Disowning Rami Rustom

I am not now, nor have I ever been, Rami Rustom's coach or mentor. But Rami has been lying to people about me. He says that I've been his coach or mentor for ten years. That's false.

Rami (aka GISTE, a non-secret second name he uses) has been a problem poster at my free, public discussion forums. He wasn't banned (until now) because my forums are especially open and tolerant. I broadly refused to have private conversations with Rami and often heavily criticized or ignored his public posts. I did give him some advice about how to learn, e.g. to do elementary school reading comprehension homework assignments and Mario Odyssey speedrunning.

Rami has a recurring history of plagiarizing me. He self-published a book heavily plagiarizing my ideas. He didn't tell me or my forums that the book existed. When I found out, he apologized and pleaded ignorance and incompetence. I believed him since he's an idiot. Then he falsely listed me as a coauthor, without my knowledge or consent, as some kind of incompetent attempt to give me credit. When I found out and explained that was unacceptable, he removed the book from sale.

Rami plagiarizes me because he doesn't have good ideas of his own, and because he doesn't know what is or isn't plagiarism. It takes skill to know when to quote or paraphrase, when to give credit for what, and how to write the credit. Rami doesn't have that skill. When he does give credit, he often attributes ideas to people that they never said and disagree with. He doesn't know how to separate his confusions and opinions about a topic from what others said. He doesn't know when he's copying someone else's idea accurately or when he's changed it enough to screw it up. This leaves him with no way to discuss other people's ideas appropriately. He simply lacks the skill. That wouldn't be so bad if he presented himself as a confused beginner, but it’s unacceptable when he plagiarizes while framing himself as an author, lecturer, coach or expert.

Rami made another document in June 2020 heavily plagiarizing me. He didn't know he'd done anything wrong and shared it at my forum. When I complained, he apologized again:

I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused you. I want to fix this ASAP. This is now my highest priority

The plan Rami decided on was to stop lecturing or teaching, and instead focus on learning stuff like basic math. Maybe he'd return to educating others after he became competent himself.

But I recently discovered that Rami is trying to become a business coach. His attempts at teaching business use my name, plagiarize my ideas, and lie about his relationship with me. He also lies about himself, e.g. presenting his business career as far more successful than it is. (He's getting into coaching due to needing a new business and failing for over a year to come up with and start anything else.)

Rami hid his new coaching business from me for months because he'd never gotten around to learning how not to plagiarize or lie. When I expressed my concerns again, Rami told me he'd fix the new plagiarism and lying, but then, instead, he kicked me out of his Facebook group to prevent me from seeing what he was doing.

Rami has lied to business owners that I'm a smart but impractical philosopher who knows nothing about business, so Rami's bringing my clever ideas to the business world. That's a value proposition he tries to sell using my name. (I've actually studied business and sold my business expertise, and Rami has gotten many business ideas from me and from educational materials I recommended like Eli Goldratt's books.)

I have documentation and evidence, including (with permission) an 80 minute video of Rami's business coaching which enabled me to judge its quality. Lots of stuff is in the public archives. I'll share more details if Rami disputes what I've said. For now, I've tried to focus on issues directly related to me, without unnecessarily exposing Rami's other flaws.

Conclusions

I'm not Rami's coach. I've never mentored him.

Rami may sound like he knows something useful, but that's because he's plagiarizing me and others.

Rami lies so much and so confidently that it's hard to believe someone would do that. Don't trust him!

Rami is an incompetent business coach. If you pay the $12,000 coaching fee that he wants, you'll regret it. I think even his free advice has negative value.

Do not try to learn about my ideas from Rami.

I demand that Rami stop lying about me, plagiarizing me, and using my name to try to promote his stuff.

I'm too patient, tolerant and forgiving. My mistake. Rami is now banned from my forums and publicly disowned, but I should have done it sooner.

---

Update 2021-05-01:

I said that if Rami disputed my account of events, I'd give more info. He seems obsessed with me and has been going around ranting, lying and making threats on social media. Since he contradicted my account of events, I'll briefly show that his story is a lie.

Rami wrote a false summary of our emails. For example:

i said "business coaching". that was my whole email.

That's a lie because that was not his whole email. His email had another paragraph which included:

my employees use your yes/no decision making process (that you explained in yes/no philosophy) and they love it

And he talked about using yes/no in employee training. At this point in the conversation, I became suspicious that he was plagiarizing me again and/or making unlicensed use of my paid yes/no product in his business. I wrote a confrontational reply about it. But Rami described my reply this way:

He [ET] replied again after that. a short email again. it seemed like he was interested (in a good way).

That's a lie because my reply was negative, not positive. Here's how my negative reply began:

did you give credit for my stuff and link them to the original, and do it without putting incorrect words in my mouth as you’ve done before? you never learned how to give credit appropriately so you’re likely to be doing something that mistreats me and my work, again.

Source.

Another lie Rami is telling is:

I hired him [Elliot] to help me do business coaching. And he took the job. But instead of helping me do business coaching, he spent the whole time trying to pressure me to not do business coaching.

I never took that job. In Feb 2021, Rami hired me for a private call to discuss the plagiarism problem from the emails above. On the call, I advised Rami about what to do to avoid being a plagiarist. I showed him an example of him currently plagiarizing me on his business coaching Facebook group (which he agreed was bad and plagiarism), and explained that he should learn how to recognize plagiarism himself before doing writing or coaching related to my ideas. I also warned Rami about what actions would result in being banned and disowned, and he (falsely) assured me that he'd avoid them. Rami also paid me to prepare for the call by reviewing a business coaching session he'd done (and had consent to show me). On the call, I advised Rami that his coaching provided negative value and that he should pursue a different line of business. I gave reasons. And I pointed out how he'd repeatedly lied while coaching, including by lying that I'd been his mentor for ten years. Rami expressed interest in hiring me for more advice and also to tutor his child, but I said I wouldn't consider it until he paid off his credit card debt.

Besides lying, Rami has been posting threats and has spammed this blog. After one of my readers wondered if Rami might escalate to violence, Rami didn't answer directly and didn't say he won't be violent. Then he wrote that he's going to "escalate" to "10X" stronger "blows" that will cause "far more collateral damage". Making threats crossed a major line, so I'm not going to engage with Rami further.

Since Rami can manufacture an unlimited number of lies or threats, I won't be responding to each one. I've given reasonable people adequate information to make a judgement. Also, Rami, don't contact me again.