Stop Selling Services. Start Solving Problems | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this practical, high-energy episode, Matt Zaun talks with Sean Garner, StoryBrand–certified marketer and founder of Sean Garner Consulting, about cutting through today’s 10,000-messages-a-day noise with a simple idea: clarity beats clever. They break down how to build messaging that wins attention, creates qualified demand, and turns “we do X” into “we solve your problem.”

In this episode, they cover:

✅ The StoryBrand core — 7 talking points that become your “verbal brand guidelines” for every email, website, and pitch.

✅ Consistency that compounds — Be relentlessly consistent about the problem you solve, not the services you sell.

✅ When prospects don’t know their problem — Lead with the pain, then educate on your unique solution.

...and much more!

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Sean, welcome to Stories of Attraction podcast.

 

Sean Garner 

Thank you so much, Matt. It's an honor to be here, and I did connect with you on here, finally.

 

Matt Zaun 

I'm excited for a conversation. I've been waiting for it for quite some time. There's so much that we can talk about today.

I want to start with the marketing piece, and then we can kind of unpack elements of your story. But let's start with marketing.

 

Sean Garner 

So can you tell my audience a little bit about what you do and what your team does for your clients?

Yeah, so I own, even though this is my marketing dad joke, so we're a marketing agency. Not super creative name.

It's Sean Garner Consulting. But what we typically do is we work with local service. The software Based businesses that are not looking just to grow and get more leads, but the ones that truly want to dominate their industry.

So we work with plumbers, med spas, accounting firms, gyms, personal brands, coaches, and consultants. And we aren't looking necessarily for the client that just is looking for a couple extra leads here and there, but they want to stand out as the true industry dominator.

Like, I want to be the best plumber that there is. So we do story brand messaging, we do websites, sales funnels, search engine optimization, and then fractional CMO consulting.

 

Matt Zaun 

All right. So when you say marketing to people, typically there's an image that they have in their mind. That word marketing paints pictures for people.

And a lot of the pictures are different, right? The perception of what marketing is. So when I say marketing to you, what is the crystal clear picture that you have when you hear that word?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah, you know, unfortunately, I will say my industry is becoming like the used car salesman of the This sector world, it's like I'm almost afraid about a marketing agency because there's so many marketing bros and stuff like that out there.

But to me, what really good marketing is, is crafting of a message and the distribution of that message. So I think foundationally with marketing, it comes down to words.

I love design. I love cool logos and stuff, but nobody has ever looked at a brand and be like, oh, my God, that logo is amazing.

I want to give them a bunch of money.

 

Matt Zaun 

But they've heard words. They heard somebody speak. They connected with a sales presentation. And then that's what put them over the edge to want to do business with somebody.

So you mentioned crafting of a message. So I saw recently that the average person will experience upwards of 10,000 messages every single day, whether it's billboard ads, whether it's text messages, emails, social media scrolling.

So 10,000 messages, that is a gob. How on earth do you break through the noise? So when you say crafting messages, what does that mean when you are in, let's say, a coaching session with one of your clients?

What do you recommend from a crafting message perspective to help them get above the noise, or at least try to get above the noise?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah, great question. So for us, how you stand out is with clarity. And so we're part of the story brand world.

I'm a certified story brand coach. And so we use something called the story brand framework in order to craft those messaging talking points.

So just like you would, whenever we think about the story, creating your brand script and this story brand messaging, a lot of times people think that it's a literal script.

It's like the word for word words that you're going to use. But what it actually is, is it's seven different talking points that you want to use that will help you filter all of your marketing messaging through.

So just like you would go to a graphic designer and they would create your visual brand guidelines, you know, like your logos, your colors, your fonts, and that side of things.

So every time you go to maybe create social media assets or a website, you would look at those brand guidelines to make sure that visually it matches up with everything that you do.

The story brand brand script does the exact same thing by... Crafting those seven different talking points. When you go to write emails, sales presentations, website copy, you filter the message through that to make sure that it sounds and it resonates like the type of person you are trying to attract, not the type of hero you are trying to be.

So those quick seven different talking points is your character, that's your customer. They want something. So we want to talk about the desires, the thing that the customer wants.

But just following the arc of story, there's a problem that is keeping your character from getting what they want.

That problem is focused on three different levels. It's the external, which is the main thing they deal with, the internal, which is how it makes them feel, and the philosophical, which is why it's just plain morally wrong.

Then you position yourself as the guide, not the hero to the story. So how do you demonstrate empathy and authority in your space to help them solve that problem?

