We were all bamboozled by Desiigner when his single Panda hit the radio waves. We were blasting Panda, Panda, Panda through the speakers nodding our heads saying we loved Future’s latest single. When in actuality Desiigner studied the success of another artist work to climb up the charts. You see this happens often with small business too. No matter the size of your business or industry there are copycats and copycats of those cats.
Here are four things you need to focus on verses concerning yourself with people who lack the originality to be themselves.
Don’t Acknowledge The Fakes
I know you’re angry that someone decided to copy what you worked so hard on. What do you actually achieve by acknowledging the situation heads up? Back in the day, I was the one to make a whole post about you. In the moment, I felt that I received something from that. Now, I realize nothing comes from that. When you know for fact someone is copying you here are a couple things to do
- block them on all social media accounts
- remove them from your mailing list
- block their IP address from your website
If they continue to copy after this send them a nice email regarding copyright infringement. You are wasting energy on someone who is two steps behind you. They need you to move ahead.
Check People
This one is pretty straight to the point, tell people to stop sharing stuff with you. When I finally announced I was the person behind Business Bestie everyone wanted to send me articles about people using the term or whatever else. Its not like the term was new but I made sure to acquire all the social media handles and get the trademark in the necessary category. It’s okay to tell people don’t share what others are doing. All it does is distract you from your plan.
Focus On Your Plan or Goals
One thing, about running my company there is only two people in the loop about my goals. My best friend, Brandi is also my lawyer and that helps me get shit done faster actually. As, I stated above when people mentioned someone was using Business Bestie for whatever, I got distracted even if it was 5 minutes. It was five minutes to long not focusing on my plan or goals. A couple months ago, I decided to take a weekend to myself to refocus my goals. I wanted to make sure my vision was still aligned and I was moving forward regardless of the climate of my industry. Here are a couple things I worked on:
- Has your target marketed changed
- Are you still hitting your goals
- Why are you building this company
- Are you setting enough time aside to work on your projects
- How is the legal aspect of business being handled
- Do I need to sit new goals, deadlines or plans
- Will my social media plan need adjusting
Establish A Great Team Of Doers
If you study the greats in any industry they are surrounded by people constantly moving forward. No one in the group is worried about copycats. This is extremely important that everyone who is helping you with your dreams or just a friend who is there to hear you is a doer. You see when you are focusing on doing you do not have time to focus on what the next person is doing. Even if they are copying your last moves you focused on your next moves. Having a group of doers help energy my business not just for Business Bestie, but it helped me understand some things I needed to implement for Imperfect Concepts and Kick Start Your eCommerce.
One of the most important thing to know that there will always be copycats in the industry. It can be easy for others to just emulate what others are doing verses establishing their own vision.
