Peter Shankman on Community, Connection, and Harnessing ADHD for Success

This program is part of the Scene Projects Podcast Network. The Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists from across the Midwest. Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are. Welcome in to another exciting episode of The Scene. I'm your host Bubba Starts. And with me today from Source of Sources, Peter Shankman. Peter, welcome to the show. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm excited to chat with another community builder. I've been using your platform for the last couple of weeks. It's really been a game changer for us here at The Scene Projects. But before we get into all of that, I'd love to just kind of give you the floor and let you give us a little bit of your backstory. sure so you know i it's always interesting um i wasn't supposed to be doing any of this i was in i grew up at borderways new york city kid grew up with uh two musical parents i went to high school performing arts um was in graduate school studying fashion and portrait photography lost my financial aid government said your parents make too much money we're taking away your financial aid i sent i said them back a letter said the government my parents do make too much money however they keep it government didn't find that funny so uh moved back home to new york city uh was hanging out in the mid 90s hanging out in the chat room uh that part of something called america online which if any of your listeners are under 35 they're not gonna know what that is i went uh somebody in that chat room said hey my company's trying to build a newsroom i said sure i have no experience i have a journalism degree from boston university no experience i'll be great um wound up getting hired to launch the aol newsroom down in virginia and that was my first and only real job i worked for aol for about three years uh moved back to new york city in the late 90s when the dot-com boom was taking off realized that i could move a lot faster than a lot of the stoics all the sort of old agencies launched a pr firm blew it up in the dot-com boom uh sold it a couple years later did where i'll try to take a year off lasted about a week realized i didn't know how to relax blame my parents uh started consulting for several years running around in my late 20s early 30s so we're just having fun uh working for uh different companies all around the world eventually realized that i talked to everyone a lot of that's because i'm massively adhd and when i uh in talking to everyone i have a huge rolodex just people who know me people who um you know i meet and on the airplanes so finally a journalist just started saying, hey, you know everyone. I'm doing a story on whatever. Who do you know? And that led to my building a database called, at the time, Help a Reporter Out. Now it's Source of Sources. And essentially, this database was filled with hundreds of thousands of people I'd met over the years. And it kept growing and growing. And when a journalist needed a source on deadline for any media outlet, New York Times, Washington Journal, Oprah, whatever, they'd use my service. And it was totally free on both sides. It still is. Eventually I sold it and took some time off, wrote some books, got married, had a kid, got divorced, still have the kid. Journalists kept calling me and sources kept calling me, hey, that thing you built that's not as great anymore now that you're not running it, would you ever consider starting it again? I said, no, no, no. And eventually they bothered me enough that I said yes. So now in addition to the several other things I do, I have another full-time job. I run sourceofsources.com, which is about a 50,000-person mailing list where twice daily we send out emails to entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketing firms, PR firms, whatever. And these emails have queries from journalists all over the world. And if you can answer any of the queries in these emails, you do directly to the journalist and you can get quoted the same day, next day in major newspapers. You can go on television, whatever, it's totally free so that in addition to 100 million other things is is is what i do on a daily basis yeah well like you i wasn't supposed to be doing this so finding that database and introduced to it from another you know podcast guest or just someone that i had a discovery call a shout out to paige thank you and uh it means a lot right i i was you know equating to you off of off camera and our followers who know me you know i was a welder a few years ago and quit my job to to pursue this because i saw a need for especially in the music community even though i was a musician myself like there there's nobody out there that was really pumping those up i had released the song and you know i did the local radio i live in rural south dakota so not a lot of media outlets anyway and so i did like the the radio the two news stations and and then like the media tour was over and it was like well there's got to be more than this and i was a big podcast fan obviously listened to a lot of joe rogan but also uh followed kill tony and tony hinchcliffe's program and to that i was like man he's doing nothing but helping independent comedians why couldn't you be doing that in the music world and granted i wasn't doing the live show although i have developed some form of that we call the songwriter showcase now um it was just getting on getting reps and starting to talk to people you know one of my first handful of interviews was bill payne from the band little feet uh you know someone who's been in the music business forever and they were coming through sioux falls south dakota and they found me because i was one of the only media outlets focusing on the music business so it was really uh it took off very fast we did 100 episodes in nine months now we have over 400 episodes out there 1500 uploads on youtube 350 000 views so it really took off on me before i knew necessarily what i was doing so to stumble into all of this i've needed these networks and these different places to kind of fall into to get my bearings and to kind of find out what i'm doing it's not necessarily always about the stories or or what we're doing but it's about communicating with people who have been in publicists and all these people and i'm kind of working in a lot of these spaces that i have no idea and no