Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. Today, we're taking a deep dive into the world of business scaling and high-ticket sales with Tanner, the founder of elite CEOs, who transformed his fitness expertise into a $100 million empire. Tanner's journey is a testament to the power of persistence and strategic pivoting. He built a business that not only sells high-ticket packages, but creates a blueprint for explosive growth. Tanner is candid about his struggles, from failed football dreams to working as a server, before cracking the code of online business. He'll share his ground-breaking approach to creating a unique selling proposition that led to selling $5,000 fitness packages with ease. You'll learn about his 9010 rule for fitness marketing and how he leverages paid advertising to fuel exponential growth. Tanner's focus is on building a scalable business model that emphasizes enjoying the process as much as achieving financial milestones. Whether you're looking to craft an irresistible offer, master high ticket sales, or scale your business from zero to millions, Tanner's the roadmap. So if you're ready to revolutionize your approach to marketing, create a sales strategy that converts skeptics into high paying clients, and build a business that scales beyond your wildest dreams, this is the episode for you.

Tanner is about to unveil the strategies that took him from a struggling athlete to a business mogul who's as passionate about helping others succeed as he is about his own success. The show starts now. Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success. We show you how to create it. On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turn everyday entrepreneurs into unstable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives. Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight, or nine-figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there. The show starts now.

Today, we've got Tanner with us. I am going to absolutely fan girl for a second. I have been following him for a really long time, so it's special. I know his girl doesn't want me to feed his ego, but this guy is a damn superhero. So I'm really impressed. Thank you so much for being on The Lab.

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. That was very kind.

So for the two people on the planet who actually don't know who you are, which is embarrassing. But can you give us a little bit of backstory, what your story was? I knew you grew up, and then give me a little bit of a lead in to get everybody who you are and what's going on.

Yeah. So one of seven kids, four sisters, two brothers, grew up super religious, conservative household. And my dad was a teacher. Mom stay at home, so not a lot of cash, not a lot of money. And At a young age, I just remember telling my mom, When I'm rich, I'm going to buy those prepackaged meals and meal prep. I was really into bodybuilding and sports. And then I wanted to go to the NFL. Took it as far as I go. Had a little sin at D1, got hurt a bunch. Don't think I was good enough either. But I gave it my all, so no regrets. That's been a big thing in my life that I've been really proud of. Then I had to start figuring out what I was going to do. I was in petroleum engineering. I had a 3.9 GPA. When football ended, I realized I hated school. I was like, Man, I was here to play of football, and I just went to class or so happened to. I sat down my mentor. My mentor was David Fry, who comes from the ClickFunnel's world. He's actually married to one of Russell Brunson's cousins, I believe.

He just taught me about funnels. I started learning all these things. I didn't make any money for years, but I was learning all these intangible skills. I did door-to-door sales, and I was a server. But right before I was about to go back to school, because I wasn't making any money, I was almost 25 now, I hit it off in the online fitness niche, blew up, had tons of trainers start asking me for help. That blew up. And then Elite Sales was born after that. And I've been doing that the last six years. We crossed 100 million in sales and 50,000 clients and all these crazy numbers. So that's the long story short.

So I like that you're being very kind with it blew up. Could you give a little bit more details of what do you mean by it blew up? Because I don't think people understand what blew up means in your world versus my world.

Yeah, it grew very fast. So I went zero to a million in a year. That was actually my slowest year of growth, which is crazy to think. And then we went one to 10, and then we went 10 to 15, and then we jumped to in the 20s. I'd say my biggest craziest year was one to 10, right? Literally 10X in revenue in a year. And that's obviously a massive jump. So that's what I mean by explosive growth. It was pretty explosive, went pretty fast.

I just needed to frame it for the people who are like, Oh, yeah, he made 20 bucks. No, he didn't make 20 bucks. It's a very different conversation here. There's a reason it's called elite CEOs. So if someone's coming into this and they're like, Okay, holy Christ, what happened here? If someone comes into the idea of scaling, if you're like, Hey, this is the most important thing out of everything we do. This is what you have to identify first and foremost when it comes to scaling your business. What was the first thing you would say they need to do?

