IAM651- Entrepreneur Helps Business Owners Take Their Skills Online

Tanner Chidester owns and operates an eight-figure consulting company where that helps business owners take their skills online.

• CEO Hack: Waking up early and every-day workout
• CEO Nugget: Hire a coach no matter what it takes
• CEO Defined: Putting your team first to hit a common goal

Website: https://www.eliteceos.com/

Instagram – @tanner.chidester

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh for me I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Tanner Chidester leaked ceos.com Tanner awesome to have you on the show.

Tanner Chidester 0:40

Yeah, thanks so much for having me say it perfectly. Man. I love it.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

No problem. Super excited to have you on and I wanted to read a little bit more about Tanner so you care about all the awesome things that he's doing. Tanner owns and operates an eight-figure consulting company where they help business owners take their skills online. Tanner, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Tanner Chidester 0:57

Yeah, let's do it. Man. I'm excited. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:59

No problem, super excited to have you on. And just to get everything started. I wanted to start I guess kind of in the beginning. I wanted to hear what I call your CEO story and what they do to get started with your business.

Tanner Chidester 1:08

Now it's a long one, right? Like it always is. I'll try and give the abbreviated version because I don't have all day. But yeah, I grew up and was made fun of quite a bit. I grew up in a very conservative household. I had two older sisters. So easiest way to play. Those are just a little filtered as a little just like on the softer side, I guess. And so I got older and I realized, hey, these people are making fun of me didn't feel that great. So that's actually what made me start going to the gym, which I think is super pivotal for a lot of stuff in my life. So I started going to the gym, and about three months later I was I was going before school. So I was 12 years old. I was going to like 5:30 but I was so upset. I was just like it was crazy.

But it just something went off where I was like, Hey, I gotta handle this myself. Three months later, people started complimenting me. And all of a sudden, I was like, wow, like, I put in a little hard work, I get a result. I just feel good.

Gresham Harkless 1:54

Yeah.

Tanner Chidester 1:54

So it started just going into grades and girls and sports. Like all those things were like before I wasn't that great. So after that, I started excelling in sports, specifically football. And I went off when I played some division one football, and then, um, I just couldn't stay healthy for the life of a man. And then I soon realized I was like, you know, I could go down this path. But I just don't think I was good enough to be a first-round pick per se. And so after a while, I was like, you know, I don't want to go through get beat up, just make a couple million and you know, be messed up the rest of my life. So I stopped that. And that's kind of when I was I made a transition in business. So I was doing engineering, with the right grades. When I stopped playing football. I was transitioning back to Texas A&M, they just have a great engineering program.

I remember sitting down with a mentor, he actually knows Russell Brunson pretty well. And so anyways, we started talking and long story short, he convinced me to leave school. And my whole family. My girlfriend, everyone is just super mad. I mean, say super. Which is ironic now, right? Because now they're so happy. But first two years. I mean, nothing. I mean, about two grand. I was living at home part of the time. Then when I moved out, I was a server. I mean, it was bad, right? And I'm sitting there just after two years of nothing to show for it. And everyone's kind of like, Yes, We told you. So that's like going like I was 25 and a half or so. And that was the first time I invested in a coaching program. And I don't think it was the best. I mean, I don't think it was well, it wasn't very good, but just being honest.

But it was what I didn't realize was high ticket sales. And so I've been doing door-to-door sales for two years. I'd like you know, dunk sports, and I say something. Okay, so like people buy this. And they're like, Yeah, all right. So I started selling my fitness services, just getting people in shape. And I remember I made like, 10 grand in a week. And so that was three months of wages for me, right? I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I just figured it out. Right. So from there. It's been a very fast projector, I think, you know, we did think we don't like 12-13 and two years. The second year, we really exploded. But yeah, it's been a super awesome blessing. And you know, I mean, my life's night and day difference now. So that's kind of like the abbreviated version, I guess.

Gresham Harkless 4:11

Nice. No, I definitely appreciate it and appreciate it. A lot of times, like when you work on a certain path, you'll get beat up, to say it nicely, as nice as you can say, Oh, I'm going that path. But I also you know, thank you for telling that story in the very beginning where you know, you put work in, you start to see the results. And sometimes you don't see it immediately. It takes a little bit of time. Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's a week, sometimes it's six months, sometimes it's a year or even longer, but putting that work in you need to get to those.

Tanner Chidester 4:35

I think it's important too, that you have one person you don't need everyone to believe in you. But you do need one person because it's funny. I look back now at the time, we still talk and laugh about it. He acts like it's not a big deal because that's just who he is. But, I mean, I called him probably five times over two years. Like I was like, I'm gonna quit I'm gonna go back to school and he would always just like, don't do it. He's like, he's like, don't do it. Honestly, If it wasn't for him, I would have because all the negativity was just after a while you start to believe it right? Because you're just trying to turn at first, it's easy. But then you know, 6,7,8 months, whatever a year, and then you're just like, up there, right? So for anyone who's listening, you know, you don't need everyone to tell you, you're gonna make it. But you do, I would recommend like for one person, it's just got your back. And it made all the world of difference for me.

