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Yes You Can
Host Hannah Pratt pulls back the curtain on being an indoor cycling instructor and fitness coach while covering online business, grief, and designing your dream life by taking action and allowing your story to empower you. Yes, You Can is the podcast you need to dream bigger, laugh louder, and feel celebrated and supported in your instructor journey. #yesyoucanpodcast @hannahrosespin
Yes You Can
Creative Inspiration vs. Copycats: How to Give Credit as a Coach or Creator and What to Do if Your Work Has Been Plagiarized
Creative Copycats, Plagiarism, and Drawing the Line Between Inspiration and Imitation as a Coach and Creator
Have you ever felt the sting of seeing your original work, choreography, social media post or ideas taken or copied... without being given credit?
Flat out: it sucks, and it can feel like you've been robbed of something.
And in the realm of social media and online communities where content reels reign, trends are fast, and you don't even know who the original creator IS- it's not *always* intentional.
In this episode, I share my experiences with being copied as a creator, how I responded, and how you can both avoid it and address it if you ever find yourself in the same position.
A note: this episode isn't talking about plagiarism in the post-secondary education sphere, or, to provide any legal advice regarding copyright infringements.
Resources mentioned:
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert - the phenomenon of two people having the same unique idea.
Terms & Conditions and Copyright Agreements - I use Contracts Market for all of my legal agreements.
Key takeaways:
- The difference between inspiration and plagiarism
- How to give credit when you're inspired by someone else
- How to approach someone when you'd like to collaborate, duplicate, or work with someone's original concept
- How to address someone when you feel that they've copied or duplicated your work
- Examples of what this can look like in social media, indoor cycling, and work
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Welcome to the yes you Can podcast, a soft place to land for fit pros and aspiring entrepreneurs looking for a motivational cheerleader who's been through it all and believes your best. Life is about being brave and tapping into your magic. Hi, I'm Hannah Pratt, an online coach and vulnerability queen. I'm here ready to share my experiences through grief, life and finding my place on the podium to help you level up. So grab a latte and a notebook and get ready to be inspired through the yes you Can podcast. Hey friends, welcome to another episode of the yes you Can podcast. I am so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:Today. We're going to be talking about another subject that I think is relevant both for indoor cycling professionals, group fitness instructors and the general public of people who listen to this podcast, which I learned from the last episode, is actually pretty wide in terms of the reach, which is cool. I can really only see my listens. I can't see who listens. I can't see a ton of deep analytics in terms of all of the different people who listen to the podcast. So it's unlike social media in that way, where there's a lot of engagement with people's profiles. So if you've been listening and you've been loving this podcast or you love a specific episode, please let me know, because sometimes it could feel like I'm literally just speaking to a microphone by myself and I don't know if it impacts anybody. And it's usually in these throwaway conversations where I'll be chatting with a rider and, for instance, I was speaking to a rider after a class and she was like, oh, and, just as a side, everybody at Work's been loving the burnout episode and I was like what? She works at a hospital? I guess she's been working with nurses. So if you're in one of those nurses, hi, hello, love that you're listening to the podcast, and it was really cool because it was an episode that's more for the general public. But this rider in particular shared that she listens to all of them. She's like I can always find a lesson, even if it's not directly for me, so that just made me super, super happy. And if you're here and you're part of that crew, welcome. I am excited to bring you another episode that I think is going to be relevant for you too. So I am talking today about a subject that I get really passionate about, I think because of my communications background and going to a school that I'm actually teaching at now, which is very cool, but it is there's a journalism focus, so one of the specializations that you can do is journalism.
Speaker 1:I graduated from the public relations major at the time is what it was called but with journalism and with writing and with academia, plagiarism is one of the biggest deals, one of the biggest offenses, if you will, that you can do in your career as a writer. I was just talking to somebody recently and they mentioned somebody's name and I'm like, oh yeah, they had that plagiarism thing back in the day and this was like 15 years ago and I remembered about it. And I am not going to discuss chat, gbt or AI as a part of this conversation, because the perspective I'm taking is talking about trends and inspiration. But if you've been copied, how frustrating it can feel and you might be on the other end and not realize that you have gone beyond the bounds of inspiration and into a realm that could be towing the line, and so we're going to be talking about that today plagiarism and what to say when you've been copied.
