I built a million-dollar business by showing up online and giving value first.
No sales team, no ad budget, no paid ads, just me, my expertise and a system that works.
That's Isabella Bedoya, founder of Izzy GPT, who turned AI into something productized and scalable
and built a 1.2 million-dollar business with no funding, no sales calls, no ads.
But that wasn't always the case.
I was one of the first agencies in the world to get a license to be able to
agents to automate sales and customer support.
I think we did like 200 calls and we were back to back to back to back for like two,
three weeks back to back calls.
And I think we closed two deals.
It was just like the worst thing.
Those two deals, we sold $20,000 each agent.
So we generated like $40,000 from all of that work.
But then I said, you know what, there's a better way.
And then that whole system, it generated us $150,000 with like not even that same amount of work.
What Isabella discovered next didn't just change her business.
In this episode, it challenges almost everything agencies believe
about where the real money is in AI.
There's a psychological factor in sales.
Getting the first dollar out of your clients is always like the hardest,
but getting the second is usually 90% easier.
How that realization led to a very specific shift in what she sold,
how she packaged it, and how she differentiated in a crowded AI market.
The biggest gold rush is when you productize your AI agents and your AI employees.
Analysts estimate like a multi-trillion dollar services market is becoming productized.
Instead of just being another $2,000 a month agency,
now you're actually charging $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month.
And unpack her exact step-by-step system.
Agencies can copy and package and sell high-ticket AI offers.
You're probably spending money on paid ads that stop working the second they
and cold outreach that gets 2% reply rates, SEO that takes 12 months,
and Google owns that data anyways.
And maybe it's even referrals that you can't control or predict.
So I built a million dollar business just by doing none of that.
For agencies listening, which types of AI agents
are businesses paying the most for right now?
Yeah, so first one is speed to lead.
Speed to lead is basically if you're running ads, right?
When they opt in, usually have a human callback within 48 hours.
That's way too long.
So speed to lead is someone opts in, your AI agent calls right away.
So anyone that's running ads, that's an easy.
So if you're an agency actually selling ads, that's an easy add-on, right?
That's an upsell.
If you are, let's say another one is the receptionists.
So the receptionists, these are a little bit interesting
because some businesses might actually have like really extensive knowledge bases,
like 30 different things that they can do.
So if you are selling an AI receptionist,
just start with like a minimum viable agent essentially.
Just say like, okay, let's automate the top three questions that you get
or the top five questions that you get
and don't put all those services at once
because that is going to be like a big task.
But that's a really popular one, the AI receptionist.
So they call into the business and it just routes you to the right place.
And then the third one, I would say, so we have speed to lead.
The AI receptionist, the third one is the after hours, right?
The after hours for service businesses,
they don't have anyone to answer the phone.
They don't have anyone to answer on holidays.
So those are good agents that they can have,
that businesses can easily add on
and agencies can easily set up
to handle those inbound calls that are happening after hours.
What is the difference in your mind between an agency that's
billing $3,000 a month selling AI employees
and one that's billing $50,000 a month?
So the difference between an agency that's making $3,000 a month or $50,000 a month,
a lot of the times is the system.
It's not how big your audience is.
It's not how hard you're working,
how big your team is or what AI tools you're using.
It's having a proper system.
And the way that I figured it out is
you need to have a high ticket offer, right?
Something that people actually want to purchase
and high ticket so it actually funds the fulfillment.
This is where I use value-based pricing, right?
So we're creating value for a business.
Charging high ticket is not out of the question
and it just has to be appealing enough
and it has to be valuable enough for people to buy it.
Second thing is having an inbound lead generation system.
So you're not going out hunting for people.
People are finding you.
And when people find you, it's a way better sales process
because they're coming to you.
They're being attracted to your content.
They're building trust.
They're building maybe curiosity of what you do.
So when they reach out to you,
you have higher leverage because they're coming to you.
You're sending cold emails
and you're essentially getting replies like,
don't talk to me.
Go away.
Unsubscribe, right?
So having an inbound lead generation system
is very effective because of that
because you're building that trust and that brand equity.
And then the third thing is having an automated sales system.
So essentially something that can help you
not be on discovery calls.
And that could even look like you using
your own AI voice agents to take an initial discovery call.
If you are still setting up calls
and stuff like that for sales,
then you could just automate it by having
a discovery call agent to do the appointment qualification,
all of that, and then pass it on to a sales rep.
Or if you want to explore ways
that you can sell without sales calls,
then you can use more of a digital sales process
where you're taking them in maybe to a webinar
or a boot camp, train them on how you work,
educate them on your processes,
and then pass on to selling them something,
sharing an offer with them
while you have them in front of you.
