Help for Stressed-Out Authors

All Things Book Marketing Podcast

 

 

 

Help for Stressed-Out Authors:

How to De-Stress, Re-Energize, and Re-Balance Your Life

by Alan Zimmerman

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Smith Publicity, All Things Book Marketing podcast. The best tips, insights, and advice from the best in the publishing industry.

Dan Smith:
Hi, this is Dan Smith, and welcome to the All Things Book Marketing podcast. Today we’re thrilled to have Dr. Alan Zimmerman as our guest. Dr. Zimmerman is a former Smith Publicity client, and he’s going to discuss a topic that will surely resonate with authors, how to de-stress or reenergize and rebalance your life and work in a crazy, busy world. I’ll read the bio of Dr. Zimmerman. He has extensive accomplishments, so I’m going to try to highlight most of them.

Dan Smith:
At the age of seven, Dr. Zimmerman was selling greeting cards door to door. By age 14, he owned a small, international import business. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in speech and political science, a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota in communication and sociology, and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota in communication and psychology. By age 21, he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as the outstanding faculty member by two different universities.

Dan Smith:
At age 36, Dr. Zimmerman retired from teaching and opened his own speaking and training company, Zimmerman Communi-Care Network. He has spoken to over one million people in 49 states and 22 countries and maintains a 92% repeat and referral rate. Some of his many accolades include being listed in Outstanding Young Men of America, International Directory of Distinguished Leadership, Men of Achievement, and 5,000 Personalities of The World. Dr. Zimmerman was inducted into the National Speakers Association Council of Peers Award for Excellence Hall of Fame, and this is an honor reserved for only a very few handfuls of people, including former president Ronald Reagan, Colin Powell, Ken Blanchard, and Zig Ziegler.

Dan Smith:
He is the author of several books, including The Payoff Principle: Discover the 3 Secrets for Getting What You Want Out of Life and Work, which we had the pleasure of working with Dr. Zimmerman promoting. Other books include Brave Questions: Building Stronger Relationships by Asking All the Right Questions and Pivot: How One Simple Turn in Attitude Can Lead to Success. He’s been extensively covered in the media, including being featured on CBS and CNN and in numerous publications, including CEO and Investor’s Business Daily and many, many more. On a personal side, Dr. Zimmerman is a husband, a father, a biker, and a hiker, and he’s explored everything from the jungles of Thailand to the icebergs of the Arctic Circle. Dr. Zimmerman, welcome.

Alan Zimmerman :
Thanks, Dan. That’s a lot to read. Thank you.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, but I had to cut out a lot. You’ve accomplished quite a bit.

Alan Zimmerman :
I’ve been busy, and I’ve been blessed. Been a great career.

Dan Smith:
Yes, and I should mention to our listeners that we just, a week or so ago, had Dr. Zimmerman … We Skyped him in for one of our company lunch-and-learns, and he was fantastic. The whole company, the whole office is still buzzing about the presentation he did. It was just amazing. He’s going to talk about some of the things today that he discussed with us. Dr. Zimmerman, as we get into how to de-stress, reenergize and rebalance your life, as you know, as an author and for the many, many authors we’ve worked with over the years, over 3000, there are particular stresses for authors. There is for anyone, but authors, in my mind … First of all, many of them, for most of them perhaps, writing is not their primary job, so they’re balancing writing books with fulfilling other responsibilities and other jobs. And there’s the stress of the competition out there because there are so many books coming out, thousands a month.

Alan Zimmerman :
Right. Right.

Dan Smith:
And it’s difficult to get attention. It can be a very stressful endeavor. So I’ll start off by asking you how prevalent is stress and burnout in general and how does that apply to authors in particular? I mentioned a few examples, but can you elaborate on that?

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. In general, we know the leading killer in this country is heart disease. 54% of us will die of heart disease, which is a horrible statistic. We should be one of the best countries in the world, and we’re far from that. The best predictor of heart disease is a life that’s totally stressed out and out of balance. That’s the generic, general answer. Applying more to authors, I think we have even more things that stress us out than the average profession.

