Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 205: Someone Else Will Do What You Do... How to Be Okay With That.
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. If I am a travel agency owner who also has elevate with Rachel K dot com and I help travel advisors become the CEO of their business. this podcast is a year long and it's all about like mindset, just different aspects. based on my years as a travel agency owner. Coming up on nine, which I'm excited about. and other entrepreneurial vent like efforts I've made over the years. There's so much. My degree's all tied to business. I live, eat and breathe business and I want to help travel advisors understand it. Okay. Alright. Day two five. You will be copied on accidents or very, very similar. Why do you need to be okay with it instead of throw a huge hissy fit and screenshot it and send it to everyone you know and be like, you need to go tear her down because she doesn't have an original thought in her head. I have seen this happen on multiple occasions. And it's like, we're all adults here. Calm down. But This is harder to fix with just a watermark or cease and desist letter or a paywall or I've got everything trademarked. Well first of all, that doesn't even like the phrasing of the name of the content maybe, but like the actual content itself inside of the paid things, that's automatically in I'm not an attorney, but that's automatically as soon as you write something out there that's can be considered copyright until somebody trades marks a phrase of it. So an example of this, if you want to get real mad at Mel Robbins It's just the p cost of doing business. This will not be happening in most cases with travel advisors. And also do not copy paste. Okay, Mel Robbins built up this massive audience. She was an attorney. And she's turned into like this is also, by the way, this is just stories I have heard. I'm not saying Either way, I'm for or against. I'm just explaining the situation as I understand it to be. It may not be factual. Please do your research on this. So there was a book that was published by Mel Mel Robbins after she built up her very large audience and she has very motivational content, right? Very good guest speakers, all that kind of stuff. And this little tiny creator coach meant to I don't know. I just remember seeing it. This was like right after the book was published. I can't remember if the little tiny creator got the cease and desist for using the phrase let them. But the creator was like, and I don't know the outcome of this case either, because I think it turned into a case. Maybe I gotta look this up. Hold on. Mel Robbins Let Them Theory Trademark Case. Trademark infringement, maybe? She filed, so Mel Robbins filed for the trademark. This is per Gemini, so also question that. which sparked public backlash over whether she could claim ownership of a common phrase. And a writer named Cassie Phillips accused Robin Robbins of appropriating the core concept from Phillips' viral 2022 poem, which shares the exact same theme. So okay, specific details. If you want the deets. I'm just gonna read because I don't really remember what happened. Mel Robbins filed production, sorry, filed for the Let Them Theory trademark in July twenty-four to protect it across educational services, journals, and merchandise. the Patent and Trademark Office initially refused the application on the grounds of failure to function doctrine, determining the phrase's commonplace and generic everyday expression rather than a distinct brand identifier. And then critics argue that Robin's concept is too close to Phillips' widely circulated poem. Let them Phillips has expressed frustration that Robbins did not acknowledge her original work, and then Robbins denied plagiarism allegations. She's never read or seen the poem, maintaining that the inspiration from her book came from her daughter, Stoicism and Buddhist teachings. Because the idea behind the phrase is rooted in long-standing psychological traditions, and the phrase itself is considered highly generic. Legal copyright protection for the idea is no. Notoriously difficult to enforce. There we go. Ideas like a generic idea cannot be enforced. Copyright. while Robin owns the trademark filings for her specific business applications, there have been no public reports of her successfully enforcing copyright or trademark infringement to penalize individuals using the phrase. Well, that's good, because I just read this whole thing. okay, I thought it was more of like a lawsuit and thing. I clearly was not paying attention back then. Anyway, learning. Okay, back to what I was saying. Where's my little teleprompter? There we go. so the whole point of that thing was it's really hard to hold on a second. How do I do this? It's really hard to For ideas and things like that, it's really hard to enforce trademark infringements, especially if they're like general principles. Like if you have a packing list that's like, don't forget to pack multiple bathing suits when you go to the Caribbean, you can't enforce you can have a trademark on