Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
When I started as a freelancer seven years ago, I was obsessed with scalable solutions. I'd spend weeks building automation workflows and complex funnels, convinced that the right "growth hack" would unlock explosive results. Then reality hit: while I was engineering perfect systems, my competitors were out there manually reaching out to prospects, building relationships one conversation at a time, and consistently landing more clients than me.
Here's the uncomfortable truth nobody talks about: the most effective growth strategies often look embarrassingly simple. They don't scale. They can't be automated. And they definitely won't impress anyone at a startup conference. But they work faster and more reliably than any "sophisticated" marketing automation you can build.
After working with dozens of startups and e-commerce businesses, I've learned that the companies that win early are the ones that embrace what Paul Graham calls "doing things that don't scale." They focus on non-scaleable tactics first, then graduate to automation only after they've proven what actually works.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why the "scalability first" mindset is killing your early growth
My framework for identifying which non-scaleable tactics to prioritize
Real examples from client projects where manual work outperformed automation
When to transition from non-scaleable to scaleable (and common timing mistakes)
How to build systems that prepare you for eventual scaling
This isn't about abandoning efficiency forever. It's about understanding that sustainable scaling comes from proven distribution methods, not theoretical frameworks.
Industry Reality
The ""Scale Everything"" Trap That's Killing Startups
Walk into any startup accelerator or read any growth marketing blog, and you'll hear the same advice repeated like a mantra: "Build systems that scale." "Automate everything." "Think 10x, not 10%." The entire growth hacking movement has convinced founders that manual work is somehow beneath them—that real entrepreneurs should be building machines, not doing the work themselves.
Here's what the industry typically recommends for early-stage growth:
Build elaborate funnels first: Spend months mapping out complex customer journeys with multiple touchpoints, automated email sequences, and sophisticated attribution tracking.
Optimize for scale from day one: Choose marketing channels and tactics based on their theoretical scalability rather than their immediate effectiveness.
Automate before validating: Invest in marketing automation, chatbots, and programmatic advertising before proving that anyone actually wants what you're selling.
Focus on metrics that look impressive: Chase vanity metrics like total addressable market and theoretical conversion rates instead of actual revenue and real customer feedback.
Avoid "low-leverage" activities: Dismiss one-on-one conversations, manual outreach, and personal relationship building as inefficient uses of time.
This conventional wisdom exists because it sounds sophisticated and appeals to our desire for efficiency. VCs love scalable business models. Startup blogs get more clicks writing about "growth hacks" than "do the work." And there's a psychological appeal to building systems that work while you sleep.
But here's where this approach falls apart in practice: it assumes you already know what works. It skips the crucial discovery phase where you figure out who your customers are, what they actually want, and how they prefer to buy. You end up automating the wrong things, scaling broken processes, and burning through resources without learning anything valuable.
The companies that succeed early understand something different: scalability is the reward for doing non-scaleable things well, not the starting point.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
My perspective on this shifted dramatically after working with a B2B SaaS client who taught me the hard way that "sophisticated" doesn't always mean "effective." This startup had raised a solid seed round and came to me wanting to build the perfect growth machine. They'd read all the right books, followed all the right frameworks, and were convinced they needed to think big from day one.
The founder was brilliant—he'd mapped out a complex multi-channel acquisition strategy involving content marketing, paid ads, partnership funnels, and automated email sequences. On paper, it looked impressive. In practice, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Here's what we tried first, and why it failed spectacularly:
The "Sophisticated" Approach: We spent six weeks building an elaborate content marketing funnel. Blog posts feeding into lead magnets, feeding into email sequences, feeding into product demos, feeding into sales calls. Every touchpoint was mapped, every conversion tracked, every email template A/B tested.
The result? After two months and significant budget, we had generated exactly 12 qualified leads and zero paying customers. The content was well-written, the automation worked flawlessly, and the analytics dashboard looked professional. But nobody cared.
Meanwhile, I watched another client—a scrappy e-commerce founder—manually message 50 potential customers on LinkedIn every day. No fancy automation, no sophisticated funnels, just genuine conversations about their problems. She was landing 2-3 new customers every week.
That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. The SaaS client didn't need a perfect growth machine; they needed to understand their customers. They didn't need scale; they needed signal. They were so focused on building for the future that they forgot to build for today.
This experience forced me to completely rethink how I approach early-stage growth strategy. I started asking different questions: What's the fastest way to learn? What's the most direct path to revenue? What can we do today that will give us real feedback tomorrow?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that wake-up call, I developed a framework I now use with every early-stage client. Instead of starting with what scales, we start with what teaches. Here's the exact process I refined through dozens of client projects:
The Non-Scaleable First Framework:
Step 1: Map Your Learning Priorities
Before choosing any tactic, identify your biggest unknowns. Do you know who your ideal customer is? Do you understand their buying process? Can you predict what messaging will resonate? Most founders think they know these things but discover they're wrong the moment they start talking to real people.
With my SaaS client, we listed our top uncertainties: Who actually has budget for this? What's their current painful workflow? Who influences the buying decision? How long is their evaluation process? These questions became our targeting criteria for non-scaleable tactics.
