I have this amazing idea, but what if I put it out there and someone steals it?
This is a legitimate concern when you're a business owner,
especially when you're in the online business space like myself,
where my products are digital. If you run a business and you offer products,
physical or digital, coaching, or services,
and you're afraid that one day someone is going to steal your product or offer
or method, whatever it is that makes you unique and different,
then you're in the right place because in today's video,
I'm going to walk you through an experience that I recently had where a fairly
established company took one of my products and resold it as their own.
This isn't going to be a video where I just rehash the details. Instead,
I'm going to share with you exactly what I learned before the product was
plagiarized and after. So let's dive in. To quickly recap,
it all started in early February when a customer of mine emailed my team and
said, Hey,
I bought this other product from another company and I looked inside and I found
your product inside of theirs. They had already purchased mine, Caption Vault,
so they were able to easily recognize it. After confirming on my end,
that it was in fact a copy of Caption Vault,
I decided to make this one public. Now don't get me wrong.
We have found copycats before, but not all of them go public. But in this case,
because it was such a blatant rip off of Caption Vault,
which I had put my blood, sweat and tears into over months,
it really hit me hard.
So I made a Reel and shared with my audience what happened.
It disheartens me to say that a brand called With Honors has ripped off
one of my products and is reselling it as their own. Their first page.
My first page. These are their captions written for service providers.
These are my caption templates for service providers inside the Caption Vault.
Literally word for word. I'd show more,
but then I'd be showing my original product. And yeah, their name is ironic.
Now this wasn't even the first time that I shared that someone had stolen from
me. I had posted a post in my feed, but when I made this Reel,
it just blew up in a way that I did not expect.
It hit a nerve with many people in my industry.
And some of the bigger names in my industry,
people like Sophia Amoruso and Christina Galbato,
they shared my Reel with their audience as well and included their take and
their opinion on the situation. After making this public,
it was clear from a lot of the messages I received that this situation,
having my product stolen and resold by another company,
it was people's worst nightmare.
The visibility of the situation and the Reel I made even got picked up by
Buzzfeed who wrote multiple articles to cover the situation from both sides.
It's fair to say that that week was a busy one.
There were hundreds of comments and direct messages from people sharing, Hey,
this was so helpful or thanks for sharing this, no one talks about,
or I'm so afraid this will happen to me,
or it's so important to know about this when you're starting out.
So that brings me to today's video.
I'm going to walk you through exactly what I had done before creating Caption
Vault to protect my product and what I've learned since then.
Tip number one is to have terms and conditions of your product.
Especially in the digital product space.
But more than that include the terms and conditions in the checkout process.
So when you go ahead and checkout and purchase Caption Vault,
you'll see the terms and conditions are highlighted right there.
They're clickable. You can read them.
They're part of the flow of checking out and purchasing the product.
Now I know most people probably don't read terms and conditions,
but I put it there front and center,
I even highlight right underneath the button that no refunds are available
because that's a term that I really want people to see,
but I put it there in order to protect myself.
If ever I need to prove that someone broke one of our terms or conditions,
then I can show in the checkout process,
they had the opportunity to read them and agree to them.
My second tip is to sprinkle key terms and conditions throughout your product
itself. This is exactly what I did with all of my digital products.
So for example,
when you're signed into your student account and you're going to access the 300
captions that you get inside of Caption Vault, right on that page,
you see a recap of the key terms and conditions that I want you to see:
the fact that this is licensed to you for non-commercial use.
The fact that you can't resell this to your audience.
I sprinkled these key terms throughout the product in various places to,
again, prove in case I ever had to,
that the terms were there and they were very visible.
The third tip is to register the copyright of your product, the IP,
with the copyright office of your country.
So I did this with my products for Canada and for the U.S. as well.
Now you don't have to take this step, but it's definitely good practice.
In fact, I worked with an IP lawyer, and this is what he said:
in most countries, it's not required to register your copyright.
The work is automatically copyrighted, as soon as you create it,
but it makes it easier to prove your copyright if you have it registered.
So I'm not a lawyer of course,
but go ahead and Google if your country has a copyright office where you can
register your products with.
Tip number four to protecting your digital products is key.
I got so excited in my original recording that I forgot to record it.
So I put on the same outfit and I'm back.
