Delegation and High-Ticket Growth: Nani Israel on Escaping the Founder Bottleneck

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Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, I am thrilled to have a relatively new mom on the show. I'm on the other side. My daughter just went to university and I talk about that a lot on the show. So I, I love having entrepreneurs on who are parents because it gives us something else to work for, a dream to achieve for ourselves, but also an example to set. Yeah, I think that's so important. So, Nani Israel, I am so thrilled to have you on. Now, you are the founder of airassistant.io, and you solve an issue for business founders that so many of us go through. It doesn't matter how many times you've started a business, we all have to start at the fundamentals, the basics, and we all find that point when we are the bottleneck in our own companies. So, I'm thrilled to have you here to talk about what happens when service-based founders hit the ceiling. Right? That they can't grow their business past what the one person or the one person with a couple of people can do. So, before we get into the strategy, I just wanna say, thank you for being here. And what does that day-to-day look like for you right now, running a business while helping other founders start theirs?

First of all, you are the sweetest, and thank you so much for hosting this podcast and having me on board. I will say that, well, I'll give you, I'll paint a picture of what Mornings look like slow mornings with baby girl, as I do have a 3-month-old, now 4-month-old, dear God, little baby girl that I— is my very first child with my husband of 18 years. And mornings look slow. Day-to-day looks like maybe checking a Slack message here, checking a Slack message there, getting some payment notifications, being totally free on a Tuesday afternoon, being able to travel and see family and You know, still not have the business fall apart simply because I'm not there and actively present and everything is not on my shoulders. So, I'm in the stage of business where it's like a breath of fresh air. I am the person who is responsible for bringing new business into the company, new sales, new clients, et cetera, but that's what I like to do. And therefore, I'm able to do that. Now, for anybody who is not at the stage where You know, you're, you're making, 'cause I'm, I've made multiple 7 figures, but I've had to scrape and grind and, you know, start the early mornings and attend the late night, whatever the sales calls, the what have you. And I've gotten to a place and space where I don't have to do that anymore because I've had to incorporate systems and delegation. So, for people who are not at that stage right now, what's happening is When you're building business and you're at the point where you're going through what's known as key man risk, you are the person who's wearing all the hats. You wear the CEO hat, you wear the marketer hat, you wear the salesperson hat, you wear the customer service hat, you wear the accountant hat, you know, all the freaking hats. And everything that is done in business is solely based off of your mood or your memory, you know, and, and that gets very, very exhausting very quickly. There's, if you tie something, and I know there's so, so many layers we're going to be peeling back in this conversation, but the one thing that I had to realize in growing is that if you tie something as finite as time to something as infinite as money, you will always cap out. And so I had to get smart about delegating to people who are smarter than me in their areas of genius. And I had to get really smart about automating whatever was repeatable that I didn't have to keep on my plate. delegating things that I really didn't want to do, and then eliminating things that probably were not even necessary for the growth of the business in the first place. I have so much more to say, but, um, you know, I'll stop there because I'll, I will keep going. Like, isn't that so funny?

Well, I, I'm here for, I'm here for it because what I think is interesting is it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which category things go in, right? And so, I feel like founders often, especially for small businesses, spend, we spend a lot of time and money going, ooh, that looks like a really good program, right? The shiny object, somebody who has a solution to all of our issues, or, or like, well, we might have that part of our business operating, so we should go ahead and subscribe to that thing, and then we don't end up using it. So, I'm here for systems that work, that give you that flexibility, that time, that freedom, because I think ultimately the world is very stressful. We all need to be able to pour into ourselves.

Yes.

As much as possible while making sure that we're able to get that coin and that we're doing work that we love. And you've found that spot for yourself. So, before we— again, I want to know a little bit more about you. What prompted you to start this business?