Yeah, so it's going to sound boring, but it's getting a good offer. Mosey has a great book on it now, $100 million offers. Most people's offers just aren't that good. There's really two ways you can do it. Either A, you have something that's so unique that no one else is doing it like Facebook, that's an example, or you have to have a unique selling proposition or USP. Typically, that's going to be in the health- wealth relationship niche, meaning let's say I'm a trainer, and every trainer is essentially workout plan, nutrition plan. And so all the trainers are fighting on price because they don't know how to position it. So the number one thing they need to start with is having the unique selling proposition. What What's the thing or the mechanism that makes what they do different? And a lot of people, they don't really understand what a mechanism is. They don't understand how to make it different, and they really don't know how to market it. And so that's the number one thing. I can walk through that if you'd like. But if they did get that wrong, it's the base of the pyramid.

Okay, so I'll walk through it. So for example, I'll just talk about when I was a trainer. So when I was a trainer, I realized, look, at the end of the day, everyone wants a six-pack and they want to eat donuts. It may not be right, it may not be the healthy. It doesn't really matter. That's what they want. When I start trying to sell it to people, instead of saying what most trainers do, they talk about the features and benefits. You get a nutrition plan, you get a training plan, you get accountability, you'll get an app. No one cares. They just want to know they're going to get the result and it's going to be easy. What I focused on is I'm a big proponent of calories. Calories in, calories out. Some people aren't, but I'd say most trainers would agree with that. With that being said, I said, Okay, how can I position it in a way where I'm not lying, but it sounds attractive? Because most trainers would say, Yeah, I'm I'm going to put you on a diet plan. Or, Hey, I'm going to teach you calorie counting. Boring. What I would say for one of my pillars, I usually have three.

It's two are the USPs. What is that I do different? Then one is why me. One of them was how to eat whatever you want without sabotaging results. What I would teach is to say, Look, I'm going to show you how to eat whatever you want without sabotaging results. Because as you get older, you go to birthdays and parties, you're not going to just eat chicken and broccoli, right? On your birthday, you're going to eat cake, right? So it's not about cutting out bad foods. It's about how to eat bad foods and still look good. So people would buy that and they're like, Oh, that sounds different. Same thing with the training. I'd say, Look, 90% of your results is nutrition, 10% is training. I don't care if you don't train at all. It's not as healthy, but I can still get you to lose weight as long as you follow the nutrition. They're like, Oh, okay, that makes sense. Then finally, when I would get down to their options, I'd say, So now that you understand you have to learn these things, you can either hire an in-person trainer who is paid for you to keep coming back to the gym, and they focus on training, which we already said wasn't most of your results.

That's not a good idea. You They get Beachbody, but they give everyone the same program, and it's just set to get as much results in the first 30 days for their pictures, and then you go right back off because you can't stick with it. Or you can hire me, and I'm going to teach you how to do this for the rest of your life, and you only have to pay for it once. So by the time they got that concept, I was selling three, four, $5,000 fitness packages. And a lot of trainers that were probably better than me couldn't do it because they don't know how to position. It's all about positioning. It's not It's not even necessarily being better you want to be, but it's positioning. And so that's the number one thing that most people fail at, and they don't think about it long enough to be different, or they think what they do is different, but it's not. It's just what everyone does. So they can't sell it at a high price.

I love this subtle brilliance that was in it. You were defeating their objections in your pitch. You're going through and saying, Listen, I know you're going to go over here and you're not going to do this. That's okay. And that's not going to work. Or, Hey, you're not going to get it in the gym. You're going to just have diet. So you're already As you're going through it, their objections, you already know where they're going to be. You've done the research in advance and you're like, I'm going to build my pitch in my unique selling proposition of this? It's already going to defeat you. It's already going to go in and it's already going to negate it. So now you're at the point where you're begging to be sold to versus having to sell. It's a completely different narrative.

Well, yeah. And the thing in sales is if you don't beat the objections in the beginning, they just come up at the end. So when you get a sales call that has no objections, all it means is you already beat the objections in the beginning. They just didn't bring them up, right? But they had them. So as you're going through a sales pitch or a presentation, the point is to beat all the objections that they might have. And so it's just you being aware of what they are before they even bring them up.

I'm a little upset that I can't eat donuts and have a six-pack, so we're going to talk about that later. As you go through and you've had all this success and you've been doing this, you created something called Elite CEOs. And a lot of people have pushback, going, Well, you're just a fitness guy. Yeah, you did it over here. You What do you know about XYZ? What do you know about car sales? What do you know about cardiologist? You've only done it over here. I completely disagree with that narrative. Tell me why that is not the right way to come through it. When most people say, Hey, if you can do it's fitness, you can only do it in fitness. It's not a truthful statement. Why do you know it to not be a truthful statement?

