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Chad Kodary (00:02.249)
What's going on everybody. Welcome to another episode of behind the revenue. Today we have Tanner Chidister from elite CEOs on with us. Tanner, I've been watching you for a while now, but for the people who don't know yet who you are, uh, just give them a little context, man. What is it that you guys do?
Tanner Chidester (00:20.782)
Yeah, so Elite COs were in short, were a business consulting company. I started off in the fitness industry. I had a pretty successful online fitness company. And then as that progressed, people started asking for help. And I started initially with trainers and then more people asked for help. And so over the last six years, we've done about a hundred million in sales and we just love helping all kinds of online businesses. And I just take the lessons I learned and try to implement it with other companies.
Chad Kodary (00:46.889)
And what's a team size right now between your team?
Tanner Chidester (00:50.062)
We were as big as 100, we're smaller now. 70ish right now. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (00:54.089)
70 and what's what's that kind of split up into is it a lot of it's primarily coaches and account managers and stuff like that.
Tanner Chidester (01:00.078)
Yeah, well, obviously a lot of account managers, a good amount of setters, I would say is the bulk. We also have different offers. So depending when you when you start, at least for us, we can get into it. But as you have different offers, a lot of times you can have the same sales team for the same avatar, but different avatars need different sales teams. And so sometimes it's just also simply because it's a different type of product, it's easier to have different sales reps, but primarily setters, sales reps, account managers, that's the bulk for sure.
Chad Kodary (01:29.065)
So I know a lot of your experiences, well, I'm assuming you have a lot of experience around setters and closers, right? Building a sales organization and a sales team. Is primarily most of your sales done through closers?
Tanner Chidester (01:36.94)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Chidester (01:43.598)
Yeah, the actual, you know, collecting the payments. You can do stuff through Messenger, but I think more times than not, Messenger works better for super high level clients. Maybe, you know, someone like yourself, or, you know, if I'm a mirror image of myself where, hey man, I'm not gonna get on a sales call, or I don't even need a sales call. For me, you know, the reason I think I feel that way is I've just done so many sales calls. I don't, it doesn't really matter what they say, does it? I mean, like when you take a lot.
Chad Kodary (02:00.137)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (02:08.073)
I get it. We don't like to be pitched.
Tanner Chidester (02:10.734)
Well, and you also know it just doesn't really matter what they say. They could promise the world and it could be that or it cannot be that. So it's more just taking the risk. But yeah, more times than not, it's going to be over the phone. So but the setters obviously have a big part in getting them to even book the call.
Chad Kodary (02:24.553)
Yep. I want to kind of go through the process. One thing that's fun, I've interviewed a couple of people that are in very similar spaces, coaches in the business space. And one fun thing that we did is kind of going through like the funnel and the journey to understand the process, like peeling the onion back, because most people, they'll see your ads, right? They'll see your funnels, but they don't understand what happens in kind of behind the revenue, hence the name. Right. So shameless dork plug. But.
Tanner Chidester (02:51.758)
No, no, it's good. I can tell immediately what the podcast is about. So it's good.
Chad Kodary (02:56.361)
Yeah. So I want to like peel the ending back because I'm also curious about the backend stuff because I'm a marketing nerd. I love funnels. We have tons of them. We have tons of offers. Um, our team size is very similar. We're, we're almost at about a hundred employees right now. Right. So very similar team size. Thank you. You too. So very similar business. Uh, uh, we do, we have coaching, we do fulfillment. So we, you know, we've been in the coaching space. We have three, uh, you know, I don't know how familiar I would DashClicks it, but for us to add some context.
Tanner Chidester (03:10.094)
Nice. Yeah, that's crazy. Congrats, man.
Chad Kodary (03:25.545)
Um, we have, uh, three kind of, uh, divisions inside of our business. We have our software, we have our white label fulfillment, and then we have our coaching, which we primarily worked directly with marketing agencies to kind of help them ramp up. Right. Um, and in the coaching side, um, we do do, uh, a lot with obviously closers and centers and stuff like that. So I want to learn from you, dude. Um, you've done. Over a hundred million dollars in sales. I want to know how and what are the secret sauces that kind of got you there. So like, if you can, I see your ads all the time.
Right. I probably clicked on one of your fucking ads and now you're following me for life. Right. But yeah, well, that's fine. I love it because I'm the type of guy who clicks on ads on purpose because I want to see like their marketing camp. Yeah. So I'm, I'm that guy, right. Um, walk me through like, what's your strategy right now to acquire new clients for your coaching or high ticket program? Like, are you doing like, and I give just example first context for also the viewers here, um, before we get into like the high level stuff.
Tanner Chidester (03:58.286)
Yeah, unfortunately.
Tanner Chidester (04:04.846)
see what happens. Sure.
Chad Kodary (04:23.945)
Are you doing like maybe like some low level tripwire like 17 $27 like little tripwires to get them into your world having setters contact them and then going through like the whole upsell model? Is that what you're doing?
Tanner Chidester (04:36.526)
Yes and no. So over, you know, over the last six years, we've done everything. And when I mean everything, we've done everything. What has been interesting is depending on the season or what's going on in the economy, social environment, different things have worked better than others. Currently, we're running pretty much everything, mostly high ticket. We do also run some low ticket stuff, you know, for four dollars, four courses for four dollars and stuff like that. But nine times out of 10, the main objective for us is we're trying to start a conversation and messenger.
and then we have the setting team go in and then move to book calls. That's the main, I'd say 80 -20 rule, right? So if you're talking about the 80 % of my business, that's working the best. At one time, we were spending half a million a month on ads and it was a mix between low ticket and high ticket. But we just play to our strengths and we just also play depending on the economy. So over the last six years, I think I did a Facebook post today actually, that as far as I'm aware, I, you know, which...
May not mean much, but as far as I'm aware, every competitor that I'm aware of that has a very similar service to us, they're all out of business at this point. That was over a million plus a month. So there could be some smaller businesses that are still, you know, maybe they're doing 20K a month and they've been around for six years. But I think the ability to adapt has really helped us. And then also we just try to have as many genuine conversations as we can. So my companies have really been built around doing the hard things, the unscalable things versus maybe
the easy, you know, kind of hoping just push to a perfect webinar and it works type way, which I think that's a better way. I think. Yeah, like I think that's actually the best way in a perfect world. But for me over the years, I've just never counted on that. And I've always wanted to make sure that I did everything in my power to be successful. So hopefully I answer that question. But like 80 percent is drive to the DMS and then kind of push through from there.
