1581 – Making it Enjoyable and Sustainable with Elite CEOs’ Tanner Chidester

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:59with us right now tanner chadister tanner you are the founder of elite ceos you're found on the web at elite ceos.com tanner thank you so much for joining us yeah josh thanks for having me so we got to do it yeah well gosh we started man we could have we we had so much that we didn't record because we hit it off so quickly, but give us an overview of what Elite CEOs is. Yeah. So it actually, it started off as a fitness company in 2017. Yeah. It was actually called Fit Warrior LLC. And I was trying to get people in shape and that business did about a million its first year. And then the next year I had trainers start asking me for help.

1:39And so it pivoted into what I called fitness CEOs, which was like for trainers. And then that did about 10 million. And then the year after we did 15. And so now it's elite CEOs. And so I didn't start the business that way, but it's essentially become the consulting business for any business owners who want to start or scale their online companies. So that we've had that about a little over five years now. Yeah. Regardless if they're in the fitness industry or not. Correct. Correct. So we still get a ton of fitness, obviously, because that's where I started and people know me for that, but we branched out.

2:08Correct. I would imagine you and Alex are mostly have crossed paths a couple of times me and Alex are good buddies we were just texting the other day and uh I respect him a lot as a person but yeah we we definitely crossed in fact our story was he tried to be friends with me and I thought he was trying to sell me something and so I ignored him for about two years who'd be told uh I had him on episode I think 891 of this podcast I didn't really know who he was at the time and I know like afterwards I'm like do you know who you just interviewed like he's kind of a big deal. And so I was like, oh, shoot.

2:41I mean, now it's like I recommend$100 million offers on at least a weekly basis. So if you're listening, you're not. But if you were listening, I'm sorry that I didn't recognize who you were. And I talk about you frequently. But Tanner, before I kind of get into the work that you do today, would you mind talking about just because I suspect you have a lot of awareness and knowledge around this. Can you talk about that intersection between high performance business leaders and health, fitness, wellness, and kind of that intersection, maybe observations that you've seen. Because I think that sometimes it can be easy for us to get our life out of balance and maybe we let the physical go.

3:24But then there are other people who are like, listen, this is my standard for business. And I have the same standard for how I want to show up physically in the world. What are your observations on that? That's such a great question. I've seen both sides of the coin. So for me personally, the more I'm on top of my fitness, I feel it does translate into my business. In the beginning years, I did have a time where I wouldn't work out as much. So I typically like about two and a half hours. I'll do an hour and a half of lifting. I usually do about 45 minutes of cardio. But when I was obviously growing the businesses, that's a little bit excessive.

3:58So I cut it down. I wasn't quite as healthy. I didn't have as low as a body fat as I do now. To your question, though, I do find it interesting because you'll find some guys who are shredded. But the reason they're shred is, you know, they like the gym selfies. They like taking their shirt off. They like, you know, the praise, but it doesn't actually translate into business very well. On the other hand, I've seen people who they don't enjoy fitness as much, but they are dedicated to at least doing a little bit of something. But they're very good at business because that's what they enjoy. So I think it can work both ways.

4:33I do think there is something to be said where how you do one thing is how you do others. But I'd be lying to you if I didn't see some people who I would maybe consider out of shape who don't have amazing businesses. So, you know, I think the big thing is trying to make it enjoyable and trying to make it sustainable, because if you don't enjoy it, you know, it's harder to stick with it. Yeah. You know, I, you know, I, you know, and it's really interesting. Another thing that I've observed is that, and I'm sure you've read Atomic Habits, are you familiar with the concept, right? But it's showing up and doing the boring, mundane, just doing the basic, you're a football guy, the basic blocking and tackling day after day after day after day.

