Tanner Chidester / Over 111+ Million in Online Sales / Coach / Founder Elite CEOs

From $0 to $100M+ in sales in just six years—Tanner Chidester cracked the code to online business success. 

He went from struggling entrepreneur to scaling an empire, and now he’s sharing the exact formula that took him there. In this episode, we break down the secrets of building a bulletproof offer, scaling with paid traffic, and hiring the right team to multiply success. 

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or scaling your business, this is the roadmap to explosive growth

5 Key Takeaways:

• Bullied at 12, millionaire by 25
• $1M in 18 months with the right offer
• Lead gen consistency beats everything
• Hire for values, not just skills
• Outwork regret for unstoppable growth

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Guest Bio

Tanner Chidester is an entrepreneurial dynamo who transformed a childhood passion for fitness into a multimillion-dollar online empire, amassing over $100M in sales in less than six years. Starting as a bullied 12-year-old hitting the gym at 5 a.m., he scaled his first seven-figure fitness business before co-founding Elite CEOs, where he’s guided clients to over a billion dollars in revenue. Author of Infinite Income, Tanner distills his eight-figure playbook into actionable steps for online success. Raised in a family of seven with a teacher dad and no handouts, his Division I football grit and door-to-door sales hustle forged a mindset that outworks talent every time. Today, he’s pushing into tech and private equity, driven not by money, but by an insatiable quest for personal growth.

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (03:20.099)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and I'm excited to have another Misfit with me. I have Tanner Chidester with me and he has done over a hundred million dollars in sales in under six years. He's an entrepreneur and author who turned his passion for fitness into a multimillion dollar online empire from scaling his first seven figure fitness business to co-founding elite CEOs.

Tanner Chidester (03:23.405)
Do it.

Paul Povolni (03:47.011)
Tanner has helped clients generate over a billion dollars in sales. He's the author of Infinite Income, sharing his eight figure formula for online success. Welcome Tanner, how you doing man?

Tanner Chidester (03:57.004)
Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

Paul Povolni (03:59.895)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation. I think you're going to have a lot of great head smacks with somebody as we talk about sales and your online empire. so I appreciate you coming on and I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Tanner Chidester (04:13.516)
I'm excited to be here. I'll do my best to deliver some value.

Paul Povolni (04:17.071)
I think you will. so usually the way I like to start this, I like to start with your origin story, just to learn a little bit more about you. And you can go as far back as you feel would be relevant. But let me, let me hear the origin story of Tanner.

Tanner Chidester (04:30.158)
Yeah. So grew up in a family, seven kids, dad was a teacher, mom stayed at home. Was kind of strange, got bullied a lot around 12 years old. I decided I wanted to work out, go to the gym to beat these kids up. What happened was I stayed consistent and dedicated and I started getting accolades in sports and compliments from girls. And I was like, Ooh, that's nice. You know, put in hard work, you get a result, you know, people compliment you. So from 12 to 22, I really pushed hard in sports. I really wanted to play in the national football league.

or American football for anyone who's overseas. Got to the Division I level, had a lot of injuries. I also think I wasn't good enough, but I had tried as hard as I could. So when I walked away, I remember not having any regrets because there was a guys with a lot more talent, but like no one outworked me. Like I think I maximized what I had. And so at...

Paul Povolni (05:18.359)
Now, did you ever go back and beat up those bullies or did you kind of like forget about that after a while? Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (05:21.33)
it's not messing with me. That was a thing. went once I, because I was in 12th grade or excuse me, sixth grade, it wasn't normal. So I had muscles and you know, everyone else didn't. And so they left me alone. It was, and that was, it was a really cool feeling to see. I reinforced to me, Hey, hard work pays off. was a huge lesson I learned at a young age. And I think that's made me a bit of who I am today and why I still work so hard. Right.

Paul Povolni (05:43.651)
Yeah. And you're probably your mindset changed after a while from being, I'm a victim. I'm, I'm getting bullied to, you know, once you start.

Tanner Chidester (05:49.696)
Right, I felt I could do something about it. know, and you know, it's funny bullies, I think they made a lot of successful people. Because if they hadn't done that, I never would have pushed myself in that sense. So, you know, at the time, I was really upset. But now I probably owe them a lot of my success, because that's really kind of how it shaped me. It's all just for me to me.

Paul Povolni (06:06.113)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (06:11.758)
At 22, I dropped out of engineering because of a mentor. I have one year left to college at a 3.9 GPA. I was going to set to make $100,000 plus a year. And my mentor sat me down. He was a friend of my dad's he said, you know, why are you an engineer? Oh, it's the highest paying four year degree. You know, I didn't want to be doctor because, you know, I'll be in school forever. And he laughed and said, oh, dude, there's ways to make way more money than that. I was like, okay, like how? Because none of my family ever had a business.

Paul Povolni (06:29.271)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (06:40.364)
And he basically made a trade off. said, Hey, if you go back to church, cause I wasn't going to church, I'll teach you everything I know about business. And so he started teaching me about business. And for two years, I had a low ticket fitness offer called the rapid muscle system. made two grand and I would call him every four months trying to quit. I'd say four to six months and five times he convinced me to stick with it because for two years I was like, I was grinding day in, day out, no dating, no, no party, no nothing. And I was getting nothing out of it. And so,

Paul Povolni (07:09.827)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (07:10.094)
you know, at 25 years old, I started to think, oh my gosh, at 22 people said, have time, at 25 they don't say that anymore.

Paul Povolni (07:17.283)
Yeah. So where did this mentor come from?

Tanner Chidester (07:20.942)
He was just a friend of my dad's and his name is David Fry. He actually was connected to the ClickFunnels world. He's married to one of Russell Brunson's cousins, I believe. And that's how I found about ClickFunnels and got integrated with that community. And he just said, Hey dude, that you have everything of what it takes, just stick with it. So after two years, I was becoming pretty desperate. And I learned a lot from him, but he did a lot of low ticket stuff. And you know, if anyone knows anything about low ticket takes either a big audience for a lot of ad spend to make it work. I hadn't either.

Paul Povolni (07:22.722)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (07:51.466)
And so I finally got desperate. was 25. I was about to quit and go back to school. And I saw an ad on Facebook that said how to start an online fitness business. I clicked on the ad, you know, paid everything I had to them. They high pressure sell the heck out of me. had no idea what was going on. You know, got paid today or you can't come in tomorrow, whatever. And I went in and you know, long story short, they just said raise your prices.

Paul Povolni (08:05.091)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (08:13.486)
I had done door to door sales prior to that for nine months. I'd been a server, I'd been a division one athlete. So as soon as I got people on the phone, I started dropping the prices. I started racking them up and I couldn't believe it. Made 10K in a week. I called my parents said, Hey, let me move home. I'll pay you guys a thousand dollars of rent. I knew I'd saved $2,000 on rent a month. And I just stayed in their room 16 hours a day for the next year. And then I made a million dollars. I got one of these awards right here from ClickFun. And a bunch of trainers

Paul Povolni (08:24.067)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (08:37.751)
Wow. Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (08:43.374)
because of it. didn't plan this, but a bunch of trainers just start asking me for help. They're like, yo, dude, I mean, I you became a millionaire in fitness. I want to be a millionaire in fitness.

Paul Povolni (08:51.671)
So what were you selling the same thing that got you to that million or were you selling something that transitioned to that?

Tanner Chidester (08:56.162)
Great. Well, to the trainers or like before like the low ticket?

