Lesson Six · 7 of 13

Minimum Effective Dose

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Jot things down as you listen

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What is the smallest amount of time, effort and activity required to maintain the current business model and revenue while freeing up as much capacity as possible to pursue the impossible goal?

Building your minimum effective week

Work through the seven steps in order. Tick each one as you complete it.

Establish the baseline: what does the business currently produce without changing anything?
List every marketing activity you are doing (add anything missing from the Compression list).
Put each activity through the revenue test: maintain, reduce/test, or eliminate.
For everything in 'maintain', find the minimum dose that keeps roughly the same result.
Separate maintenance from growth: sort the week into keep, start, build — and stop.
Put your impossible-goal build time first on the calendar, before admin and maintenance.
Apply the constraint: if you only had 10 hours a week, what would you keep? What would break?

The revenue test — list and rate your activities

List every marketing and sales activity you are currently doing (use your Compression list). Then rate each one: how many hours a week does it take, and if you stopped it for 30 days, would revenue meaningfully decline? Yes = maintain. Maybe = reduce or test. No = eliminate.

Activity	Hours per week	If I stopped for 30 days, would revenue decline? (yes / maybe / no)	Verdict: maintain, reduce or eliminate

Reflect

If you were only allowed 10 hours a week to maintain your current revenue, what would you keep doing? What would break — and what wouldn't?

What is the minimum you need to do this week to keep today's business healthy and the revenue flowing?

What is the most important thing you can build this week that makes your impossible goal inevitable?

Key ideas — for reference

More is not automatically better — past the effective dose, you only add cost and burden.
The goal is maintenance mode for today's business, so your best energy goes to building what's next.
The revenue test: if I stopped this for 30 days, would my revenue meaningfully decline? Yes, maybe or no.
Yes = maintain. Maybe = reduce or test. No = eliminate.
The question is not 'what is the least work I can do?' but 'what is the least work required to maintain the status quo?'
Your week divides into keep, start, build — and stop for everything else.
Build time goes first on the calendar. Urgent tasks scream for attention; important ones don't.
The 10-hour constraint: if you only had 10 hours a week to maintain revenue, what would you keep?