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everyone I'm Tabitha Taylor I am a business litigation attorney and Brian Taylor law one of the most common inference that we get for our new clients is how to start competing business without getting sued by your current employer and although we can't guarantee that you'll never get sued I've got some helpful tips for you today on how to try to least avoid it so today's topic is how to navigate your non-compete agreements and this is applicable to you even if you don't having formally signed a non-compete contract with your current employer of course it's a quick little disclaimer I just want to let you know that this is not going to be a substitution for actual legal advice if there's any specific questions you have related to your specific situation please feel free to reach out to us at Bryant Taylor law and we'll be happy to help you so don't lean into the juice of everything you right now I've probably spent five six years in your current industry you've accumulated a ton of skills and now you want to use your skills to put money in your own pocket instead of somebody else's what a lot of our clients come to us and say is well I've been working here for X amount of years I'm very good at what I do but I only make a fraction of what my boss is making so what I want to do now is start my own business doing the exact same thing so I can put more money into my pockets we're here to help you do that but before you go out and you register your domain name when you register your company with the state of Florida there's some things you really need to keep in mind because opening and competing business opens you up to so much liability but there's ways to mitigate that so if you didn't sign a non-compete with your employer like I said earlier you still have certain duties that you're bound to here in Florida it's called a duty of loyalty or indeed to be every single employee has that unique to their current employer regardless of where they sign something or not it's a common law concept what that means is that there's certain things you can't do so like I said let's say for example you've been working for six years and your personal trainer at your local gym your clients adore you people come in specifically requesting you because you're so good over the years we've accumulated several certifications and you only get paid fifteen dollars an hour at your gym meanwhile the gym is charging clients 150 dollars an hour per session so you think to yourself well I'm going to go start my own fitness company and charge 120 dollars an hour and I get to take home 100% of the profits instead of my boss taking them home here's the things you cannot do first and foremost you cannot solicit your current clients those clients belong to your current employer they are not yours they can't come with you even mentioning to them hey by the way I'm putting in my notice in two weeks and right down the street on three three three levels all this way I've got this excellent space I'm going to be charging $100 per hour and I'm going to be the one giving you your left session so you won't have to get a new trainer just come join me over there you can't do that you will likely face a lawsuit from your current employer there are ways around that though once you quit your job fair game now you can't contact those same customers but you can get creative with it and I'll tell you a little bit more about how to get creative with it in just a moment a couple other things that you cannot do you cannot take the training manual that your current employer gave you slap your logo on it and call it your own that's called misappropriation of confidential materials and you will get sued for that as well what you can do is use them as a helpful guide a lot of the same principles are transferable from job to job regardless of the industry but copying it word-for-word and even changing the couple words here and there if still considered a breach of your duty of loyalty that's just a couple of the things think you're not allowed to do but let's assume that like the wise individual you are you're not gonna do any of those things so you want to go ahead and move forward with your competing business the first guy that I have for you is consult an attorney the not everyone's main choice you know what they want to hear but a little bit of money on the front end will save you thousands on the background and it can keep you in business but if you insist on going to do it yourself around here subjects three things to keep in mind when it comes to non-compete duties or duty of loyalty contractual factual and defensible now focus on contractual first cause it's the easiest to deal with if you have a formal non-compete agreement that you've signed with your employer is that automatically government's look to the contract see what it says there's probably some very long convoluted words in there that aren't necessary because lawyers like one work but you can probably sparse out what it means there's always going to be three things that a non-compete agreement is gonna have time place and scope if those three are reasonable you've got a pretty binding non-compete again we can get creative with that which I'll touch on in a second but for the most part those are the three areas you first want to look at and any good attorney is gonna look at those first now in Florida with time courts say that if it's less than six months it's considered a reasonable time it's more than two years it's considered unreasonable the gray area falls in the middle and that's a huge time span between six months and two years at that point it's on the employer to prove why they're one and a half year non-compete agreement it's considered reasonable and that's because every industry is different what's common for my industry might be completely different for accounting completely different for software developers so it's going to be a case-by-case basis the next thing you're going to look at is your geographical restrictions likely it'll say within a 10 mile radius or within Broward County now some places are going to be more limited than where their restrictions are for example if your non-compete at your local German says Weston you can't open a competing business in western guess what you can do you can open up shop right over to count the borderline into sunrise it's what a couple difference not a long drive and you're still going to get Western clients you just can't solicit Western clients for a little bit of time the last thing is scope just sticking with their personal trainer example your non-compete agreement cannot say for a period of a