Paul Povolni (09:01.047)
Well, yeah, the low ticket, you said you up the prices. Was it the same thing? And you just.

Tanner Chidester (09:05.038)
It was the same thing with one on one coaching, some more customization. the product they would buy, it would have like different meal plans and different stuff they could pick from. So it went from a digital product to consulting or coaching, right? And because I was giving them more access to me and communication, all that, you could justify a higher price because I was able to sell more. Like I now have money for ads and hiring and I could do a lot more. And so I said, my gosh, I wish I'd been doing this whole time. When I started

Paul Povolni (09:32.673)
And what were you giving them? You were giving them the toolbox, were giving them websites, were giving them info product.

Tanner Chidester (09:37.166)
Well, mean, really, really, it was super simple. So for the fitness clients, it was just customized meal plan workout program, you know, calls when they needed a lot of texting and stuff. But it was really how I positioned it in the marketing because ultimately like coaching is really like fitness coaching specifically. It's all the same. but it was how I was positioned in the marketing. So my marketing was how to eat whatever you want without sabotaging results. So it really was just if it fits your macros, but I positioned it as

Paul Povolni (10:03.779)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (10:06.062)
something else, right? And I said, Hey, as long as you stay in these parameters and guidelines, you can eat whatever you want. People are like, Whoa, are you sure? Yeah, they didn't know, uh, different speed of calorie or protein or fat. I mean, it blew my mind. I just couldn't believe it. So I started making a lot of money from that. And then I had a huge amount of trainers approach me. And at first I said no, because I hated coaches. I hate consulting. Like I'd had very bad experiences at that point. paid probably 60 grand. And I would say most of it I felt had been a waste.

Paul Povolni (10:10.871)
Right, right, that got their attention.

Tanner Chidester (10:35.406)
Now that I'm on the other side, understand, you know, their position, their position a little better, but I really didn't want to do it. Finally. I said, yes, after I had about 15 people on a waiting list, ready to pay me 10 grand and you know, I'm 25 and I'm going $150,000. Like I'll take it. I started helping those trainers and then that blew up extremely quickly. Um, I was able to take over that industry. would say fairly fast. I went one to 10 million that year.

Paul Povolni (10:35.793)
well.

Paul Povolni (10:50.925)
Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (11:02.67)
And then we have more people outside of fitness start asking. And then I opened elite CEOs. We have 15 million. Then we had done free services. We went to 25 million. And then that was the biggest years I've had. 25 million a year. So that's a long story short. Once I got the right strategy, because I think success is three things. It's characteristics, beliefs and skills. I had the characteristics and beliefs. I didn't realize that at the time, but I had it. I just didn't have the proper strategy, so to speak. And so

Once I had that, it was game over. most people, think they go into it and you know, they have maybe the right strategy or they have skills, but they don't have the characteristics or beliefs. They're not willing to work hard. They don't believe in themselves, et cetera, et cetera. But that's really my path. And so in hindsight, I really, I saw the silver lining and that's what's really helped me in as I've gotten more mature and older, because now when I struggle.

Paul Povolni (11:42.306)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (11:57.602)
I just like in the back of my head, go, this will be a silver lining in a couple of years. I'm to look back at this and I'm going to be like, because this bad thing happened, it forced me to do this, which got me there. And a lot of people don't look at life that way or failure that way. That's why they quit. And that's really been my secret to success is just I'm willing to usually outwork most people. I'm willing to like strive more. Like for example, today's another 16 hour day. I had a massive concussion two weeks ago. I almost died and I could have died. I could have died. Yeah. And

Paul Povolni (12:09.067)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (12:25.069)
man.

Tanner Chidester (12:27.438)
You know, I guess they don't know what's funny until this morning. I thought I fell. So it was a, it's a standup scooter, but you know, now they think a car hit me, but I don't remember because when I had the concussion, hit the ground so hard. It was actually, you can see it right here. I have more of my face was like super messed up, but I hit the ground so hard. can't remember anything. I can't remember if I hit a car. can't remember if I hit like, if I hit the ground. it will be a mystery, but

Paul Povolni (12:27.767)
What happened?

Paul Povolni (12:36.099)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Povolni (12:40.266)
wow.

Paul Povolni (12:44.172)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (12:54.615)
Wow.

Tanner Chidester (12:56.482)
They said, you they're like, you know, you hit your head pretty hard. could have died type of deal. And, when the ambulance found me, they, you know, I'm in Miami, so they thought I'd had a long night, basically, best out or something. They didn't know. But yeah. I just said that to say I'm still pushing and doing the things I need to do. And I think most, you know, most people it's like, Hey, you got a good excuse. You had a big concussion. But when I, when I have stuff on my plate that needs to get done, I just take it very seriously. And I don't want to let people down.

Paul Povolni (13:05.534)
wow.

Wow.

Tanner Chidester (13:25.358)
myself down and we're all gonna die anyway. So I don't know, I'm not saying health is not important. I'm very much into health but I don't know. I just think at the of the day like how you view yourself and your relationship with yourself and like how you feel about yourself is very important. And so when I do things that are difficult but I know I need to do them, the next day I always have a lot of pride. Whenever I don't, I just feel shame or I feel guilt. And some people might, you know, they might try to say that's a bad thing but it's really motivating me to be super successful.

I just feel like I have a lot to prove to myself and I always feel I can do more and that's what I try to do.

Paul Povolni (13:59.947)
Yeah. So the three characteristics you mentioned, strategy and skills. So how does somebody discover if they have characteristics? What are they?

Tanner Chidester (14:10.338)
Yeah, so okay, it's characteristics, beliefs, and then skill, right? And for example, characteristics, when I when I think about characteristics, it's just do you work hard? Like, do you get up early? Are you are you like healthy? Like, are you do you have energy? Like that type of stuff? Like, what type of person are you? So if you lazy person, most people go, yeah, like person is not pretty rich, because they're lazy. So the characteristics came from really from a young age. I mean, at 12 years old, I was going to the gym.

Because I got made fun of. that's why I thanking the bullies. I was going to the gym at 5 a.m. in the morning and at 12 years old, working out before school. And then I got dropped off to first period because, and then it was, it was a gym class, right? And that built a lot of characteristics around discipline, hard work, consistency, because I saw it happen. Like I, like my life literally changed in three months. I went from a loser in the grade.

Paul Povolni (15:00.043)
Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (15:04.248)
to like, was very well respected. I was one of the best players on the football team. And especially in Texas, that's a big deal because that's where I grew up. Beliefs then started to happen because the funny thing with beliefs is as you have success, usually the reason people don't aren't successful is they start doing something and they have zero belief because there's no proof. You have to push through that though, because what happens is once you get results, then belief comes and that embraces you doing the work, which then gives you more results.

Paul Povolni (15:10.315)
Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (15:31.904)
So from a young age, I kept seeing it like grades, I get straight A's, I start doing well with girls. I got to play division one football. I made varsity as a 14 year old. I was one of three sophomores because we were a 6A high school, very big high school. So that was one of my goals. I gave it my whole summer. And so I think early in my career, the age I was at, I just kept seeing over and over like hard work pays off, hard work pays off. My dad played a big role in that. I didn't appreciate it as a kid.

