Stephanie (00:00):
What’s going on everyone. I’m Stephanie from getclients.com and today one of our very successful students, Merrill Taylor is here with us. He’s going to tell us how he was able to make $80,000 in one week just by using our high ticket method system. Merrell, good to have you here.
Merrill (00:21):
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Stephanie (00:23):
Awesome. I’m really excited to get to talk to you today. Especially since I was one of the very first people that I got to talk to you. In fact, I met you on a plane while I was half asleep and that’s how he connected. Yeah, it was coming back from Funnel Hacking Live, you and your son, you guys were amazing. I was half asleep and you guys were up and you’re wanting to talk ’cause you heard about Dan Henry. Tell me a little bit about that.
Merrill (00:48):
Yeah. We went to the Funnel Hacking Live. It was my son’s 16th birthday that weekend. So that day we met you, it was his birthday. So we were headed back home from that and I had a great experience there, learned a lot. Heard Dan speak live on stage, got his book, and started reading that and going through it and quickly realized how he was the real deal of a successful person that was able to coach and mentor other people. So yeah, really impressed by the whole thing.
Stephanie (01:18):
Yeah. So impressed that you found me on a plane and were like, “Steph, I need to book a call with you.” Awesome. I’m really glad you did. Okay, so tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Merrill (01:32):
I’m a CPA. So for years and years, I’ve been helping people with taxes, tax questions, and tax issues and preparing tax returns. I’ve prepared thousands and thousands of tax returns throughout my career. Then so this year I got the idea or found that there was a niche or a market for teaching people how to prepare tax returns, which seemed odd to me at first. Something I did every day and seemed to completely boring, that people were willing to pay good money to learn to do that sort of thing, that they were out there looking for that and there was a market for it. So yeah, that’s what we’re focusing on now is teaching people how to prepare tax returns.
Stephanie (02:15):
Yeah. There’s certainly a market out there. I mean, I feel like there are so many new entrepreneurs that they need this information, so you came at a great time. So what was the problem that you had prior to joining our coaching program?
Merrill (02:31):
Yeah, so before I joined I’d actually had been working on developing a course. So I got into being a CPA and being involved in the tax and the tax world so much, I also saw that there was a need for tax education for business owners. So I was trying to develop a course, I’d put together an outline, recorded, some videos, tried to sell. I went to some business type trade shows that wasn’t the right place to sell it. Somehow we ended up at one in LA spend an entire day and thousands of dollars trying to get people interested in it. We were selling it for under $500 and nobody bought it. So we put thousands of dollars, tons of time, all this stuff into it, and just got nowhere with it. That was before I realized that we just went about it the completely wrong way. So yeah, that’s where we were before we joined the program.
Stephanie (03:32):
Wow. That’s, that’s amazing. Just thinking about that. You started with a $500 program that nobody bought, and then you transition into high ticket. Now you’re here on the call with me, so that’s pretty amazing. What do you think made you choose our program specifically over all of the other programs, methods that were out there, and that you’ve tried before?
Merrill (03:57):
Yeah, I think it’s just Dan and his legitimacy. He’s done it, he’s done it really well, and he’s willing to teach other people how he did it. Not only teach them but like the specific ways that specific methods. So that’s what attracted me to it and then also kind of the stories of being at Funnel Hacking Live and seeing all these people, getting their awards and how many people were associated with Dan and had come through his program. So, I mean, the results spoke for themselves really.
Stephanie (04:31):
Yeah, that’s right. Actually. Now I remember you were actually part of, one of the biggest moments that I had in the company while working with Dan. So just to give you a little story, Dan took the entire team to Funnel Hacking Live, and while we were waiting for him to receive his eight-figure award, the Two Comma Club Awards were going on. One of the things that we got to see, I had the little book with all the people in it that were receiving their Two Comma Club Award. I noticed student after student of our students were getting their awards. It was a pretty emotional moment for me but one thing I didn’t realize is that you were sitting behind me. So you were actually seeing this happen, so do you feel like that was one of the things that like, Oh, wow. That’s really cool. I want to be a part of that.
Merrill (05:21):
Yeah, certainly. Definitely added to the experience of it all in what Dan did and the other results that he brings for sure.
Stephanie (05:33):
That’s awesome. Well now that you’ve been working with Dan for a while and you know of our program. Is there anything particular about our program that has really helped you out and why was that so effective for you?