Alan Zimmerman :
One is self-doubt. If we’re not an accomplished, experienced author that’s sold millions of books, there’s going to be a lot of self-doubts. Will it be read? Will it sell? Will it be good enough? I think we also have the stress of perfectionism. So many people think, “If I can’t write perfectly, why should I write at all?” and perfectionism can be a killer. We also know that we’re putting our stuff out there for the public to be judged, and nobody likes to be judged. Positively, yes, but certainly, we’re open to more negative judgment when we put our words, thoughts, feelings, beliefs into print. And so I think those three stresses make it even more difficult for authors.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, you touched upon something that is so true, and we often talk about it. We have a company video where a number of us talk about dealing with authors, and one of the things in particular we mention is what you just said is; Ian, and I always say, “Authors are our heroes,” and they are so brave, as you said, to put themselves out there because that’s a difficult thing to do.

Alan Zimmerman :
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dan Smith:
For many people, books are such a personal endeavor, and to get a bad review, which almost everybody gets, and to put yourself out there to be judged, and it’s so true. And it’s so admirable that authors do that.

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah, it takes courage, but I admire authors because there’s a passion for something that they believe the world needs to know, so hang onto the passion.

Dan Smith:
Absolutely. You advocate an eight-dimensional approach to getting more in balance with work and life. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. Most authors, as you said, may have another job in addition to writing, and in a lot of companies over the years, we used to give people stress workshops. We thought if they were less stressed as employees, that’d be more productive. Our latest research says that’s a bit narrow. In other words, when a person has stress, it doesn’t just show up in their job. It shows up in all parts of their life. And so I use a pie chart to illustrate what work-life balance is all about. If they can imagine, our listeners, a pie chart with eight slices. Every slice is a dimension of life. I’ll just say them quickly: physical, recreational, financial, occupational, relational, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Alan Zimmerman :
To have really great work-life balance, I tell people, “You’ve got to have something positive in every one of those dimensions in your life. Something positive, something working.” To work on one or two dimensions like your occupation and forget relationships, not balanced. To have a job where you make a lot of money but hate, not balanced. You’ve got to have something positive in every dimension of life. So that’s my overall approach. Eight dimensions, make sure you do something for every one of them.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in terms of having balance in one area but being completely imbalanced in another area. That makes a lot of sense. I imagine it takes a lot of work, for lack of a better term, to achieve that balance. So let’s talk about the first dimension, the physical. Can you explain a strategy we could use, and authors could use that can make a positive difference right now in a physical sense?

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. A couple of quick things. Our bodies are communicators, and they will tell you if you’re off balance. Some people will get a headache. They’ll get upset stomachs. They can’t sleep. They eat junk food. All of those signs are saying, “You’ve got some stress in your life,” and if you pay attention to the signs of distress, you can often avoid disease, so listen to your body. But a second thing, and that is we’re using our minds, obviously our creativity, when we’re writing, but are you fueling your body to make yourself as productive as possible? I don’t want to be a health food fanatic on this program, but I call them the fearful four. If you need to be at your best, your sharpest, be careful of putting these four foods in your body, and that would be sugar, caffeine, salt, and fat. Those four foods have been proven to actually make you feel more sluggish and be less mentally alert. So if you need to be writing, being at your best, be careful of having too much of those foods at those creative writing times.

Dan Smith:
That’s interesting. So the one that surprises me is most people think caffeine will give you that jump and push in energy and wake you up and get your motor running. But that’s not true?

Alan Zimmerman :
Well, you can get a little bit of a charge, a bit of alertness, but not necessarily a sharpness, and for some people, a little bit jittery, a little bit unfocused. So yeah, enjoy your cup in the morning if you want, your Coke, whatever, but when you’re trying to really produce stuff, be careful of that.

