Webinar: An Interview with Peter Shankman – Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur

The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.

Keith Wolf:

Thank you everybody for joining. I know folks are going to keep on joining us as we go through. I’m gonna do a quick introduction here, but I’m just so excited about today’s webinar. Peter, Shankman someone I’m going to introduce in just a second. He’s someone I’ve followed an admired for many, many years, so I’m borderline stockish. So I’m going to pretend not to know that much about him. I’m going to ask questions. Some of which I know the answers to just because I have been following him online and, and his exploits since probably about 2009. So I know quite a bit of Peter to the point of creepiness, but again, I’m going to try to play cool today. So if you’re in the world of marketing PR social media, you probably know Peter.

Keith Wolf:

But the beauty of his background is it really doesn’t matter where you know what your industry is, what function you’re in is so creative and innovative that, that I, I wanted to present him and his background and his story to folks from various walks of life, because I know there’s something that everybody can gain from what he’s accomplished in his career. But if you don’t know him, I’m going to take just a minute to talk through little bit of his background. He’s probably best known to many folks as a founder of hero, help a reporter out. It’s a service that connects journalists with sources. It was later acquired by Vocus, which is now a decision. And I actually was an advertiser on Herro or in the early days. And it worked really well. So he’s a keynote speaker. If you follow Peter on the social networks in non COVID times, he’s all over the world.

Keith Wolf:

Hopping on planes, giving talks, consulting with companies, organizations all over the world. He, Ron shank, mine’s a breakthrough network and elite online mastermind to thought leaders, business experts and change makers. He’s the host of faster than normal. It’s the number one podcast on the internet for ADHD. And it focuses on the super powers and gifts of having a faster than normal brain. He’s also written a book by the same name, faster than normal, which I’ve read and is a, is a great read. I don’t know whether I have ADHD or not, but I definitely got a lot out of it. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, I’ve never, I’ve never found out some of his customer service and social media clients have included American express sprint SAP, us department defense while Disney, NASA, Saudi Aramco, Sheraton, and the list goes on. He’s a five-time bestselling author.

Keith Wolf:

I mentioned one of his books and he’s an influencer and spokesperson for brands, including specialized bikes, Skratch labs, Tooley, Scotty, best, and many others. And lastly, he’s a dad, a dad of two time iron man triathlete, Peter and I were just speaking. He’s training for another triathlon right now. He’s a class B licensed skydiver. He’s got a Peloton addiction and he he’s got a, a daughter and a 21 year old cat I believe, and a dog. So with that welcome Peter, really excited to have you. Thanks, man. I’m going to be here. Awesome. Well, let’s get started. There’s so much we could talk about and you know, your story is amazing, but I, I know there were folks on this, on this webinar right now who maybe they’re in a job they don’t like, or maybe they’re a job they love, but they probably got the entrepreneurship bug or thinking about it. And, and I know, you know, you went through that. It’s been 20 plus years since you’ve kind of made that, made that decision to go into entrepreneurship. So let’s start there. You, you graduated from Boston university, take us through your first couple of, of corporate jobs and how you ended up landing into entrepreneurship and making that transition.

Peter Shankman:

So my first job out of school I was in grad school and I had 18 credits to go in fashion and portrait photography in California. And it was awesome. I was, you know, spending every day on the beach photographing people. It was, it was great. With 18 credits to go, I lost my financial aid. The government sent me a letter and said, we’re taking away from financial aid. Your parents make too much money. And I sent the government a letter bags that your government, my parents do make too much money, whoever they keep it. And the government didn’t find that funny. So I moved back to New York city back to my parents’ basement. They had a house in Staten Island at the time. And I was hanging out in a chat room in America, online. This is back in the nineties back when AOL was the internet.

Peter Shankman:

And someone said, Hey my company’s trying to build a newsroom. You have a journalism degree from Boston university. Why don’t you why don’t you submit your resume? And I went, sure, yeah, I have, I have no experience. I’m fresh out of school. This would be awesome. I’m, I’d love to. And I sent him a resume alone that sarcasm doesn’t translate well over the internet. And I was hired two weeks later as one of the founding editors of America online. And I launched my career yeah, by building an online newsroom with two other people. And we had no idea what we were doing. Literally, no idea what we’re doing. And we went in and we we started it with the premise that we’ll do something. And if it works and our members stick around, we’ll do more of that. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something else. And that’s probably one of the best lessons I ever learned. You know, keep throwing against the wall. Eventually when you’re, when you love what you do, you’ll keep finding ways to do it better. And eventually your audience will come to like it or real stumble upon something that they like. And that’s the thing you want to do.

Peter Shankman:

So you, so you were there, you figured America online AOL for about Def just in three years, came in one day, they had a giant, a layoff. Bob Pittman killed 85% of their content team. I was one of them went home. It’s like at 8:00 AM. We all had jobs at 10:30 AM we’re on the parking lot going, what the was that? Had no idea what just happened. So we went back to back to my apartment. We packed it up, moved back to New York city and found that half the world wanted to hire me because I I worked say, well, and this was the start of the.com boom. And what was the internet? One of them. So downside though, was that AOL was, was special in that, in that they didn’t give a how you did your job, as long as you got it done. Right? So you wanted to work at, you know, three in the morning or work from midnight to eight or whatever, let’s get the work done. And they were cool with that. And so then I come back to New York, I have all these, all these job opportunities.

