What to do when you are canceled by Big Tech, and what this man and his family did to fight back.
I’m Rob Anspach and here is my E-Heroes Podcast interview with James Staake of Your American Flag Store.
Rob Anspach: Hey, this is Rob Anspach, and welcome back to another edition of E-Heroes. If you’ve ever thought about all the companies that have been canceled and thought, “That’ll never happen to me,” well, it happened to my next guest. Today, we’re going to talk about what to do when you get canceled. I want to welcome my guest, James Staake. Thanks for being here, James.
James Staake: Thanks for having me, Rob. I’m excited about this.
Rob Anspach: You have a platform called Our American Flag Store, and it’s brilliant. I’ve looked at the beautifully crafted items you make, whether they’re flags or other products. I thought, “How could someone cancel you?” But it happened.
James Staake: Yeah, it did. I thought the same thing when we started the business. To show how innocent this idea was, it actually came from our 6-year-old son. I wish I could take credit, but it wasn’t my wife or me—it was our son. He thought it’d be cool to take my tools, which I wasn’t using when I wasn’t installing cabinets or remodeling kitchens and make an American flag out of wood. My wife, who’s an artist, could paint patriotic artwork, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, on it. That’s how the business started, from a 6-year-old’s idea. We weren’t in the thick of cancel culture back then, and things didn’t feel as polarized as they do today. I thought, “It’s the American flag—this is an undeniable, unifying symbol. No one’s going to have a problem with that.” I figured it was a product for everyone. You know how some products only appeal to certain groups, like fitness, surfing, or fishing? I thought the American flag is for every single American. But I was definitely wrong about that. You know what they say about assumptions.
Rob Anspach: So, you started in 2017, and for a few years, everything was going great. Things were copacetic, and you thought, “This is awesome.” Then, all of a sudden, the rug got pulled out from underneath you. I read about PayPal canceling you and taking your money.
James Staake: Yeah, that’s right. The first several years were great. This was all pre-COVID, so we built a cool little booth out of wood and hung our wooden flags inside. Our booth could hold 15 to 20 flags at a time. We traveled to rodeos, art festivals, country music concerts—anywhere we thought people would appreciate the American flag. Our family, all four of us, traveled across the country. We lived in San Diego at the time, but we went everywhere, from the Reno Rodeo in Nevada to Sturgis in South Dakota.
James Staake: Yeah, we were at the Sturgis motorcycle rally, and we did dozens of big and small events in between. We got to see the entire western half of the country over two, maybe two and a half years. We built our business that way—meeting customers face-to-face, interacting with them. People got to see our family and how everything was made. Business took off quickly because it was our son’s idea, and the growth we saw was fast. About six months in, we made local news on KUSI in San Diego. They didn’t really want to talk to me; they wanted to interview our 6-year-old, who came up with the idea. My son nailed it. He did a great job in interviews, I think about six different times. They kept having him come back to talk about the business. He loved telling people that he was the boss, the founder, and that mommy and daddy worked for him. So, yeah, the first couple of years really felt like we were bringing people together. Of course, you’d get a few people here and there who didn’t like what we were doing, but it was rare. People would come up and say, “America is terrible,” but at the events we attended, you didn’t see that much. Then, probably around 2019, we started to notice a change, especially at events in Southern California. People were becoming more emboldened, coming up to our booth and yelling at us, accusing us of making symbols of racism. One guy even spit on my wife’s feet at an event. Luckily, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy next to us, who had his own booth, stepped in and let the guy know that what he did was basically assault. Despite that, the company was doing really well. We got out of debt, saved money, fixed our credit, and traveled all over. We met amazing people across the country, including a couple from Tennessee. We hit it off with them during an event at the National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas, where half a million people from all over the country gather. They convinced us we didn’t belong in California anymore, so we started looking into Tennessee. We found a house online and bought it. My wife flew out to check that the house was what we thought it was, and everything looked good. So, we moved across the country and landed in Tennessee. This company—our son’s idea—delivered the American dream. We became homeowners for the first time.
Rob Anspach: Yeah, and you start to realize you used the American Dream to create even more of the American Dream. You gained a huge following, but then PayPal tried to take that away.
