I received the email below from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce last week. As an ambassador to the chamber, I forwarded the message to many of my business friends. My technology attorney, Byron Sanford, immediately replied with concerns about Amendment #1, which seemingly provides more security for businesses as it relates to the enforcement of non-compete agreements in Georgia… but not small or medium ones per Byron. His email to me follows the original message from the Metro Atlanta Chamber below.

I have asked the chamber for a response to Byron’s issues and will post that as soon as I receive it.

If any other lawyers have advice on the other amendments I’d love to hear from you.

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Dear Investors:

The Executive Committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber encourages our members to VOTE YES on November 2 for the six ballot measures below. All of the measures are business-friendly and will stimulate job creation, and one of the measures also addresses trauma funding, which is very important to Grady Hospital.

Click here for a summary of each issue and more details. Again, we encourage you to VOTE YES on each of these and to share this with your employees and staff.

• Amendment 1: Allows contracts with non-compete clauses to be enforced in Georgia courts.
• Amendment 2: Adds $10 tag fee on private passenger vehicles to fund statewide trauma-care expansion.
• Amendment 3: Allows the state to execute multiyear contracts for long-term transportation projects.
• Amendment 4: Allows the state to execute multiyear contracts for projects to improve energy efficiency and conservation.
• Amendment 5: Allows owners of industrial-zoned property to choose to remove the industrial designation from their property.
• Statewide Referendum: Provides for inventory of businesses to be exempt from state property tax.

Sincerely,

Sam A. Williams
President
Metro Atlanta Chamber
235 Andrew Young International Blvd., NW • Atlanta, GA 30303
Bringing the best together to help Atlanta thrive.

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Byron Sanford’s response to me regarding Amendment #1

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FYI, the first amendment, regarding Non-Compete agreements is EXTREMELY misleading and is BAD for many small and medium size business (but great for business litigators like me), as it is almost certain to push more cases regarding non-competes and non-solicitation agreements into court. These agreements are already enforceable in Georgia, if drawn up properly. The new law give JUDGES the power to re-write otherwise unenforceable provision (rather than throwing out over-reaching agreements, as they are now required to do). This means more cases will actually go to trial and the results will be less predictable as the judge gets to decide how the final restrictive provision will read.

This will encourage people to more over-reaching in how these types of provisions are drafted and will result in less certainty over how they will actually be enforces. This kind of uncertainty is bad for small and medium-sized business. The biggest beneficiaries are large businesses (who can easily outspend employees in litigation) and business litigators.

I would strongly encourage small and medium size businesses to get better informed on this issue. The Chamber’s position on this is not necessarily good for all of its membership!

-Byron

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Response from Janice Rys of the Metro Atlanta Chamber

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Chad–Thank you for contacting us and sharing your concerns on Amendment #1.  Our public policy team carefully and thoughtfully prepared all the amendment recommendations for our Board–and this was certainly a complicated one.

As background, earlier this year, the Georgia Legislature overwhelmingly passed HB 173 to put this measure on the ballot as an effort to put Georgia on equal footing with surrounding states when trying to attract jobs to the state.  Specifically, the primary purpose of the amendment is to allow judges to clarify current law and enforce the intent of both employers and employees who enter into employment agreements.  Currently, if there are any imperfections in the document, the judge is prevented from making any modifications (called “blue penciling”) to correct the deficiencies and the whole agreement must be thrown out.   This creates uncertainty for businesses who invest significant time, energy and resources training key personnel.  Georgia is at a competitive disadvantage to other states because of the current unenforceability of its law.

At the same time, the amendment also provides clarity and certainty to employees.  For the first time in Georgia, most employees would be legally ineligible to enter into such agreements should this amendment pass.  The new law would apply only to employees that have proprietary information about their company that could be shared with a competitor.  Additionally, for the first time, it would clearly define any employee agreement so employees know exactly what the law does and does not allow.  It also gives a judge the ability to void the agreement if the employee has experienced a financial hardship – something not in place today.

This current situation deters businesses from investing in and locating high-paying jobs here in Georgia, but Amendment #1 is the remedy.

As a chamber of commerce, we believe in full and fair competition.  We also believe in the value of fair contractual relationships so that both parties can have security in the terms and conditions under which they do conduct business.  We believe in Amendment #1.

Hope this is helpful to you.  As further information, attached are some documents that you may want to peruse on this issue.  Most notable is the letter from a small business owner, Ray DeMott with Southern Equipment, which provides a good look at how the current law is tough on businesses in Georgia, regardless of size.

Renay Blumenthal, SVP of Public Policy will be happy to answer any questions you might have…

Thanks for your support of us!

Janice

Janice Rys

Senior Vice President, Membership Development & Services Metro Atlanta Chamber

235 Andrew Young International Blvd.,NW * Atlanta, GA 30303

404.586.8473 * FAX 404.586.8416

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Additional Opinions

Kills Georgia’s Amendment #1, The Death of the Tech Startup

T Minus 22 Days

So Long Professional Services

How Natural Selection Should Punish Crappy Employers

How to Guarantee Another Startup Cluster Never Happens

Are you in the crosshairs?

Employees Chained & Restrained: Why We the People Must Defend Georgia’s Constitution Against HB173

The experience of being a Metro Atlanta Small Business Person of the Year Finalist was an interesting one for me. While I have no illusions that I am one of the 5 best small business people in all of Metro-Atlanta, a feeling that I am sure is shared by the other finalists, we were the top 5 of those that were nominated to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce for the honor. I can rattle off several other business owners, many unconcerned and/or uncomfortable with such publicity, that could run circles around me – some of which are my clients. With that idea in the back of my head keeping me humble, I was left to think what such an honor really means to me… if anything.

