competition and copy cats, what should you do

Summary

Garage Gym Athlete gets copied. PT Biz gets copied. the better. brand will get copied. somebody is currently screenshotting whatever I just shipped and putting their own logo on it. here is how I think about it.

1. being copied is a lagging indicator that you are winning. copycats do not exist around no one. when you see your stuff lifted, the market is telling you exactly who they think the leader is.

2. personal brand is the moat. the copycat can lift the offer, the funnel, the email sequence. they cannot lift you. people choose to work with a company because of the human they trust on the other side of it. lean into that. it’s the one thing that cannot be photocopied.

3. their copy work is their tell. a business that copies is a business that does not innovate. it is a lagging competitor by definition. while they’re reverse-engineering your last campaign, you should already be three campaigns ahead.

4. do not engage. do not subtweet. do not waste a single calorie on the copycat. concentrate on innovating, marketing harder, and taking better care of the customers you already have. competition handles itself when you do that. they handle themselves out of the market.

Transcript

introduction to the challenges of dealing with competition

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. What do you do about competition in your market, or what do you do if someone’s copying what you’re doing? What action should you take? Is there anything that you can do? This is the Better Human Business podcast.

experiences with competitors and copycats in the online space

I’m Jerred Moon. And I get this question quite a bit. It’s mainly from like, it’s those two areas. A lot of people are worried about competition in their local market, especially if they have a smaller market or something and other people are popping up other businesses around them for brick and mortar.

And then online people that I’ve coached as well and consulted, they get super concerned when somebody is kind of mimicking them or, you know, something comes up like that. And this is something I’ve experienced a great deal. Like Garage Gym Athlete started in 2015, 2014, 15, something like that. And it was well before people were really doing online programming.

And we shot off. I mean, people were doing it, but not exactly how we were doing it. And so we shot off. We, you know, kind of had some massive trajectory on our growth there at the beginning. And then we started to get copied hardcore. You know, people were stealing like our landing pages because it’s all online business landing pages, funnels, ads, everything.

legal actions and their role in handling direct copies

Everything was kind of getting stolen. And there are some things that you can do and there’s some things that you can’t do. I mean, I will say if anybody’s like directly mimicking you or doing something to where you might be able to take legal action, you might want to consider it. You have to decide if that’s worth your time.

But that happened a lot at Garage Gym Athlete. And now even in PT Biz, we have some competitors. I mean, to be honest, we have one competitor. Like if I had to deem this company being world class at anything, it’s like, hey, hey, guys, let’s go. Let’s go brainstorm what we’re world class at. They would be world class at ripping other people off.

And so you just run into this stuff like people, they just mimic you because they know that you’re the market leader. So the first thing, if you were getting copied or there’s competition, know that’s a good thing. One, if you’re getting copied. That means they think that you’re doing something right, even though you might not, you have no idea what you’re doing or you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing. Being copied is ultimately a good sign because that means people think that you are the market leader.

importance of brand identity in differentiating from competitors

Whether you are or you aren’t, they think that you are and they’re copying you for that reason. Also, competition, should you be worried about it? I mean, I don’t think that you need to necessarily be worried about it in a in a massive capacity. And I’ll talk a little bit about why and then we can kind of go over the steps that I take when I’m being copied or I feel like there’s a lot of competition.

But these days and, you know, most businesses are brands, right? You have a brand and that brand is typically attached to a personality. And I think that’s becoming more and more prominent, even in brick and mortar businesses, especially in online businesses, as people want to do business with the person. So this is why I don’t worry a ton about competition or being mimicked or anything like that, because you can have two businesses that run the identical business, like the offers are the same products, more or less the same.

You could you could say yours is better or theirs is the same or theirs is better, whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’s probably marginal at best if you’re both running the same thing and both of you are trying to do a really good job. But ultimately, you’re going to probably have a preference for who you work with.

strategies for focusing on innovation over competition

And that’s where your uniqueness is. One hundred percent like you could someone might be able to go down the street and get the same service. They might even undercut you on price, but maybe someone’s willing to pay that extra price to work with you specifically or work through your methodology. Now, this isn’t my case, like always have to be.

The person doing the work or doing the job or, you know, that’s not scalable, like you can’t just be like I’m not saying you always have to be the one doing it, what I am saying is you want to put as much of your personality and inject as much of that you as you can into your brand. So that’s the differentiating factor, not necessarily the service itself.