Peter Shankman:

One of them is a firm magazine and associate editor of a financial magazine. I’m like, wow, that’s awesome. And I, I take it I be like first two weeks, you know, I have to be in Bay 30 and we have intermediate nine and lunch from 12 to one and another meeting in the afternoon. And I’m sitting there and two weeks and I’m like, this is it’s, this, this is rough. And this is not okay. And I quit. By this time I was like, guess 98. I called my parents. I was living in a studio apartment, like roughly the size of like that sign behind you. And I called her, I said, I’m quitting my job. I’m going to start my own PR firm. What are you going to start a PR firm? Absolutely nothing. But I worked, you know, part of my job at AOL was teach people how to use the internet and why it was so important. And you know how to tell senators why the internet was important. And I feel like I could do it. And when it fails, I’ll just get another job. I literally said, when it fails, I’ll get another job, not if it fails when it fails. And that was may I think of 98?

Keith Wolf:

What is that now? Almost 23 years. Right.

Peter Shankman:

I haven’t had to get another job. I’ve gotten really lucky. I mean, I’ve, I’ve had incredible highs and I’ve got incredible lows and that’s kind of the beauty of being an entrepreneur is that, you know, there’s no, everyone thinks about entrepreneurship of like that. And I’m supposed to, it’s really sort of this way and that way, and then around the band and this way, and then, and then, you know, and if you wind up somewhere, you want to be, and it turns out it’s not where you want to be at all, but somehow you get there. Yeah. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done and it’s, it’s been an amazing ride and, and I’ve had tremendous highs and lows. But I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t change anything. It’s been awesome.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. So, so when you started that first business, first of all, it was a PR company, right. And no one telling you what to do, where to be, what your priorities are, how did you figure out what the governor whelming or was it like?

Peter Shankman:

Cause I mean, I had to put, it was the first time I ever really understood having to put rules into my life. Then my ADHD just kicked in. I’m looking out the window, there’s a giant, huge Cumulus clouds that looked like let’s get giant hand get high. So I, yeah, it was the first time I’d ever had, had to put rules in my own life to allow myself to get by. I wake up in the morning and I’d hear my, my neighbors leaving for work. And even though I had clients, I was working in my apartment. I didn’t have a, I didn’t have I didn’t feel like I was employed. I felt like it was homeless. I felt it was unemployed because I wasn’t leaving. Right. I wasn’t doing anything. And I remember I remember when I so I had to put these rules in my, into my life.

Peter Shankman:

I wasn’t allowed to like I had to get up, I had to get dressed. Right. I take a shower, I had to get dressed. I had to put on shoes. I had to sit, you know, if I remember, and it was in my, my desk next to my, in my studio apartment, which is right next to my futon. Right, right. I had, but I had to I remember, I, I, I could turn on the TV for background noise, but it had to be CNN. It couldn’t be like sail the central tree or, or, or, or you know, a game show or, or I of Lucy, it had to be like stuff that I’d hear in a newsroom. Right. And these are important rules to me because that was that, that was how I knew hdow to get work done. And it turns out as I grew up, as I get older and realize that, you know, I’m diagnosed ADHD and how the ADHD was pretty much responsible for the majority of my success. It’s those life rules I started putting into place back in 98 that have morphed into sort of what I am now, the things I do now

Peter Shankman:

My super early rising, you know, my, my, I don’t work in a bathroom. I don’t do it. You know, I have to get drafted. And so things that have really kept me sort of on path and prevented me from going down a rabbit hole many, many times more times than I can count.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you are going to be an entrepreneur, whether it was then or down, down the road. I mean, it was, it seems like it was destined to be, there’s probably people on the call who maybe it’s not as clear. I mean, how would you advise, how do you, how does one know if one knows at all when the right time is, if there’s a right time, if they should follow a passion, if it’s too soon, should they start a side hustle? How do you, how do you think about that? There’s never,

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Peter Shankman:

If you keep waiting for the right time, it’s never going to happen. I had a trainer once who told me her coach wants to tell me that,

Peter Shankman:

If you wait for your body to be ready to go exercise in the morning, you’ll never do it. The mind has to explain to the body that it’s ready. And that’s a really, really powerful tool because

Speaker 1:

You know,

Peter Shankman:

You have to stop believing in. I just actually wrote it down cause it’s a great, this is important. It’s a great line. You have to stop looking where the hell is it? Hang on. I literally just wrote it down two days ago and I’m like, Oh, I don’t remember that. Oh, you know, you have to stop. Ah, it’s called beware of destination addiction. Destination diction is the premise that you’ll be happy when you get to that next thing, you’ll be happy when you get that next job. You’ll be happy when you drop 20 pounds, you’ll be happy when you find that perfect person. You’ll be happy when whatever, if you, if you’re constantly looking for that next thing to make you happy, you’re never going to be happy. Yeah. Happiness comes from doing right. If you want to get a much better job, improve yourself and go after it and do it. If you D if you want to try entrepreneurship, go try entrepreneurship. Don’t rely on something to make you happy. You have to decide I’m going to be happy and the sound to get there. Yeah. That’s, that’s just a huge thing. Destination addiction. It’s a real thing. Yeah.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. I’ve heard, I’ve heard it said that there there’s no, there, there, right. People who are looking. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think I saw, I saw a prominent CEO entrepreneur post on Twitter. You know, everyone just started company this year. It should be your goal. And I thought, well, that’s, you know, is everyone really supposed to

Peter Shankman:

That sound like some Vaynerchuk would say no,

Keith Wolf:

No, it wasn’t him, but okay.