You then will give them a very simple step four is give them a very simple three-step plan on how they need to go from where they're at to solving this problem.

You want to call them to action with a very clear and direct call to action, because if you don't call your customers to action, they're not going to take action.

And we don't want to say things like learn more, discover how. We hope it's booked a call, schedule the assessment, buy now.

It's very clear and direct what we want them to do. So then they can also, step six is avoid all these bad things, which is the failures that they're continuing to deal with.

And step seven is create all the happily ever after and the success once they do do business with you.

So you craft those six, seven different talking points, then all the messaging that you create through your brand, you filter through that to make sure it resonates through that same thing throughout everything that you do.

 

Matt Zaun 

All right. That is gold. Thank you for laying that out for us.

 

Sean Garner 

Fantastic.

 

Matt Zaun 

So one of the follow-up questions I'd have for you is based on that clarity.

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun 

Because as everyone knows what's listening, there's viral posts that take shape and some of them become cultural phenomenons. I feel like there is this almost like flash where we're always after the next thing.

I feel like based on what I've seen, a lot of companies, they're not even hanging on to their CMOs for any great given amount of time where there's not enough of that gap to make sure that the market.

So from a clarity perspective, it almost like we piece clarity with consistency. So one, would you agree with that?

And two, once you get everything that you had just mentioned, how do you keep your clients on pace to make sure that they can end up seeing the results?

Because it's not going to be today. It's not going to be tomorrow. Heck, it might not be for months until they start to see a lot of those good long-term results.

 

Sean Garner 

So how do you piece the clarity with the consistency with everything that you just mentioned? Yeah, great question. So I do agree with that, but it's about being consistent in the right things.

So being clear is awesome. But if you're being clear on the wrong things, well, you're still going to miss the mark.

So for us, the big thing that we want our clients to be clear on is the problem they solve.

Customers or your potential customers, they do not want your product or service. Nobody wants an accountant. Nobody wants a doctor.

Nobody wants a personal trainer. They want the... Problems that those different services solve, they want to pay less in taxes.

They want improved health markers. They want to look more confident with their shirt off. But too often, I think business owners, they think that they're being consistent, like what you said, but it's talking about what they do, whether than the problem they solve.

Because customers or your potential customers, whether you realize it or not, you do this exact same thing. You're always scanning the environment for things that help you survive and thrive.

That's it. And you want to do it in as simple of a clear way as possible because your brain's trying to survive and thrive and conserve calories.

So the more clear you can make your marketing message and you show your customers how you help them survive and thrive by speaking about the problem that you solve, that's what you need to be consistent with.

And to keep that from plateauing, people are always dealing with problems. They do get bored of services. There's always, if you're trying to sell services, services come and go, like using the fitness industry.

used to be like just a regular 24-7 gym. Well, now we have apps. We've got Peloton bikes. We have lots of different services that we could focus on selling.

But if you go back to the root cause or the root problem that your customers are dealing with, that helps you pivot your company to create new revenue streams and stuff to create new services that solve the problems in unique ways.

 

Matt Zaun 

What if you're trying to solve a problem that your client doesn't know they have? What would you recommend for that?

Because there's a lot of companies out there that are trying to do that. They're trying to sell a vitamin, not aspirin, meaning like it's great for people to take vitamins, right, to make sure that they're healthy.

But isn't it better to sell aspirin? Someone gets hit in the head and they desperately need something now. It's almost an urgency.

So what recommendation do you have? There's tons of people listening that have this issue where they're trying to solve a problem where the client or I guess at this moment in the buyer's journey is a prospect.

Their prospect doesn't know they actually.

 

Sean Garner 

So there would be two parts of that. One is if your product is super unique, which I would argue to say very few actually are, there may be some educational-based marketing that needs to go to educate your consumers.

However, whenever I've seen this happen using the supplement industry, for example, and pharmaceutical industry, typically it's because they're trying to sell the product and why they've got a more healthier aspirin than focusing on the problem that they're actually solving, which may be like headaches, tension, stress, muscle sores, whatever the thing is.

You still need to talk about the main problem, and then you want to tie how your product or service solves that problem, and then you can talk about how it solves it in a new way.

A better way, but you still ultimately have to talk about the problem, because if you're not talking about the problem, your customers are just going to tune you out.

mean, using that pharmaceutical example right there, imagine a pharmaceutical rep rocking into a doctor's office. You maybe get 30 seconds with them to start up a conversation to hear why you're new.

