Some people know they will be entrepreneurs from the time they’re 10 years old. Others end up entrepreneurs based on circumstances. William Randall Wiseacre, AKA ‘Bill’, was an entrepreneur at heart, but he didn’t know it until the realization was forced upon him.
Bill was a dedicated, smart, and hard-working employee at Safe & Steady Consulting, a company where comfort and routine reigned supreme. After years of committing himself to his employer, Bill began to feel that his days were filled with the monotonous rhythm of the same tasks repeated endlessly. Bill made a good living and lived comfortably, but he wanted more out of life.
Bill’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in when he saw an invoice for one of his clients and realized how much money he could save the client if he did the work on his own. Armed with years of industry experience and deep expertise, Bill realized he had everything he needed to succeed independently. Mentioning this to the client, Bill just knew it would be a win-win because he had plenty of time after hours to do the work and the client would benefit from a significant discount.
It wasn’t such a win for Bill. During a separate project that Safe & Steady Consulting was working on with the client, the client had a conversation with Bill’s manager about what was happening. The next day, Bill found a troubling email awaiting him in his personal email inbox. The subject line read, “TERMINATED-BREACH OF NON-SOLICITATION”. Bill was fired. However, right before Bill closed out of his computer, he copied the entire Safe & Steady Consulting customer list onto his flash drive, despite the confidentiality notices and security mechanisms which were put in place to prevent this.
While not intending to do anything wrong, Bill discovered that trying to recruit Safe & Steady Consulting’s client was a breach of the non-solicitation agreement he signed years earlier.
Bill is now unemployed and bound by burdensome restrictive covenants prohibiting him from soliciting his former employer’s clients for two years.
What’s Bill going to do?
Because of his desire to get more out of life, Bill decided he didn’t want to work for another big consulting company in a run-of-the-mill office cubicle. With his hope for having his own company someday, Bill decided he would become an independent consultant. Now, he had to figure out how to get around (or at least minimize the headache of) his restrictive covenants. He was confident he would do quite well for himself once he was able to start working on his own and building up his business.
As you might imagine from Bill’s dilemma here, he tends to struggle with asking for guidance and is more than a little “financially conservative”. Basically, he’s a know-it-all and he’s cheap. But more on that next time….
The Momentum Law Group Perspective
- When Bill first started at Safe & Steady Consulting, we would have advised him to negotiate more favorable restrictive covenants, especially considering that Bill had (legally) brought some clients with him from his prior employer. Perhaps Bill did his best with his own negotiations but because he was so desperate for a job when he transitioned over to Safe & Steady Consulting, Bill accepted the offer and signed the restrictive covenants despite the onerous restrictions.
- Most people know Bill shouldn’t have solicited the Safe & Steady Consulting client, nor should he have copied the customer list. Although there’s no easy answer, we would have suggested to Bill that he have a transparent discussion with his employer to try and negotiate terms to acquire the client or a portion of the work, instead of stealing. Sometimes, the best path forward is the uncomfortable one.
- When Bill first thought about potentially working on his own, we would have suggested he be honest with Safe & Steady Consulting. It is always best to preserve existing relationships and find ways to make employment changes a mutually beneficial occurrence for both parties. By way of example, Bill could have become a subcontractor for Safe & Steady Consulting to do work on behalf of the solicited client, but by taking the actions he took, Bill never gave his employer a chance to work with him to come up with a creative solution. It was short sighted.
What would you have done in Bill’s situation?
Blog Posts from Uh-Oh Enterprises are cautionary tales from Momentum Law Group. Bill Wiseacre and his family are fictional characters representing real life situations that keep entrepreneurs like Bill from reaching full potential. #donotbelikeBill
