The Wooden Horse Trap: Why Copying Success Stories Is Costing You Results

Lenise K

19h • General Chat

I had one of those lightbulb moments this week about why copying what works for others rarely works for us.

Turned it into this. Curious if anyone else has fallen into this trap (I know I have)....

You see someone's morning routine go viral. 5am wakeup, cold plunge, journaling. They swear it changed their life.

So you try it. You set the alarm. You suffer through the cold water. You stare at the blank journal page.

And you're miserable.

But that's just personal stuff, right? Surely we're smarter when it comes to business.

Except we're not.

Someone's launch makes $847,000 in three days. So we copy their funnel word for word.

A competitor's LinkedIn post gets 12,000 likes. So we mirror their exact format.

An industry leader shares their framework at a conference. So we implement it exactly as described in our company by Friday.

And then we sit there wondering why nothing's working the same way.

Here's what's actually happening.

You know the story of the Trojan Horse, right? The Greeks built a giant wooden horse, hid soldiers inside, and left it at the gates of Troy as a gift. The Trojans wheeled it in, thinking they'd won. That night, the Greek soldiers climbed out and opened the gates from the inside. War over.

Now picture someone hearing this story and thinking, "Wooden horses. That's the answer."

So they start building wooden horses. They send one to their biggest competitor. They wheel one into their next client meeting. They park one in their email campaigns. They build three more for their website redesign. They're convinced this is what's been missing.

Sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud.

But walk into any business right now and you'll see wooden horses everywhere.

Here's what copying looks like in real life.

You see a successful business running daily emails, so you start sending daily emails too. But you don't know their audience spent two years being warmed up before they could handle that frequency. You don't see the three backend systems that make it actually work. You just see "daily emails" and you copy it.

Three months later you're burned out and your unsubscribe rate jumped from 2% to 11%.

Here's what adapting actually looks like.

You see that same business running daily emails. You ask different questions. What problem does this solve for them? You realize they're staying top of mind in a market where buyers forget about vendors in 48 hours.

Then you ask: do I have that same problem? What frequency would my actual audience want? What can I maintain without hiring two more people?

You design something that serves the same purpose but fits your real situation. Six months later your open rates are at 34% and it feels completely doable.

The difference isn't in the tactic. It's in the thinking that comes before the tactic.

And here's the part nobody wants to admit. Copying feels safer. It's faster. It doesn't require us to sit with the uncomfortable truth that we might not know what we're doing yet. That figuring out our own approach might take six months instead of six days. That we might have to face what we're actually trying to build here.

But copying doesn't work. Not really. Not for long.

Look, if you've done this before, or if you're doing it right now, you're in good company. I've done it. Everyone I know has done it. We all grab for the shortcut when we're overwhelmed or scared or just desperate for something to finally click. There's no shame in it.

But here's what I know after watching this pattern repeat about 200 times.

Copying is fast. Understanding takes longer but actually works.

The magic isn't in the horse. It's in the strategy that made someone think "we should build a horse" in the first place.

When you slow down long enough to ask better questions, when you actually understand the why before jumping to the what, something changes. You stop collecting tactics that sort of fit. You start building things that work for your specific situation, your actual audience, your real constraints.

That's when your business starts moving.

So here's my question for you.

What wooden horse are you building right now, thinking this will be the one that finally works?

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