Can I Start My Firm While Still Employed — Or Does That Cross a Line Ethically?

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Most designers don’t wake up one day and say “I’m going to quit my job and start my own firm.” That idea is made up of a bunch of little ideas that slowly percolate and draw together long before the designer’s resignation letter hits her boss’s inbox. Is that designer you? Maybe you’ve noticed that your colleagues’ design style differs from your own or maybe you’ve imagined how you would handle clients differently. You might wonder whether ownership would suit you better than employment.

Because that realization unfolds slowly instead of flashing on like a lightbulb, it’s common for designers to ask whether preparation can overlap with employment, and if so, how far that overlap can go without crossing ethical lines. Can your work experience look like the middle of a Venn diagram or is that inappropriate?

The short answer is that preparation and competition are not the same thing. But the distance between them is narrower than most of us want to admit. In this Q&A, we spoke with Laura Umansky and Melissa Grove of Laura U Design Collective about which boundaries are essential, which missteps cause long-term damage, and how to prepare responsibly without undermining trust, contracts, or reputation.

The Ethical Line Starts With Clients, Resources, and People

Designers often ask this question because they want to be fair. They don’t want to blow up their current job, and they also don’t want to delay their future indefinitely. That’s reasonable. Still, “fair” has to include your employer’s perspective. Your firm has obligations to clients and vendors, plus payroll to meet and overhead to cover. The people in charge also have to trust that employees are not quietly running an alternate business inside the business. Laura Umansky is blunt about what matters most during a transition and what you owe your employer.

“Do not take clients from your current firm. Do not use their resources. Do not recruit their people. And do not pretend you’re still committed if you’re already competing. If you’re ready to start your firm, make the leap and be transparent with your employer.”

All of these are real issues. Client poaching is the obvious one, but “resources” is usually where people make major mistakes (sometimes without realizing it). Resources include time, templates, vendor contacts, purchasing systems, and even the credibility you borrowed when you introduced yourself under the firm’s banner. Some designers think they can keep a foot in both worlds because they are still “doing their job.” The conflict starts the moment you are making decisions with your future firm in mind.

There’s also a difference between planning and performing. Planning is reading, learning, budgeting, and figuring out what you want. Performing is marketing, selling, taking deposits, soliciting leads, and building a pipeline while employed. Once you’re in the second category, you’re competing. You may tell yourself it’s “just one client” or “just a weekend project,” but the ethical issue is not the size of the job. It’s the divided loyalty, plus the risk that clients assume you represent your employer when you don’t.

Certain Missteps Create Long-Term Fallout

Designers sometimes assume the worst-case outcome is an awkward resignation conversation. In reality, the damage is more apparent a lot later, when you need a reference, a vendor connection, or even a recommendation from someone who watched how you left. People don’t forget. Trades talk. Reps talk. Former coworkers definitely talk. And clients often keep relationships with the original firm long after a designer on the team departs. Laura describes the mistakes that sour relationships quickly.

“Poaching, secrecy mixed with entitlement, and speaking poorly about the place that trained you. This industry is smaller than you think, and memory is long.”

That “entitlement” piece matters. A designer might think, “I did the work, so I should get the client.” Or, “They came in because of me.” Or, “I built that vendor relationship.” Maybe. But the firm created the platform that allowed those relationships to exist in the first place. They took the risk on payroll, marketing, legal structure, and reputation long before you benefited from it.

Speaking poorly about your firm also backfires for practical reasons. Even if your complaints are valid, it signals instability and immaturity. A prospective client hears, “This person may speak about me this way too.” A vendor hears, “This person may blame others when things go wrong.” If you want a clean launch, protect your narrative. Gratitude and restraint go a long way, even if your experience was mixed.

Remember That Networking Is Fine But Selling is Inappropriate

A lot of designers get tripped up here because networking feels like career development. And it is. Going to an event, meeting other designers, talking to vendors, building relationships with trades, and learning who does good work is normal professional behavior. It also makes you better at your job, even if you never leave. The ethical issue isn’t “networking.” It’s targeting relationships that belong to your employer’s ecosystem, and Laura acknowledges this.

“Building general relationships is excellent at any stage. Selling your services to people connected to your employer is not.”

This is where designers have to be honest about intent. If the person knows you because of your firm, and you begin positioning yourself as an alternative while still employed, you’re not just “having coffee.” You’re soliciting. Even if you never say, “Hire me,” you can imply it. You can plant the idea. That’s enough to create conflict.

There’s also a reputational side to this. If your employer finds out you’ve been marketing to their network, it doesn’t matter how talented you are. You’ve communicated that you’ll take what you want when it suits you. That’s hard to recover from and it will probably hit your reputation in the industry. However, if you want to take weekend projects far outside your boss’ scope and service areas, that’s another thing entirely.