Merrill (05:51):
It’s just the step-by-step that he had. So it’s just a really focused method of here’s how you start, here’s how you go through things, and here’s how everything’s done. He starts from the very beginning. So for me, it was really important because when I came in, I came in with this course, with this idea with something I had developed and thought that all I had to do was just figure out how to sell it better, figure out what to do better. But, as I started going through the very beginning videos of the course and working through those, my idea wasn’t fitting into the framework that Dan has set up. So he, you know, he has this really, really great framework of how to craft an offer and how to market that, and how to set it up and go through all that sort of stuff.
Merrill (06:39):
And my idea was falling short. It wasn’t fitting into things as well. So that kind of made me think like, “Oh, what’s wrong? Why isn’t this quite fitting in?” Then as I went along, I was in the program for about a month and a half when it just kind of hit me that I needed to switch the entire offer. So I switched that offer and then all of a sudden everything started fitting into the frameworks. Then we started having success, and then we started getting people in. Then we started finding the interest and all that sort of stuff. So that’s what really helped me initially, was realizing that my offer didn’t quite fit a framework of an offer, and I needed to pivot that. Then from there, it was just the step-by-step guides of, okay, go buy this software and connect it to this software over here.
Merrill (07:22):
And when you go into this software, click these buttons here and, you know, and then when you develop this resource, make sure it looks this way and has this sort of a feel to it. When you tell people stories, make sure they have these elements. When you run an ad, make sure the pictures look like this and it was just all these little, very nitpicky, small items that you don’t think much of, but make a huge difference. And so having Dan personally walk you through each of those steps, step by step, what to do is just amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
Stephanie (07:59):
Absolutely. One of the things that I got from that is that you had pretty much everything, but your offer didn’t align with that. So once you went through the program and you pivoted your offer and you completely change it. Everything fell into place and I think a lot of people they come in and they’re like “this isn’t working”, and a lot of the times it’s their offer, and that’s what we’ve got to drill it into everyone, is that it’s the offer. Dan does such a great job of helping you with the core offer and the elements of what makes a great marketing message. So I mean, I really think that was really cool that you just changed your offer and then everything like the system just perfectly fell into place. So what would you say that the result of implementing the program in the framework has been for you?
Merrill (08:56):
So yeah, so it’s given me a great outcome putting that all in together into the program. So one thing I didn’t say in the backstory was how long I had been working on my low ticket offer. So you know, here we are in September right now. So I actually got the idea for my original offer back in August of 2018. So two years ago is when I started working on the offer and it was February of this year when I met you and started the program. So I went a year and a half working on that low ticket offer, putting all the time, energy, money and got zero, got nowhere with it. Then in six months, since that time now I’ve made the 80,000 in that one week as we launched. Then we also had our beta, that we made about $12,000 off of there. So we’ve made over $90,000 in six months versus, you know, spending thousands of dollars trying to get something going in a year and a half. So that’s been the outcome for me is just, it’s accelerated our, our success basically. Yeah.
Stephanie (10:09):
Wow. Did you ever think that you would actually do high ticket offers or that you would go into that?
Merrill (10:15):
No. No, not at all. Yeah. I always kind of thought it was a low ticket type thing. I never saw the value of it because it was something I did every day and so I thought that the tax side of it was a low-value thing because people would compare it to TurboTax basically. So I’d say, “Why would they paying me $500 to teach them how to save money on tax when they can pay $200 and do Turbo Tax?” something like that. So I had a very low ticket, low-value type of focus on it. Even when I pivoted and started doing the bookkeeper thing, I still thought that that was a fairly low-value type thing. I saw a little bit more value in it, but, you know not as much value as when Dan really started focusing on high ticket and what that offer does and how it can help people. Then, so when I went fully to the high ticket and it’s still amazing to me that once everybody goes through the webinar and all the materials and things if I get the right person on the phone within 30 minutes or less, they’re pulling out their credit card to pay me thousands of dollars to teach them something. It just blows me away still.
Stephanie (11:27):
Awesome. Well, I’m super excited for you. So I’m so excited that you’ve got amazing results from that. What about your personal life? What has been the outcome of your results in what you have achieved with the program when it comes to your personal life?
Merrill (11:49):
Yeah, it’s been I’d say this whole thing has been a blessing to us. So I’ve been working at the CPA side for years and years and tax season is always hard and it’s always difficult and it takes a long time to grow clients and all that sort of stuff. You work hours and hours, hundreds of hours during tax season, and it’s hard and grueling. Then to have this opportunity to instead be the tax preparer, but to teach people how to prepare returns has really opened up the world for us. We start to plan and dream, although we’re still really early on, we can see the success coming. We can see what will happen if we keep pushing and keep moving and keep bringing the right people in. So for us, when I look at my wife and I, and I have three kids between the ages of 16 and 11, we have one in the middle there that will turn 14 next month.
