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And of the innovation. If you're not, you really should bring them up right after we thank our. But why don't you yet? Do you think you don't have the time? You don't want to look stupid or. Or you're ready to go right now, but you just need to be pointed in the right direction. I get it. I was thinking the same thing before I wrote my first one too. Get your free copy of my new book on book publishing@mariosfreebook.com and get your questions answered today. Once again, that's mariosfreebook.com you know you. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Shawn Garner. How you feeling, Sean?

I'm awesome, Mario. Thank you so much for the opportunity, sir. It's great to connect you and excited to dive into stuff with your audience today.

I am too. Because so many businesses are out there. I think everyone starts a business, they want to help more people, they want to grow, they want to do all these things and then we get stuck. It reminds me of the QuickBooks commercial. It's a great one and it's like annoying when the phone rings. Even worse when it doesn't. So how do you help make the phone ring for people?

Yeah, great question. So what we do is we help small business owners grow and dominate by creating a clear brand message using the story brand framework, building a sales funnel that takes people from knowing, not know who they are, the super fan customers for life. And we continually help them optimize it. So that way it's not just about doing it once, but it's making sure that it keeps rolling out and it keeps working. Like you said earlier in the intro here, as these new changes, as the new things that the iei, SEO, whatever's coming out, I mean, we always want to make sure that they're optimized and ready to go.

So this is near and dear to my heart because I love talking to people about this also. And we talk tell all of our authors too. Like you need to be marketing your books because you know, it's just like any product or service, you can have the best steak, but if no one's buying it, how do they know? So I'm going to do my darndest to not assume everyone knows what we're talking about because I have no doubt you and I can go back and forth and there's someone listening, gonna go, well, what's a funnel like if someone doesn't know what a funnel is and also the interpretation of it, Are we talking an lp? Are we talking a Squeeze page, you know, are we talking a full full on campaign? Are we talking Facebook ads? So why don't we just take it back and say how would you define a sales funnel and why does a business need it whether they think they do or not?

I love the question because it is so. I was in the fitness industry for a really long time and everybody would call the same exercise something different based upon like who is coaching. And the same exact thing unfortunately happens with marketing, specifically with sales funnels. So you might say sales funnels and people think it's a software platform like a click funnels or a high level or it's a style of landing page or something like that. But whenever we at Sean Garner Consulting use the term sales funnel, it's none of that. It's not a piece of tech, it's not a style of landing page. It is a relationship building process of taking somebody from not knowing who you are to becoming a super fan, customer for life. And knoweth in that process there's several different key elements and a website is one of them. But a sales funnel is not just a website, a landing page or a tool. It is a relationship building process. And every small business needs one. Because guess what? You've got customers that are out there that would love to work with you, but they have no idea that you exist. And if they do know that you exist and they come through your marketing pipeline or your world and discover who you are, how are you taking them through that relationship journey process? That's why everybody needs a sales funnel.

I love this. I love the definition and I want to break it down because that's not 100% what I thought you were going to say. You really don't even care about the tech it sounds like, even though I'm sure we need it. But walk us through, like how are most people's sales funnels and what could they do to improve it?

Yeah. So at our agency, Shawn Garner Consulting, we have what we call the marketing domination framework. And it is what we use. It is the system that that we use to help local service business owners grow their business and dominate their industry. And it all revolves around the concept of a sales funnel. So the first phase is you have to build a sales funnel. The second part is then you have to fill that sales funnel. Right? Cause my cheesy dad joke is fill the dreams. Great movie. Horrible marketing strategy. Just cause you build it doesn't mean they will come. And then step three is then we optimize your sales funnel. So whenever we talk about Building a sales funnel, it is not that style of landing page or the software. It's that relationship building journey. So for us, when we are building sales funnels for clients, it has seven different key elements with it. So the very first thing that we build for them that's inside of all of our sales funnel is your messaging. For us, it all starts with the words that you use. And so I'm a certified story brand guiding coach. And so what we use with that is we use these seven key elements that follows the arc of the hero's journey with this storytelling framework. So we have this key talking points that we need in our messaging. So that way we make sure that every time we talk about it, it's clear, it's consistent, it positions us as the guide and our customers as the hero. People often get confused about that. We're not telling your story because guess what? Nobody cares about your story. They care about them and themselves. They just want to look for a guide to help them solve their problem. So first thing that we do is we create that clear brand message. The second thing that we do is we then build a website. And so we have to then take those words because if we don't have those words set up, how are we going to know what to put on the website? Right. It's not going to sound good, it's not going to look good. And so we want to make sure that we're using that clear brand message and we're putting on a website. And we want to make sure our website is structured out in a way that is converting those customers, that it's not just talking about how awesome you think that you are. It's not the Ron Burger, you know, hey, come see how good I look. Right? It's like it's positioning you as the guide. Your customer is the hero. And so that way it is putting you in a better position to sell.