But my dad is one of the hardest workers I've ever met now. Cause when I got older and I was an adult, I started to see my friends parents like, oh, like you guys don't work hard at all. And I just thought it was normal. Like the way my dad and my mom raised me, it was just very much, you got to get a scholarship. You got to pay for your own stuff. Like it just wasn't, there was no handouts, right? And that's just how I grew up. But I thought it was normal. So I think if people go through those difficult things,

Paul Povolni (16:11.085)
Hmm, well, yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:20.673)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (16:26.338)
They get those, some people don't. They have a very easy childhood and so when they get older, they don't have those characteristics or beliefs and so even though they might have the skill, it's not enough to be successful. In terms of the skill, I think your question was how do they know if they have the skills? If you look at my, I just talk about my journey. I I did door to door sales for nine months. So when it came to, and that mentor I had, he had me build out a whole product. So I learned about funnels, emails, ads, optins, I did that.

Paul Povolni (16:46.41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (16:55.596)
I didn't realize it at the time, but once I finally had the right vehicle with the pricing strategy, all that stuff came back. I was like, now I need the funnels. Now I need the, and so I had all those things. So I think for most people, it's like when you're going through school, you're learning skills as you go through school and business is the same thing. It's just marketing, it's ads, it's fulfillment, it's operations, it's, it's technology, it's all those things. So you just have to put yourself through that. And so if you haven't,

Paul Povolni (17:04.972)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (17:25.378)
learned any of those things, that's an easy way to know, or you haven't done any classes or you haven't done any courses, you haven't done any coaching. From a young age, I just really pushed myself. you know, football just transitioned into business. All I did is it changed from physical exertion to mental exertion. And I was like, you know, I just I just knew what to expect. So when I went up against the wall, even though I almost quit a few times, every time I almost quit,

I had that mentor, but it was almost as if I knew I wasn't going to quit. was, didn't want to deal with being a loser. I was so afraid of someone looking at me and saying, Oh, what a loser that I just, I would never, I was, I just wasn't able to quit ever. And so every time I almost did, I stuck with it. But then when I finally figured it out, like everything changed and I was, I, those things in my life have really shaped a lot of my mindset. Now as an older adult.

Paul Povolni (17:56.727)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:15.755)
Yeah. And that's what took you to that first million, right? Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (18:18.702)
Oh, 100%. I mean, it was crazy. Like I went in 12 months, I went from zero, like basically two years, I made two grand and then I did a million dollars. Because all those things just gel like right when I had all three things simultaneously, it just like exploded. And it blew even my mind. I was shocked at how well stuff worked. I couldn't believe it.

Paul Povolni (18:33.858)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:39.075)
So just to clarify, just to make sure I understand, what took you from, you upped your prices and you finally decided to coach, what were you providing people to take you to that million?

Tanner Chidester (18:52.642)
Well, I mean, the big thing, I'll explain the coaching, but the big thing was just marketing. I finally learned how to acquire leads. That was the biggest thing, because I couldn't get enough leads. In terms of the coaching and what they got for fitness, was like I said, customized workout, customized meal plan, communication, et cetera. The biggest thing was how I positioned. And so, you know, I sat down and I said, you know, psychologically, what do most people want? They want to eat like shit and they want to look great.

Paul Povolni (18:59.564)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:11.586)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:20.383)
Right, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (19:20.972)
So I said, how can I ethically tell them they can eat bad and look amazing, but still be truthful? And so for me, if you think about it, you won't feel as good. And I say that even in my stuff, but I said, you know, how you, how to eat whatever you want without sabotaging results, it still looks amazing. So I would get on the phone and I'd say, look, you're not going to stop eating cake or drinking beer. So let's just cut the shit.

Right? Like that's not the plan. If you do, you'll lose weight, but we're going to add it back in. the goal and what we're trying to do is how can you have it and still look good? That's what I'm going to teach you. And you'd be shocked, but there were, just looked the part. was super jacked and super in shape. I'm still in shape now, but you know, the concussion kind of, you know, found me the pantry, so to speak. I'm trying to get it off right now, but

Paul Povolni (20:02.179)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (20:05.878)
It was just shocking me how many people they were so used to being like, do this, do this, eat this, eat this. And so I think the flexibility was very enticing to them. And I just made a lot of money that way. And to be frank, I say this all the time, there's a lot of trainers out there who probably were better than me. And it makes me feel bad in that sense, because the richest person isn't always, I think, in the highest levels of scale, like if you talk about billionaire sure but you don't have to become rich, you don't have even have to have a good product.

Paul Povolni (20:22.391)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (20:34.776)
That's a myth like you can get away if you could just sell because it's perceived value. Now in the long run, will it hurt your reputation and stuff like that? Sure. But you know, like fitness coaching and there's nothing crazy. It's like eat less, move more. And like however you do that is great, but it's really not that complex if you think about

Paul Povolni (20:39.617)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (20:54.381)
So what skills took you from, were they different skills that took you from the 1 million to the 25? Or did you develop new skills for that? Or was it pretty much doing the same thing over and over?

Tanner Chidester (21:05.602)
Yeah. Yeah. Good. Great question. So zero, I'd say zero to one hundred thousand a month is pretty much the CEO. You can pretty much grind your way there. You'll have a couple of staff members. You'll have like a couple of setters, maybe your fulfillment director. But I mean, pretty much you're still heavily involved in everything. You're taking the sales calls. You're managing the setters. You're managing. You know, you're pretty involved for me to scale. You know, the second year, I one to 10 million per year.

massive growth in team building and development. And I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, that's part of reason why I'm so good at it is because when you make a lot of mistakes, unless you have a mental disability, you learn what not to do. But most entrepreneurs can't get past 100,000 a month usually, because they don't understand hiring, training, team building. Like, you have to treat hiring as if you would a wife. And most people, they don't treat it that way. They have a need, they just want to fill it very quickly. They bring someone in.

Paul Povolni (21:42.496)
Right, right.

Tanner Chidester (22:02.946)
that person is a net negative to the company. They don't hold the values. They don't have the skills. You're basically paying them and helping them do the job. So you're not really getting your time back. And that was what I had to learn. And so now I'm very picky who I hire. I'm overly picky who I hire because

Paul Povolni (22:11.937)
Wow.

Tanner Chidester (22:22.274)
you make a wrong hire. just the business is only as good as your team because you realize that a hundred thousand a month you're out of time. There is no more time. You're working as hard as you can 16 plus hour like there's no more time. And so at that point the business is only as good as your team. And I started to realize that by hiring the wrong people really affected my business because if especially fulfillment like if you have the wrong coach or the wrong account manager they judge your company off their experience with that person. And so if you're not doing anything wrong

Paul Povolni (22:39.019)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (22:48.918)
Right, right.

Tanner Chidester (22:51.75)
I just would make the wrong decision sometimes and it would just affect my company. If I could do all the jobs, my gosh, I would love to clone myself. think we had a brilliant, yeah.

Paul Povolni (22:59.267)
Right, So who was who when you're scaling from that, from that place, who is your first hire? Is it somebody to who is it? Who do you recommend now that you've made those mistakes? What do you tell people?

Tanner Chidester (23:13.669)
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm always a fan of hiring the least important position. What I mean by that is, you know, where can you mess up and the business can still survive. So for me, that's fulfillment. Now, fulfillment is still important, but sales is by far the most important. If you stop making sales, the business dies. Well, the first thing I hired out and it was also the most time consuming was fulfillment. After fulfillment, was lead generation. So all the texting, the messaging, all that type of stuff.

