The Quarterly, summer 2024

Hi everyone. This episode of The Quarterly is a touch early, for a couple of reasons.

Let's get the exciting news out of the way first: we just opened up the new Johnny.Decimal Small Business System for pre-launch.

In a nutshell, it's the 'life admin' pack, but for small business. But so much more: where life admin is a static pack -- apart from the odd update here and there -- the business system will be a living thing.

This has been something that I've wanted to do for a decade. Literally: I found the first note that I made, 25.15 Business in a box, dated 9th December 2014. It will be so much more than just the Johnny.Decimal structure and JDex: it'll be your operations manuals, your community, and whatever else you need it to be.

Me and Lucy are planning on working on this full-time for the next couple of years. I've built a mini-site for it with all the details. Check it out at https://business.johnnydecimal.com.

You've no idea how much we appreciate those of you who put your trust in us by giving us money before a thing even exists. It really helps our small business, and puts a bit of a rocket up us to get it finished, and make it as good as it can be.

So, as always, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support.

It's interesting, looking back on the last 18 months since I quit my job. You think, this small business idea: it's so obvious, why didn't we do it at the start?

I really believe that these things need to be allowed the time to evolve. And I'm so glad we did 'life admin' first, because that taught us so much.

For example: the business pack won't be a static set of folders and files. Turns out 0 that updating a bunch of folders and files is a complex nightmare!

So this pack will be generated by a little helper app. That way you can choose your options on-the-fly. Want emoji? Tick a box. Want Bear-style JDex files or Obsidian-style? Choose that option.

For the nerds here, I'm learning Rust to do this properly. I dipped my toe in the waters of Electron and hoo boy did I not enjoy that. (Although for speed I may do a quick version using Deno, as I already know JS/TS.)

So this is step 1 towards a Johnny.Decimal app to help you manage your system. Rust + Tauri, completely cross-platform.

And this is why the business pack is taking longer: it'll just be a much bigger thing. It'll be worth it.

Reason #2 for an early newsletter: on 1st December I'll be in Sydney with my entire family, who are flying over from the UK for 3 weeks. Six of them, ranging from 9- to 78-years-old.

I'm meeting them in Sydney and we're spending a week there. Then we get the train to Canberra, where I'm really looking forward to showing my mam the beautiful gardens. Then as a peace offering to the 9- and 16-year-olds, for whom Canberra will be bo-ring, we're heading to the Gold Coast for a week.

It's been over a year since I've seen them. I can't wait.

I'll still be online, but probably just for an hour or so in the morning to keep on top of stuff.

Small apology for not really keeping up with the YouTube channel: there just isn't time. A typical video takes about 2 days of my time and then about the same for Lucy. Planning, shooting, editing, uploading. We just have to make priority calls and for now, the small business system is it.

Okay, wish me luck ferrying 6 British people around Australia! It's going to be one of those holidays where I need a holiday at the end.

Love from Canberra, x johnny, lucy, & the chickens

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