experience with right so it's been nice just to kind of you know throw a line out there i quit it to fishing you never know what you're going to get but you cast your line out there if this email gets sent through the first one i did i got three four responses that same day and now you're having conversations and do i need you know am i looking for a story every week no but once a month to throw my line out there hey this is kind of what we're looking for business or or media professionals that are willing to talk to us at the very least they're gaining another contact in the media world and having a story put out about them and i'm gaining some valuable experience and knowledge from people who have maybe been doing it a lot longer the the fishing analogy definitely confirmed that you are from south dakota so we're good uh well and without the internet and without meeting people like you who have been you know working to build these communities since you know the the late 90s in the tech boom uh i would never have gotten as far as i have now ai has had a bit to do with that as well on you know the editing side and helping us you know craft media pitches and decks and a lot of things like that obviously i have no problem talking i knew this on camera part was going to be very easy for me it's really been all the stuff that nobody else sees that's been my education and what's taken time to kind to get used to it is crazy how you know turns of events happen and the next thing you know you're doing something completely unrelated um you know not a day goes by where i i don't think back to like high school i went to high school of performing arts right i graduated with marlon wayans with omar epps with jennifer aniston um what happened to your career yeah and you know what's funny because um in the grand scheme of things i i make this joke it's funny i use south dakota as an example i say that you know if 35 years after i graduated i could still if i was living in south dakota and 35 years after i graduated i could still see my high school from where i was living it might mean you know you might want to get out and do something with your life i live in midtown manhattan i can still out of my high rise window here i can still see my high school 35 years that doesn't mean i've done nothing quite the opposite you know so it's just it's just so funny how how everything comes full circle and how things work it really it really always always cracks me up i'm very lucky with what i do yeah and i don't live in my hometown but we live in my wife's hometown and now she works at the school that she went to school at she's a special education teacher and you know and she loves it and and for me i've been all over i might have grown up in south dakota but you know at 18 i read kerouac's on the road and already being a guitar player at that point i was like yeah i think i'm just gonna throw this thing on on my back and hit the west coast and i'd done that and i was selling magazines door to door and you know i spent a year in mexico uh you know on the run from some legal troubles and i've done like i've lived this massive life and for me to kind of come back now and to live the small town life where i get to walk my wife to school you know my kids to school my wife to work every day and and to be very small but i still get to go out on the road and tour and i get to visit these major markets and hang out i would never want to live there you know our mortgage is six hundred a month. I prefer that. I was hoping you wouldn't tell me what your mortgage is. Yeah. And you probably have, you're probably recording this in your podcasting room, which is a separate room with a door. You know, I can, there's my dog, there's my couch, there's my kitchen, you know, I mean, my detached garage in my backyard, which I know that no one in New York city knows what that well we do have central park there you go everybody's backyard no it's a it's a different lifestyle and you know because of things like what you've built with source of sources and uh you know obviously with your previous which also a member of that one but don't get nearly the traction there as i did uh with i did not expect a response that quickly i did not expect it and really wasn't sure of how it did it was just like well i'm in this group i want to submit a query you know i'm always looking for entertainers to talk to and it was within minutes within minutes of seeing the email go out with my query in it and immediately getting responses like oh this thing works and works really well be good this is a powerful tool be careful how you use it because you know you already have a busy schedule sir so let's not and not to flood what you're doing But it's incredible. It's incredible to see at work, you know, the daily emails that go out and to see everyone who's looking for it. And I'm going to be more than willing to answer any of those for, you know, things that I fit in. And it's really become a really, you know, a vital part of my morning to kind of get out there and to see and to see what other people are talking about. Right. From a national perspective, because my local paper isn't covering a lot of lifestyle and things, you know, I mean, obviously they're covering the town and what's happening at the high school. school sports and that. So it's nice for me to kind of tap into what's happening at the national level. What are people interested in for these major publications? And then when we're ready to kind of put ourselves out there for when we have something big to share, I imagine that someone can use it in that aspect as well. Yeah. I mean, it's really sort of more one way from journalist to source for the journalist looking for the source. But the nice thing is once you start using it you start to get an understanding of what these journalists are looking for and you can go directly to you don't have to use my service to pitch to them directly so there's definitely sort of a win on both sides it's incredible i mean obviously uh i know that you never saw your life panning out like this 35 years ago but you seem very happy with what you've built and and obviously you wouldn't have done it again having built it sold it you obviously enjoy the community uh the community building part of it right is there kind of talk about that because i'm the same way i i don't even really know what i'm doing it's just it's who i am