Dan Smith:
It’s kind of like you when you have too much caffeine, and it makes you, as you alluded to, kind of hyper and not focused enough and a little-

Alan Zimmerman :
Exactly. Exactly.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, that makes sense. The second dimension of the balance of that pie chart is recreational, and that sounds simple enough, having a recreational balance. What do you mean by that in terms of the work-life balance?

Alan Zimmerman :
Well, recreation really comes from the words re-creation. After you’re done doing something, you feel recreated, reenergized, less stressed. If you go home at the end of a day’s work and decide to watch a 30-minute sitcom, and you feel relaxed. You get up and kind of feel energized again, great. But if you sit down for 30 minutes, have a bunch of junk food, and end up sitting there for three hours and get up and feeling, “Wasted my time. How stupid of me,” that will not recreate, reenergize you. One of the simple ways to recreate yourself is to force yourself to take some breaks. People, we have deadlines in this business. We have things we have to accomplish, so many pages in so many days, but for most of us, we need a break once in a while. And people go, “I haven’t got time for a break. I’m too busy.” It may be a good sign; you really need one right now.

Alan Zimmerman :
That might be as simple as getting up from your computer and taking 10 minutes outside and breathing some fresh air. It may be putting a day in your calendar when you’re going to really recreate, reenergize. I don’t think it’s possible to have a totally balanced life every day or even every week. Sometimes we have to really super work hard on a certain day to meet a deadline or a whole week, but you can balance a month. Look at this larger timeframe and put it on your calendar. I learned that if you don’t put it on your calendar, like taking a walk, go seeing some friends, and it typically doesn’t happen. We get so busy, so distracted, so overwhelmed that the stuff we need to reenergize ourselves, it doesn’t happen, so make sure you’re getting some breaks to keep yourself sharp.

Dan Smith:
That makes perfect sense. The third dimension is financial, and while we’re certainly not a podcast that gives out financial advice, you’re a strong believer that there’s definitely a financial component to stress and balance, and then that’s an interesting topic. Anytime you get into the finances of people, I know it can be a very stressful thing for couples and so forth. Can you elaborate on the financial component to balancing stress in your life?

Alan Zimmerman :
Absolutely. I was a former professor, as you mentioned before, and we, as professors, have researched marriage relationships. For example, for close to 50 years, there’ve been thousands of studies as to what makes a marriage work, what makes it fall apart. Everyone says the same thing that the leading killer of marriage or a significant relationship is money. People will ignore that, and they’ll say something silly like, “Well, we’re in love,” ignore the advice of what I call living beneath your means, handling your finances appropriately, spend beyond their means, and all the stress that comes with that. It may be our budget and publicity. It may be the way we buy certain items, but the advice is simply, live beneath your means, and a slogan I use, “It’s not the high cost of living that causes stress. It’s the cost of living high.”

Alan Zimmerman :
There are some great books out there that talk about that. The richest people don’t live ostentatious lives that are noticeably rich. They manage it well, live beneath their means. I would tell people this: “Every day, you make all kinds of decisions from buying a Starbucks coffee on the way to work to buying a certain item at Macy’s. Every decision will give either peace of mind or stress of mind. Take five seconds before you buy something before you make a financial decision, and ask, “Will that decision me peace or give me stress?”

Dan Smith:
Yeah. Again, that makes a lot of sense. One of the things it reminds me of is when we are dealing with prospective clients who contact us, and we’re speaking with them, and it’s a very consultative process when we’re potentially bringing someone on board as a client. If an author tells us that they, “Well, to afford you, I’m going to have to get a second mortgage or a cash in my retirement,” we say, “No, no, no. Don’t do that.” You know, we don’t want anybody to do that. When it comes to our services, we want them to invest within their means, so it doesn’t create other problems

Alan Zimmerman :
And that’s so ethical, Dan. I just admire it. That’s one reason I worked with you. Not all publicists take that approach. their approach may be, “Whatever I can get, I will sell,” so you have my admiration for taking that approach.

