Join us on an extraordinary episode of Rock School Proprietor Podcast as host John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) welcomes back Mike Grande, owner of three music schools and founder of the Rock Out Loud Live online lesson platform.
On Episode 24 Mike joined us to share how he was using TikTok Shop to sell his Card Chords product, and how it ultimately launched him into the top 4% of US sellers on TikTok. After his remarkable success, counterfeiting thieves hacked Mike’s website, locking him out of his bustling business.
In this compelling conversation, Mike shares the challenging odyssey of battling counterfeiters across multiple platforms and countries, offering us valuable insights into intellectual property protection.
Mike also gives us an exclusive first look at his latest invention, Kapsoul. Tune in for an inspiring masterclass in resilience and entrepreneurship.
Your ratings and reviews on Apple Podcast and Spotify are always appreciated!
Join our private Facebook group, “Performance-Based Music Programs and Rock Schools,” a community for like-minded professionals to connect and share insights.
Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:00.788)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki and my guest today is actually a return guest. He is owner of three, maybe still three music schools. The founder of the Rock Out Loud Live music lesson platform, video platform, also an inventor, things like tone picks, developed guitars and card chords.
Michael Grande (00:13.443)
Yeah, three music schools. Yep.
Michael Grande (00:27.951)
Card courts.
John Kozicki (00:29.711)
And that in particular is a lot of what I want to talk about. Your product, CardCords, Mike Grande. Welcome back to the podcast. How are you?
Michael Grande (00:38.381)
John, thanks so much for having me back again. don’t know, how long ago has it been? Maybe three or four months?
John Kozicki (00:43.604)
It was, well, we talked, yeah, we talked in fall of 2024. Yeah. And then that, that episode, the previous episode that you were on episode 24, and listeners might want to go back and listen to that to sort of fill in any holes from our conversation today. You were on that aired in early January. You were on to talk about diversification and in particular, some of the products that you’ve come up with.
Michael Grande (00:49.711)
So it was a little bit longer than that.
John Kozicki (01:13.036)
that sort of accompany music education and how you’ve leveraged TikTok shops in particular to, well, quite frankly, kind of make a killing on selling your card cords.
Michael Grande (01:29.527)
Since our last conversation, went, I don’t know where I was there, but now I’m the top 4 % in the United States for toys and hobbies on CardCores, the top 4 % nationwide on TikTok.
John Kozicki (01:40.258)
which is huge. back then, I believe when you showed me some numbers and some metrics, what sticks in my head? I didn’t look at the exact notes, but I remember it wasn’t uncommon for you to make $1,000 a day for an hour’s worth of work on TikTok and using
Michael Grande (01:58.935)
no, not at all. Hour and a half, 90 minutes, come on John.
John Kozicki (02:08.509)
using TikTok shop to sell primarily card cords. know your tone picks and whatever else too. So, but then about a month ago, maybe a little more. Okay, I saw you share something on Facebook about card cords being counterfeited. And then you’d reached out and you told me not only
Michael Grande (02:13.496)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (02:21.002)
April 21st.
Michael Grande (02:30.445)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (02:36.717)
where the card cords being counterfeited and presumably like cheap knockoffs, right? And as these things go, you’re being undercut with your sales and the counterfeiters broke into your, hacked into your website and locked you out. So I got to know like what happened?
Michael Grande (02:43.76)
huh. Right.
Michael Grande (02:53.537)
yeah. Yep.
John Kozicki (03:02.537)
with this booming business, this booming side hustle that you had going on, how did this all transpire?
Michael Grande (03:09.134)
Well, to start off, I don’t know if you’re aware of the numbers, but between 200 billion and 600 billion a year, a year, stolen from China. Intellectual properties are stolen in China. And there’s no recourse, there’s nothing you can do about it. And that’s every single year. And Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, says it all the time, they steal IP. As soon as you get to the five million mark, I thought I was okay, because I wasn’t making five million yet, but I’m certainly on my way.
So on April the 21st, I woke up to an email. The subject said fake and a link on Amazon. I’m like, what’s going on? I click on it and somebody in China stole my card cords, called them card coros. They were all over Alibaba, Tmoo, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, TikTok, everywhere. It was like seeing your child being stolen and kidnapped and then somebody knocking on your door and saying, look at my baby boy. And I’m like, wait a second, that’s my baby boy. Well, here’s the thing.
John Kozicki (03:52.002)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (04:08.578)
You have to spend the rest of your life proving that that’s your baby boy. Because there’s more protection. So the people in China could do whatever they want. You now have to prove it. it was, and I’m still fighting it, no, but it was mentally one of the most challenging things I’ve ever been through in my entire life. And I’ve been through a lot. to go through that, the mental breakdown of knowing that every, there were at any time between 40 and 50 different people and companies in China stealing my product.