Chad Kodary (06:06.281)
Yep, that stuff is, it's hard, it's very unlikely that stuff works, so.
Chad Kodary (06:23.751)
Yeah, dude.
Do you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive deeper into that cause I'm curious about that too. But before we go further, are you, are you primarily is your program for, are you teaching coaches how to create a coaching program or scale up or what do you, what, like who's your avatar?
Tanner Chidester (06:39.438)
Yeah, so 50 % is trainers just because I built my name there. And that's a it's a gift and a curse because you continue to get trainers but then the that's the gift is you have a lot of credibility. The curse is that people will assume oh they do mostly trainers, which is true and not true because 50 % of the clients are trainers. The other half is what I would consider.
Chad Kodary (06:55.015)
Mm, gotcha.
Chad Kodary (06:59.751)
What are you teaching them though with the trainers? Are you teaching them how to start their own coaching program?
Tanner Chidester (07:03.372)
Yeah, usually, well, how to yeah, how to start there? Well, how to really get online. So there's a million trainers, especially Miami. I mean, Miami has a ton of trainers, but they really have no concept on how online works. They're great at what they do, but they don't understand marketing sales. They don't understand ads. So a lot of them, it's moving online so they can get more time for him because I loved fitness. But I saw there was really no money in fitness unless, you know, it was either get on OnlyFans or it was work in person a million hours a week. And I didn't want to do either.
Chad Kodary (07:07.529)
Okay. Oh yeah, dude. Yep.
Tanner Chidester (07:32.142)
So I just asked myself, how can I become a millionaire as a trainer and you have to go online? So that's how that started. Once that had a lot of traction and I started getting all these awards from ClickFunnels and so forth, people outside of fitness said, well, it's similar, isn't it? And I was like, well, yeah, but the, you know, and pros and cons to that is you get a lot more market share, but the downside is now you cannot be quite as specific in your fulfillment where you can show the same steps, but.
you know, when it's a specific avatar, say this, say this, do this specifically, and they have to think less. So it's been pros and cons. I've learned a lot. I wouldn't change anything, but those are the two types of avatars we get.
Chad Kodary (08:09.993)
Got you. Okay. And so right now I want to go backwards. So you said, uh, all your ads right now are going to ads that are basically trying to get people to start a conversation and message. Or is that like primarily not all, but 80 % of your ads and where are they? Is this a Facebook messenger, a Iggy messenger, anything that's
Tanner Chidester (08:21.614)
80%. 80%, yeah.
Tanner Chidester (08:28.268)
Yeah, it's funny. So three years ago, we were running half a million a month through Facebook. Now we run 50 ,000 or less and we run the rest through Instagram. There's no yeah, and we're open to having a change. We just seem to have higher quality on Instagram. And I'm not sure if that's because it's just a younger demographic. So, you know, most of our clients are 20 to 40 want to start a business, you know, once they get over that age.
Chad Kodary (08:34.055)
Okay.
Chad Kodary (08:40.465)
Really?
Chad Kodary (08:56.713)
Same with us, yeah.
Tanner Chidester (08:57.614)
Yeah, so I'm assuming it's because Instagram has the younger demographic, but I couldn't tell you. But again, it just it's interesting. I think you just really have to constantly be optimizing and be up to date with what's going on in the marketplace. But yeah, that's what we do now.
Chad Kodary (09:11.625)
Okay, so any ads been on YouTube or TikTok?
Tanner Chidester (09:16.302)
We do some, not as much as we used to. I don't find YouTube as profitable for us now. Can't really tell you. Yeah, I think it depends on the offer. I think when you can go broader on YouTube, it's better. Or maybe retargeting, or if you just have an extremely high cost of acquisition. But a couple years ago, it was more profitable, not as profitable now. I think the other thing we don't love with YouTube is that again, we can't.
Chad Kodary (09:24.017)
YouTube is hard to scale, dude. It's really hard. For us, it was really difficult, man.
Chad Kodary (09:32.777)
And we can't.
Tanner Chidester (09:45.71)
push them into a conversation. So it has to go all straight to page, which I'm not against, but that's just never worked as well for us. And I like to think it's because I'm not as good at marketing as you know, maybe I should be. And that's so that's that's not necessarily a good thing per se. But I also like to think of the same token that it's forced me to get better at sales and strategy and follow up and all the things that I think in the grand scheme of things are actually far more important.
Then maybe having the perfect VSL or the perfect video if that makes sense
Chad Kodary (10:17.289)
I agree. Dude, I see people with the shittiest landing pages and ads and stuff like that and they crush it. Right. So it's like that stuff. That stuff doesn't really matter as much. It helps. It doesn't really matter though. It's not like the core. Um, so, okay. So you run ads going 80 % of your ads are going to the DM. So let's talk about that. So what happens then DM hits a IG. Is it going on your page? Uh, your personal IG page.
Tanner Chidester (10:21.678)
Yeah.
Tanner Chidester (10:40.526)
Yeah, we split test between business pages and personal. Personal work better. It's not like a massive surprise. Once they come in, the first link or message I say, we'll have a link to where we'd like them to go to opt in or watch a video. And then the setting team will go in from there. I am looking into, you know, different AI products. The cool thing about AI now is not necessarily, well, I'd say for guys like myself.
Chad Kodary (10:45.257)
Yeah, it always does.
Tanner Chidester (11:05.39)
You can go and buy AI and hope that it does this perfect setting. But the cool thing is if you actually are really good at sales, you can build your own AI with your own responses. So you can actually build it out where it can have the perfect responses that you would say, which, you know, if I compare myself to my team, I love my team, but you know, your team's usually 80%, right? 80 % is kind of what you'll shoot for in terms of your sales expertise or whatever it may be.