Ooh, girl. Okay. Well, let's get into it. So, I remember I'm going to start, I'm going to start in college. Okay. I'm gonna start in college. So, I remember my junior year in college, I attended what was known as the Dream Job Academy. It was a seminar that, that was hosted by a founder of a company called Dream Job Academy. And he said something that really defined How I live life today and all the things that I did up until this point. He said, in order to find what he called your dream job, I consider it your purpose in life. He said, find a problem in society that pisses you off and be a part of the solution to change it. And at the time when I was looking around in my world and I saw women that looked like me, because I went to an all-women's college and I was one of maybe 30 Black women in a predominantly white institution. And we had to work a lot harder. We had to do a lot of things. And so, my world was full of, you know, the fiercest women, leadership-driven trailblazers, you know, all the things. And when I looked and I saw women in general, but especially Black women, I saw promiscuity. I saw unprofessionalism. I saw things that didn't relate to my reality. And so, I said, you know what? I'm going to popularize what I see. You know, every single day to become mainstream. And so, I started what was known as the Ladies of Elegance CEO Academy. It was a charm school for women in business. So, we worked on, and I helped founders and women in corporate with their poise, with their deportment, with their etiquette, with their confidence. And we incorporated business skills in terms of monetizing their social media accounts. And so, a couple of years go by. know, I make a few, uh, maybe multiple 6 figures at this point. And my founders are like, listen, Nani, we love all of this, you know, making money and all this, all this good stuff. They said, but we hate the sales funnel side of things. We, it's like learning a different language. We don't like any of it. And I have a marketing background. So, it was just, it, it came natural to me. And the more I learned, the more I taught them and we all came up together. And so, they said, listen, we don't like any of this stuff. I said, well, would you like us to source train and place the people to just do the things for you? And overwhelmingly they said yes. And airassistant.io was born. And so, here we are, a full-fledged digital growth marketing infrastructure firm for those founders who are either in corporate and they're building businesses where they want to quantum leap their results. They wanna collapse time and not have to worry about all the trial and error that comes with Growing from zero to your first six figures, or your first six figures to your first seven figures, etc. Right? So we installed the infrastructure and the leadership and the teams that help coaches, consultants, service-based business owners, and thought leaders actually start to sell on a high-ticket level, so that as they're how do I say? I want to say exerting their genius, but I'm sure I can word that in a different way. As they are delivering transformation to people who they've determined they'd like to serve, they can do it with a small handful of people. They can do it without being exhausted. They can do it without carrying the business on their shoulders. They can do it while offering a very premium level transformation to a very, very concise kind of person that only they are qualified enough to do it. And therefore they can command a premium price point to do it. So, while you're building a quote unquote wildly successful business, you're also able to live a wildly successful life. And success to me looks a whole lot more like being totally free on a random Tuesday than making the dollars and the bills. You know, money's great. Money's great. But time is— free time is even better.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know one thing that you talk about is The difference between a hustle problem and a leverage problem. And you mentioned, you know, you've had to do the hustle, the early mornings, the working in your business, and you figured out solutions for your own business and then were able to turn it around when people came to you and said, hey, we have this problem too.

Right. That's true. And the one thing that I will also say to that is that investing in the right rooms, investing in the right Mentors, being in the right places and spaces to allow you proximity of information and people and systems and strategy so you can collapse time to get to your next level is absolutely necessary. It's absolutely necessary. I know a lot of us try to YouTube University our way through growing business. A lot of us try to funnel hack our way to, you know, copying our competition and it's You're going to cap out after a certain point in time, you know? So, yeah. So, well, I will say, I will say me personally, I've invested well over $400K of my own money over the years to get to the point where I'm able to say I've made over $4 million in, you know, in closed sales, helped the tribe get to almost $20 million in closed sales. All of that is an accumulation of going in the right places, being in the right rooms, Gleaning the right information, sometimes being the only woman, sometimes being the only Black woman.

Okay.

And pulling that information and then saying, hey, here are the strategies. I practiced them. I deployed them. Here's what works. Here's what doesn't. Go and go and be great. Go win. You know, there's too much money out here for you not to.