You're telling me the plugins are the most important?

Yeah, yeah. They're really not. Like, we're like, people ask us all, what, what, what platform do I need to be building my website on? Like, I don't care. Like, we have certain things internally we like to use, but there's not a certain tool, plugin software that is going to make you money. If so, guess what? The world's largest companies would be doing it. That's why you'll see every company using a different platform, a different website builder, a different CRM. The tool doesn't matter. Like, obviously the tool is going to tell you that it matters because they're trying to sell you more subscriptions to the tools. But it doesn't matter. All that matters is whenever we help clients select tools, we have ones that we use internally, but whenever you're going to pick one, it's only as good as your ability to execute on it. So it doesn't matter what feature.

We'll be asking about the tech later.

But yeah, let's get into it doesn't.

Matter because I think so many people rely on it or it's a crutch or whatever. And you know, one that I'm. I enjoyed early on leadpages. Yeah, it was a great at the time, fantastic. It still is, but there's others and we can get into that later. But what's the third point?

Yeah, so that the next thing that we need with our, with our sales funnel is our lead generator. So this is a lot of times you'll see this like people want to call it like a PDF, a guide, a quiz. We want something because guess what, everybody that comes to our website is not going to be ready to buy your thing. Schedule a call, book their assessment, whatever the thing is that you're trying to do. So we need something that's an exchange of value to capture their information because guess what, we're doing all this work to drive the traffic later. We don't want them just to Only we don't want to only we don't want to miss out on opportunities for people that would rather would do business with us in the future. So got a brand message. We got our website. We, we got our lead generator. Quick side note of what we what.

Do you think of a book as a lead gen. Lead magnet.

Oh, if it, if it does these three things, I think that it's awesome. If it has a clear and catchy title, if it gives your customer a quick win or the first step of the process and it positions you as a guide or an expert in what you do. I think that it's awesome that that's my checkbox for what makes a good lead generator. It does those three things is at.

The end just because you have something on the landing page. It could be a good lead, John, or it couldn't. It's not just, oh, it's an audiobook, it's a book, it's an ebook, it's a checklist, it's a. It has to resonate with the. Your prospect.

Yeah. People will mess this up because like I, I had a legion on my website and it didn't work. What makes you think that it didn't work because like all the information's not that good. Well guess what, nobody even read the information because they never downloaded the thing or bought the thing. And so what may what you need to do is check the box of making sure that you're doing those things. Does it have a clear and catchy title? Is it something people would even want? Because people won't even get an opportunity to see what's inside of the thing unless it's got a clear and catchy title and it's even easy to get the thing. The other mistake I see people with this kind of stuff is like hey, here's this free thing. But here's 50 questions that I want you to answer first. I want your blood type, your Social Security number, like make it simple to give the person the thing because the secret sauce is not in the thing, it's in the next part. Step four, the follow up of the thing. Like what are we gonna do once we have that information? This is where I think a lot of business owners mess this up. And because like you said we'll talk about tech and stuff, people over rely on automations and so they're like well you know, but you can finally downloaded my Legion now and then you can.

Use a zapier connection and hook it.

Up and yet yeah, over automate everything. Yeah you over automate everything. And then guess what? When something breaks or it's not working, you have no idea why it doesn't work. Automate. How I always describe automations to my clients is automations. Think about the term sales funnel, right? We're building this bucket that we can fill in leads and potential customers and stuff in here. We want to make sure that there's no holes in the bucket. Your automation is just going to be a net below the bucket. So if somebody accidentally falls out, we've got a backup plan to capture them. For small business owners like I'm assuming, no offense, this is not huge enterprise clients that we're talking to right now. You're not doing a hundred million plus dollars a year on your business right now where you have like a huge sales team and all of these things inside of your business. You're probably a local, local business owner or small business owner. So guess what, you can move quick. You're not a huge enterprise business that has shareholders and all of these things that you have to be accountable for to where you only can do automations. You can guess what the secret to really good marketing is. Being human. And so when somebody comes in and enters your sales pipeline. You don't have to sit back and hope the automation works. That's a backup plan in case the, in case you can't get to them. But if you really want to know the secret, especially marketing, in today's AI agent AI, answer the phone. Look, I love that stuff. We build it for our clients. But be a human that when the lead comes in, you call the lead, you send them a personalized text message. You're allowed to do that email. Yeah, I know that's crazy. Crazy idea that you be human and you actually talk to the people that you're. You're stressing out and I don't have any leads. And one finally comes in and you just sit back like, okay, I hope the automation works. I hope they open up all the email sequence. Like be a human, call the lead and follow up with them, thank them for downloading the thing and make that human connection stand out.