Drugs is the best thing. If you are just trying to push the product and the features of it, you are going to fail because people will buy benefits.

Features will help kind of push them over the edge, but the benefit, how does it actually help them? What problem does it solve?

That gets you the door open so then you can actually get into the nitty gritty with all the features of the thing.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, I like how you keep bringing it back to focus on problem. I think there's a lot of wisdom to that.

What would you say to a company that's highly regulated? So clearly they want to help their clients with the problems they have, but they might be restricted on the messaging they're able to say.

So we mentioned pharmaceuticals. I mean, we could throw banking and finance into this. There's many, many different companies that are highly regulated that we can say they have something they want to solve for their prospects, but they're restricted in the messages that they can share.

What recommendations would you give to an organization, or I should say?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah, that is the beauty of this. You can talk about problems all day. In heavily regulated industries, where you get in trouble is when you start presenting your product or solution as the only solution to the problem.

Let's do highly regulated stuff. We've got clients that are in the financial industry. If you want to start talking about, let's say, financial planners, financial advisors, stuff like that, they might think of this like, oh, the problem is, you're not investing money with me.

Like, no, that's not the problem. The problem that the customer has is that they don't have a plan for retirement, or they're concerned that they're not setting back enough money for savings to be able to build a legacy for their family.

They're concerned that they're not going to have, that they're going to have to work for the rest of their life.

They're concerned that their problem is that their assets aren't performing as well as they wish they would. You can talk about those problems all day long.

Where you get in trouble is, especially in those highly Regulated industries is whenever you start forcing your product or service as the only solution to those.

So that's where by talking about the problem, it gets people's ears to perk up. And then that gives you the right and the opportunity to have that conversation in a more controlled environment, like if we're sticking on the financial sector here, that gets people's ears to perk up of like, wow, they get me because they're using my words.

So there's a really common saying or quote in marketing is the more clearly that you can identify your customer's problem, the more that they will naturally expect that you have the answer.

So even if you don't, and you can't talk about the specific services that you provide and the results that you've gotten from your industry, if you clearly drill down that problem, like I said, there's three levels to the problem.

The external is the main thing. The internal is how it makes them feel. The philosophical is why it's morally wrong.

If you drill down to that bottom level, and you use the exact words that's going through their head and

Keeping them up without you even presenting your solution. If you can articulate the problem that clearly in their words, they automatically will assume that you have the answer to it.

So if you're talking about the main problem of not having enough money saved for retirement, that's everybody's going to be talking about that.

That's the external main thing. When you start using feel words, that's the internal problem of like, man, are you frustrated?

Are you scared about what's going to happen whenever you turn 65 and you want to try to retire? And you start talking about that.

Then it's like, well, yeah, I actually am scared. And then when you get down to the deeper level of a philosophical problem, that's saying something like, man, we believe that your retirement, you should be the best years of your life.

And you shouldn't be worried about how you're going to, you know, how your finances are going to provide for you throughout your golden years.

Like whenever you're like that, then it's like, oh, wow, he gets me. You should, your retirement year should be whenever you're really solidifying the legacy with your family.

You know, whatever that main thing is that connects them with, that's whenever their ears start perking. Because you've really identified the problem, how they see it and feel it, to give you the opportunity to then connect with them and share your services.

 

Matt Zaun 

Let me make sure I'm getting this right. You said the more clearly you can identify your client's problem, the more they believe you have the solution.

 

Sean Garner 

Articulate. Yeah, identify or articulate. Because the words, remember, the words are what connect people. So whenever you use the exact words and verbiage that they are using, that's whenever you really stand out.

Like we talked about all these messages and stuff bombarding. Bigger companies, especially big enterprise companies and stuff, I've realized where they miss this mark is they try to sound too corporate and they don't use the words that the everyday common consumer is using.

And that to me is honestly one of the big secret pivots of some of the small businesses that we work with is they can adapt.

They don't have to have 50 meetings to think about how they're going to change a tagline and they use everyday normal language and it makes them stand out even more because they're connecting with the company.

 

Matt Zaun 

I'm laughing because the same thing happens in politics. My background is the political world that happens with voting, right?

If you have a politician that's saying words that the average voter can't relate to, they're going to think that person's weird, they don't get it, right?

They're not going to vote for that person. So I really appreciate you mentioning that. One of the things I have seen, Sean, that I find fascinating is there are a lot of leaders that they want to be thought leaders, and the idea of them becoming a thought leader is cranking out every message that comes into their head.

