The Founder of HARO

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Peter Shankman – Bestselling Author and the Founder of Help A Reporter Out (HARO)

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 From AOL to Dot-com PR
04:36 Startup’s Fall and Rebirth
07:29 Backlink Spam and Subscriber Cull
11:56 “ADHD as a Gift: Life-Changing Impact”
14:29 Massive Exposure and Bold Stunts
17:32 Chaotic Printer Smashing Event
21:20 Harrow’s Origin: Networking Made Easy
23:58 Email Ads: High Open Rate Value
28:47 Tree Insurance Confusion
32:09 Private Equity’s Destructive Impact
33:46 “Entrepreneur’s Transition Challenges”
38:02 Unexpected Breakfast Encounter
40:17 Harnessing Your Brain’s Potential
42:59 “Early Riser: Avoiding Traffic”

Podcast Transcription:

Person [00:00:00]:
And I think that too many companies sort of forget that they initially started to solve a problem. Right. And maybe, look, maybe I’m just, you know, naive, but I kind of feel that if you work on something to solve a problem, you’ll have much better success than you would if you work on something just to make money from it. Agreed. Money will come if you’re doing it for the right reasons, I think is the best way to put it right. And so if you’re doing it for the right reasons, the money will come.

Person [00:00:44]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link funded drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie Calls and Call Extraordinary Answering Service as well as the Bold Business Book. And today we are welcoming Slash, preparing to learn from Peter Shankman. Peter, I got to read this. You got a lot going on. We got six time best selling author, serial entrepreneur and the founder. This is the most important part that I’ve found at least of help a reporter out also dubbed the world’s most authentic marketing expert. So that’s not something you get dubbed a lot or every day.

Person [00:01:26]:
So Peter, how’s it going today?

Person [00:01:28]:
It’s going well. I’d love to know who said that.

Person [00:01:30]:
Yeah, who did say that? I don’t know. It was in your bio. So I just figured somebody important did or somebody observant will call him.

Person [00:01:38]:
There you go.

Person [00:01:39]:
Let’s. We got a lot of ground to cover and I think we both have a little bit of adhd. So let’s roll with it here. Let’s start out with the first business you started because it mentioned in your bio that you had sold a couple businesses. Yeah, I don’t know how far back you want to go.

Person [00:01:56]:
So first company I started in the late 90s when the mid-90s I started my career with I had one full time job. I worked in America Online and I helped start and launch the AOL newsroom back when AOL was the Internet. The I left AOL in the late 90s and launched a PR firm that focused on the dot com world because dot coms were blowing up at that point with clients ranging from Napster to Juno to I mean really, you know, staples of the dot com world sold that in 2001. I saw the writing on the wall, knew that the sort of dot com boom, you know, had its, had its limits. The goal was to take a Year off, I booked a flight to Asia. Remember, I went to Tokyo, went to Hong Kong, went to Phuket, Thailand, and flew back to Tokyo. And I remember calling my mom from a payphone at the airport and I said, I’m coming home. I said, it’s in three weeks.

Person [00:03:01]:
I’m going back to the city. I lived in New York City in a studio apartment, and my parents like, why are you coming home? You’re supposed to be gone for a week. I’m like, you never taught me how to relax. This is your fault. Hung up on them. But, yeah, I realized I didn’t really know how to relax. And so I came back and I started consulting for several years, consulted for companies all around the globe, was traveling constantly. Loved being on a plane, Just love being on a plane.

Person [00:03:26]:
Still do. And what wound up happening was I just created this huge, massive Rolodex and that led to knowing a ton of people. When you’re adhd, you talk to everyone, right? If you’re, if you, unless you fake your death, I want to know everything about you by the time we land, if you’re sitting next to me on a plane. And so I had this huge Rolodex and it sort of came in handy. Reporters started calling me, hey, I’m working on a story about whatever. Who do you know? Yeah. That led to help a reporter. Help a reporter out.

Person [00:04:03]:
I started in 2007, sold it in 2010.

Person [00:04:07]:
Oh, wow.

Person [00:04:09]:
Yeah, it was a three year exit. And it worked. It was pretty amazing. It changed my life when I sold it. And I learned a lot of lessons from that. I’m glad I sold it. But when you sell something that you’ve created, it’s your legacy. What you did with it is your legacy.

Person [00:04:36]:
And it’s hard to separate the part that you did from whatever the company who bought it does after you sold it. Right. And that’s a hard lesson learned because I sold it and the company that bought it, I ran it for the first couple of years for them and then fulfilled my contract and that was done. I walked away and the company who acquired it kind of ran into the ground and the reputation that it had was destroyed. So what happened was it, they eventually shut it down and about six months ago or so, another company stepped in and bought the IP at like, I guess, bargain basement prices and they tried to relaunch it. I don’t know how it’s. How it’s doing, but I wound up real. I wound up creating a new company that pretty much does the same thing.

Person [00:05:39]:
Because I got so frustrated with what they turned it into. I had no, I had no non compete. It was like 15 years later. So I’m like, I’m not going to let this happen. And so I relaunched it and I created a new company. It’s called Source of Sources, which is similar to what Help Reporter out did. Is that, is that, you know, we connect journalists with sources all over the world and it’s a free service. You sign up@sourceofsources.com, you get two emails a day from journalists with queries from the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, cnn, you name it.