So I'm actually looking forward to that. I think we could do some more damage that way where if every single conversation was quote unquote perfect. But that's what we do now. And then from there, we'll either obviously book the call. So they have three ways to book. They can watch the video with the first link, book that way. They can have, yeah, usually VSL. Yeah, usually VSL and then, you know, link to book a call or a button, excuse me.
Chad Kodary (11:50.793)
That video, by the way, is going to like a lander with a video on it or is just...
Chad Kodary (11:58.953)
Okay.
Tanner Chidester (11:58.958)
and then the setters can talk to them and then if they aren't qualified, we can set a 15 minute call as well and then the setters could call, see if they're qualified. But we've really found that to be super efficient and successful because again, a lot of companies can't or won't do it. And so I think that's how I've stayed in the game, is just scale what's unscalable. For sure.
Chad Kodary (12:18.569)
So I want to ask a couple quick questions. I like to dive super deep into shit. When you send them to the VSL and there's whatever button embed, whatever it is that you're telling them to book a call, is there any type of like qualifiers that you're saying in the videos? Like you have to be in the coaching space. You should be doing over 50 K in rev, whatever it is. I'm just giving you an example, right? Is there any type of qualifiers that you're trying to put in the content before they book a call?
Tanner Chidester (12:44.846)
mean, I just try to be super straightforward. I don't necessarily to be frank, you don't need to have a lot of money, you just have to have a lot of grit. So more times than not in my videos, I will disqualify quite a few people because I'll say, Hey, look, you know, here's my expertise. Here's why I know what I'm talking about. If you're into this great, but you need to have these skills. If you don't like to work hard, if you don't like this, you don't like that stuff for you. This isn't a get ready. So it's more of that because realistically, the thing that holds
Chad Kodary (12:51.497)
Yeah, agreed.
Chad Kodary (13:11.529)
That's what it is.
Tanner Chidester (13:12.686)
Yeah, what holds most people back is their just inability or unwillingness to do the work. And so to guys like me, I just, I've been in the industry a long time. I've paid for a lot of coaching. I've invested a lot of things. I know that more times than not, it really just comes down to the ability of the person to persevere and execute. And, you know, some people will go, Oh, well, I, you know, I had a bad experience. And I say, yeah, that's literally normal. Or,
You know, I equate a lot of the coaching space for business a lot to dating. And the reason I say that is if it takes 10 girls for you to meet your wife, it's the same thing with coaching. And some people they look at is that they have one bad experience and then they write the whole industry off as a scam, which I can understand what they mean. But you go to college and drop 250 and Owen Batts and I, and I just never understood that mindset. Things completely backwards.
Chad Kodary (14:02.985)
So they book a call. Let's say I go, I book a call. Am I booking a call with a setter for a discovery call or am I going straight to a closer? Okay.
Tanner Chidester (14:10.446)
Yeah, straight to a closer. Some companies do that differently, and I'm not a huge fan of it if you can avoid it because it just doubles up your processes, meaning you have to double the setters, double the closers, etc. But for us, when they go into the DMs, that's kind of our setting as is. And then they watch the VSL. We have a type form. So it's the application for anyone who doesn't know what type form is. And then from there, if it's not a fit, the setter can go back. Hey, saw this. If it is a fit, we keep it.
Chad Kodary (14:18.697)
Yeah.
Tanner Chidester (14:38.958)
So we haven't really seen the need to do that with paid ads. I'm more a fan of the 15 minute maybe with organic or cold obviously, but with paid ads I don't really see the benefit more times than not.
Chad Kodary (14:49.897)
Okay, fair enough. How many setters do you have versus, well, let me actually rephrase this question. Are your setters just working in like a pool or you have like teams of like one closer, three setters? What's your back end process kind of like in there?
Tanner Chidester (15:05.752)
Yeah, so everyone kind of works together. Like I said, I separate the sales teams based on offers. So we have four total offers. Three of them are for business owners. So when I say that's the same avatar, same sales teams, same setters, et cetera, then we have another offer, which is separate setters, separate sales team. So total setters between the two offers, 12 ish. And then we have five sales guys total. Could have more, but I'm very good at keeping a very slim sales team.
Chad Kodary (15:23.465)
Got you.
Tanner Chidester (15:33.218)
because we just keep the calendars really clean. We disqualify pretty hard. No, they're 60. So usually we'll give them about, yeah, we give them 60 minutes. They don't always go 60, but we like giving them 60 minutes. I think 30 is a little much for a five figure package. It depends, but we like to make sure they have enough time. Yeah, so the packages can range, excuse me. Most of our high ticket products will range anywhere between 4 ,000 to 200 ,000.
Chad Kodary (15:37.897)
and what are the call links the thirty minute calls sixty minute
Chad Kodary (15:51.911)
What's cost on it?
Tanner Chidester (16:02.018)
Main package prices are going to be between, I'd say the bulk is going to be sold between four to 16 ish. Anything above that is going to be higher level packages, higher, you know, higher level clients, upgrades, cross sales, stuff of that nature. So around there.
Chad Kodary (16:08.679)
Got you.
Chad Kodary (16:18.217)
Okay, and I'll have some fun questions, metrics, because people always like that. What are your backend metrics? What's your show rate, what's your close rate? What are you floating around averages?
Tanner Chidester (16:29.73)
Sure. So cost of acquisition usually hovers around three to five grand, three grants. Like I'm very happy five grants. I'm not as quite as ecstatic, but around there, we try to shoot for 25 % CAC show rate, 72, 73 % applications, 250 to 300 ish, which I'm pretty happy with lead costs will vary depending on the offer between.
You know, 10 to 30 bucks, depending on actually has been 10 to 60 bucks, depending if it's a really high level offer. But I'd say on average, 10 to 20 bucks. And yeah, I don't know if there's any other metrics you want to know.
Chad Kodary (17:11.121)
yet no uh... seventy two seventy three percent sure you doing anything to increase your rates any secret soster
Tanner Chidester (17:17.006)
Yeah, I mean, we're pretty I'm pretty I'm yeah, I mean, I'm pretty happy with that show rate. You know, in a perfect world, I have, you know, 80 percent, but I'm pretty happy with that. I think the thing we do really well is we just really barrage them. So once they book a call from the center, the center will send a DM, please watch all this homework, etc. They get all the automations, you know, emails, text, etc., etc. And then the closers themselves will also send a manual follow up and just say, hey, you know, this is Tanner with Elite CEO is just making sure we're good for our call tomorrow.