Peter Shankman:

But I thought that was interesting. I don’t necessarily, I don’t agree with that. Yeah. There were some people I was dating a woman once and, and, and she calls me when I’m finished. Like, Hey, what are you working on? I’m like, I’m hanging out with them at the w a I’m at the bar at the w it’s about 4:00 PM on a Thursday morning. W I’m waiting on a client meeting. Oh, Barb w to 4:00 PM and Thursday, it must be nice. Why don’t you do some work? I’m like, okay, you ain’t, I’m working much harder than you be. You don’t realize that you’re not actually mad at me for having a meeting of the w you’re mad at yourself because you’re in a job. It doesn’t let you do that. Right. Don’t get angry at me because I decided to take the risk and I’m doing it.

Peter Shankman:

Not everyone should go out and start a company. It’s a stupid thing. I’ve ever heard people. There are some people who work from nine to five to make money, to enjoy their lives when they’re not working. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Who the hell am I or anyone to be that much of an, but grudge you and say, Hey, the way you’re living your life is wrong. That. If you’re living your life and you’re happy, dude, what was, you’re not hurting. Anyone else more power to you? Yeah. Don’t tell someone they have to start a company. But I will say if you’re unhappy and the only reason, yeah. You’re not changing. It’s because you’re afraid of what might happen. Then I kind of pity you. Yeah. It’s a great line from the West wing. And Mrs. Landingham says to, it says to Martin sheen since the president Bartlet, if you don’t want to run for president again, cause you don’t want to run.

Peter Shankman:

I respect that. But if you don’t wanna run, cause you’re afraid you won’t win, then hell Jeb. I don’t even want to know you. Yeah. It’s so true. Right. If you don’t want to change because you were afraid of what might happen, dude, and you’re miserable in your current position, dude. Yeah. Yeah. I will say that if you want to change and you want to start a company now happens to be a great time. Whenever there’s a crisis, whenever hits the fan, that’s the best time to make change. Because, so what if you fail now, we’ll look at it. You can tell me anything about 2020 was a win, right? If you start a business and you fail and you’re still alive, you’re still ahead of the game right about now. Right? Right. I mean the bar, so God low. So, so I don’t need you to be awesome.

Peter Shankman:

I need you to go out and do it. And if it, if it succeeds awesome. If it fails us and at least a tribe. Yeah. Right. I’d much rather you try and sit there at home and be miserable zone. What if I drove you a little bit in, that’s the worst thing to have, especially when you’re a HD man, and we’re just gonna have it as like grass growing on your feet. And man, I wonder what if I did? I mean, I, someone I bought 10 Bitcoin at a hundred bucks a piece and sold them a thousand bucks a piece. I thought I was King of the world. Oh boy. But I’m not going to sit there. I’m not going to, you know, that’d be over a quarter million dollars right now. I’m not going to sit there and about it, whatever it is, what it is. Right. I use the 10 grand I made and probably had a blast. I’m sure I did. And I, you know, it was like or something. So I don’t have yeah. Any issue with failure. I love failure. I failed a ton. I won’t hire someone who hasn’t failed. Issue I have is, is that you haven’t tried anything. Right. You sit there and you’re afraid of trying to think death by paralysis. There’s a real thing that sucks. You don’t wanna live your life that way, but

Keith Wolf:

You’re still open and transparent. That’s one of the things, that’s one of the reasons I’ve been following your story for so long is because you do talk about those things. What are just so, so folks can understand some of the failures that you’ve gone through that you prepared to talk about.

Peter Shankman:

Yeah. I mean, you know, I, back in 2005, I created a company where called air productions where I thought you could connect. I thought it’d be cool if, because I was traveling so much, most of my flights were really crappy. They had one flight where I sat next to miss Texas. I’m like, well, that was fun. The rest of my flight should be like that. So I actually created a website called air productions and let you choose your seatmate before you get on the flight. Right. And it was pretty cool. It got tons of press, tons of people signed up, but it was too early. If I had built it today, I would have backed that back, ended into expedience united.com and to Facebook. And it would have a piece of cake back then you had to sign up and you had to enter your flight info.

Peter Shankman:

And then you had to look and it was pain, the, right. I couldn’t get critical mass. And you know, I learned from that, I learned that, that, you know, I have no qualms about what I tried. I got a ton of press out of it. It actually helped launch my next book. And you know, I’ve learned a ton from it, but I, I lost 50 grand of my own money. And but that’s fine. I mean, eventually it wound up getting acquired by by by the venture firm. Right. And they paid off the majority of my desk. That was fine. I don’t know. I’ll ask you a little bit, but it was, it was, I learned a lot from it. I learned a lot about people from it. I remember trying to get funding for it and realizing how many people out there are.