Person [00:06:22]:
If you can answer any of the queries, if you have the expertise, you just reply directly to the journalists and you get quoted in the media. And one of the things I learned is that you can’t fake caring. The reason that Sources Sources is successful, we’re at over 50,000 members in a year.

Person [00:06:41]:
Journalists or these are sources experts.

Person [00:06:43]:
So any, any expert can join. And we have about a 79% open rate for each email and that’s two emails a day, five days a week. So that’s pretty crazy. You can’t fake caring. Other. I, I’ve, I’ve heard through the, through the grapevines and there are so many grapevines that help reporter and the other companies like them. There are a couple others that, that sort of sprung up over the years. They try to automate everything and you know, they, they, they fill out this form and it’ll automatically go to your, to all these experts.

Person [00:07:29]:
Well, SEO companies have long, long ago learned the value of a backlink and hire these companies out of Bangladesh and Delhi and whatever to get as many backlinks as possible. But they do it and they found these services and so they use Arrow and they use the other services and hit reporters with every reporter in there. They just harvest the email addresses and pitch them on everything, hoping for a bank backlight. Problem is that doesn’t help the journalist or the re. Or the source. So, and none of the, none of the companies are willing to sacrifice their subscriber numbers to get rid of these people except me. I have called close to 10,000 subscribers off my list. I banned entire countries.

Person [00:08:25]:
You cannot sign up for Source of Sources if you are in India. You cannot sign up for Source of Sources if you are in Thailand. You cannot sign up for Source of Sources if you were in Vietnam. And the reason being is because that’s where all the SEO farms are and oh well, I have a business in Vietnam and I really want to subscribe. That’s not fair. You know, life sucks sometimes, you know, buy a, get a vpn. Subscriptions cost six bucks a month, don’t be cheap. So you know, I, and that’s sort of like my take on it.

Person [00:08:53]:
I’m not. If you don’t care, I don’t care what kind of business you run. If you don’t care, you’re not going to be able to run it as successfully as you could. And so yeah, so source to source is growing by leaps and bounds. We’re supported by a small little text ad at Stop beach email. It’s going well and I’m having fun with it and you know, I’m sure at some point we’ll get acquired again. I’ll start round three, but who knows. And then I run a couple other companies as well.

Person [00:09:20]:
I’m co founder of a company called Mental Capital Consulting. We help companies attract, hire and retain neurodiverse employees. People with ADHD like myself, people with dyslexia, dyscalculia, any sort of neurodiversity, Asperger’s, autism, etc. So our clients there are Morgan Stanley, Adobe, Google, small little companies. And yeah, we’re having fun. I try to stay busy. I’m a single dad. So at the end of the day I’m, you know, no matter, no matter what kind of a day I have, I’m still the, I’m still the dad who’s way too cringe and constantly embarrasses my 12 year old daughter.

Person [00:10:06]:
So it’s all good.

Person [00:10:07]:
I love that you use the word cringe there. You got the nomenclature down, right?

Person [00:10:11]:
Oh yeah. You know what I did once about a year ago, I asked ChatGPT to write a conversation for me. Write my side of the conversation that would embarrass my daughter the most if I said it to her loudly outside of her school when all her friends were around. And so it did. And so I, you know, I picked her up. I’m like honey, how’s, you know, like, like how is math? Is it. Was it, you know, was there Riz and I just, I’d use all the, oh God, I used all the terms and she, she lasted about 15 seconds before she, I think she ran back into school. It was awesome.

Person [00:10:48]:
I’m staying here. Oh, that’s funny. Tell me. So you, you wrote a few books and it looks, I guess, I think I saw six. Tell me if that’s the right number. Yeah, okay. From the order that you wrote them, did they play off each other? Are they related to each other?

Person [00:11:05]:
So the first one was about. The first one was customer service. No, no, I lied. The first one was, can we do that back in 2005. God, 20 years old this year. Which was about. What the hell was that about? That was about PR stunts, right? PR stunts. Correct.

Person [00:11:21]:
And then the second one was New Rules for Customer Service in a Social Enabled World. The third was called Nice Companies Finish First. And it was the concept that you don’t have to be sort of a dick in business to succeed. Fourth one was Zombie Loyalists. That was the premise that you use rabid service. You use great service to create rabid fans. And creating rabid fans means they will go around and do all of your PR for you. Right? Be slightly better than crap, which is what we expect.

Person [00:11:56]:
And they’ll go out and tell the world how great you are. Fifth one is my favorite. It’s Faster Than Normal. And Faster Than Normal has sort of become the bible for ADHD and the concept that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. I got an email through Instagram several days ago from someone overseas who said, dear sir, some of the lines of, I am 23, I have not really had any focus or know what I want to do with my life. And in my country, you know, if you’re not working out of school, you’re considered a failure. And I was very close to ending my life, and I found your book and it changed a lot of things and it really sort of. It was amazing what happened here? There we go.

Person [00:12:49]:
You still there? Okay, yeah, I’m here.

Person [00:12:50]:
I’m here.

Person [00:12:50]:
So. Thought I lost you there. So, yeah, so basically, I guess this book saved this guy’s life. So I get emails all the time from people who say that the book has helped them. And it’s in its fifth printing, so I’m guessing it’s. It’s doing well. It’s the only. The only book out of all them that I’ve actually made back my, My, my advance and gotten really decent royalties from.

Person [00:13:11]:
So it’s nice.

Person [00:13:13]:
It’s impressive, right?

Person [00:13:15]:
Seriously.

Person [00:13:15]:
Yeah.

