572: (Solo) How to Build a Brand That’s Uncopyable: Even If Your Idea Gets Stolen

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of the founder podcast. Now this one, we're shaking things up guys. It's going to be just me today. and this is part of a new 10, 15 minute founder to founder series where we're really gonna test out this new format where I have been building founder for over 12 years now and I wanna share with you what I'm finding is working, what I'm finding is not working. I have a wealth of experience building founder, building e-commerce brands, the exceptional founders that I get to speak to on and offline, these conversations you hear.

1:26I wanna start doing more solo episodes. So these are going to be short solo episodes with what's been on my mind as a founder, what I'd wish I'd known earlier, and just the things that I'm learning on my journey. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:52So this is a new format we're testing, and I want to make this super valuable for you, and I want to make it real. and for that reason, I'm going to give my email. You can email me at nathanatfounder.com. I'll put in the show notes as well and I want to hear from you. Let me know your suggestions. I'd love feedback for this new series and we can build and develop it together along the way. So at the moment at Founder, we're really busy working on our product and sourcing and manufacturing summit. We've got our co-host, Kian Golzari. He's an incredible instructor on the Founder Plus platform. He's the guy.

2:27When it comes to sourcing products, he's the guy. And he's co-hosting this summit. It's going to be amazing. And today's first topic that I want to share with you guys and talk about is something in the community you guys have been asking for a lot, right, that I see comes up and you want to go deep on. And it's this fear. In 2025, can I really protect my business idea from being copied? How do I stop it from being copied? What do I do? And I totally understand this fear. And in fact, I've experienced, you know, having my own e-commerce business, Healthish, being ripped off and copied everywhere massively.

3:02So all I can share with you first and foremost is how to get around this and what do you need to do? I think this is really important because when you do get success, people are going to copy your business, right? Having the fear of copycats is real. But here's the truth, right? You can't stop people from copying your product. You just can't. And what you need to do and focus on is just outplay them in many other ways. that matter way more in the grand scheme of things of building a business. And I'm going to share my own experience. So a few years ago, I launched this e-commerce brand called Healthish.

3:35So as you guys know, at Founder, we help people start and grow e-commerce businesses through our Founder Plus platform, our coaching program, and mentoring and group coaching. It's amazing, right? And along the way, I kind of developed this yearning to want to start my own e-commerce brand. So I started a brand called Healthish at the time a few years ago with my girlfriend. And it was basically a time-marked water bottle. So we took a simple product, drink bottle, and we put time markers on it on two sides of the bottle, first half of the day, second half of the day. And really what it did was it solved the problem of reminding you when to drink because it was a one liter bottle.

4:16People need to drink two liters of water a day. So if you drank two times from that bottle, you'd make sure you drink enough water. and it was a really clever idea. And through my marketing skills and Instagram skills, I was able to really make sure that that product took off and it went viral. We were solving a real problem, design, the branding. It was awesome, right? But it went viral and then copycats came. And at first I remember this feeling, I never forget where my girlfriend at the time, she was getting really frustrated because copycat brands just kept popping up. There was even one called Healthy Wish and she's getting so frustrated.

4:52And then I was speaking to Greta, one of our instructors, and she said, oh yeah, write this to them. And then we got them to shut it down. And then another one came and then we do it again. And then the other one said, oh, we're not gonna stop, right? And it was like playing whack-a-mole. And that's what I learned really the hard way that you don't just need a product, you need protection and a plan. And stupidly, I didn't do some of the things I'm gonna share with you guys, right? So here's the thing, you can't protect every idea but you can protect execution. These are some of the things that I wish that I did, right?

5:24Like we didn't trademark the brand name or logo or the design. We didn't use NDAs with anyone that would develop the product. We didn't apply for design protection and we should have. And we didn't explore a painter and we possibly could have or should have, but it all got too late. And by that stage, everyone was flooding the market and copied us. and what I learned from this and how we combat it and and work through this was people can take your idea but not your unfair advantages and your unfair advantages are your brand story your quality control your speed to market your unique founder point of view your customer loyalty they can't steal that and so what we did at Healthish was employ some of these things which I'm going to share with you which is really really important because founders are so fearful that someone's going to steal their idea that it slows them down and they worry about patent protection and all these other things.

6:22What I learned is you only do this stuff once you've got traction. Now, the mistake I made was not do it at all, right? So the key parts are your brand is your moat, not just your product. So make it legally and emotionally hard to replicate. Of course, do the technical things once you've got traction, but once you've done that and got that out of the way and people are still copying, what you need to do is focus on your brand. Make your brand incredible. It's hard to copy a great brand. Really focus on things like your marketing. That's hard to copy, right? And they can't keep up. Like founder-led content.

6:58That is massive now. Go out there, share your story, have a connection with your customers, build in public, take people on the journey. Just like I'm taking you guys on the journey right now with this little podcast, like this new series that I'm launching, right? Build in public, build trust, you know, be first, be loud, be loved, like launch fast, gather customer love, be the brand that people recognize first, create fans, not just customers. And that's what we did with Healthish, right? We didn't do as much founder-led content as I would have liked, but what we did do was we doubled down on the domain.

7:30We doubled down on the brand. We launched new products. We doubled down on influencer marketing. We were the legit brand. We were water bottle that everyone knew and loved. And a great example of this, I was speaking to Amy Smar. Make sure you listen to that interview. I interviewed her a few months ago and she built the odd muse. She took it from zero to$30 million a year and got copied instantly, right? And what she did, and she still wins, she's killing it right now. It doesn't matter how many copycats she gets. She focuses on founder-led marketing. She's really growing her personal brand. She shows up, right all the time she's in stories she's taking her community on a journey she has creator alignment and she really focuses on this positioning luxury over fast fashion quality over quantity and so really what i want you guys to take away from this little bite-sized lesson is don't worry if people are copying you and if they are that's a good thing make sure you protect your brand the right way once you've got traction but focus on building your brand focus on building your community.

8:36Focus on putting yourself out there with that founder-led content and focus on the community and the relationships you're building with your community. Because here's the thing, right? You can't stop copycats from trying. And if you have copycats, it's a good thing. It means you're doing something right. It means you're winning. It means you're making money, right? People started copying Healthish when the brand was doing seven figures a year. They weren't copying when we first launched. People were copying when we were killing it, when we were everywhere, when we were making a lot of money and the business was doing well and your brand can't be cloned.

9:09People can't clone you. They can copy your products but they can't copy your brand. So people might buy a product once but they'll buy into your story forever. So that's the thing guys, right? I really want you to take that away to not be fearful and worry about all the legal stuff. Don't hold that back from launching. Don't let it hold you back from launching. Get out there, validate your product, go to market, start crushing it And when you do, make sure you get the legal protection in place, but always focus on brand. Every single successful founder that we've interviewed, especially in the e-commerce space, they have incredible brands.

9:44So guys, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you got value. And if you're looking for more solo episodes like this, you do me a favor. Email me at Nathan at founder.com or DM me on Instagram, just at Nathan Chan. I'd love to hear what you think. Open, honest, and candid feedback. And also, if you're looking to launch your e-commerce brand, you're stuck on the physical product side, the manufacturing side, make sure you sign up to our summit. It's happening 5 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, this coming Sunday when you're listening to this. And you can go to founder.com forward slash summit. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode.

10:25I can't wait to speak with you soon. Much more to come. All right. Have a great day.