Conflict of Interest Is the Fastest Way to Blow Up a Transition

Melissa Grove tends to look at this topic through operations and risk, which is helpful because designers can talk themselves into ethical gray zones when they’re excited. Operationally, overlap creates a conflict whether anyone wants to admit it or not. It starts with incentives. Once you plan to leave, your priorities shift. That shift affects decisions.

“The biggest one for me is a conflict of interest.”

That conflict can present in subtle ways that a designer might not even recognize in the moment. You might delay a tough conversation with a client because you don’t want to handle it. You might over-invest in a relationship you plan to “keep” after you leave. You might avoid making a decision that benefits the firm if you think it hurts your future. Even small decisions can add up, especially on client-facing work where timing and trust matter. Melissa also connects that conflict directly to contracts and professional obligations.

“If you are making project and client decisions to benefit yourself post-exit, that’s a huge no-no that is probably prohibited in your work contract.”

Even if enforcement is unlikely, that’s really not the point is it? While employed, your judgment is supposed to serve the firm’s projects, clients, and standards. Once you redirect that judgment toward your own future business, you have effectively changed the arrangement without telling anyone. That is why transparency matters.

And don’t forget about time, Melissa cautions. “Probably the most obvious [misstep] is spending company time to work on your own business. That’s a misuse of a firm’s most critical resource: your time.” Time is what your employer bought from you. Not your soul. Not your future. Your time. If you use that time to build a competing entity, you’ve breached the simplest part of the agreement.

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And Legal Problems Often Start With Solicitation, Recruiting, and IP

Designers sometimes fixate on whether a non-compete will “hold up” in court while ignoring the more common legal headaches that come from conduct. Conduct is easier to prove. It also tends to be more emotionally charged because it feels personal. If you solicit clients or recruit team members, you’re not just leaving. You’re taking, Melissa says. Plain and simple.

“Client solicitation or recruiting team members to join your new firm can expose you to further legal issues and damage your reputation before you even begin.”

This also harms you even if nothing legal happens. Think about what you want in your first year in business. You want goodwill, referrals, and vendors willing to take a chance on you. Starting your firm with even a whiff of “she poached her old firm” is a problem. People may still work with you, but they’ll watch you more closely. They’ll hedge. They’ll protect themselves. That slows everything down.

Melissa also addresses intellectual property, which is an area designers often underestimate.

“Also, it might be tempting to use company IP as a starting point. Think contracts, proposals, processes, etc., but that puts you in another legal crossfire.”

Even if you “rewrite it in your own words,” the underlying structure can still be derivative. And beyond legality, it’s lazy. You want your firm to be built on your own thinking, your own policies, your own workflow.

But What About Non-Competes?

A lot of designers ask what they can do while employed but looking towards their own futures because they are worried about non-competes. The reality is uneven and depends heavily on where you live, what your contract says, and how aggressive your employer is willing to be. Melissa acknowledges that, noting:

“Non-compete enforcement differs by state and what’s actually included, so they can be a little shaky to enforce.”

That said, even a shaky non-compete doesn’t change the ethical issue. If you launch by taking clients or resources, you might not get sued, but you will still damage trust. If you leave cleanly, the non-compete can still be annoying, but it won’t come with the added mess of personal betrayal. Melissa also offers her own opinion on non-competes.

“Personally, I’m in favor of making them illegal altogether. I think they discourage healthy competition, which can stifle innovation, which should be a highly creative industry.”

But she immediately returns to what matters day to day in residential design: reputation, discretion, and relationships. “That being said, your reputation matters more than a piece of paper.”

You can be technically “in the clear” and still lose referrals because people don’t trust how you operate. You can also be legally constrained and still build a strong long-term business if you leave well and keep relationships intact. If you take one thing away from this article, let it be Melissa’s final words on the subject:

“This is a small industry, so I would say this is more of a trust issue than a legal one.”

What You Can Actually Do While Employed Without Crossing A Line

There are responsible ways to prepare that don’t involve competing with your employer or exploiting what you have access to through your job. The most responsible way to prepare yourself for an exit? Be respectful and learn as much as you can. As Melissa says, “Glean as much as you can from your current firm and gain an understanding of the industry at large: how much goes into the daily management of a team, how much it costs a firm to run, how to respond to clients when things go awry, etc.”

This is exactly the kind of preparation that keeps you ethical, grows your talent, and makes you the kind of designer clients will jump to work with in the future. Learn how project management actually works. Learn how contract terms protect the business. Learn what errors cost the most time and money. Learn how and why margins disappear. You can do all of that while still employed, and you can do it without undermining anyone.

“Establish relationships with mentors. Start preparing yourself for the financial risk of entrepreneurship.”

Financial readiness is not glamorous, but it’s what keeps designers from accepting bad clients out of desperation. A cash buffer gives you patience. But most of us learn nothing about business building in design school. We learn it watching our bosses and supervisors work through it in their own businesses.

“And then when you’re ready to leave, do so cleanly and respectfully. This isn’t the kind of industry where you can burn bridges.”