Dan Smith:
Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. On to the fourth dimension. Occupational. As we talked about early, most of us, or most authors, are part-time authors. There are certainly some full-time ones who are fortunate enough to make a living from writing. What advice do you have that would take some of the stress out of the job of an author or balance with their full-time job?

Alan Zimmerman :
Well, some of these tips may be redundant because authors may have heard these things before, but I’ll tell you what works for me. In addition to writing five books, I’ve published 964 articles. I write an article every week that goes out to my followers of about 150,000 people, and a couple of three things that worked for me to keep things in balance. First of all, I make myself write something, whether it’s every day or every week. I don’t let my feelings come into it and say, “I don’t feel like it.” I would tell authors, “Your feelings get a voice in your writing, but not a veto.” If it’s something you have to do, you make a commitment. You do it. Don’t let your feelings control that.

Alan Zimmerman :
But secondly, for me … Actually, a lot of authors say they even find an inspirational place to write, and that may be true for them. For me, it’s been finding a place with no distractions. I’ve literally written a lot of myself in the public library. I go to the very back of the library where there’s a table facing the wall where I can’t see anybody walking by. I can’t see any of the books. There are no distractions, just a blank wall, and there’s nothing to do except writing. That works for me.

Alan Zimmerman :
I know for a lot of people, it’s putting a time up to write. If it’s a certain day of the week or a certain time of the day that they discipline themselves. “I’m going to spend 30 minutes, one hour, two hours,” and watch yourself. If you’re creative, want to write longer, fine, but discipline yourself to do those things. Being self-employed as a speaker and author, my wife is our general manager. She’s had to help with this. On occasion, she’s said to me, “5:00, the office is closed. You’re now my husband. You’re not my business partner,” and to put those limits on when the occupation stops for that day, and the relationship picks up again.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, that’s interesting. My wife, Sandy, who’s also the president of the company, we just literally two days ago were saying, and because of smartphones now, your emails are constantly at your disposal anytime, anywhere. Because we work together, when we come home together, we were talking about making the rule, “Okay, after 7:00 p.m., we are not looking at our work emails,” that kind of stuff.

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. We found it to be critical because we work together. You can talk about your business all day and all night long [crosstalk 00:19:12]. This is your partner in life, not just your partner in business.

Dan Smith:
Yeah. You’re absolutely right. That’s something, after years now, we’re still trying to figure that out, because we know it’s not … You’re exactly right. We could talk about our business, 24/7. It’s just not healthy.

Alan Zimmerman :
That’s so true.

Dan Smith:
So on to the fifth dimension, which is relational. I think I certainly know what you mean by that. Nothing seems to bring more stress to a bad relationship, and nothing relieves more stress than a good relationship. I know we touched upon parts of this, and I know we can have a full-day course on the importance of relations. What is one strategy we and authors or anyone can use as it relates to the balance questions and relations?

Alan Zimmerman :
What you mentioned earlier, Dan, about the courage of authors putting themselves out there for rejection or criticism, things like that. I put people into two categories. They’re either toxic or nourishing. Certainly spend more time with the nourishing people. Toxic are the ones that no matter what you do, they can always pick, gripe, complain, find something wrong. It’s the person that calls you four times a week and whines about this or complaints about that, but they never do anything to fix their life or their problem. They’re just dumping their garbage in your backyard.

Alan Zimmerman :
And two things I suggest. First of all, if you’ve got negative folks in your personal life, professional life, be careful because if you don’t release them, avoid them in some way, you’ll start resembling them. We found out in the research, you can put five positive folks in a room having a meeting, have one negative person join the meeting, start griping about something, and everybody else almost always joins in it with their own gripe about something. So avoid negative people.