And you know the drill most people, you know, if they don't respond, they're not going to show. And I think also part of our show rate is just the fact that we're more stringent on the calendars. So people will go, well, I have a terrible show rate. Well, you let everyone schedule and you know those people shouldn't be scheduled in the first place. So you got to keep in mind if you're canceling people or you cancel, excuse me.
Chad Kodary (18:02.247)
Mm.
Tanner Chidester (18:08.718)
then they're not going to show because the canceled and it doesn't hurt your metrics because you're keeping it off the calendar. And I and I think that's also why some people have massive sales teams and they drive themselves nuts because they are letting so many people book and they go, well, yeah, but maybe the closer can close it. The problem is you don't keep the closers happy. You're having to manage twice as many people. And more times than not, they're not a good fit. Like the center can go back to them and say, hey, X, Y, Z and cancel it if it's not a good look. So.
I don't feel like I lose out on anything. I don't feel like we cancel too much. So I think that's also a part of it that helps us probably compared to other agencies or programs where if they go straight to page, they're going to usually have a lower show rate because they don't have any of these conversations.
Chad Kodary (18:52.681)
Yeah, what's usually something that you guys consider as somebody not being qualified? Like what are you looking at in the application or in the conversation?
Tanner Chidester (19:01.614)
I mean, realistically, for someone to be qualified, they need two things. They need desire and they need money. So if they don't have money, obviously disqualified or if they don't have desire, meaning, yeah, I'm just kind of looking around. I'm not looking to do anything for a couple of months. I just wanted to see what you guys could do. That to me is not worth the call because they're already telling you upfront. They're not super interested. Now, it can vary if the sales team's calendars are light. Let them through. I don't want my sales guys just being completely lazy.
Chad Kodary (19:23.465)
they're not interested yet
Tanner Chidester (19:31.15)
But there's also enough to where it's a balance, right? You need to know, OK, if we're doing really good and we're scaling, maybe we don't let these people waste their time, have a setter call them, let the setter qualify more and then go from there. But it's really just if there's a desire and they have cash, they have desire and cash, you're good to go.
Chad Kodary (19:48.455)
What is your team based out of the 70 people? Are they everybody in the U S or you split out like setters and.
Tanner Chidester (19:52.238)
Yeah, it's all over. I'd say mostly US and Canada. We love setters in Canada because we can get them. Let's say in the US if you're paying 18, it's 23 Canadian so you can get a really high quality setter if it's hourly right? So most setters if they're doing dials, they might be a base plus percentage, but we have a lot of message like I call messenger setters like they message a lot. So a lot of times we pay them hourly so that way we can build a big team and have.
different people pop in and out, but we're not paying them on a salary basis. And so we like a lot of Canadians for that specifically because the money goes farther and they're also first world. We've had a lot of issues, I think, for higher level, excuse me, higher level offers when we go third world country. And that's just because, you know, they can tell, you know, like this doesn't sound like someone.
Chad Kodary (20:46.085)
Plus Canadians are super nice. They're just nice people.
Tanner Chidester (20:48.896)
Yeah, yeah, usually. I haven't really had any bad experiences.
Chad Kodary (20:52.635)
The, the, uh, so the centers that you have, are they around the clock? Cause I'm, you're running ads all day, right? So you have 24.
Tanner Chidester (20:57.55)
Yeah, great question. So we do six hour shifts. So typically in a day, right, it'll be 12 hours. We used to have an overnight shift, but the issue we've had with that is the over one, there's not as much traffic just because people are asleep, at least when you're targeting US, obviously. And then number two is that the overnight person doesn't get a lot of management. And so what we've usually found is when we go in and actually look, they're not doing what they say they're doing. So right now we've actually just cut our overnight shift.
And so at nighttime it piles up a little bit, but then we come back. So it's usually, you know, 12 hour shifts and then we have two six hour shifts. And then that's also how you keep them fresh and they make enough money, but they're not too tired, et cetera. And that's kind of been the best way I found.
Chad Kodary (21:39.561)
Any like spiffs or bonuses or anything for the setters?
Tanner Chidester (21:42.606)
Yeah, for sure. Definitely on sets that close, we give them incentives. We also make it, we also try to make it so that the team wants to help each other. So for example, let's say in your normal script, there's 10 questions. Once the person drops, let's say question number seven, they will get allocated that bonus. And what you do is you incentivize the team like, look, every time you drop that question, someone's going to help you. So you need to help them when they drop it. And so that way you kind of keep it fair as well.
You can also do split bonuses. I just think it's harder to track, you know, so, hey, this person said the question and this person set the bookie link, whatever. But at the end of the day, as long as it's a team thing, I haven't really had any issues.
Chad Kodary (22:22.281)
Do you pay on sets or showed?
Tanner Chidester (22:25.056)
Closes we don't pay on either of those. Yeah, we pay on closes because end of the day I just tell them I say look we're if we paying if we're paying you hourly It doesn't really matter if they don't close I'm not paying you a bonus on a show because you might get all these people to show that are trash So to me we do it on the clothes then what you can do is you could pay more on the closes and it incentivizes the behavior want because that's ultimately what you want is you want closes
Chad Kodary (22:26.633)
closes.
Chad Kodary (22:45.289)
there does they don't send shit to the closers because of the only
Tanner Chidester (22:50.99)
Yeah, because if you incentivize shows, I can get a hell of a lot of shows, but you may not get anyone who closes them, so that's not what I want.
Chad Kodary (22:56.617)
qualified. Yeah. And your sales rep, are they commission only sales rep? I'm assuming a lot of them. What's a percentage usually that they're running?
Tanner Chidester (23:02.062)
Yeah, 1099 commission only. Usually 10. I think if you start getting this super high level offers, you could also technically lower that to maybe, let's say, 8%. I know a couple of my buddies who do that, but I think end of the day, it's tick for tack. The only time you might need to lower it to 8 % is if you're, you know, tremendously scaling. And so let's say you're doing two, yeah, two, three, two, three, four million a month, you know,
Chad Kodary (23:26.279)
Yeah, costs.