Gresham Harkless 5:22

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times, that person may or may not be around your inner circle, so to speak. So sometimes you might have to go outside to be able to connect with that person through somebody else at a networking event, something like that, that introduces you to something that maybe even your inner circle isn't kind of aware of. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know it's I know when I read your bio, can you take us through exactly how you work with clients and exactly what you do to help serve them?

Tanner Chidester 5:46

Yeah, sure. So we kind of have like, the company's all under one umbrella, we kind of have three different types. So the first one is getting people in shape. So you know, like, you want to lose 30 pounds, right? That was the first business I built, that really scaled. After we did that we had so many trainers coming to me that it was almost like, Yeah, can you show me what to do? I'm like, Sure. So it was a very easy transition because I had a lot of people asking me for it. And so that was the second business that we built. And we scale that a little bit faster, just because we can charge a little bit more. So it was a lot easier to scale that. And then just recently, maybe like, five months ago, we started doing more of a like I would call it a general business offer where it's not fitness specific, right?

Because that's really where I started. But again, it was the same thing we're getting so many people asking, I'm just like whatever else, let's do it because the concepts are the same. And to be honest, I think a B2C business is the hardest one to scale. And that's the first one I did. So when I get business coaches coming to me, it's it's easier to be quite honest. So easiest way to describe is we kind of have three facets, they'll come in and we'll give them obviously a membership portal. And that's a pretty standard Facebook group support ticket, but then we're I feel we deliver the most value, they have one call per day with different specialists like ads, coach, copy coach, sales coach, whatever, but then we give them unlimited one-to-one. And the way we do that is we have two full-time coaches that find success directors, so their full-time jobs, they sit on computers all day, and they answer, like they'll answer by Facebook Messenger.

So it's very quick communication, not like an email, right? And then they'll get on Zoom calls similar to this. And we'll walk them through things. And then we also use those, I would call them like the part-time coaches or accessory coaches in certain aspects. So like, we'll have an ADS coach who typically only does one call a week, but then he wants to do one-on-ones with clients. So the goal is that those one-on-one coaches do 80-90% of the work, but in different specialties, we'll put someone else in there because, like our ads coach, for example, he's running millions of dollars a year. So it makes more sense for him to do it than one of my client's success directors who's not in charge of our ad spend stuff like that. So we tried to bring the best of both worlds where in my opinion, I think most businesses centered around what's best for them.

So I've really tried to do is like what's best for us is group coaching and leverage, right, and what's best with the client is one-to-one. So we just trying to mix those two, where we're giving them one-to-one whenever they need it. But we're having so many touchpoints with different coaches, that it lowers the amount of one-to-one they need, if that makes sense. So that's what I feel is the best. Because when you only do what's best for you, the client suffers when you only do what's best for the clients you've suffered. You know, if everything we did was one-on-one, no group or whatever that, you know, that would be a nightmare. So that's how I like to do it. I just think it's the most ethical. You know, as we get bigger and bigger, you know, I see some coaches, they moved a group only.

But that's my personal opinion that hate anyone who does only group but that's just like how I feel because the biggest thing I hated when I was coming up was that I paid all this money. And then I feel like I got support. And I'm a guy who works extremely hard. So when I wasn't getting results, I didn't ever think it was the work. I just was like, I need to know what to do and what's wrong. And that was Anyways, that was what frustrated me. So I try to just kind of like do the opposite of that for any clients I work with.

Gresham Harkless 9:05

Awesome. So now I'd ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this can be for yourself or for your business. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Tanner Chidester 9:14

That's a good question. I love that question. I think for me, the biggest thing was how I started generating leads. So you know, every coach is different, etc, etc. But what I noticed when I was trying to get to the level I'm at now is it was it was almost like every coach was saying the same thing. That's how I felt it was like, Yeah, so just set up a webinar and you'll be rich. And I was like, yeah, like, I don't know, everyone's been on webinars like, I don't feel like everyone's getting rich. And again, it's not that it can't work. I just felt that after going through a bunch of coaching programs. I was like, You know what, this takes a lot of skill takes a lot of skill to be good on video. It takes a lot of skill to set up a webinar.

It takes a lot of skill to have good emails, like all these things that like you see Russell Brunson, dude, he makes it look easy. It's like man, he's a beast. So what I did that really made the difference for me is that that was around the time many chat out and bought started coming out. And I talked to a lot of coaches about and they weren't really big on it. I was like, You know what, screw it, I'm gonna try it. Initially, when I got it, I was just using it how everyone does like automation, right? So it's like a click, and they go through it or they don't if they didn't, I just leave it alone. So what I did is as funny, I actually got really frustrated with the coach I hired, I was pissed. And I was like, Screw this, like, I'm gonna hit up all my leads, I'm gonna make this work. Like I don't care. Like it was just a really bad conversation, I got fired up.

