Why "The Minimum Effective Dose" Is The Key To Getting Sh*t Done (Without Getting Overwhelmed)

Chris Graham (0:34)

Oh, you're too kind.

I'm very happy to be with you, hanging out, podcasting today, Brian. How are you?

Brian Hood (0:39)

I am doing very well. A little update since the last episode, I got a 90 days notice to vacate the building I'm in now, where my studio and business and stuff is set up, and I also live here.

And we've been renting it for like nine years, and it's just such a cheap rent that I wanted to stay here because it's just the cheapest thing ever, and they haven't raised the rent in nine years. So we got 90 days to leave here, we started house hunting, we found the perfect place, just got my documents from my loan people, and we're gonna make an offer on it after this episode is done. So fingers crossed that we get this place because of plans I have for the place we're gonna get.

Chris Graham (1:13)

Does it have a guest bedroom for me to come stay in?

Brian Hood (1:15)

It does, and it's a zoned office and residential, so I can do another live work thing there. Not that it really matters because studios are legal here in Nashville now thanks to our friend Lidge Shaw.

Chris Graham (1:24)

Yeah, Lidge.

Brian Hood (1:25)

If that ever changes, I'll still be good because it's a zoned office, and residential, so things are going great here, and I'm still a little stir crazy, but I am past my burnout that I hit several weeks ago on the podcast. Maybe we can talk about an episode on getting over burnout.

Chris Graham (1:40)

Holy crap, that's a great idea for an episode.

Brian Hood (1:42)

Yeah, that's not today, but that'll be in the future. Maybe episode 148

Chris Graham (1:45)

Yeah, preventing and recovering from burnout.

Brian Hood (1:47)

Yes, exactly.

Chris Graham (1:48)

You know, I talk about this all the time, but exercise has just been a godsend. It's been so freaking helpful.

Brian Hood (1:55)

You wanna talk about a way to get past burnout is actually doing physical activity. And that was probably the biggest thing. I would say I have not done what I would consider straight up exercise, but I'm walking 12,000 to 15,000 steps a day right now, which is far above what I typically do on a normal week or a normal day. And I think that's helped me get past the burnout a little bit through this season of life.

A kick in the ass to change your entire life up and move everything will help too, because you don't have a choice.

Chris Graham (2:21)

That's true, man.

Well, let's dive into our conversation. I'm excited about this episode. This is good content.

Brian Hood (2:27)

Yes. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about something that Tim Ferriss is huge on. And for those who don't know who Tim Ferriss is, if you live under a rock for some reason, he's got one of the biggest podcasts in the world, Tim Ferriss Show, and he's got a book that we've recommended multiple times in this podcast called The Four Hour Work Week. And he's got a series of books with that kind of name.

And we're going to talk about something called The Minimum Effective Dose.

And just to kind of go back in the medical world, if you are given a prescription drug, typically you just want to take the least amount you can for it to be effective. You don't want to take too much for obvious reasons.

And it's the same in business.

A lot of people tend to overcomplicate things. Chris Graham's very guilty of this. You actually, you tried to do this before we even started this episode. As we're planning this episode out, you were trying to overcomplicate things.

But Minimum Effective Dose, the way that translates to our business is that we try to overcomplicate a lot of different things in our lives due to maybe the shiny objects that we come across, maybe things you've heard on this podcast, you want to implement every little thing, and you try to go super deep into that subject and try to overdo it. And a lot of times, you're taking too much of the dose that we prescribe to you. You have some adverse side effects. So today, we're gonna talk through two or three different parts of your business and what the Minimum Effective Dose for those parts of your business, specifically around marketing and systems. And we picked these two because in any business, you have one of two problems. One is you don't have enough clients and so you need more clients. And so that's typically a marketing problem. Maybe it's a skills problem. You suck at what you do and you need to improve those skills so that people want to hire you. But let's just say all things being equal, our listeners are generally really good at what they do. They just need the business problem. So if you don't have enough clients, marketing can be the issue there. And we can talk about Minimum Effective Dose when it comes to marketing. But some people have too many damn clients and they can't fulfill the work they already have right now. And in that case, their biggest problem is systems. They need to work out things in their business to speed up the flow of work.