the name of it, but you can't enforce that idea because that's pretty general knowledge, right? Or like make sure you have a passport. Like if that's if that's your stuff you can't really enforce it. There's no original different frameworks. If you're just reading stuff that you learned over the years and didn't really spin it in your own way, if you're just like, this is this, this is this, this is this inside like your mini great your mini courses, there's no legal standing because you're just teaching basic stuff. Like Okay. Anyway, so you shouldn't be that concerned. However, that you missed it. Yesterday's episode I was talking about this advisor's lead mag that that was really, really good. And it was more the copy itself was like really, really, really enticing to get someone to book with them. And that's where a problem can be. Okay, if it helps at all, sorry, went on that rant. This is not unique to you. Or me, or travel advisors in general, or any small business owner, like every industry that has any sort of visibility online deals with this. Chefs see their recipes reposted. That was a thing a couple weeks ago. A chick tried to say because she had a recipe in a cookbook and this other chick just randomly made a similar recipe that she thought she got from somewhere else. She tried to sue her for it, and it's like, no, this is like from good housekeeping nineteen eighty-five. Like this is not your original work. Right, designers see their layouts recreated. Hello, Pinterest. Coaches see their frameworks repackaged with new names on them. This is simply what happens once you create something that's good enough that other people want a version of it too. So Understand that. And it's worth separating out who's actually doing this because lumping every instance together will wear you down unnecessarily. Some people genuinely don't have the creative capacity or the confidence to build something original themselves. And they're looking for the fastest path to looking like they know what they're doing. That's not about you. That's about where they are in their own journey. I have told advisors before who are like, I'm struggling with this, and I'm like, you know what? Here's my copy. When you figure it out, you can change it. Like here's my copy from my page on my site. Like you need to revise this obviously and rename these things. But here's a basis for you to get started. I don't care because we don't even do like we do similar yet completely different things, and I knew they needed help, and I knew they didn't want it to sound like complete like ChatGPT made or you know what mean? Okay. Some people are simply trying to make a quick buck, and they will move on to copying the very next trend the moment yours stops working for them. Okay. Then some people, more than you'd guess, are genuinely admiring what you've built. They see it, they respect it, and their version, even if it's clearly influenced by yours, might come from a place of real inspiration rather than an attempt to take something from you. Again, most of us use one of five CRMs, most of us use one of like 10 suppliers in the US, most of us use one of like three or four email. Newsletter CRMs. Like we're not all that different in how we have our frameworks. We are slightly different in how we have our services. And if you aren't clearly spelling out, clear as crystal, this is how I serve you, step by step in great detail. No advisor taking your lead magnet will be able to replicate you. And even if they even if you were like this is exactly what I do, they cannot replicate you because they are not you. Sorry. All right, the last group is the one that's worth sitting with for a second because it's so easy to lump them in with the others out of hurt feelings. But actually being someone whose work inspires other professionals in your industry is a sign that you are doing something worth noticing. Okay? What ultimately matters more than any single piece of content someone copies? I mean, there are legit people who create content for all of us advisors to just use. Like who cares? Alright? They can copy a guide. They can try and copy like your frameworks. Or like a caption style. They can They cannot copy your actual real expen experience, your specific relationships with clients, your founder's story. Go back, I think it's episode 200. I think we talk about the founder's story. Your brand story they can't copy. The specific way you make someone feel throughout the process. We've spent time, if you've listened to this podcast since day one, we've spent a lot of time. Hopefully you've been just not listening and be like, I'll do that later. You're driving in my vision. that's a tomorrow problem. We've spent so much time on that in earlier episodes. And if you're like, what do you mean? All right, I also have a program at elevatewithracialk.com that's called the Success Circle. Now I gotta remind it. Remind myself to link it in this episode. It's thirty-five dollars a month and it kinda pairs with this a little bit. I try to kind of like touch on topics we're covering the week