100%. And I think that's one of the things people often do, right? Well, let's go back to, you talked about charm school and poise and Those are things that are not taught these days. I'm in different volunteer organizations, and the training I got out of those organizations helped make me who I am today. And I look now and I'm like, wow, they're not even offering the same kinds of opportunities to the young women who are coming through these programs. So, it drives me crazy, but it also— kudos to you for recognizing that was something that was needed. And particularly as we see more of those entry-level jobs on the decline, people need to be able to step up, whether they are in a business working for somebody else, right, or running their own business.

That is so true. Do you know, I think the thing that inspired me as far as that's concerned was growing up, I, my family has always been very well-spoken. You know, when you have certain exposure to places, people, things, like right now I'm in my grandmother's home. She's a It's a nice fricking home, okay? It's almost like a mansion. But when you're exposed to things like that, and you see yourself in a certain light, and when I looked around and I said, no, these are some amazing women, and they feel as though they're not qualified enough, or they're not prepared enough, or not fill in the blank enough. And I'm like, no, you just need the right training so that you can, you can be in the right rooms and command the kind of respect And the kind of, the kind of recognition that you initially desire. And so, it's, it's really a feminine superpower. I got to tell you, it really and truly is. But once you've harnessed that, anything that you apply, whether it's in your business, whether it's in your personal life, if you're hosting events, if you are looking to incorporate sales in what you do, those are skill sets that never leave you. They're just as classic as As, as dirt on the ground, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. Well, 100%. And that is that barrier that you're talking about, that imposter syndrome, that fear that we don't know enough when we probably are more qualified than the next person to take something on. That's something that holds us back. So, you help women work through that, you know, got them elevated. Nani, I'd love to hear some stories. Some examples of women and their businesses that you helped elevate and get to the point where they felt comfortable scaling, living in their power, and being able to have that freedom?

Okay. 2 automatically popped in my head while you were asking the question. One is Zara. She's the founder of Sun Studios in Baltimore, Maryland. And I've known her since she was, I want to say, 17 years old. I helped teach her how to drive. And she is a photographer. She is a videographer. She has worked with celebrities. She has HoneyBook and Apple as clientele. And she has had her studio now for, I want to say, maybe 6 going on 7 years. And she, just the growth that I've been able to see, knowing that she, I've taken her up underneath my wing. And now at this point, she's, I want to say she's kissing the 7-figure mark. In terms of total accumulated revenue since she started her business. And at this point, since we, I think her and I really hit the ground running last October, and she's, her MRR, monthly rate of return, is now well over $25K monthly and continuing to grow, you know? So she's, she's gotten into the place and space where she's confident enough to command premium rates without second-guessing her skillset. You know, she has gotten to the point where She used to be very chaotic as a person when it came to building her business and dealing with the shiny objects, et cetera, to getting very concise and specific and laser-focused on where she wants to go and how she wants to get there. And so, she is really soaring. There's another founder, Carrie Lynn, who— she's the founder of The Salary Bump. And so, she deals with— she helps professionals negotiate salary packages and exit packages. And I remember doing a one-on-one with her where I was asking about her, her major offers. And one of her major offers seemed to be the most lucrative out of all of them, aside from her needing systems, aside from her needing team, et cetera. I remember she reported a win where she helped a founder with a $2.4 million package, right? She has a, what she calls a success fee that came from that package. So that was a $240,000 win for her just by shifting who she's speaking to, how much she's charging, right? And how she's approaching the person that she's, that she's has determined she's ready to serve. There's another founder who, and this is an example of not pulling the trigger and not, you know, being too afraid to step into the places and spaces that can really help you to elevate. There was another founder who is a, an event marketer, right? So she helps get butts in seats for major events. And she did work for, I want to say it was AfroTech. And so she charged them $16 an hour. And for the work that she did with AfroTech's event, they made over $1 million just from ticket sales alone. And I said, okay, let's reverse engineer this really quickly. I said, if you, if you had me in your corner, if you had me in your corner, Right. And you were able to package your offer in a way where you're focusing on ROI, return on investment-based pricing. Number one, it should be minimum $10,000 to even get you on board to their team, right? Then if you have a certain revenue share percentage of the, of the ticket sales that come in, you know, I told her, I said, just from, just from the ticket sales, if you had, I want to say it was maybe a 5% or 3%, something along those lines. That would have been an additional $30,000. They work with you for 3 months, $10K per month, plus that revenue share. That is a $60-some-odd thousand engagement, and they paid you $1,600 a month for 3 months. Major loss, ma'am. And you were responsible. You were responsible for, for getting them to the level of success that they, you know, that they got to. But unfortunately, she never pulled the trigger, so she's never She never got to the point where she was able to command pricing like that with other clients, even though it was really easy to do. She's worked with AfroTech before. Come on now. You know? So, I mean, the night and day.