year you can't work at a fitness she at all that's way too broad what if you want to become a nutritionist what if you wanted to be open instructor what if you just want to manage it Jim those are different things that are not what you're currently doing at your local gym that you're 100% permitted to do because here in the United States of America we like people opening their own businesses and courts don't want to restrict people from being able to earn a living so that's why there's all these limitations on what a non-compete can and cannot do so let's say your non-compete violates any of those automatically consult an attorney and fight their non-compete agreement because an attorney can likely get you out of it or at least negotiate amended terms because there's certain clauses in your non-compete that do not fly when it comes to state employer if you do have a binding non-compete agreement like I said earlier get creative that's mainly when attorneys do we're here to get creative and work within the great area so my advice to you would be to change slightly what you do so that you can get yourself in the industry a lot of our clients will say well my non-compete is built one year I can't work as a nurse for one year I'm going to resign wait until the years up and then I'll get back in the industry I highly highly recommend that you don't do that because you're putting yourself in a disadvantage it means for an entire year you won't be working in your industry which means you're not going to be up to date on the current technology on the current workplace and you're not going to have a year of building relationships with clients so this is where you get creative so let's say that you want to stick with the personal trainer example you want go and open up your own gym well if you're a personal trainer giving one other one personal training sessions there's nothing stopping you from opening up a yoga studio or even a CrossFit Center as long as you open a CrossFit gym and you don't offer personal what I want training is just group fitness with a bunch of equipment and everyone's kind of on their own then that is arguably different from what you were doing at your current employer and therefore no breach of the duty of loyalty you just have to get creative with it then once a reasonable amount of time has passed so if you do have a non-compete miss of six months one six months has passed you can go ahead and start offering all the services that you used to do at your old employer and now you've got six months of building relationships and networking instead of just jumping in after six months of being completely out of the industry so if you don't have a non-compete agreement you're going to look next to the second category I mentioned earlier which is the factual category is what you want to do actually different than what you are currently doing or is it the same most of the time people think too broadly and everything is a little too big so for example you say I want to go open up a CrossFit gym but I was a personal trainer and now in Canon I don't want to risk the gym suing me because I'm going an opening and computing business well CrossFit is not the same as a gem a gem has stationary bikes they've got different equipment everybody comes in they scan their past they do their work out whatever they want to do and they'll even come with it please CrossFit is designated workouts with a daily regimen usually has different alphabet and tell you to spell out your name with all sorts of jumping jacks and squat it's very different you don't have the one-on-one personal training sessions you don't have all of the equipment you don't have the treadmills you don't have the ellipticals those are differences that you need to pay attention because in the legal world details matter so they a creative way change it up a little bit and then what's a reasonable amount of time is past go for it open up all of the services that you want now let's see the last option is defenses and defenses are both with the contracts and without a contract so defensible things are one there's no legitimate business interest for example if I look at this company and I say I don't want you to work anywhere in this area period just because these are my clients that's not a legitimate business interest those aren't just your clients most will be anybody's clients you cannot put a moratorium on every single citizen within the city of Weston what I can say is their customers that I currently have our mind and you can't solicit them but that doesn't stop you from going on LinkedIn and finding small business owners that you know like to work out or looking at the public posts finding individuals that into the post on their Instagram they're different workouts you know that they like to work out those who meet your clients as long as you find alternative means to finding new customers it's perfectly fine and you cannot face any kind of lawsuit also for example a lot of times companies will have you sign a non-compete agreement regardless of who you are and every single person from the CEO to the janitor is going to sign a non-compete that does not protect any legitimate business interest because what information is the janitor have that the CEO also has lightly very different information and what you're trying to protect has to be specific so in this instance wouldn't be and what you can do is you can tell the court it's just a boilerplate contract that they have everybody sign and they're not really trying to protect anything lastly would be confidential information so a lot of times companies will say they're using my confidential information to go and start a competing business for example let's say you're using the same contracts for your membership well which you can do as long as you can show that that contract is right on Google and all the Jim did was Google gym membership contract print it out put their name on it and use it as their own that does not count as confidential information because readily accessible to the public and that's the same way that you've got it so with every little thing and every single turn it's been saying the same thing there's always a way out and if there isn't we can get creative and work around it so that you can still accomplish the same end goal that you want to Brian field a lot of us what we specialize in we're business litigation and transactional attorneys so if you have any specific questions about wanting to start a business or help with maintaining your business you can contact us at the link below or you can give us a call at nine five four two eight two nine three three one thanks so much for watching