While I certainly appreciate the publicity that such an honor has bestowed (…and the complimentary business class airline tickets from AirTran), it occurred to me that regardless of how important, or unimportant I found this award to be, there are others who probably consider it important, such as other members of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, my staff at Carceron, my family and others.Thinking back to the event, I recall the final seconds before they announced the honor and was so nervous and choked up (a feeling that I definitely had not anticipated having) that I was extremely relieved when Debbi won. If I had won and was forced to get on that stage, it would have been a very “un-manly” moment for me.

More than a week has passed and I have had time to reflect on all of this: my feelings of modesty relative to my being worthy of such an honor; how important I viewed the award relative to others;  the unexpected emotions that I experienced just prior to the announcement. I have found a sort of mental compromise that reflects my modest impression of the honor and the reverence that others hold the award in. Here goes:

I must now live up to the award’s name and truly be amongst the top 5 small business persons in Metro Atlanta as viewed by all of Atlanta – not just the Chamber.

It’s a lofty dream, but achievable I think.

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My article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle

My promotional video created by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and Atlanta Business Video for the event.

Web Sites of the other Metro Atlanta Small Business Person of the Year Finalists:

Debbi Shapiro, Henderson Shapiro, (#1 Small Business Person of the Year)

Shelly Justice, Convention Models + Talent Agency (finalist)

Susan Bixler, Bixler Consulting (finalist)

Shannan Russo, Kinetix HR (finalist)

Instead of telling you what I think, I want to know what you all think. In a commodity type business, such as IT support, you look for any distinct advantage, any method of differentiation that you can to market your business. It’s tough because there are so many strategies. If you develop a new product or service that no one has in order to differentiate yourself, you will soon be copied and lose that edge. Re-bundle your services, same thing.

When I sat down with our customer advisory council about this, we were told our biggest distinction was our customer service. However, I am finding that difficult to market because I want the message to rise above the status of a platitude. When is the last time you went to a networking function only to hear people say the same old crap:

“We pride ourselves on customer service”

“We the most reliable, dependable, etc.”

blah, blah blah. It’s all talk unless you can prove it.

What I want to market, the story that I want to tell the world, is that we are the best at what we do. Something like:

“Everyone claims to have great customer service, but we can prove it!”

Some of the ideas I have had are:

• Promoting that we are the most recommended IT consulting firm on Linkedin.com (already using this)
• Customer Service Award from the Better Business Bureau or some other type of entity (we have a competitor that has done this

I’m not thrilled with the idea of awards because I think people today realize that many such awards are shallow victories. The chance of you winning an award these days seems to be more about who you know than actually possessing the merit to deserve the honor.

I need a way to prove that Carceron is the best at Customer service and I need a way to spread the word. Can you even market customer service?

P.S. If you have any other ideas around differentiation for a managed IT services business such as mine, I am all ears.

P.S.S. I’m not looking for a marketing consultant, so please don’t reply with a solicitation.

As an owner of an IT company, I am constantly asked my opinion on allowing FaceBook (or other Web  2.0 platforms like MySpace) into the workplace. Like so many other things in life, the answer is that “it depends”. It depends primarily on who in the company is using it and also how your company is structured.

Let’s start with the “who” should be using it: anyone in marketing, sales, or most management – assuming that they use it to some extent for business purposes and that your business is suitable for use on a social media platform. If you manufacture skateboards or provide marketing services, you should be using FaceBook. If you’re a defense contractor… not so much. FaceBook and other social mediums are becoming more used as the de facto communication tool, so allowing these platforms to be used by people in business development makes sense. As of this writing, I am guessing that a full 20% of my own business communications are going through FaceBook or Linkedin.

If your company is structured as a performance-only culture, then I say “Open the flood gates!”. By performance-only culture I mean that every single employee’s salary is somehow affected by incentives and/or commission based on performance metrics. In this case, FaceBook should not make a difference since all that matters is putting scores on the board (who cares how it is done short of breaking the law). Incidentally, this is crucial for employees that telework as you do not have any ability to block computers on their home network from accessing these sites.

Since I have told you “who” and “what types of companies” you should allow, here is the “why”: Blame it on the millennials. This generation wants to work from wherever during whatever hours they want and the ability to collaborate easily which is what tools like FaceBook provide. In the end it is all about collaboration, very current information, and staying “in front” of one another. Social media is a great place to announce events, post blog article links, links to other useful resources and to show a more human side of you if you’re willing to open up a little. Why is the latter important? Because people buy from people, not from companies – unless you’re just that well branded.

My company, Carceron, has allowed FaceBook because it is a medium we sometimes communicate on and also a medium we communicate to customers and fans with on our Carceron fan page.

In summary, there is no one size fits all answers to this question. Seek expert advice from experts in information technology, especially those in security.

Side Note: For those of you not aware of how web sites are blocked, many solutions exist that allow a business to block specific web sites like FaceBook, as well as generic web sites by category, such as: pornography, hate groups, etc. This is usually done by a small investment in a higher level firewall, such as a SonicWall, with a content management subscription. If that does not provide enough security, there is software that can monitor and record everything a user does. SpectorSoft makes such a product and is the solution of choice for Carceron.