Wings of Inspired Business

Health insurance now eats around 30 percent of the average American family's after-tax income, about $35,000 a year for a family of four, and what you get for it is a $5,000 to $10,000 deductible and the right to file a claim someone else may deny. Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs calls it the biggest gaslighting project in recent history, and she would know: she has spent 21 years inside life and health insurance, ranks among the top 175 independent insurance producers in the United States (fewer than 3 percent are women), and built Quantum Insurance Services from a cell phone and a laptop in 2013 after tripling her boss's business and being told a maternity leave was "really like a paid vacation." So, she founded Ionava, a healthcare fintech built on 400 million life years of mortality and morbidity data: a Vault that unlocks $300,000 to $1 million in cash if the big what-if happens, and a Wallet, funded by 70 percent of your subscription, that you can spend anywhere on health and wellness, that rolls over, earns interest, and pays you more the healthier you get. Today Jennifer shares how it works, why the private sector will fix healthcare before Congress does, the coaching that finally got her funded, and her theory of who writes checks to women.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

💰 🏥 The Vault and the Wallet: How Ionava splits protection from spending. A Vault reserved at $300,000, $700,000 or $1 million that pays cash on a terminal, critical or chronic diagnosis, and a Wallet that takes 70 percent of your subscription, spends anywhere in health and wellness with no network and no prior authorization, rolls over, earns interest, and goes with you at 65.

📈 🌱 A Good Driver Discount for Your Body: Sleep, hydration, mental health, community and early screenings raise your health score, and your health score raises the interest rate on the money you haven't spent. Skin in the game changes behavior; Ionava pays you for it.

💸 🔎 Cash Is Cheaper Than You Think: A doctor takes home about $65 for an office visit inside an insurance network. Jennifer's own cataract surgery cost $10,000 cash with the best surgeon in Beverly Hills, versus $10,000 out of pocket on top of $15,000 in premiums, with the insurer choosing her lenses. Cash rates now match or beat insured rates, and most people don't know it.

🚀 📱 A Cell Phone, a Laptop and a Citrine Crystal: Why Jennifer left the boutique whose business she'd tripled, squatted in an unused corner of the building, held a crystal for courage on scary calls, and grew Quantum 37 percent in year one while the Affordable Care Act cut commissions from 20 percent to as little as zero.

👩‍💼 ⚖️ Competent Until Proven Otherwise: The credibility gap in fundraising, why a coach told her to say "Princeton" in the first 30 seconds, the Wall Street friend who taught her to write ten-word emails, and her hot take on which investors will never hear a woman's pitch no matter what she delivers.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1004

More about Jennifer at Ionava

www.ionava.com

Women make most of the purchasing decisions, and on the receiving end of the largest wealth transfer in history, some $40 trillion in the next decade. We're writing more philanthropy checks, but less so when it comes to investing, especially in women-led startups. Chantell Preston is done being polite about it. A serial healthcare entrepreneur with multiple exits, including Mentis Neuro Health, she is the founder and CEO of the family office Preston Partners, co-owner of the San Francisco Signal pro volleyball team, lead partner of Portfolia's Active Aging and Longevity Funds, and author of the new book The Success Lie: Reframing Your Reality to Thrive Personally and Professionally. She also hosts the Get Real Get Results podcast, a professional and personal development show which focuses on ambitious professionals—especially women—to redefine success on their own terms. She's been named as one of America's Top 100 Women to KNOW and to the Entreprenista 100. Today she shares why Gen X women were never taught about money and how to fix that now, what she looks for before she invests, how she and her partner brought 75 women into sports ownership with them, and why the definition of success she had chased for 25 years turned out to be someone else's.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

💰 📈 Women Investing in Women: Why so many accomplished women donate but don't invest, the "don't worry, somebody will take care of you" lie at the root of it, and how to start now: a finance group that works like a book club, a fund rather than a single startup, and minimums as low as $10,000.