Speaker 1:As an end recycling professional, as a creator, as a content creator and maybe even as a digital course creator. I'm going to get into that because, as the creator of Instructor Magic, my six-week online course for end recycling professionals who want to level up, fill classes and change lives. I've had this course for two years and I've developed this course over two years actually three. It's been publicly launched for two and I've definitely seen some copycats come out, both with not directly Instructor Magic 2.0, but very similar concepts, exactly the same curriculum, and it's frustrating. It's extremely frustrating. However, we're going to talk about longevity, because that is one of the differentiating factors of people who try to copy and paste and those who are actually completely unique and creative in their concepts, so that is what we're going to be talking about today. I also wanted to do a little last call because I'm shutting the doors to Instructor Magic.
Speaker 1:Speaking of my course for the summer, we've had an amazing cohort of people come in through the summer school cohort and that means that people can register at any time. So if you register now, while you're listening to this episode live, after it's just been released in the week of August, 20th August, which is the 21st day you can still register and get access to all of the modules. Now there's going to be I don't want to get too into it about all the changes because that will be another episode, but for those, I've been having a lot of conversations and a lot of people have actually been signing up for the course recently, despite me not really promoting it, which is amazing. And a lot of the conversations are like what's the difference between summer school and the fall? A big difference is that I've had eight rounds of Instructor Magic live and as a part of all of those live rounds I have guest masterclass instructors come through. So the last one we had was Harry French, who did a whole masterclass on power wattage, and then we had Anna Klosson who did one on mindset, and so those were in June and early July and next round. You are not going to have access to the previous seven rounds of masterclasses. So normally when you sign up you get everything that's previously been done and future rounds. So you get everything that's going to happen in the future all of the updates, all of the future guest masterclasses and all of the previous seven rounds. Right now, as of this recording, you can still get all of those masterclasses. So that includes Christina Giroux. Her episodes on this podcast have been someone I've most listened to Ryan Jones, jordan Wrightchart, roa and Aida there's more and more of these amazing court lymphozochus and I've had because we've been doing this for so long.
Speaker 1:At this point, the curriculum and the masterclasses, even the Zoom quality, isn't going to be what it should be and what I want to present to my students and clients coming into instructor magic in the future. I want to make sure that all the curriculum is super relevant instead of just getting more and more, and I want to communicate a little bit of urgency so that if you see a guest masterclass instructor that you want to learn from that, you jump in for that round. The other thing is I pay all of my guest masterclass coaches and what I love to see is because I see a lot of different contracts, I see a lot of different stipulations that they'll have and how they run their business, and I let them lead the conversation of their speaking fee and how they want to handle intellectual property. I'm seeing a lot many more of them decide that this is their intellectual property, which it totally is, and so, as I think about hosting this intellectual property inside the course, it does come with a much heavier cost, a much higher cost, to then own that video, and if I'm going to be updating that video anyways, I'd rather just put that budget, allocate that budget to pay that person to come back and do a new masterclass in the future, rather than negotiating for the rights of this video, which might be absolute, if that makes sense, or obsolete in the future. Anyway, that's getting to the weave a little bit about how I run my business, but it is helpful for people to understand that this is a paid opportunity. I have very real contracts and I was just thinking about when I'm setting up the next rounds. I want to run it pretty. This is this one round. This guest masterclass coach comes in for this one round and then we go. I'm also going to be offering scholarships in the future, and this is going to be something I'm very excited to launch, and I've been taking a lot of time figuring out how to best do this. If you've ever worked in a university or post-secondary institution or anywhere that offers scholarships, it's such a great idea in theory, but to make sure that it's truly fair and equitable and reaching the people that it needs to, you have to be very aware of the accessibility of everything and especially of the course itself, and so this next round, I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into making sure that all of the videos are accessible as possible, that I give a lot of time to apply for the scholarships and so forth. So, anyway, final time to grab Instructor Magic and get all of the modules, including the Guest Masterclasses from previous rounds this week. What else it's?
Speaker 1:As I've heard about my Burnout episode and other episodes, I've had a busy summer full of ups and downs. Things are going well. I'm really excited about my new position, which I'm going to be teaching at the college I graduated from, which is absolutely wild. The program I graduated from specifically called Creative Communications. I am their newest PR instructor and this is a part-time, temporary position. I'm filling in for somebody and that suits me just fine because I'm excited to learn. Do I love this as much as I love teaching and educating everybody else? Is this something I've, this dream that I've had for such a long time? Is this going to be what I love to do? And so I'm going to be testing that out in the fall. It's actually more full-time than part-time and I'm a 0.8, so basically just four days a week instead of five. I'm very thrilled about that.