So they start putting out everything on leadership or everything on grit or whatever it is, and if you start scrolling through their social media or even some of the blog posts they might have on their site, it's disjointed.

It's all over the place. So would you recommend, I've heard a few people talk about like content buckets, like having three or five or honing in and focusing on certain words and then building out whether it's stories or messages regarding those words?

So what are your thoughts on that kind of formula? Would you recommend people stick to certain content buckets or what are your thoughts on that?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah. So for personal brands in particular, is that what you're talking about or just any brand at all?

 

Matt Zaun 

Just any brand at all. I see more and more leaders say, hey, I got to do marketing. I got to get on social media.

I got to start cranking messages out in the world. And the message has nothing to do with their business.

It has nothing to do with them. And they might have listened to a TEDx or read a book, and they're commenting on things that they might not even need to be in the ballpark of commenting on.

So would you recommend from a focus perspective, like sticking to certain talking points or certain content buckets? Or what are your thoughts on that?

You mentioned clarity earlier. How can someone focus, more simplistically speaking, from a clarity perspective?

 

Sean Garner

Yeah. So it all comes back to what problem do you want to be known for solving? And for us, where I see businesses get this wrong is they start talking about problems that their customers.

are dealing with, but they can't solve. So they might, let's say we're in the accounting finance world, they may start talking about the, let's say they're accountant, but they're still in the financial world and they're talking about the importance of saving for retirement and they're a thought leader of saving for retirement.

Well, that's awesome if you want a bunch of likes and followers on social media and like that. But at the end of the day, I'm sorry to tell you, I hope everybody realizes, I have not tried to, I have not been able to pay my mortgage with likes and followers.

And in comments, what actually pays when people buy my products and services. So it doesn't matter what content that you are putting out there, if it's not driving bottom, like money to the bottom line.

So if you can't solve the problem, you shouldn't talk about it, unless this is what, that's why I asked the clarifying question there.

If you are trying to build a personal brand that you do want to eventually maybe be a speaker on stage, you do want to write a book and you want to create a new revenue stream or business opportunity create a stream

or yourself, then it could make a little bit more sense. But if you are a CEO of a company, and you are, let's say, you're a fintech company, you should talk about the problems that your potential customers, whether it be B2C or B2B company, are dealing with so you look like a true thought leader whenever you're able to articulate, again, those problems and talk about your potential customers' issues.

 

Matt Zaun

Wow, that's fascinating to because I see more and more people, especially when we're talking about business leaders. And I had mentioned to I work with a lot of CEOs.

They'll see or hear something that they find fascinating. And then they've been coached to start sharing more because it took a while to get out of their shell.

So they start sharing, but it might not tie back to their company at all. So I really like what you said about, they might talk about problems their prospects have, but they can't solve them.

So where is the alignment in that? I think that that's a really good question to ask.

 

Sean Garner 

So I was in the fitness industry for a long time, so this will be a very... Very easy to get example that people click and resonate with.

I was the head of marketing for a very large fitness app where we got to manage some of the largest fitness influencers in the world.

Not being inappropriate or vulgar here, but a lady could post some bikini pics that's super fit, and she's going to get a lot of attention on social media.

But that doesn't mean people are going to go in the back end and buy their product and see them as a thought leader for solving the problem.

They're going to say, oh, wow, that's great. You got yourself really fit. You maybe solve this problem for yourself, but I'm looking for the solutions for this problem.

And if your business doesn't solve that problem, they're just going to go to the person that actually is. So you, your content by talking about all these different things might get your customers interested, but now they're going to go find the solution to that problem instead of seeing you as being able to make money from it.

 

Matt Zaun 

Well, so let's use that example because I think that that's an interesting example. So in the event, someone were to post a picture and the.

That gets a ton of traction, let's say a lot of impressions on a social media platform. With more eyeballs on a screen, couldn't that company have some type of gen lead where they're having something in the comments where they have a link that people can put in their email?

So what are your thoughts? But I guess what you're saying is the clarity from a problem perspective, they might get a lot more email subscribers, but those are not necessarily who they're targeting.

They're not going to necessarily be the buyers that they want. Is that correct?

 

Sean Garner 

You want quality leads over quantity of leads. So for example, let's use an even more easy example. You could do a giveaway on your social media account to where, hey, enter your name and email address, we're giving away an iPad.

You're going to get a ton of leads, but it doesn't mean they're going to be qualified for anything at all that you're trying to sell versus like, hey, here is our top 10 tax cheat sheet.