Person [00:13:16]:
And then I wrote a children’s book last year called the Boy with the Faster Brain, which is also about ADHD, but from. From a 10 year old’s perspective. I’m working on a female version, a girl’s version right now called Jumping Jessa and the Quest to Sit still, which is my. Or the Quest to Pay Attention, I haven’t decided yet, but that’s my. That’s my daughter. So. So, yeah, fun. We’re having fun.

Person [00:13:38]:
All right, that’s cool. That’s cool. Tell me. I want to talk about the PR stunts thing because that’s. I guess even though the book is 20 years old, I imagine the, the premise applies today. Did you do some PR stunts or. This was so.

Person [00:13:53]:
Yeah. So my PR firm, the Geek Factory, when I ran it in the dot com, boom, we had tons and tons of PR stunts. We. God, we crashed the Internet one night back when domain names cost 79 bucks a piece. We came up with the idea that you could. They shouldn’t have to cost that much. We had a client who called Name Engine who wanted to charge nine bucks a domain name. And I said, well, why don’t we just give them away free for an hour? You know, take the loss.

Person [00:14:29]:
We get a ton of exposure. I mean, 700,000 people tried to access the server all at the same time. I remember we took down part, part of the northeast of the Internet another time to promote our agency. We took 150 CEOs skydiving, which is amazing. And that, that was, you know, there’s a, there’s a joke that you put 100 people in a room, you give them cocaine, and 99 of them will say, okay, that was fun. And they’ll go on with their life. One person will be like, I need more cocaine. And that was, that was me with skydiving.

Person [00:15:06]:
So I have. That was my first jump back in 2000. I now have over 500 jumps.

Person [00:15:10]:
Holy cow. Okay. I remember seeing on your website an image of you skydiving.

Person [00:15:13]:
Yeah, I’m a licensed skydiver, chapter subchapter B or category B licensed skydiver. And with over 500 jumps. So yeah, it’s, you know, be careful what you wish for. What else? So we used to do ton of those stunts. And the nice thing about stunts are that that they, when done stunt for the sake of a stunt, is pointless. But a stunt done well can dominate the news cycle. You know, the flip side is you got to be careful not to do it too well. We did some things where we accidentally shut.

Person [00:15:44]:
Accidentally shut down city streets, you know, not really what you want to be doing at 5:45pm on a Thursday night on the west side at two blocks from Lincoln Tunnel. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta be aware. But there are tremendous benefits to prsens assuming they’re done well enough and done to. Like I said, a stunt is like. If a stunt is pointless. We do a stunt to generate publicity and exposure about your company that keeps People talking. That. That.

Person [00:16:17]:
That works.

Person [00:16:18]:
Yeah, it’s just. It’s a noisy environment as far as billboards and social media and all this.

Person [00:16:23]:
Stuff goes, and make it fun, you know, I. Stunts that just scream the name of the company in. In over and over in perpetuity. Don’t do anything for me. Right. But give me. I remember there was a. I don’t remember the name of the movie.

Person [00:16:40]:
This had to be like 18 years ago or something. There was a movie or a TV show about a sheep. I don’t think it did well, but.

Person [00:16:52]:
You’Re talking Shaun the Sheep or something more real.

Person [00:16:54]:
No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember the name of this, but about a sheep. And. And so they turned Bryant park into a. A sheep herding field. And they brought like a hundred sheep into Bryant park to graze. And it was just one of the coolest things you’d ever see. Like just sheep crossing 6th Avenue.

Person [00:17:13]:
I mean, that was very cool. So things like that, you know, I think, are awesome.

Person [00:17:17]:
Nice. Nice. I get that. I did a. We did a stunt. I don’t know if I call it a stunt. We just paid for it, and it turned into more of a stunt than I anticipated. The guy, one of the actors from Office Space, came to a local baseball game thing that we have.

Person [00:17:32]:
And so at the time, I had a printer copier repair company. And so we had a whole printer smashing event after the baseball game. We did not foresee, like, I had goggles and gloves, and I was gonna have lines and stuff like that. It was gonna be all organized. This was at 10, 10:30 at night when people are lit up after the baby baseball game. Would have even been a double header. Anyways, people are drunk and so no lines, and there were bats everywhere. And I’m coming back, trying to wield these machines onto the field.

Person [00:18:05]:
Oh, my God, it’s chaos. Yeah, there’s chaos, but it’s almost. It was so I’m gonna say near anarchy, that there was no stopping it. You’re just like, well, hope no one gets hurt.

Person [00:18:15]:
I remember the. They used to. These two things like that. Again, you got to think through all the possibilities, even the. Even the most remote possibilities, what would happen if. And then plan for it.

Person [00:18:26]:
Yeah, I remember after that was all done, we’re cleaning up the pieces. I had this recycling company come and help us move the pieces. I felt bad because I don’t think they knew the pieces were going to be that small. But anyways, we got that, and we’re picking up pieces really tiny pieces of glass and plastic off the tarp that they roll over the field. And the marketing manager is like, that was really cool. We will never do that again. Like, all right.

Person [00:18:52]:
Yep.

Person [00:18:53]:
Yeah. But I don’t know. We got a little name branding out there, and it was a good time, and as far as I know, no one got hurt. So all in good fun.

Person [00:19:02]:
All the win. There you go.

Person [00:19:04]:
Yeah. Tell me what the. The skydiving with 100 CEOs. That had to be multiple planes.