Tanner Chidester (23:31.694)
An extra 2 % at that point could be 20 ,000, 30 ,000. But realistically, the way I look at it is I want people to make, depending on the position, like I'd say at the highest level, I want them to make them 30, 40 Gs a month. If they want more than that, there's plenty of talent out there where I can find someone who wants 30, 40 Gs a month. And I think that's realistic. You have to look at what's the cost in the economy to find that level of talent. And so, you know, some people are, I know a buddy who's paying one of my friends 80 grand a month.
for the guy who's a COO type position. And you know, that's fine if that's what he wants to do. But I'm like, man, to be frank, I don't think you need to pay this guy 80 grand a month to be your COO. I think you can find plenty of optimal COOs who would take 30 or 40, maybe 50, but even that, it's not 80. Maybe if you're talking about Google or SpaceX, but those are billion dollar companies, totally different.
Chad Kodary (24:27.145)
And closers, what did you say the close rate again was? What's your close rate?
Tanner Chidester (24:31.182)
Yeah, honestly, our closers will close 40 to 50%. But keep in mind, I give them a lot of I give them a lot of leeway on the calls. So what I mean by that is a lot of companies will say, let's say you're selling a program for five grand. And so if they don't have five grand, a lot of companies will have the sales reps, you know, keep building value, keep building value. And I agree with the sentiment. But the problem is, if someone doesn't have five grand, you can build all the value in the world. I don't care, you know.
Chad Kodary (24:36.137)
Hi.
Tanner Chidester (24:58.414)
what Grant Cardone says or, you know, Andy Elliott or whoever, it's, it's, you're not going to make them pull five grand out of their butt. So what we do, no, we actually don't do financing. I don't like financing just because a lot of them don't end up being what they say they are. It always is looks real good on the outside, real bad on the inside. But what I do is I give them a leeway to work out different packages. So if they go to someone say, Hey, it's five grand. They say, Hey, I don't have it.
Chad Kodary (25:06.217)
Do you do financing?
Tanner Chidester (25:26.03)
once they find out cash on hand, I give them different parameters on what they can and can't do. So changing the price. And so obviously, if you're able to do that, you should have a higher close rate. And so I've also. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And I also think it's really helped my companies over the years because what a lot of people don't realize is by, you know, you let all those little deals go. But remember, even if it's not a great deal, that goes back into ad spend, that goes back into paying your team. So when you're a solopreneur.
Chad Kodary (25:37.417)
So like payment plans, right? Payment plans, you're talking about stuff like that.
Chad Kodary (25:52.233)
Yeah, 100 % dude.
Tanner Chidester (25:55.214)
You're not going to do that type of stuff when you have a bigger team. I think that could be an extra couple hundred thousand dollars a month, which helps for payroll and ad spend and all those types of expenses. And so and again, you don't lose anything from it as long as you're given a good service and you give them the same service. I think it's fine. I think the thing you do have to be careful of, though, is that's not something that you would obviously want to publicize. I don't see anything wrong with it because it's your company. But, you know, like anything, if you sell a bag of chips for 10 bucks and someone else gets it for five, let's say.
Chad Kodary (26:22.921)
Yeah, yeah.
Tanner Chidester (26:23.726)
You know, you got to be careful with that because you can sometimes get upset people, etc. But that's at the discretion of my closers. And I tried to do that also. So, you know, they don't spend another 30 minutes on a call trying to build an extra $3 ,000 of value when in reality, this is what the person has. I think it's easier and it's more efficient and trying to battle and battle for 30 minutes. That's just at least my two cents.
Chad Kodary (26:46.313)
Yesterday interviewed Andrew Crozy. I don't know if you're familiar with him. Um, yeah, he's also down in Miami too. I was a good friend of mine. I've known for years. Uh, he actually, uh, threw out something that threw me like, like, I didn't even think of this. Um, I asked him, we started getting into the financing questions and he's, and, uh, actually, sorry, it was actually out of the podcast and now I'll bring it back into the podcast. This was a DM conversation that I had with him yesterday. He's asked me, I was like, Hey, did you have a good financing company? Because I'm thinking about, you know, we used to use a company back in the day.
Tanner Chidester (26:49.198)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (27:15.017)
for our coaching program, our coaching programs like six cases, not like super high ticket, but it's high enough for people can't afford it. They might need financing. And it was hell because they used to have to go through like a week or two of like paperwork and this. And it was like, I don't even want to deal with that. Right. So it was just too much of a headache. So we just, we said, fuck it. We're not going to do it anymore. We stopped doing it. Right. We haven't done it for like two or three years now. And then I asked Andrew, I was like, man, like,
Tanner Chidester (27:32.91)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (27:36.617)
Is there, is there anything new in the coaching, like in the financing world? And he actually said what he does is he actually grabs a firm in Klarna. Have you ever heard of them? Klarna.
Tanner Chidester (27:48.302)
Karna? Yeah, yeah, I've actually heard they're like a good option. I think the only caveat with them is their little, I guess they seem like they're a little hard on what companies they'll do it with or so forth. But yeah, they're for good things. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (27:59.401)
So I did the research, I did the research. So a firm from what I understand does not work with coaches or B2B businesses, which knocks us out. However, Klarna, right? I did the research and they do work with companies like that, right? And they just, they integrate right into Stripe, right? You just toggle it on, on the backend and everything's kind of done in Stripe. And the process for checkout is literally like two minutes.
Tanner Chidester (28:06.542)
Correct, yeah, yeah.
Tanner Chidester (28:18.894)
Right.
Chad Kodary (28:24.713)
So you go as if you're for the context for viewers, if you don't know what this is, like if you're using Stripe and you have Stripe integrated on your funnel in DashClicks shameless plug, then basically what you can do is you can literally toggle Klarna on, right? It'll show up inside of your checkout and they'll give you two options when someone's checking out. You wanna pay with credit card, you wanna pay with Klarna. When you hit Klarna, it'll automatically detect, cause you can set it in Stripe.