Well, I mean, some of the concepts... I mean, it's a lot of the same concepts, right? I mean, so yes, when you're selling fitness, it will take fitness to business consulting, right? But yeah, There's differences in fitness for sure. Meaning the type of avatar will be different. It's going to be someone who's 30 pounds overweight versus maybe a super-ambitious business owner, right? Certain terminology will be different. It's obviously different niche, but The sales process is the same. The marketing systems are the same. The back-end systems are the same. I do think for more people, it takes more skill to be able to do different things. But in the grand scheme of things, when I'm teaching Messaging people concepts, it's all similar. The people who do better, though, they usually have more of those tangible tactical skills, meaning they know how to run ads, they know how to do sales calls. So all they need is a strategy. What makes it difficult is if you get a beginner who has no tactical skills, so messaging, sales, marketing, they don't understand that. Plus, you have to give them strategy. So it just takes a lot more to actually move the needle, if that makes sense.

It does, yeah. So for me, it was pretty natural progression because I I didn't plan on doing this. It's just I had success in fitness, then I had a bunch of trainers ask, and then I had a bunch of... So it just naturally progressed, but I never really planned on doing what I'm doing. I was just going to stay in fitness forever at the time.

It's the same way I fell into it. I was on an IT company, we sold it, we had an exit, and then everyone was like, Hey, you did IT. Can you do this with this and this? And I was like, I guess. And it just progresses into it. It's the same strategy. I'm like, Okay, you're not selling computers and you're not a dork, but you're a cardiologist, so maybe it'll work. So it does go into those. Before we get into some of the higher-end stuff, if someone's listening to this and they're like, You know what? I don't have the skills of messaging, and I don't know how to do Facebook ads, and I don't know how to write copy, and I don't know how to build funnels, and I don't know how to do all these wonderful things, where can someone go? Where do you rec them go? They go, Go read this. Go do this. Maybe work for someone else. What is the best way that you found to start building some of those core skills so that you can lay the strategies on top of it?

The best thing I ever did was nine months of door-to-door sales. And the reason The reason was, I didn't know this at the time, but I wasn't a really good communicator, and I didn't understand human psychology. But once I knocked on 100 doors a day for nine months, you learn very quickly how to pick up on facial expressions, body movements, certain rebuttals they would have. When you're selling door to door, they don't want you there, and they don't know you're coming. The rebuttals you would get, I mean, exponential. You couldn't possibly memorize everything, so you'd have to have frameworks. Once I moved into high-ticket sales or online business, there's only four objections. Time, spouse, need to think about it, or they have a belief issue. That's really it. Because you pre-framed and they want to be there. And so if someone does door-to-door sales, they almost always Excel in business unless they're not willing to learn some of the technical side, like setting up ads and funnels. But they usually do very, very well because one, they face a lot of rejection, and two, it's just an easier to sell. They actually want what you're selling.

There's a million things people could do. But if someone just wanted to go take three months, you could even do two months, just go sell for a security company. It's 100% commission. They'll let anyone do it. Just go sell alarms or go sell pest control, even. I'm telling you, that will be probably worth four years of college right there. That's one of the best things I ever did. It's the hardest, but it's probably one of the most beneficial things I ever did.

When I was learning human behavior, I volunteered at a suicide hotline. It taught me more in the months that I was doing that than anything else. Any of the books, any of the stuff I was exposed to, because you're in the fire. And luckily, there was people to help out, but that's how I learned it. So very similar process. So you've got someone who, again, we don't help people grow their initial businesses. We I know people scale them. So if you come into this environment and they want to be an elite-level CEO, they want to be at this high enough level that they're like, Hey, we're doing this. I've already got the basic skills. I understand that. I've already understand a basic idea of my product. It's somewhat successful. When they get into your environment and they start doing this high-end coaching with you and they do this, what are the things? What is the process of the life cycle that someone goes through?

So if they come in as a client, for example.

If they come into your client, what is the result they normally get? And then what are the things you make them do? Because everybody has their different strategies and their techniques. Okay, first we do this and then we do this. What are the things that you make them go through by default?

So, yeah, in terms of results, obviously, they're going to vary per person, but I would say, 80% of our clients will make their first 10K in 45 days. It's pretty high because, especially if you're selling something for three grand, we're only talking three sales. I don't think it's that crazy of a claim. It's just people got to be willing to do the work. When they come in, first we assess where they're at. I think one of the key things I've learned over time is making sure that the strategy stays not consistent. You're able to adapt based on where someone's at. For example, if someone comes in, they have no sales skills, no social media, no messaging, they're starting from scratch. We got to start them. Let's just get you a basic offer. Let's get you doing outreach. Let's get a couple of sales. If I bring somebody who's got 2 million followers on Instagram, I can monetize that immediately. I'm going to have a totally different strategy. They don't need to do any outreach. We just need to monetize what they have. The first thing is we assess where it is. They come in, they fill out a check-in form, client check-in form.