John Kozicki (04:13.016)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (04:38.272)
at any given time. I would wake up and hit F5 refresh after thinking I got some down and there would be more, they were populating, they were spreading like cancer and my mental state was just, it was diminishing my family. I was breaking down, I had a nervous breakdown and of course you call lawyers, my lawyer wanted about $1,000 for each counterfeit up. So if you went up to somebody at Tmoo, what the Chinese do is they’ll actually,
John Kozicki (04:38.829)
Wow.
John Kozicki (04:54.958)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (05:06.968)
post it and when they get caught they will just shut that store down open up a new one with a fictitious name email and phone number that’s what they do and that was a question I couldn’t do it anymore I started doing it myself so I went to people like eBay I went to Walmart I went to Amazon I went to Tik Tok and I started hitting intellectual property theft and hoping that my patents my trademarks my copyrights were going to protect me the way they should have
John Kozicki (05:11.459)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (05:31.94)
Well eBay doesn’t want anything to do with it. eBay is like, you know what, send it to a court, make sure the court or the judge says, alright, it’s legal to actually go after them. And once you get a judge to say, you know, put an order out, then we’ll go after those Chinese sellers. I’m like, are you kidding me? So then what I did is I called my friend Travis. I don’t know if you know Travis. You ever see the cord buddy? That’s the cord, but it’s a plastic contraption that fits on a guitar. You press a button. He was on Shock Tank and Robert made a deal with him, Robert Hershavik.
John Kozicki (05:31.992)
Right.
John Kozicki (05:45.09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (05:58.443)
Okay. Okay.
Michael Grande (06:00.975)
Cord buddy is owned by Travis. I called up Travis. I said Travis What did you do because immediately after shock tank and you made that deal with Robert something had to happen because I see a counterfeit Cord buddies all over the world. He goes Mike. I lost my mind I went crazy and but they’re found this company their lawyers they work on consignment and when they there’s enough of your product bastardized and all over the internet we then this company goes after them
John Kozicki (06:14.712)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (06:28.175)
as attorneys and they freeze their bank accounts before they go to China. And then what they do is they send you a check and they take a commission. So seven months after he had with Shark Tank, he said, Mike, I got a phone call and they sent me $250,000 from all the counterfeiters of monies that they froze. So naturally, I called up all these attorneys that he uses and I said, you you work with my buddy Travis from Shark Tank and he goes, yeah, this is what’s gonna have to happen. We need to find at least 25 different
John Kozicki (06:28.398)
Okay.
John Kozicki (06:43.991)
Wow.
John Kozicki (06:49.784)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (06:57.839)
places in China who are stealing your product before we can actually sign you up. Because then we know that we have enough that we can actually go after to make a commission on that. And then I said, I can’t see that happening because I could see hundreds or thousands and they just get more and more. They were like cancer. So I said, this gotta be a different way. So I called up more and more attorneys and I’m picking their brains and they said, listen, if your patents and trademarks are not working, what about your copyrights? I said, what does that mean?
John Kozicki (07:00.93)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (07:08.14)
Right.
Michael Grande (07:25.965)
She said, you have, one of my attorneys said, do you have pictures on your website, Card Courts? And I don’t mean on eBay, I don’t mean on Amazon, I don’t mean on TikTok and Walmart, because did you know, and I didn’t know this, the moment you upload a picture, even if it’s your own seller account on Amazon, Amazon owns your copyright. You cannot do anything about that. That’s exactly what I said, because my photos were copyrighted. The photos I used to post, but fortunately,
John Kozicki (07:33.262)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (07:45.676)
No kidding. Okay.
John Kozicki (07:50.988)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (07:54.426)
Three years ago when CardCords started to become a thing, I hired somebody to write blogs for me and I had thousands of pictures, the same pictures that were used on Amazon, Walmart, Tiktok, eBay, those were the pictures used on my postings. They actually started out on CardCords.com. So naturally what I do is…
John Kozicki (08:10.57)
Okay, so is that so just what I’m following. So that means because you had established a copyright on your own website for card cords prior to using those same photos on Amazon, that’s showing proof of your copyright for those. that okay?
Michael Grande (08:13.732)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (08:27.247)
That’s right, so a copyright is considered published when you’ve published it on your own website, your domain. So you can’t contest that, and that’s just the way that works, which I didn’t know, because my patent didn’t hold water. We would have had to have a court, make it a court ruling, and go to a judge. That would have took tens of thousands of dollars, and would have taken months, and my card codes would have been all over the place. So long story short was, that was my goal. Then I went to IP protection, Amazon, to TikTok, to Walmart, to eBay, to to T-MU.
John Kozicki (08:46.275)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (08:56.749)
And I said, here’s a link to my website, you fill out all the information, these are the links to the people who have stolen my stuff in China, all that stuff. So in the process, I started to order all of these card chords. I wanted to see what was counterfeited, right? So before I actually found out about the website thing, all of these card chords are coming to me and they changed the word from card chords to card coros. Now all the chords were wrong.
John Kozicki (09:20.43)
Well, right. And just so because we’re dealing with audio, I saw an image that you showed of your card cords and the font and the counterfeit card coros. And I can I see now when you have that visual, you see like, that D at the near the end of cards. Then they turn that into an O because it looks close enough to that D. Yeah.