So anyways, I go through and I do this, like manual follow-up process, and I made like 30 stacks in a week, I was like, oh, like it was the same thing. Like, I was like, I figured out the next thing like paid ads, right? So over the next year and a half, I spent a lot of time systematizing it like they say this, you do this, they say that they do that bringing in team members to perform for me and stuff. And part of it is automated, but a lot of it is like it's that human touch man. It's like saying the right thing at the right time. It's sales, right? And so what I found is that doing that took a lot of pressure off my marketing. And I think that's why exploded so fast. And that's kind of what I Teach to my students, it's like look like, when you're paying a coach, you need a coach who gives you a slam dunk, right?

So if you can run an ad and someone clicks on it, and then you can create a process inside messenger, per se, we're like 90%, open rates, people are very interactive, it doesn't matter if your videos the best, it doesn't matter if your emails are the best, because that's all you have to get them to. And you can get them through to a call or a purchase wherever you want. And it does suck you know, when you're like all by yourself, but now that I've grown a huge team, it's not a big deal. And I think the system I created without sounding super arrogant and crazy. It's just not something you can try like funnel hack and figure it out, you know, people say all the time because it's so variable. And so I created a system that not only is like, I don't think anyone else is doing it at the scale on that. But it's just also like, it's such a high selling point for my clients.

Because the way you could try to figure that out, but you never will, because it's so variable, it'd be like, it's like a basketball game. Like, at any time, something can happen to steal a dunk or rebound, whatever. So that's kind of how I describe it. So that is what has helped not only me but my clients. And so we have a very high return rate at a very high price. Because we can get it to where it's almost like automatic, it is a skill like anything, but we just tell the clients, hey, if you're willing to learn this skill, if you're not good at marketing, it won't matter as much versus making an imperfect webinar. I mean, it's very difficult, especially in the fitness industry. And that's what frustrated me because, you know, business b2b is different. And so I had a lot of business coaches, like, yeah, just run a webinar ourselves.

For five grand, I might do like this, these people are like, they're not motivated, they're overweight, like they don't want a billion dollars here, like you. And so when I created that system for myself, it was you know, and then turn around to show clients that, you know, it's awesome, right, and the client said, Oh, my gosh, so that's my secret sauce, or quote, and that's kind of what I felt like really helped me scale.

Gresham Harkless 13:06

I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So that could be like an apple book or habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient,

Tanner Chidester 13:15

I wake up early in our workout every day. And that may not be a big deal for some people. But I just find that I think much better. And I'm so much less stressed.

Gresham Harkless 13:24

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Tanner Chidester 13:33

So honestly I think what I would have done sooner is just hired to coach faster. So what people don't seem to understand is that there's the information is everywhere. The problem is knowing which information to trust, and then packaging it into one concise formula like people I can find that on YouTube. Like, yeah, dude, I mean, but that's just one thing. Like, do you know every step to get to your goal? So if you want to sell or build $100 million company, do you know every single step from watching a YouTube video? Probably not. So something I was scared of is like, I always told myself, I'll save up.

The problem is when you're making three grand in a month, you're not going to save up because something will happen. And the funds will deplete you say 500 bucks a month car breaks down 500 bucks a month. You know, it's your girl's birthday, whatever. And then all of a sudden, you're just going in circles. So, you know 23 to 25. Not only did I not make money, but it was hilarious. Like I've sent her 25 And I felt so defeated. I looked at my bank account like that was the same number. It wasn't I was 23. And I was in the rat race. And that's when it went off like Dude, I have to get a coach no matter what it takes because Saving money is not going to hit my goals. I have to make more.

Gresham Harkless 14:45

Definitely appreciate that. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Tanner, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Tanner Chidester 14:55

I think it sure is, as a CEO is someone who puts others before himself to hit a common goal. It's funny, but like, I truly believe that like, when you put your team first, the team works harder for you. And at the end of the day, the bigger the business gets, the more you have to rely on the team.

Gresham Harkless 15:16

I definitely appreciate that Tanner. I appreciate your time even more, what I wanted to do is back to the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of you to find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Tanner Chidester 15:29

Sure, man. Yeah, the last thing I'll say is just don't quit. I mean, as dumb as it sounds, it really is like if you're just willing to keep trying to try and try and try and unless there's you know, you have a mental challenge or something like it's just it will work you just have to kind of just keep going in terms of contact me like I'm always very responsible on social media. So just anything Tanner to this or Facebook Instagrams usually best or you can go to eliteceo.com and hear a little bit more about my story and see client's results. So thank you so much for having me, man. It was awesome. And I hope it wasn't too much over the top I like to talk.

Gresham Harkless 16:04

Hey, man, I was right on point. So I truly appreciate that and we will have your links and information in the show notes as well too. But thank you for reminding us as well not to quit you only really lose if you quit and I think if you keep going understand it's a process and we always have the opportunity to win so thank you so much for helping us win Tanner and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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