Speaker 1:As from this podcast, I love marketing. I love public relations, I love communications. It's what I spent my career doing. And more than that, I love mentoring and helping others understand concepts, and I've done that in my career hiring people, taking people under my wing, and from students to people that I develop as professionals, and so I'm really excited about that opportunity. That's going to be a cool thing.
Speaker 1:And then finally, I just yesterday my voice is a little sore because I delivered the two-hour studio sales accelerator workshop to studio owners and it was so good, it was so fantastic. It was two hours of discussions and planning on how to skyrocket your sales and your revenue for Q4 with Boutique Fitness Studio owners, and it was an intimate group I think there was like 10 people there plus others who weren't able to come live and so we were really getting into me, coaching them on a lot of their specific situations so how to convert new riders into packages, what are the price of their packages, what are the touch points, how is their experience in class, what are the follow-up emails, do they get text messages? And all of those specific action items that will result in higher conversion rates, even subject lines. And so this morning, as I record this episode and I'm going through all of their checklist items and creating all these different things for them so that they have all these takeaways and going into the fall with an exceptional campaign that's going to help them make a lot of money toward the end of the year, because we're coming out this summer and it can be a lull, it can be a hard time for studio owners. So those are all the updates and if you're interested in that workshop, I'm going to be delivering another one in October. Initially I was going to record it and then you could buy the replay, but because there was studio owners who were sharing a lot of their insights about their business, I think I'm just going to do it live again and then that way everybody who attends that one will have the heads up that their Q&A. They might be in the recording if they are attending. So that is all my updates.
Speaker 1:Let's get into the episode, friends. Okay. So plagiarism and copying. Now I think it would be helpful if people understood the definition of plagiarism. So it's always this big, scary word that I think again is used in academia or universities, or you've seen it on a syllabus or this. Like this very ominous thing, like it's like breaking the law. I feel like like that's how we treat it, and I understand right off the hop. It's not always intentional, and so it's helpful to understand what the true definition is, because you can especially if you're writing a paper and you're citing sources and you miscite a source it can be you can be plagiarizing something without really having the intent of doing it. The definition of plagiarism is the practice of taking somebody else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own, and so I think what's important here is the word ideas.
Speaker 1:Now, we live in an age where we all create content. I create a shit ton of content for Instagram and for my email list and for instructor magic, and it's like talking about all these things. Creative brilliance is I'm quoting that that's an actual skill of mine. I can come up with ideas very quickly, and I'm never really lacking for ideas. The execution, now, that's another thing. That's the neurodivergence, finishing the task. But creative brilliance is not something I have a hard time with. Now I there's times where somebody will come up with an idea and I'm like, oh, I wish I had come up with that. That is so good, or I'll have been waiting on a real audio and I won't have. I wouldn't have just filmed the real audio with the idea that I had, and somebody else will come up with one and post it. I'm not going to do that now because it's been done.
Speaker 1:But there's plagiarism, where people are unknowingly passing things off as their own and so they might have been inspired, and then they just create a reel or create content or take something and be like, oh okay, great. And other times when they are truly trying to pretend like they were the original creator and it's not super easy to do anymore, I think, because there's eyes everywhere and people who check you. And then there's the people who had, might have, the same ideas you and there's a really great book called Big Magic that talks about this. They might have had the exact same ideas you and did not know or did not see your stuff, and so I'm aware that there's people who might have come up with ideas similar to instructor magic and not have seen my thing, not have seen my course. They might have come up with digital, but I will say at the time that it created instructor magic, there was no online course for indoor cycling professionals. That was online and went beyond certification, so beyond the certification level for professional development. There was none that I could find, and that's pretty unique. That doesn't happen very often because, like everybody's, like, every idea has been done once In the indoor cycling industry. It's actually not quite true, and I've been in a lot of business coaching containers to be able to check this against other things.
Speaker 1:Another one that was very unique is DJ Academy. So Manitoba DJ Academy is a course that my good friend, carly DJ K, chatted and I came up with an online DJing course. There's tutorials and there's a few courses out there, I'd say, but not many and definitely not by two women and with the different things that we were teaching, which was like DJing 101 versus DJing skills. But anyway, just talking about unique ideas and how you can still have them, you can absolutely still have them, and so if you're listening to this and be like, no, I had an idea and somebody did steal it, I believe you, I totally believe you.
