Zachary Sexton: Business Technology Coach | The Business Blast Podcast #166

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Zachary Sexton with us. He is a business technology coach and he helps small business owners put systems in their business that save them time. So welcome to the show, Zachary.

Hey, thank you so much for having me on.

Of course, thanks for joining us. We'll dive in. The first question I have for you is what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

This was a hard one for me. I was thinking about this, and then my soon-to-be-in-41-days wife gave me a call, and I asked her, what do you think a good answer to this is? And she gave me one. It's not the most fun story to tell, but it is, it is a good story to tell. About 5 years ago, when we were starting starting to date. This is my girlfriend at the time, now soon-to-be wife, Nikita. She showed up to my place and she was looking really cute. And I said as much. I was like, "Oh, hey Nikita, you're looking really nice right there." And then I got back to what I was doing. I was working on the computer, banging away, doing some online business type stuff. And she kept looking at me and I just looked back. I was like, What's going on, Nikita? And I had planned a date, just a whole full date. I said I was going to take her out and we were going to go to a restaurant and then we're going to a baseball game. And I completely forgotten about it. And I always had what I called a leaky brain. I would just forget appointments. I would forget things that I promised people. I'd forget complete things that happened to me. And that was a moment where it really hit home. It's like, I I can't keep doing this because I just disappointed this girl that I was really into. And I later found out she almost broke up with me over, over that. So the underlying message— and this is something I made a turn pretty quickly after that— was write things down. And started using a calendar, started showing up for appointments, started being a lot more reliable for people in my life, but also people in, in business and people and friends, and becoming that reliable person was, was really important to me. And it doesn't have to be all that complicated. Just open up your iPhone, put a reminder in there. And, and if you're one of those forgetful people, I think that's, that's something that you could do that's super simple that can make a big impact on your life.

And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Oh, okay. So after, after write stuff down, the second thing that I typically talk about is, is using systems over motivation. So a lot of times you can get really motivated if you want to make some sort of change, maybe in your health, you go to the gym 5 times that week, or in your, in your business, you're like, okay, I'm gonna go to all the networking events, or I'm gonna get to inbox zero, or whatever it happens to be. But what happens is motivation can wear out. Either you get a bad night's sleep, you get distracted by another idea that you think is, is the bee's knees that you want to go after. So if you can create some systems in your life, so either a system for personal productivity can be a habit with a sort of trigger routine reward mechanism behind it, or a system, we were just talking before we hit record, in your business, a process, a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, this is how you do this thing, or even an automation, which I know you're trying to get into Zapier as well. Having something, having some sort of system that has the work or the thing that you want to get done consistently done is a much stronger way of going about life than trying to rely on motivation alone.

And what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?

Yeah, if it's not write the you-know-what down, I don't know if you can cuss on this podcast, or systems over motivation. One that I really like is giver's gain. I feel like people who give first before they ask tend to be the ones that have the most success. We were again talking before the podcast how this, this podcast alone, you've been able to meet people and have positive interactions with them, and it's just led to more and more business. So if you can have more of a giver's mindset, try to help people out before you ask for them. And that's actually a marketing strategy that I use as I go into different groups, and I give people different advice on how they can systematize their business or how they can save time with the tool or an automation. And that often leads to them just checking out my website and seeing the services that I offer and ended up working with me down the line. So givers gain is a good one.

And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

All right, so I went back to my Instagram for this one because this has quotes and advice. And this one is from a guy named Germany Kent, which maybe I misspelled that because Germany is a weird first name, but I liked what he said, which is Advice to my younger self: start where you are with what you have. Try not to hurt people. Take more chances. If you fail, keep trying. It seemed like something that I wanted to steal.

In your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

Oh, man. Relationships. Just spending time with people that you love and that love you. That's probably what it's all about.

Yes. And what's the best book that you've read and what's the number one thing you learned from that?

Oh man, there's so many books have been really influential in my life. And I think getting a good book, getting a good theory, getting, getting something that's going to help you out has made a big impact. But the book that I read after my girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, almost broke up with me is called Getting Things Done by David Allen. And the process is completely just get everything out of your head, write it down in some lists, look at those lists on a regular basis, decide the most important tasks and the next action, and then just go ahead and do that. So Getting Things Done by David Allen. If you struggle at all with productivity, it's kind of an intense system to follow, but it can change your life.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

All right, so this one's a mouthful, uh, but it's kind of goes to the overall theme of what we've been talking about the whole time. And it's by this economist named Dan Ariely. He's a Duke professor, which is kind of rough. Nikita is from UNC, so you know that people— some people might know that rivalry. But he's a really smart guy, psychologist, behavioral economist. And he has this quote that says, when it comes to building the physical world, we seem to understand our limitations. We build things like roads and bridges to help us do things that we can't perfectly do on our own. But when it comes to the mental world, we somehow forget the idea that we are limited, that we are fallible.

Okay, and then so why, and why is that your favorite quote?

Oh, you know, it just, it kind of encapsulates my overall philosophy of writing things down and creating systems. And I see so many people, and a lot of people that I work with a lot of people that I have to interact with, either vendors or, or friends, rely so much on holding things in their head. And it's just, it's, it's so much more stressful to try to remember all the things that you have to do throughout the week, or all the things that you want to do for the year or for the coming season, if you just took a little bit of time and got it out of your head and put it into some, into a place where you know you're going to look. So if it's an appointment, putting it in the calendar and writing something in the description to remind you about what you want to get to. And if it's a task that you want to get done, or maybe it's something you want to assign to somebody else, rather than just telling them or messaging them over Slack, putting it into a task manager or project manager where that's where the work is going to be done. Or if it's a process, I mean, the idea of marketing books, there's a number of things that you do over and over and over again. Getting that out of your head so other people can do that work for you so you have more time to leverage yourself to do fun things like yak with strangers on the internet and record it and share it with more strangers on the internet.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?

Well, my home base is my name, ZacharySexton.com, but we're— again, we did a lot of talking before this call. I've got a free course. Where people, if they're service professionals, coaches, consultants, freelancers, and they want to spend less time trying to book new clients, if you go to automateyourbooking.com, I show you 5 of my favorite tools and how to use them on that course. So automateyourbooking.com. I think you're going to sign up because we talked about how you needed to sign up.

And I'll just let everybody know, I actually already did sign up before I even hit record.

Oh man, well then my Zapier automation should have sent me an email letting me know that, so it'll be in my inbox. Inbox waiting for me if you really did or not.

I really did. And this, so this is actually really cool. So this has come completely full circle and I really appreciate you coming on again, man. It was awesome.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. The podcast you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app and completely free from anchor.fm/podcast. That's anchor.fm/podcast.