Person [00:19:10]:
It was. Yeah. I mean, it took. It took entire day. I mean, we. We basically planned for. We brought picnic lunches and everything like that. But, you know, it was the premise that I said, what can we do to really get our agency on the map? You know, I don’t want to.

Person [00:19:25]:
I don’t want to do, like, an all, you know, open bar or any of that crap. Let’s do something fun. And someone in my. In my agency, I don’t remember who, suggested skydiving, and I’m sorry, sitting there going, yeah, that works. And we. We rented school buses, and we just. It was so chaotic. But I remember had.

Person [00:19:43]:
And the crazy thing was they all paid. Every single CEO that did it paid themselves, like, paid to go. We didn’t. It didn’t cost us anything. And we had clients donating product, and we had T shirts made, and we called IT Web Dive 2000. It’s actually. I think it was. I want to say July.

Person [00:20:02]:
I’ll be damned. I think it was yesterday in the year 2000. It was July 20th. I remember the T shirt. July 22nd, 2000. Yeah, it was yesterday in the year 2000. So. So 25.

Person [00:20:12]:
Jesus. 25 years ago. Oh, my God. But, yeah, and so we all went out to Jersey and went skydiving, and it was. It was amazing. It was awesome. Everyone lived, everyone had a blast. It was crazy.

Person [00:20:26]:
So the people that you invited, were they existing clients?

Person [00:20:30]:
Some were existing clients. Mostly we just got news made. You know, we had news about it, and once the news broke, everyone started talking about it. Once everyone started talking about it, people started showing up and said, I want to be in that. I want to be in that.

Person [00:20:42]:
Oh, I’m a CEO. I want to jump out of a plane. All right?

Person [00:20:45]:
And. Yeah, and it was amazing how many. How many CEOs wound up going. So much fun.

Person [00:20:53]:
All right. Did it turn into business?

Person [00:20:56]:
It did. I remember we landed some clients where we get a huge. Get a huge story in the Silicon Valley reporter and the New York Times and Businessweek. It was Crazy. A lot of fun. A lot of fun.

Person [00:21:05]:
Nice. Tell me a story about help a reporter out. Because I actually used help a reporter out. It’s been a long time. But that’s what was recognizable to me, I guess, with you and all that. So tell me about the initial idea.

Person [00:21:20]:
Harrow came about because I like helping people and because I know everyone, I talk to everyone. And reporters would call me and they’d say, hey, I’m doing a story on blah, blah, blah, you know, everyone who do you know who’d be good for this piece? You know, I’d go through my Rolodex and it started taking too long, right? It would take way too long after, you know, I’m doing a story on Nigerian farming. Okay. You know, three hours later, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend knew someone who worked in, you know, soil recomposite at usc, right? And I get this. I figure out how to connect the two. And it was always like this, like, it’s got to be a better way to do this. And that’s what led to. Led to Harrow.

Person [00:22:04]:
And like I said, it was never about making money in the beginning. It was about helping people. And I think that too many companies sort of forget that they initially started to solve a problem. Right. And maybe, look, maybe I’m. I’m just, you know, naive, but I kind of feel that if you work on something to solve a problem, you’ll have much better success than you would if you work on something just to make money from it. Agree. The money will come if you’re doing it for the right reasons, I think is the best way to put it.

Person [00:22:44]:
Right. And so if you’re doing it for the right reasons, the money will come. So for me, it was always about making sure that the people who I was helping saw the value in it. Right. And it’s one of those things where who wouldn’t want to be on that list, Right? If it gets. It doesn’t cost me anything. If it gets me free press, great, Right? But it was always about make sure you’re playing by the rules. Make sure you are.

Person [00:23:08]:
You know, don’t pitch off topic, don’t. And again, I think that was kind of lost after I sold it. So for me, it’s really just been about starting projects, whether it’s help reporter or whether it was sos ASM now, or even mental capital, about starting projects that help people and that create environments where people can benefit.

Person [00:23:35]:
All right, tell me about the. The helper reporter out. If memory serves, I Don’t think I paid. I don’t like you guys money to pay for the service. So.

Person [00:23:46]:
No, it was entire, it was entirely free.

Person [00:23:48]:
Okay.

Person [00:23:50]:
And it’s, you know, source of sources is entirely free. That’s the whole goal.

Person [00:23:54]:
Okay, so you make money on volume or how do you.

Person [00:23:58]:
No, we sell advertisements. At the top of each email there is a small little text ad about four lines and the average price for an ad pays for itself in about five emails. So that is a lot of, there’s a lot of value there. And the reason that the ads can be, can sell for what they sell for is because like I said, we have 79% open rate on each email and the reason we have 79% open rate on each email is because the day you don’t read the S.O.S. the Wall Street Journal’s in there doing a story about your industry and you missed it.

Person [00:24:38]:
Oh, gotcha.

Person [00:24:39]:
Okay, right. It takes 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to scan each email. You do it, move on with your day. But on the day there’s something you can get, you know, it, it, it pays in for itself in spades.

Person [00:24:53]:
Yeah, I remember opening up the Harrow emails not necessarily to pitch anything but more to see what was going on in the world that people were looking for speakers on. It was very interesting from that perspective. We did pitch a few things but it was also interesting just to see what a journalist looking for. It was not often printer repair at the time, so that’s understandably so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still nothing but crickets here. Have to sell newspaper on that one. Tell me about you also have a book on.