Speaker 1:But plagiarism is when you knowingly take somebody's idea and, either with intent or without intent, pass it off as your own. What this can look like, and what I've seen this look like, is inter-psychology instructors taking choreography or a video of somebody doing something with this particular choreography to a song and getting inspired by it clearly, and then recording that exact song and that exact choreography with their studio and then posting it. I've seen a lot of social media creators do this, with doing the exact same trend, with the exact same lip sync, with the exact same concept and passing it off without any sort of attribution and the caption being like thanks to this person for the inspiration. So when you hear an audio of a reel that's funny, and then you can attribute it to your niche or to your subject matter. So I do this a lot with spin I'll grab an audio that has nothing to do with spin and I'll lip sync it and then I'll have like captioned words on the screen, a copy that says when a rider walks out of your room, and it'll have like an audio that's funny and unrelated. So somebody would do the exact same thing as me and not attribute me as the creator or as the inspiration. I would probably say something, and so that is an example of doing that.
Speaker 1:Another example somebody taking your exact in the social media sphere, your exact graphics or your words, your caption, and recreating them exactly. So I had this happen to me with a the Kanye West whole debacle last year. He's still. I still don't play his music personally, but I had posted an Instagram post that was my words, using the Notes app and I laid it out in Canva and I said I'm not playing Kanye West music anymore and this is why and I explained everything and somebody, I guess I mean it went. It was very popular, super, super popular and went out of all of my posts. It was one of the most highly shared and commented and everything because nobody else was talking about it at the time in terms of the end recycling space.
Speaker 1:And somebody, I guess my post got passed around and somebody screen shot of the exact graphics and then created their own graphics, but using all of my words. And it was. It was just interesting because it was like my words, like it was like I'm making a personal decision not to play Kanye West music anymore, and somebody literally like copied and pasted this into a Canva app and then made it seem like she was saying it and I messaged her and I had a lot of people to comment on her post and we didn't follow each other. So that was the other interesting thing. I she was a smaller, like newer instructor didn't have a large following and I do have a bigger following in her, and so a lot of people were commenting on her post, being like this is Hannah's, this is Hannah's post.
Speaker 1:And I felt badly because it was. I've never experienced that where I had this sort of this swelling of community support being like, hey, you're copying this girl. And they were supporting me. And I reached out to her and was like hey, I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it's just awkward because these are my words and so maybe you could give credit on the caption and I'm just gonna take it down. There's so many people who are being mean to me and it was. I felt bad. I did feel bad, but I was if it were me, and I was really inspired by words that, but I didn't know where they came from. And so what had happened was somebody had posted I guess, screenshotted the post without the caption. I don't know if this is true or not, but they had screened out of the post without the caption and all of the images that it was a carousel post in this group chat of instructors, and so she just created the same thing in Canva and wrote it. But for me personally, I think maybe just because I'm pretty sensitive to this sort of stuff, I would say, like a source unknown, please tag the original source if you do know who they are. So that's we're getting into.
Speaker 1:The second part of this is just gonna be how to give proper attribution so that you don't play dry somebody else's work. But those are just some examples. The thing with when you copy, whether it's somebody's choreography, whether it's somebody's song and choreography, whether it's somebody's concept and I have seen somebody replicate an exact video of one that we had done at Wheelhouse. It was actually Casey, who had a wonderful, cool, creative reel and another studio and he filmed it with Taylor, the studio owner, and another studio copied the exact thing, frame by frame track choreo. Like him. He was opening a locker and had a iced coffee and the camp, like it was. Just it was such a unique and creative reel and another studio copy exact thing and did not properly attribute Casey or Wheelhouse and it was just so like beyond. And apparently it was the social media person who and the other thing was people were like oh, this is genius, this is such a genius thing Like crediting the social media creator had fucking copied exactly Casey's concept and it was just that was bad, that was really bad.
Speaker 1:There's a difference between doing that and being inspired by, and the inspiration part is that feeling of oh, that's so cool. I have a different sort of take on this, but I'd love to like jump on this trend. I feel really creatively lit up by this idea and so when you copy it like that studio for me has a negative correlation in my mind. Will I judge them forever? No, but is that my only experience with them? Yes, and it's a little less important, I think, to the general public about a studio was like trustworthiness in the cycling industry as it relates to originality of concepts, but you can't fake it. You really can't fake it. If you're gonna be copying. It's exactly like the movie Bring it On when she's copying all of the routines and it falls. It all falls apart halfway through.