5:18My observation of business success, and of course you do your work with CEOs today, right, is that it's not that, you know, they discovered some magical thing all of a sudden one day and they were overnight success. Usually champions are built from doing it bored and doing it consistently. And I find that for me, I used to be a heavy dude. I'm about 60 pounds lighter than I used to be. Yeah, I was and it was not a good look on me. um but it really like when i break down well what did i do just it was consistency and that same thing in business i believe is absolutely true is that consistent if you find something that works stick with it and don't throw in the towel don't try and get too cute don't get shiny object syndrome just stay the course when you find something that works what i don't know what your take on that is No, I 100 % agree.

6:12It's funny, because a lot of times you'll see people talk about the keto diet or vegan or vegetarian or whatever it is. I honestly just think it's whatever is the easiest to adhere to. So for example, for me, what I usually just try to do is just make sure I hit a certain number of protein, and then the rest of the calories can come from wherever I want, because it's easy to stick with, you know, I'm traveling the world right now. I don't have, you know, my perfect little meal setup or anything else. And so I think if people can stick to stuff that's a little bit easier to hit. So for example, Hey, I hit this much protein and then everything else can come from wherever.

6:47I just feel it's more sustainable and it doesn't feel like such a stretch. And I think people forget that sometimes where they start stuff that is so rigorous that they can't possibly stick with it unless that's all they actually do. So, you know, there's levels to every game, but I think for most of us, at least speaking about health. We just want to be healthy. We're not trying to, you know, be Olympic champions. Yeah. Right. Right. Talk about what you do. What does elite CEOs do today? Like who are you working with and what, what are you helping to create with, with the folks that you work with?

7:20Yeah. So it started off as a consulting service where most people were coming to me because they saw my success with ClickFunnels. Anyone who's familiar with that company, they saw my awards, like, Hey, what are you doing? So we just started helping people with done with you one-on-one coaching. So anything, their sales or marketing, you know, backend systems, hiring, training, anything you can possibly think of. We've now actually created other divisions inside of it that are done for you. So, you know, a lot of our clients like, Hey, I need setters or sales reps. We create a done for you division.

7:49A lot of our clients are like, Hey, we need ads. So we create a done for you ads division. Other clients have asked for different tech software. So So we're just helping at higher levels. But I think as we've been established and it's progressed, people are wanting more done-for-you aspects. And so they're all separate divisions. They're all separate teams. But the core is helping them with their business in a done-with-you format. And then we have these done-for-you services as kind of the back-end or add-ons. And so we've been doing that about five-ish, a little over five years, five years in September, coming up on six years this September.

8:25So it's been a ride. has been arrived for sure um yeah so the you know and obviously you know i'm on your front page and and i see that at some point you're the founder and at some point you brought in a ceo can you talk about and i i think that there are a lot of people you know i've thought about this you know at what point does the business get to a point where i would see myself shifting into more of like a chief evangelist role and letting someone else kind of ceo um what we do what went into that that thought and that transition? Yeah. So it's such a great question. I love telling this story.

9:00I was, I hit the market just at the right time where we were going up about a hundred thousand dollars a month in sales and COVID hit. So it was this influx of people moving to online business. We're a company that helps people build online businesses. And we were scaling at the same time. So we hit, we were hitting about one and a half million a month easily. I mean, we were crushing it. And then it started going down a little bit after COVID. And I was like, what's going on? Is it our ads? Is it our marketing? And I just think that honestly, the playing field was leveling out, you know, more people were going back to work, less people were interested.

9:36So we sat around, we sit around about one to one and a half a month in my main division, elite CEOs, and for about a year. And then I had the thought and I was just thinking, you know, I'm trying to optimize all these little things, but end of the day, no matter what I do, it's only going to make maybe an extra couple hundred thousand a month, which to me at that point didn't matter. And then I started interviewing a lot of people who sold for nine or 10 figures. And I realized I said, man, I'm in the wrong vehicle to get bigger, you know, because I'm in the information space. I'm in the marketing space.