🏐 🤝 Open the Door, Then Pull Them Through: How Chantell and her partner Jess Wolf secured the San Francisco Signal in League One Volleyball as lead investors and then brought 75 women in with them, whether the cheque was $25,000 or $25 million, so that women owning women's sports becomes the norm, not the exception.

🔎 🧐 What a Family Office Actually Looks For: Bet on the jockey. Is the founder coachable? Do they have an exit strategy? Do they know who is going to pay? And the instant red flag: "there's nothing like it out there."

🪞 ✨ The Success Lie: Chantell had the money and the title by her early forties and called it the darkest time of her life. Why success now means peace of mind and control of your time, and why you get to rewrite rules you never agreed to.

👩‍👧 ⚖️ Balance Is a Lie. Integration Is Real: Quality time over quantity time, Sunday logistics meetings at home, letting your kids see the bad days as well as the good, and the grief nobody warns you about when you sell your company.

Her advice? Stop chasing perfection and start building self-worth; learn to say no earlier and more often, and focus on ownership not just income.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1003

More about Chantell at Preston Partners

Get The Success Lie

Listen to Chantell's podcast Get Real Get Results

Laila Marshall is the Founder & CEO of Beebizy, a B2B event management SaaS built for the lean teams running events that drive real business revenue. A previously exited founder in on-demand healthcare technology, Laila brings a rare combination of practitioner depth and product vision — having personally produced 500+ events before building the software she always wished existed. Based in Los Angeles, Laila is currently in active enterprise conversations with brands like Marriott, Hilton, and Eleventy Milano, while raising a seed round to fuel the next phase of growth. She also serves on the General Leadership Council of the Ayana Foundation, which focuses on capital access and development programming for female founders.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

🚀 🤝 Turning Event Nightmares into Seamless Success: Planning events, whether for 2 or 2,000 people, can be overwhelming, so learn how even "non-event planners" can create and run impressive gatherings in minutes. Hint: Software and repeatable proven processes are key for finding reliable vendors, staying on budget, and organizing across all departments.

✨ 🤖 Building Software from the Ground Up: Why Laila built Beebizy as a concierge service, planning 500+ corporate events and using every pain point as a jumping off point to build a scalable software platform built on customers' real-world needs and challenges focused on everything from transparent budgeting, remote site planning, vendor discovery and management, and analytics reporting.

💰 📈 Fundraising and Female Founders: Why warm introductions from other founders to investors is critical to success in raising angel and venture capital, and why even if you're not ready to raise, it's important to start cultivating those relationships and networks asap.

🎉❤️Face-To-Face is Valuable: Why events are increasingly important for any company's marketing, sales and customer success, as more people crave genuine connection.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1002

More about Laila at Beebizy

www.beebizy.com

Naseem Sayani is a venture capitalist and the CEO and founder of GCWC and GCWC Capital. She also hosts The Capital Flex podcast, highlighting the stories of female founders raising money for their startups. Previously a GP at Emmeline Ventures, Naseem is on a mission to educate women about venture investing, and catalyze an ecosystem where women are writing checks to support their entrepreneurial sisters. We talk about how 100,000 women, each with a $50,000 check, could revolutionize venture with a $50 billion fund.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

🏟️ 💵 The $50 Billion Stadium: Naseem's math: 100,000 accredited women, $50,000 each, is $50 billion into venture, "a sports stadium of people." What it takes: Education about venture, an annual investing allocation for investing in women-founded startups, and female fund managers working together.

💪✨Volume Creates Change: If more women pooled resources—even at modest check sizes—we could move billions in venture capital, funding more women-led innovation and leveling the playing field for the next generation.

🎯 🤝 Build Powerful Networks & Share Opportunities: Connecting women with each other to share knowledge, resources, and opportunities is foundational. Stronger communities mean more collaboration and less isolation, enabling collective success. Plus, how to overcome deeply embedded ideas about scarcity and competition between women that stand in the way of collective power and progress.

💪 🦋 Financial Fluency Matters: Understanding financial tools—from investment terms to strategic use of leverage—is crucial. Moving beyond "treasurer" roles into "co-CFO" positions in households and businesses allows women to take charge of generational wealth-building.