James Staake: Yeah. Facebook was actually the first to hit us. We don’t know exactly what triggered it, but around the same time, Shopify also hit us. When COVID hit, it eliminated our ability to travel to rodeos and events, so we reinvented ourselves online. We were still in San Diego at the time, and we started placing ads on Facebook and Google. Once we figured it out, business was doing just as well as it had when we were traveling. Since we weren’t on the road three or four days a week, we had more time to make flags. It allowed us to grow our business during COVID. Facebook was essentially doing the advertising for us, so we stayed at home and made as many flags as possible. That’s when our business grew to the point where we could buy a house. But as we were locked down and focusing more on production, we started feeling disconnected from our customers. Our customers had always been a great source of new ideas. For instance, almost a year into the business, we didn’t have an Iwo Jima flag until a customer asked if we had one. We couldn’t believe we had missed it. So, interacting with customers face-to-face was a huge part of how we constantly came up with new patriotic flag designs. When COVID hit and we were isolated at home, we were able to grow the business, but we started feeling detached from our customers, and we didn’t like that. We love our customers. About four months after we moved to Tennessee, we had been running ads for about a year, and it was like clockwork. We’d spend a certain amount on ads and get a predictable amount of sales.
James Staake: It was very predictable. We’d spend around $1,000 in ads, and we’d get $3,000 to $5,000 worth of sales, almost every month. Then, four months after we moved to Tennessee, everything stopped—no sales for an entire month. We thought, “That’s weird. Maybe I forgot to place an ad or used an old one?” So, I updated the ad, put it out again, and doubled our spending to make sure we had a good presence. But again, the second month—nothing. No sales, not even an email saying, “Hey, can you tweak this design?” Just absolute silence. I started looking into what was going on. I asked my friends, “Have you seen any of my ads lately?” None of them had. No one had seen any of our ads on Facebook. So, I contacted Facebook, and they responded that our advertising privileges had been suspended because our products didn’t meet their “community standards.” That was the only explanation they gave us.
Rob Anspach: Community standards? But they don’t actually tell you what those are, right?
James Staake: No, they don’t. It’s completely arbitrary. When you’re dealing with Meta or Facebook, you’re not talking to a real person. You’re talking to a bot or automated system, so you don’t get a real answer. It’s the same generic response every time. Since our ads were blocked, I started looking into other options, and that’s when I found out Shopify had removed some of our bestselling flags as well, for the same reasons. Even though we couldn’t advertise, we still had some people going to our website through social media. But when they got there, they couldn’t see our bestselling flags—things like the “We The People” flag, the Christian Cross flag, first responder flags, or military tribute flags. If you remove the Christian, military, and first responder flags, you’re taking away products that appeal to a huge portion of our customers—people like military personnel, police officers, firefighters, and dispatchers. These are the people who love our country and want to buy flags. When you take an emblem like the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, or Air Force and put it on a flag, they go nuts for it. Shopify pulled all of those bestselling flags from our site. So, not only were we not getting new customers because our ads were blocked, but the few people who did make it to our site weren’t seeing the products they wanted to buy. It was a double whammy. And this was before PayPal got involved. At that point, I felt like we were screwed. I had done everything I could. I even reached out to my aunt, who’s a five-time Emmy award-winning director for Face the Nation, the longest-running news program in American history. She’s been with the show for over 30 years. I called her and said, “This is a newsworthy story. We’re being canceled over the American flag.” Wouldn’t CBS be interested in this? Absolutely not. She said, “James, I’m not going to do anything with you. You support Trump, and he’s a terrorist. If my name was even attached to yours, I would lose respect among my colleagues.” I thought, “Okay, so you’re picking your colleagues over your family?” To make it worse, her brother—my dad—had just retired in California and moved here to our guest house in Tennessee. California is too expensive for anyone to retire, so he moved here, mortgage-free. Now, he gets to watch us grow this business, just like I watched him build his. That’s been a separate little dream come true. But now, all of that was being threatened. We had no place to go. Nobody would touch us, not even conservative outlets, because they were afraid, they’d get canceled too. They had employees and responsibilities, and they didn’t want to risk it. Things were going okay for them, so they stayed under the radar. And I totally understand that. What I should have done from the start was pray. But it took losing everything—nearly going bankrupt and losing our house—for me to finally turn to God. I left the shop, which is only about a hundred yards from our house, went up to the house at about 10:30 at night, and asked my wife to get out of bed. When I walked into the bedroom, she was crying. The stress was overwhelming, and we were wondering how we were going to feed our kids. She got out of bed, and we prayed, asking God to show us a path. If He wanted us to leave the business, we were fine with that. It had served a great purpose—got us out of California, got us a home, and we couldn’t complain. If we had to make