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Doing Things that Don’t Scale
How the biggest wins often come from the unscalable work no one wants to do.
Luke Himmelsbach
February 26, 2025
In partnership with
Top of the mornin’ readers!
I hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far, and we’re feeling ready to roll into March (how did we get here?).
I’m feeling a bit under the weather today, so no long, runaround intro in this issue, but I did want to thank you readers who have been sticking around through the evolutions of this newsletter.
We’ve gone in many different directions, and we’re a long way from where we started, but that’s what growth is all about.
It’s not about the most efficient route, it’s not about getting to the end goal, it’s about exploring what makes you tick creatively.
That’s why this week, I want to talk about the kind of work that isn’t flashy, efficient, or scalable, but still makes all the difference. Thanks for tuning in!
-Luke
Doing Things that Don’t Scale
If you spend enough time in the startup space, you’ll hear one piece of advice over and over: do things that don’t scale. It’s almost cliché at this point, but admittedly, it’s one of those rare clichés that actually holds up.
Whether you’re building a startup or growing as a creator, the best opportunities often come from the things that shouldn’t work at scale. No one wants to do those hands-on, inefficient tasks that haven’t been automated yet, but in my experience, they’re exactly what leads to continued growth.
For creators, that might look like responding to every comment, personally reaching out to followers, or tailoring pitches to brands instead of blasting out a template. For founders, it might mean manually onboarding users, cold-emailing potential customers one by one, or offering an absurd level of personal support.
None of these things scale, yet they’re often what makes the difference.
Because algorithms change. Ads get expensive. Cold outreach loses effectiveness. But relationships, real relationships, built through effort and passion continue to pay off long after they should.
When I look at the wins I’ve had, whether in content, in my startup, or just in life, so many of them trace back to things I did that made no logical sense from a scalability standpoint.
The best partnerships? Came from reaching out personally.
The best opportunities? Came from saying yes to something that didn’t seem worth the time.
The best growth? Came from showing up, engaging, and trying every possible approach to make it work
Doing things that don’t scale won’t always lead to instant success, but it builds the type of foundation that makes scaling possible in the first place.
So if you’re hesitating to take that extra step, have that conversation, or put in the effort where others wouldn’t, do it anyway.
Sometimes, the best results come from the least efficient work.
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