Step 2: Choose Direct-Response Tactics
I prioritize tactics that give immediate, qualitative feedback over those that provide delayed, quantitative data. This means:
One-on-one conversations over automated surveys
Personal LinkedIn outreach over broad-targeting paid ads
Manual email sequences over automated drip campaigns
Direct phone calls over contact form submissions
In-person demos over self-service trials
Step 3: Implement the "100 Before 1000" Rule
This is my core principle: get 100 meaningful interactions through non-scaleable methods before you try to automate anything. With the SaaS client, this meant the founder personally reaching out to 100 potential customers—not through marketing automation, but through genuine, individual conversations.
Here's what those 100 conversations taught us that no amount of market research could have revealed:
The real decision-maker was usually one level higher than we thought
Our assumed pain point wasn't actually painful enough to drive purchase decisions
Customers needed a completely different onboarding flow than what we'd built
The language we used in marketing didn't match how customers described their problems
Step 4: Document Everything That Works
The goal isn't to stay manual forever—it's to build a foundation for intelligent automation. I have clients document every successful interaction: which opening messages get responses, what objections come up repeatedly, which demos lead to closes, what follow-up timing works best.
This documentation becomes the blueprint for eventual scaling. Instead of guessing what to automate, you're systematizing what you've proven works manually.
Step 5: Scale Only Proven Patterns
After 100+ manual interactions, clear patterns emerge. That's when—and only when—we start building automation. But now we're automating proven processes, not theoretical ones.
For the SaaS client, this eventually meant: automated LinkedIn connection requests using the exact messaging that worked manually, email sequences based on conversations that consistently led to demos, and content topics pulled directly from the most common customer questions.
The result? Within six months, they had a repeatable system that generated 50+ qualified leads monthly—all built on the foundation of non-scaleable tactics that taught them what actually worked.
Validation Speed
Non-scaleable tactics give you immediate feedback from real customers instead of delayed metrics from anonymous users.
Learning Depth
Manual interactions reveal the ""why"" behind customer behavior that automated analytics can never capture.
Resource Efficiency
It's cheaper to test with 100 manual interactions than to build and optimize complex funnels that might not work.
Foundation Building
Non-scaleable work creates the knowledge base needed to build effective automation later.
The transformation was dramatic and happened faster than anyone expected. Within three months of switching to non-scaleable tactics, my SaaS client had completely rewritten their product positioning, identified their real target market, and built a sales process that consistently converted.
Here are the specific results we achieved:
Customer Discovery: 100 one-on-one conversations revealed 3 distinct buyer personas we hadn't anticipated
Messaging Clarity: Direct feedback led to a complete homepage rewrite that improved demo conversion by 340%
Product-Market Fit: Manual demos identified 2 critical features customers needed that weren't on our roadmap
Sales Process: Personal outreach created a repeatable framework that worked for the entire sales team
But the most valuable result wasn't measurable: confidence. The founder went from guessing about customer needs to knowing exactly who they served and why. This clarity influenced every subsequent decision, from product development to hiring to fundraising.
When we eventually did build automation, it performed 3x better than our initial "sophisticated" approach because it was based on proven human interactions rather than theoretical customer journeys.
The timeline surprised everyone. While the original complex funnel had taken months to build and failed to generate results, the non-scaleable approach started producing qualified leads within the first week and paying customers within the first month.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this approach with dozens of clients, here are the most important lessons I've learned about choosing non-scaleable tactics first:
Speed of learning beats elegance of execution. A clunky manual process that teaches you something new every day is infinitely more valuable than a polished automation that generates predictable mediocrity.
Your first instincts about customers are probably wrong. Every founder thinks they understand their market, but non-scaleable tactics consistently reveal gaps between assumptions and reality.
The most powerful insights come from unexpected places. Automated systems give you the data you expect; manual interactions reveal the insights you never thought to measure.
Timing matters more than you think. Most founders wait too long to start manual outreach and transition to automation too early. The sweet spot is usually 100-200 successful manual interactions.
Documentation is your scaling foundation. Non-scaleable tactics only work if you're systematically capturing what you learn. Otherwise, you're just working hard, not working smart.
Resistance is often fear in disguise. When founders resist manual tactics, it's usually because they're afraid of rejection or uncomfortable with direct sales. Push through this—the discomfort is where the learning happens.
Scaleable solutions built on non-scaleable foundations perform exponentially better. Automation that replicates proven human interactions will always outperform automation built on theoretical frameworks.
If I could go back and advise my younger self, I'd say: stop trying to be sophisticated and start trying to be helpful. The market doesn't care about your elegant systems—it cares about whether you understand and can solve real problems.
The companies that win are the ones that get this right: they use non-scaleable tactics to learn fast, then use that knowledge to build automation that actually works. Everything else is just expensive procrastination.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, focus on these non-scaleable tactics first:
Personal LinkedIn outreach to ideal customers
One-on-one product demos and feedback sessions
Manual email follow-ups based on demo conversations
Direct phone calls to trial users who don't convert
Founder-led customer development interviews
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores, prioritize these manual approaches:
Personal customer service calls to understand pain points
Manual social media engagement with target customers
One-on-one styling or product recommendation sessions
Direct outreach to potential brand partners and affiliates
Manual email responses to abandoned cart customers