🧞♂️ New to Exponential Scale? Each week, I provide tools, tips, and tricks for tiny teams with big ambitions that want to scale big. For more: Exponential Scale Podcast | Scalebrate | Scalebrate Hub
Founding Supporters: Support the following people and companies because they supported us from the beginning: DataEI | Dr. Bob Schatz | .Tech Domains | Fairman Studios | Jean-Philippe Martin | RocketSmart AI | UMBC
In this Week's Newsletter
Latest Podcasts: What You Missed
The 10 Money Skills Every Microteam Should Master - You’re great at what you do. But if the money side of your business feels confusing, stressful, or weirdly fragile, this episode is required listening.
What Can You Learn from 22 Microteam Success Stories? (…Plus 1) - Real microteams, real results, and the repeatable patterns behind outsized growth with tiny teams… and one notable failure.
Interview with Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier - How Zapier scaled with leverage, automation, and focus instead of hiring and organizational bloat.
Interview with Fabian Veit, CEO of Make - How advanced automation helps microteams remove busywork and scale faster without added headcount.
The Week in Exponential Scale (In Case You Missed It)
Miss a few Daily issues while actually running your business? We’ve got you.
Here’s a quick skim of everything we shipped in the Daily newsletter last week.
Free Daily Drops
Data Entry Abolition: Automating Information Flow Stop copy-pasting data between systems and build automated information flows that eliminate manual data entry completely—because if you're still moving data by hand in 2026, you're hemorrhaging time and creating errors.
Automate Lead Scoring and CRM Updates Set up AI-powered lead scoring that automatically updates your CRM based on engagement signals so your sales team knows exactly who to call first without manually reviewing every interaction.
Pre-Launch Chat: Install a Live Chat on Your Landing Page Before You Have a Product Talk to potential customers before you build anything by adding live chat to your pre-launch page—capture the conversations that tell you exactly what to build and who will pay for it.
Email Drip Campaigns: Nurture Leads While You Sleep Build email sequences that automatically nurture leads from first touch to paying customer while you focus on higher-leverage work—set it once, let it run forever, and wake up to warmed-up prospects ready to buy.
Emma Chamberlain: The Authentic Path to DTC E-Commerce Learn how an awkward YouTube teenager turned authenticity into a $10M coffee empire by building a brand that refuses to act like a traditional company—and why her approach works better than any polished marketing playbook.
Email Marketing Tools, Templates & Sequence Builders: 30 Resources for Microteams A curated list of every email marketing tool, pre-built template, and sequence builder you'll actually use—from free open-source options to premium platforms, with honest assessments of what works for microteams.
The Data Entry Abolition Toolkit Step-by-step automation blueprints to eliminate manual data entry across your most common workflows—includes Zapier templates, API integration guides, and the exact systems to sync your tools without touching spreadsheets.
The Automated Lead Scoring Toolkit A complete lead scoring model with automation workflows that track engagement signals and update your CRM in real-time so sales always knows who's hot and who's not.
The Pre-Launch Chat Toolkit Scripts, setup guides, and conversation frameworks to run effective pre-launch chats—includes question prompts that uncover real pain points and buying intent before you write a single line of code.
The Email Drip Campaign Toolkit Ready-to-deploy email sequences for onboarding, nurturing, upselling, and re-engagement—copy, customize, and launch in your email platform within an hour.
The Authentic DTC Playbook A framework for building a DTC brand that wins through authenticity instead of polish—includes positioning templates, content guidelines, and the anti-corporate playbook that actually converts Gen Z and Millennial customers.
Creativity + Science = Ads that perform
Join award-winning strategist Babak Behrad and Neurons CEO Thomas Z. Ramsøy for a strategic, practical webinar on what actually drives high-impact advertising today. Learn how top campaigns capture attention, build memory, and create branding moments that stick. It’s all backed by neuroscience, and built for real-world creative teams.
This Week's Deep Dive: Ambitious... But Lazy
Confession time: I'm lazy.
Not "quit my job and play video games all day" lazy. But "I'd rather work 4 hours smart than 14 hours hard" lazy.
I want results. Big results. But I also want time. Time to think. Time to rest. Time to not be glued to my laptop at 11 PM answering emails.
Call it what you want: Strategic laziness. High-leverage thinking. Working smarter, not harder.
Here's the uncomfortable truth most hustle-culture gurus won't tell you:
Working 80-hour weeks doesn't make you successful. It makes you tired.
The most successful founders I know aren't the ones grinding themselves into the ground. They're the ones who figured out how to get 10x results with half the effort.
They're ambitious. But they're also... lazy.
And that's exactly why they win.
The Founder Who Scaled to $50K MRR Working 25 Hours a Week
Meet Jordan, founder of a 4-person B2B SaaS selling scheduling software to service businesses.
In year one, Jordan worked 70-hour weeks:
Manually onboarding every customer
Writing every email personally
Hopping on sales calls at all hours
Fixing every bug himself
Revenue: $8K MRR
Burnout level: 11/10
By month 14, Jordan was exhausted. He was ready to quit.
Then he had a realization: "I'm working harder, not smarter. What if I just... didn't do most of this?"
So Jordan made a list of everything he did in a week. Then he asked:
What happens if I stop doing this?
Can this be automated?
Can someone else do this better/faster/cheaper?
He cut, automated, and delegated 60% of his tasks.
What he stopped doing:
Manually onboarding customers → Built a self-serve onboarding flow with video tutorials
Writing every customer email → Created email templates and an FAQ doc
Taking every sales call → Implemented lead scoring and only talked to A-tier leads
Fixing every bug → Hired a part-time developer on contract
What he kept doing:
Product strategy (where to build next)
High-value sales calls (deals over $5K/year)
Customer feedback loops (talking to top customers monthly)
Result:
Revenue: $50K MRR (6x growth)
Hours worked per week: 25-30
Stress level: Way down
Business actually more sustainable
Jordan didn't work less because he gave up. He worked less because he got strategic.
He became ambitiously lazy.
What It Means to Be Ambitiously Lazy
Let's define it:
Ambitious: You want big outcomes. Revenue. Impact. Growth. Freedom.
Lazy: You refuse to do unnecessary work. You automate, delegate, and eliminate ruthlessly.
Ambitiously lazy = Maximum output with minimum input.
This isn't about slacking off. It's about focus.
It's about asking:
"What's the 20% of work that drives 80% of results?"
"What am I doing that literally doesn't matter?"
"How can I get the same outcome in half the time?"
Working hard is easy. Anyone can grind.
Working smart is hard. It requires thinking, systems, and discipline.
Ambitiously lazy founders:
Automate repetitive tasks
Say no to low-value work
Build systems that scale without them
Hire or outsource before they "feel ready"
Protect their time like it's their most valuable asset (because it is)
They're not lazy in the traditional sense. They're ruthlessly efficient.
The Ambitiously Lazy Playbook: 7 High-Leverage Strategies
Here's how to be ambitious without burning out: