Throwback: What to Do When People Shamelessly Steal Your Stuff [Hint: Get Over It] | Ep 915
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If you're the winner, people are going to copy your stuff rather than moaning about it. Get used to it and win. I talk to business owners obviously a lot now. And I see this recurring theme among losers. And the thing is, is that

I used to think this way. And so I want to half talk to my older self. I'm half making this for our portfolio founder. You know who you are. And I think I might get a little spirited today. And so the idea is around thought ownership. And so it's this idea that you have when you're a kid.

that if you have an idea or you have a joke that it somehow belongs to you. It's like when you figure out that one plus one equals two and you tell somebody else, you believe that for the rest of their lives, that one plus one equals two belongs to you. But the thing is, is that no one owns truth, number one.

Period. No one owns truth. And the fundamental idea of how human beings learn in general is through replication and remixing, right? Everything that you have ever done has come from someone else that you have remixed in some way. And the degree to which it was remixed is the degree to which it was original. Now, the reason that I think this is important to delineate is that

This is how kids in kindergarten get into fights. This is how siblings in the backseat of the van get into fights. That's mine. That was my idea. But in the world of business, basically nothing is yours.

And so I want to really, really drive my thumb into this wound because there was a portfolio company who was like, hey, you know, I was making content about this stuff. And one of my competitors started making content about that stuff. And they're stealing my ideas. They're stealing my ideas. First off, no one's first off. They weren't your ideas to begin with. Number one. Number two.

stealing implies that some damages have been caused as a result of the other person making content. And if you're ever going to somehow be

made whole in the legal system that exists in the United States, you would have to sue them and show damages and somehow prove ownership over the idea, all of which would basically never happen. And so what you really need to do is put your big boy pants on and realize that this is fucking competition. This is fucking America. This is how capitalism works. And when I was a young lad, I remember I had a, obviously we had the gyms. And so I wrote ad copy.

So I would write copy for my gym and lo and behold, I was a pretty good marketer back then too. And some of the other gyms in my area started saying, Hey, you know what even works better than our ads? Alex's ads. And we just, we just get to steal his ads and just run them as our own. So they, I mean, some people literally just took my videos of me and ran them for their gym in addition to my words.

But some of the slightly more tasteful ones didn't, they just put their own video, but then use word for word, my copy, right? And so I used to get so upset about this. And I went to an IP lawyer, so an intellectual property attorney. And I said, Hey, how do I, you know, can I, can I, can I, can I copyright this stuff? And he just looked at me, he's like, it's an advertisement. No.

he said this is America he said it's based on competition it I was like what about my offer I was like can I say that no one else can use he's like you want to say that no other gym is allowed to give away six weeks for free because you do and he just looked at me and I was like well well I mean kinda and he just was like he laughed me out of the room laughed me out of the room I was 26 years old

And I just was like, "Shit." I was like, "So that means that anyone can copy anything that you do

And unless it's a recipe, you know what I mean? Or you have a chemical formula that you have made uniquely yours. Like if someone tried to copy Coke's formula, and the thing is, is that even so, they still try to keep it secret, right? Like they both patent it and try to keep it a secret. It's both elements, right? For those types of businesses. But anything that is public, if you advertise, if you make content, if you make free giveaways, PDFs, whatever the hell you want,

That stuff is public. And so the thing is, is that it's the losers who are like, that's mine. I'm a special snowflake. When bro, it's America competition exists to make everybody better. That's how the marketplace works. Like if you figure out how to do dry cleaning in 24 hours, your competitor across the street can come up with dry clean in 23 hours.

That's how competition works. And so can you imagine if Snapchat had been like, oh, Instagram stole stories from us. That was our idea. We said Snapchat stories. That was our thing. And then Instagram just took it. That's not fair. Well, guess fucking what?

That's how competition works. And that's at the highest levels. And so you think your dry cleaning store has an ad that somehow belongs to you or that you made content about whatever the hell and that you think you own that idea forever? Grow up.

And if you want to beat the competition by shrinking them into a relevance, it means that you need to 10x the size of who you are and what you represent. And if you need some help with that, I wrote a book called 100 Billion Dollar Leads. I have the free audiobook on this podcast, which you can start listening to at $5.79. I think that's the offers one. But if you like hard copies, you can grab it on Amazon. Or if you like watching stuff, you can go on acquisition.com/training and watch all the videos for free. Enjoy. So.

