When it comes to establishing systems in your business, there are a lot of things that are deemed essential. You’ve got to have systems for managing your clients, marketing your business, handling your finances, and more.

While essential management systems are quite obvious in business, we often forget another group of business systems that are essential to creating a thriving, sustainable business: maintenance systems.

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5 MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS TO IMPLEMENT IN YOUR BUSINESS

Management systems keep certain things going in your business, mainly the external ones like client work, projects, and marketing. But maintenance systems are the hidden key to reducing your overwhelm and keeping your business running like a well-oiled machine.

When it comes to maintenance systems, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Your car comes with a manual that tells you exactly what to do when in order to maintain your car, but you didn’t get one of those when you started your business!

This uncertainty is why so many entrepreneurs neglect to implement them in their business. This can leave you feeling overwhelmed, even if you’ve got your management systems down pat.

Well, think of this as your business maintenance manual, filled with five essential maintenance systems to implement in your own business to keep everything running smoothly and in tip-top shape!

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DAILY START UP & SHUT DOWN

One of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur can be maintaining boundaries and a solid work/life balance. When you work from home, genuinely going “off the clock” and transitioning into life mode instead of business mode is not easy!

This is where a daily start up and shut down comes in.

This simple maintenance routine allows you to intentionally build in space for some of those important daily activities like tackling your inbox, responding to social media comments, and checking in with your clients, which frees you up the rest of the day to focus on the stuff that really matters in your business.

Plus, having a routine for how you start and end your workday, can really help maintain those working and non-working hours and keep solid boundaries!

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WEEKLY PLANNING

I’m a pretty big advocate of the mantra, “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”

While things don’t always go according to plan, it’s easier to pivot and rework the plan than constantly be winging it with no idea or direction. This is true for the big things in life and it’s true for the small things in life, which is why I’m a huge advocate for weekly planning.

Weekly planning is an opportunity to take a few minutes to look at what you accomplished this week, what you need to accomplish next week, what’s on your calendar, and how you’re going to make that happen.

You can keep it strictly for business, or you can add in personal things that will help your work life run smoother like meal planning or reviewing the weekly budget.

Things may change as you go through the week, but you’re far more likely to finish it feeling accomplished and productive when you plan things out in advance.

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MONTHLY DUTY DAY

Of all the maintenance systems, this is perhaps the one I deem the most essential and the one I implemented first in my business.

There are a lot of big things to keep track of in order to keep things running smoothly, but there are also a lot of little things to keep track of — like tracking your mileage, updating availability on your scheduling app, or double checking all your content is scheduled and ready to go.

You could do all of these little things here and there throughout the month, or stress yourself out when taxes are due because you forgot to categorize your mileage throughout the year… or you could create a checklist of simple things to review, complete, and update once a month that will keep things running the way you want them to.

Start small by noting some of those random tasks you need to accomplish on a regular basis and slowly build out your monthly duty day into a robust system that does wonderful things for your business!

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QUARTERLY CEO DAY

We all know the struggle — there’s so much going on in your business, that it’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of it all. You work so much in your business that it’s hard to find time to work on your business.

This is where a Quarterly CEO Day comes in. It’s an opportunity to take a step back from the craziness of it all, put on that CEO hat, and look at your business from a strategic, long-term perspective.

It combines some bigger maintenance tasks like website and process updates with taking time to look at the long-term vision for your business, your overall goals, and the progress you want to make over the next few months.

Having this system in place is so helpful for keeping some of those bigger things (like your website) up-to-date and ensuring you don’t move through the year blindly, completing task after task, without ever stopping to think about where your business is actually going and if that’s the direction you want it to take.

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ANNUAL REFRESH

The biggest and robust of all the maintenance systems, the annual refresh is not for the faint of heart. It’s an opportunity to give your business a full scrub, from top-to-bottom, reviewing every single piece of it.

I love this system because, when used in conjunction with creating your annual business plan, it’s a wonderful opportunity to simplify your business and clear out the clutter before finishing out the year.

You get to review all the wonderful, good things about what worked in your business the year before, reflect on the hard or frustrating things that didn’t work, make a plan to move forward, and clear out all the clutter from your business backend to help you make those big dreams happen in the following year!

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It takes time to put maintenance systems in place, but making the space for them is one of the best things you can do for your business, in the short and long-term.

If you’re ready to get started with business maintenance, but not sure what to do first, the Business Maintenance Spreadsheet will help you map out and stay on top of annual, quarterly, and monthly maintenance systems to keep your biz in tip-top shape! Get it now in the Spreadsheet Shop for $77!