Or you get 73 leads. The automation wasn't working. You thought it was. And it's two weeks later they're trying to get a hold of you, you're wondering where they went. And it came down to like some cloudflare issue on, on the tool you're using.

Yeah.

Or.

Or you did this is if we want to get tech nerdy stuff for a second. Or you forgot to put a card on file for a zapier account so it stopped firing because you passed all your free automations for the month or whatever. Like little things like that happen. So, so yeah, so that's the other thing is just over reliance on automation.

And then when you do call them or text them or whatever. I like video email. Send an email with a video. Hey, how's it going Sean, good to see you. Loved having you on the show. This and that. And it's like, holy smokes. One how do you do that? Not rocket science. There's a lot of systems. But that personal connection, I think it really pays off. I've had people say with our software, even years ago, I developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically. Like 12 years ago. And they were like, I've never had a tech company call, you know, because tech is the one thing, you can swipe the card, sign up, you don't know who's doing anything. It's not service based.

I have made a lot of money.

It's like be contrarian and do something that's not in your industry.

Yeah, I've made a lot of money off of loom videos because somebody will download A lead generator I will look at. I'll see. Like for me, obviously we're a marketing agency so if somebody comes in with an email address that's like first name@businessurl.com well I'm going to instantly grab a URL, I'm going to run a quick site audit and everything on it. And if I see there's a good opportunity, I'm going to send them an email with a loom video. Hey Mario, Sean here. I just saw you downloaded the, you know, the website wireframe checklist. Wanted to just let you know I did a quick SEO audit on your website. Looks like he got some good things going on, but there's a ton of blind spots and opportunities. Love the opportunity to jump on a call, show you exactly what we found. Here's the report that we sent over. If it makes sense, click this link down below and let's schedule a call and see how we can help. That 60 second loom video makes so much money because nobody does that people are expecting you to go to your website and get some autoresponder. But whenever the owner of the company is sending personalized loom videos to all the leads and stuff that come out, that really is a way to help you stand out on the line.

You tell me that's more effective than sending thousands of random.

Yeah, buying scraping lists off LinkedIn and cold DMing automation everybody about their special new offer. Yeah.

Hey Sean, I see you're in marketing. We can help you get more leads. Have you ever considered like really? Did you even read my profile or whatever?

You can tell it's a template because like the, the, the different things are like bolded or in brackets. Hey, first name. We're really excited about the things that you're doing in business name.

I saw that you recently Authority effect interviews.

Yeah, yeah, just. Yeah. It's crazy the lack of effort that people put into things. Like they're, they, we, we like people will say like we get dumber with technology. Like people just get lazy and they think that technology is super smart and perfect and they over rely on it and they don't even think about eh, maybe we should look at this automation or template that we're sitting out a.

Few hundred of those people in the same room all doing the same thing congratulating each they're giving awards saying well we reached 10,000 people this week we reached 20,000. Oh my gosh, you're great. How many converted though exactly?

Yeah, there's a big difference between sales and revenue. Or I'm sorry, sales and profit in a business because I know lots of businesses that spend a ton of money on ads and they're barely scraping by because they're having to, they're churning customers like crazy and they just, just selling the next lead.

So what would you say? So next to the loom videos, what is another conversion? Great with conversions.

I mean honestly it's just the human call. So whenever, whenever we have on our lead generators what we will do is I always want to. Yeah, I want a name, email, phone number. Now this is going to be different for every single industry, right? So me being in the, the marketing agency world, I want those things and I, I pre qualify. So like I told you like if I've got somebody that, that comes in with the lead generator and I have a dork out about automations here for a little bit, I have an automation that if the email address is not one of the common ones like you know, Yahoo, Gmail, Bing and it's like icloud and it's an actual, I can tell it's a business name that sends me a special notification because that to me would at least be a more warmer lead than just a Gmail. Somebody that's just scraping the Internet looking for lead generators and stuff. So I want to, if somebody is on their business account, that to me is a big red, like a big green flag of like it's go time. And so those people typically will get a quick audit. I'll see what they're doing, see if there'd be a good fit for the type of clients that we're looking for. And then that's when I do the loom video and then I'll follow up with like a text message and then phone call as well. Like being human like doing the things.

