Copycats 🙄

You’ve probably bought one.

A product that looks like a better known, more reputable brands’ product, but for whatever reason you ended up with this one.

And it’s just not cutting it.

For me it literally didn’t cut it – a couple years ago I had a beard trimmer that I loved, but it broke just before a holiday.

While we were on holidays I looked everywhere for the same one (couldn’t find it), but the shelf was filled with other brands that looked basically exactly the same, so I just picked one.

I figured “this must be how beard trimmers are now… how different can they be?”.

Turns out they’re very different.

Beard trimmer details are boring, so I won’t bore you – but there are enough critical features that if yours doesn’t have them, it’s actually useless… meaning it’s just another piece of junk taking up space.

The point is…

Copycats suck. They trick you into buying by looking the part, but failing on the most basic functions.

And it’s not just products. Services can be guilty of this too – I fell for an SEO company who played copycat. Don’t be a copycat.

If you’re gonna copy (or “Steal like an Artist”), be a step better. Use the original as a positive influence, add a useful feature, or remove a superfluous feature… but don’t be inferior to the original.

I mean, you could aim for at least as good as the original – as in, if you’re gonna make a beard trimmer, at least make a beard trimmer that can trim a beard.

Anything otherwise is just wasteful junk.