Paul Povolni (23:40.706)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (23:41.118)
last thing to go with sales because that's the most important right. So some people will do it backwards when they get the setter first and they do lead generation but in most cases if you can do it and you have the time to do it there's no point in hiring someone. I would wait till the last second some people will hire kind of prior before they need to. I'm not a huge fan of that in the beginning because you learn a lot of skills and you learn exactly how to do it so you can teach the next person who comes in. But yeah as an account manager that's first person I hire.

Paul Povolni (23:44.099)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:09.547)
Yeah. Cause yeah, cause if you, if you didn't hire somebody to do the fulfillment early on then, but you had all this, this stream of things coming in, then suddenly you're at a place like, am going to fulfill all this stuff coming in? Right. And so you kind of get in this place of, I've got all these projects, I've got all these tasks, I've got all these things that I've got to fulfill, but I don't have the people in place to fulfill it.

Tanner Chidester (24:24.814)
Mm-hmm.

Tanner Chidester (24:34.092)
Right. Yeah. And it just took the most time. Like, so if you think about when you start getting, you know, you're around 20,000 a month, you have 20 to 40 clients, you're spending hours a day on fulfillment. If you get that time back, you can now put that into lead generation. most people. Right. Right. And most people are just are not that good at sales. You know, I'm, I've, I'm able to say I'm very good at sales, but that's because I did door to door. And so I just have a, I psychologically and mentally,

Paul Povolni (24:48.203)
Right, right. Because you're the face of it anyway, right? Or you're the, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (25:04.044)
I've just been able to see so many things, there's so many objections that it's really given me an edge in sales where, you know, I can pretty much sell anyone if I really want to, you know, if they if they have an interest, right, like I mean, Jordan Belfort talks about that if someone, you know, they don't care. But if they care, there's a lot of techniques and things I learned just naturally by selling in person because you have a very split second to reply on a phone call, you know, you could take a couple seconds.

Paul Povolni (25:16.579)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (25:31.648)
in person, know, they can tell right away if you don't know what you're

Paul Povolni (25:32.034)
Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah. And I think that's a great point too. It's a lot harder to sell somebody that's not interested in doing better, changing, upgrading. You know, it's a lot tougher of a sell and identifying that early is definitely a skill.

Tanner Chidester (25:43.01)
yeah.

Tanner Chidester (25:50.252)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's it's definitely comes down to like, like when when you can learn how to hire a team, you can make a lot more money. So I'll just say.

Paul Povolni (26:01.515)
Yeah. Yeah. So going back to the question before is, what, you know, what skill or what, changed as far as in how you did things to take you from that first million to, you know, whatever 10 or 25, what were some of the skills? there any that changed or, or, or is there something specifically that you can point out?

Tanner Chidester (26:23.982)
Well, the first skill that made the biggest difference is I just learned how to run paid traffic at a very high level. And I also had, you know, big cojones for lack of a better word. I went from $3,000 to spend a six to 12 to 24 to 50 to 100 to two. mean, we just as soon as it worked, was like, yo, let's go. I'm a very aggressive person. So

Paul Povolni (26:44.15)
Wow.

Tanner Chidester (26:51.958)
I was very, I'm very, and I'm very efficient. So one of the other things that really helped me when I look back at scaling is I just would hire people. say, here's the job, do the job. If can't do the job, you're gone. Bye. As I got older, I thought there was an issue with that because some people told me, they said, hey, you know, a lot of people aren't, you know, wired the way you are. need to kind of chill out and you need to kind of have more tolerance. And I read some leadership books and I kind of started doing that. But I think

Paul Povolni (27:03.267)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (27:19.786)
some of the leadership books out there, they assume that everyone's And that's not the case. So what happened is, as I became more tolerant, what happened is I hired people who didn't have the same standards when you think or values when you think of values. If you just meet me as a normal person, I value hard work, I value discipline, I value I don't know if you want to say the grind, but like, I value like, I do what I say I'm going to do no matter what I don't. You know, I don't care if I have a concussion or not.

Paul Povolni (27:24.035)
Ha

Paul Povolni (27:44.707)
Right, right.

Tanner Chidester (27:48.554)
And some people they don't think that way. They think the opposite. And I'm not, it's not that they're a bad person. It's just that if you bring that type of person on your team and you think differently, like that they're not going to perform at the level you're hoping because when things go bad or their, head's not looking, they won't do it. And so I regret a lot of hires I made from that context, from that place. And what the advice I would give some now is if you have high standards, good, raise them higher and make it hard for people to come on your team because

the better your standards are, the higher they are, the better the quality of the person on the team and your team will perform better, which will beat competitors. I disagree with just, yeah, be tolerant, let people on the team, whatever. And yeah, it will take longer and it's more work, but isn't anything great or worthwhile? So it always goes back to the same thing. it's easier, it's almost always the wrong answer. Almost everything in life that is quote unquote worth it.

It's difficult and it makes sense because most people won't do it. So the harder it is, you just have look at that and say, this is what's going to get me to the next level because other people aren't willing to do this.

Paul Povolni (28:52.213)
Right. And that's kind of, guess it comes down to culture, right? Is you establish the culture and you say that in my company, this is how people behave. This is the expectations. This is the rewards. These are the disciplines. I mean, that's what culture is, is, you know, what do you punish? What do you celebrate? What do you tolerate? What are you for? What are you against all of those things? And so, you know, you had that culture established. but people try to kind of.

put another culture on you, right? And you realize that we're wrong.

Tanner Chidester (29:22.766)
Right. Well, and it's funny, too. So Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two of the richest guys in the world, most people I think would say they're a-holes. That's usually the consensus I get from, yeah, they're too hard. They're the richest guys. Like, end of the day, you got to get performance. And yeah, I don't think you have to be an a-hole doing it. But Elon Musk just comes off to me as like a no BS guy. He's like, this is what we're doing. This is what you got to do. If you can't do it, And people get upset about that. But

Paul Povolni (29:48.119)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (29:50.838)
That's what it takes to win in my opinion. So I wish I'd been less tolerant. And I'd gone the other direction because I think over time that really hurt me. you know what it sucks because when you get upset clients or you have bad things happen and you're paying that person and they're not doing a good job and it really sucks because I don't mind paying someone who you have values and skills. So in a perfect world, a player has values and skill. I would rather hire a person who has good values and low skill.

Paul Povolni (30:09.517)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (30:19.598)
because at least they're trying. But man, when you have someone who has high skill and low values, man, that is the worst. When you see the paycheck leave, man, I'll tell you that, that's painful. And I put myself in bad positions a few times by making poor decisions, but you know, living the learn.

Paul Povolni (30:21.047)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (30:30.476)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (30:35.363)
Well, and that could also be a bad influence on others if they have high school and low values it can wreck culture.

Tanner Chidester (30:39.73)
that's like cancer. It spreads like cancer because if someone you you say please do this and they don't do it and you let it slide, which sometimes in the business you have to because you know, I don't know if this is the wrong thing. Sometimes I think, you know, I should fire him right away or I should wait.

But if you don't fire him right away and they see that it starts seeping into the team because they go, he's not that serious about this. When in fact you are that serious but you're in a hard rock and you know hard rock in a place where you know, do I fire him now and take over and I'm overwhelmed or do I wait until I find a replacement? But if you just don't make the run higher in the first place, you're good.