💰 📈 The Numbers Don't Lie: Women-founded companies deliver 2.5x the returns, generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested against 31 cents for men, burn 15% less capital, exit six months faster, and made up 24.3% of US venture exits in 2024 on less than 2% of the funding. As Naseem puts it, "that's not the takeaway." Imagine how much bigger these businesses would be if they were funded. "This isn't charity; I'm here to make money."

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1001

More about Naseem: GCWC Capital · The Capital Flex Podcast

Episode 1000. Almost a decade ago I started Wings of Inspired Business to change the power dynamic for female founders, who to this day receive less than 2% of venture capital while delivering 2.5 times the returns. So, for the thousandth episode I gathered seven women who have lived it: Rajia Abdelaziz (invisaWear), Lindsey Mignano (Mignano Law Group), Clare Baukham (The Billionaire Woman), Ungenita Prevost (Ungenita Beauty), Trixy Castro (TRX Capital) and Deborah Sass (SpaceVrse), bookended by venture investor Naseem Sayani (GCWC Capital). The subject: money. Who gets it, why, what to say when an investor hesitates, and how women could put $55 billion into venture without asking anyone's permission.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

💰 📈 The Numbers Don't Lie: Women-founded companies deliver 2.5x the returns, generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested against 31 cents for men, burn 15% less capital, exit six months faster, and made up 24.3% of US venture exits in 2024 on less than 2% of the funding. As Naseem puts it, "that's not the takeaway." Imagine how much bigger these businesses would be if they were funded.

🎯 🤝 Qualify Your Investor as Hard as They Qualify You: After 99 no's, Rajia flipped the pitch: "I'm going to be as selective about you as you are about me." Lindsey on why a term sheet is a long-term marriage, "all collaborative until it's not," and the five questions to ask before you take the money.

🗣️ 💡 Rewrite the Pitch: How Rajia went from safety statistics to "that could be your daughter, your granddaughter, or your wife," and sold a quarter of a million dollars in two minutes on Good Morning America. Plus, Clare's reverse-psychology close: "Don't put them on a pedestal. It's not for everyone," and my enterprise-sales version, "can you see any reason why you wouldn't want to do this?"

🚪 🛤️ Venture Isn't the Only Door: Lindsey on founder haircuts of 20% at seed and 16 to 17% at each round, why "an incredibly great, incredibly lucrative business" may not be right for VC, and the alternatives her clients use: crowdfunding, SBA loans, non-dilutive credit lines and revenue-based financing. Her own girlfriends' fund: 30 accredited women who pooled their money and got into a $300 million fund.

💪 🦋 Resilience, $52.27 and the Fearless Girl: Ungenita on the day she was down to $52.27 (she still has the bank slip), Trixy crying in front of the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street and vowing to be that girl for everyone behind her, Deborah on why she will "always, always support other women in any freaking way I can," and Clare's butterfly: "that's not me anymore."

🏟️ 💵 The $55 Billion Stadium: Naseem's math: 100,000 accredited women, $50,000 each, is $55 billion into venture, "a sports stadium of people." From treasurer to co-CFO of your household, to an annual investing allocation, to female fund managers walking in together instead of as the exception. And why investing in women "is not charity. I'm here to make money."

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings1000

More about the guests: invisaWear · Mignano Law Group · Ungenita Beauty · TRX Capital · SpaceVrse · GCWC Capital · Clear Art Reserve

Drea Lynn is an attorney, former corporate COO, and author of Smart Quit who helps entrepreneurs escape burnout, scale with confidence, and take control of their business and life with The Smart Shift System®. She also helps professionals make the leap into entrepreneurship with a four-phase framework. After years leading teams inside high-growth organizations, she walked away from the corner office - and the six-figure salary - to build her own consulting business. The exit didn't go to plan: she landed in six figures of debt before rebuilding to half a million in revenue. Her mission is to help one million people quit smart, build bold, and live free.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

💵Cash In, Clock Out: Knowing when to walk away from a job you've outgrown with a plan, not a panic, and how to master the mindset shift that helps you master your time freedom and grow wealth. Hint: It means being nimble, proactive, self-aware, and open to relentless learning.