Are you using the text through a system or is it literally your cell phone?

Yeah, used to be my cell phone and then as the business grew and now dozens of clients have my personal cell phone is not super awesome. So now what we use is we do use. So with the main software that we use for our CRM is go high level. We white label it as an agency and call it story growth funnel. So we do it all through the high level platform.

Okay, so you're sending the loom video, you attach it to the texting thing that they're piggybacking off of and you're sending it to that person that way.

Yeah, I'm sending it through both. So like let's do a real life example. Let's say you come to my website and you download the lead generator. Well, I'm going to your website based on the URL that's on your website and I'm looking at your first name and I'm thinking, oh well this is the guy that actually owns the company. So we're all right. We're already talking to the decision maker. You know, if it's a big medical practice or something like that, a lot of times like the front desk is reaching out. So I typically would go on like I do some hunting here. I'll look on the about page of the website, see if I can see like a meet your team and see exactly who I'm talking to and what level of person I'm talking to and then I will personalize it, use their name, any information that I can scrape. Like this sounds like it takes a lot of work but I do all of this stuff and like less than two minutes, like you can click through and do it quickly. And then so then after I do that, I open up loom, make a quick loom video, send it over into the email that they just sent over to. And that's what I like about the high level system is it's all one conversation dashboard. So I sent him an email. Then right there in the same exact thread I sent him a quick text. I just said, hey John here, thanks for downloading XYZ Guide. Just sent this over to you in an email, but I wanted to drop it here instead. Love to connect if it makes sense. Just boom, boom, boom, double click, make it happen.

Love it. So the lead gens, it sounds like you have a couple of them. You said the wireframe and then SEO and then I think I heard a third one at least.

Yeah, yeah, we have a lot. So we still haven't gotten all the way through what makes a sales funnel, but we do have. So one of the things that we do is with us internally is we typically will roll out or test a new lead generator about once a quarter because we are on I'm on podcast quite often. We have our own podcast that we do, the Marketing Domination podcast. And so we're always able to get lots of data because we're always promoting different lead generators and everything. So yeah, we personally have tons of different things that we do and we try to tie them into products that we're selling on the back end. So for example, we sell. We. One of the lead generators is what we call the marketing domination checklist. Just a few. It's just the things that you need in Your marketing to make sure you succeed online, that is selling. What we have is the marketing domination framework which is just an all in one packaging. Get all your marketing done. We've got a website wireframe and the whole goal for that is we are trying to sell a website development. So they're downloading this website wireframe how to set up your website for that we're sending website development. We've got a Google review scripts and so that is teaching you. We literally give you copy and paste messaging that we use inside of our automations to get you more Google reviews which for local service businesses who we work with, that's huge. That lead generator, the goal for that is to try and sell local SEO services. So we've got multiple of these that we are selling or that we're giving out all the time because. But we don't just come up with random lead generators. We test it. We test the title. We change the title before we change the thing. That's. That should be a big key is, is don't create another lead generator because it didn't work. Try just changing the title first. Yeah, change the title because people don't know. And then after you change the title and you get it humming and you know that it's working well. We also always tie it to a specific product so it's not just doing something because oh, I think my audience that I work with would like something like this. We want to make sure that we're tying it to a specific thing that we're trying to sell.

Smart. It sounds like it's going well for you too.

It's not, not working. So that's part of what we do is like we always tell our clients is you should not make any decisions for your business based. This sounds bad and heartless but don't make any decisions based upon personal preference or emotion. In today's world there are so many data points, especially in the digital marketing thing. Yeah, it's, it's data. It's like some of the lead generators that we have that are our most popular. I personally don't think that they're that good. But guess what, we're not going to change it because it's still working and so don't. Like I was in the fitness industry for a long time and whenever you are writing like training programs and stuff for clients, you get bored of the program. So like you just start changing the workout just because. And like the clients like why are we changing it? Like I was seeing good results. It's like I don't know. That's a good point. I guess I was just bored of it. And so, like, the same thing happens with business owners and entrepreneurs and stuff. They change things just because they get bored or they think we need to do the latest and greatest. Well, before you just start going and changing stuff, do you have some baseline data that we can compare it to? Because maybe what you're doing is actually working. And so we don't want to just go out there and start randomly changing stuff and self sabotage your business. Get some data points to know what's working and make the decisions based upon that.