Merrill (12:52):
You know, we can sit the kids down and we can start to dream about stuff. We can say, “Hey, you know, what, what kind of house would you like to live in, and what kind of cars you’d like to drive in?” So we start to dream about the possibilities that are out there because of the program and the money that we’re able to make from it. More than that it’s also about really helping people. That’s something that’s really impacted me a lot was when we took our beta group, and now we have our new group that’s kind of coming through. When they come and they say, “Hey, I want to learn how to prepare tax returns” and you walk them through the process, and then they come on a coaching call and they say, “I just picked up my first client, what do I need to do?”
Merrill (13:36):
And we walk them through that process. Then we’ve had them then come back and say, “Oh, I just delivered the tax return and I got paid from the client.” The client’s happy and they’re happy. You see that the happiness that it comes to their life because they now have this new skill that they were lacking that they really wanted. So that’s really left a huge impression on me is actually making a difference in somebody’s life. You know, when I did tax returns, it always felt like a commodity. It was something that they require that they absolutely had to have. So it was like this necessary evil, and they had to pay for it and they always hated to pay for somebody to prepare their return. So I always felt like even though I was helping them, it felt like it was always a drain to them versus teaching people how to prepare a return, teaching people a skill that enables them to change their lives and then change the lives of those that are around them has been really impactful for me to see that.
Stephanie (14:34):
Wow. That’s awesome. Especially the part about your family and how you’re building, you guys are preparing to build a future and your son, the 16-year-old son, I think that’s the one I met at Funnel Hacking Live. He’s he seems like he has an entrepreneurial spirit as well. If I’m not mistaken, he wanted to do his own thing. So you’ll be able to help them with that as well.
Merrill (15:00):
Yeah, We have and we were talking the other day, he has a real passion for cars and he knows everything about them. So whenever I’m looking at cars, I’ll ask him, “Well, hey, what’s that car? What about this?” You know as I shop for cars I asked him his opinion and he can just spit out facts like crazy. So we were talking the other day and I said, “Hey, you know what, you know so much about this. I bet there’s a market out there, people that want to want to learn that.” So he started to think about that and how he could develop a course on teaching people about cars. So we’ll see what happens there.
Stephanie (15:34):
That’s amazing. I’m sure he’ll be super successful with that. So now you’ve been getting all this amazing success, but what do you feel like you would be if you hadn’t taken action and joined our program?
Merrill (15:52):
I would still be struggling without a doubt. I would still be trying to figure out how to market this program that I developed on my own and not being able to find the niche, the market. I mean, I went a year and a half trying to figure the whole thing out. So there’s no way in the last six months something would have clicked, maybe something would have, but I highly doubt it. It would’ve just been more time and money and stress and frustration trying to figure that out and work through it. So yeah, very grateful for where I am now. And yeah, it’s good.
Stephanie (16:30):
Yeah. Well, we’re grateful to have you. So in closing this, there’s going to be a lot of people that are watching, so for those who are still on the fence about booking a call with us or jumping in, what would you tell them?
Merrill (16:48):
I would say do it, yeah. Do it right away. Don’t delay, don’t waste time because the time that you waste is just time that you could be developing. So you know, in the last six months, it takes time to work through it. You know, some people can come in and get results really, really quick. For me, I had to pivot and change the direction I was going, and that took a month or so. Then it took me a bit to build a group of people, which Dan goes through amazingly well. You know, I came in with zero following, I had a lot of connections on LinkedIn, but none of them were in this niche. So I had to go out and get an entirely new following of people and build a group and everything. And so that took a little bit of time and everything takes a little bit of time and the longer you wait, the longer it’s gonna take for that to build and grow. So I’d say jump in and be committed and spend every day doing something that will push that along and just focus on that. So, yeah I’d say anybody that’s on the fence, just jump in and get going on it right away.
Stephanie (17:59):
That’s right, so jump in and book your call and let’s get started right away. Merrill, thank you so much for your time. Loved having you and I cannot wait to see what you do. I know you have tax season going on right now with all the people that follow you and their extensions, but you’re getting out of that very soon.
Merrill (18:18):
Yeah.
Stephanie (18:22):
Awesome. All right. Well, take care, and thanks everyone for watching.