10:08You can get as high, I would say on average, you'll see most people between at the highest levels, one to three mil a month, somewhere above that, but it's rare. And then past that, it's very difficult unless you have, you know, maybe Grant Cargone type credibility or something of that nature. And so I started thinking, okay, you know, it's what Warren Buffett says. It's not about how hard you row, but it's in what vehicle you're in. And so I started looking at, okay, if that's the case that I need to remove myself, because no matter how much I do, it's not going to change much. I need to replace myself with the CEO.

10:40So either a, I can move on or B I can sell either way it works. And so now I'm actually in the progress. If I stepped out on the first of January and that's what I'm doing right now I'm trying to figure out my next thing because I think the vehicle does matter more than how hard you work, especially once you build basic skills, which I have over the last five years. Yeah. And so for a friend that's listening to us right now, who should be reaching out? You know, obviously you do strategy sessions at EliteCEOs.com. But like who especially should be like, wait a minute, I need to reach out to Tanner and his team.

11:18Yeah. So the first person is a beginner, which isn't really your audience. That's the first person. But the second person is the one who's trying to scale. I usually see as the biggest bottlenecks is the hiring, training, and building of a team is by far and away the biggest obstacle that most entrepreneurs face. I would say anywhere between 100 ,000 plus a month. They just don't know how to do it or they don't know how to retain talent. So most of the people that would fit your audience that would reach out are in the transition of either hiring and training a team or they're trying to scale to the seven figure a month mark, we have a different program for them called Next Level.

11:54It's the same company, but it's called Next Level. And those are where some of the highest level clients we have. And the way that works just briefly is they have access to my entire C-suite. They have their own base camp with an entire C-suite in there. Then they have their own private coach. And then we just focus on what the biggest things are to move their company. But I would say the biggest thing with that is the scaling and then hiring and training of the team. Just most people, they're just not very good at it or they struggle with it. And would this be primarily around what we would consider to be traditional kind of click funnel flows and kind of offers and products?

12:30Yeah, it's online high ticket businesses. So we do have a done for you ad agency and things of that nature. But most of people come to us, they're doing high ticket, they're selling over the phone, it's a service based offer. You know, anything that doesn't fit that mold, we could obviously help, but it's completely different than what I would say our flagship program is. So most people, we want, you know, a$3 ,000 priced offer selling over the phone service-based. Okay. Love it. Tanner Chidister, again, your website, EliteCEOs.com. Is there anything else that you'd recommend that people go check out so they can spend more time with you or kind of learn more about the, you know, what it's like to work with you or would you recommend just kind of the, Hey, just grab some time with us.

13:14Let's chat. Yeah. I mean, obviously check out the site, but then if you want to get to know more about me as a person, I'd recommend two things. One is my YouTube channel. I'm trying to start putting out a lot of content, just high level stuff, stuff I enjoy really no pitch, just high level stuff. I enjoy, uh, I'm doing some videos on different retreats. I've done stem cells. I just did stem cells last week, uh, things like that. And then the other thing I think would be to go to my Facebook profile and there's a link there that has conversations with individuals who sold their companies for nine or 10 figures.

13:45Some of them are billionaires. And I just gave it away. And people have just absolutely been raving about it. I've had multiple people hit me up and say that that was helpful. So I think your audience, if they just go to my Facebook profile, it's the PIM post, the documents right there, they can just get it and download it. And I think they would find that very helpful because there's about 30 different interviews I had and I had to pay for them. And it took a while to get that content together, but people have really been enjoying that. And I think that'd just be a great thing for them to have.

14:12Yeah, no, your YouTube game is pretty great. So again, if you just on YouTube, you just search Tanner Chidister. And if you don't know how to spell that, just in your podcast player, click around, click the show notes. You're going to see, we've got a direct link, Tanner to your YouTube channel, as well as to EliteCEOs.com. But yeah, there's some really, really good content there. Tanner Chidister, again, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh. I appreciate it.

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