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Why Doing More Actually Kills Your Business (The $0 Drum)
I built a simulation to prove something that sounds counterintuitive: working less can make you more money.
Let me show you. (Pic related)
The Simulation
I created a game that models any multi-step production process—whether that's an agency, a community or a department like sales, ads, content, and especially fulfillment.
Here's how it works:
- Work flows through multiple stages (stations)
- Each station rolls a dice to complete their task
- Roll a 1? The token moves to the next stage's queue
- If a token reaches the end, the team earns $1
The dice simulate real-world completion rates. A D6 (six-sided die) gives you a 17% chance per round. A D4 gives you 25%. This models the natural variation in how long tasks actually take.
I ran two scenarios:
Scenario 1: No Control (Push System)Everyone works as fast as possible. "Do more" is the mandate.
Scenario 2: Drum Buffer Rope (Pull System)Work is synchronized to the bottleneck. The constraint sets the pace for everyone.
The Results
The throughput was basically identical.
Read that again. Both systems produced the same output.
Why? Because the bottleneck is the limiting factor. If your constraint is running at 100% capacity, the system literally cannot produce more. It's physics.
But here's where it gets interesting:
Same output. 10x faster delivery. Fraction of the resources.
What This Actually Means
Imagine cycle time is measured in days.
Your sales team says "Yeah, it'll take about five days." That's technically true—five days of actual work time. But in the push system, clients are waiting 50 days because their project is sitting in queues behind hundreds of others.
That 45-day gap is where:
- Refunds happen
- Reputation dies
- All your marketing spend (ads, content, outreach) gets wasted
- You get called a scammer
Not because you're evil. Because you neglected the client experience while chasing "more."
The Trap Everyone Falls Into
When things get backed up, here's what most founders do:
- Yell at people to work faster
- Fire and replace
- Add more people to the bottleneck
- Implement "local optimizations" at random stages
None of this addresses the actual problem. You've still got the same dice being rolled for the same stage. The constraint hasn't changed—you've just created more chaos around it.
And the people who genuinely care? They burn out trying to bandaid their specific area while drowning in the WIP that keeps piling up.
Yes, you're making more. But your margins are collapsing.
Each token is a lead that cost money to get, commission paid to close, all still pending the work to be done.
Its inventory -- spare excess inventory that is stuck in the system waiting to get an ROI.
This work-en-masse is what kills companies. Doing more actually fucking kills the company.
And it triggers a death spiral where cycle time just grows.
And it doesn't stop when you DO MORE... which is what every single one else says to do.
No one says "TO DO LESS"...
Because thats not monetizable, practical, or can be justified...
But I can, and thats why you're here :)
The $0 Fix: Drum Buffer Rope
Drum Buffer Rope (DBR) is a concept from the Theory of Constraints. Here's how it works:
The Drum: Your constraint (the stage with the lowest throughput rate) sets the pace. When the drum completes a task, it signals the rest of the system.
The Rope: Raw materials only enter the system when the drum completes. This ties input to the constraint's capacity, preventing WIP buildup.
The Buffer: A small queue in front of the constraint ensures it never starves. If upstream stages have a hiccup, the drum keeps running.
The critical insight: When the bottleneck stops, the entire system stops. Throughput goes to zero.
But that means every other stage CAN stop—and that's not just okay, it's necessary for profitability.
Real-World Implementation
For a content team, it might look like this:
- Scriptwriter produces a script
- Videographer pulls one script and records
- Editor produces one video per day (the bottleneck)
- Publisher is usually waiting for a video to post, promote, and spread out to get views
Instead of producing thousands of scripts and recordings that sit in queues, the team syncs to the editor's pace. They produce a week's worth of content for editing, then take the rest of the week to do other things.
Same output. Better quality. Less chaos. More profit.
Why This Is Hard
The fix is stupidly simple to implement once you understand it. The hard part is psychological.
Getting people to switch from "I NEED TO DO EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME" to "What exactly is my next task?" requires trust. Trust in the system. Trust that working less on production means better outcomes.
Most founders do everything BUT find the bottleneck and fix just that. They optimize randomly. They add resources everywhere except where it matters. They confuse activity with progress.
The Counterintuitive Truth
With DBR:
- You can charge more (consistent, predictable delivery)
- You deliver higher quality (less context-switching, more focus)
- Your team has time to think, develop, and improve
- Your margins expand instead of compress
No one said the goal is to run more ads or throw resources at the current bottleneck.
The goal is to say "work less, as a team" and suddenly unlock the ability to charge more, do the highest quality work possible, and have the mental space to actually fix the system.
Find the bottleneck. Protect it. Sync to it. Everything else can wait.
I'm building an audit process as part of becoming an operator, to build the path.
To play with this, here's the link to these two basic HTML pages.
Enjoy.
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Why Doing More Actually Kills Your Business (The $0 Drum)
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