From zero to 40 leads a day with one tiny automation team

In our first Business Insights Series conversation, Theo Moulos shared how “growth hacking is a mindset, not a tactic.” That article explored the origins of growth hacking and its evolution into a whole-business philosophy. But our second conversation went even deeper. We talked about systems. We talked inbound. We talked about the hard stuff no one wants to say out loud: that working on the business often feels like neglecting the business.

Theo is the Chief Strategist at Growth Hackers Inc. and CEO of GrowthRocks, and in this second interview, he took me on a tour of the systems and thinking that power his businesses. From inbound automation to founder mindset, this one’s full of real talk and tangible takeaways for small business owners trying to scale sustainably.

But as we’ll explore, the conversation around systems has evolved dramatically. What Theo pioneered with traditional automation tools now represents just the foundation for what’s possible with AI-powered operations.

If you’ve already read our article on Holistic Growth, you’ll notice the theme carries over here. Where that piece focused on alignment across the front and behind of operations, this one shows you how automation and AI elevate that alignment into true scale.

Let’s dive in.

Why are systems your real unfair advantage

Theo didn’t pull any punches: “Don’t wait to be big to start building systems… That will lead you to be big.” This hit home for me. As a business that helps others with digital transformation, we had the plans for automation systems. But plans are not systems. Systems are working things. They don’t just sit in documents or slide decks: they live, breathe, and evolve.

Here’s the simple truth: systems aren’t a reward for growing big, they’re how you grow in the first place. For small businesses, especially, the right systems can save hours, reduce friction, and turn messy processes into a smooth engine for growth. They’re not a luxury. They’re the vehicle that gets you moving in the right direction.

“We are orders of magnitude smaller than you, but we spend orders of magnitude more managing things manually. And that’s the cost of not having the systems in place,” I told Theo.

His reply? Simple: start now. His stack is lean: Elementor, WordPress, Go High Level, ChatGPT Pro, and Zapier. That’s it. No fancy enterprise platform or custom codebase. With just 0.5 FTEs nurturing their lead pipeline, they handle over 40 daily engagements. “Everything is automated,” he said. “Even our newsletter is curated and pushed with just 15 minutes of work a day.”

He showed me how this isn’t just about convenience, it’s about mindset. Every daily touchpoint becomes an opportunity to automate, optimise, and grow. Newsletter prep is templated. Lead notifications arrive enriched. Even social media content and blogs are partly systematised through these tools. “I haven’t had a single day in the last years where I didn’t update or improve something on the website,” he told me. That level of obsession is what fuels scale.

It reminded me: automation isn’t about replacing people. It’s about freeing them to create, to think, and to grow.

The next evolution: AI-powered systematic operations

While Theo’s approach represents the foundation of systematic business operations, recent case studies show us what the next level looks like. Consider this: Theodore’s agency made the decision to “go all in” on AI systems nearly a year ago, treating it as a core business investment rather than a side project.

Their approach was surgical and systematic. They split their efforts into three dedicated teams, each tackling a critical layer of their new operating model:

AI Assistants & Media Innovation Team – This team built the creative engine, exploring and deploying cutting-edge tools for audio, video, and content production. They operate in “the last mile,” integrating tools via APIs, chaining AI steps, and ensuring ideas turn into production-ready assets. Their milestone? An automated news bulletin reaching 120,000+ subscribers with a 30% open rate.

Developer Velocity & Infrastructure Team – Leveraging platforms like Cursor, Supabase, Lovable, and Vercel, they build blazing-fast web apps, plugins, and Chrome extensions. Their work integrates deeply with marketing automation stacks, using listeners, webhooks, and smart database connections. The result? They now build in 5 days what used to take months.

Autonomous AI Agents Team – This team designed and deployed autonomous agents embedded in daily workflows, handling everything from social media posting to paid advertising and strategic growth initiatives. The impact? It feels like they onboarded 40 additional full-time team members without actually hiring anyone.

What makes this evolution powerful isn’t just the technology but the systematic approach. These aren’t isolated tools but integrated systems that collaborate, learn, and scale across teams and projects. This isn’t just automation; it’s autonomy with intelligence.

Inbound systems: Don’t wait for leads to start building

Theo’s biggest advice? “Don’t build the inbound system because you have inbound leads. Build it so you can get inbound leads.” That might sound obvious, but it’s where most of us trip.

