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Starting a Business on the Side – Be Careful What You Work On!

This is the third installment of a four-part series on how to navigate taking on a side job or starting a business in addition to your regular employment.  If you missed the first or second parts, click here and read them!

Yet another thing you want to be aware of is whether or not your current gig could see your side business as competition.

This does not have to be direct competition, like McDonald’s and Burger King.  Your employer could see anything in the same field or line of work (basically any kind of food making or selling from fine dining to packaged granola bars could be seen as competition for McDonald’s).

Once again, if you have an employment contract, you want to pay attention to the clauses on working for competition in it.  Many contracts restrict employees in working for direct competition both during employment and for some time after the employee leaves the company.

If you think your side business could be seen as competition, you should tread carefully.  Consider negotiating with your employer and getting an agreement set in writing about the nature of your business and what your employer is comfortable with you pursuing.

If you don’t feel comfortable approaching your employer or you want to keep the project entirely secret, know that you are taking a risk that down the line your employer may fire you for your behavior or demand some ownership in your side business.

When in doubt, you should get a second opinion before investing significant time or money into a side business to ensure that you won’t have to reimburse your employer for your hard work.

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Want Ad Abuses

Most micro and small businesses do not have the resources for a full-time in house counsel.  This means the business owners need to be that much more vigilant to ensure that the actions the business takes comply with state and federal laws.  If your small business is planning on posting a want advertisement, there are a few points you should be aware of in regards to possible discrimination and job security.

The advertisement should be worded so that it does not appear to discriminate against any protected class.  At first this seems like something that can be done obviously, and in most cases it can, but some wording that suggests discrimination is still prevalent in advertisements today.  Protected classes include favoring: men over women (or vice versa); blacks over whites; or one age group over another.  The age group is one that is often forgotten about by many small businesses that operate without the advise of a lawyer.  To comply with the discrimination laws, an advertisement should not contain phrases such as “age 25 to 35 preferred,” “recent college graduate,” or “recent college graduate” as these phrases may suggest the business is discriminating against older persons.

Want ads can also inadvertently suggest the job is more secure than it is.  Many employers post ads that may give employees more rights by using phrases such as “long-term growth,” “permanent,” “secure,” or “career path.”  Phrases like these may create an inference that the employer is offering a job that cannot be terminated except for notice or cause even when the employer has no intention of giving workers added job security.

The best advise is to avoid copying and pasting a similar business’ advertisement until you know what all of the phrases and wording within the ad imply.

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Who Owns Those Tweets?

No one can deny that social media has become an amazing way to promote small and start-up businesses.  Facebook and Twitter accounts are free for the taking and the majority of American are spending significant amounts of time on social media everyday. Before you ask someone to take on the task of tweeting for or about a business, business owners should consider putting a contract in place.

A recent federal case demonstrates how valuable tweets and twitter followers can be.  In PhoneDog v. Kravitz, Kraviz, a tech reporter who was formerly employed by the news site PhoneDog, left his job with PhoneDog and took his 17,500 twitter followers with him by refusing to release the password to his account.  A federal judge refused to dismiss PhoneDog’s suit and the case will likely be in court for another year.  To read the decision, click here.

Small business owners should keep this case in mind when asking someone else to tweet for them.  Business owners can protect themselves and ensure that tweets and other social media avenues concerning their businesses belong to the business by putting a specific contract in place with anyone who is tweeting or posting statuses about the business.  Setting out the terms of tweets in writing prior to asking others to take on this task will protect businesses from potential disputes in the future.