So you sell one to many instead of one to one.
You've built your entire business around
a simple four step framework.
Can you walk us through how this works
specifically for agencies selling AI employees?
So because of this four step system,
I have generated over $1.2 million.
I have grown to over 47,000 followers on LinkedIn.
I have been featured on Forbes four different times
in Business Insider and a bunch of different publications
where it was all earned media.
They came to me.
I didn't have to go and pay PR to get published.
I think my content has been seen over 8 million times
and I've created also a strategic partner network
that reaches 15 million people
through all the partners that also share
my content and my offers.
The first step to the whole thing is like,
how do we attract more people?
And this is where normally people will run cold email,
they'll run ads,
maybe they'll even post on Instagram or on TikTok or whatever.
In this case, I figured back in 2023,
when I started going all in on AI,
I figured if I'm trying to attract business owners
and professionals, I want to build on LinkedIn.
And I had already been on Instagram for a few years.
I probably grew to like 2000 followers.
But on LinkedIn, I just started posting
all of my business insights.
I started posting like actual valuable posts.
I'll share with you a few examples.
The biggest name of the game here
is actually building a personal brand.
And the reason why you want to build a personal brand
is because there's only one of you.
And when you are sharing like your story,
your experiences, your lessons,
your wins, your losses, all of that,
the right people will find,
will not just like find you
and find your stuff maybe appealing,
but it will actually build that resonance
with your ideal clients.
For example, everybody knows Elon Musk,
and we all know Tesla, but we all know Elon Musk.
And nobody really knows that Elon Musk
owns like the Boring Company, right?
So it's like that personal brand is always going to be
one of the best assets that you can build for yourself.
You don't have to become a celebrity,
but at least if you're playing in the online space,
you're building an agency, you're building a business,
this is going to be a non-negotiable
as we continue going down this path.
So if you just want to make your client acquisition
more efficient, then building a personal brand,
posting content that attracts your clients,
attracts the right people,
attracts partners that actually want to work with you.
It attracts podcasts, joint ventures,
speaking gigs, whatever the case is,
you're attracting those, they're coming to you.
They already have some sort of trust
that they've built because of your content
and who you are.
So better deals will come to you.
And then you have that leverage that
because they want to work with you,
you also have the advantage that you can price higher
because it's you and it's you're only one person
versus being one of the many, right?
If an agency owner is starting from scratch on LinkedIn,
what types of posts should they be creating?
I post on LinkedIn daily.
Usually I use a 60-30-10 formula.
So basically it's a 60% pure value.
So this is where I share how to,
frameworks, breakdowns, how the funnels work.
These are just like deep dives
where I'm just educating what I've learned.
30% is usually story and lessons.
So this is like my story of how I've,
my story and like my lessons
that I've learned in entrepreneurship.
So it creates that resonance with people.
And then the last one is results and proof.
So basically this is just sharing like case studies
or like actual things that have happened
like client wins or whatever.
But yeah, it's basically if you keep that formula
and also one that's not mentioned is the 111 formula.
When you are posting content,
always talk about one problem, one solution
to one ideal client and have one offer.
And if you keep it consistent,
one problem, one solution, one ideal client, one offer,
you focus until you scale up to 1 million
and then you can start talking about
different offers and services and expand.
But keeping it like that focused
will help you grow a lot faster.
And then the other thing is a hook.
If you don't have a good hook in the first two lines,
people are gonna scroll past your post.
So what I do is I have usually a strong hook
and of course I'll play around
and tweak these and all that.
But then I have usually like how like my theories work,
my actual strategies work and all of that.
And that's essentially what this post is doing.
But then what I do at the end
is usually I'll have some sort of call to action.
And the call to action, I never share links.
Instead what I do is I tell people to comment below.
So and then a carousel, this is a carousel basically.
These get like a lot of engagement on LinkedIn.
On the second page, I added an offer with a QR code.
So now I'm attracting people, I'm getting their attention,
I'm providing value, I'm building trust,
I'm building more of that personal rapport.
I'm telling them to comment
so I can get people actually commenting in the comments.
And then I'm giving them something to convert into
within the post without violating any of LinkedIn's
rules or how they would normally like you know
throttle the post if you put the link in the comments.
If you know Alex Ramosi, he's a big proponent of this, right?
Like just give everything away.
I'm not saying give everything away,
but like just give enough that will attract people,
that you'll build trust.
And they'll start building a relationship with you.