I shared how Serenichron has primarily relied on outbound. We have enrichment processes, segmentation, and custom outreach flows. But no matter how good outbound is, it’s manual by design. Inbound creates compounding benefits: people come to you, the system handles qualification, and you just show up at the right time.

Inbound marketing works because it meets people where they are. Instead of shouting louder with ads, it quietly builds trust by solving real problems. Across nearly every industry, the strategy is the same: create something genuinely useful, let people come to you, and make their experience count.

Theo gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of how inbound is truly done. Everything in GrowthRocks and Growth Hackers routes through Slack, where the team lives daily. “Slack is our home base. All notifications go there: submissions, downloads, subscriptions. Even the preview of a lead’s website appears there automatically,” he explained. It means no toggling between inboxes or CRMs, just actionable insight in one place.

The moment someone downloads a resource or signs up, the system pulls their LinkedIn profile, job title, industry, and even their location. From there, connections and conversations begin fast. “We’ve set up dynamic enrichment so we know exactly who’s engaging and what they’re interested in. It’s all about speed and context,” Theo said.

And this doesn’t stop at lead scoring. Newsletter sponsorships are also tracked, automated, and monetised via their Beehive integration. The same inbound system that brings in leads also brings in revenue.

“We get 40+ interactions per day and only need 0.5 employees to handle it because the system does the heavy lifting,“ he said.

If you’re always reacting, you’re not scaling. You’re surviving. And survival doesn’t build pipelines.

The investment mindset: playing offence, not defence

Here’s where the conversation gets real. Building these systems, whether traditional automation or AI-powered operations, requires a fundamental shift in mindset. It’s not about dabbling or experimenting on the surface but about making deep, foundational investments that don’t just prepare you for the future, they give you an edge right now.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in systems. The question is: What if you could actually afford to go all in, and didn’t? What would that say about you? What would be left of you a year from now?

This is the paradox many founders face. You know you need better systems, but building them feels like taking resources away from delivery, from client work, from immediate revenue. Yet the companies that break through this paradox, that treat systematic operations as core business investment rather than overhead, are the ones that scale sustainably.

As Theo put it: “We invest today to exist tomorrow. But this investment isn’t just preparing us for what’s next, it’s already making us better today.”

Was it risky? Sure. Was it expensive? Definitely. But what was the alternative? Not investing and disappearing a year from now?

The paradox of working on the business

Business owners live in a daily tug-of-war: get through the urgent tasks or step back to shape the bigger picture? You need both. But too often, the day-to-day wins. Answering emails, handling client work, and solving small fires, it’s easy to stay busy but not move forward. On the flip side, ignoring operations to dream up strategy can leave you blindsided when the engine stalls. The real challenge? Finding a rhythm where strategy and execution fuel each other instead of pulling you in opposite directions.

I brought up the classic advice: work on the business, not in the business. But Theo challenged that, hard. “Every time that I was working on the business and not in the business, the business suffered. People say that, but they don’t realise what that really means.”

He’s right. It sounds smart until you feel the pinch. We all admire strategy days and vision boards, but stepping away from delivery, especially in a service business, has consequences. Clients still need things. Bills still come due.

“When you go to events and pitch your startup, you get a lot of opinions from gurus who have only spent 10 minutes with your business. If you keep chasing advice instead of building, you’ll never have something real,” Theo warned.

The conclusion? Balance is a moving target. You do need time on the business. But not if it costs the engine that pays the bills. Systems help close that gap. They buy you time without robbing the business.

This is where AI-powered systems become transformative. They don’t just automate existing processes; they can actually think in systems, handling complex, multi-step workflows that previously required constant human oversight. The result? You’re not choosing between working on or in the business. The systems handle much of the “in the business” work, freeing you to focus on growth and strategy.

Don’t spin off, integrate

Another trap Theo warned about was SaaS temptation. “Every time I build something, I fall in love with it and think it deserves all my time. But most of the time, it doesn’t,” he said. The lesson? Just because a new tool or product feels exciting doesn’t mean it’s time to jump ship.

His advice: test your ideas, but don’t abandon the business that funds you. New projects need to earn their spotlight.

One of the most personal parts of our conversation was about chasing ideas. Theo admitted he used to spin off every new idea with a new team. On paper, it worked. In practice, it broke things. Investors began questioning his commitment to the core business, and the performance of both the main company and the spinoffs suffered in his absence.