Exactly.

The night and day is just mind-boggling, but I am on a personal mission to help no less than 1,000 founders reach the top 10% of earners. That's crossing the 6-figure mark. Let's cross it like well beyond crossing the 6-figure mark. But at the very least getting there, because once you get there, you just copy and paste and copy and paste and copy and paste and copy and paste to get to your first 7 figures.

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What do you think is the largest misconception that people have about delegation and not feeling like they have to do everything themselves?

I love that question. We are perfectionists. A lot of the founders I work with and that, I've found is that number one, we're perfectionists. So, we think if I can't do it, it won't be done right. And that's a lie. The second thing is that sometimes we like to, and this is a, this is a very controversial point of view, but I'm going to say it anyway. There are founders who refuse to delegate because they like to distract themselves with work inside of their businesses. Mm-hmm. When you actually delegate the tasks, when you delegate the ownership of outcomes, because that's real delegation. When you assign the ownership of outcomes for a certain department in your business that you no longer need to carry on your shoulders, that puts you in an existential crisis where you go, huh, somebody is working on content. Somebody is working on operations. You know, my offer is good. I have clients that are, that are being served. They're happy. What do I do as a CEO? And then you start to self-destruct. Okay. That'll put you in a very existential crisis if you're not careful about being laser-focused on, how do I say, staying in the CEO seat. The CEO seat means you're focusing on more visibility at the top of the funnel. How do I get in front of more people? How do I build more relationships? How do I build more partnerships? How do I get more eyes to my brand? Right. And then conversion at the bottom of your funnel. How do I get more sales? How do I get more people to say yes? How do I get more people to, you know, continue to work with us? How do I get more people to become repeat clients or repeat customers? That's our job as the CEO. Once you've successfully delegated the marketing, potentially the sales and the operations of your business. So now you have established engines That allow you to target, attract, nurture, and convert leads to turn them into customers, right? So to answer your question, to answer your question, the thing that prevents people from delegating, one is distraction, 2 is perfectionism. Those are, I think, the biggest ones. And 3 is just plain old fear. If I bring somebody else, one, Am I actually able to keep up payroll? And believe it or not, if you think in terms of ROI, right, if you think in terms of for every person I bring on, they should be, they should be increasing my business's annual income by no less than 10 to 30%, then now these people are investments. They're betting on me and I'm betting on them. So, I have a, you know, 10-person team and we're able to close on average about $100K per month. Great. If I didn't have them on my team, I wouldn't be able to close that much. So, it's a, it's a, it's an exchange. A lot of people think, well, yeah, I can be a self-made millionaire. You show me a self-made millionaire, I'll show you the team that they rely on. Okay. Let's stop playing these games. So, that's what I would say are the biggest, the biggest, when you pull back the curtain, that's normally what you see. Is holding people back from delegating.

Well, and let's talk a little bit about that issue of the ROI, right? Because I think, now I've been working for other people and podcasting and teaching and doing all these things and looked at this part of my business, the podcast, as something fun, but also an investment. And I think people forget that you have to make an investment to make your businesses grow. And that can be really, you know, hard because people do get into that scarcity mentality, right? They think, oh, but if I spend this, I'm not going to see the return. And there is that element of you have to believe in yourself. You can't self-sabotage because by speaking those things, that's exactly the road you're going to do to prove that you are going to fail. So what do you do? How do you help women and other entrepreneurs get out of those mindsets to say, you know, here, maybe, I mean, do you work with them to say, here's a budget that you could put aside and here's how that can help you grow your team and start delegating effectively so that you are working on the right things?