Paul Povolni (31:08.323)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:17.859)
Yeah. Yeah. So what else changed as you started scaling, you know, to, you you went, you got to the 25, then you hit what was the next milestone and did anything else change, or did you kind of develop a way of doing things that kind of took you from, you know, the 1 million to the 25 to the hundred.

Tanner Chidester (31:36.94)
Yeah, so I mean, nothing really changed. I mean, so the highest I made in a year was 25 million. The only difference is you're just doing more faster, right? So people think a lot of times, you know, as a business grows, it becomes more complex. The complexity comes from bigger team, more staff, more clients, stuff like that. We actually were doing the same things over and over. So nothing really changed from that perspective. It was just, you know, hey, if you're spending

Paul Povolni (31:57.729)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (32:05.582)
$10,000 now we're spending half a million in the same time frame, right? Other than that, no, it was the same stuff. Like most of my days at that point was a lot of strategy and then it was a lot of management, right? Like I spent a lot of time managing the team, so.

Paul Povolni (32:08.054)
Right.

Paul Povolni (32:17.603)
Yeah.

Yeah. So now you help clients and you've helped clients generate over a billion dollars in sales. what, what do you first look at when a client comes to you that you see whether you can help them or not.

Tanner Chidester (32:35.896)
Great question. mean, I'll help anyone. I'll be transparent. I'll help anyone. In terms of what's going to make them successful, the first thing is the offer. So, you know, if they have a good offer, it mitigates poor salesmanship. It mitigates poor marketing. It mitigates, you know, just kind of being clueless.

Paul Povolni (32:44.515)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (32:55.267)
And what are the ingredients to a good offer? Like, what do you look for?

Tanner Chidester (32:58.47)
Honestly, it's just two things really. I Hormozzi has his formula which I agree with most of it But if you just want to make it simple, it's unique and it has low competition and by being unique it usually has low competition So like in the consult in the internet marketing industry a lot of people are consultants right business consultants coaches, whatever you want to call it so

There really isn't much you can do to make your offer unique outside of a mechanism. So if you're like I'm a business coach or consultant, right? So if I'm in a room with 10 other guys, the only reason you might pick me is like my experience like so you're like, Tanner's made the most or something like that. Or you might say Tanner does this thing that these guys don't and this gives a different result. So it's a lot of mechanism marketing, which is tougher. The best clients I've had or even my portfolio companies

Paul Povolni (33:39.351)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (33:46.69)
They just have a very unique offer. So and it's a no brainer buy. So two of my clients that stick out that I can share is one has a I'll get you into an Ivy League school with a 90 % success rate. Right. It's like a no brainer. The other one is I'll get you a green card. Right. So they're just absolute no brainer offers and they're usually offers that are marketed to non marketers. So you know one of the downsides of what I've done is you know I just kept helping people and you know

Paul Povolni (34:05.411)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (34:16.13)
people who own businesses and they're marketers, they're actually harder to market to because they know what's going on. The easiest people to market to have no clue. if it's a B to C, so business to consumer, unique offer, that's just a no-brainer. Ultimately, the marketing is done. It's like, hey, I'll help your child get into an Ivy League school with 90 % success rate. That's pretty much it.

Paul Povolni (34:21.793)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (34:38.307)
Right, right. It sells itself. Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (34:40.162)
But if I say, I'm going help you grow your business to 10,000 a month or 50,000 a month or a hundred thousand a month. Well, guess what? There's a million other people who also claim that now it's all mechanism driven, which isn't as powerful. And then if you want to get really wealthy, we could talk about that if you want, but it's outside this industry and there's reasons I can share with you for that. But inside this industry, that's the number one thing I look at, excuse me, is the offer. And if their offer is not sexy, it's like, I try to make as sexy as I can with the unique mechanism.

Paul Povolni (34:48.193)
Right, right.

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:06.837)
Yeah. Yeah. So what's next after you've, you've got the, the offer and the unique mechanism. What's next that you look at to see if it's somebody you can help.

Tanner Chidester (35:14.386)
Next is lead generation. So you have to have consistent lead gen. I don't care if it's from YouTube. I don't care if you're doing cold outreach. I don't care if you're doing ads. It's just it has to be consistent. And that was a big thing I was missing. So once you have consistency and lead generation, you can now have predictable income and then it makes the business not so unstable or unsafe anymore. And so a lot of clients I work with

Paul Povolni (35:34.999)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (35:36.844)
If they don't have consistent lead generation, we got to find it. And it's like, Hey, like, here's your options, which option makes the most sense for your situation. That's when we're going to go with that. Yeah. A lot of coaches will, you know, the, the promises that make me nuts is like, how to make, you know, blank money without cold DMS or ads or whatever. It's like, okay. Like, yeah, that sounds nice in theory, but unless you have a big organic following, you're either going to be stuck at a very small number, which is okay for most people. or that's bullshit. Like, and so ultimately.

Paul Povolni (36:04.44)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (36:06.038)
If you don't have a big audience like Mr. Beast, you can post content, right? People can engage, you can reach out to them. You can do cold outreach, which is like outreaching the strangers, or you can run ads. That's the only three ways to do it. And people will try to overcomplicate it or, know, that's not how you get clients. I mean, that's the three ways you get clients. And most people, they don't have a big following, their content doesn't resonate that much. They don't have money to start. So most people usually they'll start, you know, likes, comments, followers, and then they got to do cold outreach.

Paul Povolni (36:24.097)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (36:35.466)
if they run out. Once they have enough money, they go into paid ads. I'm not against paid ads. I'm not for paid ads. It's just for the average person paid ads makes more sense than, hey, let's try to build you a big YouTube over the next three years. Like YouTube is a long term play in my opinion. I've

Paul Povolni (36:35.491)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:51.043)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (36:51.894)
I could have done better, right? It's harder to be a creator and run a business, but I have 30,000 subs. I've posted 1500 videos. So could I have done better? Of course. So if I put more time into it, would I get better? Yes, but I'm also running a business. I'm a business owner. I'm not a contact. You know, so it usually will take a backseat if I have other pressing matters and it just is what it is.

Paul Povolni (37:04.811)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (37:11.083)
Yeah. Yeah. So I would imagine that if you, if you have time, but no money, go organic, go cold call and go all that. But if you have money and no time, then go paid. Right. And it's also speed. Right.

Tanner Chidester (37:22.07)
Yeah. Yeah, it's speed and it's also skill though, because you know, I would in a perfect world, I would love to bring clients in day one, have them do paid. But paid only works if there's some skill because you're going from, you know, you're talking to strangers, you know, so some people think, paid ads is a you know, magical formula. It's like, no, dude, like all it is, is bringing awareness. That's all it's doing everything else. In terms of your marketing, your salesmanship, that's what converts them into clients.

Paul Povolni (37:49.773)
Well, and also, I guess the offer, right? And so you've got to nail down the offer. Like you mentioned, that's one of the first things you do is if you have a bad offer, but you have a lot of traffic, you're wasting a lot of time and energy.

Tanner Chidester (38:01.526)
Right. Yeah. 100 percent. I mean, and some people there's only so much you can do. if they want if they're you know, I talked to an individual today, he had an offer that he consults musicians. It's not bad from that standpoint. It's pretty unique. There's not a lot of people doing it. But, you know, in my opinion, most musicians, they're broke. So if he has a hard time making sales, that offer could be a potential problem because he's selling to people who, in my opinion, on average, don't have a lot of money.