Michael Grande (09:26.82)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (09:42.659)
Yep, chords.
Michael Grande (09:47.778)
Right. Which if they were smart they would have spelled it C-O-R-D-S because a lot of people have that they make that grammar mistake chords C-H-O or C-O-R but they didn’t so I did what I did was before I found out about this whole copyright thing I’m going crazy because I have to see so I ordered 26 different copies of my card cords from 26 people from Timo, Amazon, eBay, everybody they started to come in yeah yeah
John Kozicki (09:55.8)
Sure. Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:08.63)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, question about that too, sorry, but I’ve got a lot of questions. because related to related to these counterfeiters, obviously, what they’re doing is they’re they’re undercutting the original, they’re undercutting your. Yeah. So they’re able to sell it at a lower price. What are we talking about in terms of their price compared to your price percentage wise or dollar numbers or whatever?
Michael Grande (10:26.99)
The count of it.
Michael Grande (10:37.503)
$2 for a set of card cords compared to my $44. Yeah. Yeah. So.
John Kozicki (10:41.358)
Oh my gosh. Wow. So anyone, anyone who’s who’s like, Oh, this, this product, card chords looks really cool to teach me how to play guitar, I’m thinking I’m going to buy it. And they go to your website and they see that it’s $44. And then they look it on up on Amazon or something like that. And they see counterfeit versions for $2.50 or whatever. Home run. Right? Yeah.
Michael Grande (11:07.939)
Yeah, well, the key here is, and I’ll give you this as a side note, of course, yeah, besides the fact that, and all the chords are wrong, like the A major’s wrong, that’s not a single chord that’s correct. All of the chords are wrong, and they don’t fit on the guitars properly, so they don’t work. But the one thing, and this is for any listener that sells, whether it’s on TikTok, Amazon, eBay, anybody, you don’t get…
John Kozicki (11:12.268)
Now they’re getting garbage, of course, but yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ugh.
Michael Grande (11:33.188)
you don’t get to see who your real customer is, which that means is Amazon’s great to sell, but you never know who that buyer is. How do you get in touch with that buyer? Well, simple part is, is you gotta get that buyer to either get…
Get in contact with you somehow so what I’ve done on all my card cords is I give a free ebook with ten songs video guitar lessons video lessons of me teaching them ten songs and how to learn to use the card chords so in exchange for me and working with Amazon team who Amazon webs all the websites the End user says wow I got a great set of card chords I get all the chords, but now what well they scan that QR code they put in their email address I capture all their information I’ve gotten thousands and thousands of those people
John Kozicki (12:13.198)
Brilliant.
Michael Grande (12:15.877)
legitimate people who want to learn to play the guitar. Now I have those emails.
John Kozicki (12:16.365)
Yeah.
That’s that is brilliant. That is I think that it’s so important to highlight that you’re you’re thinking long term, not just about that sale, but you’re thinking about I’ve captured this sale and the attention of this person. So getting their email address, super important. Good work.
Michael Grande (12:23.757)
Yep.
Michael Grande (12:38.871)
Yeah, and I know they’re a guitar player. all that stuff. So the card chords didn’t have that, the card coros. So when they came, they actually, one out of the 26 boxes said distributed in Spain, Madrid, Spain, and it was actually manufactured in China. So naturally I looked them all up and I found out where they were in Spain. I called one of my friends up who lives in Barcelona. He goes, Mike, I’ll go out to that site next week. And he did. It was a fictitious place.
John Kozicki (12:51.854)
Hmm.
John Kozicki (13:05.386)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michael Grande (13:06.743)
and it was a fake phone number that nobody picked up but the email address worked and I sent them a cease and desist as well as the place in Hong Kong. Well they stopped selling it on their website but as this is happening people who are selling in China they stole my actual TikTok videos, created Facebook ads, pointed people to a fake card coros website
John Kozicki (13:10.988)
Okay.
John Kozicki (13:25.752)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (13:29.303)
And people were getting back to me now and saying, I bought your card cords, the card cords are wrong, they don’t fit my guitar, they’re ripping, they’re not plastic, they’re made out of paper. And now I’m losing my mind. So this is when I find out about the copyright. So naturally, I submit all the intellectual property protection with Amazon Web, all the platforms. So I’m not going after the manufacturers, I’m going after the platforms. And I directed them to my cardcords.com website that clearly said I was the copyright originator.
John Kozicki (13:37.058)
Yeah. Right.
John Kozicki (13:51.054)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (13:57.265)
for these pictures and images and they belong to my website. And all of the sudden, the 10 went to nine, to eight, to seven. The 42 that I refreshed on a Friday went down to zero on Monday and these Chinese are relentless. They’ll post on a Friday night on Tmoo, on Sheen, on AliExpress, on all of the websites on a Friday night knowing that the IP.