Person [00:25:27]:
Is it a book, a presentation maybe on nice companies. Nice companies finish.

Person [00:25:30]:
Yeah, nice companies finished. First was a book and the premise there again was just, you know, employees that invest in their customers, employees that invest in their employees. Companies that invest in their employees tend to do better. It takes every single employee to keep your company running smoothly. It takes one company, one employee to it up forever. Yeah, you know I remember it was a huge, used to be a huge Hertz, Hertz loyalist. And one day I landed in Phoenix. I was went to the Hertz counter and there’s like a two hour line and I go down to the gold counter.

Person [00:26:19]:
So I’m a Gold member, 45 minute line there. So I’m waiting there and my name’s out on the board and I finally get to the front only to hear them say okay, we only have one person. You, you only to go upstairs to the main counter, back to the main counter again. Two hour line. I’m waiting in it the whole time. Her ignoring my texts, my tweets, my posts, everything. Finally get up there and to the, to the counter. And they look me up and they go, oh, you’re a gold member.

Person [00:26:46]:
I’m like, yes, great. You have to go downstairs. I’m like, okay. And they literally, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. They nexted me next. I’m like, okay. So in, in Phoenix Harbor Airport, all the rental counters are in the same location off site. So I walked 50ft from the cesspool of evil that was hurts to the Zen garden of peace and tranquility that was Avis.

Person [00:27:15]:
And they had me in a nicer car for a cheaper rate. And the woman behind the counter smiled at me.

Person [00:27:25]:
The bar is that low that if.

Person [00:27:27]:
They, I really, it’s, you know, know, the bar is so incredibly low that anyone can get better. Yet most companies are down there limbo dancing with the devil, right? It’s amazing how. How low the bar is. So my premise has always been that I don’t need, I don’t need a company to be amazing. I need a company to suck slightly less than everyone else. And if they do that, I will probably follow them to the ends of the earth. I just need them to suck slightly less than everyone else.

Person [00:28:11]:
And that bar is barely above ground.

Person [00:28:13]:
Oh, it’s incredible. It’s incredible how low it is. It’s a tripping hazard in hell Fair.

Person [00:28:19]:
Yeah. Interesting. I can tell you a really quick story. I just switched insurance companies to Allstate. Allstate took a picture. Somebody from the company came to my backyard, took a picture, and they said, we’re gonna cancel your homeowner’s insurance because you have a tree that’s taller than your roof. And I’m like, I think most trees are taller than my roof. So I called Allstate and I got passed down from Indian person to Brazilian person to somebody in Colombia to.

Person [00:28:47]:
Anyways, after five or six times of giving my name and policy number anything, I end up with a guy that’s actually a licensed insurance guy. And he’s like, yeah, the notes are only that there’s a tree. A tree. We have like 30 trees on our property. We have a tree that’s taller than your roof. And I’m like, okay, I’ll call an arborist because I want to have insurance. Like, which tree and how low does it have to be? Yeah, we don’t have any of those notes. So I call up an arborist and they’re like, yeah, this is a thing.

Person [00:29:17]:
Do you know which tree? And I’m like, I don’t. And so she tried to reach out to Allstate, had no success. And I’m like, I’m working really hard trying to be a client of Allstate. Screw this. I just got a different insurance company, and it was easier. So when I canceled Allstate, there was no question of, like, hey, why are you canceling after five days? Or whatever? There’s no. There’s zero care.

Person [00:29:43]:
Yeah. They didn’t try to save you. And that’s the amazing part. It’s, you know, I. I’ve had situations where I’m like, look, I. You know, I’m trying to keep myself as a customer for you guys, and you’re not making it easy. That’s the killer part. You’re not making it easy for me to stay here.

Person [00:29:58]:
It’s weird. It’s one of those, like, you need people like me more than I need you.

Person [00:30:04]:
Absolutely.

Person [00:30:04]:
Plenty of competition.

Person [00:30:06]:
Absolutely.

Person [00:30:06]:
And if you go away, another insurance company is just going to take your place. So, I don’t know. It’s interesting concept because me as a business owner, I imagine you as well. We would never dream of treating clients like that.

Person [00:30:19]:
No.

Person [00:30:19]:
Even people that are not clients, I wouldn’t treat like that.

Person [00:30:22]:
100%.

Person [00:30:23]:
Yeah. It’s bizarre. Tell me a story about selling a biz. You have sold a few businesses.

Person [00:30:31]:
It sounds like every company I’ve sold, the buyer has come to me.

Person [00:30:36]:
Okay, that was the next question. That was the next question. If you had to market it or push it or if they.

Person [00:30:41]:
No, the buyers always come to me. And. And it’s very funny. I don’t. I’m not a fan of sales. I don’t like sales. I don’t like selling. None of that.

Person [00:30:57]:
So when the companies come to me and say, hey, we love what you built, we’d like to acquire it, it’s a lot easier.

Person [00:31:09]:
Tell me, so the companies that you’ve sold, the big part is, how do you price it and how do you exchange that money? And what do you have to do once that money’s exchanged? You have to stay on or.

Person [00:31:19]:
Yeah, so when I sold Haro, I stayed on for a couple of years as I became one of their. One of their chief. I think a chief evangelist or something like that. Small business evangelist for them. And I helped. I helped grow, you know, and the funny thing was, is that. Is that I’ve never really played well with others. I work very well on my own, and so it was a lot easier to go out on my own.