💪 Prepare, Position, Pivot, Profit: Learn the 4 P's of the Smart Quit framework, including knowing when to walk away, and how to avoid the biggest mistakes most people make when they try to leave a job.

🛠️Preparation is power: Build a financial runway, assess your skills, and use your current role to gather relationships, skills, and systems to serve you in your future business.

💡 Profit isn't just money: True entrepreneurial "profit" is about building the life you want, not just the business. Consider your why and what freedom and fulfillment look like for you—otherwise, you risk building a new kind of prison for yourself.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings999

More about Drea at How To Smart Quit

https://www.howtosmartquit.com/ and at DreaLynn.co

Laura Henson is the Founder and CEO of HVM Communications, a boutique strategic communications agency focused on brand storytelling, media relations, and thought leadership for founders, women leaders, and mission-driven organizations. For 20 years, Laura has built a reputation as a trusted voice at the intersection of capital, visibility, and women's leadership. Laura is also an active investor across venture capital, private equity, and early-stage companies, with a portfolio that reflects her conviction that capital and communications are equally powerful tools for lasting change. She serves on the Executive Board of How Women Lead and the Goodnation Foundation. She is a contributing author at Inc.com and was named to the KNOW Women list of 100 Women to KNOW in America in 2025, and 100 Women to KNOW in New York in 2026.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

✨Visibility is NOT optional: How to overcome persistent challenges women face in gaining visibility as entrepreneurs, including imposter syndrome, and how to make visibility part of your strategy from day one because it drives business opportunities, secures funding, and establishes credibility and influence. In a competitive landscape, it's vital not to leave your narrative up to others.

❤️Authenticity builds trust: In a world awash with performative content and skepticism, showing up authentically (not just "talking the talk" but "walking the walk") helps you stand out and create a lasting impact. Learn how.

💸 Invest in women: Whether it's supporting women-led ventures with capital or amplifying each other's expertise or buying each other's products and services, creating a virtuous cycle advances everyone. It's not charity; it's a path to creating more wealth, opportunity, and impact for all women.

🎯 Practical Steps for Founders: Build your networks on platforms like LinkedIn and join IRL communities because face-to-face interactions often turn into lasting business opportunities; set aside specific times each week to connect with new people, and focus on building trust.

💡 Leverage AI the Human Way: AI can help streamline busywork and free time for deeper, more authentic relationships, but it needs human oversight, critical thinking, and personal voice so you can stand out from the crowd with authenticity and build trust.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings998

More about Laura at HVM Communications

Get a 15-minute Zoom to brainstorm your visibility: DM Laura on LinkedIn.

Karen Ahrens is the CEO and co-founder of Wait4me, a Los Angeles-based platform reimagining how people can reclaim time. It's the first "time broker" allowing people to buy and sell time, connecting clients with trusted, local personal assistants while also offering a concierge-style service tier. Karen's journey has been anything but linear — from working in industrial parts departments in Wisconsin to leading global digital transformation and CRM initiatives for Fortune 100 brands as a President within Omnicom. A former expat in Paris, street photographer, single mother, and avid trail runner, Karen finds balance on the canyon trails of the Santa Monica Mountains while building a company rooted in the idea that time is the most valuable commodity.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

⌚Time is a Commodity: the value of time as a tradable asset, and how individuals can "buy" time from those with more flexibility—think simplifying errands, admin tasks, or even organizing your space so you can focus on what only you can do.

🛠️Niche Matters in Marketplace Platforms: How to build a successful peer-to-peer marketplace, and why specialization is vital, and how Wait4Me pairs on clients with talented local assistants for tasks that require a human touch, rather than trying to be "everything for everyone."

