Quick Start: what should the next pack be?

10-19 Concepts 14 Build your system
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@jayde20 asks

So the question really is, what Quick Start pack would you all like next?

I have two in mind.

Small business/home business

Lucy and I have both been freelancers, contractors, business owners, employees, sole traders – pretty much the lot. So we understand what it takes to run a ‘small business’. Think up to about 50 employees.

So this pack would contain everything you needed to run a small business. Office, contracts, finance, marketing, sales, HR, legal, … you get it.

And it would be non-business-specific. Like the ‘life admin’ pack doesn’t include your hobbies. This would be the back-office stuff, and your product is something you’d need to figure out yourself.

Idea: I’d love to build a private community around this. Small business owners who can chat to each other about this, and anything else. Support each other. Probably Slack-based. Longer-term, once this has proven its value, I’d like it to be something I could charge a monthly subscription for.

I can see the QS:SB pack growing to become an operations manual. Probably web-based, so it’s constantly updated. More value for that subscription.

So the ID on bookkeeping might give you resources, guides, specific checklists, schedules. That sort of thing.

We – humans – re-invent so much of this. Everyone who starts a small business has to do it themselves. That’s silly. I’d like the QS:SB pack to eventually grow to include much of this common knowledge.

Project management

I’ve already got a pretty good structure for the PMP method of project management.

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I’ve used this for years, and my mate @Alex has refined it since. It works stunningly well.

Similarly I could see this being something that PMs might like a community around.

Something else entirely?

Remembering that to produce a QS pack, me and Lucy must know the subject matter, are there any other suggestions/requests?

Thoughts please!

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I can only speak for me. I do bookkeeping, admin, customer service and secretary work for my Dads small business. He isn’t tech savvy or organised, very old school, I finally got him to go digital so I’ve started a digital system from scratch, which could really do with a few tweaks or a new layout! I am loving the life admin pack. Trying to figure out how to replicate it into my work as mentioned above. I have nearly transferred everything over to my life admin folders :smiley:

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I second the small/home business vote! But both would certainly be useful.

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Definitely ‘small/home business’ for me!

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Yup… Small/home Business would be a biggie!

  • 40 yrs of small business, part of which was during a full time teaching job (that actually put the bread on the table).
  • Biz has primarily been a product based distributorship, with agents across the country, but also included direct sales
  • Biz is transitioning to a more service based business, including sports coaching, and media content creation options (YouTube, podcasts, webinars, learning academies for coaches and athletes alike) — resulting in less product based reliance
  • If nothing else, a QuickStart/SmallBusiness offering would include the essentials of running most small businesses in most locations — including categories/IDs for: accounting (yuck); marketing; social media presence; financing; registration; ownership (partnership/incorp); documentation; et al; et al… — having all these as Cats/IDs would be invaluable for entrepreneurs, the index of which would provide them with a Cole’s Notes of things they probably would never of thought of — until it was too late!
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Yes! This is the magic.

It’s an idea I’ve had for 10 years now. It was called ‘Business in a Box’ in my head for a long time. Pre-loaded with IDs, and those IDs can have checklists, either one-time — register a business — or quarterly do the books or whatever else. All the ‘gotchas’ that you might otherwise forget.

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Spot on!
There will always be a need for this type of course.
I say, go for it!

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I was thinking, for a bit, that these kinds of things migh be a bit too specific for different countries. But of course, the basic categories are the same everywhere – register a business, do the books.

What you say about putting checklists in IDs: I would agree, put focus on the invisible/workflows. That’s what a business stays healthy on, but it’s the hardest to see.

As an example: I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve read telling me what structure to give to my accounts and to my folders for saving receipts and invoices, but that’s static. With finance it’s about staying on top of the flow. Some people probably make that connection, but not me. It was only recently that the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz showed me a structure intimately linked to process (I just realized, writing this, that that is what his five accounts structure does. It encodes the flow of what you as a business owner need to do directly in the structure).

So a quick start pack which just from the table of contents showed the processes and actions relating to all the ‘domains’ would be really interesting!

I think your recent release on the Creative Pattern is an example of this too. When you look through it and read the description, you realise this is about a recurring process; the end product of each client project isn’t really so important, those contribute to the continuous improvement of your library. It’s a shift in focus encoded in the structure.

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would love to see this come to fruition!

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I would love to see the Small Business. I have several rental properties and I watched your video on the freelance problem. I set up each of our properties as if they are clients and then use templates for their categories. But then I didn’t know where I could put support materials that relate to the business in general like forms and notes.

It’s further complicated by the fact that we live in a rental (duplex) so sometimes it’s hard to separate our personal house stuff from our business.

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I prefer a project management system. I’m no business owner. Should you decide to not develop that I would at least be curious how your or Alex’s default index looks like.

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Drop me an email and I’ll send you this Excel file.

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could I email for the excel file please?

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Gimme an hour and I’ll just drop a link here for anyone interested.

(But, of course! You can always email for anything. :heart: )

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Edit: I put the PMP pack in its own thread to avoid cluttering this one.

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I would love to see the small business/home business starter pack. I have a music teaching studio and I manage 20 rental properties across two businesses for my mother-in-law, so this starter pack would be incredibly helpful for me. Also love the idea of a support community for small business owners as well. I really hope both of these happen!

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90% sure this is the next thing we’ll do.

I’ll start a thread for it. See you over there.

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Incorporating checklists into JD system as a core integration would be awesome. A bit like how you used to drive your old Omnifocus setup. Not sure what it would look like, but having checklists as an integral part of the JD systems and workflow seems like a match made in heaven. Not only can you find stuff, but now you don’t forget to do stuff either.

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100% something we’ve got planned as part of the small business pack!

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