a clean break and go back to our previous professions, we could do that. But if He wanted us to stay and fight, we needed to see a path forward, because I had done everything I could and didn’t see a way out. I prayed, “Show me a path forward, and I’ll walk that path until the very end.” The next morning at 7:30—this was after praying at 10:30 the night before—I got up feeling depressed, not knowing what to do. I thought, “Why am I even going to the shop? We don’t have any orders. Nobody’s advertising for us. What’s the point?” But I got out of bed anyway, and the phone rang. It was a producer from Newsmax. He said, “Hey, I saw a post of yours on LinkedIn about being canceled. Would you like to come on Newsmax and tell your story tonight?” Heck yeah, I would! So, we went on Newsmax and got a bunch of sales that night. Here’s the blessing in all of this: In that prayer, I said, “God, show me the path, and I’ll walk it until the end.” After the Newsmax interview, the producer said to me, “James, this is going to be a long story, and as things develop, we’ll be here for you until the end to tell it.” When he said that, I thought, “This is God’s answer to my prayer.” Since then, we’ve kept walking that path. Just when it seems like we’re reaching the end, the path gets extended. For example, we got a lot of sales after that Newsmax appearance. The next morning, my wife and I thought, “We’re saved.” We started figuring out how much wood we’d need, how many screws, all the materials. So, I went to place the order for the materials, but our card was declined—even though we had nearly $100,000 in our account from the sales that came in after the interview. We called PayPal to find out what was going on. The customer service rep, Scotty, had been talking to my wife for about 30 minutes before I walked into the room. She wasn’t crying, but she was very frustrated. I took over and asked, “Scotty, what’s going on?” He said, “Well, you have a pretty shady business, and we don’t think you’re going to be in business much longer.” I was shocked. I asked him what he meant. He said, “You don’t have any products made, and yet you’re selling them.” I explained, “Of course we don’t have the products pre-made. It’s made to order. We don’t know if someone is going to order a Marine flag with their name on it or with their service dates. We make custom pieces of art.” But Scotty said, “That’s a pretty shady business model, so we’re holding the money.” I told him, “If you hold nearly $90,000 of our money, of course we’re going out of business! You’re guaranteeing it. We need that money to make these flags.” He responded, “If you make those flags and get them out within six months, we’ll reevaluate and let you know if we’ll give you the money back.” That was rock bottom for us. We had all this money, but we couldn’t access it. We had tons of orders and people depending on us to fulfill them, but in two or three weeks, customers would start calling and asking, “Where’s my flag?” And how was I supposed to explain that PayPal had their money? It didn’t matter if they paid by credit card—PayPal did our credit card processing. And when customers would ask, “Why would you use PayPal if they did this to you?” I’d have to explain that I didn’t know PayPal was going to do this to us. But customers don’t care about all that—they just want their flags.
Rob Anspach: Yeah, and for any entrepreneur listening, I want you to understand that if you have $90,000 locked up by someone and they’re saying they won’t give it back for six months, how is that going to affect your business? Most of you would be out of business, and you probably don’t have a contingency plan for something like that. I want you to focus on what James is saying here. Maybe some of you aren’t the prayer type, and that’s fine. But sometimes, when you’ve exhausted every other option, you have to pray. You have to get your friends involved, the media involved—anyone who can help you get that money so you can stay in business, keep your employees, and continue contributing to your community. Anyway, I’ll turn it back to you, James.
James Staake: That’s good advice. In hindsight, we should have had a backup plan. I’ve been asked, “Why didn’t you just take the money out of PayPal before they froze it?” Well, they put a hold on the funds less than 12 hours after the money came in, so we really didn’t have a chance. And that’s where legislation comes in, which I’ll talk about in a minute. After they held all of our money, I called Newsmax and told them, “You won’t believe this. You helped us solve the advertising problem, but now PayPal has frozen all of our money.” They said, “Okay, we’ll get you back on the news.” We switched credit card processing companies and managed to get a little bit of money, but the support from that initial Newsmax interview was intense. We fought with PayPal for several months, going on TV a couple more times. That’s when Harmeet Dhillon saw our story. For those who don’t know, she’s a big-time lawyer who runs the Center for American Liberty, which takes pro bono cases for people whose personal liberties have been challenged by major companies. She called us and said, “I’ll fight to get your money back. You focus on making the flags.” With a lawyer like Harmeet, everything changed. Before that, talking to PayPal felt like talking to a brick wall. But once you have a lawyer, they start using their back channels. Harmeet was able to get PayPal to release about $10,000. That wasn’t enough to cover the cost of materials, but it was significant because we had never had that many orders all at once. With that kind of volume, we could have bought materials in bulk and saved almost 40%, which would have increased our profit margin and opened up the possibility of hiring employees. But PayPal was releasing such small amounts of money that we couldn’t take advantage of those savings. It ended up taking us about six months to fulfill orders that should have only taken two or three months.
