Small Business System

The Small Business System shares a foundational ethos with the Life Admin System described on the previous page. So if you haven't read that yet, please do. This page builds on that one.

This page describes a product that we sell, for money. This is how we make our living. So I'll explain what this system is, and how we created it. But if you want it, you need to buy it. It's AU$500. I didn't want you to get all the way to the end before you discovered that. :-)

Business in a box

I've had this idea for well over a decade. Business in a box was the working title: the idea that we shouldn't all have to figure everything out again!

That, rather, we should be able to go to the Shelf of Business Things and pick what we need from a catalogue of pre-made stuff. We all need to deal with registrations and staff and premises and tax and technology and we all have customers and provide some sort of service or product that we need to create, promote, sell, and support.

(It's the GDP of New Zealand)

Can you imagine how much time we waste, reinventing this stuff? I can: I reckon it costs us at the very least $240bn a year.¹

What if other areas of business were like this? If you had to figure out tax law yourself vs. paying an accountant? Or build your own cloud storage or payments infrastructure or sales platform? That'd be an intolerable inefficiency.

But, as with life admin, when you start a business you buy a new computer and it's just blank and that's it, you're on your own. Start creating new folders! Hope you get it right!

A common framework

So our goal here is to provide you with a comprehensive, cohesive framework that any business can work in. We did this by looking back over a combined 40 years of our own business experience. Between us we've been independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, and business owners for at least that long.

Cover all the bases

We spent ages on discovery. Many weeks. It's obviously impossible for a single structure to be perfect for every business. So that wasn't the goal: rather, we wanted to make sure that we built a single structure that had a place for everything, and that we were confident that we could explain where any thing should go, and for there to be no ambiguity.

This led to some really interesting conversations. We had a list of target business types: from hairdresser to farmer, taxi driver, architect, gardener. And as we designed each piece, we tested it against this list of a dozen-or-so businesses. What are the things that are common to us all?

12.32 Keep our customers secure looks a lot different whether you're a hairdresser or a farmer. One needs to make sure that new staff know how to lock up at the end of the day, and the other might be concerned about kids' safety on farm machinery. But they're the same thing in the context of your business, and we can manage them with the same IDs.

Internally consistent

Then we talked these decisions over for hours at a time. Lucy's capacity to hold this entire structure in her brain is amazing. (Me, not so much.)

The hairdresser manages their alarm system contract here, I'd say. But didn't we say that it was part of their front office operations?, she'd ask. And slowly, piece by piece, it'd fit together. The whole process took us the best part of 7 months.

50,000+ words of guidance

The JDex for this one is a business operations manual. It stands at 50,000 words across 344 IDs over 5 areas holding 20+ categories. It's comprehensive, and we plan on keeping it updated as we use it to manage our own business.

I truly believe that there's no better one-stop way to manage any business at this price. And, of course, our 14-day guarantee means that it's risk-free.

Real business

Now we've got something that we've never had: a shared language for business. So we can have targeted, precise conversations.

My dream, which we're still a way from -- help me get there -- is to have this community of business people who can all help each other out. Because I'm no expert on 13.62 Accounts that handle tax, but I know a lot about 14.20 Storage, data, & backups. So what if you help me with my books and I help you with your backups? A little quid pro quo?

I'm in online 'communities' for business. Honestly, they're pretty crap. They feel more like places for backpackers to discuss get-rich-quick schemes. I get no value from them.

This isn't that. This is for people starting or running real businesses. People who are busy and need to get stuff done.

We use this every day

One of those people is us. We use this all day, every day. And already this is revealing some interesting patterns, that I'll be sure to document and share.

An early example: we ended up with 5 categories in each of the areas 10-19 through 40-49. This wasn't by design, it's just how many categories we needed. But it turns out to be a really happy accident, because there are also 5 days in a week. And so I have the beginnings of a cadence that ensures that no aspects of my business can be neglected.

This is just an early idea, and needs exploration. But it's an example of the sort of thing we'll be doing: constantly evolving, discovering, and sharing ways that this highly-structured system can help you run your own business.

It will save you money

A schtick, I know, but I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it: think about how much time you waste looking for stuff today. Knowing that something exists and not being able to find it. Or -- worse, in many respects -- finding it, distributing it, then discovering that it wasn't the right version.

If you put your rate anywhere near $100/hour, and if you waste just an hour a week, this thing will pay itself off before the month is over.

And like everything else Johnny.Decimal, it's one payment, then updates for life.

Write me off

Of course this is a business expense. Receipts go in:

• 13.31 Inbox and processing of expenses, until you follow our ops manual:
• 13.02+OPS1 Process your financial inboxes, at which point they move to the catch-all:
• 13.33 Receipts or, if you prefer, with the service that you purchased. That'd be:
• 14.32 External software & services.

Look at that. You're more organised already.

Get it at JDHQ.