I'll assess it. I'll do a 10-minute loom. My account manager sees and they implement whatever that is. From there, let's say they're a beginner, we're going to come up with their pillars. There's usually three pillars. Like I said, the fitness one, it's like how to eat whatever you want, how to train however you want. Then the third one, I called lifestyle recalibration, which was like, who do you hire? We'll figure that out for their offer so they can use it in their marketing, they can use it in their sales pitch, they can use it in their emails. That's really the core message they have. For years, one of the things we used for Elite Sales was conversion conversations, which was when DM ads were It's not new anymore, but at the time, I was like, Yeah, I'll show you how to get 50% more conversions doing conversion conversations versus a webinar. We crushed for two years just running that angle. It was just same angle over and over. That's going to be number two. It's usually going to be health, wealth, or relationship niche. If the offer doesn't fix one of those three things, people usually are not very interested.

They got to make more money, have better relationships, or getting better health. Once that's done, if they're starting from zero, then we got to start doing outreach. You obviously have inbound or outbound. Inbound is going to be what I would call, if you go to my Facebook profile, you can see a two-step I did today. So the two-step was, Hey, most business owners stuck at below or 20K a month or they can't get to 100. They have the wrong strategy. I did a 45-minute call with someone. They doubled their revenue in 26 days. Here's the document. Comment down below. That's inbound. And you can go see... I told people to message me, but they're still commenting. But there's hundreds of comments already, and people are DMing me. That's a lead gen strategy that we can teach clients how to do. The other way is outbound. Outbound is the worst. So it's like direct cold DMs or followers or likes or comments. The only reason you would do that is if you're low-skilled and you don't have money for ads, because that's usually the fastest way or you don't have a big following. So we'll go through that process.

Once they get a couple of sales, two or three clients take that cash, we'll put it into ads, whether it's boosted post, DM, straight to page. And then we start scaling from there. And then it's just rinse and repeat that process until desired income level. Along the way, as they start to scale, we start teaching them hiring, training, interviews, back-end systems. I would say most clients, they don't really understand hiring and training, and they don't understand back-end systems. The highest-level Clients, that's usually what they need help with. Lower-level clients, it's, I don't know what to say in a message, or I don't know what to say on a sales call. It's more of the tactical. As they make more money, it gets easier to coach or consult because you're just telling them the strategy. And you know they can implement it. So it's like telling Michael Jordan, Hey, do five layups in a free throw, versus you tell a five-year-old, shoot a layup. The five-year-old can't even get the ball off the ground, right? So that's our process. I can go into more detail, but that's how it would possibly look for a beginner, and then someone is a little more experienced.

Yeah, I'd love to have more of the beginning tactics where they go through, because most people's messaging is horrible, and most people have never made it to the 20K a month. Again, either they're not willing to do it or their messaging is garbage. When you talk When you're talking about there's only three areas to do, health, wealth, we get into that environment, health, wealth, relationships. When you get into that environment, if you have someone that comes in and says, Hey, I want to sell grandma's cookies, how do you have that honest conversation with them going, No one cares about your grandmother's cookies. When do you meet with them and say, Listen, you're just not my fit, or, Hey, I can't. Do you say you can't scale it, or what do you do in that environment?

I'm a pretty straight shooter, fortunately. I think that's why a lot of people maybe listen to me. I'll just tell them, I say, Hey, so this is terrible. The reason it's terrible is it's not unique at all. I just got off a call with a guy, for example, and he... He's a really good offer, actually. But the way he was presenting, he's like, I'm going to give you accountability, so you'll get one-to-one coaching. Every business consultant says that. It's not unique. It doesn't even matter if it's true. The issue is when someone's on a sales call, they think you're lying or they're looking for where you're trying to be dishonest. So saying, I give you one to one, every coach says that. It's not unique. His next one was, I'll What was it? I'm trying to think. He set up their funnels, which was okay, but then he had another one which was all I do, I'll give you a good portal. It was something weak. I can't remember what it was. So what we did is I said, What's unique about what you do? How do you help clients get sales? He had something pretty cool where he said, So what I do is I teach them how to set up these...