Rob Anspach: It sounds like PayPal saw an algorithm where your sales suddenly spiked, and they just decided, “Nope, we’re going to cancel this.”
James Staake: Exactly. They just canceled us. Harmeet figured that out and got us a little bit of money, but not enough to make a difference. We were able to start fulfilling some orders, but without being able to buy materials in bulk, it was a slow process. Customers were frustrated, but they understood. They didn’t want to get caught up in a fight with PayPal. In the end, it took 11 months. After six months, PayPal still wouldn’t release the rest of the money, and that’s when Harmeet really started applying pressure, saying they had no reason to hold it any longer. It wasn’t until 10 months, three weeks, and three days later that we finally got the last bit of the money.
Rob Anspach: And they held it interest-free, right?
James Staake: Oh yeah, no interest. We’ll get to that in a minute. So after nearly 11 months, PayPal sent our lawyer a message saying, “We’ll give him back the remaining $11,000 if he signs a non-disclosure agreement.” They were effectively bribing us to stay quiet with our own money. They didn’t say, “We screwed up, here’s your money, and we’ll compensate you for the damages.” No apology, no compensation. They just wanted us to sign an NDA. I refused. A couple of days later, we went on Fox & Friends and told their audience what was going on. Five hours later, on a Sunday—when banks aren’t even open—we got our money back. No NDA. It turns out someone high up at PayPal must watch Fox, because they didn’t want any more bad press. That goes back to the prayer I made earlier. We thought we were done once we got the money back. All of our customers had their products, and we had people calling us offering to do advertising for us. Public Square, for instance, reached out and said, “We’ll never cancel you.” They told us, “You align with our values. Come on board with us, and we’ll promote you.” So, we had an advertising alternative. A friend of mine, Eugene Ra, who’s now a partner in the business, also helped us. He built us an entirely new website and got us away from Shopify. The website you see today is all thanks to him. All these problems that big tech created started to get resolved. We thought God showed us a path, we walked it to the end, and everything was over. But no, it wasn’t. Then, we got a call from our local congressman. He said, “I saw you on the news and heard about what you’re going through. Can I come by and talk to you?” Of course, we said yes. He came to the shop, and we told him everything we’ve talked about here. He was shocked and said, “This is terrible. We need laws to fix this. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” So, the path got a little bit longer. We’re going to walk that path until the end. That went on for about a year. Legislation is a slow process, but it needs to be. Laws have all kinds of nuances, and while they might help one person, they could hurt another. They have to be careful when passing laws to make sure they’re helping everyone and not causing harm. I get that. But we seemed to have a bill that both sides of the aisle, business owners, and non-business owners could agree on. About a week before the vote, everything looked good. I went to Nashville on February 14th to testify about what happened to us. When I got there, our congressman, Monty Fritz, said, “James, I’m really sorry. PayPal has sent a bunch of lobbyists to town, and we’ve lost support. We’re not going to get the bill passed today.” I thought, “Man, the path is getting longer.” But Monty gave me good advice. He said, “Just go tell the truth. Tell your testimony, be honest, and let’s see what happens. That’s all we can do.” My testimony wasn’t just about what we had personally been through. In the two and a half years of fighting big tech, I’ve had hundreds of calls from other business owners who’ve experienced similar things. I learned a lot during that time, especially about the toll this takes on families. When a business can’t make money, when you can’t feed your kids, and your spouse is stressed, it’s an unbelievable load to carry every day. Getting up in the morning to go to work, knowing there’s no paycheck and no food on the table, is devastating. My kids were outgrowing their clothes, and we couldn’t do anything about it because PayPal was holding our money. It was a very stressful time for us. Fortunately, we were able to endure it, and we came out stronger and closer as a family. Our faith in God was strengthened as well. But not every family makes it through that. What I really focused on in my testimony was the impact this has on families. In the best of circumstances, most businesses in America last about seven years. People have a great idea, they go for it, but after five to seven years, many businesses don’t survive. Maybe it’s because it was a fad, or maybe it’s due to poor management. But seven years is about the typical lifespan for a business. And when those businesses fail, about 60% of the families behind them end up in divorce. That’s the real issue I wanted to address in my testimony. When companies like PayPal, Facebook, or Shopify cancel businesses, they’re not just attacking entrepreneurship. It’s an attack on the American family. When businesses go under, families break down. Kids end up in broken homes, and they suffer from anxiety because their parents aren’t getting along. Their childhoods can be ruined as a result. Not always, but it can happen. That’s what I focused on. As a result, we got all the Democrats back on board, and all the Republicans. The six PayPal lobbyists who were there to testify left the building halfway through my testimony. They didn’t want to testify after that. The best thing that came out of it was that Representative Towns from Memphis, a Democrat, was so upset that he said he wants to launch a congressional inquiry into PayPal. He wants to find out how many people they’ve done this to, how much money they’ve held, how long they’ve held it, and most importantly, how much money PayPal has made from holding people’s funds. That could be tens of millions of dollars. That’s where we are in the story right now. I expect that once we finish this part of the path, God will cut it a little deeper, and we’ll take our law to the national level. Hopefully, we can eventually end cancel culture.
