Trying to scale too early kept me stuck.

Hey everyone, this is Allan. I’m talking about how I messed up a lot over the past few years while working as a freelancer and trying to build a career as a developer.

Inspiration

I got the idea for this video from a talk I watched yesterday called “Do Things That Don’t Scale.” It was recorded by Bruno Fagion. He usually makes videos in Portuguese, but he also posts in English under his brand Crafting Cases. I liked his point that, most of the time, it’s better to start with things that don’t scale before you try to scale them. That made me realize many of my past mistakes came from being too anxious about scaling my business or my income. The anxiety actually made me earn less and forced me to start many things from zero.

Freelance Journey

I started freelancing in 2022 as a designer, creating social‑media posts and websites. I quickly saw that I wasn’t very good at it, I had only taken a few courses. Meanwhile, other designers who started after me were improving faster than I was. I then shifted toward more technical work, learning how to build pages with Elementor and use WordPress. By 2023 I decided to learn programming and become a developer. Within a few months I landed my first front‑end projects, mainly landing pages, because that was the easiest way to get started. After a year of studying, I expanded into back‑end frameworks, and now, with AI, I can handle most of the work on my own. I taught myself to code without relying solely on AI, but the transition was messy.

Scaling Mistakes

I made several poor decisions along the way. For example, before I quit my design work I could have raised my rates, but I didn’t, and I ended up with no design jobs. In 2024 I grew impatient with Elementor, declared it “really bad,” and decided to stop working with WordPress altogether. I quit the contract I had as a service provider for an agency that created Elementor pages, and I tried to start from scratch getting clients for custom‑coded websites. I thought that coding would let me work less time for more money, but that turned out to be the wrong idea. I also tried to launch SaaS projects without really understanding the business side, and those ideas never took off.

Lesson Learned

Bruno’s video reminded me that it’s better to do things that don’t scale first. If I want to build a SaaS, I should first provide services in that area, learn the real problems people face, and only then create a solution. Understanding the problems requires direct contact with the people who have them. In the past I skipped that step and jumped straight to the “scalable” thing, which left me stuck.

Practical Example

The best illustration of this principle for me was mentoring a friend who wanted to use AI and cloud code in his business. I could have recorded a course, put it on my channel, and spent money on ads, but instead I chose to work closely with a friend, see the issues a beginner faces, and iterate with him. After almost three weeks of mentoring, the experience has been far better than I expected.

If you’re in a similar spot, just starting out or thinking about changing the way you work, take small steps and focus on the non‑scalable tasks first. They’ll give you the insight you need before you try to scale.