It's going to show you 10 things that you can do today to save over 10% on your taxes. That's going to get a lot less leads, but it's going to be much more highly qualified ones for the...

Tax accountant that's looking for new clients.

 

Matt Zaun 

Saved 10% of my taxes. Where do I sign up for that, Exactly.

 

Sean Garner 

There we go. See, we're going to name an email there.

 

Matt Zaun 

You got an email subscriber. Woo. All right. So I do want to talk, we're talking about stories. I want to talk about your story.

I'm always fascinated about how people got to where they are in life. So you had mentioned me prior to this interview, you had a bunch of jobs.

I want to go back even further. want to talk about you as a teen, right? I think the teen years are so incredible when it comes to molding and forming us as people, especially those of us that become leaders, right?

There's a lot that happens in our teen years that position us down that road. So if I were to ask you, Sean, as a 13-year-old, what you wanted to be, aspire to, what response would I have gotten?

 

Sean Garner 

I have no idea. I had no vision for life. It was like, I'm just here living. My wife, we've been married for over 20 years.

Now we got married at 19. And so she's even seen me grow. And So much. But whenever I was a kid, I had no drive.

I had no ambition. The only thing I was this skinny skateboarding, acne up video game kid that that's all I cared about was, hey, I just got to I just got to finish my homework so I so I can play some video games.

I grew up very, very, like poor lower middle class family. And so I had no ambitions for entrepreneurship for even going to college.

It was literally just just get by.

 

Matt Zaun 

So you mentioned skateboarding, right? So I have a cousin who was a skateboarder, but it takes grit. He broke a ton of bones.

He had to focus on certain jumps and certain techniques again and again and again. So there was repetition. Now he's an incredible entrepreneur today, right?

And that helped form him. So though you might be saying that you didn't have the ambition, do you think, you know, getting up again and again, falling as it pertained to skateboarding kind of led you in a certain direction?

 

Sean Garner 

saying might might that that that No, I'll tell you what I actually did. So whenever I was in high school, I would say until I was in about the 10th grade, everything was the same.

It was very much Groundhog Day. I was just going through the motions, doing what it took, minimal amount of effort to pass a class.

That's all it took. So then whenever I was transitioning and going into my sophomore year, I was applied for something that's called like a tech school, like a VOTEC school.

The only reason I wanted to go there was because it got me out of high school, which I hated for half a day, and you'd go to this tech school.

And as I was there, I remember the first day of class, I met this guy. His name was Carl.

He was like full of energy. He was on stage speaking, and it was like part of like this student council thing.

And it was the first time that I actually looked up to a colleague at the time, like a fellow student of seeing like, wow, he's dramatically different.

He's got so much energy. Like how does he, how does he stand in front of this group and not get nervous?

And through him, I got connected with this student organization that they took me to this leadership camp. And I.

I when I went to that camp, I went with one of my good friends. And for some reason, I don't know why, but something came over me as I was driving to this leadership camp.

It was a couple hours away. I told myself, nobody here knows you. Be the complete opposite of what you are at school.

So at school where I was the quiet, shy, little dorky video game skateboarder kid, I intentionally made myself, because in my mind, I was like, I almost was doing it, I think, to be funny.

And so I was like, I'm going to be completely opposite. I'm going to be the first one to show up to these events.

I'm going to be loud. I'm going to be vocal. I'm going to share my opinion. And so because of that, I naturally got put in positions of leadership during this camp where I was like our team leader, and I was forced to go on stage and have to do like my first little mini public speech for the first time.

And that just kind of honestly snowballed over the next couple of years to where I then became that exact same guy to where I got part of the national student organization to where I was taking these classes on like extemporaneous speaking.

Doing these prepared speech competitions and everything, but it was because of that one little moment as I was driving, I remember, like I said, my buddy was like, nobody here even knows us.

And when he said that, that one thing clicked on me, and I was like, huh, well, what if they don't know us?

And so it was almost like a fresh restart to reinvent myself, which honestly led to a lot of, I would say, who I am now.

 

Matt Zaun

So you heard a guy named Carl. You went to a leadership camp. Around what age was this leadership camp?

 

Sean Garner 

It was sophomore year, so it had been like 15, 16 years old.

 

Matt Zaun 

Okay, so a couple years before you got married, right?

 

Sean Garner 

So that's 16. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got married at 19.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I find this fascinating because, so I can relate to this story in the sense that I'm an introvert myself, and in order for me to get to where I am, I've gamified embarrassment, okay?

