Comments on: Give Away an Egg, Not the Farm

By: Ruby Web

Ruby Web — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:08:32 +0000

That is the theory anyway. My experience with non disclosure agreements is that your trade secrets can still be highly compromised, although not officially so!

By: seb-beingeffective.net

seb-beingeffective.net — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:06:36 +0000

IMO it isn’t about keeping assistants dumb. I have found that it takes a quite a long time for people to actually steal your business ideas (yes, it did happen to me!). The most important thing is to ensure that you hold on to your key business idea or your USP. This is the only bit that you have to protect from your assistants.

By: MLDina

MLDina — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:41:56 +0000

While I do think it’s a valid concern, you have to come to that point when you want to hire where you can start trusting others with your business. Like you said, you don’t have to give away all your secrets, just provide enough knowledge to get the job done. With time, though, your friend might come to trust his new employee and be able to give them more responsibility. That’s how a company grows!

By: What’s Up Wednesdays: Random Reading « Beyond the Rhetoric

What’s Up Wednesdays: Random Reading « Beyond the Rhetoric — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:16:12 +0000

[...] marketing. He doesn’t want to give away all of his trade secrets, so Danielle tells him to give away an egg, not the farm. Only tell your hired help what they need to know to complete the task at [...]

By: jtGraphic

jtGraphic — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:39:14 +0000

NDA for the win. That’s what EVERY employee I hire signs. Effective until 2 years after they are no longer with the company.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:59:34 +0000

I can understand your friends concerns. You can outsource a lot of work but there will come a time when you need to hire people to do specific tasks which are key to your websites growth and/or succes. And with certain jobs I’m sure the part time eployee will be thinking ‘Hey, I could be doing this myself and keeping all of the money’.

I think this is something which all industries suffer from. How many of the most successful companies in the world were created by ex employees of a company who wanted to go out alone.

It’s a double edged sword. The more competent and knowledgeable the employee becomes the better they will be at their job, however they are then more likely to go elsewhere : either for a better pay or to develop something themselves.

I think the pros of hiring someone outweigh the cons and losing ideas or secrets is just a risk you have to take (unless you make them sign something in their contract which restricts them from doing so).

By: Ruby Web

Ruby Web — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:07:08 +0000

Teaching a dog new tricks can be to your own detriment, especially in the virtual type of business we all dabble in, where you are not selling a solid, tangible product as in a conventional business, but rather skills and services. Keep the business compartmentalized, and that should prevent the helper from getting too clever and deciding to do things for themselves.