Tip number four is this:
include in your frequently asked questions section in your product a
question about reselling, is it allowed? Yes,
this is repeating your terms in a more conversational way, but again,
it's just one more place where you can include a reminder that it's not okay to
resell your product. Here's what mine looks like inside of Caption Vault.
Here's what it's like to be inside of Caption Vault.
You can see under the Welcome module there are a few steps that I want all
students to take.
And number six under the welcome module is the frequently asked questions.
The FAQ's. The very first question,
how long do I have access to Caption Vault for? Fair enough.
The second question, can I resell the captions in my own business?
So here they aren't the official terms.
I actually linked to the official terms right here,
but here is where I say in a conversational format that Caption Vault is
licensed to you and you are not allowed to sell it or reproduce it,
or even sell a modified version of the product in your own business.
So again, front and center,
one more way that I've protected myself and my digital products.
The fifth tip to protecting your product is to develop your own method or system
that's baked into your product itself. So for example,
when I created Story Vault, I came up with the Story Seasons method,
meaning your business goes through different seasons, whether it's visibility,
engagement, lead generation or sales.
And I put this method together again called the Story Seasons method.
And that's exactly the template, the formula,
that I used to build my product Story Vault.
I carried the same concept over into Caption Vault where you don't just get 300
random captions. They're all categorized by visibility, engagement,
lead generation and sales. And because I had baked that method into my product,
that's exactly how my customer was able to recognize Caption Vault as my own,
even when it was inside of someone else's program. For more on this topic,
check out this video here,
where I cover how to launch a product and I go a little bit more in depth on how
to build a product that's unique to you.
The sixth tip is to take screenshots.
Document like you've never documented before,
whether that's before you call them out or after,
the point is you can't have too much proof. So for me,
I was able to gain access to this other company's program.
And I recorded my screen using a tool called Loom.
And I showed the experience of when I logged into my account for the first time
found the caption templates and opened up the document that they had provided.
And I could show that the templates were pretty much the same, very, very close.
I can't say exactly the same because they made some adjustments to the color and
the font and a little bit of the copy, but it was very,
very clear that most of the copy was from Caption Vault.
I then found them in my student database and I took screenshots of that.
And then of course, once I made it public,
as they started to put out replies and comments,
I was taking screenshots for that because they were deleting things soon after
publishing. So I am glad that I have record of what they shared,
even though they deleted most of it and turned off comments on their posts.
The seventh tip applies to when you've discovered that someone has copied you.
And this tip is to send a cease and desist letter or email.
Typically these communications come from a lawyer,
but I have also created my own version.
And in the past I've sent these out and they have worked.
They've accomplished what I want,
which is to have that person stop selling my product. So on that note,
let's talk about my eighth tip,
which is to have a lawyer on hand who you can work with,
if and when these situations arise. Now,
I would guess that most businesses don't just have a roster of lawyers on hand.
Oftentimes you don't really think about this until you're in the situation,
but if you're watching this video and you do want to prepare your business and
protect it today for if and when it does happen to you,
it's not a bad idea to find that lawyer contact today,
they can look at how you have things set up.
They can look at your terms and conditions and help you in that sense,
help strengthen your product,
strengthen your business for the day when someone maybe tries to steal it or
plagiarizes your work.
This is something that I wish I had taken a little bit more seriously in my
earlier days, but to be honest, I just didn't have the bandwidth,
or I was really afraid that lawyers would cost a lot.
Since going through this experience, I've been pleasantly surprised.
I've made contacts with really great people who have been able to speak to me in
layman's terms.
And that's also really important and they're not charging an arm and a leg.
So don't be afraid to make that contact and make that connection today because
it is worth protecting your business in the long run. So there you have it,
my tips on how to protect your business from copycats.
I really hope that this experience doesn't happen to you,
but from what I've learned,
it actually taught me that I had a lot of good things in place to protect myself
as a creator. Now, after all this talk about Caption Vault and my methods,
if you're curious, you want to check them out,
go ahead and head to Caption Vault.co to get 300 caption templates that
you can use to grow your business. To ease and revenue.
I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for watching today's video on how to protect your business from copycats.
I hope it doesn't happen to you. If you like this video,
be sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell so that you don't miss any
future trainings just like this one.