I love that question. Let's dissect it. Let's peel it back real quick. The first thing I will say is that you, as an entrepreneur, and my aunt taught me this, who used to be a Michelin star chef, who has been a multimillionaire since before I was born, right? Who's led the most freaking amazing life ever. And who actually sowed the seeds in my brain and in my spirit pertaining to all things etiquette and femininity, et cetera. She told me, she said, listen, she said, if you are in business and you're broke, there's only room for one broke party. You better be talking to somebody with some money.

Okay.

So that's, so that's number one. You cannot, and I have to be very, very plain when I say this. The best way, or the really the only way that you will be able— I'll say the best, the best way that you will be able to grow your business is to speak with people that can afford your rates. So I talk to and target people who mentally have radical self-belief. They have radical self-trust because they are ambitious enough to get things done. I've worked with people from the etiquette school side of things. Who I would have an hour-long sales conversation with. My sales team would have an hour-long sales conversation with them. They'll be boohoo crying. This was amazing. Whole therapy session, $300 a year, a year, $300 a year for a membership. And it was like pulling teeth. They were like, well, I love this, but I can't afford it. Oh my God. Oh, what do you mean?

Wow.

What do you mean? Why did we just spend an hour doing this? So, and I will also say, Sales is service, right? And so, in order for you to actually deliver on a major transformation, you have to sell to them. And for a lot of people, sales seems so icky, right? So, what I say to those women who come across my world, who, because mind you, again, I've invested the multiple 6-figure level. Most founders that I work with have not invested on that level, but they have invested on a premium level before. So, I don't have to be in the energy of convincing. Right. I'm, I'm in, uh, I'm in the energy of authority. Excuse me. I'm in the energy of authority when I say, this is what we do. This is how much we, this is how much we charge. This is the potential ROI that you can, that you can see. But I also have, and this is a little exclusive here, I also incorporate what I call an indoctrination engine, right? So, before the sales call even begins, before we hop on Zoom, They're already pre-sold on a belief system. They're already pre-sold on the offer. They're already pre-sold on working with us. It's just a matter of now answering questions and talking about how, you know, how it's a, how it's a good fit between the both of us. So, to those women who are listening, they go, oh, you know, I have self-doubt because legit, there are days when I'm, when I have self-doubt, but there are also days where I have to go back and refer to my receipts. I have to go back and refer to when I feel like I'm in the energy of lack and I'm like, I need to make $10,000 in 7 business days. What am I going to do? And host an entire conversion event and close $90,000 in 3 days, right? Radical self-belief. You take the action, you get it done when you have a plan of action in place, right? And so, so yeah, it's a matter of belief coupled with action that actually gets you your results. If you are stuck in analysis paralysis, where you're gathering all the information and you're preparing to preparing to prepare, then you will continue to stay in that until you've made the decision to take action. Because once you've decided, that's when your actions will follow. That's when your behavior will follow. And those are the people that I stay in community with, and those are the people that end up working with me. For the folks that. usually are doubtful or that want to talk to people that are inside of my testimonial reel. Hey, here's their contact information. You do what you got to do, right? But I know at the end of the day, you're still in the scarcity mindset, which means that you're not going to move forward. In a world of abundance, in a world of abundance, if I only need— and this is the people that I talk to in my world— if you only need 5 to 10 people To make anywhere from $100K to $500K or more, then we're only going to be focusing on gathering those 5 to 10 people. Everybody else, they're just not for you and you're not for them. And that's okay. Right? So, we're only focusing on the small people, the few people who will make the biggest difference at the end of the day to the business that you can pour everything into to give them that total transformation. And that just— That mindset shift alone Has people go, oh my God, I didn't realize that if I close one client, for example, had a behavior analyst just started with me about a month ago, probably not, probably not even a full month. One client for her with the length of time that that client stays with her is worth no less than $120,000, right? One client is worth $120 grand, but you've been selling yourself short. You've been, you know, you haven't been focused on making sales, et cetera. Just by shifting her pricing, she was able to close an $18K client. Wonderful. There's a whole lot more where that comes from, a whole lot more. And that was for a 3-month engagement. You see what I'm saying? So, and what that happens, what happens when that, when that goes down or when you experience a win like that is that you think to yourself, I will never go below this ever again in life. Like, how can I do, how can I duplicate this? How can I do more? How can I, like, how do I now deliver to this type of premium person? You know? So, those are the folks I talk to in my world. For everybody else that's doubtful, it's just going to take a little bit more time. Stay on YouTube University. Because I remember the times where I remember the times where I was doubtful. I had to make the decision to do something about it. And those are the folks that I spend my time helping because I know my advice, my insight, our, the service that we deliver won't be in vain. You see what I'm saying? Because you, as a founder, you have to step up. You are the captain of your ship and you have to be the person to steer that bad boy along to your given destination. If you don't have a vision, if you're not the one taking action, if you're relying on people to do the thing without you taking responsibility as an owner to say, listen, this is how I need things done. This is how I imagine my team working on my behalf to get that thing done. And this is how we're all gonna work together, then it's not gonna work. Yeah.

