Swearing yourself to secrecy might be the best tactic when starting your first business. Unfortunately, a lot of young and new business owners struggle to do this. After all, you're about to start a company for the first time, and you're really excited! So, you want to tell as many people as possible, including friends, family - and possibly even coworkers at your current job. It's normal to do this, and part of you does it to help generate hype around your business. After all, the more people that know about the business, the more you can spread awareness through word-of-mouth. Therefore, you could have a lot of interested people willing to spend their money when you eventually launch your company. Nevertheless, there is a big danger when you overshare and tell too many people about your company. Can you guess what this is? That's right, you run the risk of people stealing your business idea.
How can people steal your business idea? If you tell someone about an idea that's brewing in your mind, nothing stops them from taking it and running with it. Technically speaking, you don't own the idea, so anyone can just steal it and open a business before yours. The same goes for ideas that might revolve around a product or invention; if you share your designs with other people, they could steal them or replicate them and pass them off as their own. Likewise, people can take your ideas and sell them to other business people. There are always entrepreneurs looking for inspiration, and it can be easy money for someone to just sell your idea to them. The biggest problem with both of these issues is that there's not a lot you can do about it. Primarily, it all depends on when you start sharing information with others.
How do you stop people from stealing your business ideas?
For starters, being more secretive in the early stages of business development will help a huge deal. Limit the number of people you talk to about your idea, saving it for those you can truly trust. Secondly, look into working with intellectual property lawyers to maybe get copyrights or patents for your ideas and designs. This can protect you in a legal sense, meaning nobody can steal your ideas or designs without legal ramifications. Combining these two tips will mean that there's less chance of someone taking your idea and running away with it. If they do, you will at least have some legal ground to stand on with the copyrights and patents. The problem a lot of small entrepreneurs have is they get too excited about things and talk about them before they protect their intellectual property. As a result, if people take the idea, you don't really have a leg to stand on as you didn't protect it.
The moral of the story is that you should be patient and secretive when starting a business. Don't talk about it to everyone you see; wait until you've set things in motion, got the legal protection in place, and then you can speak about it safely.
