She Made $1.2M Selling AI Agents (EXACT 4-Step Framework)

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 Badoia, founder of Izzy GPT, who turned AI into something productized and [music] 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 offer AI voice 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 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 your clients is always like the hardest, but getting the second is usually 90% easier. How that realization led to a very [music] 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 a 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 that you stop paying and cold outreach that gets 2% reply rates, SEO that takes, you know, 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 when if you're running ads, right, when they opt in, usually have a human call back within 48 hours. That's way too long. So speed to lead is someone ops 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 an another one is the um uh 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 the services at once cuz that is going to be like a big task. Um 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? So the after hours for service businesses. They they don't 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 a an agency that's billing, you know, $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 3K a month or 50K 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 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. It adds This is where I use value-based pricing, right? So we're creating value for a business, so 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 being 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 rather you're sending cold emails and you're essentially like 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 a um 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 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 and 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 built your entire business around a simple four-step framework. Can you walk us through how this works, you know, 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 like four different times and 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. Um 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 who are running cold email, they'll run ads, they'll maybe they'll even post on Instagram or on TikTok or whatever. In this case, I figured back in 2023, I 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. You know, I probably grew to like 2,000 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. So 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 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. Um you don't have to become a 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 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 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 that 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 um But yeah, it's basically if you keep that formula and also one that's not mentioned is the 1-1-1 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 one ideal client, one offer, you focus until you scale that 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 going to scroll past your post. So, what I 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 um I have usually like how it how like my my theories work, my actual strategies work, and 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, uh and then a carousel, this is a carousel basically. These are like 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 uh something to convert into within the post without violating any of LinkedIn's um rules or how they would normally like, you know, uh throttle the post if you put the link in the comments. If you know Alex Hormozi, he's a big proponent of this, right? Like just give everything away. I'm I'm not saying give everything away, but like just give enough that will attract people, that you'll build trust, and um 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 it's not extremely complicated, but it's terribly focused and efficient, it seems, at uh at capturing and and converting customers. Tell us a little bit about that. For example, when we were doing the uh voice agents, I would give snippets away. Like I would say like I figured out how to automate like how to automate uh if you're running ads, I figured out how to automate not losing that that uh that person that opted in. So, it's like speed to lead, right? Um 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. 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 uh Here's a funnel that I used that generated X amount of money, right? It's like it's it's sharing little tidbits because it's going to 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. Um so, it's just figure out I'm not saying like for any agency owner, right? I'm not saying like go and and and start a whole new offering. Just figure out from your current process, what are steps that you can either give away a little snip snippet that people are going to say, how do I do it for myself now? Can you do it for me? And then that's essentially the what you want to trigger. Some people want like um they'll want like case studies, right? Like here's a case study of how I did this. And um and the cool thing about case studies is that you don't necessarily have to start with like your own success stories. Uh when I was trying to break into into the SaaS space and like see if I could attract anyone in this space, I 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. Um but people like case studies, they like to see like how other people or competitors are doing um the things that they want to achieve. Uh 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, um quizzes. Uh quizzes are also really effective because first it's an ego boost for them, right? Like let me see what I what I score, but also for 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 around AI agents generated um I think like 180,000 $ in like 6 weeks. All of the agent ones, these are all the lead magnets. So, um 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 uh I sold them a uh let me build your AI agents for you. Um I priced it at like 8,000. And then people just bought it without sales calls straight off the website. >> Once you've captured people with your fantastic lead magnets, um following up with them and converting them is is the next job at hand. And just like your four-step system, you've got a really uh simple but focused and efficient follow-up sequence. Can you tell us a little bit about that? The first email is usually like, here's your download. Second email is rapport building. Hi, I'm Isabella. This is my track record. Third email is like pain point awareness. Uh 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, uh 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 um some of those questions for opt-in. It's like a BANT questioner, so budget, authority, need, and time timeline for a solution. So, I'll ask that. Um if I'm in discovery mode and let and like, what