Hi, I work for a discount real estate company, we sell flat fee mls listings. The company I work for has been in business for 9 months. The problem is we had a guy working for us that my boss basically hand held for the entire 9 months. This kid learned the system and about who all of our vendors were, and basically how everything works. Once he got enough information, he told us that he was quitting our company and starting his own. Our site is soldbyme.com and he bought the domain soldmyfsbo dot com. I am trying to protect our company and so i bought the domain sold-my-fsbo.com. Basically my goal is to make our site show up in the search engines well above his. I know it is the ugliest thing you have ever seen. My goal is two sided- 1. to have like at least 7 websites that rank above his, so if you search for sold my fsbo, I will come up first. while I was working on all of this, I am thinking I can make a nice flat fee mls review site, so people who are thinking about selling their house can figure out which company is the best. I need help, lots of it. Thanks, Adam
You should always have a non-disclosure / confidentiality agreement when employees are exposed to such information.
I used to work as a real estate broker, but i resigned like a couple of months ago. Before I left the company I was interrogated by my boss about my new job and stuff. Basically he was trying to find out whether I was gonna work on my own or for another company. By hiring somebody for such a job you're always running the risk of loosing him/her. This is so because the real estate market is constantly expanding. The only way to prevent this from happening is by including a special clause in the employee's contract which will force him/her to abide by the law.
you should of had you company protected from employees sharing information, only thing you can do now is keep ahead of him i believe.
Thanks for all your responses. You guys are right, my boss should have had him sign a non-compete clause. but for now I want to make my site dominate his, and thats really what I was asking for help with.
An NDA is always important to protect yourself. You can add into their employment contract they can not work or start their own business of the same nature within a timeframe after they leave you. I know with jobs I have had in the past I have had to agree to such clauses. At the end of the day there are always going to be competitors but yes to be used like that isnt nice.