And I just think the world’s massively shifted that way. If you look at influencers and social media followings and everything else, you really just need to focus on being you and then offering what you offer and people will choose to work with you. So that’s why I’m not like overly concerned when people, you know, just constantly rip us off or try and do the same thing is because ultimately, who cares?

leveraging unique selling propositions to enhance customer loyalty

Right. Like it’s someone’s going to work with us or work with you based off of what we do, who we’ve helped and our company culture and all those good things. So three things that I look at and remind myself of when competition pops up or if someone’s like brutally, brutally just mimicking everything that we do.

First, if someone’s mimicking what I’m doing. I see that as a huge win. That means they can’t innovate, they’re incapable of innovation. And that’s awesome. If they just want to copy and model your business, they will never win because they are, they are learning. They are teaching them themselves a skill on how to mimic and how to copy and not how to innovate.

I would rather be focusing on how to innovate, how to come up with new products, new offerings, new ideas, new marketing strategies. And that’s where I spend a lot of my time is in that department. And if someone else is just always running behind you, picking up the scraps, cool, let them always be number two.

final thoughts on maintaining focus and pushing through competition

So that always makes me feel better if I’m ever getting mimicked. Second thing, if there’s competition in your area, competition online, or someone is copying you, do not dwell on it. Do not dwell on it at all. Seriously, don’t reach out to them with a little snide remark. Don’t do it. Don’t interact.

Don’t engage. Don’t talk to your clients or customers about them. Do not dwell on it. Do not put any thought into these other companies. Do not. Like me recording this podcast is more, like has made me think more about competition and people mimic me than I have in the last six months to a year. Like I’d never focus on what other people are doing.

I don’t care. I just don’t care. I don’t want to focus on it. It’s negative energy. I just move on. And a lot of times this will get pointed out to me by customers, by current clients or customers, like, Hey, these people are ripping you off or like doing what you’re doing or, you know, team members will notice it and they’ll, they’ll share it.

I always respond the same way. Do not dwell on it. It’s not a good space for your mental energy. And I’m not talking about stealing. Someone’s straight up stealing from you. You might have a legal case there. And so I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about if someone steals your marketing strategy or they want to mimic your business model, some of these things you can’t take people to court for, and to be honest, I’d even argue that might not be worth your time.

Even if you could take them to court for something, it’s not going to. That’s not focusing on growing the business, right? Like there was another person in our industry who they trademarked a term and then they tried to send out a bunch of cease and desist letters to everyone in the industry who was utilizing this term.

This is the company PTBiz. And I just thought it was so funny because they spent all this time and money trademarking, which can take years, takes a lot of money, legal fees. And they did all this stuff. And then they were like, Hey, you can’t use that term anymore. And then we were like, okay, we won’t use it.

And our business still grows. Like we’re still doing everything else. And, and that was like kind of a sneaky, like they were trying to do something like, oh, we’ll, we’ll trademark this term and then they can’t use it anymore. And it’ll crush their business. It’s no, we were utilizing the term because we didn’t think anybody else had rights to it.

And so cool. We’ll stop using the term and our business will still grow. So you see how that other business focused on the wrong thing, spent a lot of money, time, resources, and then having to follow up, follow up with people to make sure they’re not using your trademark, that becomes a job in and of itself.

That’s a wasted state. That’s wasted mental energy. That’s not innovation. It’s not focusing on the right areas. So I urge you, if you have competition, you have somebody copying you just do not dwell, dwell on it. Don’t engage with them. Just move on and keep doing what you do. And that’s my last thing.

The best way to attack competition or people copying you is innovate, innovate, innovate, innovate, continue to innovate. Because if they’re copying and they’re modeling and they’re just competition, your local area, trying to do what you’re doing, they may be incapable of innovation. And so you keep innovating, you keep doing new things and bringing new ideas to the table.

Take care of your customers and market like hell. So that’s the last thing. It’s three, three in one. Innovate, take care of your customers, the best of your possible ability, and then market like hell. And I think these are the best strategies to combat some competition in your local area, somebody copying you, as opposed to getting into a negative mental energy, like way, thinking that they’re going to beat you out, you know, thinking that you’re going to lose market share or getting all pissed off about it or spending all the time on their website and their social media, trying to look and see what they’re doing.

I don’t do any of those things. I don’t think you should do any of those things either. I’ve done those things like a long, long time ago as an early entrepreneur, those things used to really upset me, especially with garage to mouth early on. I’d get so upset. Like I spent all this time like trying to be innovative and then someone would just rip you off like right away.

It was always super frustrating, but it never ended up being something worth pursuing. It never ended up being worth my time. So if you are worried about competition or someone copying you, just remember they probably can’t innovate like you can. Don’t dwell on it. Move on. Save your space for innovation, taking care of your customers, customers and marketing like hell.

And to do that, you’re going to have to try harder.