Tanner Chidester (28:24.782)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Kodary (28:50.505)
Like for me, I don't want people to run through Klarna if they're gonna spend like a thousand bucks or 500 bucks. I'd rather just run your credit card, right? Cause there's fees and stuff associated. So I put it anybody between five and 10 grand. If you're running a five or between, sorry, between 1000 and $10 ,000 transaction, I'm gonna show Klarna as an option, right? And then they just click on the button Klarna. They put their phone number in, a little pop -up happens. They literally get.
approved like within a minute on the spot and it gives them payment options where they can pay in four payments. Uh, they can pay in 30 days in full, or they can do financing up to 36 months, obviously with financing rates too. And what Klarna does is they charge the business like us 5 .99 % plus 30 cents of transaction, but that's with Stripe fees. So if Stripe charging you two or 3%, you know, whatever you, you, you got running with Stripe because it's well, no, no, no, it's with Stripe.
Tanner Chidester (29:18.7)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Chidester (29:41.678)
Yeah, it's like 8%.
Chad Kodary (29:45.161)
So it's 6 % with Stripe because it's all happening. Yeah, it's all happening in Stripe, right? So if you're paying Stripe 3 % anyways, it's like another 3%. And what's cool about this is you get all the money now. And if that person doesn't pay, they deal with it and they eat the cost.
Tanner Chidester (29:46.926)
Oh nice. Oh nice.
Tanner Chidester (30:00.11)
Yeah, that was it was great. I mean, that's ideal. Most of the times. Yeah. So if I mean, that's if that's an option, that's badass. I think most times what I ran into is, you know, they'll take a massive fee. So then at that point, what's the point? I might as well just do a payment plan and risk it or two. They won't take a massive fee. They'll do it month by month, but then they'll have all this yellow tape. Oh, well, you have to use this X amount and these deals. It's just funny to me because I'll go down these.
Chad Kodary (30:13.769)
Six.
Tanner Chidester (30:26.958)
I'll go down the river, I guess, and I'll ask a million questions and, oh yeah, it's like this, it's like that. Start using it and then their team will reach out. Oh, actually this and that. And you know, it's not what the sales rep said. So I've kind of given up hope, but I think out of all of them, I have heard pretty good things about Klarna. So if that's the case, that's great.
Chad Kodary (30:42.985)
Dude, it blew me away to the point where I had to call my CTO in the morning. I was like, yo, we got to get this inside of our funnel builder and like activating it. Like everybody should be able to, because it's so cool. Right. I mean, Andrew told me he's like, dude, uh, this is going to double your coaching business because the reality is most people don't buy not because they're not interested. It's because they don't have the money to buy a lot of the times. Right. So if you can solve a percentage of that, right. If I can increase my, my close rate by 20.
Tanner Chidester (30:52.686)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Tanner Chidester (31:04.494)
100%. 100%.
Chad Kodary (31:11.613)
you know, 10, 20 % closing people that are like literally dying to join the program. They just can't afford it, right? Dude, Klarna, go check out using Klarna. So shout out to Andrew, if you're watching this, that was a really cool thing. And I'm learning so much cool shit as doing all these interviews on the podcast, I'm asking all these questions. So, okay, so let's keep going. So you close, you have whatever, 40 % close rate, let's just call it that, right?
Tanner Chidester (31:18.99)
Yeah, no, that's great, man. Yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to, yeah.
Chad Kodary (31:39.369)
Is this for your first tier or, and then you're kind of upping people to like higher ticket or whatever, like you're during the closing call, you're kind of evaluating if they're, they're just going to ready to go straight up to the top.
Tanner Chidester (31:51.854)
Yeah, so yeah, so the closers have different packages they can sell. Obviously you'll have, let's say your base and then you have your down sell and your upsells. So it's yeah, off that's usually 40%. And then what I do at least in my company is once they're handed over to the account manager, the account manager is the one who gets the next upsells. And so I've found the reason I like that personally is just that they're well, yeah, they're building the relationship. And so what's ironic is you actually need coaches.
Chad Kodary (32:13.991)
Less salesy.
Tanner Chidester (32:20.942)
that also know how to sell. And if they don't, it actually is a massive detriment to your company and your staff. And to be honest, your LTV, everything. So, yeah, the initial sales rep basically will make that initial sell. And then from there, the account manager takes over and then everything on the back end is the account manager. And that's also why, you know, you need to make sure that they're a good coach, that they're tracking it, that they're actually getting upsells. It's like super important, but yeah, that's how we do it.
Chad Kodary (32:47.433)
And swinging all the way back over to the front end, do you have any low ticket products like low ticket courses, 500 bucks, 997 and stuff like that, that you're running ads to.
Tanner Chidester (32:56.27)
Yeah, we do, but they're usually much cheaper. I'd say usually we've seen the best results between seven and 27. When we go above that, you can still sell it, but it actually doesn't seem to make much of a difference. It's just less customers for about the same amount of, you know, like average cart value, et cetera. So I always will take more obviously. But I think right now, one of the things we're running is four courses for four bucks is actually a spit off of a.
Frank Curran had something like that and my executive team liked it. So we're running some stuff like that. We also, we have other courses, but they're usually free. So we'll have Facebook Ads Academy or YouTube Ads Academy or things of that nature.
Chad Kodary (33:31.517)
Are you doing it as like an SLO? You're just trying to liquidate on Aspen and dry that?
Tanner Chidester (33:35.054)
Yeah, either liquidate or just build trust. The trust, at least in my opinion, compared to where it was six years ago, is extremely low. There are just a lot of people who just don't trust anymore and I totally understand. So a lot of times now we're just trying to do things on the front end that will help build trust so that then they'll buy from us because it's a lower risk, right? $4 risk versus a $16 ,000 or $20 ,000 or $25 ,000. You know, it's just easier. And so that's what most of that's coming from is just to build trust.
Chad Kodary (34:02.665)
You have one time offers in there too to get the AOV up? What's an AOV on a $4 front end offer? What are you doing on the back end?
Tanner Chidester (34:04.878)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, something, you know, or a bundle or.