So what I would do, you know, everyone hates feeling awkward and weird, and it was very difficult for me to do any kind of public speaking in any way, shape, or form.

The fact that I do it professionally today is... Still shocking to me, right? So I made a point, this is many, many years ago, where I was going to purposely embarrass myself once a week, okay?

So I kid you not, I had a whiteboard, and I said this, you know, I had little tickers on it, and every week I was going to do something that was going to embarrass myself.

Whatever that was, a lot of it was speaking engagements. I did a talk, it was an improv, not improv, I did do a bunch of improv comedy as well, but I did a stand-up comedy, and I just got up.

There was no comedy. I just got up and I talked. Like, I got booed, it was horrible, right? That was one of my reps of being embarrassed.

And what I learned was the more I got embarrassed, the less I was getting embarrassed, right? The more I put myself out there, the more reps I did, I got so used to it, that when I did do something in the business world, it became a cakewalk, right?

Me getting up and speaking in front of CEOs, it didn't feel that embarrassing anymore because of all the reps that I had.

It sounds somewhat similar that... No one knew who you were, so now you could be someone else. You can get up, you can speak, you can get out of your comfort zone, and you kind of created a different identity for yourself, and you got the reps in and really had an impression on you and had a change in you.

So you said around 15, 16 years old, and then did you run for student council?

 

Sean Garner 

Is that what I heard? Yeah, so then because of that, I was like, man, the next year, so the summer camp was before I started tech.

It was like a transitional summer thing, so hey, now they pitched it to us. It's like, get to know people before you start this tech school.

So then whenever I got back to the tech school, I now was known at that tech school as this guy.

And so whenever, it was kind of interesting because in high school, it was almost like a split personality. When I was in my regular high school, nobody knew anything about me, sat by myself at lunch type thing, really shy and quiet, but I was at the tech school.

I was loud, doing the morning announcements, welcoming. The new students on stage speaking, it was like completely different personalities.

And it wasn't until then I, when I went to college, like whenever I left high school, then it's like, okay, I like being this guy more.

Let's just be this guy all the time. And I think it's probably also just more of a confidence thing.

If I just realized like, you know, I like this guy better. And so we're going to stick with him.

 

Matt Zaun 

And I'm sure your world was different in the different venues of no one knows you versus people know you.

It actually goes back to the beginning of what you said on crafting a message, right? You had more messages going out in that situation where people knew you, you know, you're giving announcements.

So it is, it's interesting how that ties back to where you are today and your passion for marketing, passion for getting these messages out.

All right. So you're 16 years old. So take us through the next few years. You mentioned college.

 

Sean Garner 

So what did you study? Yeah. So what's funny is when I went to tech school, I went to study marketing because it was supposed to be the easiest blow off class.

So I didn't think. I I was going to use it, and I didn't use it for almost 15 years.

 

Matt Zaun 

But so I just took it just to have a blow-off class when I was there.

 

Sean Garner

met my wife. From the day I met my wife, our senior year of high school, she told me what she was going to do, and she is doing it.

She's like, I'm here studying pre-nursing. I'm going to go get my bachelor's of nursing. Then I'm going get my master's.

I'm going to become a nurse practitioner. I'm going to open up my own clinic. She's doing all of that.

Like from the day I met her, she knew what she's going to do. I was like, you asked me the question, like, what are you going to do at 13?

Like she asked me the same thing. I like, I don't know. So I've had tons of jobs. We ended up going to college together, and I actually studied youth ministry, and I thought I was going to be a youth pastor.

Did that for a couple of years, then went to go transition to a different church. They ended up not having the funding to pay for me, so I had to get like a quote-unquote real job and fell into the restaurant industry.

And the restaurant industry transformed into, I hated that, to food service and managing restaurants, transferred into, I went back to.

School became a firefighter paramedic. I was a firefighter for about five or six years. That got me into wanting to work out for the first time.

That got me into fitness, which led me into opening gyms, working as like an online fitness influencer, working for writer and fitness advisor for Men's Health Magazine, which led me to learning the online marketing stuff, which led me to start helping other businesses, which led me to talking to Matt about my story.

It all led to this conversation. My whole life has been leading to this moment.

 

Matt Zaun 

Talk to me about the gym, I guess, part, chapter, if you will, in your life, because a lot of people that I talk to that have been in the fitness world or might still be in the fitness world, I feel like their level of grit is much higher, right?

There's something about working out, committing to a schedule, whether it's running, lifting. Do you feel that that positioned you to help you in the leadership role that you have today?