Peter Shankman:

Right. And realizing that, realizing I learned two things from introductions. I learned that if I ever started another company, I wouldn’t take them. I wouldn’t take venture. I wouldn’t take any sort of funding. And I didn’t, when I did heroin, it was entirely on my own. And when I, when I, when it got acquired, they wrote me the check and that was killer. And second thing I learned is if I ever did have a lot of money, I wasn’t going to be an about it. I wasn’t gonna be an with money. I wasn’t gonna be that guy who sits there and judges everyone’s visit. I don’t think that’s, you know, like, come on, you know, life’s too short, man. There are too many assets out there be a decent person. And a lot of what I do now, I probably give away about 99% of my content for free, because a it’s the right thing to do.

Peter Shankman:

And B I know that if you liked them joining my content, you’re going to buy whatever it is I have when I do have something to sell. And you’re on my email list, you get, you get my emails and there’s, so few of them are, are salesy, right? They’re very, very rarely says they’re all like advice or information. Every once in a while, I’ll throw a link at the bottom, Hey guys, I’m running a class on a, whatever. I’m running a class on how to be a public speaker. Actually I have a class on on how to it’s called master the media. And it, it, it, it comes from everything I learned from three years of running health reporter. Right. And it’s like, I’ll put it in the I’ll put it in the chat here. Right. And if people sign up awesome, if they don’t sign up, that’s great too.

Peter Shankman:

If I’m giving you value from this talk and that to me is a win. Right. And if, and so, you know, so it’s funny. So that’s, that’s the link to the, to the, to the class. But more importantly, the other link is to my email list. And if you wind up signing up for my email list and not for the class, that’s fine. Because if I’m giving you value, I send out those emails, maybe once every two weeks, three weeks, it’s certainly not a high it’s Tuesday. Here’s your annoying email of the day. Yeah. And so when I send them out, you know, I sent out one yesterday with a link to a class I’m building about being a public speaker. And I think 19 people signed up just from that one line at the bottom said, Hey guys, by the way, I’m doing this thing, no hard pitch, no hard sell.

Peter Shankman:

I don’t, I, there are other ways to sell. Yeah. Without having to be a about it. Right. And, and that’s one of the things I learned really early on is that, is that having an audience? I mean, my email list is about 70,000 strong. Having an audience is a privilege. It’s not a right. Then remember when we, when we did the half Ironman together, I we were both wearing spandex, right? I had a crane. I had a train for a year for that race to be, to earn the privilege of wearing spandex. Having an audience is the exact same thing. If I walked down the street right now and wore spandex, I get arrested. Some people do not have the right to where very few people have the right to wear spandex, but we train for a year. I’m doing Kona in October, right?

Peter Shankman:

I’m going, it’s Trump training for a year. I’m going to drop it on 25, 30 pounds. I’ll get to the point where I’m, where I’m racing. And at that day I live in the privilege of wearing spandex. I’ve crossed the finish line, like 14 hours later, I’m doing my medal. And then some guy comes in circle, guys, relations, nice metal, can you please put on this bucket teacher? I got that same thing about having an audience. If I don’t give my audience the information they want, the way they want it, when they want it without selling them, they’re gonna go somewhere else. Yeah. Right. And the more companies need to learn that. So few companies understand that.

Keith Wolf:

Well, I think what’s important for people to understand also is that you got that list over years and the people who get it trust you, they trust you. So they don’t really have to know that much. They just know that Peter’s doing it. It’s quality. And all I really need to know is one line in the link. And it just, that takes time to build that trust up.

Peter Shankman:

That’s the thing about heroin. I mean, heroin was an email newsletter that before I sold it to PR news wire, it was going out to 750,000 people three times a day. I mean, I was sending 2.2, 5 million emails a day, double opt in. Here’s the thing I had a 91% open rate on those emails. That is, I mean, that’s, that’s obscene. That’s crack. I was sending out crack. I will never have that again on anything, but the reason for it, because you opened that email, you could get in the wall street journal the next day you could, your business could be the New York times. You could be featured in people, magazine, whatever you had to open them. And they were. They weren’t like, you know, one query and then four ads. It was just, it was a hundred. It still is. It’s still free.

Peter Shankman:

They still, you can still set up or it’s help a reporter.com. I sold it over 10 years ago, but it’s still very much there. 150 queries per email, three times a day, you have like 450 chances for free to get in the press every single day, Monday through Friday. Why wouldn’t you open that? Right. Right. And so by keeping it as a text, email, clean, simple to the point, it became this, this incredible resource for people to use. And it still is. And it catapulted my brand in the stratosphere because three times a day, I’m sitting in your inbox and I’m sitting your inbox with quality content that you need to read. Yeah. But again, it all came from knowing how to respect my audience at the end of the day. That’s it? You have to, that’s the only way to live

Keith Wolf:

You. I mean, how do you learn your, your writing style? Was it something you just developed? I mean, anyone who’s ever, I noticed a difference. I’m not trying to bash the, the buyer of it, but the day you stopped writing an email to me, I could tell. So why, where did that come from? Did you train yourself? Is it just something you’re not sure

Peter Shankman:

Get gifted up. I’ve always loved writing. I think that, again, a lot of it comes from ADHD. I write exactly. Like I talk, if you read faster than normal, which is the book I wrote about ADHD it literally sounds like I’m talking to you, right. It’s not a book that’s written like a book it’s written like I’m having a conversation with you. And I do everything like that. And, and a lot of it’s just because that’s just what I do, but that’s not normal. I don’t really care. It works. If, if, if, if, if everything I had to do was normal as a PO, as, as considered, like what the masses consider normal, I’d be a very boring person. I live my life in a way that works for me. And a lot of people seem to like that. Yeah. And so, you know, for me, it’s really about knowing what to do and, and, and again, here’s who I am, right?