I was just talking, having a very similar conversation in person at the. We did a double book launch last week in Vegas at the Fontainebleau. And it was like, you might spend years going from A to B, and then you think once you get to B, you got to change everything to do that. It's like, this is what got you there. You don't need any of this new stuff. I've actually done trainings where I've thrown paper and pencil, paper and pens at people on the table. I'm like, write down the top 10 people you haven't called this week because you think you need the next thing. And then I made them pick up the phone, actually call them, and then I put them all in the corner and recorded videos. Not the loom one, but it was something else. And it was just like, okay, this is not rocket science. You don't need any of this stuff. It helps when you're dealing with volume and, you know, tracking and all that. But the end of the day, I love that you're talking about the relationship. So let's continue on the sales funnel, because I know there's someone going, okay, I want to hear the rest of it so I can implement it.

Cool. Mario. Yeah, I got to finish the rest of this thing, but I also didn't.

Want to be going through that so quickly that it's like, well, what about this? Each one of these we can drill down.

Oh, my gosh. Yes. There's. There's a ton. We could. I could talk about each one of these topics for an hour. Um, so. So we got our messaging, we got our website. Um. Oh, I actually skipped one. So we've got our messaging, which is our foundation. The second one that we actually have is what we call our one liner statement that is just like what. What you'd call your. Your elevator pitch. Right. So how do you take these messaging sound bites and put them into a quick, easy thing to where you can simply answer the question, what do you do? And it follows a very simple formula. Problem, product, result. So whenever you want to hook somebody and get them to pay attention, you start talking about the problem. So if somebody comes to me and they're like, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm a marketing agency. Well, instantly everybody in their mind has a preconceived idea of what that thing means. And unfortunately in my industry it's becoming like the used car salesman of like the digital world of like, oh, I've worked with those guys before. So we don't want to use that. When we're talking about what it is that we do. We want to talk about the problem. Yeah, most local business owners are really good at what they do, but they're unable to find the right clients just because their competitors have better marketing than them. Oh yeah. My name is Sean and I'm Sean Garner Consulting. And we help small local business owners create clear brand message, build a sales funnel. Their business can grow and they can dominate their industry. That sounds a lot cooler and like, ah, tell me more than just I'm a marketing agency. Because that's the whole goal of that is you're not trying to sales pitch somebody with this phrase. You're just trying to pique their curiosity because you just want them to do one of two things. Ah, tell me more or oh, that's really interesting. I know somebody that could use your help. That's the whole goal of this. One liner statement. So we got our brand messaging, we got our one liner statement, we got our website, we've got our lead generator. And then the fifth thing that we do is guess what, we talked about it already. But that follow up sequence, that can be the text, that is automated. But the email sequence and the text messaging sequence that we're putting people through to again, not do the work for us. We're not, they're not trying to cop out here, but it's to catch anything that might fall through our regular process. It's, it's a backup plan with those automated emails and everything that we do. The sixth thing that we do is then after we have this stuff, guess what, we need to talk, talk to our people on a regular basis. But this is, we just don't want to have the automated sales email. Like these are just a bunch of bad leads. I sent them through the sequence and they didn't buy like, no, we want to continually add value because this is a sales funnel, remember, is a relationship building process. So it's not just like, hey, buy my thing, buy my thing, buy my thing. And then I'm never going to talk to you again. It's you want to put them into that sales funnel because. Yes. Or that sales sequence because they are a hot lead if they've gone through that. They were looking for the solution to the problem that you solve. They didn't quite book a call with you. They were interested, but yeah, piqued their curiosity. But they weren't ready to book the call. They buy the thing, whatever it is. So they did download your guide, take your quiz, opt in, whatever your thing is, we follow back up with them. And then after that they still didn't buy. So guess what? We don't want to just blow those people off. We want to continue to nurture their relationships. We do what we call a nurture email. So then what we want to do is we want to create emails that position you as the guide and expert for them, that continually add value. These are not sales emails. These are not sales text messages. These are ones where they go, man, I want to open these emails every single week because there's such good information in here. Because guess what? They might not have been ready to buy right then and there. We want to always be showing up wherever they're looking, SMS emails and stuff. So whenever they are ready to buy, they think of us.