Speaker 1:I think that that plot is very, I think, is important, so you can be inspired by without then going off and replicating exactly what you want, because it can be damaging to your reputation as a creator, for sure. And I'm not even getting into when people actually just copy and paste resources or intellectual property, like we talked about at the very beginning and sell it as their own. That's a whole other thing and that's the reason why I have terms and conditions and agreements with all of my people who buy courses from me, because I would pursue legal action if they were stealing my work and selling it for a profit. But in terms of like the sort of creative plagiarism that we're talking about, I think it's damaging reputation amongst your peers. There could be potential legal repercussions, depending on what you're doing, if you're charging for the work that you are copying, pasting and it does follow you. So it's obviously not something to do Now.
Speaker 1:The best thing that you can do and the thing that will inspire and instill a sense of community and camaraderie and all of the good things is, first, give credit. If you are going to be replicating something, give credit. So that means publicly giving credit, not just in your mind, you have to say. For me, the top tips are when I do a choreo sequence, that's like quite literally a copy paste, and it hasn't happened very often, but I will, in class, shout out the original creator. That original creator is not in my class, they don't know, but it is the public declaration of.
Speaker 1:I want to shout out like, for example, christina Giraud with Empowering Flow for that amazing. When I went to Arizona and visited her, I got inspired by a lot of different things. I was like there's one specific movement that I do where it's the pull down and then to the side and then you like, almost like hit the air and then clap and then switch sides and that is totally a Power and Flow move and I've I shout her out all the time when I've done that. I want to shout out my friends in Arizona, christina Giraud and Power and Flow, because that is their total, their move, that I grabbed and it's fire whatever. If you do this on social media, obviously tag them, and this can be at the very end of the post. I had a confessions from the podium series that I started doing and I noticed another creator had a very similar series. Now I had come up with it on my own, but I still tagged them in the comments and being like thanks to to this person and this other person for adding their voices to the conversation with their own series. And so I like acknowledge, publicly acknowledge, their work as well, even if I wasn't inspired by it, because I had already had my own ideas. So giving credit in class when you're using a choreo sequence, making sure that you tag them on social media.
Speaker 1:Another and another thing that I think is really respectful is actually asking for permission. Now, this is especially if you are thinking about using a playlist exactly, or you want a song that they've used or or a theme, a ride theme especially, you can ask for permission, and this is something that I actually did with a ride in rejuvenate. This is a theme that Alex Barbie came up with and she's a motivator in Regina and she's been doing a ride in rejuvenate theme for years and it is like a wheelhouse. It's like a wheelhouse, a franchise theme, meaning it's like rise and wrap. It is totally original, totally part of her brand and it's this class concept. That is not. That goes beyond the theme.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to do a very similar sort of vibey theme, which and so the whole concept is like she had diffusers and she has the whole foyer is like really chill when you come in, and it's more of this rejuvenation ride where it's not about huge choreo or big pushes, going within and connecting deeper to yourself, and she's known for this, and so I wanted to do a Winnipeg version and I thought it'd be cool to ask her if she'd be interested in that, and so I sent her a message saying I love your theme, I love your concept, and we know each other kind of but not as like we know each other well at this point now but I sent her a message. I love your work, I think it's so original and creative and I love to do a Winnipeg version If you're open to that, and I would obviously give you full credit for it. And I just think like there's been a lot of people who I feel need this theme here and I did it for the wheelhouse live platform, and so I asked for permission and then and she said yes, and I was like I'd love, and I'd love to even have a conversation over the phone to see if you have any recommendations for keeping this really within the spirit of how you created it, so that I'm bringing exactly what the essence of ride and rejuvenate and obviously we're colleagues and so that was helpful. But you could do this with people. You don't work with the same company. So we had a conversation and it was fantastic and so I did that ride on mealhouse live. I think it was riding, ride and rejuvenate either Winnipeg version or 2.0 or something like that, and that is a really good example of doing the right thing, going about it in the right way.