It's called an RPV, but it's like an interview. Then somehow, I don't know what he said in the call and so forth, but from the interview, They then would get them on another call and close. And so I looked at his stats. He tracked it. 16% of the outreach as his clients did, these are brand new beginners, booked a sales call. Well, for anyone who's listening, 3% from paid traffic or cold... You're killing it. You're getting 3%, you're freaking making tons of money. So I was like, Man, you're getting a 500% increase. You're not even talking about it at all. So that's a great example of now that I spoke with him, I was like, Look, this needs to be your mechanism that you talk about in the ad. So his ad headline could be, Book 400% more sales calls without ads, or Book 400% more sales calls without a cold DM, or whatever, because that's what he was pitching. So that, for example, that's like an easy example, but that's what most people miss. And so if they don't have that, I just tell them, Look, this sucks. You're not going to sell it.

Just period.

And then if they don't suck and they actually have something decent, do you help, which most of them do, do you help them write their copy? Do you help do their funnels? And then how do you write good copy? Because there's so many people out there like, I'll just ChatGPT it. I'm like, No, it's not going to work. So how do you get in the situation where... Where do you get good copy? Do you outsource it? Is it something just experience? How do people get to the point where they do good copy?

Yeah. So in terms of what we do for our clients, we can do anything A to Z, depending on the package they pick. So we have an in-house copywriter, we have media buyers. We'll set up the funnels, we'll do the pixels. I mean, we'll do it all. And we've just had to over the because it's not only just giving them strategy, but it's trying to help them implement. People need that help. That's number one. In terms of writing copy, where I start is what's the biggest thing I'm trying to get across? If I'm writing an ad or a headline or whatever, the number one thing is what am I trying to show or what do I want them to understand? For example, I just spoke about the last guy. How to book 400% more sales calls using the RPV method. Creates, curiosity, it's unique.One we use for years.Sales and result. Yeah, it's usually the result from it. How convergent conversations books me 57% more sales calls or how to use the... What's one we're running recently? It's like, get X amount more return using the boosted funnel. And then it's like, what's the boosted funnel and stuff like that?

So I think the first thing is, what's going to draw attention? And it needs create curiosity. You don't want it to be so weird where it's like, aliens are running across the Earth at light speed, but you don't want it to not be too simplistic. So one that I always use as an example is bulletproof coffee. They don't say coffee with butter. They say bulletproof coffee. So it's like, well, wait, what's bulletproof coffee? And it's like, oh, you put the butter in and then use it to keep whatever. I don't care if it's true or not. That's not the point. The point is it works in terms of driving curiosity. Once I have that, the first line, if I'm writing the body, is then who it's for. It's like, if you're this type of person with this type of struggle, this is for you. I just call it out immediately, and then I go right into the problem. Then I'll relate back to them. It's like, Hey, you're this type of person. I used to be here, too, until I started whatever I started XYZ method. And then this is the result, and then a CTA.

So that's usually how I'll structure the copy. And part of it for me, I think over time, it's gotten easier because the more you do it, the more you know what's going to drive curiosity and attention. But to be frank, it's all the same. And something I get away from sometimes my organic content is I get lazy, and so we're just throwing reels out there. But whenever I get feedback from a consultant, he's like, Bro, just treat it like an ad. What would you say in the first 2 seconds to get someone to click on your stuff? I'm like, Oh, yeah, of course. So as long as you have a catchy hook, a good headline, and then if it is an ad, just for anyone listening, people are looking at the ad, then their eyes go to the headline, then the copy. So it's in that order of importance where the image or video needs to be immediately catches attention, and then the headline, then the copy. So if you have a follow-up, let me know. Hopefully, I hit all the cylinders.

No, that hit a lot of them. So if you've got the people who are like, Okay, clearly my message is garbage. I need to make it more unique. I need to sell the result. Shit. Once we get that rocking and rolling, the next question I get us all the time, especially by my clients, they're like, Well, how much do I have to be involved? And I'm a systems guy. I'm going to automate someone. And whenever I'm scaling businesses and brought in, I'm going to fire the person as quickly as possible. I'm like, You're on my way. You're the business owner. Get out of my way. You've been in my way. I can't scale it with you being here. But my businesses are significantly bigger than most people. I'm guessing some people who are these, hey, I'm just a coach or I haven't made my first 20K yet. What do you tell the person? Can they bring in VAs? Can they bring in staff? Or do you say, You know what? I'm going to put your face against the grinder, and we're just going to hunt, and I'm going to make you work 80 hours a day.

Let's go. Yeah.