John Kozicki (14:12.792)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (14:22.256)
protection folks they don’t see those emails until Monday so they have three days Friday Saturday and Sunday to sell and sell counterfeit until they get caught these Chinese are just what they forget about it right so they will manipulate everything they could for a dollar so a long story short is I find that and they’re learning the Chinese are learning my all of these websites are being taken down all of these sellers are getting fines and violations so when Amazon sends you a violation they they’re
John Kozicki (14:26.166)
Wow.
John Kozicki (14:34.798)
Wow.
John Kozicki (14:39.221)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (14:51.67)
strict they’re like listen we’re going to take your amazon account down ebay the same thing ebay’s got this thing called the vero group v-e-r-o group so does aliexpress alibaba and all of them so they start coming down they’re realizing that they’re using my pictures and my pictures on my website as what’s the reason why they’re getting taken down so i will never forget this on a monday morning i hit the refresh and all of these these come up there was over 50 counterfeit versions of pictures of me
John Kozicki (15:10.432)
Interesting.
Michael Grande (15:20.528)
my son’s girlfriend playing the guitar with cards, all of these pictures all over T-Mobile, AliExpress, everywhere. And I’m like, oh my God, I gotta submit my applications now, and I gotta do this again to intellectual property protection. So as I checked my card court site, it said unable to, 404, forbidden, couldn’t get to it. I’m what’s going on? So by trade, for 23 years before, as I was growing my music schools and being a musician, I was also in IT.
John Kozicki (15:33.006)
Wow.
Michael Grande (15:50.415)
I was a certified ethical hacker. I don’t know if you know that about me. So as a chief technology officer on Wall Street, and I worked for all these big financial institutions as a certified ethical hacker, which means I had a hack. It’s like a guy who carries a gun. call them a police agent, a police or a federal agent against the robbers and the bank robbers. I was the federal agent. I was a certified ethical hacker. I could track exactly where you are, your MAC address, your IP. I could track all that. So naturally, I tracked it down. My website’s hacked.
John Kozicki (15:55.543)
Okay.
John Kozicki (16:10.264)
Hahaha.
Michael Grande (16:20.546)
So nobody can access my website. Amazon can’t, Timo can’t, Ebay can’t, nobody can verify this to take all these counterfeiters down. I locate them to a province in Hong Kong, to a specific place. I knew exactly where they were. And I captured the screenshot and I emailed them, I found their email address. And I told them, I now know who you are. Since then, it took three days to get my website back up. Now it’s been up, knock wood.
John Kozicki (16:28.835)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (16:32.762)
huh.
John Kozicki (16:43.65)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (16:48.322)
Every day since because I had to put it behind a certain firewall and we had to make sure we had ban IP Protection and all that stuff, but it’s worked But I want to make a note to you guys and anybody that’s listening if the Chinese are that adamant about knocking down a website for card courts for car Imagine what the Chinese are doing to our property our Social Security numbers our our identities and the threat is out there. They already have it
John Kozicki (16:54.829)
Wow.
Michael Grande (17:15.824)
It’s when they’re going to actually use that data. So if they’re doing this with card cords for something to make $1 profit off of, God only knows what they’re doing. And by the way, the $44 difference to $2 difference, it wasn’t even comparable. Mine’s made out of plastic. Mine has the free ebook. It’s got all that stuff. The packaging is beautiful. And it’ll last you a lifetime. Theirs, they won’t even fit in the guitar. Needless to say, the point that I guess I’m trying to make is that
John Kozicki (17:16.195)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (17:23.587)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (17:42.624)
Our information is already exposed and we really need to consider what we can do to protect it, especially now that the Chinese have all our information. It’s just too late to stop.
John Kozicki (17:52.572)
Well, so that, you know, that does bring up a kind of an interesting question in my mind. And I’m going to tread lightly because I certainly don’t want to get into like the political stuff. You know, I agree with you about our data and how important I mean, I’m pretty passionate about like, well, we should own our data, not the big tech companies or anyone else. But again, that’s a whole separate topic. When you told me about this,
Michael Grande (18:02.094)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (18:13.582)
Yeah, right.
John Kozicki (18:21.908)
I, you know, I didn’t do a ton of research, but I was curious, OK, if this has happened in the mic, I mean, I know it happens to big corporations on the regular, especially like designer brands get counterfeited all the time. And this is a historic thing that’s been going on forever. But this is huge brands that have been around for decades versus Mike Grande, who you literally sell these on tick tock out of your house. Right. Like.
Michael Grande (18:33.594)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (18:48.932)
Yeah, my basement.
John Kozicki (18:50.542)
you told me once, yeah, after dinner, I’ll go downstairs and make 450 bucks on TikTok or whatever. So these large corporations, more resources with lawyers, obviously, like you’re doing the hard work. I did a little bit of looking into it and it did seem to point to the like the
Michael Grande (18:56.89)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (19:17.26)
The tariffs and the of the questions around the tariffs recently seem to create a spike in this with some of the larger brands to play off of, especially US consumers fears. And again, kind of don’t want to get into like the politics of it. But the question that sticks into my mind is. And you kind of touched on this, but why? Why card cords this small little startup?
in comparison to these, you know, these big brands, you know, do you think it was because of how successful you were on TikTok?