I remember when I was so butthurt about this whole ad stealing thing that I was like, how do I keep my ads a secret but still advertise them? And that ended up becoming this really big lesson in futility. And when I had Gym Watch, I obviously was writing a lot of ads for thousands of gyms at this point.

And I remember I got a lawyer letter. So this is hilarious. I got a lawyer letter from a gym owner trying to sue me for using his copy. But here's the funny thing. The copy that he said that I was using, he had stolen from me. So many people had used my ad copy that he didn't even know that he was stealing my copy. And so when we had a gym in his market that was running my copy,

He sent his lawyer over to say cease and desist. And I said, hey, bro, why don't I just show you the first screenshot of the time that I used this ad to show you? I was like, because I know I wrote it. And I said, if you can show me that you used this thing before me, I was like, I'll happily. And his own lawyer was like, I'm deeply apologize for it.

how stupid my client was. The thing is, is though, even if he had, even if he had written the copy, I just find this hilarious, but even if he had written the copy, there's not shit he could do. He can't stop me from running an advertisement. It's not, it's not, it's not owned. Right. That's how ads work. Now the marketplace might be like, Oh, that's weird. They kind of, they copy it, you know, they copy and paste or whatever it is. But the thing is, is that especially when it comes to content or things like that, like I,

Most people like my number one way of getting inspired to make content is, is I'll look at what people are saying online and then be like, Oh, let me say something that I disagree. Like basically I wait until I see something that's stupid that I hate. And then I say, okay, I'm going to make a rant piece on this. Right. And so most of the time it comes from my life. Like I come hot and loaded. Like I am this morning.

But if I don't have something that I'm pissed off about, or I think that is absolutely ridiculous or stupid, then I will just look. I'll just look for something. And believe me, it doesn't take long to find something stupid that someone else is going to say where they preach something that they've never done or give advice about a context that they've never walked through. Only small business owners complain about small business owner shit. So I was talking to a billionaire buddy of mine.

who's probably worth two or three billion at this point. But he was like, dude, it's so ridiculous that these guys obsess about things like content being owned by someone. He's like, dude, I'm in the SEO game when literally people try and win on keywords with the same title for the same article. And like, you just have to make your article better so that yours ranks higher.

And like people look, okay, he has 11 in his listicle. I'm going to have 13 in my listicle and I'm going to use his 11 and add two more. And like this game is competitive. And so it's the funny thing is it's like, I only see, and I see, I see business owners getting bent out of shape.

Like they're wasting their weekends, spending all their time scrolling, watching their competitors' content, trying to find the one nugget or kernel or saying or ism that they said. And the thing is, is one, they might not have copied it from you. It just might be something that somebody in your industry says in general. And secondly, even if they did copy it, so what? Who cares? Just take all the time you are obsessing about them and obsess about your customer and obsess about your content so you can stay a step ahead.

So I had this dude DM me and say, "Hey man, I just really would appreciate if you give me credit for the Closer Framework." And I was like, "What the hell are you talking about?" And he was like, "Well, I mean like the Closer Framework's mine." And I was like, "What?" And this is like, I'm gonna be real with you. This is a guy who has like 2000 followers on Instagram and says he does sales training or something. And he's like, "Hey, you know, I appreciate it." He's like, "But you know, it's mine and you stole it and you're bigger so everyone thinks it's yours now."

And because I came up with it. Now, here's the thing is that an acronym for sales about closing, not that crazy original of an idea, like just to be, you know, just calling this out there, it'd be like having an advertising framework called market, right? With six letters in it anyways. And so,

I go and I, and he said, and I was like, nah, man, I'm, I'm pretty sure. I was like, I'm pretty sure you just probably uniquely on your own came up with the same acronym for sales, which is fine, dude. And he said, no, well, uh, anyways, here's, he's like, I've been teaching it since this date. And so me being the asshole that I am, I went and found the first video that I had in the closer framework, which guess what? I'm older than he is. And I had been teaching it to my sales guys three years prior to that.