Rob Anspach: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 1995, so almost 30 years. I’ve owned multiple businesses, and this consulting company has been around for over 20 years now. I’ve seen things that would make people’s toes curl, but I’ve never seen what PayPal did to you or what Facebook has done to others. I’ve heard stories, though, and honestly, I don’t think any business could sustain waiting for nearly $100,000 for 11 months. That’s crazy. Personally, I’d be tempted to find where someone at PayPal lives and knock on their door asking, “Where’s my money?” But I want listeners to understand that James didn’t go out looking for news sources to run his story. They found him. Not everyone will have that luxury, but whatever you do, share your story. If your business is struggling, put your story out there on social media. Someone will share it, and it could get picked up. If you have local political representation, talk to them. You’d be surprised at how far up the chain they can go to help save your business. I don’t like seeing businesses taken advantage of. I don’t like big tech saying, “We’re going to take your money, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” That’s when we, the small business owners, need to become David and take down Goliath. That’s what James is proving to you every day. He gets up and keeps going, even when things look bleak. A long time ago, someone told me, “This too shall pass.” And it’s true. You just have to believe that tomorrow will be better. Maybe you’re not into Christianity, politics, or you don’t like Trump or MAGA. It doesn’t matter. If you’re an entrepreneur, you have to rally behind other entrepreneurs. If it affects one of us, it affects all of us. So, go to James’ store—youramericanflagstore.com—and support him. Because when you support him, you’re supporting other local entrepreneurs. We can’t afford to let big tech keep taking away entrepreneurship. So, James, we’re down to a couple of minutes here. Any final words of encouragement?
James Staake: I’d probably close with what you just said. Don’t give up, and don’t stay quiet. Those are the two worst things you can do when you’re being attacked by big tech. Put your story out there, even on the platform that’s canceling you. Facebook wasn’t the platform that got me noticed—it was LinkedIn. But still, all these platforms are in cahoots in some way or another. It was posting on social media that got a Newsmax producer to see my post. He didn’t like what he read and reached out. Also, talk to your local politicians. They often have connections to the media, and they can help get your story out. If they can’t do that, they can talk to other politicians and start making things happen. Laws and legislation take time but talking and prayer work. Giving up and staying quiet never will.
Rob Anspach: Absolutely. Share your story, no matter how painful it is. There are others out there in the same predicament, and they need to know that someone is out there fighting for them. James is taking on that role right now, and he’s encouraging others to follow. Without someone like him leading the way, a lot of entrepreneurs would just give up. We need to know that these challenges can be overcome. In my 30 years as an entrepreneur, I’ve seen a lot. Even one of my books, Rob Versus the Entitled, which is part of my Rob Versus series, was taken off Amazon. It was gone for six months because someone was triggered by it. I called them up and asked what was going on, and eventually, they put it back up. I didn’t lose thousands of dollars, and they didn’t hold my money, but I had to speak up. I want everyone to understand that you may feel like you’re at the end of your rope, but being canceled isn’t the end of the world. Speak up, share your story. If James can do it, and I can do it, you can do it too. And with that, we’ll wrap it up. We’ll catch you all on the next episode. See ya, and don’t forget to visit James’ store—www.youramericanflagstore.com.
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