Michael Grande (19:55.921)
Yes, that’s exactly right. So I’m really successful on Amazon. I make between eight and 10,000 a month. And on a side note, we’ll talk about Amazon in a second, because this is very important that we speak about this Amazon. Why Card Cords? It wasn’t until TikTok, I blew up on TikTok. When we spoke last, I think I had maybe 10,000 followers. Now I’m like 43,000. I’m still making between, I want to say between eight and 10,000 a week.
John Kozicki (19:57.857)
Okay.
John Kozicki (20:03.438)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (20:24.4)
on TikTok and when they see those numbers, there’s so many engines that check the algorithms to see what’s selling and for TikTok to say I’m the top 4%, people actually are able to become my affiliates. So when TikTok puts that out, I have over 1,000 people who I’ve never met before who are actually selling on TikTok my brand, Card Cords, through my shop and making a 20 % commission. So when you see these other folks,
John Kozicki (20:24.686)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (20:53.85)
who are in China who are able to counterfeit, they’re seeing all of that momentum with any product. In this case, was on TikTok with CardCords, they’re gonna steal it. That’s why CardCords.
John Kozicki (20:58.488)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (21:04.768)
Okay. And card chords as a product, if I can kind of describe it a little bit, really innovative and in how it works and filling in the space, maybe a little too late, but a card that fits between the strings and the fingerboard on a guitar, you have two different versions to fit a Les Paul style and a Fender strat style. okay.
Michael Grande (21:29.616)
Now we have a Deluxe. And that’s the funny thing. The original one that the card chorus stole was one that was four years old. So I’ve evolved my card chords in four different evolutions of the card chords to get it perfect. They’re stealing the original one that didn’t work as well. So it was originally strat, a separate one for the Gibson Les Pauls, which were two different fret sizes and fretboards. Then I went to Deluxe.
John Kozicki (21:44.11)
Mm hmm. Yeah. OK. OK.
Michael Grande (21:56.722)
and which is if it’s universal, now I’m deluxe left-handed and right-handed. if you’re a righty or a lefty, it works for both. So many evolutions. So the Chinese took the oldest, I mean the one that didn’t work and sell the best to the one that I’m doing now, which sells amazing. So yeah, they took that original.
John Kozicki (21:59.395)
Gotcha. Gotcha. OK.
John Kozicki (22:13.068)
Okay, so and it very innovative. I can only imagine how much time and effort it took for you to develop this because it’s such an interesting product. The card slips between the strings and the fretboard. It is not just for the frets so that you can leave the card on the guitar while you place your fingers on it to play the chord and that’s how it teaches you. Very innovative, but
Michael Grande (22:32.902)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (22:41.516)
on the flip side from the counterfeiters perspective, they look at that and that’s like, well, that’s a, that’s a, a die cut piece of cardboard with some printing on it. We can dupe that, you know, and obviously like a crappy version that as you were saying, doesn’t hold up and it’s all wrong. but I can, I, you know, I see where in the mind of a nefarious individual, they’re like, that, would be something easy for us to, to dupe off really quickly.
Michael Grande (22:56.529)
with all the wrong chords. Yeah.
John Kozicki (23:11.267)
and undercut. But again, going back to the why, your success on TikTok is what you feel strongly is why you were targeted for this,
Michael Grande (23:24.261)
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
John Kozicki (23:26.518)
Okay. Okay. Now, you were talking about a lot about copyrights. So maybe like kind of quick, quick bullet points. You hold copyrights for card cords, you hold a patent for card cords, and you were saying that, okay, and a trademark. Okay. And the patent and the trademark were those the ones that were harder to prove, and it was the copyrights that that ultimately helped you.
Michael Grande (23:43.952)
trademark.
Michael Grande (23:54.384)
Yes. you believe? So the fact that I think in my mind, this is the way I think it works in China. They think that the trademark is the only thing that I actually went for. To do a trademark and a patent, I’m sorry, to do a patent, it’s gonna cost you, it cost me $10,000. And I don’t think that the Chinese realized that I actually patented it.
John Kozicki (24:14.936)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (24:19.523)
So they said, you know what, he probably just trademarked it because for 300 bucks you could trademark it and most people are gonna spend 300, not 10,000. But I did both and I saw as well as copyrighted it. So what they did was that’s where they changed chords to chorus because now it’s no longer a trademark violation. Secondly, they would even Photoshop the card chords name off of it and keep my packaging thinking that I only trademarked. So if I just remove the trademark, well then that’s fine.
They could just remove the pictures, the card cords words and sell it. But they actually, the fact that I was able to show that it arrived, it started at my cardcords.com website and they photoshopped it there, the pictures and images were stolen. They didn’t come up with their own pictures and images. So they stole them. yeah, it’s the combination of all, but the copyright is just so important to have. And that’s, you don’t have to copyright it with the government. I did.