Speaker 1:You might need to pause and wait until they give you permission before you can share whatever it is that you want because you want to have that, go through the necessary steps, do your due diligence, which includes asking the person for permission. If it's something like that which is really, really aligned with their brand, I think that's the right thing to do and I personally wouldn't go about it any other way. If somebody wanted to do a rise and wrap theme, I would love it if they asked for permission from me, because I do. Am I the original creator of it? I don't know anybody else who came up with that theme, certainly not in a way. That's like a part of their, a part of yeah, I don't know of any other studio that promotes it as a, as a franchise sort of theme or concept. It's very closely aligned to me. Everybody wears red on Sundays, or they, most of them wear red on Sundays. It's like a thing. So if somebody wanted to do the exact same thing, I would expect that they would ask for permission. Otherwise I'd be like that kind of sucks that just feels it's just like they're taking, you're just taking.
Speaker 1:So collaboration community comes with doing your due diligence, asking permission for permission, giving credit. Now, I love the innovate don't imitate slogan because sometimes, when you feel like you're asking permission and you're giving credit and you're doing all these things, it's like are there ways that you can get inspired that don't involve just taking in content and seeing what other people are doing? Can you do things that I teach inside instructor magic, like using chat GBT to get excited. I have the AI guide that you can download for free on getting inspired with motivational sayings or ride themes or concepts. Can you listen to podcasts and read books and go for nature walks and do things that activate that creativity in your mind. That don't involve taking in content, because if you're only taking in piece other people's work, it's bound to happen where you're like oh, that's the cool thing that I want to do.
Speaker 1:The other way that I love to get creative is when I have an idea, I put it in my notes app and I come back to it, so I have this running list of ideas that I've come up with. I find that I like my best ideas come to me when I'm in the shower, I have time to actually sit and think and so getting creative, building in space for that and realizing that you have a lot of beautiful ideas within you just need to figure out how to activate it and be confident that you do actually have the capabilities of being just as creative as anybody else. Now, those are all the things that I recommend for avoiding plagiarism. Firstly, that's moving backwards. Innovate, don't imitate, so find out ways to be creative yourself and and activate that creative brilliance within you.
Speaker 1:Asking for permission if you're going to be coming up, if you're going to be doing the same ride, theme, ride, concept, playlist, piece of choreography, even maybe general idea, anything else like without getting into the realm of actually duplicating their work for sure. Giving credit on social media, giving credit in that class, making sure that also, if you are asked about something or complimented about something, that in that gratitude for that compliment, you shout out the original creator, so it would look like thanks so much. I actually got inspired by, I don't know, let's say, zach, zach shares, who posted about this, so you should definitely check out his post. Like you, you acknowledge, you accept the compliment, but then you share it and, of course, you are going to do things unique. So it's not like you never take the compliment, but it's bringing in that original creator to those conversations. That is really doing this in a way that it has a lot of integrity associated with it. So, giving credit where credit is due the and. So now we go into what to do if you have been copied, instead of being the person who's getting inspired.
Speaker 1:Initial thoughts are to absolutely stay calm. Firstly, stay calm. It can feel like a bit of a trigger when somebody has taken your work that you've put a lot of effort into and either fully duplicated it word for word, or have taken the concept and changed a few things, or they have. If somebody were to post about Rise and Wrap, I'd probably be a little like that sucks, that just sucks a little bit. It would hurt. It would feel like somebody's taken all of the years of work that I've put into this idea and just done a version of it and it just feels hard. So anytime you care about something a lot, of course it's gonna suck, but stay calm. It is the best thing to do to keep your wits about you and to be less emotional about this and just look at the facts.
Speaker 1:I would personally do as much research around the circumstance. So if this is a post that's come out, I would see if they follow me first. I would see when my post was or whenever that I had done first was and look at the difference in dates. If this were a course, I would probably look at all of the similarities and make sure that it is a direct copy or plagiarized or whatever gone beyond the inspiration or happens to be the same thing and is actually like word for word. I would document all of this and I would also have my evidence backed up and again, like I'm talking about a bunch of different situations, so if this were just a clear whoopsie we forgot to tag the original creator or this was clearly you were inspired by my thing and heads up like I would tag me in the future versus a legal thing where somebody's actually completely duplicating my intellectual property.
