Decimal Diary: Business links and food trucks

Today's blog is a guest post by Lucy.

Dear Decimal Diary,

Yesterday I added a bunch of new resource links to several IDs in the Small Business System. And one of them led me to start an imaginary food truck business.

Sensible, governmenty links

Turns out there's a lot of great small-business-related information out there. But it can be hard to find if you don't know where to start (or have the time).¹ We originally planned to include a few curated links in most Small Business IDs. There aren't many yet – I add new ones as I discover and vet them to check they're reputable.

Since we're Australian they're mostly from our Government or 'sensible' government-adjacent organisations. But I do try to find things that are relevant no matter where a business is. For example, there's links to some good general advice in:

• 14.42 Technical cybersecurity, and
• 14.43 Behavioural cybersecurity.

But if you need country-specific guidance, hopefully anything we find can help you search for similar advice from your government.

This may or may not be a useful feature, but we thought we'd give it a go and see if it evolves into anything.² At the very least I'm learning heaps of stuff about running a small business that I didn't know before.

Refining search

At the same time I also try to think of new keywords for JDHQ's search feature (remember you can just type / to activate search).

So if you've tried to find something in Small Business (or elsewhere) and search didn't surface it, let us know. The words we use to describe something in Australian business might be different to yours. But it's easy to add keywords that will help you find what you need.

For example, we learned from a Decimal this week that it's common to have an 'operating charter' in American business. So I added that to the examples list for 11.11 Structure & registrations. And now it appears in search.

My imaginary food truck

The first link I found for 11.12 Licences, permits, & accreditations is from the Australian Business Licence and Information Service (ABLIS). ABLIS has a handy tool to research licences, regulations, council approvals, and compliance requirements for different businesses. So I thought I'd take it for a spin.

I pretended I wanted to start a:

• Simple food truck business (aka 'mobile food van operation'),
• Located in central Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory,
• And I would operate as a sole trader.

I then answered a short series of questions about how I thought my business would run. And I got back this list of 40 (!) things that I might need to consider. To anyone out there who has a business that involves any regulation, I tip my cap. I had no idea how much there was to know.

I was just playing around and some of my results were more important than others, like safe food handling. But there's so many other hangers on that might be relevant – there's an entire code of practice just for having a movable sign! But I think my favourite is the Workplace and Telephone on Hold Music Licence.

Like many people, Johnny and I have pretend-talked about having a simple hospitality business.³ However, I reckon if more budding entrepreneurs went to a licencing site like ABLIS before committing money to their idea, they might find it quite sobering.

I'm not saying don't dream big dreams.

The world needs successful small business owners – you make daily life so much more interesting than big corporations.

Just try hard not to procrastinate reading all the tediously boring government regulatory information before taking out a big business loan on a food truck in Canberra. 😉

From Lucy

100% human. 0% AI. Always.