And then naturally they'll want to take the next step.
It looks like you've made an incredible system.
And it's not extremely complicated,
but it's terribly focused and efficient it seems.
At capturing and converting customers.
Tell us a little bit about that.
For example, when we were doing the voice agents,
I would give snippets away.
Like I would say like I figured out how to automate like
how to automate.
If you're running ads, I figured out how to automate
not losing that person that opted in.
So it's like speed to lead, right?
So it would just be that specific solution
instead of saying here's the whole thing
of how you automate the whole thing.
So it's just finding very specific examples
that it doesn't even have to be like giving away
the most important part.
It could just be like,
here's five emails that I sent that got me appointments.
Here's a funnel that I used
that generated X amount of money, right?
It's like it's sharing little tidbits
because it's gonna increase people saying,
wait, how did you do that?
Can you do it for me?
Because most people don't want to do it themselves.
And that's where like agencies come in, right?
We all have the power now of like,
oh, we can actually do this for you.
So it's just figure out,
I'm not saying like for any agency owner, right?
I'm gonna say like go in and start a whole new offering.
Just figure out from your current process.
What are steps that you can either give away
a little snippet that people are gonna say,
how do I do it for myself now?
Can you do it for me?
And then that's essentially what you want to trigger.
Some people want like, they'll want like case studies, right?
Like here's a case study of how I did this.
And the cool thing about case studies
is that you don't necessarily have to start
with like your own success stories.
When I was trying to break into the SaaS space
and like see if I could attract anyone in this space,
I did case studies on like other companies and other tools.
And it was just my analysis of like how I saw it work.
And that's enough to like also build trust
until you get your own case studies.
But people like case studies,
they like to see like how other people or competitors
are doing the things that they want to achieve.
If you can build calculators, there's tools that,
there's like a lot of vibe coding tools
that you can use to build calculators, quizzes.
Quizzes are also really effective
because first it's an ego boost for them, right?
Like let me see what I score,
but also for the person posting that as a lead magnet,
it also sort of like gives you insights
into who you're attracting.
All of these are on AI agents generated,
I think like $180,000 in like six weeks.
All of the agent ones, these are all the lead magnets.
So this one, this one, this one,
they all got launched around the same time.
It was all through LinkedIn content.
And then same strategy, I sent everyone to a boot camp,
then I sold them a, let me build your AI agents for you.
I priced it at like 8,000.
And then people just bought it without sales call
straight off the website.
Once you've captured people with your fantastic lead magnets,
following up with them and converting them
is the next job at hand.
And just like your four step system,
you've got a really simple
but focused and efficient follow up sequence.
Tell us a little bit about that.
The first email is usually like,
here's your download.
Second email is report building.
Hi, I'm Isabella, this is my track record.
Third email is like pain point awareness.
Fourth email is like starting to convert.
Fifth email, convert.
Sixth email, testimonial.
Seventh email, convert.
Last call.
One of the things, I track how much time
people spend on the resource,
which is why a lot of the resources
are links and not PDFs.
So I'll track how much time
people are spending on the resource.
Then I'll track some of those questions for opt-in.
It's like a Bant questioner,
so budget authority need and time,
timeline for solution.
So I'll ask that.
If I'm in discovery mode
and like what language do I need to be using,
then instead of doing Bant,
I'll do opt-in for the lead magnet.
And then what's your number one challenge
with this subject right now?
Why do you need an agent?
What's your number one challenge
that you think you need an AI agent?
And then people will tell you,
oh, it's the tech, it's this, it's that.
So then that feeds my marketing material.
So when I post content,
I create emails or whatever,
I use their language.
I'm like, oh, if you're dealing
with tool overwhelm,
here's five steps to do it.
And they told me that.
So I just use their language back
the people that are being attracted by all this.
This sounds really counterintuitive,
but you stopped doing sales calls.
So what replaced them?
I hate doing sales calls.
It's the worst thing ever.
And the reason why I don't like it
is because it almost becomes
like this big task.
It's like a big time draining task.
Usually it's the sales call.
Typically it's five minutes of small talk,
35 minutes of asking questions
to qualify them to see how you can help them
to understand their problems.
Then it's 10 minutes of actually presenting the offer.
And then it's 10 minutes,
usually of overcoming objections.
And if you're doing this from a cold audience,
even more because they don't trust you.
So I didn't like that
because I felt like it was always a game
of like who has a bigger,
almost like a bigger ego
to out overcome the objections or like,
it just comes from a place of power.
I didn't really like that.