“I was losing my best guys to new projects. The main business suffered. I missed them, and they missed me,” he said. Eventually, he brought everything back under one roof. Instead of spinoffs, they now integrate ideas into the main business.

While spinning off might look good on paper, especially in corporate playbooks, it rarely delivers the value founders expect, as research shows. Theo’s experience reminded me why. The theory sounds solid: create a separate company to give a new idea room to grow. But without a clear and compelling reason why it would perform better independently, you’re just multiplying your workload and diluting your focus. It’s easy to forget that every new venture still needs your time, your judgment, and your energy to thrive.

This was gold. Many founders think focus means ignoring ideas. But Theo’s approach, test internally, build it for yourself, and scale what works, avoids the trap. It’s not about saying no to new ideas. It’s about saying yes, intelligently.

Pipeline is positioning, not luck

Theo also spoke passionately about the importance of content density across multiple properties. “We have 37 different properties. Our main website and 32 others all connect the dots. People search for different things and end up with us,” he said. That strategy, which he jokingly called a “micro monopoly,” means no matter what niche someone explores, one of his sites can meet them there.

Theo showed me the live feed of his leads flowing in, dozens per day. It looks like magic until you see the machinery behind it. What makes it even more impressive? The entire engagement pipeline is managed by just 0.5 FTEs (full-time employee equivalent) thanks to automation.

“We’re not lucky. We’ve built systems that tell us everything: who visited, what they downloaded, their LinkedIn profile, industry, and location. And then we can act instantly,” he explained.

What struck me was how deliberate it all is. Every asset, every landing page, every content piece plays a role in capturing, qualifying, and nurturing leads.

At Serenichron, we’ve always helped clients do this. And honestly, we’ve learned what systems to build by doing the work, delivering results, solving pain points, and getting our hands dirty with real-world challenges. But like they say, the cobbler’s son had no shoes. Until recently, our site was a one-pager. No trust signals. No funnel. That’s changing now.

As I said to Theo: “This Business Insight Series is not just content. It’s a transformation engine, for us as much as for others.”

The competitive reality: build with AI or get built over

Here’s the uncomfortable truth that’s emerged in the past year: there’s a narrow window of opportunity to make deep, foundational investments in AI-powered systems. Most companies are still dabbling, experimenting on the surface, talking a lot but shipping very little.

But that window won’t stay open forever. The companies making these investments now, treating AI integration as a core business strategy rather than a side project, are already seeing the results. They’re the ones handling complex projects in days rather than months. They’re the ones operating with the efficiency of teams twice their size. They’re the ones that clients approach, saying, “How the hell did you ship that in 48 hours?”

The lesson for founders, marketers, and agencies is clear: Don’t wait for AI-powered systems to become “standard practice.” By then, it’ll be too late.

What started as moves to future-proof businesses has become a competitive advantage. Companies thought they were playing defence. In reality, they were playing offence all along, moving first, experimenting early, making tough calls, and learning fast.

Now, companies and agencies are coming to these early adopters, asking them to implement similar systems or train their teams on these foundational elements.

Conclusion: Systems unlock the next level

What Theo made crystal clear is that scaling isn’t just about team size or revenue. It’s about systems. Systems that run when you’re not watching. Systems that free your team. Systems that make growth consistent, not accidental.

“Think systems. Even if you don’t have leads, you need the system ready for when they come. Because when they do, you’ll either be ready, or overwhelmed,” Theo said.

But as we’ve seen, the definition of “systems” has evolved dramatically. Traditional automation tools like Zapier and Go High Level represent the foundation. AI-powered operations represent the next level, where systems don’t just automate processes but think systematically, handle complex workflows, and operate with genuine autonomy.

The companies that understand this evolution, that invest in both traditional automation and AI-powered systems, are the ones positioning themselves not just for survival but for dominance in their markets.

Whether you start with Theo’s lean automation stack or jump into AI-powered operations, the principle remains the same: systems first, size second. The window for this transformation is open now, but it won’t stay that way forever.

“You either build with systems, or you get built over.“

And he’s right. If you’re a founder juggling client work and ideas, sales and delivery, this isn’t about ambition. It’s about sanity, and increasingly, it’s about survival in a rapidly evolving business landscape.