So full transparency, I think it depends on the person. So let's say someone who's had prior sales experience or business experience comes over here and they're like, I want to start this new business. Well, they can move a little faster, but they already have experience. It may not be the same business, but they have experience. The issue is if someone comes in and they're brand new and they want to hire everything out to start, the problem is they don't what it should look like. The issue is you don't have to know how to do everything, but if you don't even know what it should look like, and you don't know if someone's within KPIs or doing a good job, you can't do it. Typically, at the beginning, if it's a beginner, I don't like them to do that because I say, Look, think about it. You're going to bring someone on who's not as skilled as you because you're going to pay less money. You're wanting them to do something that you've never even done before, and they're not as skilled as you. You see the issue there? It's obviously not in every business, but I would say from mom and pop or a startup or something starting from zero, that's not a great idea because people get the wrong idea.

They go, Oh, I'm going to build a business and not have to do anything. It's like the people good enough to be able to run your business that way, usually run their own businesses, or they get paid a ton of money to do that for other people. You're trying to get someone to run your business for two grand or four grand. It ain't happening, man. Usually, no. If I start a new business now, yeah, I could just start day Obviously, hire, hire, hire, do all that. But I have the experience. I think a lot of people... There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money. I think most of us actually start business to make a lot of money. I don't think we start to help people. I mean, it sounds nice, but I started business to make a lot of money. Yeah, I like helping people now, but it took me a few years to get to that higher level of purpose, realizing that chasing money was stupid. It wasn't going to fulfill me. I think a lot of people at the beginning, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't believe it now, unfortunately.

But if I could go back and talk to my younger self, I'd say, Dude, enjoy the process because the process is the reward. But I didn't understand that. I think if people would stop having the mindset of, Oh, I just want to build this and get out of it as fast as I can. The thing is, those people are never as successful because they're just working to get to a benchmark, and then they stop. The most successful people, they enjoy the game, and that's why they always win because they never stop no matter what result they get. I know that's not everyone's goal in life. I know not everyone He wants to be like a me or hermosy. It's brought up a lot. He works all the time. But there is some truth in it where if your goal is just to get to a certain point and stop, I feel like those people have a harder time being successful because they're always looking to do the least versus someone like me is, I'm doing the most, but I'm always worried what else I can do. I'll do a 16-hour day. I'm like, Oh, what else could I have done?

These people are doing four hours, and they're like, Oh, that's enough work. It's just a totally different mentality and mindset.

I also think getting to that mindset is a little challenging because I talk about this all the time. You can sing Happy birthday, but if I put a grenade in your hand and take the pin out, you're going to have a much longer, harder time singing Happy birthday. So step one, get the pin back in the grenade. Then we can talk about all the other stuff. And for most people, it's like, how do you eat? How do you get to the point where you're like, Okay, I got my rent paid for the next year. I have a wealth ratio that exceeds a year. Now I can start playing the ball game, and I can start moving things around in a very different thing. So someone comes into elite CEOs, you've already told them that their message is caca, and you're going to help them get their message better. You're going to help them with their copy. You're going to help them do outreach. When it gets to the point where they're like, All right, we've got this done. They're working in it. They understand it well enough. They're hitting all their KPIs. What is the systems that you normally say, these are the ones that result really, really well, and these are our next steps.

Okay, we've done this. We fixed your stuff. Now we're going to talk about systems. We're going to systemize this so we can scale it. What are some of the things that you normally go into? Say, Hey, you know what? Facebook ads are great, or Instagram posts are great, or selling underwear is better, whatever it is.

Yeah. Well, so something that's really simple, but a lot of people don't know how to do is... So we have our own white label version to go high level, right? We call it Elite 360. Same thing as go high level, except obviously, our service behind it and the funnels and tell us. Anyways. But the point is that a lot of clients, they don't know how to set up simple automation. If I do what I consider a two-step, a two-step is where I say, Hey, I helped this client double their revenue in 30 days. Just comment down below to get the document. You can set it up where when they comment, it'll just fire the sheet immediately to everyone. For some people, they don't know how to do that. They'll get 200 comments, and it takes them two days to go through it or they have to pay VA. I'm like, You just automate it. So that's number one. It's just super simple. Just get little automations out of the way or an email campaign. You'd be shocked how many people, they don't have email campaigns or text campaigns. Just one time you do the work and it's done.