John Kozicki (25:00.258)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (25:03.65)
Gotcha.
Michael Grande (25:12.145)
The United States has my copyright. That’s for unpublished. But for published, your website would work and it doesn’t cost you anything.
John Kozicki (25:18.988)
Yeah, and I will say it is relatively easy. I won’t go into the details relatively, relatively easy and inexpensive to copyright through through the Library of Congress as well. Okay, now, all that said, you were talking to me a little bit about a new product that you have in the works. And I’m before you kind of share that stuff, because I’m excited about that, too. Are you
I mean, are you hesitant? Are you worried? Are there things that you would do different from this experience?
Michael Grande (25:56.88)
That’s such a great lead up question. This is gonna open up a whole different highway of conversation. So I’ll give you an example. So to your point, yes. I’m not doing anything different. I still file for my new product, I still file the patent. I have a utility and a design patent pending. I have a trademark, I also have copyright images. I have all that stuff. I’m scared shitless. I’m sorry, I have, if you’re gonna, of this next chapter, because I know this next product is going to be huge.
John Kozicki (25:59.311)
You
Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:16.482)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (26:25.553)
to share it with you and it all started with TikTok. My challenge with this particular product, which I’m going to show it to you and I hope your audience can see it somewhere in the show notes is I was on TikTok and this is how this product came to me. But before I tell you that is I was so afraid to launch this product thinking that I would have to go through this mental breakdown again. John, it was like losing. I have a very close friend in the West Coast and his name is Chris.
John Kozicki (26:28.59)
Okay.
John Kozicki (26:43.64)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (26:47.341)
Right.
Michael Grande (26:54.179)
I broke down in tears. I couldn’t even breathe. He talked me off of a bridge because I didn’t know what to do. All my hard earned time and money and cap rates, you spent all this money and time for somebody to just steal it from you and nobody was doing anything. Amazon says to me, Amazon wouldn’t take these down. They said we don’t see any comparison. And you’ve seen the comparison, so what do you do? They are, yeah.
John Kozicki (27:13.683)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they are exact. With the exception of the D and the O, they’re exact, yeah.
Michael Grande (27:22.161)
So people leaving me negative reviews for these card corals they didn’t buy from me. They’re messaging me. They’re saying this is a scam So what do I do is I buy from Amazon this this counterfeit seller and I leave a negative feedback and negative review writing counterfeit Do not buy buy or beware Amazon sends me Twice we’re gonna take your listing off and we’re gonna cancel your Amazon sellers account You will no longer be able to sell on Amazon because of this and I’m like, I’m trying to protect my IP. So
John Kozicki (27:37.698)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (27:51.179)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (27:51.29)
I would have lost $10,000 a month because of Amazon. I fought that with lawyers and attorneys and twice I had a win. I won twice. But I was literally minutes away from Amazon just turning off my seller account to never be able to sell on Amazon again. It was crazy. So I’m going through this mental anxiety. What do I do with this product? How am I going to get it out there? And I also was tying with going to Un-Shark Tank. And when Travis said to me, Mike, you go on Shark Tank. They’re going to steal your product.
John Kozicki (28:06.082)
Ugh.
John Kozicki (28:17.154)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (28:20.849)
That’s what’s gonna happen. And I was so afraid of that. So I said to my wife, I said, what am I gonna do? I wanna go on Shark Tank. I know this is a multi-million dollar product, but I can’t go through this anymore. I don’t need the money. John, don’t need, and I’m not saying this as an ego thing, I just don’t need the money. So I don’t need their money. I don’t need their distribution. I don’t need anything from them. So what would I go onto Shark Tank for? And then it dawned on me. What if I go onto Shark Tank and say, you know what, I’ll take a dollar.
John Kozicki (28:22.2)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (28:37.218)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (28:40.942)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (28:49.841)
A dollar from anybody that wants to invest in me for like 10 % of my company in exchange for your attorneys and counsel to protect my IP to know I will never have to go through this mentally again because I just can’t handle it. That’s my thought. And I’m looking forward to going to, I’m hoping Kevin, Kevin’s a guitar player, Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful. He’s a guitar player. He’s also a guitar collector. So I think him and I would get along really well. He’s also, he owns my tax side, my accounting team. So I’m hoping that we could.
John Kozicki (28:52.728)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (29:01.39)
Brilliant, Yeah.
Michael Grande (29:19.685)
we could work together. So the way this product came to light was I was in the middle of this TikTok performance, I’ll call it selling on TikTok. A woman gets on and she says, my God, Mike, this is an amazing product. And I, my son would absolutely love it. So I naturally said, well, get your son on the video and we’ll, we’ll just go over how these card courts work. She goes, no, you just don’t understand. My son passed away. He passed away in his twenties, but he played guitar and loved guitar. I did it every day and my heart dropped. But she said, but we memorialize them.