I mean, you are saying all the things that we all need to be thinking of, and anybody who listens is going to get a lot of affirmation from just hearing your voice right now. I did wanna dig in a little bit to the marketing side of things, right? Because you, you help people with all of that. I was interested to see where you see marketing and the team building for service-based founders heading over the next year or two. We know obviously you have airassistant.io, We know that there's a lot of artificial intelligence in our world, a lot of generative AI that's taking over some of these work streams, but there's also the people element that we need. So, can you talk a little bit about any shifts in your business and where you see things going?

Ooh, yes, that's a great question.

So, you've never been one to settle, stand down, or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you. You can't You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.

Pro tip, and I will also— let's, let's just pull AI out of the equation for a second. Of all the developments that have happened, let's say just over the last 100 years, 200 years, 300 years, my take on all of this is that the best marketing practices have never changed. They're just simply wearing new clothes, right? So, AI, when you have, when you're bringing on AI, AI helps to enhance what already works and what already works is relationship building, face-to-face, belly-to-belly. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs incorporate in-person. It's, you know, elements to some degree of their business. So that's never going away unless another pandemic hits, then, you know, you got to lay low for a little bit. But another thing that works really, really well, done for you. The more you can incorporate done for you elements in your business, the more irreplaceable you will become as a business owner and as a professional, right? So, even though, again, you can use AI to enhance what you do to probably make better deliverables, you know, provide better deliverables, or maybe deepen your insights that you deliver to other people. But at the end of the day, the human connection is not going anywhere. People value human connection more than anything else in the business world. And that's the reason why it's not going anywhere. The trust economy is at an all-time low, and there are people who assume that AI and generative AI is just going to be bots talking to bots, but there is still going to be a very large percentage of business owners, of people who are in corporate, who are yearning for that connection, that human connection. They're yearning for some sort of in-person element. So you're going to see a rise in real-life events. You're going to see a rise in service, more services. Yes, they'll incorporate more AI, but the ones that will really stand out from the crowd are the ones that do or provide more of a done-for-you element in that. So those are definitely the insights that are trending up. If we're looking at past, how do I say, if we're looking at past patterns for what has worked, one idea just to give you, uh, just to kind of round this out, Madam C.J. Walker, who was the first recorded self-made millionaire who sold a hair pomade in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Wow.