You don't ever have to do it again. So that's number one. From there, once they have a sales process that's working, then we just want to continue to drive leads with whatever method is better. So if it's Instagram ads, great. If it's YouTube ads, if it's like they can just do it organically, that's fine. I don't care if clients use paid ads. I mean, I've ran about 30 million in paid ads, so people know I'm a paid ads guy, but that's only because it works really well. If it doesn't work well or you can do it organically, there's no point because 60% of my expense in a month is ads. If you take away 60% of my expenses and I could just do organic, great. It's just you need enough traffic to sustain that. Those are really the two, I'd say, biggest things. It's just most people don't have very basic automations. Then once they have a consistent sales process, they're like, Well, Tana, I want to keep this going. I want to start over from zero every month. So whether that's organic or paid ads is fine. It's just most people don't have a big enough following, so they have to go more of the paid ads route.

And when it comes to getting a bigger following, how important is social proof? There's some people like, Hey, I've never... Nobody knows who I am. There's other people who are like, I was on dancing with the whomevers. How important is social proof? And if it is important, what's the best recommended way to get it?

Yeah, so I have a unique perspective on this. So for years, I did paid shoutouts, which is basically just a bigger page on Instagram. It's like, Hey, follow at Tannar Chitester, blah, blah, blah. And it worked probably two, three years, and now they don't work at all. We don't do them anymore. And so I'll give you two sides of the coin. It's been interesting because part of it, it was funny, is it's just a money game. I would say I pay 10 grand and I make 270. It's massive returns because you could get followers for like 10 cents. And on Facebook, if you get a lead for 10 bucks, that's great. So for years, that was cool. I would say the benefit of that was as your number goes up, some people look at like, Oh, he has a bigger number of followers. But do you need that? And if the engagement is not there, it's not as good. If you have a high number, but your engagement is not as good, I don't think it helps you in the long run. It might be a short term thing. But to answer your question, do you need a big social media presence to make money?

No. I started from scratch. Most of the followers you see either came from shoutouts or paid ads. I'm pretty transparent about it. It didn't come because I have this great organic presence and stuff. That's actually something I'm trying to work better on. But But there's two paths you can take. You can take the organic path, which is you have really good content, you get very high engagement, and you drive a lot of sales from that. Or B, you do the paid ads path, which is when I opted for, which is a little faster, but it takes a little more skill. Because I didn't care about being popular. I was like, I just want to make money. I was like, whatever is the fastest way A to B, when you merge both those two, that's where you get Alex Famosi, where you take someone who's really good at paid traffic, and you someone who's really good at branding. And those are the people who become billionaires. So the next step for me, personally, is I want to get much better at organic. I want to get a lot more traffic organically. But I'd say most people, 80% are going to be better off running paid ads because building an organic audience takes time, and you don't know if it's ever going to take off.

And so I didn't want to build a method or teach people something where, okay, you got to be good on video and you got to be good on care because some people just aren't. And so it It feels like better advice to teach people paid versus organic, if that makes sense. But that's my view on both.

Originally, I hated everything that came to social media. I owned an IT company. I was like, I worked very hard to make sure no one knew who I was. And then sitting down at dinner, someone bet me 10 grand that I couldn't grow 100,000 followers. And I was like, okay. That's what it was. I bet you 10 grand, you can't grow 100,000 followers in 90 days. And he was right. We did it in 39 days. And we did the exact same thing. That's crazy. Which was, you to shout out and pay that. This is a complicated stuff. Luckily, I've been on stage for years, so I could turn a camera on, blah, blah, blah. That was simple for me to do. The problem was once I did that, I became the Instagram guy. I was like,. And I literally went dark on my I'm completely went dark. Then we started the podcast, and the first week, we were top 10. Jesus didn't walk on water. He just knew we were the Rocksport. So this is the joke that we always say. There's ways to do this. But what doesn't happen very often, which is one of the reasons I wanted you on here, was most people don't show up authentic.

Most people are, No, I never ran paid ads. I'm just special because my fart in a different direction. It's like, No, come on, be honest. Let's get into this. Let's really get into it. So we've gone through, you need a better USP. We've gone through the idea that you've got to work it. And we've done that. We've gone through some of the systemization processes. As you're getting into it, and as you're someone who's like, Hey, I've gotten this far, and I want to scale it, and I really want to take this to the next level, what is Elite CEOs? Why does it work versus all the other stuff that's out there, specifically for you?

Well, yeah, I think first thing is there's a million things out there that can work. In terms of what I've done, it's been pretty simplistic and straightforward. It's hard, obviously, but Again, you just take my methodology. You're starting at zero. You have no cash. I made a few for sales organically. Once I had that cash, I dumped it into ads. Then once you learn how to spend a dollar to make two, you just rinse and repeat. The more I made, the more I spent, the more I made, the more I spent. It's been that cycle for the last six years. I think I make some of it look easier because I've been very experienced in sales. I was a former athlete, and so I learned how to do a lot of hard things. I'm pretty resilient compared to the average person. But to be honest with you, it's how all businesses grow. You're either going to grow for free or you're going to grow with paid. And the free could be social media or referrals or affiliates, or the paid could just be paid traffic or paid shoutouts or whatever. Most of the times when you see people talking about different methodologies and strategies, it's a different method, but it all comes down to the same thing.