How long do you do the nurture sequence for?

Forever. Tell you cry buyer. Like if you remember that the Chet Holmes ultimate sales machine, I think it was him. He said, you do it till they cry, buy or die like they are. Once they're in there, they're in my world now. The nurture email sequence, that is just life. So I want to be sending out weekly emails to my entire list that solve those things and check those boxes, just giving away value and then positioning myself as the guide and the expert for them. So whenever they are ready to buy, they think of me. Then based upon the amount of value that you give, you do then have the opportunity to present a sales letter or a call, I should say a strong call to action email throughout that we can't be selling every single week or people are going to unsubscribe. But if we do have a really good amount of value that we've been kind of like stocking up and that equity that we've been building, then you get the right to ask that good sales. And so how often you get to ask for the sell is based upon the volume and the quality of the value that you've Been building I think Interesting.

Can you elaborate on that? Like is if you were to put it into a percentage, is it I think of jib jab jab, right hook, like kind of 75, 80%. Like don't be asking for the sale every two seconds. But if you go 20 emails without asking for one thing, that's probably a little weak. What's your medium?

Or I personally like it, the 8020 principle, you know, thousands of dollars worth of value. Or the flip side is, is maybe we're just giving out weekly tips and emails based upon the, the quantity that we do. Then after that I can get a permission to ask. So I like to think about I I'm going to give 80% and then the last that gives me permission to, to do one ask. So if you think about creating really, really good emails, if you're adding true value, true value, not chatgpt came up with some tips value, but true value because you're an expert on these things, once a week, every five to six weeks, you should be able to have a good strong sell.

Very cool. Yeah. I've heard some people say, well I only do seven days, 14, 21. Some said 36 days is the thing. Others say 90. And I'm like, I wonder what they're basing this off. You say just keep going with it. And so I've been on some list where after so, so long they're like, hey, you obviously aren't opening these or you've opened 78 of them but never bought anything. It's maybe not a good fit. So what, what's your, what's your reasoning for saying, you know what, I'm not gonna drop them off the list. Do you have some insight? Like, you know what, maybe they don't buy the first year, but some people do take a year and a half.

Two years solution for that. The third one is going to be a success story like portfolio share case study or something like that. Like portfolio share case study or something like that. The fourth one is going to be overcome an objection. So what's the most common objection you're getting? We're going to state that in these emails before they have a position, opportunity to even speak it. The fifth one is going to be a paradigm shift. Why is your way of doing things, your product and service a lot better are different. And the sixth email is the strong sales email. That's the sales sequence that they go whenever they download the lead generator. And if you want to like that's like the magician telling you how to do the magic trick, if you download any of the lead generators on our website, you're literally going to some. Some clients are selling, you know, really big consulting packages and stuff. Well, those, we can paste those out. I'm a couple of days apart and everything. We don't want to go so far out that people forget like, what was that thing that I just downloaded? Or these guys, again, like I. Typically for a sales sequence, I'm not going out further than three days just because by the time they get through the whole sequence, they're going to forget why they even downloaded that guy in the first place. So, so that's how I do the sales email sequence. Then when I'm getting good helpful tips and share the things that we're doing. So for those, I want it to go forever because again, it's, it's different from, for everybody. But if they have gotten on because of how we do marketing, we're not one day. And so I want to always be.

On top of mind.

Yeah. So like I'm not. I have refined my targeting. But here's a good lesson so you can die. We have some really clickbaity lead generators on our website that get lots of downloads, but not qualified. So one of the most popular ones that we have is called the 100 viral hooks. So it is 100 hooks that you, that you can use to start your social media content that has gotten us tons of emails, but very few of them have actually been qualified. And so that is where you do have to start to know and think about that kind of stuff for the type of businesses that we want to work with. I should say there's a lot of people that are downloading it, are they're younger or actually marketing agencies looking for viral hooks for their own clients and stuff that they're creating. And so it's not the type of customers that we want. But typically for the most part, if they're on our list, how we like to do marketing is they're good qualified leads. So I want to be contacting them on a regular basis because if they're not ready to buy, guess what? They can unsubscribe at any time. So if they haven't unsubscribed, they still want your stuff. Like I unsubscribe from stuff all the time. So I'm not, I'm not going to not talk about what it is we do and how we can help people. Because if they're on the list, they're on that list for a reason. Because we're not buying or scraping. And so I'm not going to manually remove people or stop talking to people just because they didn't buy. Like, that just might not be the right time for them. Maybe they're in a contract, like for us. Maybe they're in a contract with another agency. Maybe I wasn't talking to the right decision maker and eventually they were going to be at a meeting. Like, I actually get these emails from the Sean guy all the time. Maybe we should talk to him. Because I will say I've had. I have long sales cycles where people are like, yeah, I've been on your email list for a couple years and this thought is finally time to reach out.

