$450K from 87 text messages - sounds ridiculous, right?
Last week, I was in a session with a client who’s killing it.
They’ve built an incredible business. Solid revenue. Strong leadership. Scaling fast.
Amongst several since our last session, there was one critical business win I had to share—for them it was a revelation.
$450,000 in revenue.
From 87 outbound automated text messages.
Not AI. Not some groundbreaking tech stack.
Just good old-fashioned process mapping, simple automations (OK basic AI was used), and targeted SMS marketing.
The AI Hype Trap (And Why We’re Getting It Wrong)
Right now, AI is so hot it’s cooling down.
We’re obsessed with what’s possible without figuring out what actually needs fixing.
I started an AI platform company - Ambit back in 2017. Scaled it, then exited it.
The issues from then persist today: here’s what most businesses get wrong when they jump into AI:
They automate before they even understand the process.
They don’t define the actual problem they’re solving.
They have no clear success metric—so they don’t know if it’s working.
The result is tech being thrown at problems that don’t exist.
Meanwhile, my client did something different.
The $450K Play: What Really Happened
Before we even thought about automation, my client’s team mapped out their core business processes.
I won’t lie—this part wasn’t glamorous. It felt like a slog, and they resisted it at first.
But within weeks, they spotted gold.
They found massive inefficiencies—human bottlenecks doing work that machines should’ve handled.
So, we ran a test.
We sent a simple text message stream to a segment of the right prospects, at the right time, with the right offer.
The result? 87 conversions. $450,000 in unplanned revenue.
No extra hires. No fancy finicky AI. Just better systems.
The Business Lesson: Get the Basics Right Before Scaling
Most businesses want shortcuts. But the biggest wins come from fixing fundamentals first.
Some things I’ve learnt over the years:
Process before automation. If you don’t understand the system, don’t automate it.
Drucker tells us that what you measure gets managed. Know your metrics and set meaningful targets that are frequently reported on.
Interrogate the hell out of the problem before starting. Frequently a subsidiary issue is focused on; get to the root cause and solve this!
If it’s not obvious, a critical part of my work is in helping organisations optimise their business through great processes, then systems, before automation.
Let me know if you’d like to learn more about this.