When freaking, I think her pomade was maybe a dollar. People were making less than $20 a month. You know what I'm saying? So there was a, it was, it was what people would consider a large chunk of their income. Right. But one thing that she implemented that still works to this day, according to Mary Kay, according to Avon, according to businesses that work with brand, brand partnerships, brand partnerships, affiliates, That's never going away either. Because again, it's a, it's the relationship piece. When you deal with referrals and you have a strategic way of incorporating referrals into your business, whether it be through affiliates, whether it be through partnerships, that will increase your revenue by no less than 40% on an annual basis. Prime example, last year, 30% of our 7-figure revenue was attributed to brand partnerships. That was over $300K in revenue. Just by focusing on partnerships. So yeah, partnerships, human connection, that's never going away. So find out a way to incorporate as much human connection as possible and find out a way to make sure that you're incorporating as much done for you in a very specific way for a very specific kind of person. And that way you set yourself apart as a Chanel instead of a Walmart. Okay. Chanel can command premium prices. Walmart cannot. Okay.

I love that. I love that. Oh my gosh. Another question I think people will have is, you know, when they're thinking about their marketing, I love that you said that we need to be authentic. We need to not just do the same thing everybody else is doing. We need to see what we can do to connect with community. Really what you're talking about is community, whether it's, it is virtual or whether you can be in person. And I completely agree with you that people are looking for ways to connect more. person to person. But if somebody has a small following, right, that if they have a small email list, maybe they don't have a big following on social media, they haven't paid attention to their social media, that can also make founders kind of go, ooh, but am I really equipped to get, you know, attract the kind of people that are the right people for my business that will be those few who will give me the most and that I can do the most for?

Yes. Oh, so I'll speak to that a little bit. Usually, the founders that see the most success in the shortest amount of time have a small audience. They have an audience of some sort. And what we normally focus in on first is what we call a 4-week sprint. During that 4-week sprint, we focus on a cash injection strategy. So, to your point, people usually forget about the folks that they've gathered into their email list, the people that they've gathered into their text message list. The people that they've gathered, you know, into their social media followings. And that's the first place we tap into to make sure that you're, you're grabbing your money bags because they've already expressed some sort of interest in you, your offer, you know, your, your interests, et cetera. And so what we do is focus on you launching a conversion event to your warm audience first, because your warm audience, you're, you're 60% more likely to sell to a warm audience than to people who've never heard of you before, a cold audience, right? So, it's the first place that we look. So, for those who have small audiences, you could literally have, depending upon the offer that you, that you go for, and if you have the right systems that are set in place, usually folks in our world, if they're hosting their first conversion event, they'll be in a Zoom room either for a day or maybe 3 days. They could talk to 10 people and they close 2 of those folks, 2 of those folks will be worth $10K plus. Like, the numbers can be small as long as they're impactful, you know? So, yeah. So, that's, I mean, yeah, if you host a— because people think I need big numbers and I need a huge following to make a million. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I have less than 20,000 followers altogether off of LinkedIn. LinkedIn alone, I think we closed a little over $2 million. I have less than 4,000 LinkedIn followers. Okay. You just got to know what to do and how to, how to use the platform. So, so that's what I would say to folks that have a small— it's a mindset thing, baby. Mindset plus the right actions.

Yeah.

You gotta, you gotta know what to do. You gotta know what to do and you have to have the right mindset. But yeah, it's doable.

Yeah. Amazing. And, you know, I, I know that you have some special offers for our audience, so I want to— I'll have those all in the show notes, but I want you to talk a little bit about those and what is, One starting point, anybody listening who is in the middle of starting a new business, or they're thinking about starting a new business, or they've been in business for a while, but they feel stuck. What is one action that they can take right now?

