Nick:In one town. In one town alone.
Jack:In one town. So, so you learned about the importance of targeting, even though it was a very expensive lesson in targeting. And it was more on the brick and mortar. But you definitely learned a very, very strong lesson in targeting there, I guess. Which has benefited you, right?
Nick:Absolutely. And that’s the beauty of online marketing, how you can drill down and zoom in so closely now.
And so from that situation, here I am getting out from under that contract and getting these things turned off as fast as possible, as soon as I was allowed to. And as soon as that happened, I remember looking at. I had a very, it wasn’t Google analytics. It was very basic, funky online statistics. And that was the first time I built a website.
And actually, when I looked back. I was looking at screenshots the other day. I mean, there are actually printouts of it. It was actually a heck of a site. I did a pretty good job putting it together.
And what was crazy is that after that, the TV campaigns were done, I noticed that my traffic was still rising. And what was crazy is that it drove so much action. I was getting thousands of visitors to this site a day. Thousands. But none of it was targeted, as we said, right? So no one was buying. Cause they don’t live in the town.
But so what ended up happening was that after we pulled the plug in ads, I looked back at the stats and my stats and my traffic is increasing. Now, imagine that. I pull the plug. Stats are going up. I’m flipping out. I’m thinking I’m spending more money on ads, right?
I call these guys back. Like, dude, what’s going on? Like, it looks like we’re spending more money. I have nothing else you can take. I don’t know how you’re doing it. They’re like, Nick, we haven’t run any ads. This has been done for over a week. I’m like, how is it still going up? And we actually didn’t know.
It sounds kind of funny, but we didn’t know, because the analytics didn’t tell us where it was coming from. Again, it was very basic. And so I called the web guy and I’m like, hey, man, I just don’t understand why the numbers are going up. Is something broken? And he goes, oh, no. It looks like you’re on Google. And your rank’s on Google, right?
And as that’s happening, I go into work and I get a package in the mail. Package in the mail. I open her up. And I’m like, all right. I get a little glimmer of hope. I’m thinking like I can turn this thing around. None of that traffic converting but I’ll figure something out. I’m about to get interviewed by West Hartford news, which is big in West Hartford. I’m super excited.
So I’m still keeping my chin up. A smile on my face. And I have an interview coming up. Within about an hour, I’m going to get to the office. I open up this envelope. Big old mean FedEx envelope. Open her up. And it’s a Cease and Desist. And it’s a Cease and Desist for trademark infringement.
Here I sit at my desk. Like you’ve got to be kidding me? I was trademark infringement? And I’m like this is insane. And trademark infringement. I, you know, I actually went online. Searched the USPTO.gov. I talked to both the advertising company and my attorney and I asked both of them. I said, guys, I don’t want to take any chances. Should I trademark this? They said no.
The attorney said, let me do that name search and make sure you’re in the clear. And then once I say yes, you’re good. Prove the concept then trademark. He said, yes, you’re in the clear. I never paid the guy, because he was a real estate attorney. He did me a favor. So I had no recourse on him because we never had a contract.
Jack:And so this was trademark infringement from what? From somebody that you were ranking for?
Nick:Yeah, so my name was Venue Perks Card. And so basically, there was another company with a very similar name.
Jack:Aah.
Nick:And so, and it was after going through, it was infringement. So I called this company up as soon as I got the package, before I had that interview. And I’m like, guys. I’m speaking to the attorney. I’m like freaking out. And he’s like listen. We need to speak to your legal team.
I’m like, listen. I’m twenty-six years old. I put every little nickel I had into this thing. There’s absolutely nothing you can take. I don’t have a legal team. I’m doing this to build up my brand. I’m doing this to give back to charities. I’m like, this is freaking me out.
And the guy ended up, so I ended up doing my own legal work. And next thing you know, they end up getting me into a corner. They realize how many cards I had in circulation. They threaten a big, huge lawsuit. And trying to sue for damages. And all this crazy stuff. We weren’t even competitive. It was totally ridiculous.
I ended up having to give them my URL. I had to give them the assets. I was forbidden to distribute the cards and all this stuff. And it was just a huge disaster. And when I, and the guy, the attorney felt so bad for me. And he started, it was crazy. He literally felt so bad because there was no reason to squash me like that. I was in West Hartford. They didn’t do anything that was even relatively competitive.