Paul Povolni (38:31.337)
Right. Right. Well, well, and it needs it to be as good as your line was, you know, lose, lose weight or get fit without and eat whatever you want. It needs to be that special of an author as opposed to just simply, you know, I coach musicians, you know, there needs to be some, some other thing that coach them towards what, you know, what is the goal? What are you going to get them for that? You know, what are they doing that they, that others think they, they have to do, but you're not going to have to do, right?

Tanner Chidester (38:31.886)
stuff like that.

Tanner Chidester (38:48.27)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (39:01.366)
Yeah, And you know, it also comes down to what that client can fulfill. So I have ideas for some clients, but they can't do it. And I'm like, Hey, you should do this, you should do that, but they don't have the skills yet. And that's okay. Just the way I think about coaching and consulting is if you're a basketball coach, you know, you tell LeBron James what to do and you tell a kindergartner, like, it makes sense why they don't get the same results. But you know, some people lose their minds and they're like, I should get the same results. Like, you're not going to like you're not.

Paul Povolni (39:11.062)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:28.035)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Tanner Chidester (39:31.02)
But, you know, I don't own people's failures. I also don't own their success. Like if people come through my programs and they do great, it's all them. They do bad, it's all them. And because that's the only way you can have it, you can either take all the success and all the blame or you can take none of it. I just choose none. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's the way I do it.

Paul Povolni (39:46.918)
Yeah. So, okay. So we start with the offer, then we go to leads. You've got to have some sort of traffic or whatever. Um, you mentioned several ways to get traffic. So somebody needs to be taking notes if you're not writing notes. What's the next thing that you look at, you know, offer leads. What else do you look at?

Tanner Chidester (40:04.256)
Yeah, I mean, after that, really what I look at is a fulfillment. Can we increase LTV? Like, you know, are you doing it in a way where you're following up with clients who've given a good service? The biggest that's the biggest thing is a good offer or unique and then lead generation then we go into fulfillment. Once fulfillment is done, then we just go into scaling and scaling is more hiring, training, managing all that stuff. So you think of those as your three base bricks to your house. It's like

offer lead generation fulfillment. Once we get that in place, then we can scale and scale is just getting other people to now follow the systems you've put in place. And that's really the four steps, you know.

Paul Povolni (40:40.801)
Yeah. Yeah. So which of those is the toughest?

Tanner Chidester (40:45.582)
managing, hiring, training, managing, of course. I'll meet again, like I said, if you work hard and you're patient and you just like, can, you know, put some work in, you can do a hundred thousand a month and be a terrible CEO. Like you're horrible with people. like a CEO's job is really to assemble a team. You, if you want to make millions of dollars quickly, let's say quickly, not over a long time. If you want to make them quickly, you have to learn how to leverage other people.

Paul Povolni (40:48.109)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (41:12.392)
And that means you have to learn how to motivate you have to learn how to look and find good talent, not make the wrong car. You have to learn how to manage you have to learn how to, you know, make their goals fit within your goals, which is difficult at sometimes depending on your business model. But ultimately, the best thing you can do to get people incentivized is align their goals with yours. Because if you align their goals with yours, they're definitely going to push for their goals. And then by them hating their goals, you're going to hate your goal. That's the best way to do it. When you just try to bring people in, you're like, yeah,

Paul Povolni (41:32.984)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (41:42.228)
just, you know, work hard and all this other nonsense. Like, it just doesn't usually I think work unless they're already they have those types of values already, which just comes down again to hiring. Like, that's the very first thing. So yeah, for most entrepreneurs, they're not very good at it. They don't know how to manage, they don't know how to talk to people, they don't know how to convince them. Like, they basically just won by brute force at that point, but they don't know how to get other people to do what they can do. Does that make sense?

Paul Povolni (42:09.569)
Yeah. Yeah. So when it comes to your book, Infinite Income, is that the formula that you have in there or what's, what's within that book that is maybe different from what you've shared already?

Tanner Chidester (42:18.038)
Yeah. Well, so that's my first book. like looking back at it. I wish I maybe spent some more time. you know, I saw like, I'm good friends with Alex and he had his books come out and I was like, okay, like that's, that's how you write a good book, put a, you know, two years into it or however long he did. But yeah, it goes through my story and it goes a little bit through the strategies of what I did. And, know, just by having the story in there, I hope it helps people relate. You know, I was in a pretty dark spot in my life or it felt like it at the time.

And I just, you know, talk about how I got out of there. So all the stuff I told you earlier. I'm so sorry. All this stuff.

Paul Povolni (42:55.299)
That's right.

Tanner Chidester (43:00.11)
Make sure this is off. Okay, do not, okay. All the stuff that, shoot, I lost my place. What was, I'm sorry.

Paul Povolni (43:10.317)
We were talking about what's contained within infinite income and some of the things you've learned. Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (43:13.858)
Yeah. So yeah, so all the stuff I spoke to you prior my story, it just goes through that in more detail. And then it, you know, shows people kind of the strategies and I tried to make it practical. tried to make it a book where you can read it and it's like, Hey, this is how this guy actually did sales calls or this is how this guy outreach to people. used to read a lot of, you know, business books trying to, you know, how do I build a business and

I get through the book and I'm like, I still don't know how to build a business because there was no practical steps. It was just like go to sleep early, like work hard, all that type of stuff. And I just don't think that stuff usually helps.

Paul Povolni (43:46.241)
Yeah. Outside of what we've already talked about, is there a head smack that really has affected you at this stage in your life that you wish you had known when you were younger?

Tanner Chidester (43:58.158)
Maybe from a personal standpoint. You know, from a very young age, I just wanted to make a lot of money because I wanted to have optionality and choices in my life.

something that took me a few years to figure out and I still think I'm going through a bit but it was interesting to me to come into a lot of wealth. You know, I'm over six foot, pretty good build and you know, at that point, I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. And, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs don't talk about it but I think

you know, navigating that was somewhat difficult for me, meaning you build this life to be able to do whatever you want. And then you can quote unquote, do whatever you want. But then I guess you have to learn the restraint in some areas or maybe that's probably not the best move to go about your life. You can move that into dating, you can move that into, you know, partying, you can move that into like spending money, whatever. And, you know, I just had never experienced that before. And a lot of entrepreneurs don't talk about it or some of that stuff is just a little bit more hush hush.

where, you know, like if I go up to a guy and say, Hey, dude, you know, how was your relationship with your wife and this and that, you know, some guys, they don't want to talk about it or they just give you a surface level answer. So that was probably the only other thing that it was really hard for me to navigate. And I had to use some personal experience because I had to figure out how I wanted to live my life. And when you are in a position when you can quote unquote, do anything, I don't know what my percentile is, but I think for my height and the amount of money and stuff like that, like it's pretty low.

Paul Povolni (45:01.847)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (45:31.694)
are pretty high, however you want to put it. When you have a lot of optionality, you have to really decide who you're going to be versus if you're five foot zero and you make 30 grand a year, you don't really have a lot of options. And so hopefully that came off in the right way, but that was an interesting thing for me to go through and learn from.

Paul Povolni (45:48.202)
Right, right.

Tanner Chidester (45:55.982)
There didn't seem like there was a lot of places I could go for advice where I could get an honest answer and it makes sense because it's very personal. Depending on what it was, it could be very personal,

Paul Povolni (46:02.976)
Right. Right. Right. And when you have those options, you you decide what your values are. mean, that's where your values really come head to head with, you know, I have, I have so many more options than somebody else. And now I've got values that come against those options and who am I going to be and who am I when those options come up?