Speaker 1:I come at it with a lot of empathy and positive assumptions. So this is a Brené Brown thing positive assumptions and there's a bunch of other psychologists, people who talk about this, coaches but when we assume positive intent, we bring a certain amount of empathy. Now there's gonna be people who are diabolical and who are gonna be doing things that are not full of integrity, and that's fine. But I try and come at it with a positive intent and empathy and then you'll see the proof in their reaction and how they react. If they react with an oh my gosh, we are so sorry. We meant to tag you Absolutely. We definitely were inspired by your reel. We love your creativity. We're gonna change the caption right now and add that that is somebody who is clearly was not intending to do the copy pay.
Speaker 1:Sometimes people will even tag you in a story but not in the caption, like they'll tag you to share the reel and then you're like great, but you didn't give me public, you didn't really publicly thank me, and I've even called up people who've done this for other like to other creators that had nothing to do with me. Okay, this is actually this person's video. You should probably tag them. I send them a message directly instead of leaving a comment, because that is me having a direct, one-on-one conversation with them. That's positive intent I'm saying. I'm assuming you didn't mean to do this, so here's, but you have the chance to rectify it and remedy it. So approaching the person or studio with understanding, respect, empathy and even in there. You might not have known that this was actually an original creation by me and, as such, I would really appreciate the attribution within the caption so that people can see the original just citation of where you got inspired by.
Speaker 1:If they're like, oh no, and they respond with defensiveness or ghost you or whatever, then it's gonna be up to you how you deal with it. Like how much time do you want to invest in thinking and dealing with the situation? If it is a piece of content, if it's a real, if it's a post that isn't necessarily like the colony thing but it's a little bit harder to nail down the source of the trend, then that's gonna be up to you. If it's your exact words, I would personally say something or potentially have be open about the discussion that I've had with them, especially if they were defensive or rude or anything like that. It totally depends on how much energy you're willing to put out on it. I really do think that you have to protect your energetic space and your mind and not allow certain things to fester. Is the juice worth a squeeze to have somebody take down a post I don't know I'm getting, if they're being like, their post and their content is becoming a lot more popular than yours and they keep stealing your ideas and this is like an ongoing issue, absolutely call them out. If they don't respond, call them out again. Make sure your community knows about it and then it's up to you if you want to publicly acknowledge because it is.
Speaker 1:It can get into things like income. It can get into things like brand deals. If you're two creators, you're an influencer and there's another influencer who's like taking all your stuff, then it's getting into. This is becoming an issue of livelihood, and that's when it's more serious. So if you're listening to this as an indoor secondary instructor and you don't have a large following, it can be hard, and I don't either. I'm not saying I do, but I'm thinking about the TikTok creators who there's like somebody who has 2 million followers or a million followers, and they're copying the ideas and the concepts regularly of smaller creators. That is a point where you really need your community to rise up and help Galvanize support for you, and so part of that is documenting that evidence that I was talking about earlier the when did I post versus when did they post and it's going to take some work to do that.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, though, it is not done with malicious intent and, in the idea of indoor secondary instructors, they simply take it down or tag you appropriately, give you the attribution, and I think it's a really good moment for, if it goes well, if you write this post or write this sorry, write this message with that positive intent, intent, positive assumption, like not realizing necessarily how it would make you feel and thinking that maybe there was some miscommunication or they just didn't tag you or whatever. Hey, I love that you were inspired by this, my work. I love that you were inspired by my ride concept. It is something that I hold really closely aligned to my brand and to my intellectual property and a part of the stuff that I put out on the platform. I'm sorry if you can listen to my dog drinking water she's so loud right now. It's something, this work, is something that I'm really proud of and I do hold closely aligned with my brand and my identity on here and my marketing, and so I would really appreciate that you would tag me as a part of your inspiration for this post.
Speaker 1:I can see that I did post it first and you do follow me, and so I assume that you've seen it, because they are pretty much exactly like copy for copy. A few of my followers have sent this to me and I appreciate your understanding and your quick attention to this, and so the quick attention to this is hey, do this now and it's all very nice, it's all very like, positive. It's saying this is really important to me. This is stuff I've put a lot of work into. Please adjust, please add the tag. Thank you very much, and they will probably respond positively.