Peter Shankman:

Like this, the song, and this is me from, from greatest showman is, is like written for me. Right. I don’t care what you think if you, and it’s not that don’t get me thinking, I care what my daughter thinks. I care what my parents think. I care. My girlfriend thinks that’s pretty much it. Right. I, I’m not going to waste time worrying about the reactions or worrying about what people who don’t contribute to my mortgage. Think of me. I’m going to go out of my way and try to help people. Cause that’s what I think we should do. We should help people and we should help animals. We should make the world better than when we leave it than how we found it. Other than that, our, our goal is just to have fun on this planet for that short amount of time, our goal is to have fun.

Peter Shankman:

I’m at, petershankman on all the socials, right? Same name on every single social media platform. And people always tell me when they follow me, they’re like, yeah, I follow you because you know, you might occasionally go off on rants, which I did. I think I posted like something like 32 yesterday during the impeachment trial. But, but you know, right this morning, I’m back to posting self-deprecating about, you know, how Mr. Fat got up and got on his Peloton for 90 minutes. You guys, this is who I am, and this is me. And, and the key is I write the way I speak. I write the way I think. And I have an audience that finds value in that. And I’m constantly talking to my audience and asking, are they finding value? And how can I give them more value and better value?

Peter Shankman:

And what would they like to see? Right. You know, do they want more video? Do they want audio w you know my audience, a lot of them are like me. They’re not, you know, they like short, short bursts of information, right? ADHD brain, like short little bursts of information. There’s this, the, I got an, a very early access invite to this thing called clubhouse. Yeah. And I joined it and I had, I get invited to be on someone else’s chat. And I had to sit there for a freaking hour, unable to do anything else. Like, wow, this is just incredibly not for me.

Peter Shankman:

I can’t sit anywhere for an hour. Yeah. Right. You know, this, this conversation right now is about as long as we’ll go, I can’t go, you know, I have people that, well, we’d like you to speak for two hours. I’m like, great. Over several weeks. How would you like that? And so, you know, you know, where your audience is, you know what works. I know that as I’m walking down the street going to pick up my daughter later, maybe I’ll do a Facebook live because I can do it from my hand as I’m walking in the street. And that kills two birds, one stone, I get the dope meat of the walk. I get the conversation with my audience. Everyone wins. Yeah. It’s the same reason I hate talking on the phone. Yeah. Right. If I have talked on the phone, I have to actually pay attention to him.

Keith Wolf:

I hate that. Right. But I can say, so when you and I did our, did our pre-interview call, we chatted for a few minutes. I went back and I was looking through your Twitter feed just to kind of see what you’re working on. And I noticed you probably shot up four tweets during our conversation. But I would never know the difference because you’re that, I mean, you like a lot of things going on. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s what you do. And I know that about you. And so I just found that interesting. It was just a real life example in the moment.

Peter Shankman:

I mean, that’s the key though, you know, and it doesn’t mean I’m not focused on you. Right, right. Right. Now, when we’re talking, I know that you have what, a hundred people in the audience. It is my job to be very focused on them. And so I am focused on you. My laptop is closed. I mean, it’s open, but I have zoom is full screen. I’m not looking at my email. I’m not checking texts. You know, everything’s on silent. Because that’s a respect that, that you and your audience deserve. Right. But I think that the, the problem is, is that we live in this multitasking world where people think it’s totally okay in the middle of a conversation to open up your email, start reading it. It’s really not right. If you only, you know, it’s the same before the air killed us, by going outside.

Peter Shankman:

I used to take all my meetings. I used to have walking meetings, which is, if you want to meet with me, we can do it. One of five ways we can meet at 5:00 AM for a run or a bike in the park, after which I’ll buy a cup of coffee, we’ll talk we can take a Peloton class at 6:00 AM in the studio. If in an after, which, you know, we’ll have a cup of coffee, you can meet me at Peloton, or you meet me at my apartment at 7:00 AM after my workouts. And we’ll walk to my office together. Right. But what I will not do is have a 10:00 AM or 10:30 AM coffee with you in Midtown, because I’m then leaving my athlete, my opposite at nine 30 to nine 45 to get there, which we’d have to shut down at nine 15, which means that I get the, I get the meeting and I have this half an hour with you and I have to walk on it.

Peter Shankman:

I’ve just killed three hours of my day to day. Right. So what may be a 15 minute? No. So we will meet on my terms. And like I said, it’ll probably be a 20 minute meeting at most. Right. That’s very Darwinistic right there. If I tell you that we can meet at 5:00 AM, because everyone, I get a lot of people. Can you pick my brain? I always say yes or you’re welcome to pick my brain at 5:00 AM tomorrow, meet me in central park or 7:00 AM. Meet me on my side, my apartment, walk to my office. Darwinism comes in the fact that they don’t, if that’s too early for them, or that’s not worth getting up or, well, that tells me everything I need to know about them. And chances are, I don’t wanna meet with them. Yeah. Yeah.