Tanner Chidester (46:23.159)
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, for me just to be more transparent, I my thing was has always been women like I would I would always like, I want to say I'd always but I think because of a kid, I don't know for sure. Like, of course. But I look back, I was bullied a lot. I was kind of a loser. I came into some, you know, success. I started being treated better.

And so I don't, I don't know where that comes from, but it was always, it was always interesting to me, you know, coming to success, you'd get a lot of attention from women and then, you know, what kind of guy do you want to be? Do you want to have a lot of girlfriends? You don't want to have girlfriends. And, I grew up very religious, but I'm not quite as religious anymore. So there wasn't any kind of religious thing holding me down. And so, you know, I guess kind of navigating that, so to speak and seeing all spectrums of guys out there, you know, you got a

all the way from Andrew Tate to, you know, a pastor, right. And trying to figure that out was a little bit, I don't know why, but it's just always been something I think I've enjoyed more and trying to kind of figure out right from wrong or the best way to go about my life in that area was, yeah, it was difficult. But I'm in a better place now, I think. But I struggled with that for a while and I wasn't really too sure what to do. And I always try to do the right thing. I try to be a good guy, but

Paul Povolni (47:17.954)
Right, right.

Tanner Chidester (47:43.054)
I guess I just didn't know the right way to go about it. I've, the one good thing, and I guess it's a bad thing too, is I'm, I don't ever want to choose something because other people tell me to. And so that can make me a little bit stubborn sometimes because I want to feel like it's my decision. And so if society's doing it, sometimes I go, that doesn't mean that much because, you know, I don't, want to be my own person, if that makes sense. So.

Paul Povolni (47:46.263)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:52.695)
Right.

Paul Povolni (47:57.889)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:05.385)
Right, right. And it's also like, what kind of baggage do you want to pick up to take into the next phase of your life? You know? And so when it, when you're talking relationships, when you're talking behaviors and values and all of that, it's like, okay, well, what kind of baggage do I pick up and then carry with me into my next relationship, into my next.

you know, endeavor with business and all of that. so your values and, know, your options, that's where the conflict happens. can decide, okay, here's, here's what's worth it. Here's what I don't want to carry into the next phase of, know, who I'm going to be and how my business is going to be, or who I'm going to date or marry or whatever. Right.

Tanner Chidester (48:42.39)
Yeah, it like it's it's just it's just interesting. I think it will. You know, I if I could, you know, if I would give up all my wealth right now, if I could talk to God or our Creator and just ask him a couple of questions, because there's a couple of things about how the life works for us. Like, you know, is that is that a me thing? Is it how things are? But, you know, all this, we don't all have the answers and that's OK. But

Paul Povolni (49:03.255)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:09.111)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (49:09.848)
there was some stuff that really bothered me deeply for a while. And, you know, I wasn't sure if there was something wrong with me. wasn't sure if, you know, I just maybe had, you know, more proclivity for a certain thing or whatever. But anyways, it's been good in hindsight, like all trials and like struggles like help you grow. And so it kind of me go pretty deep, I guess, and like personal relationships and stuff like that.

Paul Povolni (49:33.985)
Yeah. So what's next for you now that you're, you're, you know, you've achieved all this stuff now that you've, you know, you're helping a lot of businesses grow. What's next for you.

Tanner Chidester (49:41.774)
Yeah, so I mean, at first I thought I'd retire and I did for six months and I came back and I started working again and I, you know, I didn't realize how bad I had felt. I think it's like eating a McDonald's for six months. You know, the first couple of days, maybe, you know, you feel bad, but then you get used to it and that becomes normal. And I remember that feeling and I said, wow, that's interesting. You know, that's very interesting. So really now what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to go to the next level.

I feel I've accomplished everything I can accomplish in this industry. I still have it. I still love it. Like I still coach people, know, still have clients, et cetera. But I'm really trying to go to the next level. And for me, the biggest plays you can get in is tech, private equity or hedge funds. And I'm really starting to dabble in those. And it really just comes out of pushing myself. There's no other reason I don't need any more money. You know, I'm just not motivated by that anymore, to be quite honest with you. But I really

Paul Povolni (50:34.945)
Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (50:37.76)
I really enjoy the personal development and I really feel business is one of the best personal development vehicles out there outside of a you know, maybe a romantic relationship. I think that can also help you grow but I don't know like I don't have all the answers. I just know I feel the best when I'm doing that I feel the most pride and so for me I'm just trying to push as hard as I can and to be honest I think the most successful people in the world they have a different motivating factor and I think it's a revolved around that because ultimately a lot of what we do here I don't

Paul Povolni (50:55.916)
Yeah, yeah.

Tanner Chidester (51:06.317)
I think matters that much. don't think anyone's gonna die and be like, my gosh, Tanner, you know, did a billion, like, I don't think anyone's gonna care if I get to that point. So that's really what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to push. And I know that makes me a little bit of an outlier, but I'm okay with that. And I just surround myself around people think the same way.

Paul Povolni (51:13.229)
Right.

Paul Povolni (51:24.311)
Yeah. Well, and you've got to have that, you know, what, does the next season look like? Because, know, I'm, I don't know the difference, but they say that once you hit a certain amount, you know, certain million, whether you hit 1 million and then you hit 10 million, your lifestyle doesn't change a whole lot at that point. And so you need, you need something to take you into the next season. need some sort of vision. need some sort of motivation, some sort of a big picture vision of your life or else you kind of do get bored. Right.

Tanner Chidester (51:52.374)
Yeah, I'm not a huge thing guy either. I went through my phase. had three super cars. You know, I lived in an overly priced condo, stuff like that. It was interesting when I was single, I enjoyed it. When I had a girlfriend, I did not. And that...

was that feeling made me go, that's interesting. Maybe this isn't because I enjoy it, it's because of ego. know, because when you're single, you draw all these types of attention and stuff like that. Or it would impress guys, right? And I started realizing, you know, don't really, I'm not really in the game to impress guys, so to speak. So at least for me, if you enjoy that stuff, more power to you, great, that's awesome. I wish I enjoyed it as much as other people, but you know, after six months.

Paul Povolni (52:16.704)
Hmm, wow.

Tanner Chidester (52:35.128)
your brain resets and whatever you had, you got to get something bigger. And so for me, that just wasn't a game I wanted to play anymore. I really enjoy using my money for experiences and my personal development. Like, you know, there's nothing I think you can do better than investing in yourself and whether it goes good or bad, like bad mean you don't get an ROI out of it. Good meaning you do. I mean, you learn like when you learn, you'll learn learning what not to do is just as powerful as learning what to do. And a lot of people.

Paul Povolni (53:03.991)
Right, right, right. So what's a head smack or a question that I haven't asked you about scaling that you'd like to talk about or like to share?

Tanner Chidester (53:15.23)
man, you've done a pretty good job. I think the only thing I want to reiterate is, you know, most people, I think if they drop their expectations for how life should be or how stuff should be.

They'll lose a lot of anger and resentment. I've even noticed this in my life recently. I've been really busy and my girlfriend's been trying to clean up and do whatever she can to help me, which is one of the reasons I love her. She's great. But some of the stuff's been misplaced lately and this morning I was all upset and all this stuff. then I just realized the reason I'm upset is because I'm busy and I'm tired and I'm stressing. But I just realized if...

if I just drop my expectations where things are going to be in the right place and like there can't be mistakes. A lot of that dissipates. So it doesn't mean I don't continue to strive for excellence. And obviously this example is not that big a deal like know Kleenex box being the wrong spot or like myself or whatever. But

Paul Povolni (54:11.544)
Right.