Speaker 1:If you came at them really aggressively, then that's harder for them to apologize for. It's just, if somebody comes at you really aggressively, it's gonna be. You're gonna feel more defensive, just naturally. So that is how it started and then you can go from there and I'm not gonna take all the go and all the steps. First of all, I'm not a lawyer and I don't know which regions you're in. It's gonna be harder to prove plagiarism in one area or not, and so it's one region or not, because you have to prove something around, like loss of income and whatever. But that's how I would start the conversation With empathy. This is really important to me. I've put a lot of work into this. I would really appreciate a tag so that people know where the original creation came from, but love what you're doing, cheering you on from afar, appreciate your quick attention to this. You can go more supportive or less, depending on your connection with this studio or not. If it's somebody that I know, I would absolutely be very positive. If it was somebody that I wasn't, then I would maybe be a little bit more direct and a little bit more short and concise, and that would be that.
Speaker 1:Now, as you had thought about the juice worth the squeeze conversation, this might be the third or fourth time that this has happened with somebody, or even the second time, and you hadn't said anything the first time. And what you can do in those situations is still come at it with positive intent, even though it's very hard and very difficult, and say something more along the lines of hey person, I'm reaching out with it, with something that's been on my mind as I saw your last post related to this. I had posted something very similar, in fact almost word for word, a week prior, and this is the second time that I've noticed like unmissable or another word better than that similarities between our content. Now, I assumed the first time was an accident or something along the lines of us being inspired by the same thing. However, now I'm seeing a bit of a pattern. I wanted to address this with you and your team directly, because I do assume positive intent here.
Speaker 1:However, I would appreciate more of a distinction between our content. I understand that the social media realm is not one where originality is always possible. However, there are some the similarities and there's not enough distinctions between our work to have allowed me to just move beyond this, so please avoid this. I would also appreciate attribution, because both of my posts did come first. You follow me and once again, my content was the original piece of inspiration, clearly for your content as well. Thank you so much. Here's what you can post in your caption original content inspired by this by me. Here's my handle.
Speaker 1:I appreciate your quick attention and response to this, because then the first one was quick attention, so they might just change the caption. The second one is like I also want you to reply to this Now, you can't force somebody's hand one way or another, but I think that and I just ripped off that it would have been a lot more smooth if I had written anything down beforehand. But you're acknowledging what's happened. You're acknowledging the fact that there's like and you're calling out that the work is not distinct from each other. It is very similar. We're either word for word or whatever, and that will help just be very like, direct about the thing, right? You're not skirting around the issue. I was trying to remove as many filler words as possible instead of saying I'm just reaching out, I'm contacting you about these posts. They are too similar and add your own flair and your own personality to that as well. So those are the responses that I would personally use.
Speaker 1:Now, the other tool that you can use for making sure that you're not the plagiarizer is using something called Grammarly. Now, grammarly is a fantastic tool. I wish I was sponsored by it that you can actually do a plagiarism checker. This is gonna be more for students, for people in the professional business world, but it will scan websites. It will scan other people's websites, so it's like not it's been around before chat GBT and it will identify whether any of the work has been taken directly from websites that exist on the internet or document or anything. It'll say the percentage that it's been to. So if you want to directly check and it's a little harder with social media content. If you know of a tool, please share with me. But caption, for instance, could be checked against this and anything else that's available on the internet, and so Grammarly is my favorite tool for that, and sometimes I would even use it. If I was writing an article for someone or for someone, or when I was a student doing my masters, I would always run it through Grammarly to make sure that I had all of my sources cited, because when you're writing like a 25-page paper, sometimes you had meant to put a source in or whatever, and you wanted to make sure that it was in the proper format and for some reason you didn't. And so just to make sure, double check, I would run it through Grammarly.
Speaker 1:I hope this episode was helpful. Once again, reminder that Instructor Magic is closing its doors for the Summer Co-Op Summer Co-Op this week, and then we're gonna be doing a full launch in the fall. If you want access to all of the previous master classes, this is the time. You can use code YESUCAN50 or YESUCANZARY and you'll get $50 off of any of the payment plans or the full pay. So that's $50 off. Using code YESUCAN. You can find the link for Instructor Magic in the show notes and you can find the waitlist for my studio sales accelerator workshop in October there as well.
Speaker 1:I would appreciate a rating and review. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcast, which you're gonna hear in a second, and if you really love this episode, please share it with a friend and tag them. Thanks so much for listening, friends, and have a great day. I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the YESUCAN podcast. If you loved this one, I would so appreciate a rating and a review on Apple Podcast that lets others know that, hey, this is a good podcast and it's worthwhile to listen to. If you really loved it, make sure to share with somebody you love who could benefit from Google Magic and motivation in their lives. Thanks so much, friends, and have a great day. I'll see you on the next episode.