 

Sean Garner 

A hundred percent. One, I would definitely say for most parts of the country here. Here in the U.S., most parts of the country, if you are a personal trainer or gym owner, that is a passion project because it is not a high income earning skill.

When I went to Miami, much different story. Like it's summer year round. We lived in Miami, Florida for about five years.

There, people are paying a lot of money because they value those things. But here in the Midwest, yeah, not so much.

But 100%, like those small disciplines, it actually started with the fire department. So I was not, like I told you, like I was the skinny, dorky video game kid.

Like I was that kid until all the way up until I became a firefighter. That was the first time where I actually started working on my own health and fitness.

I didn't play any sports or anything like that growing up. But the disciplines that I learned as a firefighter, that's what transitioned over into entrepreneurship and owning my own gyms.

Because that was my first business was I wanted to, I like fitness, so I wanted to open up a gym.

And so went and got certified and opened up a gym. I had no experience doing the thing I was starting a business in, but we just opened it.

And, and. Praise God it was blessed, but those disciplines that I learned as a firefighter, that transition to that, which was definitely a transition to what I do now.

My wife and kids, they laugh at me because I am extremely predictable. I'm going to wake up 4.35 a.m.

six days a week. I'm going to do the exact same thing, and the first couple hours of my day are mapped out.

And those little disciplines is what allowed me to be able to do how I do things now.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, so I want to talk about this more. I want to unpack a little bit of this. I'll give you a little bit about my story so you know where I'm coming from.

So my father was a fitness freak in every sense of the word. He was a double Ironman triathlete. So for anyone listening, if you want to go through one of the most grueling things in the world that you could possibly do, do a double Ironman.

So when I was growing up, very early on, I witnessed my father train nonstop, right, in early morning. That was his running time.

He'd wake up super early in the morning. He'd go running. Then he'd go to work. He'd come home. I remember coming home from school.

My father had a stationary bike, and he built a wooden box around the bike. And on the wooden box, there was a little table.

I would actually sit at the table. We'd play checkers together. I would eat there while he was training. And then on Saturday, that was a swimming day.

He would swim all day on Saturday. Sunday was church day. But all I saw this guy do was work and train.

And he didn't just tell me, Matt, you need to have a good work ethic. He showed it for me.

That's how I have the work ethic I do today. It was modeled for me. So my passion was wrestling.

I wrestled for 10 years. There's elements of wrestling that are grueling, right? You have to run a lot. There's a lot of training, a lot of stamina, a lot of lifting.

You're there by yourself on the mat. So there's an element of grit. And I'll never forget, there was this one moment that it was a couple years in.

And he said, you know why those muscle magazines that basically say the same thing, you know why they keep selling?

Because they make it interesting, Matt. And his whole point about this is like, lifting can be pretty boring. can be pretty daunting, right?

Running can be pretty boring, pretty daunting. But you have to figure out a way to make it interesting. In the very beginning, you rattled off all these different industries that you work with.

You mentioned plumbers and you met all these different industries, right? And a lot of those industries, we've heard a lot about them.

Like we know what a plumber is. We know what a car sales rep is. With all of these different industries, like they could be pretty boring.

But we need to repackage it. In a way that does speak to our clients, that does speak and focus on their problem, on their pain.

And it's just really interesting that the more we think about it, we have to focus on this, right? Because there are a lot of industries, are a lot of people listening to this episode where they're thinking, because I've heard this time and time again, Matt, I'm not in a industry.

Why would anyone care about what I do, right? Well, they should care because you're going to repackage it in a way that speaks to them, right?

So I want you to talk a little bit about that. If anyone is in an industry that they feel is everyone knows about it, it's a dime a dozen, if you will, right?

People know. What is your response to tweaking it, making it interesting, bringing that flash out, unpacking an element of it so that it is something, it comes across as something new or interesting to people?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah, great question, and it's going to be a boring answer. I love it, that's good.

 

Matt Zaun 

it, I I I love you.

 

Sean Garner 

It does come back to the problem. So whenever we're working with clients and we're using those different talking points, what we want to help people do is craft something that's called a one-liner statement.

And that follows a framework and a formula of, again, problem, shocker. Then the next thing is product and then result.

So we put those three things together to create what we call a one-liner statement because too often whenever people are asked what they do, they default to a job title and a service.

And whenever you do that, it does instantly lump you in to every single other person that has that job title.

So if somebody says, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm a business coach. I'm an accountant. I'm a personal trainer or I'm a physician.

