, “Now I want you to push it to Netlify,” which is a place where you can host things for free, essentially. Push it to Netlify and rebuild the whole thing basically, and it rebuilt the entire website over on Netlify. So I have another copy of that website just sitting over there.

[00:14:18] If anything ever happens, I could just transfer the domain name to Netlify for the new website that I’ve got set up in two places now just waiting in case I need it. So that’s like another workaround if you’re listening. Just take your HTML code from wherever your website is. I mean, even if it’s like Squarespace or what’s the other one that thera- b- r- not Brilliant Directories, the god, I can’t think of the name of it. You guys listening are probably like, “It’s blah.” It’s that one that like all therapists use for a long time and it, like you had to pay them a monthly fee and they update the website for you. I can’t think of the name of it for some reason. But yeah, go over there, download your HTML, see if you can like keep it somewhere else.

[00:14:56] Give it to Claude. Tell Claude to put it on Netlify. You just have to set up a free Netlify account. These are things to do because these places, right, they could raise their rates on you, right? They could say like, “Hey, last year you were only paying like $300 a month to maintain this website. Now you have to pay $400 a month.”

[00:15:12] And you might be like, “No, I don’t wanna do that. I want my website.” Pull the code off of these things and save them somewhere else in case you ever decide to leave those places, and then you’re not on that rented land anymore

[00:15:23] So anyway, the whole reason I’m talking about this is if you’re using AI anywhere near as much as I am, I don’t want you to, like, get stuck on this one platform, right? ‘Cause I was all in on ChatGPT, and now I’m all kinda in on Claude and Manus. And then ChatGPT just released all this really great stuff. I wanna take all my stuff over there.

[00:15:43] So no matter where you are, get in the habit of keeping all this stuff in one centralized place so you can put it up somewhere else overnight if you have to

[00:15:54] So what’s the habit? Just to summarize, right? It’s really simple, and I don’t wanna make it more complicated than it is ’cause it’s really not. But back up the stuff that matters, right? Even on your computer, like download everything just to a thumb drive every once in a while, just so you’ve got it all somewhere else other than just in your computer

[00:16:12] Your website, download the code, keep it somewhere. Keep it in a Google Doc if you have to

[00:16:18] Any important documents that you’ve got living on custom GPTs, that sort of thing, pull them out of the custom GPTs, put them on your Google Drive, keep them on your computer somewhere. If an AI tool you use lets you export, just go ahead and export it. I know it sucks, but just do it as a backup so you’re not stuck without, you know, losing all the hard work that you put into something like a website

[00:16:40] And the next one just to remember is keep your ideas separate from the platform, right? So that’s why I’m so obsessed with skills right now. And just ha- being able, and being able to have, like, these little MD files that you could just take with you everywhere you go, that you could open up, you can edit, you can make better and better over time, and just re-upload the new version and just keep it really nice and clean on your system.

[00:17:03] And you could just, like, if Claude goes down tomorrow for some reason, they get like, you know, attacked, cyber attacks, right? I wanna have all my skills that I could just take right over to ChatGPT and be able to use them over there instead

[00:17:14] Same with your brand voice, your stories that you put on blogs and that sort of thing, the frameworks that you use. Keep it all somewhere safe that you could just go put your hands on it if you need to in case it gets lost or a platform shuts down on you Facebook groups. There’s a, there’s a full export you can do from Facebook where you just click a button and it’s gonna download all of your information.

[00:17:38] Do that. You know, I, I, I collect people’s information that comes into my Facebook groups. I’ve had, you know, I’ve got 35,000 in the Traveling Therapist group. I’ve got a lot of emails. That’s backed up on a Google Doc, all the emails that we collect when people come in, because if you’re in multiple income streams like me, your email list is everything.

[00:17:57] You’ve got to have people to sell stuff to if you’re trying to make a living, you know, outside of the therapy room, that sort of thing

[00:18:03] And the last one is just like stay a little like nimble in your head. Don’t get married to one tool that you can’t imagine leaving. Like I love Manus. I was really upset when I was like, “Oh my God, what’s happening?” And I also had my site rebuilt elsewhere in about five minutes because I had to pivot like that.

[00:18:20] You know what I mean?

[00:18:21] So like both things are true. You can love a tool, but you can still keep your bags packed, so to speak. Not to use a traveling therapist analogy, but you can. You know, you can just like keep it in preparation for in case you need to go somewhere else.

[00:18:33] And it’s just, the stuff’s just moving so fast, right? GPTs are getting pulled, mergers are falling apart, watermark detectors are propping up everywhere on different AI tools, and I don’t know. It’s just, it’s just the world we live in now, so you just have to be prepared for stuff to change fast and be able to pivot

[00:18:51] And really, the therapists that are using AI for their practice or, you know, their other income streams, that kind of thing, the ones that are learning how to do this well and pivot and be flexible are the ones that are gonna stay successful and not, you know, have to, like, become so burned out because they can’t keep up with their own stuff or, you know, manage these other income streams because of the ever-evolving world of AI that they’re trying to use to manage the whole thing.

[00:19:15] And I don’t have it all figured out, by the way. I’m still processing this right along with you. I was freaking out on that call the same as everybody else was freaking out. I just happened to know a bunch of ways to back it up because I’m just in that world a lot, and that made it a little easier for me to just, like, be able to say, like, “Okay, problem.

[00:19:35] How are we going to pivot immediately? Let me teach everybody else here in the room how to do this too.” And then, you know, it turns out it wasn’t that bad, thank goodness. But anyway, lesson learned. I hope this helps you guys as well.

[00:19:47] So I guess go from here and pick the things in your business that would hurt the most if you lost them. Your website resources you share with your clients, your course that you created. Whatever it is, go this week and make a copy of it somehow, one of these ways that I’ve told you today

[00:20:04] And if you actually wanna work through some of this stuff with the people who are figuring this out in real time like me and the members of the Thera AI Hub, come join us. The doors are actually closing in a little less than maybe 72 hours. So by the time you guys hear this, it might already be closed.

[00:20:21] But there will be a wait list on the website. You can go get on the wait list. We’re shutting everything down. We’re revamping the entire Thera AI Hub. I’m super excited about that. And those of you that are listening that are already members, you’ve already gotten an email about this, but we’re merging the club and the hub together.

[00:20:36] So if you’re in one or the other, you’re now gonna be in both, and it’s gonna be merged into this really cool integration of the two, so I’m super excited about that. Okay. So that’s all I’ve got for today. Go back your stuff up, and I’m gonna finish packing for my trip, and I’ll talk to you guys later.

[00:20:50] Have a great day. Bye.