I don't really want to be the type of person
that's convincing people to work with me.
If you don't see the value,
you don't see the value.
When I started the voice agency,
when I merged it with someone else,
our first few calls,
like we did, I think we had like 200 calls.
I posted on LinkedIn.
The post went viral.
It booked us like 200 or 300 calls on our calendar.
And we were back to back to back to back
for like two, three weeks, back to back calls.
And I think we closed two deals
and it was just like the worst thing.
And those two deals,
we sold $20,000 each agent.
So we generated like $40,000 from all of that work.
But then I said, you know what?
There's a better way.
So I introduced my old partner to my bootcamp system.
And I'm like, I'm going to post content.
I'm going to drive them to a LinkedIn to a bootcamp.
And then I'm going to upsell them
into buying our agents.
And then that whole system,
it generated us $150,000
with like not even that same amount of work.
So I was just like, this is ridiculous.
We're spending all this time getting on sales calls
when we can just do a bootcamp once a month
or maybe even like once every three weeks or something.
And then upsell them to our high ticket offer
without having to get on all these calls.
It's just so much better of a process.
You use low ticket bootcamps instead of discovery calls.
Why does that work so well for warming people up?
A bootcamp is like a $47 a month type of offer.
Sorry, not a month, a $47 virtual event.
I'll usually do this like once a month.
And that virtual event is usually like a three day,
it's like a three day, one hour a day training.
And I'll teach them like how to go from point A to point B
of a really specific challenge really, really fast.
So basically it's three days and those three days
they get like a little training.
And then those three days,
my whole purpose is to actually like show them
and educate them on what my services are doing.
So this is essentially just like an education layer
that I added so that when people are coming
and warm for my content, this three day bootcamp
really, really warms them up into like,
okay, what am I actually missing for my business?
At one point I showed how to use AI as a personal coach.
So this is just one of the offers.
So I just build a funnel.
And then if I just scroll down here
just to go through the pricing.
Or is it?
Here we go.
So basically it's three days
and those three days they get like a little training.
And then those three days my whole purpose
is to actually like show them and educate them
on what my services are doing.
So this is essentially just like an education layer
that I added so that when people are coming
and warm for my content, this three day bootcamp
really, really warms them up into like,
okay, what am I actually missing for my business?
And then so I'll have like the actual bootcamp $47.
And then I'll have some sort of upsell
to try to increase the cart value.
And usually I'll put that at like $199.
Now this is, I don't know if I have another one
that's active right now.
Let's see.
Yep.
Vibe coding, right?
So I did one on how to build apps.
And then, yeah, the whole thing.
It just tells you, it walks you through a whole thing.
Build it on how to build apps.
So my content for that whole week or that whole month
was around like vibe coding and building apps
and stuff like that.
And then the backend when we're in the bootcamp
then I'll say, oh, and here you can see
I'm also testing your own pricing, right?
I'm saying like, well, what if I do VIP general?
What if I do add-on?
So I'm constantly testing, just see what works.
But the thing about this bootcamp
is that it's creating this,
there's a psychological factor in sales.
Getting the first dollar out of your clients
is always like the hardest,
but getting the second is usually 90% easier.
So the whole ideology is
what if I can just educate them,
get them in my circle,
get access to me for like a few days,
actually make it live.
They can ask me questions.
I'll provide a lot of value
so that we can build that trust
and that connection a lot faster.
So now on day three, when I pitch an offer
and it's pretty much just here's my service, right?
Like here and here's how it works.
And it's like some sort of high ticket offer,
3000, 5000, $10,000 offer, whatever the case is.
But because we spent three days together
and we have Q&A time,
it's essentially doing one sales call
for multiple people all at once
so that I don't have to then go on multiple sales calls
one by one and pitch the same thing over and over again.
And then when it comes time to like actually saying like,
okay, here's the next step, continue working with me.
It's just a no brainer
because now they know they have a problem
and now you're the right provider
that's in front of them that they built trust
and that like connection with the last few days.
You do a virtual event that eliminates
a lot of the resistance
and it also eliminates the fact of having
to do a bunch of one-to-one sales calls.
So what has to exist on a landing page or deal room
for someone to confidently buy
a high ticket AI employee without talking to you?
If you want to sell it without sales calls,
you have to be extremely like very focused
on your ideal client
because you literally have to lay everything out for them
so that it makes sense.
So if you're selling AI voice agents,
and you're trying to sell gym owners and realtors
and business loan brokers,
that's going to be all over the place.
It should only be focused to one specific person
and the term is called buyer's enablement.
