Is It Stealing or Just Business?

A story about plagiarism, idea theft and what still belongs to you when the lines get blurry

Have You Ever Seen Your Idea Show Up in Someone Else’s Work?

Not copied word for word, but close enough that it left your stomach in knots?

Maybe it was something you shared in a meeting, or mentioned in an open thread.

And then, there it was. Not with your name on it. Not as a collaboration. Just… borrowed. Repurposed. Echoed back through someone else’s platform, someone else’s success and spotlight.¹

I’ve felt that sting more times than I can count. But the first time I really understood what it meant to protect the boundaries of professional work, I was 21 years old — and it was my job to catch someone stealing.

The First Time I Caught Plagiarism in Action

Back in 2006, I was working at a student newspaper, serving as an editor on the city desk where I worked with student and staff reporters. I knew our reporters by name, by voice, by the shape of their sentences. I knew how they worked — their strengths, their tics, the amount of effort they usually put in.

So when one reporter — someone whose drafts were typically chaotic and messy — turned in a piece that had sections of polished copy, I paused. Something about it felt… off. Too clean. Too structured. Not in her voice.

Google was still relatively new at the time, but I ran a few searches. And there it was: whole sections lifted almost word for word from another newspaper’s coverage of the event she was supposed to have attended. Quotes, context, scene — all borrowed, with just enough words changed to give the illusion of originality.

We didn’t publish the piece.

What followed was a conversation between me, the student, her professor and the director of student media. She admitted to the plagiarism. She looked uncomfortable. And while I didn’t believe she did it maliciously, I did believe she made a choice. Her professor gave her a failing grade on the assignment, with no chance to rewrite. That felt fair.

There are rules in journalism. One of the clearest? If you quote someone, you were there. If you cite a document, you name it. Attribution matters.

But outside of journalism, those lines aren’t always so clear. And when I left that world and entered business, marketing strategy and later Substack — I realized: we don’t have built-in editors to catch this stuff anymore. We have to learn to protect our own work.

What Counts as Stealing in the Real World?

In the business world, in the publishing world, in the too-fast world of Substack publications and tweets and “I had this idea last week” — attribution gets murky.

It’s not the idea that counts, they say. It’s what you do with it.

But I’ve seen what people do with it. I’ve seen good, clear ideas reshaped into pitch decks by someone else. I’ve seen business frameworks lifted from threads and turned into paid products. I’ve seen publications publish topics I told my readers I was working on — days after I mentioned them.

I don’t know if that’s stealing. I’m not sure I’ve been plagiarized. But I do know I’ve been naïve — thinking that I could keep talking openly about what I love, sharing it in public, assuming the timing didn’t matter.

What I’ve come to realize is: maybe it does.

What They Can’t Take

There’s a grief in seeing your ideas reflected in someone else’s success. But the thing I keep coming back to — the thing I try to hold onto — is this:

They can’t take what you do with your ideas.
They can’t take how you connect with your readers.
They can’t take the long arc of trust and care and relationship you build by showing up as yourself.

Right now, AI is being trained on people’s published work. (Click the link to read

Daisy Buchanan

’s piece that’s begun being shared widely.) People are hurt. They should be. Some of that work was sacred. It took years, risks, long nights and broken contracts. Some of it came from writers who bet on themselves and lost. Who kept giving, hoping the big guy would eventually notice.

And still, their ideas were scraped. Their words were extracted. Their creative labor turned into a data set.

No one can make that right. But I want to tell you something anyway: what AI and algorithms and opportunists can’t replicate is the way you put your work in someone’s hands. The care with which you choose your words. The space you create for your reader to breathe, feel, connect.

They can copy your format, your talking points, your prompts. But they can’t copy your heart.

You Don’t Have to Get Paranoid — But You Might Need a Plan

I’m not telling you all of this so you’ll get quiet or paranoid or start hoarding every idea in a locked Google Doc. I’m telling you this so you can build something more honest and more strategic than that.

What you create — on Substack, in your publication, in your reader relationships — can be rooted in what’s uniquely yours. Your original ideas. Your lived experience. Your earned expertise. Your language. Your rhythm. Your voice.

You don’t need to chase viral growth or copycat tactics. You need to nurture the parts of your work that no one else can replicate: how you care for your readers, and how you teach them to care about your work in return.

That’s the only real moat there is.

You’re Still Magic

I’m telling you this as someone who has been scooped, borrowed from, mimicked and overwritten. More times than I care to remember.

But I’m also telling you this: you are still magic.

You might need to be savvier about what you share and when. But you don’t need to shut down. Don’t let anyone take your tenderness from you.

Readers might use AI to organize their meeting list — but they’re still looking for a human to pull them into an experience. They’re still searching for a voice that understands them. They’re still aching to belong. I really do believe that. I see it every day.

And if you're here to offer not just content, but connection — you’re exactly who they’ve been looking for.

1. I’ve been quietly following along as Mel Robbins’s “Let Them” manifesto is coming under increased scrutiny. How easy would it have been for her to just reach out to the author of the original poem, Cassie Phillips? How easy to acknowledge that she’d been inspired by the poem and then went on to create a book and movement around the Let Them concept? Read more about this issue through

Sage Justice

’s piece, “Public Pressure & Mel Robbins.”