of whatever day two five week is. Anyhoodle. But there's that too and it comes with coaching and live QA's and stuff like that. Anyway. Content can be replaced and replicated. A genuine relationship and a lived track record cannot. This is also why everything we've covered matters so much. Your founder's story, your brand story, your specific approach to service matters so much. Those things are much harder to convincingly copy because they're actually true and specific to you. Rewind like two minutes ago, I went on a rant about it. A stolen template is hollow the moment someone tries to build a real client relationship on top of it. So why are you worried about it? I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be mean. When you notice someone is doing a version of what you do, back what like what I was saying. it's an agent that works for my joke nemesis, not real nemesis. And some of my colleagues, if you're listening to this episode, you might be like, yeah, I remember that was following me way back on TikTok. And I followed him back and I anyway, I was like, nice 'cause I'm like, you're new to this and we do the same niche, okay. And then one day I saw like verbatim tried to replicate the background, but they couldn't connect with the camera. They were really and I like, you poor thing, you're trying so hard, but it was like exact content I had made. I hope you're still out there doing it. I'm not gonna name your name, but I almost just did. And I hope you're very successful. Alright. Anywho, when you notice that someone's doing a version of what you do, a useful, honest question to ask yourself instead of spiraling spiraling, getting upset, screenshotting it, sending it to all your friends, asking them to spam their business accounts and like just be mean and hateful and be like bit-da-da. Like we're adults, stop being a child. Is this actually gonna hurt your business what they're doing? Or is it just hurting your ego? Cause it's 99.9999 ad infinitum, whatever, percent, your ego's hurt. And it shouldn't. You should be flattered. Most of the time, it's gonna be the ego. Someone else having a similar guide or similar content or similar copy on their website rarely is gonna take a specific client away from you because you should be confident enough in yourself to know I get the people that wanna work with me, right? And it shouldn't affect your reputation. So what kind of child would go attack someone else and destroy their reputation? That's like, okay, here's the here's the child mentality, like I want you to understand. That'd be like you as a preschooler and someone else next to you is a preschooler, and you start building with the little wooden blocks with the letters and numbers on you know? And so you start, you're like, I'm gonna build this pyramid. And then the kid next to you starts building a pyramid. And they watch and they're like, And they're kinda but their blocks aren't i identical. Like they don't have ABC on the bottom. They have like GQ elephant or something crazy block as a bottom three. That's three in my head. Are like what kind of child would just smash the pyramid of the other kid? Someone who's very needs a nap, probably. You know what I mean? Like Or maybe if it's like a little two year old versus a five year old that's like, yeah, I'm gonna build the same thing and the two year old's building and then the five year old's building and they get to have maybe nicer blocks because they have better fine motor skills. I don't know the situation. Or they can like pair the different blocks if they're different shapes. I'm thinking of this block set I had as a kid. And so the two year old's stuck with the square blocks. The five year old's got different shaped blocks is building something way cooler, but they're both like pyramids, right? With the two year old might smash what the five year old's doing and cause a fight. Because their ego is hurt, not because the five year old's doing anything to them. I hope that made sense. Alright, if it's genuinely more than that, if someone has taken something of yours word for word, profiting directly from it, that's when practical steps from yesterday's episode can matter. Make sure it's documented. Address it directly if appropriate. Lean on the protections that you have built in, like keeping your best work behind a paid offer rather than just out in the public, open, fully public. Okay. That wraps up this three-part stretch. Knowledge base services as a possible additional stream. Actually, no, it's not. I added to it this freaking teleprompter. Stop. We're gonna clear up charging the premium mindset, and we're gonna do a little bit more mindset to like really get your ego out of the business. Because like today's example, like Let's step away and detach ourselves from our business because our business isn't our identities. Even though a lot of us are like, travel agent, blah blah blah name. You know what mean? But it's not your identity. All right, that was day 205 of the Travel Agency Near Podcast. I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you tomorrow.