John Kozicki (29:27.064)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (29:45.378)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Michael Grande (29:48.305)
I said, how did you memorialize him? Well, we took the bag of ashes and we dumped it inside his acoustic guitar. I’m going to send you a picture. I’m like, you dumped a bag of ashes into his guitar. So she says, yes, it’s hard to really visualize because you can’t see the ashes. They’re inside the guitar wrapped in a Ziploc. But we have a memorialized guitar, acoustic guitar, with candles and flowers. And it’s beautiful. that’s how we memorialized my son. She sends it to me. And I said, how could we do this better?
John Kozicki (30:06.935)
Okay.
Michael Grande (30:17.234)
And that’s when I thought of this new invention and now I’m going to share it with you. It’s called, here it is. This is the first time, now that the patent and trademarks are all pending and all that stuff is ready, this is the first time. This is called Capsule and I’m going show you, the packaging is brilliant. So this is a, it’s called Capsule. So Capsule now, when you look at it, this is, it’s going to open up like a beautiful jewelry box. I’m going to show you what that looks like. So right there are the instructions.
John Kozicki (30:17.549)
Okay.
Okay, all right, here we go. Am I getting an exclusive right now?
Yeah.
John Kozicki (30:34.957)
OK.
Michael Grande (30:44.07)
The instructions basically say, gently you’re going to pour in the ashes into the vessel. So these are ashes of your loved one. And then you’re going to put it inside this little capsule, tighten it, and then the capsule will fit inside the acoustic guitar. So this is what it looks like. And you’ll see when you pull this out, I’m going show you, that’s the bag. See that? So what I’m going to do is I’m going pull it. There it is, right there. So this is the capsule. So how does this work?
John Kozicki (30:49.581)
huh.
John Kozicki (30:53.186)
Right, right.
John Kozicki (31:06.774)
Yep, okay.
Michael Grande (31:13.518)
So this is made out of special material. It’s waterproof and there’s nothing that will ever leak out of this, including ashes. And the pattern and design pattern, utility pattern is on this cap with this metal, let’s call this screw, right? So you can actually screw this in. They’re threaded, right. So let me show you how this works. I’m gonna grab my acoustic guitar. let’s this here. Now this is great for anybody who wants to, well,
John Kozicki (31:19.703)
Okay.
John Kozicki (31:29.998)
Mm-hmm, the other threaded cap, yep.
Michael Grande (31:42.584)
I wanted to do this just as a memorial and it’s going to get a little bit more interesting. So if you put the cap inside right here, look at how beautiful that is and that’s the memorialization of…
John Kozicki (31:58.772)
that looks sharp.
Michael Grande (31:59.909)
It’s, yeah, so you can see the capsule is inside, we call it the heart of the guitar, and it sits there with the bag behind it, and it’s twofold. So I took this naturally when I was trying to find out if there’s a market for this. I went to a funeral directors and crematoriums, and they said, this is beautiful, it’s a great design, but I have a question. And I said, well, what’s the question? They said, can the musician play with this capsule inside? Does it?
John Kozicki (32:18.371)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (32:27.246)
as it affect the guitar. no, absolutely not. In fact, when you actually go out and perform live, and you know John, when you perform live on an acoustic guitar, you gotta cover the sound hole or else you get feedback. Yes, so I said, so they said to me, your market is not just the crematoriums and the earns market, it’s the musician’s market that goes out and plays. Imagine the psychology of somebody who’s playing with their past loved one, whether it’s their parents or their grandparents or their pet, and they could play.
John Kozicki (32:36.044)
Yep, for feedback. Yeah, yeah.
Michael Grande (32:55.376)
And it’s so, I mean, you could see, it doesn’t say anything about ashes, it doesn’t say crematorium. You don’t even know it’s ashes. And you could perform with them when a musician, and we could all think the same, I think, about musicians. When a musician is in a state of whether it’s the sentimental state, the psychology of a musician’s performance plays just as good of a role as their performance. Because when you get the lights dimming, you get that feeling in your heart and your soul, man, you could play better than any.
John Kozicki (33:01.784)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (33:17.486)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (33:23.366)
That’s gonna be in your performance knowing that your grandmother, your grandfather, your parents might be inside your guitar and they’re inside your performance. So people started getting back to me.
John Kozicki (33:24.12)
Right.
John Kozicki (33:34.382)
that is, yeah, that’s a really interesting, you know, never would have thought about something like that. But it again, the way it looks, it looks really sharp. Covering the sound hole. Yeah, there are things that cover sound holes. But this is that’s that’s, that’s quite an idea there.
Michael Grande (33:53.297)
Yeah, and I’ll go one step further. There’s a place called the Crematory Cowboy. This guy’s huge on TikTok. And if you want to just, actually, do you have those drums? my son is playing drums right now. I’ll just ask him to, yeah, let me just ask him to move. So yeah, as far as the Crematory Cowboy, the Crematory Cowboy is a guy who actually cremates people while he plays his acoustic guitar. So people are like, you gotta do me a favor and reach out to this Crematory guy.
