Reliable Resources for Your Regulatory Compliance Research
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I know…. regulatory compliance, this is your favorite topic ever. I understand, I hear that often, but actually this is a source of anxiety for many, many business owners because you often feel that you don’t know all the rules that are out there. Most of the time when I’m talking to business owners, they say something like, “Well, I might be missing something. What kind of rules do I have to follow? What are the licenses that I have to have?” So this Legal Reports video is going to cover some of those things. I’m going to be sharing some websites with you, and I encourage you to do some DIY research of your own. Yes, I know it’s weird that I’m encouraging you to do DIY, but this is one of the areas where we do like to see small business owners digging in, learning the information, and figuring out where they can find more information on their own. And that’s with regulatory compliance only. Okay? So Dr. Google, can be very dangerous and I want to be sure that you’re going to the right websites when you do your DIY research. So I’m gonna share a few. The rule of thumb is to go directly to the government’s website. You always wanna get your information directly from the government and all of these opinion bloggers and writers out there, you know, they, don’t have to be attorneys to put stuff on the internet. So just be careful of where you get your information from. That’s why I like to go directly to the government’s websites. So let’s start with a few here in Florida. So for Florida, we’ve got DBPR. This is Department of Business and Professional Regulation, myfloridalicense.com/dbpr. One of the things I wanna show you here is they have some really great resources. So if you go to licensing and regulation and you click on this, it will pull up all of the different types of businesses that DBPR regulates. So we’re talking in the state of Florida. There’s an agency that regulates certain types of businesses. This is the list of businesses that DBPR regulates, and you can see all kinds of different ones. I’m just gonna click on one herejust to kind of give you an idea of what this looks like. So let’s say that you are architect and we’re gonna click on architecture and interior design. And DBPR is going to have some resources here for this particular industry. So when you scroll down here, you can see on the right hand side, there’s some links down here. They’ve got all kinds of different licensing. Um, so you go here to figure out where it is that you need to get the information, hot topics, important information. This is something I like that DBPR does. I’m gonna pull in here some more recent things about the changes in regulations and changes in licensing. You’ve got business tips and useful links here, which take you to all kinds of other things. You’ve got Secretary of State, division of corporations, all kinds of things here. So this is DBPR to find out whether or not your business is licensed by this particular agency, or whether or not there’s just some rules that your business has to follow. You would go here and follow these links. The second one in Florida that I wanna talk about is DACs, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Now, I know this one might seem like this is all for farming, but it’s not. I do want to show you that there’s a lot of things in here and DACs have more that they regulate than agriculture or farming. So one of the things that I wanna show you is this business services tab. So if you go to this business services tab, it shows you all of these things, all of the areas that this particular agency regulates. So you can see down here, they’ve got veterinarians, telemarketing, a lot of businesses do this as an activity, a marketing activity. You’ve got surveyors and mappers, solicitation of contributions for nonprofits, and health studios. You’ve got travel agents, franchises, there’s all kinds of things here. So let’s go ahead and take a look at, health studios for just a minute and see what this looks like. So you’ve got frequently asked questions over here. You’ve got business services down the side here. This is a great resource. There’s program resources here. One thing I noticed is this Florida do not call tab. So if your business does cold calls or texts or anything like that, this is where you would get that information. So this is DACs, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That’s a Florida agency. The last Florida agency I wanna show you is the Florida Department of Health. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be in a health profession to be regulated by FDOH. So here are some regulated, professions here. If you go to Florida Department of Health, it has all the regulated professions here. So I’m looking at some of these, you’ve got massage therapist… There’s a couple things in here that you wouldn’t normally think about. Body piercer, you’ve got occupational therapist, and then you’ve got regulated facilities and permits, you know, biomedical waste. You’ve got mobile home parks, random, but mobile home parks are here in Department of Health. You’ve got tattoo establishments, obviously pharmacy, so these are all of the locations and the types of businesses that Department of Health regulates. So this is a great way to research some of their regulations. Now let’s jump to the federal level, the national government. I wanna start here with the Federal Trade Commission. They’ve got some really great resources on their website, and here you can see them by going to home. And then business guidance here. So that’s under this, advice and guidance tab. If you go to business guidance here, you can find this. Select Industries tells you what industries, FTC directly regulates. So alcohol, appliances, automobiles, clothing, textiles, finance, franchises, funerals, human resources, jewelry, nonprofits, real estate, tobacco. If you click on any of these, it will take you down and show you where all of the different regulations are for them. One other thing that I do wanna show you here is advertising and marketing. So the FTC does regulate this as a business activity rather than a business profession, and so you’ve got here advertising and marketing basics. If you advertise or market to children, there’s additional resources here. Influencers, endorsements, environmental marketing, health claims made in the USA, this is such a great resources for small businesses to take advantage of. They’ve got a great website, Federal Trade Commission, also on the federal, national level. You’ve got US Department of Labor, one guess as to what they do. Yes, you’ve got, it is employees, payroll, wage and hour claims, and discrimination. You can see all the topics that they do have here. Hiring, all the posters that you have to have, training, unemployment, insurance, you name it, they’ve got it here for the US Department of Labor. This is a great resource for employees. Now we are gonna go over to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. The EPA does touch on some small businesses, occasionally, like with agriculture, sometimes with automobile construction, oil and gas, and transportation. So if you are in any of these industries, this is gonna be a great resource for you. You go to the EPA, and you can go enter here by topics and this will take you down to all kinds of different things. Mold, lead, and pesticides, but it will also take you to, by business sector or by topic, and you can get more information there. Last but not least on the federal side is not a regulatory agency per se, but the Small Business Administration has some amazing resources online. So while you’re doing your DIY research, check out the SBAs website. This applies for licenses and permits tag right here. This has all kinds of great information. So if you sell alcohol beverages, you know, try here, if you have anything to do with firearms or explosives, any of these things, then you can follow those links. And then it has some great information about state licenses and permits. It’s just general information over here as well. So that’s the Small Business Administration. So we covered the state of Florida. We covered federal. Let’s jump into local real quick. And I’m just gonna show you, I know a lot of you are not even in Northeast Florida, you’re scattered all throughout the state of Florida. But I wanna show you Jacksonville’s website. Just as an example, you’re gonna track down your local government’s website. Maybe it’s a city, maybe it’s a county, maybe it’s both. But for city of Jacksonville, this is what you would look for. You’d look for business here, and then you go to business resources and it has all of these different links. So every county or city has the ability to regulate certain businesses or industries and even business activities within its jurisdiction. You just wanna make sure you’re checking the local. Don’t forget, the local people can also have business rules. So websites like these on the local side will have all kinds of information available to you. So I hope that’s helpful. Hopefully by breaking it down, showing you where you can go to get real accurate information on regulatory compliance helps!