Alan Zimmerman :
If you’re stuck with them, you must live with them, and you must work with them, then apply creative neglect. It may be the person that calls you three times a week, and they’re complaining about something, but they never change, as I mentioned before. You might have to say something as simple as, “Really sorry to hear that. I do wish you the best. You know that. Busy right now. Have to run. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.” You do that a few times, and they will learn that they will stop dumping their negativity on you. On the other hand, when they’re positive, they’re praising your work, they’re talking about an accomplishment, something they’re doing, you reinforce that. “Great to hear. That’s wonderful. Keep it up.” You teach them to speak more positively, and you’ll give less reinforcement for the negative talk. If you’re in a cafeteria and people are all complaining about something, you may have to say, “Excuse me. I’m having a challenging day, and I just need not get involved in a downbeat conversation. Let’s get together some other time.” Creative neglect. A couple of things that I find help a lot in relationships.

Dan Smith:
Right. And this leads into the next dimension, mental. In mental, I know we’re talking, moving from relations into our own mental approach. I know we just exchanged emails; something that we have in common is we try to adhere to positive thinking. We both mentioned that we were kind of followers and readers of Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking. I’ll let you talk about it, of course, but I know that about two years ago, I started implementing the power of positive thinking in my own life and in work. It has been amazing the difference it has made. Yeah, there are some elements that can seem simple, but it takes a lot of work. One of the things, and then I’ll let you discuss it-

Alan Zimmerman :
Sure.

Dan Smith:
… is in one of Dr. Peale’s books, there was a simple challenge thing. For the next 24 hours, anything that happens to you put a positive spin on it and make something positive out of it. It literally means anything, anybody you run into, anybody who says anything. That is exceedingly difficult to do, but it’s a great exercise. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on positive thinking from your vast experience. You even said you saw Dr. Peale speak. In your practice and speaking, and what do you focus on with this wonderful world of positive thinking?

Alan Zimmerman :
Well, you made a good point about Dr. Peale’s challenge. I will tell people in my seminars, for example, “If you can’t go 24 hours without a cigarette, you’re addicted to nicotine. If you can’t go 24 hours without a drink, you’re addicted to alcohol. And if you can’t go 24 hours without thinking some negative thoughts, you’re addicted to negativity.” People kind of are taken back by that, but I believe it’s true. People say, “How do you know if you’re addicted to negativity or not?”

Alan Zimmerman :
Well, that’s one way, but a second way is this. I was on the CBS Morning Show a while ago, and the interviewer asked me, “How do you know if you’re addicted to negativity?” My response was this. “Look at your first reaction to any bit of news that you get.” If, for example, you go to your desk and you see a note from your boss that says, “See me immediately,” what is your first reaction? If your first reaction is, “Oh, the raise is coming early this year,” that’s great, but 85% expect a negative like, “What did I do wrong this time?” Your kid comes back from school with a note from the teacher that says, “I suggest a conference as soon as possible,” what’s your first reaction? For most people, “What’d he do?” So look at yourself. See if you’re addicted to the negatives.

Alan Zimmerman :
The second thing I suggest, and we did this in the webinar, the program with your people live, is to be careful of using mind binders. A mind binder’s a negative comment you tell yourself over and over again. It might be, “I can’t make that cold call. I can’t get going without coffee in the morning. I can’t close that sale. I can’t write that chapter. I can’t give a speech. I can’t deal with that person.” And you’re right. As long as you think that way, you’ll never have success in those areas. So first of all, stop saying them, but if you accidentally do think them or say them, immediately neutralize it. If I tell myself something negative, I’ll say, “Alan, now stop it. Just stop it.” Or I might say, “Cancel, cancel,” to neutralize that negativity. You saw the exercise in the program I did with your people where I had them literally tell themselves negative mind binders, test their arm strength before and after. Test strong before. 10, 15 seconds of negative comments, and right away, their arms come down. You literally destroy your own energy when you think negatively.

Dan Smith:
That is so true. Maybe in the future, we could have another podcast just on positive thinking. Just one example in our business and something I started implementing is when inevitably in anybody’s business or life, there’s going to be problems. If we have a situation where sometimes, and it, fortunately, doesn’t happen often, but a client is upset, and it bumps up to me and says, “I want to have a call with you right away. I’m disappointed with the results.” Again, fortunately, this doesn’t happen, but it does happen sometimes.