You need X amount of eyeballs for a certain cost, and in return, you deliver the service, and whatever the difference is, is the profit. I don't think I've done anything quote, unquote, revolutionary. I just think I'm a little more tenacious than most people, and I'm willing to do a lot more. I did a couple of things right. The other thing, too, in some people's defense is once you're successful, it's easy to keep being successful because you'll see celebrities, the more money they make, the more free shit they get. It's backwards. As you make more money, it's easier to win, and you have more opportunities, more people want to meet you and collaborate. I'd say the hardest is the beginning because no one knows who you are, no one cares, you're by yourself. But if you can get out of that hole, going zero to 10 is as hard as 10 to 100 and 100 to a million. A lot of people, they don't understand.

I would say zero to 10 is the hardest.

Yeah, because once you get the ball moving, you start building confidence, and then you have more opportunities at your-I didn't know what works.

Zero to 10 starts showing you what works and what doesn't work because you're going to fail a whole lot more in the first zero to 10. Correct. What is surprising right now? What have you found that surprise you that's working really intensely? You're like, Holy crap, I didn't expect in 2024 that this was it. We talked about before doing paid ads and shoutouts. We're like, Holy shit, this worked great. That's a million years ago. It doesn't work anymore. It's dead. What works now that, at least in the Instagram world, what works now that really surprises you? And you're like, Holy shit.

Yeah. So the jury is still out because we're in the early stages. But what I've noticed that isn't working, to answer that question first, is the high-ticket space has gotten much more competitive. Costs of acquisition is much higher. People are less receptive, more skeptical. Back in 2020, '21, whenever the pandemic happened, I didn't even realize at the time, it was easy picking. People were just looking to move online. With that being said, what's working now, ironically, is the community model has been working really well for us. I think the reason it's been working, and I was a little surprised at how well it's working, even with cold traffic. The reason I The thing that's working well is they come in, they're skeptical. You're giving them something lower priced. As they come in and they see value, it's been easy for me, especially if they can see me on a call or they can see me giving value. I I always like going straight to high ticket if I can. But I've been a little surprised at how well it seems to work right now and how receptive people are once they build a little bit more trust.

I just didn't realize how low trust has been. That's what is working really well for us right now. Our cost of acquisitions are way down. We're getting a lot more sales. It's even funny, too. They'll buy certain packages, and then it can almost turn into a sales call and they'll buy more stuff. It's very interesting.

How do people track you down. How do they find you? How do they get access to you? How do they learn some more of this stuff?

Yeah, leadcels. Com is our main website. We have a couple other links, but I can't remember them off the top of my head. So you just go there, you can check Yeah. You can check out a bunch of testimonials and you can read more about me and so forth. If you want to book a call, you can do that. But that's our main website and has most of our information.

I appreciate you coming on and giving really tactical stuff. Been a fan for a really long time, so I really appreciate your time, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me. You asked great questions, and I'm glad to be here.

As we bring this episode to a close, we hope Tanner's remarkable journey from struggling athlete to business scaling expert has inspired you to rethink your approach to marketing, sales, and business growth. We extend our sincere thanks to Tanner for his candid insights. Your open discussion about the challenges of building a multimillion dollar business and the power of a compelling USP is truly invaluable for entrepreneurs at every stage. To our listeners, your dedication to scaling your businesses and achieving your dreams motivates us to continue bringing you these game-changing conversations. We're deeply appreciative of your continued support. For those eager to revolutionize their marketing strategy and master the art of high-ticket sales, you won't want to miss Tanner's comprehensive companion guide. It's a gold mine of practical strategies, including a detailed breakdown of his USP creation process, tactics for leveraging paid advertising for exponential growth, and tips for scaling from zero to millions. Don't miss out on this resource. Head over to our website at podcast. Iamcharleschwartz. Com to access the companion guide. It's your blueprint for crafting irresistible offers and scaling your business to new heights. Remember, your unique selling proposition is your ticket to standing out in a crowded market.

So go forth, create an offer that resonates, and watch your business soar. Until our next session, keep innovating, keep scaling, and never stop enjoying the journey of entrepreneurship.