And I was like, huh? So I guess I didn't take it from you. Number one, actually, I guess you took it from me, didn't you? But the thing is, is that it doesn't matter because I don't care if he teaches it. And he probably didn't take it from me. I don't think he'd be that butthurt if he had taken it from me. I think on some level he would have been like, oh, well, I took it from Alex, right? He probably just independently came up with an idea because guess what?

Like different people, like the Wright brothers figured out how to fly here. And then like around the same time, there was some other dude in Germany who figured out how to do it too. It's just like humans, like there's Newton who came up with calculus. There's another guy across the world, like Russia who came up with calculus too. It's just like people innovate and we're not that original. And so that's the thing. Is it like this whole idea of thought ownership and concept ownership? No one owns truth, period, period.

Truth is. You can talk about truth, you can describe truth, you can apply truth to different scenarios, but you don't own it. So get over yourself. Anywho, all this to say, one, expect that everyone is going to copy you. Two, if someone copies you, it means that you're ahead, which is great. That's a W. That's an indication that you're succeeding. Number three,

You will never, I'm just saying like, you can waste the time if you want, but like the amount of time it takes away from you to get upset about stuff like this is taking away from your customers and from the amount of time you should be dedicating to making your product better, advertising harder, et cetera. And so if you want to quote, beat the copycat, mark it 10 times harder.

That's it. Just advertise like you want you like you're not going to beat them by getting them to stop. You beat them by shrinking them into irrelevance. And I'm going to keep saying this until people fucking get it. Like you don't beat people in business. Like it's very rare that you actually put someone out of business. What you do is you go scoreboard, scoreboard, cool, dry cleaner across the street that went from 24 to 23 hours. Great. I'm going to open 20 more locations than you fight me.

Because that's how you do it in capitalism. You win by just growing and being bigger and beating them into submission, right? Beating them into irrelevance by looking so big that they can't even be seen in your shadow. Like, where do you think that gym owner is who tried to sue me for using my own copy that he didn't even know he was stealing from me? By the way, did I counter? Did I counter C-Synthesis? I was like, good luck, kid. He was like a 48-year-old man, but like... Um...

Good luck, bro. I was like, cause I'm going to just keep going. I was like, so the only way that you can win is that you got to match me. And I remember when I was young like that, I was like, every day that I see you on Instagram with your wife, with your kids going out and enjoying life, I was like, I'm going to eat your lunch every day that you do that. You're not working. I will. And for some people that's very dark and guess what? Okay, fine. That's dark. Live your life the way you want to live your life.

But I just get so sick of this, and I think now that I'm saying it, what it roots down to is this victim mentality. It's this like, aw, like, woe is me. That was my, it's like, bro, welcome to fucking, like, think about warfare. You know what I mean? Like, they copied our, well, that's literally what they try and do. They try and figure out what you're doing.

And so in the context of business, unless you have a patent on some mechanism in a machine, right? Or you have a recipe for a formula, basically nothing is IP. Now brand name, image, image likeness different, but like actual concepts. Like I started talking about LTV to CAC ratio and then Alex started talking about LTV to CAC ratio.

Somebody talked about acquisition. It's like, could you imagine if I was like, no one else is allowed to talk about acquisition? How stupid would that be? They're concepts. No one owns them. And so every second that you spend thinking about your competitor is another second. And this is where they really beat you.

is that another second that you're not thinking about your customer, you're not thinking about your business, you're not thinking about advertising more. And so I can truly tell you that it's been years since I've been concerned. You think I get concerned when people steal my content ideas? You guys see it all over the place. This is a leading indicator that you're doing a good job. You should only fear when they stop copying you. Really let that sink in. If no one's copying you, you suck.

Like really think about it. If no one copies you, you suck. And so you should want to have as many people as possible copying you because it means you're leading the way and they're trying to be like you and they're never going to beat you at being you.

All right, so hopefully I convinced you to focus all of your time on your customers and not your competition and realize that that lawsuit and the cease and desist thing that you're going to send is not going to amount to anything. Because if Instagram can do it to Snapchat on a clear feature, the guy down the street can copy your ad or copy the hook or copy the topic of the content that you're choosing to make. And the real, real is he probably isn't copying. He's just doing his job.

Real quick guys, I have a special, special gift for you for being loyal listeners of the podcast. Layla and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got IT, you've got recruiting, you've got HR, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale

and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30-ish pages for each of the stages. Once you answer the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, R-O-A-D map, roadmap.