So up until now we've all been
in a seller's enablement market.
I think like maybe two years ago
things started shifting
where now it should really be buyer's enablement.
So how do we enable our buyers to buy from us
because buying has changed.
And now people know that when they get on a call
they're going to be sold.
People hate getting on calls.
And then you just create a like a deal room.
It can be a PDF.
You can look at tools that create deal rooms
and that deal room you add everything that they need.
You add what is the value proposition?
What is their problems?
Why is this the solution for them?
How you can solve it?
What are some examples of how you solved it?
What is maybe an agent that they can play around with?
Everything that they need.
Everything that they need to make a proper decision.
So then usually at that point
it's like I fully understand it.
I usually put a chat bot on every landing page
and then essentially it'll just ask you
like you'll ask it whatever questions
but it's trained to be kind of like a ninja salesperson
because you'll ask like where do I find this?
And it's like, oh, go to page seven.
By the way, tell me more about your business, right?
So it's like doing that qualification.
It's still following the same sales principles.
It's just in a different way
that it doesn't have to be you doing it.
You've designed your system so people can buy without calls.
So if someone asked to hop on a call with you
what does that usually mean and how do you handle it?
So if they still want to jump on a sales call
I'll usually send them an email and ask them like
is there anything specific you want to talk about?
And then they'll say, oh, I want to talk about pricing.
I'm like, okay, what do you have in mind?
And then we'll kind of do that over email.
But if it's like they actually are pressing for a sales call
it usually isn't more than like 15 minutes
and those 15 minutes is really just to like get alignment
solidify the trust.
Like, are you actually going to do this?
Yes, I'm actually going to do this.
Okay, cool, right?
It's like that last little bit of trust.
But yeah, most of the times
I'll just try to continue to do it over email
and if I still I'm not able to do it over email
and I have to jump on a call
then it's usually about logistics.
At that point the people have already self-selected.
They already know it's for them
and it's just a matter of like
I just want to make sure you're a real person.
And it shouldn't take long.
It shouldn't be a whole objection handling game
or anything like that.
After you've sold the very first agent
a lot of agencies and the actual businesses themselves
that are using agents leave money on the table.
And so tell us what they can do as next steps
after the first one's live and successful.
Yeah, so if we start with like the first price point
the first price point is essentially like
how do we get them in the door?
And that's usually what I consider that to be
is usually the boot camp
or some sort of like low ticket training.
The immediate upsell is usually the
how I shared in the funnel, right?
I have like some sort of 199, 299 upsells
so I can increase the value ladder
or I mean the average cart value
and then after the boot camp
then I'll have some sort of like high ticket offer.
So now it's like let me build your agent
for like $8,000.
Let me do let me build you an app
an MVP for like 5k or something, right?
Like 10k even whatever.
But that backend upsell of the boot camp
it's usually a high ticket offer
and then the recurring revenue usually comes in
as like whatever the service might be.
If it is an agent then it's like okay
here's a recurring revenue.
Here's the maintenance plan for your agent.
It can be $500 a month.
It could be a couple of grand a month, right?
It really just depends on your offer.
And then after that I have the high ticket experience
so that people that have already gotten a lot of value
from all the other stuff
and they want to work at a closer capacity
then I started doing retreats last year
so we'll do on these like retreats
and then that can go those are like more premium offers
because now there's like a house that you have to rent
and private chef and logistics
and it's just bringing like a tight knit group of people
so it's more of like a mastermind retreat
and then we just talk about it's just like a few days
where we just like talk about how to grow the business
how to continue the growth.
I also help them figure out
like what agents we need to build on top
so I build them agents that like are replicas of them
they're AI avatars of them.
So that all comes baked in
and then the growth partnership
this is now if you actually want to become a growth partner
a growth partner is an offer
that you shouldn't have more than 10 of those
at any given time of the year
because if you have more than 10
like it's just going to be really hard to fulfill
so as a growth partner
you become an extension of their team
and you actually start doing work for them
and instead of just being another $2,000 a month agency
now you're actually charging $10,000 a month
$20,000 a month
but you're also getting revenue share
because these are like long-term business partnerships
it's not necessarily
it's something that you sign for the year
it's not something that you sign
for like a three month or a one month thing
and those growth partners those are awesome
because you definitely increase what you're worth
you increase your revenue
you increase your
you essentially grow through the revenue that you're generating
the rev share that you're generating
without having to scale through more clients
so you don't have to turn your whole thing
into a growth partnership
but at least one or two or three growth partners
definitely make a big chunk of change
like difference in your business