John Kozicki (34:00.416)
Okay.
John Kozicki (34:05.295)
That’s all right.
Michael Grande (34:22.938)
This guy will love this product. So I reached out to him and he thinks that the market’s just gonna go crazy for this particular item, which I do too, and he’s gonna actually promote it for me as well. So I’m hoping that with his promotions and going on Chalk Tank and hope that they will bet on the jockey and not the horse. And I say that is because I’m afraid to go out and get sales to put this out. I did something strategically different with this. Every piece in this capsule,
John Kozicki (34:46.285)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (34:51.044)
is made by a different manufacturer. The cap is made by one manufacturer. The bag is made by another manufacturer. And the case is made by another. So there are three different manufacturers that make the capsule. So I’m hoping we made it so hard that if the Chinese wanted, like you said, it’s just not a die cut piece of paper, that when the Chinese want to steal it, they might think twice and say, is a little bit harder than I think. That’s what I’m.
John Kozicki (35:04.015)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (35:09.709)
Right, right.
John Kozicki (35:14.189)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Harder to reproduce, much more complicated, three dimensional versus, you know, like a flat, essentially piece of, well, I mean, yours is like a piece of plastic-like paper. Man, Mike, this has been a wild, wild episode and wild story. I learned a ton.
about intellectual property, about protecting it, about copyrights. So I appreciate that. think that your new product looks really super interesting. And of course, I wish you the best. I’m interested to see how it goes as things take off here. honestly, I’m super glad to hear that with CardCords, you’re still, that’s still an income stream for you. it hasn’t
Michael Grande (35:57.084)
Thank you.
John Kozicki (36:14.179)
completely derailed. Are you still doing TikTok every day for card cords? Wow.
Michael Grande (36:15.772)
Yeah.
Every day twice a day and you know, it’s funny because people even tik-tok doesn’t believe I’m I’m doing this this much and it’s like they they send me during my tik-toks Swipe this if you’re real people think that what I’m doing because I’m doing it so often like no human does this this much so I swipe it so they so I’m doing it and I think the key to anything that you do in life if you’re consistent at it, you’re going to do well, that’s that’s just the bottom line, you know, and that’s
John Kozicki (36:37.347)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (36:45.177)
Yes.
Michael Grande (36:48.306)
My claim to fame is I’m really consistent at it. I think if you recall in your first interview with me, we spoke about why I constantly just do all these different products and projects. And I said, it’s because the universe or God, whatever you believe in, is putting these things in front of me. And whether I choose to do them or not is up to me, because that could be my next big thing. And when this came to me, I gave it to three or four other people. I’m like, here’s a great idea. Do it. You’re going to make millions. I promise you. And they, yeah, I’m going to do it.
I’m gonna do it and like six months later, nobody did anything. So I’m like, here we go again back to me figuring it out and this I think this is gonna make me a multi-millionaire just because this is a product that nobody’s ever thought about and people are constantly looking for new ways to to memorialize their loved one and I think this is something that that is a new thing and according to the people I speak to if I make this to Shark Tank and the only thing is is if I make it to Shark Tank and they say no
John Kozicki (37:22.211)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (37:37.199)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Grande (37:48.274)
because I don’t have enough sales. Now I’m exposed to Shark Tank and everybody can steal this. That’s the hard, you know, the hard part.
John Kozicki (37:53.635)
Yeah, sure, sure. huh. Yeah. Well, Mike, always a pleasure. I’m again, I’m, I’m, I’m glad that things have worked out for you. I am impressed by your ability to bounce back because putting myself in your position, I, you know, I empathize with that situation where you felt like
Michael Grande (38:02.631)
Thank you so much, John.
John Kozicki (38:22.563)
man, what do I do? This is this thing that I created and that I put so much work into and it’s part of your livelihood, part of your income stream and no one wants to help you when it gets stolen. what a, yeah. Yeah, what a horrible, horrible situation to find yourself in. But you’re resourceful, you gave the hackers a little bit of.
Michael Grande (38:23.933)
Yeah.
Michael Grande (38:36.987)
or they’ll charge you. They’ll charge you a lot of money.
John Kozicki (38:50.851)
dose their own medicine. So good for you. All right. Well, again, Mike Grande, thank you so much. The website for I want to I want to plug website one more time for card cords. It’s card cords.com. Correct. So
Michael Grande (38:52.083)
Yeah, I did. I thought I did.
Michael Grande (39:06.311)
Yep, if they want to see that new product, it’s Capsoul with a K, K-A-P-S-O-U-L, Capsoul, like a cap on your soul. yeah, with those pictures that I’m actually uploading of pictures of this product so they will be officially copyrighted.
John Kozicki (39:14.031)
Okay. And there’s a, is there a website for that already too? Okay.
John Kozicki (39:23.725)
Okay, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes. Again, Mike, thanks for joining us and we’ll wrap this one up. We’ll see you next time.
Michael Grande (39:33.886)
Thank you, John.