Person [00:31:44]:
And when I sold the company, you know, you have that year, that two year earn out and I wasn’t itching to get out per se, but I knew it was time. And the funny thing is, is that the company I sold Harrow to, they eventually got acquired by private equity.

Person [00:32:06]:
And okay.

Person [00:32:09]:
Nothing good happens to a company that gets acquired by private equity. Red Lobster didn’t go bankrupt because people were eating too much shrimp. They went bankrupt because they got acquired by private equity. Malls didn’t fail because of Amazon. Malls failed because they all got acquired by private equity. My doggy daycare place where I bring this rescue mutt sitting on the couch, taking up the entire couch next to me, they’re going to hell and I’m going to have to switch soon because they got a private equity. It is probably the worst evil on the planet. And so if you see that coming down the pike, you know, and a private equity comes in and says, hey, we can make you very rich.

Person [00:32:56]:
Know that you’re going to be rich at the expense of your legacy. And you know, look, if that’s, if that is something you’re cool with, go for it. But you have to ask yourself.

Person [00:33:13]:
You know, what is that? Is that, are you going to be proud of seeing that? Like, hey, I started that.

Person [00:33:16]:
Exactly. And that’s, that’s the thing. It’s like Harrow is an entirely new world now. I’m technically, Harrow is a competitor of mine now.

Person [00:33:23]:
All right, well, I mean, it’s a good thing that they kind of dropped the ball. Makes it easier to compete with.

Person [00:33:29]:
Yeah, very true.

Person [00:33:30]:
Or I guess it opened up the door for you to compete because if they stepped it up, well, I certainly.

Person [00:33:34]:
Wouldn’T have recreated what I built had, had they not screwed it up in the first place.

Person [00:33:39]:
Right. So those couple years where you were on after you sold it, did you see things going downhill and you.

Person [00:33:46]:
I saw things start, yeah. I mean, also, you know, also you gotta realize you’re used to, you’re used to running a company where the, where the decisions are all made by you. Right. And all of a sudden they’re not. All of a sudden you have to go up a flagpole, a decision tree. That’s kind of annoying. So, you know, selling a company, look, it has its pluses and minuses. I’m, I’m doing this interview from the 60th floor of a high rise in Midtown Manhattan, two blocks from the Hudson river, two blocks from Times Square.

Person [00:34:23]:
I live here, it’s my apartment and, you know, selling. My company got me this. But, you know, there’s cost to it, there’s cost everything.

Person [00:34:32]:
Yeah, fair, fair. How did you end up figuring out how to price something like that? Talking about nationally known web based company, overhead, I’m gonna dare say is relatively low because of software.

Person [00:34:47]:
A lot of times it’s, it’s the company buying. You will come with their terms and you can argue with them. For me, it was, it was. I think they came with like 2.5 times revenue or something like that.

Person [00:35:01]:
Okay.

Person [00:35:02]:
And you know, you go back and forth and you come up with a number. It works.

Person [00:35:07]:
Okay. Was there much negotiating for Harold?

Person [00:35:10]:
There was some. There was some. There are a couple things I wanted. A couple things they wanted. It wasn’t that difficult. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a, A, it wasn’t like I was selling a multi billion dollar logistics company with, you know, with equipment, with planes, with whatever, you know, it was, yeah. The majority of what I was selling was the ip, Right.

Person [00:35:32]:
Exactly, exactly. That’s what. That makes it more challenging to price. I imagine where you’re selling a jet, you’re like, hey, this is A, whatever 1992 jet. We know roughly what they go for on the market, or something like this where it’s more IP but a different game because you’re essentially selling and they’re buying pie in the sky.

Person [00:35:50]:
Yeah.

Person [00:35:52]:
So it’s always interesting to me here, like, how did you guys come up with a number? How much negotiating back and forth was there? And what were the little parts of the contract that maybe weren’t necessarily dollars and cents, but something like your time or their time or the odd nuances that every, every business acquisition always.

Person [00:36:11]:
Yep.

Person [00:36:12]:
Yeah. The other companies that you sold, was it essentially the same thing? People came pr.

Person [00:36:16]:
Yeah. One was a PR firm and that was just, that was just a multiple of, of the revenue of the clients.

Person [00:36:21]:
Okay.

Person [00:36:22]:
So you know, it, it, it’s. Again, you know, I think it’d be a little different if I ran a, if I ran a, you know, shipping company or something. Right.

Person [00:36:30]:
This is how much boats are. This is how much pals.

Person [00:36:33]:
Exactly.

Person [00:36:34]:
Rinse, repeat. All right, you had. Let’s shift gears here. You had. What do we got here? 3 minute rule for smarter networking. Let’s shift into that.

Person [00:36:45]:
Yeah. My basic premise of networking is that, you know, talk to everyone. Talking to a. Whether it’s the person on the plane next to you or the person waiting in line, you know, or the person at the deli, whoever you Whoever you happen to be next to strike up a conversation, worst case scenario, they don’t want to talk to you, so you won’t. But you never know where you’re gonna get right. I’ve met some of the most incredible people. I still have friends that I made God knows how many years ago that I met in the most random of places. Remember I met someone, I let him share my newspaper over our heads in a, in a.

Person [00:37:37]:
Out of the blue thunderstorm as we were crossing the street in Los Angeles. And I still talk to the guy. You know, it really, it comes down to what’s the worst that can happen. My belief is that if it doesn’t create an international incident, if it doesn’t wind you up in jail, there’s no reason not to do it.

