Ok, so today's one is a touchy subject. Copycats. You feel hurt. You feel like stopping. You feel like: what's the point if people are just going to copy me. But hold on there girl, back up a few steps. What I'm going to say might not be exactly what you want to hear right now, but just hear me out for a second. People can feed off of your current work, but they can never anticipate where you're going next. As long as you keep on innovating, bringing new spice and flavour into your brand and business, they will stay in your rearview mirror. And I don't mean this in a bad way - you can take them along for the journey, but just don't allow them to hijack your ride. Ok enough figurative speech, what I mean is this: once your ideas are sent out into the world, you might forever be finding reinterpretations of what might look very much like your own creations, art or products. But everyone draws inspiration from somewhere, (we all do), and most often these interpretations might be too vague to call out. And I'm not talking about stolen images, yet, we'll get to that. But don't let inspiration drawn from your work by others just starting out, steal your thunder or your magic. They actually need your encouragement and direction. Let's dig a bit deeper into this. When I interviewed Nick Dreyer of Veldskoen shoes this topic came up. His words were: We just maintain a good company culture and if we see exact knock-offs of our product, I just send them a message saying: Come on guys, you're better than this. Go and put your own spin on it!! And Heike of Fleur le Cordeur and I have done some Instagram lives together, where this exact topic came up a few times. Her approach really inspired me and changed my mindset even more: She said that it took her quite a few years to be ok with people using her ideas and as others call it, copying her. But she also said that there is very little under the sun that is truly new, and our ideas and the creations we put out there, will always be open for interpretation by others. She shifted her mindset to start seeing it as a compliment, which she admits is very hard to do. And she started encouraging people and motivating them instead of feeling robbed and fuelling the scarcity mindset. So you'll see you generally have 2 options in how to deal with copying: Confront when needed, or avoid and continue on your own path. Now if someone is stealing your exact work, or using your self-created original images as their own, you'll have to confront them. That's just not cricket. Ask your community to call it out when they see your images being used without your consent. Usually they don't even need to be asked. Most of the really engaged online communities and fiercely loyal. I've seen it done before and I've called people out myself. I've even called people out when they weren't tagging artists but using their artwork in a post of theirs. Now I hate confrontation as much as the next person, but what's right is right and what's wrong is just wrong. On the other hand, unfortunately, we don't have much possession over our unique ideas. Unless of course, you have it patented. Different story for a different day. The bottom line is, we draw inspiration from different places and those around us do the same. Now, as with most things in life, a mind shift will soon have you looking through a different pair of goggles. They might not be rose-tinted, but let's make them a carefree shade of yellow. There is more than enough to go around. If we can use this feedback and remain in the role of the leader, or thought-leader even, it should allow us and even push us to continuously innovate. Which is not a bad thing. It's a goo...
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