Keith Wolf:

Let’s so let’s talk about the ADHD. It’s something that you obviously embrace. You started a podcast it’s I’ve listened to, I’ve got a lot of value out of it. You have amazing guests on it. Unless I think I remember from your book that you didn’t find out technically that you had ADHD until later in life, although you looking back, you probably thought it was obvious looking back, but tell us about your journey. And I know you don’t like to use the word when you’re diagnosed, but found out that you had the gift of ADHD. Just talk a little bit about that.

Peter Shankman:

So all my life, I was a weirdo, right? I grew up weird. You know, when I was a kid in the seventies and eighties in high school, the eighties in New York city I went to high school, performing arts, right? The famous school I could sing. And I had no problem with the class. I was great at it’s the stuff that I loved was stuff. I was terrible at spelling out with it. Right. And ADHD, wasn’t a thing. What was the thing was sit down and disrupting the, and the irony is that, why was I just talking in the class? I was, I was the class clown. I was making jokes. Why? Because those jokes would give my brain dope mean, and the dope meat would actually allow me to focus and learn. I, when you’re ADHD, you don’t get the same amount of dope, mean as normal people.

Peter Shankman:

And so you’re constantly looking around for something exciting to give you that energy. And so I get in trouble, my parents, and I could never understand why I couldn’t just shut up and keep quiet in class. I never understood it. It wasn’t telling me mid thirties, I was seeing a therapist and he’s like, so, you know, peanut, I mean, they ask you, you know, have you ever, have you seen the new line of ADHD, drugs, what medication you’re currently taking for your ADHD? We’ll be talking about ADHD. He’s like yeah, you do. And that was the first time I’d ever, ever had any sort of concept of that. And as soon as I went and took the test, I got diagnosed with a ha I literally man, coming to America, taste the salt, everything made sense, right? This explains everything. This explains my relationship, my inability to have them.

Peter Shankman:

This explains why I can take the garbage to the front door. And then they’ll sit at the front door for five days instead of bringing outside all this, all of a sudden made sense. And so you know, why can I start companies on a dime, but can’t, you know, can’t commit to dinner. Yeah. Everything starts to make sense. And that’s when I realized, well, all this stuff I’ve been doing to keep me functioning is actually our hacks are, are, are our brain hacks are ways to improve myself. I just have to figure them all out and echo living room thermostat to off. And that’s one of the things that I learned is as I started cataloging these hacks and realizing what they were and what they were doing for me, everything became crystal clear. Right. And, but both the good and the bad, right.

Peter Shankman:

I started realizing you know, I don’t, I can go months without drinking, but when I sit down for a drink, I don’t have one drink. I have eight. Right. Not because I’m trying to get drunk, but because it’s in front of me. And so I was talking to my dad just once I’m like, dude, I’m an alcoholic. He goes, we had probably, but he goes, you’re not an alcoholic in the sense that, you know, you need a drink at 6:00 AM. He goes, D w what is, what is tequila have in common with pizza? I’m like, what? He’s like, you eat and drink them at the same speed. He goes, have you ever noticed you’ve never had leftover pizza in your life? I’m like, well, that’s not really a thing. He’s like, no, for most people love their pizza thing. Like, well, I didn’t know that, you know, I just thought you ordered the pizza.

Peter Shankman:

It arrived, you ate the pizza and that’s, so, you know, you put those rules into play. If my daughter wants pizza, we don’t order it a pie because she’ll have a slice in half and I’ll have five and a half or six and a half. We’ll go to the pizza place and we’ll buy two slices or three slices and we’ll bring them home and she’ll have two and I’ll have one. And that’s how I make sure that I don’t eat a whole pizza and succinct thing with alcohol. Right. I don’t have the ability to moderate. I have, I have two speeds and they are not gonna stay. And I’ll cut a. And there’s absolutely no middle ground in there. And so understanding that about myself allows me to focus on living my life in a way that prevents me from going off the rails.

Peter Shankman:

Like I said, I don’t keep alcohol in the house. I very rarely drink more than likely or not. It’s because I’m training for something, but that’s just a great, it’s a great excuse, but it’s still an excuse. I don’t drink because I understand that, you know, am I going to have, am I going to get drunk and go and pillage a village somewhere and wind up jumping? Of course not. But what’s gonna happen is I’ll have several drinks. I’ll come home. I’ll fall asleep. The sleep will be good. Right. I’m a big guy already having, I already have sleep apnea. So asleep. Won’t be good. I probably will forget to wear my mask. So the sleep won’t be good. I’ll wake up. I’ll feel like. Well, I didn’t wake up at 4:00 AM to work out. So it’s obviously not going to be a great day. So that being said, you know, screw it. Let’s go order two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches for breakfast. That’ll soak up some of the alcohol. Well, screw it. If I did that, I might as well order pizza. Now it’s like three months later, I’ve been in that cycle. I’m 20 pounds heavier. And I hate everyone. Yeah. What’s the line from war games. The only winning move is not to play. Let’s just not play

Keith Wolf:

Well. There’s already one person. I’m sure there are others who are just not asking, but how do you find out about it?

Peter Shankman:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I look, I, I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not sitting here pitching my book, but I, I do talk about a lot in the book because again, I didn’t know I had it. The book is called faster than normal. You can find it on Amazon anywhere you want fast, normal.com even. And the you want to talk to someone you want to talk to a therapist. I mean, there are tons of, of, of tests online, but they’re mostly kind of. If you can, you know, now, now with like Talkspace and all the different sites that are out there where you can where you can connect with a therapist, just talk to one, you know, it’s pretty obvious if you think you have it, you probably do, but you want to get tested just to know you know, for me, I mean, I, again, didn’t know really what it was.