Person [00:38:02]:
Fair. I can remember my, my wife and kid and I go out for breakfast. This is years ago, breakfast place is pretty busy, but they had room at the kind of bar sitting at this little cafe. And so it was me, my kid and my wife. And I’m sitting next to this guy and I just said, hey man, how’s it going? We end up in a conversation because my kid was doing something with me menu with my wife. And my kid is just amazed. He’s 4 or 5 years old at the time and he’s like, who is that guy, dad? I’m like, I don’t know, I just met him. I think his name is Steve or something like that.

Person [00:38:35]:
And like, what do you mean you just met him? You don’t know him? Like, no, he’s just some guy. And I was trying to teach my kid that you can, you can talk to people. I mean it’s cautious because this is.

Person [00:38:45]:
Little guy of course, right.

Person [00:38:47]:
But in the end, most people, generally speaking are pretty nice. And a lot of times people are just lonely. And if they show that, if you’re nice to them, you can get a conversation. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering or anything like that, but I always find it what we talked about.

Person [00:39:02]:
But my daughter a lot always, you know, will be in an elevator or something and someone will be there and I’ll start having a conversation with them and my daughter. You know, dad, you don’t have to talk to everyone. I’m like, no, you do.

Person [00:39:14]:
It’s just being nice.

Person [00:39:15]:
Exactly.

Person [00:39:16]:
And it’s for me at least personally, it beats awkward silence.

Person [00:39:20]:
100.

Person [00:39:21]:
You got to ride up 50 floors with one person in the elevator. It’s just going to get creepy unless you say, hey man, how’s it going? I’m acknowledging you as a human.

Person [00:39:29]:
Yep. Couldn’t agree more.

Person [00:39:31]:
Yeah. So all good. Tell me. Next we shift gears into the faster brain.

Person [00:39:38]:
So I’ve been neurodiverse, obviously my entire life. I wasn’t diagnosed until my late 30s. And when I was, it was a game changer because all of a sudden, everything started making sense. Right. All of a sudden, I started understanding why I am the way I am, why I do the things I do, why I’m as annoying as I am. And it sort of led to this. This whole rebirth that what I am is actually okay. And it’s okay to be weird, it’s okay to be different, it’s okay to be whatever.

Person [00:40:17]:
But. And it not only is okay, but it actually can benefit you as long as you know how to use it to your advantage. So for me, it was really about learning what my brain could do, learning what I had to do to keep my brain in the best possible shape. In other words, you know, it takes very little for me to sort of one, I’m three bad decisions in a row away from having a really, really bad day, week, month, year, whatever. So it comes down to understanding how your brain works and not putting yourself in situations where you will go down one of those paths. It’s about seeing things in advance.

Person [00:41:22]:
Some more anticipation rather than reaction.

Person [00:41:24]:
Exactly.

Person [00:41:25]:
Okay.

Person [00:41:26]:
And so, you know, it’s. Knowing, it’s quite. I have friends, a couple of my friends have been in aa and they. There’s. They have a term, they’re called playing the tape forward.

Person [00:41:35]:
Okay.

Person [00:41:37]:
And the premise behind that is that.

Person [00:41:39]:
You.

Person [00:41:46]:
Ask yourself, what is this decision going to do for me in 12 hours? How am I going to be in 12 hours from this decision right now? And if the answer to that, more often than not, the answer to that is not good. Right. So, you know, yeah, I could sleep in and not get on the bike and work out in the. The morning, tomorrow morning. But. Well, now I’ve slept in. You know what? I. I kind of ruined the day.

Person [00:42:28]:
I’ll just. I’ll just order some breakfast. I’m. I’m not really feeling it. Well, now I ordered some crappy food. Well, the day shot, I might as well have a pizza for dinner. Well, I did. Now it’s three days later.

Person [00:42:38]:
I haven’t exercised, I’ve eaten, like, you know, what’s the point? It’s easier to not go there to begin with, get up and get on the bike, that kind of stuff.

Person [00:42:53]:
Yeah, you’ll maintain the trajectory that you’re On. So you want to keep making sure that you’re on a good trajectory.

Person [00:42:58]:
100.

Person [00:42:59]:
Yeah. Fair. Totally fair. I can tell there’s little things with me. I know that I hate getting stuck in traffic, so I’ll rather drive at 4 in the morning. If I have a long drive, then drive at 4 in the afternoon. Because I know 4 in the afternoon, I’m gonna have to deal with every camper and boat that was ever made manufactured. Four in the morning, most of those are put away.

Person [00:43:18]:
Absolutely.

Person [00:43:19]:
So, yeah, I get it. Just understanding where your comfort zones are and setting your schedule accordingly. Yeah, that’s fair.

Person [00:43:27]:
Not rocket science.

Person [00:43:28]:
No, no, not at all. What are you up to currently? Is. Is source. What was it? Source on source or source?

Person [00:43:37]:
Source of sources.

Person [00:43:38]:
Source of sources. Is that still going?

Person [00:43:40]:
It’s every day. Yeah. It’s what I currently run. Yeah. So currently running it, it’s doing very well. We’re at about 50, 000 members and growing.

Person [00:43:50]:
Nice.

Person [00:43:52]:
Two emails every day. 79 open rate advertising sold out through the fall. So, yeah, that’s going exceptionally well. I’m also still running mental capital consulting. I am. What else am I doing? Still writing. I’m still a talking head on the news networks. Staying busy.