Tanner Chidester (34:11.054)
To be frank with you, I don't know that number right now. I probably should. I probably should. But I don't know that number right off the top of my head. But I think when we were selling the 27, I want to say it was between like 60 to 70 something average order value. And we would have an upsell of they had a bump order. So it's 27 with a bump. And then we would have usually a 97. And then there'd be like a 497.
Chad Kodary (34:13.385)
Okay, fair enough.
Tanner Chidester (34:36.334)
and that would usually average out to somewhere in between there might have been more might have been closer to 100 don't quote me on that but we're not running enough now for me to care I'm usually focusing on like that 80 % right now we're just not running that much there so that's why I don't know the numbers as well.
Chad Kodary (34:50.185)
That's fine. And that 80%. So all the DMS are coming in. What do people miss? Cause I've never, by the way, I've never ran DM campaigns. So I'm probably going to leave here and start running DM campaigns. My question for you is what are like the, are people just coming straight out of the gate with questions like, Hey, how much is this? How does this work? Like what's that? Like first initial DM that they're sending in.
Tanner Chidester (34:56.876)
Yeah.
Tanner Chidester (35:09.198)
Yeah, it depends. If it's a beginner, not usually. In fact, we usually will ask them, you know, so let's say they click, they see the link. They're not expecting a conversation. And so we might say, hey, you know, thanks for clicking on that with your goal. And we go right into it. If it's someone more advanced, that's actually been the hardest part. We're getting more, I'd say, experienced business owners because, you know, guys like me, for example, if you call me, probably won't pick up. If you message me, probably won't respond.
That's actually the harder one, right? Is just trying to be creative enough to get those people to respond because those are actually the best clients. But they're also, you know, maybe they're just clicking to see what your ad does or, you know, they've been in a couple of programs and so their trust is low. But usually on average person, they don't ask anything upfront. It's usually us initiating.
Chad Kodary (35:57.961)
So when somebody clicks on an Instagram ad and educate me here, because like I said, I've never done messaging before, messaging ads, if someone, if click on an ad, am I immediately sending a message? Is IG immediately sending them a message? Like starting the...
Tanner Chidester (36:01.132)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Chidester (36:10.286)
Yeah, so what IG or Facebook allows you to do is you can pick an initial message. And what we do is in that initial, can't speak, initial message, we'll say, you know, hey, you know, thanks so much for clicking. Here's the training link you were looking for. And it fires the link that we want them to go to. Now, the one downside to IG and Facebook is sometimes for whatever reason, the link won't fire. So if you don't have a team that's going in there and responding,
I actually think for most people that's another reason why some people don't do it because it misfires a lot. Luckily for me, what my team is trained to do is we'll have all the ads with the link. And so if they see that the link didn't fire, what's cool though is you can still like, there'll be like a little, I don't know if it's, I don't think the other person could see it. So the prospect, but there's, you can click see ad and it shows the ad and then they'll know the link and they'll shoot the link manually.
But that's really all they get to start and then from there you either can take over. There's also ways to build bots, but I don't think building a traditional bot that has preset questions and stuff is the way. I think the only way you could really build a bot is if you built up a big enough database that when they say this, it says this. When they do that, they do this. And the way you would manually build it up is one, you'd have to have the technology, but two,
Chad Kodary (37:01.961)
Gotcha.
Tanner Chidester (37:26.382)
is the CEO or sales manager, whoever is just a bad ass at sales and they manually build the database because I've just seen too much AI is just not nearly good enough because the people building it don't know sales.
Chad Kodary (37:35.497)
It's, it's, it's super tricky. There's a lot of these AI appointment set or bots. There's a air .ai, which is the calling, which by the way sucked. I tried it. It was horrible. It's not there yet. Uh, there.
Tanner Chidester (37:43.182)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Chidester (37:49.678)
It's also like a lot of that calling stuff. Yes, I think it's two years out plus, but it's also it's the 15 minute appointment stuff. It's not actual closing, which is totally different in my opinion anyways.
Chad Kodary (38:00.009)
Yeah, no, I agree. There's a lot of stuff with AI. I personally think as cool as AI is for some things, it's like chat, GBT, like normal, like basic stuff.
Um, it's great. I use it every day. Stuff like a Hey Jen, like creating video ads. I tried that. It's not there yet. Air, uh, air .ai, whatever. It's not there yet. Even the booking bots. Um, it's funny because, um, I won't say this person's name cause I don't want to embarrass them, but, uh, I have a good friend, uh, that is on IG is actually in Miami as well. Funny enough. Uh, and instead of him answering, cause I tried to get them on the podcast. I was like, Hey dude, want to jump on my podcast?
Tanner Chidester (38:15.822)
Agree. Agree.
Chad Kodary (38:35.399)
Usually he answers me right away and this time it was an AI bot and you can tell it was an AI bot because of what they were saying. So I was like, I was like, fuck it. I'll just screw around with the AI bot and see how it works. It was horrible. It was horrible, right? So it's like.
Tanner Chidester (38:48.75)
Yeah. Yeah. It's because it's because like from what I've seen most of this stuff right now is they give you let's say a preset bot and then you can go in and fix it up yourself, but it takes three months. And so for me, that's not actually a good product because you're having to go build it out yourself. But.
Chad Kodary (38:59.273)
Dude.
Chad Kodary (39:07.177)
Hey, Tanny.
Tanner Chidester (39:09.58)
Yeah, go ahead.
Chad Kodary (39:12.009)
No, sorry, I lost you there. You cut out. So you said that the bot, what did you say? Go back to the...
Tanner Chidester (39:15.246)
Okay. Yeah, I was just saying that a lot of the bots right now that people are selling, they're not, they're not actually made for a certain avatar. So I'll give you an example. A lot of people right now are saying, hey, buy this and it'll do all your messaging, et cetera. What happens is it's kind of this preset thing, but it's kind of trash, so to speak. And so then what people are having to do is taking 90 to 120 days to build up all the responses the way they want. And then it works. But the problem with that is the only people that's going to work for.
Chad Kodary (39:41.639)
Yep.