Whenever you have that said to you, everyone listening to this instantly just had a person, a thought, a quote-unquote stereotype pop into their mind.

So if you are trying to constantly attach yourself to a job title, you are now Lowering yourself to every single person in that industry.

A, what I would say better approach would be is to follow a story formula to connect with people with the problem that they're dealing with so you don't sound like everybody else.

So because I'm on here, I can talk about myself. If I can just say, if somebody says, what do you do?

And I'll be honest, it's easy to default to this. What do you do? Oh, I own a marketing agency.

Now, instantly, anybody that has had a bad experience with a marketing agency, oh, yeah, I've hired people like you before.

Oh, I've tried things like that before. But instead, if I follow that problem, product result formula, then, and somebody says, what do you do?

I could say something like this. Well, Matt, you know how most small business owners are so busy doing the day-to-day that they're frustrated that their business isn't growing and they're not getting consistent leads?

Like, yeah, yeah, cool. Well, okay, well, I own Sean Garner Consulting, and what we do is we utilize storytelling marketing to

Help business owners like that build, fill, and optimize the sales funnel so they can grow their business and get more leads.

That instantly now I'm like, okay, that sounds way different than the last marketing agency I worked with. It sounds like there's a system.

It sounds like they've got a focused solution of a problem that they're working on. And so, I mean, this is even more powerful with the boring industries because everybody's going to say, I'm a plumber, I'm an accountant.

Another popular example is like, imagine an at-home chef. You're at a dinner cocktail party and somebody says, what do you do?

And there's two people there and they're both at-home chefs. And one of them says, oh, I'm an at-home chef.

Oh, that's cool. Somebody might ask them a couple of questions like, who have you cooked for? What's your favorite recipes?

What are your favorite restaurants? And that's going to instantly fall flat because they're an at-home chef. But the next person gets asked and they say, what do you do?

They say, well, you know how most families are so busy that they don't even sit around the dining room table and talk anymore.

And when they do, it's typically nothing healthy. Well, I'm an at-home chef and what I do is I prepare healthy.

Nutritious Mills, so you can spend more time together connecting around the dinner table. That instantly, you had the two exact same industries, but one is going to get a whole lot more business than the other because they follow that formula of talking about the problem they solve instead of the services that they provide.

Because problems is what make people buy. Services is just you talking about yourself.

 

Matt Zaun 

And the first one, people are going to say, oh, interesting. The second one, there might be follow-up questions.

 

Sean Garner 

It's going to be, tell me more.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Love it. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for this conversation.

There's a lot of different nuggets. There's three things in particular I'm going to take away from our conversation. The first thing that you had mentioned to me that really stuck with me, the more clearly you can identify or articulate your client's problem, the more they believe you have the solution.

That is so important to focus in on the intentionality behind the messages we're sharing. Does it actually connect with?

The second talks about problems, but the second thing I thought was interesting is you'd mentioned leaders that they talk about problems their prospects have, but they can't solve them, right?

That this could be a waste of time. Now, you mentioned if someone's trying to build a personal brand, it's different than them trying to be in alignment with business.

I think that's so important because people just crank out messages left and right. Is it actually unified and in alignment to the messages that they're trying to share?

And then the third piece is what you had just mentioned regarding that chef. You said, focus on a one-liner statement.

You said, often when people lead with the job title, it lowers yourself to everyone else. And you gave us the example of, I'm an at-home chef.

First, you know how most families are busy, but they can't sit. I'm not going to do it justice, but how most families are busy and they can't sit down together to have a healthy meal, right?

The second response, more than likely, there's going to be follow-up questions. It could potentially lead to more business. So I appreciate all of that.

Sean, if people want to get more information on you, they want to reach out to you for your services, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Sean Garner 

Yeah, the best place specifically also for your audience would be our website, seangarner.co slash SWT. So stories with traction, that's the key there.

So seangarner.co slash SWT. And on that specific page, based upon what we were talking about today, I think that I want to share something that we leverage a lot.

It's called the Marketing Domination Framework. And so what that is, is a complete checklist of all the things that you need to have in your marketing.

Because we talked a lot about the messaging, which is awesome, because that is the foundation of all of your marketing, is making sure that you nail this brand message.

But then once you have that, what else you need to do to make sure that you've got all your marketing and everything in place?

We've got the Marketing Domination Checklist, so they can go to the website there and check it out.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I'll include that in the show notes. People could just click and go from there. Thanks again, Sean. Really appreciate your time today.

 

Sean Garner 

Thanks so much.