language do I need to be using? Then instead of doing BANT, I'll do uh opt-in for the lead magnet, and then what's your number one challenge with this subject right now? Right? Like what's 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 um emails or whatever, I 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 used their language back on the people that are uh 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 a it's like a big time-draining task. Usually, it's the sales call typically is 5 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 uh out overcome the objections or like it it it just comes from a place of power. I 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, um our first our first few calls, like we did I think uh I think we did like 200 calls in I posted on LinkedIn, the post went viral, it it booked us like 200 or 300 calls in our calendar. And we were back-to-back-to-back-to-back for like 2, 3 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 uh $20,000 each agent, so we 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 boot camp system. And I'm like, I'm going to post content, I'm going to drag them to a LinkedIn to a boot camp, and then I'm going to um 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 could just do a boot camp once a month, or or maybe even like once every 3 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 boot camps instead of discovery calls. Why does that work so well for warming people up? A boot camp is like a $47 a month type of type of offer. Uh sorry, not a month. $47 a uh virtual event. I'll usually do this like once a month. And that virtual event is usually like a three-day um it's like a three-day uh 1 hour a day uh 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 3 days, and those 3 days they get like a little training. And in those three three days, my whole purpose is to actually tell 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 in warm from my content, this three-day boot camp really, really warms them up into like, okay, what am I actually missing for my business? At one point, I showed how to um use AI as a personal coach. Right? So, this is just one of the offers. So, I just build a funnel, and then uh if I just scroll down here just to go through the pricing. Um where is it? Here we go. So, basically, it's 3 days, and those 3 days they get like a little training. And in those three three days, my whole purpose is to actually tell 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 in warm from my content, this three-day boot camp really, really warms them up into like, okay, what am I actually missing for my business? And then um so, I'll have like, you know, the the actual boot camp $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 uh I 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 uh how to build apps, and um and then yeah, the whole thing. It just tells you it walks you through a whole thing. Build it on how to how to build apps. So, my content for that whole week or that whole month was around like vibe coding and building apps or stuff like that. And then the back end, uh when we're in the boot camp, then I'll say um "Oh, and here you can see I'm also testing our own pricing, right? I'm seeing like, well, what if I do VIP, general, what if I do add-on?" So, I'm constantly testing just to see what works. But the thing about this boot camp is that it's creating this There's a There's a psychological factor in sales. Getting the first dollar out of your 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 that connection a lot faster. So, now on day three, when I pitch an offer, and I it's pretty much just here's my service, right? Like here's and here's how it works, and it's, you know, like some sort of high-ticket offer, $3,000, $5,000, $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 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, cuz now 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 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 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. Um because you literally have to lay everything out for them, so that it makes sense. So, if you're selling AI voice agents, um and you're trying to sell gym owners and realtors and uh business loan brokers, that's going to be all over the place. It should only be focused to one specific person. And um the term is called buyers enablement. So, up until now we've all been in a sellers enablement market. Uh I think I like maybe two years ago things started shifting where now it should really be buyers enablement. So, how do we enable our 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. Uh it can be a PDF, you can look at tools that create deal rooms. And that deal room, you you add um everything that they need. You add what is the 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 a maybe an agent that they can play around with. Um Every 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 chatbot 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, well, can we what do what do you have in mind?" And then we'll kind of do that over email. But if it's like they 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 um but yeah, most of the times I'll just try to continue to do it over email, and if I still am 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 and it shouldn't take long. It shouldn't be a whole objection handling game or anything like that. After you have sold the very first agent, a lot of agencies and 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 if we start with like the first price point, um the first price point is essentially like how do we get them in the door? And that's usually what I'll what I consider that to be is usually the boot camp or some sort of like low-ticket training. Um the immediate upsell is usually the how I shared in the funnel, right? I have like some sort of a $199, $299 upsell, so I can increase the value ladder, or I mean the average cart value. And then um 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." Um but that back end upsell of the boot camp, it's usually a high-ticket offer. And then the recurring revenue usually comes in as like um whatever the the the service might be. If it is an agent, then it's like, "Okay, here's the recurring revenue. Here's the uh 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. Um and then after that, I have the high-ticket experience, so the 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 um I that can go uh those are 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. Uh I also help them figure out like what agents we need to build on top, so I build them uh agents that like are uh replicas of them, their AI avatars of them. Um so, that all comes baked in. And then the growth partnership, this is now if you actually want to become a growth partner. Um a growth partner is an offer that you shouldn't have more than 10 of those on at any given time in the year. Um 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 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.