How to figure out the Minimum Viable Effort in your small business
When you’re pressed for time, it can feel hard to let go of some tasks in the moment – it all tends to feel equally important. The temptation to keep doing #AllTheThings is high even under pressure – but it’s often not feasible.
There is a simple solution: defining your Minimum Viable Effort.
Whether you…
✔︎ need to get through a busy client season
✔︎ want to prep your business for a vacation/holiday/time off
✔︎ have things going on in your life you need to prioritize, or
✔︎ just want to find space in your schedule for projects and business updates that have nothing to do with client work or production
… knowing your Minimum Viable Effort (MVE) will keep your workload manageable when pressed for time.
What does Minimum Viable Effort mean?
I was listening to an episode of the Fizzle Show, where the hosts were talking about something they called “minimum viable income” – aka the amount of money you need to make to cover your most essential expenses. Not your ideal lifestyle expenses, not your “think big number” – but just what’s enough to keep the lights on for you.
I thought this was such a cool concept, and figured that applying the “minimum viable” idea to my workload could work, too! I started calling this my minimum viable effort.
By minimum viable effort (MVE) I’m referring to the work that you need to do
1) to get in front of potential customers regularly, and
2) to keep both your business and life humming along
It’s like a bare minimum to-do list of marketing tasks, admin work, and life stuff that you can lean on when you’ve got other things taking up your time.
Instead of overworking (aka trying to keep up with everything as usual), you can shift to your MVE to make space for whatever you need to take space for – and still feel confident that your business isn’t likely to crumble.
Why it’s helpful to define your minimum viable effort a.s.a.p.
When you take the time to identify your most impactful tasks upfront, you already have a plan in place when it’s time to minimize your workload *or* when you’re running out of time to do your most important work.
This way you’re not left scrambling, trying to figure out what to prioritize while also dealing with [the thing that’s taking up your time and energy].
What’s the theory behind the Minimum Viable Effort?
You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule (or the Pareto Principle), which states that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts.
In other words – if you were doing only the most important 20% of #AllTheThings you do in your business, you’d already be getting 80% of the results.
Your MVE is like a bare minimum to-do list of tasks that includes that most important 20%
The key to an effective Minimum Viable Effort
For your MVE to be supportive, it’s important to identify the RIGHT 20% to focus on 😊
✖︎ Not the 20% the business celebrities say you “should” do
✖︎ Not the 20% that’s working for other people
✖︎ Not the 20% that’s working “right now”
✔︎ But the 20% that will actually bring YOU results
Which tasks and activities should make the cut?
According to a survey done by Constant Contact, small businesses of 1-2 people are spending an average of 20 hours per week on marketing. This means there’s an opportunity to free up a lot of hours if you create an MVE version of your marketing tasks and activities alone.
That’s why I focus on my advice in this blog post on marketing and sales tasks (basically anything you do to grow your visibility and revenue) – but you can create MVEs for many things – even household chores.
Choose the tasks/activities that you are comfortable committing to
If you’re unsure of which marketing and sales activities to pick, I would keep in mind
1) what results you’d like to see (and track for MVE evaluation purposes)
2) what you enjoy doing and/or what comes easily to you
3) how most of your clients/customers found their way to you
4) which tasks/activities helped your clients sign up for a service or purchase a product
While points 3 and 5 were easy to figure out in my photography business, they’re a bit harder in my coaching business because the more data you have to lean on, the better. So if you’re in this boat, I feel your struggle! In this case, don’t get super stuck on picking “the right things” – lean more on points 1 and 2 and be open to experimenting to see what works.
Decide the frequency and effort you put in for each task/activity
This could look like
✔︎ sending out an email newsletter once a week, sharing two social media posts per week, and only checking your email and responding to people every other day
✔︎ creating a piece of long-form content, like a blog post or podcast episode, every other week (instead of weekly) – and preparing the emails and social posts that will direct people to them
✔︎ reaching out to your awesome business contacts to remind them that your schedule is open for expert guesting/new clients when you get back from vacation on xyz date
Make the tasks you pick as effortless as possible
When you ask your brain questions, it tends to come up with answers! So ask yourself – how can I make [the tasks] easier on myself?
For example, let’s say you want to make sure you have emails and long-form content going on while you’re away. Does it feel easier to batch-write them in one sitting, or does it feel easier to write one piece a day when your brain is at its freshest?
Approach your MVE as an experiment
If your MVE isn’t quite enough to keep things humming along, you can always adjust by increasing the frequency of tasks or changing to different ones.
As with anything in business, you’re making your MVE decisions according to the information you have available– and once you’re *actually* implementing it, you’ll get information and data that helps you tweak it for next time.
Keep in mind when you apply the 80/20 rule to your tasks and activities
You may use the 80/20 rule in a larger sense (as in picking just 20% of the activities you usually do) OR you can use it to define a 20% effort for a particular task or activity.
For example, while having some kind of presence on Instagram was important to me as a photographer, I realized that about 95% of my followers were other photographers who just wanted to follow along for inspiration. This meant my IG efforts weren’t bringing in photography clients; most families found me through Google. Instead of trying to be active there daily, I scheduled 1-2 posts per week for several months at a time. This allowed me to stay off the platform but made my account look active enough if someone did happen to check out my IG account.
Benefits of implementing your minimum viable effort
When I first started experimenting with the MVE in my photography business, it was to get through seasons when I was busy with photo sessions or needed to prep for time off.
During the years I’ve been experimenting with my MVE I’ve been able to
1) free up time by decluttering tasks from my not-as-important 80% permanently (without it negatively impacting my revenue)
2) double down on my most impactful 20% to see quicker progress while still working less
2022 update: I’m not looking to grow my photography business from its current state, because I’ve got enough repeat clients and families finding me through Google. So I’ve dropped to an even more minimal level of MVE for the photography business.
How to use your Minimum Viable Effort
You can lean on your MVE when you for example …
✔︎ need to get through a busy client season
✔︎ want to prep your business for a vacation/holiday/time off (I drop down to my MVE in the week before, so that I have time to prep my MVE for the break too)
✔︎ want to space in your schedule for projects and business updates that have nothing to do with client work or production
✔︎ become a parent, and want to reduce the amount of time you’re working while your little one is little
✔︎ have *a lot* going on in your life and want to be able to be present with that instead of worrying about the business
✔︎ you want to experiment with a lighter workload or shorter work hours
And maybe you can think of other uses for an MVE, too!
If you think that a Minimum Viable Effort would be great for you, but you don’t want to spend a ton of time figuring it out or second-guessing yourself, this is something we can figure out 1:1 👍