Like I was going to say, because some of them might be 6 to 12, 18 months, depending. I'll say the qualifiers, depending on your positioning up front. If they don't know you from Adam, it's going to take longer. If your positioning is higher, it might still take six, eight, nine months. Because they're like, you seem legit. I'm. And I do this. I just want to watch you. I've even done it would get for people who apply to be on the show. They seem cool, they seem awesome. Let's watch them for a week or two. I train the team to go just pay attention to what they're doing. And it's like, good, good, good. Ooh, what the hell was that? Or good, good, good. Oh, you just got better.

Yeah.

You know, the time is like, not everything has to be overnight. Let it. Let it marinate a little bit, see what happens. It's like, oh, okay, that was a time bomb. Six months in. You know, that never happens in relationships or life with anyone, business or personal, ever. Sure.

Because how I think about. Especially the email inbox now, it's. So we work with obviously lots of like, plumbers, electricians, H vac guys and stuff like that. So they're always spending money on billboards and everything. People are driving by. Well, me showing up in somebody's inbox, that is like the digital billboard. They might just see my name and click delete every single week. But guess what, Mario, they're seeing Shawn Garner consulting. They haven't unsubscribed. And every single week, they're seeing Shawn Garner consulting. Oh, yeah, that's that marketing guy, Sean Garner consulting. So even if they're not opening the email, they're still click and delete. But they're seeing my brand name every single time. Just like the digital billboard or the highway billboard that they're driving By. So I'm. I'm cool with it.

Good perspective on it.

I mean, well, thank you.

I've never heard it that way. That's. I feel like I should fire off some emails now. Like, yeah, I've been seeing you, like, a lot of people talk about the social. Oh, you're all over the place. I've seen you on social. Did it. But, yeah, email. Even if you get it, oh, it's the. And truthfully, there's a few. I'm like, oh, it's them again. It's them again. And maybe one out of five or six, depending if I'm at the airport lounge or whatever. And I got a. Like, oh, what's this about now? Now I'm curious. What if. If. And what did I buy from the. You don't know them from Adam people. Yeah, there's a few that come into mind that I'm like, oh, they're sitting. I'm like, who was this again?

Yeah. So think about this, like what you just said, because I do agree, like, be everywhere, especially on the socials and everything. That's. That's the last part of the sales funnel is your social, your digital storefront, getting all your profiles built out, your Google business profile, all of those things to complete this whole sales funnel bucket. But. But when you post something on social, they don't get a notification. If you send them an email, ding. It's showing up at the top of their m. Ah, that's that Sean Connor can swipe. I might not open it, swipe, delete, whatever. But they're seeing that name every single time. I could post something and they might not see it. They could log into social media and still not even see it because the algorithm and everything. But when you send an email, like, if you've done it, if you've done your homework and everything's going good and it's not going to spam. Like, they're still seeing your name every single week in their inbox.

All good points. So I appreciate you taking us through that. Is there anything we need to recap or anything you'd like to add in that we didn't cover as far as the steps go?

Yeah. So what I would say is with this, don't, as you're going through it, go, well, I've done that. Or, okay, well, that sounds good. Code I use all the time is knowledge, without application is meaningless. It doesn't matter if you know these things. It's. Are you applying them?

You.