Person [00:44:12]:
All right, tell me about the talking head on the news networks. What are you talking about?

Person [00:44:15]:
Typically, usually marketing, crisis management, people being stupid.

Person [00:44:21]:
Common theme these days.

Person [00:44:22]:
Well, it’s funny, I. I don’t do it as much because, you know, people being stupid doesn’t really make as much news as it used to.

Person [00:44:29]:
It’s not as rare.

Person [00:44:30]:
No. I mean, I remember back when, during Trump’s first run for his first term, I was on TV every day because every day he’d do something stupid. Now that’s just called Tuesday. Yeah, right. We don’t care that much anymore, which is really sad. I mean, it really. It shouldn’t be. Right.

Person [00:44:46]:
We shouldn’t be in a world where, where we accept stupidity as the norm, but for some reason, here we are, which is.

Person [00:44:53]:
I was joking with a buddy of mine that I’m like, I miss slow news days.

Person [00:44:58]:
Oh, absolutely not. Every goddamn day needs to be unprecedented.

Person [00:45:02]:
Yeah, but that’s, that’s the world we’re in. Oh. So I love it. I hate it. Yeah. Tell me, do the networks reach out to you or do you try?

Person [00:45:11]:
Yeah, once you, Once you wind up going on once or twice, they tend to know who you are and they like you and they start. They start calling you.

Person [00:45:17]:
Gotcha. Okay. All right, now I mentioned that’s all remote or are they having you go on site?

Person [00:45:22]:
No, I go to. I’m eight blocks from CNN’s global headquarters.

Person [00:45:25]:
Oh, there you go. That works out well.

Person [00:45:27]:
The New York headquarters, anyway. Another base of Atlanta, but yeah, MSNBC is right across the street as well, so CBS is right up the street. Although CBS is kind of on my shit list right now.

Person [00:45:37]:
All right, fair. They’re. They’re making some bad decisions. That’s fair indeed. Yeah. It’s an interesting chess game, I guess, as far as that goes. For better or worse.

Person [00:45:48]:
I don’t think they’re even remotely playing chess, but fair. What are you gonna do?

Person [00:45:54]:
I watch and see. Watch and learn, I guess. Yeah. Hope we don’t end up in a mushroom cloud, I guess, is the thing. I just was at a conference in D.C. having nothing to do with government stuff. It was a veterinary conference. And the joke with my buddies was that would be a targeted city if any other country in the world was not very pleased with us.

Person [00:46:20]:
And I don’t think we’re doing nice.

Person [00:46:22]:
Thing about living two blocks from Times Square is that, you know, if it ever happens, probably same thing super quick.

Person [00:46:27]:
Arguably worse. Right.

Person [00:46:28]:
Wouldn’t have to worry about anything super fast. And we’re done.

Person [00:46:30]:
Yeah. Where I live in Madison, Wisconsin, I think if we got hit, I don’t even know if it’d make the news. So there’s comfort in that a little bit. Anyways, Peter, I appreciate your time here. Where can people find your books?

Person [00:46:45]:
Yeah, so my entire world is shankman.com is everything. You can find me at shankman.com you can find me at source of sources dot com. I’m Peter Shankman and all the socials, except for Twitter. I won’t use Twitter, which is a bummer because I used to love Twitter. And then books are everywhere. Amazon, anywhere you buy books.

Person [00:47:04]:
All right, fair enough. And then if people want to get on the source of sources list.

Person [00:47:11]:
Source of sources dot com.

Person [00:47:12]:
All right, easy enough. Sign up there. I do want to ask you a really quick question before we go, because this is always one of those things that I’m like, how do they do that? Source of sources, as an example, or Harrow. You have the journalists and you have the people that want to supply information, the experts in whatever field to supply information for the journalists. That’s a chicken and egg scenario. How do you. Where do you start?

Person [00:47:36]:
I mean, the best answer I can give you is rephrase the question. Do you mean, where do you start building something like that? Or.

Person [00:47:44]:
Yeah, yeah. So you have to get a handful of journalists in order to have experts to find the journalists.

Person [00:47:49]:
Right. I know a lot of journalists just from being a public and then, you know, from that. I know a lot of, I know a lot of people on tv. I know a lot of, you know, and it, it, over time, it just worked.

Person [00:48:01]:
Okay. So it’s essentially, it helps.

Person [00:48:04]:
It’s, it’s all about, right. It’s, it’s all about who you wind up working with, who know who you know and trust.

Person [00:48:13]:
Got it. Fair. Fair. Do you feel like you’ll be selling or bowing out of source of sources anytime soon?

Person [00:48:22]:
I don’t think so. I enjoy, I enjoy running it. I think for now I’m gonna stick with it.

Person [00:48:26]:
All right. That’s the important part. As long as you have fun with it.

Person [00:48:29]:
Exactly.

Person [00:48:30]:
Keep rolling.

Person [00:48:31]:
Exactly.

Person [00:48:32]:
Cool. Peter, I appreciate you being on the show.

Person [00:48:35]:
It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Person [00:48:37]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls on Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web https://callsoncall.com as well as the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give it the big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course share with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those friends that may be experts and they can share their expertise with journalists on source sources. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Peter Shankman, six time bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, founder of helper reporter out as well as source of sources and dubbed the world’s most authentic marketing expert. Peter, thank you so much for being on the show.

Person [00:49:31]:
My pleasure. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Person [00:49:33]:
Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.