So, you remember what I mentioned in terms of the mission, right? We're helping, we're on a relentless mission, my team and I, to help no less than 1,000 founders become the top 10% of earners, right? Because that, what that literally means is Then you will be able to live your version of a freedom lifestyle because you'll have the financial capacity and the mental capacity to carry that on. So, because we want to help founders get there, I actually have 2 gifts for listeners that you're going to want to lock in right now if you're listening. So, what you're going to want to do is text the word podcast to this phone number, 217-745-6987. So, when you text the word podcast to that number, 217-745-6987. What's going to happen is that I'm going to send you a link to schedule what I call a Scaling CEO assessment. This is a conversation you'll be having with me, not anybody else on the team. And I've, you know, kind of extended my calendar for that because I don't have that many conversations with folks on a monthly basis. So, usually it's about $4,000, but for you guys, it's free when you text that number, that keyword to that number. And so, what's going to happen Is that in that call, it's going to be maybe 20 minutes, no more than 30 minutes. We're going to peel back the layers and see, kind of pop open the hood, see what's going on in your business, see where your money leaks are. Where are you currently leaking money in your business? What are the systems that need to plug up those leaks so that you can actually see more revenue? Sometimes by just changing your pricing or changing the person that you're speaking to, changing your, you know, switching up your messaging and your positioning. And then from there, if it makes sense for us to work together, great. If it doesn't, you'll walk away with an action plan. For making your next $100K. All right. So that's gift number 1. What happens for gift number 2 is immediately after you book, you're going to receive instant access to a $13-ish million strategy vault. That strategy vault is filled with the best plays that my team and I and our founders, our clients, have actually been able to deploy that led to multimillion-dollar results since 2020. Okay. So all of that. is available for you all just for listening to this episode and being associated with Your Brand Amplified. So, yeah, I'm so excited.

Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, you have an easy air about you. Like, you do come in with authority, but also, you know, you're like the friendly big sister business associate who's going to like give you the tough love, but with a smile and a laugh.

I love that. And I agree. I think my founders would say the same thing.

Yeah.

Yes. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's, and I think that's important.

Yeah.

But that's what, you know, we work with people who we feel attuned to and who we know can, who we have seen have the success that we want. And so, I think that's really important and that sets you apart as a brand yourself, right? The brand of Nani Israel. And what you're able to put out into the world for others. So, thank you for that.

Thank you. Thank you. It's a, it's a servant leader mindset, you know? And so, I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have founders that believed in what we do and saw those results and could help other people so that we're still winning by proxy, you know? So, yeah, it's a, it's a never-ending circle of giving and receiving and feeling like we're actually meaningful to the lives of the people that we touch. That's why I do what I do.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been amazing and really fun. I know that there's so much more we could have gotten into, but I love giving a little taste in these conversations. You provided actual advice and some great insights and things for us to think about. Nani, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, words that continue to inspire you to be who you are?

Aside from the one that I shared earlier about Finding a problem in society that pisses you off and be a part of the solution to change it. There is one by that I'm quoting by Myron Golden, who's a really popular sales trainer that said that it's, it's easier to make a lot of money over a short period of time than it is to make a little bit of money over a longer period of time. The caveat I'll add to that is what's hard is becoming the person who can do that. It is a journey. It truly, truly is a journey. And the person that you are embodying, you're borrowing from the confidence of the, of your future self constantly. And so, when you're in every sales conversation, when you are talking to the people who have said yes to working with you, because your business, for a lot of, for a lot of our founders, our businesses are our ministries. You know, it's how we serve. It's how we serve God. It's how we serve each other. And The embodiment becoming is really what it's all about at the end of the day, the money, the testimonials, all of that's evidence, but the journey is really the, the main character. So I hope that helps. Yeah.

Yeah. Brilliant. I love that. Thank you so much for bringing your energy to Your Brand Amplified and to everybody who's listening or watching this. I'll have all the information for Anani's offers and how to reach her in the show notes. Think about what you can delegate, how you can take that next step forward in your own business or your personal life, right? I mean, we have people from all walks of life and all parts of their business coming to the show. So whether you're starting out, you're mid-career, you're looking at making that pivot and that switch, or you've had businesses and you're looking at the what next, think about what you can do to help others, what you can do to delegate parts that you don't need to hold on to, and think about what you can let go of, which is something that we talked about a little bit, but we'll keep that for another conversation in the future with Nonny. With that, thank you, and I'll be back again with another amazing guest very soon. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating, Or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

You've never been one to settle, stand down, or stand still. You're a lifelong learner energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, And your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.