Employment contracts often contain language preventing employees from leaving and soliciting existing customers or clients at a new place of employment. This appears easy enough to understand and follow, but enforcement depends on the language used by the attorney who drew it up. There can be all sorts of curve balls here.
If an employment contract has a non-competition and non-solicitation clause, one of them will work to stop whatever the employee might do in the future. In other words, a non-solicitation clause might not stop an ex-employee from accepting (instead of soliciting) customers, but a non-competition clause will most certainly stop all solicitation within a specified, reasonable time and place.
As with non-competition clauses, the purchaser of a business will most often have the upper hand in enforcing a non-solicitation clause in a purchase and sale contract.
Each contract is unique, and must be analyzed closely before I can advise you whether to leave, where to go, and how to do it. Everything you do leaves a trail which later becomes evidence to be used for or against you in court. Even the most seemingly air-tight cases are risky, putting your livelihood, and that of your family, squarely on the line.