Alan Zimmerman :
Sure.

Dan Smith:
I tell my team before we get on that call … You know, the reaction used to be from me on down, it’s like, “Oh geez, what are we going to do? This is going to be terrible, and let’s just get this call over with.” We’ve changed that mindset to going into it, saying, “Okay, we have a problem. Let’s work the problem and find a way to affirmatively and positively address the problem,” and it really makes a difference.

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. I look at a complaint as a gift that they’re giving me a chance to fix the problem and keep the relationship going. It’s a free consulting service.

Dan Smith:
Exactly. And our biggest problems occur when a client does not express disappointment along the way.

Alan Zimmerman :
And it goes to some …

Dan Smith:
Yeah, go ahead.

Alan Zimmerman :
… body else or prints all kinds of negative things about you. Right.

Dan Smith:
Exactly. And again, it doesn’t happen often, but a few times. Five months after a campaign, someone will write a negative review online about us, and the results were … As during the campaign, they never expressed any problems at all. I reach out to them. I say, “Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me, and we would’ve talked about it, and we would have found a way to positively address your concerns.” It’s just an interesting human phenomenon, and it really goes toward communication. If you’re upset, if you’re disappointed, just communicate.

Alan Zimmerman :
Exactly. I totally agree.

Dan Smith:
Yeah. On to the seventh dimensional, emotional. And in your writings and your workshops, you teach numerous strategies for better emotional health. Can you give us and the audience a quick and easy tool we can use right now?

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah. My favorite is simply this: Do the most important things. There’s not time for everything. Our to-do lists are always longer than the possible time allowed. Do the most important. And people say, “Well, how do I know what’s most important? I have my book to write about. I have a publicity campaign. I have my husband. I have my wife. I have my kids. I have my church. I have my temple. I have an exercise program.” And yes, of course, they’re all important.

Alan Zimmerman :
So how do you know what’s most important? Ask yourself, first of all, this question: “If I had just six months left to live, would I be living my life the way I’m living it now?” If the answer is you wouldn’t change very much, the good side, you’ve got a good work-life balance working for you. But if your answer is, “If I die in six months, heavens, I’d quit this job. I’d go and see this person. I would do that,” if your life would change dramatically, then my second question is, “What makes you think you got six months?” And I tell people, “I’m not trying to be morbid. I’m not saying quit our jobs, quit writing your book. Simply realize there’s not a time for everything.” Are you doing the most important? Is it more important to dust your coffee table or play with the kids for 30 minutes on the floor beneath the coffee table? Don’t major in the minors. It’s one of the most effective strategies people can use.

Dan Smith:
Yeah, and I know there’s a saying or an adage that if my son’s asking me to throw the ball with him for an hour, and sometimes we just are going to be too busy, but other times, I just say, “No, no. I’ve got to get back to work, and I can’t do it.” I think the saying is when I’m on my death bed, am I going to say, “Geez, I wish I would have put another hour into work,” or would I say, “I’m glad I spent an hour playing with my son”?

Alan Zimmerman :
You know, that’s so right. I think my oldest daughter, hundreds of times, when she was a little kid, she’d say, “Dad, Dad, Dad,” and I’d say, “Just a minute. I’m busy,” and she’d say, “Dad, Dad, Dad,” and I’d put her off for 10 minutes or two hours or whatever. I look back at that, and I can’t think of one single thing that I put her off for that was so critical, but I still remember her asking and me denying it. Probably, what I was putting her off for wasn’t all that important.

Dan Smith:
Right. Right. It’s very true. Very true. finally, your eighth dimension, which refers to spirituality and the spiritual aspect of work and life balance. I know the word spiritual can absolutely turn some people off. When we’re promoting a spiritually oriented book, it can turn media off, and they don’t want to touch it and so forth. Other people get very excited about it. So how does spirituality relate to this work-life balance pie chart that you have?