Peter Shankman:

And then as soon as he started knocking these things, I’m reading this book. I’m like, well, you know, if you have 20, 20 or more of these hundred questions, right. Chances are you have it? I have like 97. Right? Okay. Well, there you go. You know, and again, it’s just, it’s just sort of one of those things where it’s not having ADHD is not, nothing will be the end, all be all of your existence. It’s not knowing you have ADHD or taking meds for it is not going to radically change anything until you’re ready to change. And that’s the key, you know, nothing can make you change until you’re ready to change. Whether that’s drinking drugs, food, sex, whatever, until you’re ready to say, okay, you know what I’m done with this, or I want to make it better or I want to improve.

Peter Shankman:

That’s what will happen. And that’s really what I learned. You know, I remember I had a girlfriend once who I said to us, I said, you know, it’s funny whenever I drink, I just, I feel I can drink too much. I wonder how that problem with alcohol may still be your problem. If you want a drink, drink less, drink less. Oh, well, it’s that simple. That’s me. Right. You know what that, you know, she, she wasn’t, she wasn’t wrong person. I mean, she could have been a little less of a about it, but she wasn’t wrong per se. The issue was that she doesn’t have the same brain as I did. Right. So only I can understand if I’m like that. And you know, the cool thing about it. I mean, there’s so many great things about having it each year, having a neurodiverse brain, you know, I started helping a reporter out because I had an idea in an airport, a security line in lax.

Peter Shankman:

By the time I landed in Houston, I had a sketch of the company. I went to the lounge, I had a soda call, the guy I knew who knew how to program websites. Like, can you build me something like a one-pager that captures people’s emails? And you’re like, sure. But that’s how I landed in New York. I had help reporters done. Wow. Right. The flip side of that is that same speed at which I come up with. Ideas for companies is the same speed at which I say, well, Oh, a 500, no, our hand table is open up a black. Okay. I’ll play a couple. You know? And, and so that’s led me to, I just, I actually just tweeted that. I tweeted, you know, one time I had a spur of the moment feeling, and I put $500 out in the hand that I split AIDS.

Peter Shankman:

And I had, I lost because he had 21 and I pulled eighteens and I lost a thousand dollars. That was a spur of the moment feeling storing the capital is not a spur of the moment idea. But anyway, and so, you know, but my point is, is that understanding that that’s how my brain works. My speaking cut. I speak all over the world. But before, before COVID I was traveling 300,000 miles a year for speeches. Now I do them all from this chair. But when I was doing that, my aye speaking contracts said, here’s my fee. Here’s my travel expenses. You will pay me. I will show up at this date and time and state and alcohol, except when it was a speech in Las Vegas, it was speech Las Vegas. It said you will fly me into if it’s a morning keynote or an evening keynote, you’ll fly me into Los Angeles the morning of, or the day before.

Peter Shankman:

I don’t know if it’s, if it’s a morning, keynote, you’ll fly me to LA the night before, and then I will take a 6:00 AM flight to Vegas and be there for your 9:00 AM. Kina. If it’s an evening speech, I will come into the afternoon, speak in the evening and then you’ll fly me to LA for the night before I fly home to New York next month. The only time that one applies, if it’s the lunchtime keynote, I’ll take a 6:00 AM flight out land. Do the speech take a 4:00 PM flight home. The reason for that being is because if the morning or evening keynote in Vegas to fly from New York, I’d have to spend a night on either side. You know, either, either in the morning, the night before the night after there, am I going to like dive into my kid’s college fund and lose it?

Peter Shankman:

Of course not, but let’s not put that opportunity on the table. Yeah. Let’s just take that out of the equation. And people say, Oh, well, what do you know? What if no one wants to read that and you lose your keynote, then it wasn’t meant to be right. You know, like I said, am I going to get drunk and do it? Probably not, but why risk that, you know, am I going to, am I going to, if I, if I, if I drive somewhere one day without a seatbelt, am I going to get killed? Probably not, but let’s not take that chance if we don’t have to. Yeah.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. So you you’ve talked about a lot of these roles. What are some of the technologies? I know you’re obviously, you know, use technology constantly in your life. What are some of the technology hacks that you put in place to, to keep focused on task?

Peter Shankman:

So everything in my life is is automated as much as humanly possible. My lights in my apartments start coming on in my bedroom start coming on at three 30 in the morning. By three 45 10 to four. They’re pretty much at full power. At four o’clock, my alarm goes off on the off chance that I am not up already and I I’m already asleep. I’ve already slept in my, in my bike shorts and a pair of socks. I roll five inches to my left and I’m on my bike. Right. I’m on my Peloton. My Peloton name is also Peter. Shankman again, feel free to add me. I’d love to raise them. I’m doing a 90 minute ride at 4:00 AM tomorrow, Eastern

Keith Wolf:

Peter. So I looked you up on a pallet. You actually a little, a little too aggressive actually.

Peter Shankman:

Well, but think about that a 90 minute ride tomorrow at 4:00 AM means by five 30, I will have all the dope means. Serotonin adrenaline. I need for the day. I won’t have to take medication. That’s huge. Yeah, yeah,

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. Do you do you believe in work-life balance? I mean, there’s something. Yeah.