🤝 Human + Tech = Real Leverage: Even in a world overflowing with AI and automation, there's a growing demand for services that can't be done by bots—whether it's event prep, nuanced market research, or trusted, in-person support.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings997

More about Karen at Uwait4me

https://uwait4me.com/

Vivienne Wagner is the Founder and CEO of Houndstooth Media Group, a boutique digital marketing agency helping mid-sized businesses turn their websites into revenue-driving assets through strategic SEO and AI-driven optimization. Known for making complex marketing concepts clear and actionable, Vivienne advises business leaders on how to position their companies to be found by both human audiences and emerging AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. Her approach increases organic visibility, drives qualified traffic, and reduces reliance on paid ads, enabling businesses to scale more sustainably. Through her SEO & AI Optimization Audit, she helps companies uncover missed opportunities, identify weaknesses, and build a clear roadmap for competing in today's evolving search landscape.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

🎯 AI as the New Personal Referral: How AI Chatbots are becoming the new "word of mouth" so if AI isn't "seeing" you clearly, you simply won't be discovered by your ideal customers.

🔍 Get Specific, Get Found: Learn why context and nuance on your website are now critical. Businesses that take the time to describe real pain points, target audiences, and use real-world language from forums and social spaces are being matched by AI directly with their perfect-fit customers.

🧰 Practical, Actionable Tips: Make sure you optimize both website copy and image file names (e.g., "pink-blonde-curly-wig.jpg" instead of "img123.jpg"), build out robust FAQ sections mirroring real search queries and answer them conversationally and with keywords, and always attribute blog content to an actual human with expertise and authority (not just "the company").

💡 Paid vs Organic: Why you're wasting ad dollars if core best-practice SEO is not in place. Platforms still index the same foundational elements: clear copy, keyword-rich image names, relevant title tags, and, above all, transparency about who you help and how, plus how you can cut your ad budget if you get organic right.

🚨 Avoid "Founder Blindness": Don't assume you already know your customer—let data and conversation reveal new opportunities.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings996

More about Vivienne at Houndstooth Media Group

https://houndstoothmediagroup.com/

Tune in to Vivienne's Free Webinar

https://houndstooth-media-group.webinargeek.com/aio-webinar-get-your-business-found?cst=wings-of-inspired-business

Deborah Sass is the CEO & Founder of SpaceVrse, a global space ecosystem connecting industry leaders, innovators, creators, and next-generation talent across more than 150+ countries. Her work focuses on shaping how space is communicated, commercialized, and culturally understood — beyond borders, sectors, and silos. Over the past 25+ years, she's worked across media, entertainment, and technology, partnering with some of the world's most influential organizations — from Mirror Group Newspapers and The Times in the UK, to TV networks including Channels 9, 7 & 10 in Australia, and later with global digital platforms such as Amazon, iTunes, Shazam, and Spotify. She is also a Co-Founder of AstroBridge Advisors, supporting companies, founders, and investors operating across space, emerging technologies, and future-focused industries — helping bridge strategy, capital, and opportunity on a global scale.

🔑Key Takeaways🔑

🚀 Who Gets to Build the Future? The case for radical diversity and inclusion in space innovation, exploration and research, and how SpaceVrse is democratizing access by making space relatable to non-experts, sharing stories and making connections for genuine accessibility in an industry that feels out of reach.

🤝 Diversity and Persistence Drive Progress: True innovation comes from collaborative, diverse teams and a refusal to accept "no". Plus, why sharing stories turns intimidating fields into accessible ones. Deborah says, "speak up, show up, and uplift those who've been historically underrepresented."

🤎Being 'The Only' in the Room: Why being an outsider is an advantage in a highly specialized industry. Fresh perspectives come from those without a traditional background and lead to groundbreaking opportunities. Learn how to overcome imposter syndrome with curiosity and a willingness to ask, "Why not?"

🌙 Cold Calls to Cosmic Ventures: Lessons learned as a woman of color over 30 years from her start driving sales off the Yellow Pages to global media executive, philanthropist, and now innovating in the space industry from a farm in Ibiza, a story of resilience, reinvention, and building across three continents.

🎙️Subscribe to Wings and get the full Show Notes at https://bit.ly/Wings995

More about Deborah at SpaceVrse

https://www.spacevrse.com/