Alan Zimmerman :
It comes down to one word, values. Not looking at religiosity or denominations, those kinds of things, but values. And I ask people a couple of questions. The first one, “Do you know what you really, really, really love?” In other words, what’s most important to you? What’s the second most important to you? What are your values? Because if you don’t know what you love, you don’t know your values, the only other alternative is to settle for less, and that will burn you out. Got to know what’s important, and some folks never quite figure out their values until, as you said, it’s too late. They’re on their deathbed.

Alan Zimmerman :
And secondly, once you know what you love, once you know your values, are you living by your values? One of the quickest ways that authors or anybody else can bring stressors into their life is to profess a set of values and not live accordingly. I can’t say, for example … I tried this. I couldn’t say that my kids were important to me, but I was too busy traveling across the country speaking, never see them. Couldn’t say one thing, live another way, and expect to have peace of mind or self-respect. I can’t say that my writing is so important that I never have time to date my wife and feel good about myself. Got to know what you love, live [inaudible 00:33:31] value.

Alan Zimmerman :
People will say, “Well, how do you know what you’re doing that?” It really is just integrity. That’s what I see as spirituality. It’s integrity. And the way you know if you’re walking your talk is to look at your investments. When your earth, first, you only have three investments you can make: time, money, energy. That’s it. People can talk a nice game, but where they invest those three things, you’ll find their real values. When I talk to CEOs, oftentimes they’re working 80, 100 hours a week. I’ll say, “You’re killing yourself. Why are you working so hard?” And they’ll say, “Well, I’m working for my kids. I want my kids to have better than I get it.” And then I will challenge them that the average male executive spends no more than 14 minutes a week talking with, interacting with, playing with his kids. My challenge is, “Don’t tell me you’re working for the kids, and they get 14 minutes of your time.” No research anywhere that backs that up.

Alan Zimmerman :
Or it might be looking at your checkbook. Some people believe in a certain church or belong to a certain kind of faith, and they go to a meeting. They can’t say they believe in their church and give a dollar a week. That’s that contradiction of values. You can’t say that your physical health is important, but you eat junk food and never exercise. That’s not integrity. Got to know what you love. Got to live by what you value. Then you have integrity or real spirituality.

Dan Smith:
That’s terrific. And again, these eight aspects that you talk about, rounding off with the spiritual, is so important. We could have a two-hour conversation about all of these, but this has been wonderful advice. I’m very confident that this episode of our podcast is going to be one of our most popular. So Dr. Zimmerman, can you tell us about how people can reach out to you and learn about your writings, your programs, your newsletter, et cetera?

Alan Zimmerman :
Yeah, very simple. My website is drzimmerman.com. That’s D-R for a doctor, and my last name’s Zimmerman, Z-I-M-M-E-R-M-A-N. drzimmerman.com, and there, they’ll find all the books, the audio recordings, the webinars, programs I speak to the public about, but I would encourage them to sign up for my Tuesday Tip. That’s my newsletter I’ve been writing, as I said, for almost 20 years, 960 some issues. They’re all available free of charge and become one of our thousands of subscribers. It’s good stuff. They’ll love it.

Dan Smith:
Terrific. And from our end, as for our audience, to get in touch with Smith Publicity, you can visit our website. It’s smithpublicity.com, and of course, on social media, Twitter, @smithpublicity, and Facebook and all those wonderful platforms. Dr. Zimmerman, thank you so much. This has been outstanding, and I very much appreciate your time.

Alan Zimmerman :
I’ve enjoyed this, so thanks a lot, Dan, and the best to everybody listening.

Dan Smith:
Thank you. Take care.

Alan Zimmerman :
Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to this edition of the Smith Publicity, All Things Book Marketing podcast. To reach us and learn about our many book marketing services, visit www.smithpublicity.com or send us an email to moc.yticilbuphtims@ofni.