Peter Shankman:

Yeah. When I go to sleep, I shut my phone off and I’m not just silent. I shut it off. Yeah. Because if I woke up, if I had to wake up at two in the morning to go to the bathroom and I look at my phone, you know, I’m gonna be up like now, but if I have to wait a minute and a half for it to boot up, I’m not gonna do that. Just go right to his bed. Yeah. I take time off. I go off the grid, no question. Or you have to have it. I don’t work. I don’t, it was a great question. And I used to keep the new Yorker that said, I’m not a workaholic. I just work to relax, but I might go on a plane and fly 14 hours to Tokyo and give a speech and then take three days and go skydiving in Thailand.

Peter Shankman:

I found that balance. Yeah, you gotta have it, man. You can’t just do one or the other. And, and the, the, the quote, unquote entrepreneurial dudes out there, you know, who are screaming and shouting and Oh, you know what man, you to, if you have a full-time job, you sit beside besides the $40. And then if you only have three hours sleep, that’s fine. You don’t need to sleep are telling you to kill yourselves and that’s realistic, but some, man, don’t do that and live a positive life. Get some sleep, get enough, sleep, get eight hours of sleep a night exercise, eat a vegetable. And one’s not pizzas, not a vegetable take care of yourself.

Keith Wolf:

Yeah. And I know, I know you got to stop here. I have about two minutes more than going to go pick up my kid. Yes. Okay. So if anybody’s got a quick, I’ve got hundreds of questions.

Peter Shankman:

If anyone does, you’re welcome to email me. Peter shankman.com is my email. If you just click on the link, S H and k.mn/emails, you’ll sign up for my list as well. Like I said, at petershankman on the socials. I do answer my own email. I’m not allowed to schedule things. My assistant took write access to my calendar away from me about 10 years ago, after I booked two different dinners, two dinners on the same exact night on different continents. She was a little angry about that. But I am allowed to answer any note and I do that. So I will always answer. Yeah.

Keith Wolf:

Oh, you definitely do. And when I asked you to be on this, you responded may have been 30 seconds. So I, let me ask you this. So w what’s either, you guys answer either way, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given for your career, or if you haven’t been given any great advice, what advice would you give somebody who’s early on in their career?

Peter Shankman:

That’s advice I’ve been given is very simple. If you don’t like where you are, move here, not a tree. If you’re unhappy, change something, right? If you can change it, don’t worry about it. If you can’t change it, nothing you can do. Don’t worry about it either way. Don’t worry about it too. Short life is what you and the other piece of advice I got if you can’t change the people around you change the people around you. And when I realized that that was like, my, that was my mind was blown on that. Life’s too short to spend the people that don’t understand you too. Sure.

Keith Wolf:

Definitely. I’m just curious, besides your own, what podcasts are there podcasts that you like and listen to them?

Peter Shankman:

Yeah. So what do I love? I love, like I said, Festa, normal’s mine, obviously. That’s the best one in the world. What else do I love? Let me see. I love I have my list here. It’s funny. Most of them, I listen to on planes as well, so I’m probably behind all of them. I listened to strangely enough, there’s I don’t, I, I don’t play golf. I, the sport, I, it kills me. There’s nothing about golf that I like, but there’s a, there’s a a podcast called driving improvement with a guy named Mark Russo who’s with the PGA and it is a golf podcast. It’s not really about golf. I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons from there. I totally recommend that. I like I don’t recommend it with Deborah Dean. There’s one called generation slay, which is by a girl named, and I have a host.

Peter Shankman:

She’s a 23. I, I keep a stable of kids. That sounds really wrong. Wow. I have a collection of that sounds even worse. I there’s about 10 kids, age 14 to 23, that every three months, while we used to be for COVID every three months, we meet for pizza and I would buy them pizza and just watch what they did. Right. That’s how I learned about Snapchat before anyone else and got my own. My petershankman on Snapchat. That’s how I learned about Tik TOK and all these things. I, I, every, every three months I’d sit with these kids. I just watched them for 90 minutes and watch what, what apps they’re using, what that’s, how I found out about Fortnite and about among the us and all these things. So I strongly encourage you have people outside of your own circle. They will, they will help you. What else do I love? Fun podcasts called everything is terrible. The clip out is a Peloton based podcast that I’ve, I’ve been on several times. And then of course pedal pixel, which is about photography and the WestWingWeekly, which is just

Keith Wolf:

Awesome. Very eclectic, not random. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, like I said, I could, I could pepper you with questions all day. I really appreciate your doing this. It’s a bit a thrill for me and someone that I’ve followed and looked up to in the marketing world and entrepreneurship world for a long time.

Peter Shankman:

Okay. As you know, you saved my life in our Ironman, so of course I have no choice, but do your bidding. And I know, but I appreciate, I appreciate you. You have me on man. I’m happy to come back. Yeah.

Keith Wolf:

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for joining. We’re going to cut it there. If you have any questions, Peter is very accessible. Peter. One more time, your email.

Peter Shankman:

Yeah. It’s peter@shankman.com and I’m at Peter. Shankman

Keith Wolf:

Perfect. And you can do us one favor. If you, if you like these webinars, just tell a friend about them. Hopefully they can join too next time. All right, Peter, thank you so much. Appreciate it. My pleasure. All right.