Tanner Chidester (54:14.796)
I just think most people, the point I'm trying to make is they want to be successful, but they have an idea of how long it should take or when it should get there and how easy it should be or how hard it should be. so they quit because their expectations do not match reality. And so for me, again, like I just have really tried to train myself no matter how hard it feels, no matter how tired I am, no matter how sad I am. Like I just push.

Paul Povolni (54:38.882)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (54:38.962)
And last night, I remember for bed, was so tired. I think mostly because it's concussion, but I was so tired that, you know, I must felt like I could cry. Like, I know that sounds kind of weird, but I was so tired. I felt like I could almost cry because I just had no more energy left. but I was doing what I had to do. And I think, you know, a lot of people, if they watch me work,

Paul Povolni (54:49.623)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:56.396)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (55:03.598)
Like you wouldn't be a surprise. I've had the success I had but you know, that's a trade-off and I'm not saying you have to work yourself to death to have be successful but You know, I like to do everything I feel I can do so that I leave as little Chance to luck as possible. I want to have as much say in my success and what happens as possible and I just wanted to point that out because I think a lot of people if they have that mindset there be a lot more successful people and a lot more

like unhappiness and a lot more success because you know it's a big thing with clients I think sometimes what they want and their expectations of what it's going to take to get their do not align and that's why they quit or they get upset.

Paul Povolni (55:35.253)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:47.159)
Well, and I'm sure people wonder, you know, what keeps a person that has reached a certain level of success going, you know, like Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet. Like at that point I would retire and just chill. you know, and, and, know, with you, you know, hitting the goals that you've hit, you know, you did chill for a little bit. and you wonder what, keeps you coming back and is it just that inner drive or is there something else?

Tanner Chidester (56:13.998)
Yeah, it's just personal development. like one of the stories that helped me realize that money wasn't going to do it is I had to go to hit a million in a month. I did it in 18 months. I sacrificed everything to get there. When I say sacrifice everything, friends, relationships, dating, I mean, the whole night, like it was just you a few, I'd be working, like just like I am right now, like even this podcast is technically working like I'd be working. And

Paul Povolni (56:32.225)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (56:37.166)
I had a huge party in Miami, just bought three super cars, had a Lambo SVJ, you know, the car's over a million dollars now. And a guy showed up and he said, Hey, whose party is this? He was a random and I was like, Oh, it's my party. Thanks for coming. And he's like, yeah, what's party for? And I said, Oh, I just hit a million a month blah, blah. And you know, went on this whole tirade and he looked at me and you can tell he was like unimpressed and he said, great. And

that moment just really messed me up because I sat there and thought I just did something 99 % of people won't do. And he doesn't give a crap. And then I started thinking, so what does that mean for Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zabris? And if I'm never that good, it's not gonna mean anything.

And so that really took me down a deep spiral for a while. And I actually went off and did some stuff that people would consider crazy. One of the good things about things about me is I'm very driven and I'm very type A. So when I get desperate, like you'll see me do crazy stuff. Like I'd be on the street, like being, you know, I'd be homeless, like holding up the sign. I do it all. So long story short is I started going to a lot of therapy. I did some psychedelic stuff, hoping, you know, I just was really looking, what's the purpose of life, right?

Paul Povolni (57:21.581)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:40.29)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:49.217)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (57:49.678)
And after I went down that for a while, at least for me, I just realized, you know, no one 100 % knows, you know, if you're religious, you might think you have an idea, but none of us 100 % knows. And so I said, Okay, I'm gonna be here, like, unless I'm gonna try to leave the earth sooner than later, which I don't think is a good idea for anyone. So I said, I'm be here. So what's gonna drive me and like, what's gonna give me purpose or what's gonna make me feel good. And really, at this point, I just want to personally develop as much as I can, I want to do hard stuff.

for no other reason than just to try to become the best version of myself. And all I can tell you is when I have a hard days at work and I push to follow my meal plan and work hard and like be kind to people and help my team. And I have a lot of pride. And when I don't do that, it's not that I'm a bad person. It's not that.

You know, I think it's really gonna make a huge difference in the grand scheme, but I don't feel as good. I have more shame. I have more guilt. I don't feel as good. And, you know, I've just learned that from experience. And so for me, that's just really the goal for me is that what's helped me drive is I don't feel good about who I am and where I'm going when I don't try. When I'm trying, I've realized it doesn't matter what results I get.

Paul Povolni (58:53.921)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (59:05.75)
Regret I think stems from lack of effort. I do not think it stems from lack of results. So the goal for everyone I think and I don't know what the purpose is maybe you know one day I'll talk to God and he'll tell me I would love to know I'm a very serious person but for me I think the biggest thing is I just

Paul Povolni (59:16.675)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (59:35.073)
Hey, it says that you're no longer recording, which is kind of weird.

Paul Povolni (59:59.619)
Okay, you're back. The bad thing is I don't know at what point it stopped recording. I just had a message pop up and say, you're not recording.

Tanner Chidester (01:00:06.315)
Yeah, I can try to backtrack. Sorry about that, man. Geez. That's probably annoying for you. I apologize.

Paul Povolni (01:00:12.737)
No, no, no, no, that's the first time that's happened. That's kind of weird.

Tanner Chidester (01:00:15.264)
Yeah, but I guess what I was trying to say is just there. The next thing for me or why I'm so driven is just to me, you kind of were trying to go through life and figure what stuff is about. And I've just tried to listen more to my intuition or you can call it, you know, God or you could call it the spirit, whatever. But when I when I ignore how I feel in the moment, you know, like to say I want to donate or I want to skip the gym or, you know, I want to cuss out a customer.

Sometimes I do and I don't feel as good after and then when I ignore that and I do, you know, the thing about, guess the thing that my older self would be proud of. I feel better and I can get more into depth on that, but it's funny and it makes you unstoppable too, because no matter where I get, like I always want to be better. And I think that's the end game of life. If you can get to that place, you will really enjoy your life. And if you don't,

Paul Povolni (01:00:44.362)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:53.283)
Yeah.

Tanner Chidester (01:01:09.644)
I don't know, I just, don't really know what you're, I guess you're floating and I don't really know what to say for that. For me, like that's the direction I wanna go.

Paul Povolni (01:01:17.685)
Man, that's so awesome. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I really have enjoyed what you shared and I think a lot of good stuff when it comes to both life and business that you've shared, especially around scaling a business and taking them to the next level. I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of value from it and be able to see where, you know, maybe their business can go next level and change and adapt and, you know, really look at some of their things that they've got in place, whether it comes to their offer, whether it comes to lead generation.

where there comes through scaling the internally and making sure they're ready for whatever that next level is. I appreciate this conversation, man. This has been awesome, Tana.

Tanner Chidester (01:01:57.228)
Yeah, thanks for asking good questions. I can always tell after I've had a good interview because I'm very excited about it. So hopefully that came across and sorry if I talked too much, but that's, I mean, that's got me excited.

Paul Povolni (01:02:04.071)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (01:02:08.495)
It was phenominal, man, it was really, really good stuff and I appreciate you coming on. Alright, take care.

Tanner Chidester (01:02:13.493)
Yeah, thanks for having me.