Maintenance Matters

The Simple Newsletter - # 063

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ADAM'S THOUGHTS:

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about loss.

Personally, we all fear losing people who are important to us. That’s natural. But in business, loss shows up in ways we don’t usually expect.

You can lose an employee.

You can lose a client.

You can lose a great vendor.

You can lose a piece of software your whole system depended on.

And when that happens, something interesting occurs.

On one side, you realize how much you may have taken that thing for granted.

On the other side, you begin to question whether it was actually necessary at all.

Both of those thoughts start pulling on you.

Do you replace it?

Do you innovate and build something new?

Do you outsource it?

Do you bring it in-house?

It’s a strange kind of problem-solving because it doesn’t necessarily move the business forward.

It maintains it.

And maintenance is something most of us don’t enjoy.

We don’t enjoy getting the oil changed in the car.

We don’t enjoy servicing the furnace.

We don’t enjoy cleaning gutters or blowing out sprinklers.

But if we don’t do those things, eventually something breaks.

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ADAM'S LESSON:

What if we approached this differently?

Instead of waiting for something to break… we take inventory.

Regularly.

As owners, we should probably be reviewing a few things more often than we do.

Our software.

Do we actually use it?

Does it still serve the purpose we brought it in for?

Our people.

They helped us get here... but are they the right people to help us get there?

Our processes.

Just because we’ve always done it this way… does that mean it’s the best way going forward?

Tom and I have decided we’re going to start doing this more intentionally.

Not casually.

Not when something goes wrong.

But proactively.

We’ll sit down and ask real questions:

Are we using this to its full potential?

Is this helping us get where we want to go?

If not, what should change?

Because it’s far better to make those decisions intentionally… than to be forced into them when something suddenly disappears.

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So here's my question for you this week:

When was the last time you intentionally took inventory of your business... your tools, your people, and your processes?

Is it time to look again?

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.

-Adam

P.S. If taking inventory of your business feels impossible, there’s usually a reason. Many self-employed owners unknowingly become the system their business depends on — click here to find out why that happens.