And the thing to know this is, are you Applying all of them. Because you might be like, well, yeah, I've got a. Most people may have just checked the box in the mind. Well, I have a website and a lead generator and automated email sequence. Like, I'm good. No, that was three of the seven things I just told you. It's only going to work and be successful at the level of complete implementation. So if you want to have that whole complete relationship building process, you just need all of it. I mean, it's, it is that a sales funnel is a relationship building process. So imagine been married for 20, almost 23 years. So imagine that. Thank you. Thank you. So imagine if like we talked about this, building a relationship and all I did was text and send flowers. Like, okay, like, are you talking? Are you calling? Are you checking in? Like, are you affectionate? Like, there's a lot of other stuff, steps in a relationship building process. So just because mentally with your business, you can check a couple of those boxes that we just said. Like, I try that stuff. It doesn't work. Only works if you execute it 100% and you do it consistently. Like I said for a long time. Correct. I was in the fitness industry for a long time and people would be like, I'm not seeing results. Well, tell me what you've been doing. Well, I did Pilates last week and now this week I'm really into running, but I've done weightlifting before and they're doing all of these things and they're just random. And it wasn't because those things don't work, but where they were not seeing the results is because they were never doing anything consistent long enough to see the actual results for it. Or maybe I'll tell you, yeah, I'll tell you. Everything works if you're consistent with it in the fitness industry. Like, if you want to, you can lose. I've seen people lose weight. Running, weightlifting, CrossFit, boot camp, Pilates, yoga. Like, everybody's lost weight and gotten in shape. If they were consistent with it and they saw the whole thing all the way through, like you said, the nutrition, their supplementation, their sleep, the recovery, all of the aspects were on point. That's what really gets the results. It's not, there's, there's not a secret hack. I'm sorry, if you were listening to this and you're like, what's the one thing that I need to be doing to finally grow the business? Like, it's not about the one thing. It's about being consistent in the little disciplines. But all of this stuff in a Product.

That would be a great hooky headline. The one secret you need to know to be successful in business, there is no one secret that you need. Yeah, we're running low on time, but I got a few more questions for you. Pick a color.

Everything looks yellow. So yellow.

Yellow is good. We'll give it. We'll give you a yellow question then. So the yellow question is where would you like to travel that you haven't been?

Oh, it might be political to some people, but Israel. I would love to. I'm a Christian and I would love to see like all the Holy land sites and everything like that. That's one place I've always wanted to go to. And then unfortunately, like with all the war and stuff that's going on and everything over there, it's not the most family friendly place unfortunately right now, but that's the one place I've always wanted to go to is you'll see, like all the Holy land sites.

Same great answer. We're going to thank our sponsor real quick and come back for the imperfect action round. So you want to write your book, but you're not sure where to start. Get your free copy of my new book on book publishing@mariosfreebook.com and get your questions answered along with the start you've been looking for today. Once again, that's mariosfreebook.com and we are back, but you're not sure where to start with perfect action round. Oh, and we are back with the imperfect action round. Sean, are you ready to take in perfect action?

Let's do it.

All right, I got three questions for you. Rapid fire answers. The first one is, what's the fastest path to the cash?

Being human.

Very quick. Second one, what's the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

They think that they're doing everything right, but like we said, they're not putting all the steps into place. And more specifically, on your website, you don't have a clear direct call to action for people to even give you money. You're sending people to their website and it says contact us. Nobody wants to contact you. They want to schedule a call, book an assessment. They want to get the problem solved.

I love that. Number three, what's the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Same answer is, number one, being a human. Don't think that just because you close that you got the kill, you close the sale, that the deal is done. It's just starting. It's just like within marriage, just because you get Married doesn't mean you stop dating. So whenever you close this deal and you get married, just like within marriage, that's whenever the real relationship work, everything starts. You did a lot of work to get them. You got to do even more to keep them. You got to keep that love fresh, mark.

And works better when it's the same person you keep dating.

So, yeah, good point there. Good point.

Just, just clarifying that for listeners. This has been great. What books would you recommend? As a publisher, I got to ask, what books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Yeah, so based on everything we talked about today, like, I'm a huge fan of Don Miller. That's the. The framework we use. But building the story Brand 2.0, if you haven't read it, that will give you the messaging framework overview that we talked about today. So you can start to make sure that you have that clear foundation to create a good, clear brand message. To invite your customers into the story positions you as the expert and the guide for them and helps them.

Excellent. Where would you like people to learn more, Sean?

And if this was good, if you guys liked any of this stuff at all, just go to our website, Shawn Garner co. It's S E A N G A R N E R C O SHAWN GARNER co. Tons of free resources and everything on there. Like we talked about today, we got the Marketing Domination podcast where you do weekly educational marketing content for local small business owners. Go check us out there.

Excellent. Well, appreciate your time and your wisdom. This was a lot of fun. I can't believe it's over. I looked at the clock. I'm like, it felt like it was five minutes. So thank you for everything you shared with us.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, sir. It's great to connect with you and you guys have an awesome day.

All right, Expert Authority World, have another great episode for you here today. I'll see you.