Karma and Business Ethics

What happens when you forget about ethics and ‘right action’ in business and then get slammed by karma in your personal life or in your business? This week’s full moon is bringing in heavy karma action and if you have been breaking the karma rules – like doing things that are unethical and dishonest, you may be surprised at how quickly karma catches up to you now. 

In this podcast I talk about a truly unethical business practice – stealing content – that a former business coach has been doing to me for over 10 years and how karma has manifested in her life. 

I am not one to gloat over someone’s misfortune but she has been breaking the, stealing from me, and using my content in her business without my permission or paying me for it for years and now she gets to pay a very heavy price. I have no pity for her – karma doesn’t prey on people, it just returns the energy you put out back to you. What goes around comes around.

We have a strong full moon on October 17, 2024, and this one has karma written all over it. Of course if you have not been sending out any karma boomerangs you don’t have anything to worry about. But if you have, you might want to start being careful and looking over your shoulder.

There are people in the world who don’t care about the consequences of their actions. In fact, they think that their actions should not have any consequences at all and they can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal. I have known people like that, some of them have done some really awful things to me. And today I learned that one of them got the karma boomerang in a very strong way.

Since I began my online business in early 2004 I have had problems with people stealing content. This is a real problem for any author or content creator and the internet has just made it 1000x worse. And you have unprofessional, unethical, and uneducated people who seem to populate the coaching world, especially business coaching, who think that the internet is a ‘content buffet’ that they can just help themselves to at any time they want.

They don’t have the credentials to create original content, no problem. They will just steal it from someone who does. They aren’t creative enough to generate consistent content for their audience, no problem, they will find someone who has content they like and they will use theirs.

 This is not just happening with small accounts, it is happening with popular and well known people too. In fact, I am currently initiating copyright infringement actions against a well known ‘digital course’ leader who has been stealing content from me for 2 years – I have proof – and who should know better. If you say you have a $100 million business you should be able to create your own content and not steal it from someone else.

But I digress.

If you have been following me for the past 10 years you know that one of these content thieves is a former business coach named Christine Kane. I first learned about her content theft, which by the way is copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property, in October 2014 when she announced her new ‘Becoming 360’ program which was entirely stolen from articles and programs I had created in 2013. I have proof. So I sent her a Cease and Desist letter telling her that she could not use that content because she had not created it.

Not only did she not reply to me, but she also continued to use it and called it one of her ‘most successful programs.’ I hired a lawyer to take legal action against her and she still did not stop stealing my content. In fact, she stole more. I also found out, while doing the research for my lawyer to prepare the case against her, that she had started stealing content from me in 2011. I could find my words and ideas all over her programs and blog that were published then.

Anything she taught about business, energy congruence, or alignment, integration, and energy use was from content she read on my website and in my newsletter. To be honest, anything she wrote about or presented in her business was something she got from me. And she never paid me any licensing fees or royalties, never contacted me to get permission to use my content, she just took it.  Although I had blocked her email address, she had people working for her who would go through my writings and take what they wanted. And she could use her phone or other computers to access my website, blogs, and podcasts if I blocked her IP address.

She was using so much of my content in her business that she nearly destroyed my business. I could not use my own ideas and words in my business because she was using them in hers. It was a nightmare.

And of course Christine Kane calls herself a spiritual person, she talks about love and light and how we should all be nice to each other. She even had the absolute gall to write an October 2014 blog post saying that ‘it’s OK if someone steals your content because they can’t steal your energy.’ Was she trying to deflect the karma she was building by stealing my content or pacify her guilty conscience about using content that she knew was not her original work?  Did she write it just before announcing the Becoming 360 program so that I wouldn’t respond?

So I did the only thing I could do, I let everyone know that she was a content thief and everything she produced that was from my work I let my audiences know. I was not afraid of a defamation lawsuit because it is not defamation if you have proof and are telling the truth. As a paralegal and experienced legal researcher, I would never publicly accuse someone of such a serious charge without having irrefutable proof. And I had it. There was so much proof that my lawyer, an experienced copyright infringement and IP lawyer, said it was the worse case he had ever seen. And the content theft continued.

Eventually, in 2022, she was so discredited that even her most loyal followers were asking her about the source of her content and she declared that she was taking a ‘sabbatical’ and closed her business.  It has remained closed for the past 2 years.

Since she was no longer writing or actively managing her business, that was one problem solved although she still owns the illegal becoming 360 trademark that my attorney is trying to get for me and the becoming360.com domain name.

How does this connect with the upcoming full moon and karma? Well yesterday I learned that she had suffered significant losses in the Asheville, NC flooding. Yes she lives in Asheville and has for many years. Her home was on Riverbend Drive, less than 30 feet from the Swannanoa River. She owned 2 homes and both are gone. In fact, it is all gone, the homes, her possessions, the land – it is all washed away. She has nothing but the clothes she is wearing. She can’t rebuild because the flooding washed the entire riverbank away. There is no land on which to rebuild.

Now I am not one to gloat over someone’s misery and losing all of your possessions is a big deal. But this is a person who gladly stole everything from me without a second thought, who happily hurt my business and income while bragging about how much money she made using my content. And who waved the spiritual flag for her followers while engaging in very dishonest and unethical actions.

Now she is homeless and has to re-think her life. I call that karma. I wonder if she gets it and whether she will take a long, hard look at how she is living her life and what she is bringing upon herself because she sure wasn’t concerned about that when she was stealing from me.

It’s karma time and the karma boomerang may take some time to circle back but it eventually does. What goes around comes around and that is absolutely true at this time. Anything that has been done since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 is coming back around so if you have been doing good things, you will probably be fine. But if you have been living your life on the wrong side of ethical behavior, you should probably be thinking about making some changes.

And as far as Christine Kane is concerned, I wish her well but I do not feel sorry for her at all. I hope she has learned something from all of this and if not, that’s her problem. One thing about karma, it is relentless. It comes at you until you get it and if you don’t it comes around again.

It’s karma time and time to balance energy accounts and make good on promises and consequences.  If it has your number it will find you and if not, you will watch the karma boomerang hit its mark with pinpoint accuracy. You do not need to feel worry for or pity these people. Bad behavior does eventually get punished and it always has a foundation in the truth of their actions and being. It’s something you can’t escape and while you may think you’re getting away with something you are not. Karma keeps score and eventually it demands payment. This is one of those times.

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