Chesterzoda.comReviews of chesterzoda.com

I've noticed that many of these reviews are written quite early in the customer's experience. This review is based on a year's experience. My bottom line is that I have paid $36,600 to Dr. Zoda, an additional $1295 in marketing/platform fees, and have made ZERO revenue. I hung in there, believing, until I couldn't anymore. Here's my story, which I've shared with the company leadership, in detail, including the documentation. I joined the basic introductory Zoda course on 9/13/2023 for $7,800. Having developed online courses before, it was the claimed marketing expertise of the program that appealed to me during the sales call. I was told that there was a staff person with expertise in Semrush, for example, who would advise on niching. However, when I was in the program and looking for this expertise, the Semrush expert was no longer available. I became aware of the "Fast Track" program, so I booked a call to "see if I qualified" in mid-Oct. The sales person guaranteed, at the end of the 6-month program, a recurring monthly revenue of $30,000. There was a written guarantee in the contract that the team would continue to work with you at no additional cost until you realized that revenue. There would be an upfront market analysis of my idea to determine if there was really a demand for the content. My program was a B2B program for healthcare executives on leadership models to create cultures of wellbeing for employees. I was concerned about finding the decision-maker through online marketing. I was assured "It's all in the marketing and we really have that nailed down". I signed a contract for Fast Track on 10/23/2023. It was a $30,000 price tag then, but I paid $28,800 using cash. WITHOUT THE WRITTEN GUARANTEE I WOULDN'T HAVE JOINED! My 'customer success manager' (CSM) and her team were located in Bogota, Columbia. Their English and manners were excellent. I received an Excel spreadsheet spelling out the phases of the 24 week program. I was pleased with the market analysis provided in the first few weeks. It was clear that there was a market in healthcare for leadership development programs. Facebook and Google Ads would be the pathway to finding my decision-makers. Fast Track is a 'do it for you' program. Course Creators dictate their content to the CSM. I preferred to transition material from books I had written into a course format, rather than dictate it. When it came time for the team to turn my content into slides, I found the slides rather mediocre, not geared to the professional audience I was trying to reach. I ended up heavily editing, and ultimately, creating the slides for the later modules myself. Once I'd recorded my content, the team's responsibility was to build out the Kajabi platform for my courses to be delivered on, creating the promised automated 'cash machine'. The marketing phase on the timeline was for Weeks 21-24, but my project did not enter the marketing phase until week 33, 11 weeks late! I kept track on the spreadsheet of the reasons given for delays. They WEREN'T due to MY tardiness. My biggest complaint about the program is that the team lacked a sense of urgency or accountability about the timeline of the project. Delays = Lost Revenue. "Fast Track" became "Torture Track" as I felt like I was on the world's slowest conveyor belt. Communications happened through email. It could take 2 to 3 days to hear back if there was something that needed to be addressed. Then, a follow-up to iron out a further detail could be another 2 to 3 days. It was a very inefficient and frustrating way to try to resolve all of the minute details that needed completion. I hired outside resources to finish things I couldn't wait on them for. I also didn't appreciate the sense of being gaslit. I was told that certain things were being worked on, when clearly they were not. I'm not alone in the experience of overly slow output. I connected with one other student who had the same frustration. Finally, 11 weeks late, we began what was designed as the 4-week marketing phase. By this time there was no longer someone who did Google Ads. Dr. Zoda himself wrote to assure me that FB Ads were the best way they'd found to reach anyone through its segmentation capabilities. I'd been advised to price my B2B program at $5,000. I worked with the FB marketing expert for 9 weeks until I realized she didn't have the faintest idea how to find my people. I'd already spent $845 on Kajabi fees and $445 on FB ads with ZERO REVENUE. I asked the company's operations manager for a review of my situation to see if we needed to switch up something for a better outcome. The response I got was that eventually FB Ads would work for me, just stick it out. That was the laziest, most clueless recommendation I could imagine. It was time to cut my losses to regain my peace of mind. KW, PhD

Course is waaaayyyyyy too overpriced for what is actually being offered. For a $10,000 course I was expecting more support. I bought the course in September, 2022 and I’m still working on building this course but have to be searching Outside of the course for additional resources. The methods that is being used is outdated and doesn’t work for everyone. The only solution to getting leads is to keep posting a curious genius statement on Facebook groups which have multiple barriers to entry. The one mistake I have made here is to buy into a course that has no money back guarantee for that much money with very little support and solution. I would never recommend anyone to pay more than $500 for this course. For 10K you literally have to do everything by yourself. Initially, There was no 1:1 mentoring for specific issues. I tried to schedule one of these 1:1 calls when I signed up at first to with the person who signed me up (Adam) but he canceled the meeting without any explanation. After posting this review, which was blocked several times by the company saying I’m not reviewing the right company , the team ( Ashley) reached out to me to inform me of their 1:1 ongoing success calls which I was not aware of when I signed up last year. So this must me something new that was added to the program because I was not aware of an unlimited 1:1 success call when I signed up. They do have a community session weekly but sometimes its not always feasible to join in on those to get your concerns in. I would love to speak with some of the most recent clients ( within the past year) that are actually making that 10K monthly income and made it within a few months of signing up and following the methods exactly as in the program. If any recent client of Chester Zoda is willing to share their success story with me and verify it. I will take this review down. But the success reviews I have seen is the same ones since I joined the program last year and it wasn’t that much to begin with. The course have some good information but it’s not worth the money spent because I’m still spending money outside of this course to get better mentorship and guidance. I think if you charge someone this much for a course there should at least be some interest from the company to check in and at least make sure the student is actually making some progress towards their goals. But it’s a no refund policy so the company’s money is secure and it really doesn’t matter if the student succeed or fail. So I would not tell anyone don’t buy the course but don’t over pay for it.