Tanner Chidester (39:45.646)
are seasoned vets or people are really good at sales. And so in my opinion, if you really want to build a master product, I think the only way to do it right now is you pick one niche and you build a database all around that niche, whether it's real estate, whatever. And then that would be a great product. But what everyone's trying to do is they're trying to build it for everyone, which means it's not built for anyone. And it's just shit. That's my personal opinion of what I've seen so far.
Chad Kodary (40:07.305)
Yeah. I can give you a perfect example. Like for us, we use intercom for support, um, for our dashboard and software and all that stuff. Right. Uh, so we have an AI bot, right. And the first, it's kind of like the first course of action. You ask a question and the I bought the, the AI bot, the AI bot will come in and it will start, you know, it will try to answer that question for you.
using AI and if not, it'll pass it over to a human. And for the last maybe six months of using this system, every day I have somebody from my team, it's basically our customer service manager who runs our whole live chat team. Every day they have a tool that's called Snippets in Intercom. And that's basically what it is. It's you building the knowledge base for the actual bot. Like for example, like Intercom,
They're obviously we use intercom for our help center. So they have all, we have like 300 plus help center articles, right? So like troubleshoot issues with the software and stuff like that, right? Not only that, they synced up our website so they know everything about our products. We have like hundreds of pages on our website about our products and services and stuff like that. But what we do is every time somebody asks a question, if the bot doesn't answer the question properly, we'll add what's called the snippet inside of intercom. And the next time somebody asks that question, it'll answer it the right way because.
Tanner Chidester (41:17.006)
Right, correct. It's better. Yeah.
Chad Kodary (41:22.121)
It has the actual, the backend data to understand that we do that throughout the day. And what's cool is in intercom, um, there is something that, that basically it's, I forgot what they call it. It's just like a percentage of the bot answering the questions versus the answer rate. Sorry. It's called an answer rate. Um, and it's basically like, what's the answer rate. And you'll see that like six months ago, our answer rate was like 20%. Because if, if what happens with intercom is if you ask a question and it doesn't give you the answer, when it gives you the answer, there's two options. It's like, did that help?
And if you say yes, it'll close out the ticket and that's count as cool. It was answered. If it didn't help, it'll say, talk to a human and that transfers it to a human, right? Which means basically it didn't help, right? Our answer rate before doing the snippets was like 20%. Now it's at like 65, 70%, which means 65, 70 % of our inquiries are now running through AI and they're getting answered because people are saying that they've been answered, right? But that takes months of work and it's a full -time thing.
Tanner Chidester (42:09.102)
Wow.
Tanner Chidester (42:15.278)
Amazing. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So and I think that's the issue is it's it's not bad. I just think that's for experienced salespeople. They're only building it out for themselves or maybe that specific avatar. And, you know, it makes sense because a lot of times when you try to sell something to everyone, it never really does that well unless it's mass market. Right. And then even then it gets extremely competitive because I think a good example.
I don't know how they're doing now, but I remember Jasper .ai was doing great. I don't know how they're doing now, but now that chat gbt's out. Yeah, I'm assuming I'm assuming they can't be because people are just like.
Chad Kodary (42:49.481)
Not doing good. They're not doing good. We use them. We were on their enterprise plan. We use them. Um, yeah, I'm friends with Dave and, uh, Austin also on Facebook. So I've been kind of like watching their journey. Uh, and it's funny cause I had Dennis you on, uh, the podcast and me and Dennis were talking and he was literally the Jasper came up and we're talking about AI and stuff like that. And you know, Jasper was basically Jasper came out when before.
Tanner Chidester (42:55.918)
Oh wow.
Tanner Chidester (43:06.062)
Yeah.
Chad Kodary (43:17.661)
chat GBT was really like a thing. Nobody really knew about it. So they were like the unicorn first to market people, like when they were running ads, I remember seeing their ads and people were like, Whoa, what the, what is this thing? Like they didn't, they didn't believe that AI could write a blog for you. Right. Um, and then they, and when we signed up, we signed up to an enterprise plan because we put our whole content team through it. And we're like, not that we want to just write the full blown blog, but it also helped them write blogs, Facebook ad. Like if you know how to prompt it properly and set up proper templates in Jasper.
Tanner Chidester (43:19.054)
Right, correct.
Tanner Chidester (43:28.238)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Chidester (43:42.958)
Mm -hmm.
Chad Kodary (43:47.177)
You'll get good outputs, but it's not like copy and paste. Like you need to like physically look at it and optimize it and then, you know, uh, put it out into the world. But Jasper now, from what I understand, they really only deal with enterprise because there's no regular, like small business that's really using them because they could just use chat GPT for 20 bucks and get the same exact thing. So dude, like, I think they're, I don't know, like backend stats and stuff like that, but I don't think it's looking good.
Tanner Chidester (44:04.782)
Yeah.
Tanner Chidester (44:12.59)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, chat GBT. I just think like when you're going that mass scale, it's tough. And I think that's why niching down is always usually the best plan, because I think a better example was I think it was ConvertKit. So ConvertKit was an email software just for bloggers. And it basically does the same stuff. But because they only targeted bloggers, it was they really could go after that sector. And I think that's usually the best route, because if you don't.
It just gets too competitive. And then if one person is better than you, they all they all jump ship versus well, yeah, they do it for them, but we do it for this. And so that's at least my theory on stuff like that. But I guess we'll see.
Chad Kodary (44:40.585)
hard dude.
Chad Kodary (44:48.329)
I mean, we have it. It's very trick like for us, we target marketing agencies. We're basically 100 % marketing agencies. And it's difficult even when you're trying to run ads and stuff at scale, because you can only target this one person versus the whole world, right? So yeah, but anyways, I know we're running out of time here and we can, I love to talk about the stuff we go on for days, but Tanner, thank you dude for coming on. Appreciate you brother. I know you're local. Hopefully we'll see you one of these days.
And if somebody wants to reach out to you get into one of your programs anything like that. Where's the best place that they can go?
Tanner Chidester (45:20.014)
Yeah, just go to Instagram DM me something and we'll take it from there.
Chad Kodary (45:24.905)
Sounds good brother and hey man, thank you so much. Appreciate you again.
Tanner Chidester (45:27.982)
Alright man, thanks for having me.