i'm always talking to someone my wife laughs because she's not like that at all and she's like like you will find someone to talk to everywhere we go and you know now it's kind of part of my job but talk about that aspect and the passion for that specifically well i'm a i'm a uh massive adhd right so because of that i talk to everyone and when i realized that i actually could be a gift if i just shut up for a while and listened that's where things started really blowing up when i understood that i could actually you know i that's what created this amazing database that's what gets me the people in my living you know oh call this guy or call that guy you know everyone wants to be that guy that has a guy for whatever it is you need i have a lot of guys and girls you know people who i know who have um i've met in one way or another usually on airplanes or you know a hotel lobby or whatever and and and from that it's nice to have those connections and my logic has always been if you've had any modicum of success in your life you have a responsibility to send the elevator back down and i truly believe that um and so i've always tried to do that uh my first company all my companies have really been trying to help people i've written several books on adhd um and sort of how i use it to my advantage and one that i wrote about nine years ago is still in print and still being printed called faster than normal published by random house and at least two or three times we get an email from people oh my god there's the first book i've ever read that tells me i'm not broken and thank you so much you know i just there's enough pardon the expression bad in the world you know if you have the ability to put out some good stuff you really you really should i couldn't agree more i mean obviously i'm running this show producing it myself on stream yard i do this i have 13 shows on my four networks you know i'm probably doing too much and a lot of people couldn't handle one of these but it's very important to me to kind of use that as a superpower if you have the ability to do all of these things you know this morning i was editing a video for a show we have coming up on valentine's day and doing that and then i'm getting behind the camera and doing this and producing the show and later today i'll have meetings on this like i'm wearing many hats all the time i never considered a detriment now i've never been diagnosed adhd but they put me in gifted classes when i was in second grade because they're like look you can't just talk to everyone you know tested in the top one percentile on our standardized testing in second grade and they were like look okay this boy and they called us gifted back then they didn't call us put a label on it and try to pump us full of drugs in the 90s they were like hey we're gonna give him algebra homework in second third grade and so and then when we moved to south dakota and probably the reason i started getting into a lot of trouble is that i went back to like remedial classes and there wasn't those resources then to push me where i needed to i'm finishing my homework in two minutes everybody else is still working on it and and i'm not being challenged and i feel like it's so important these days to let people know that like you are not broken just because you operate differently than what the standards of society are it's just that no one's told you that you're special in a good way not like you know not short but off the wall so i wrote a kid's book um called the boy with the faster brain and the premise behind that is exactly that it's about a 12 year old kid named peter who keeps getting sent home with notes from the teacher and constantly in trouble and all that and what he finally his parents finally take him to see a therapist and the therapist learns that you know the kid is incredible in math and you know the stuff that he loves english or whatever but when it comes to subjects he's not he doesn't love he's not that great and he determined he discovers his brain works a little faster right so it was a great way to sort of teach these kids hey you're not broken because you know i've been i was told by teachers that i was broken from age five that you know it wasn't it wasn't called adhd in the 70s and 80s in new york city public school systems it was called sit down you're disrupting the class and so when you spend the first 20 years of your life being told you're broken you spend the next 30 in therapy trying to undo that so if i can help one kid not have to do that and maybe start a little earlier and to understand they're great that's a win all around so that's kind of why i do it i think my cat has adhd she's knocking over everything she's getting all cats all cats have adhd but they also don't give a um i i've had cats my whole life and and you know i i've they literally they they watch you and they get like i'll be sitting there and the cat will be right on the counter staring at me as she knocks a glass mug off the counter and watches it shatter just stares like what are you gonna do you're not gonna do anything sit there you know what are you gonna do throw me out yeah you're gonna not feed me exactly now i have now thanks to my daughter i have a dog of a rescue dog who um has been trained by the cat and essentially he i've never met a dog who when you get out of bed pulls the covers up and stays in bed he's a cat it's he's literally sleeping on the couch right here it's amazing uh so great well i know that you're doing uh you know you're a public speaker you obviously have all the books and everywhere is there a website that people can find out about that and then obviously uh pitch source of sources as well sure so source sources is just source of sources.com you can sign up there it's totally free my life is at shankman.com s-h-a-n-k-m-a-n.com just my last name i'm at peter shankman on all the socials except for uh twitter i gave that up about three years ago because it's ick but i'm everywhere else i have a pretty big instagram which tend to be either me complaining about training for some triathlon or marathon or bodybuilding something or reels of me traveling with my daughter. So I try to have a lot of fun, but yeah, I'm very easily available online. You can find me. And I do respond to all my own emails. My assistant doesn't let me book my own calendar, but I do respond to all my own emails. Fantastic. Well, Peter, I appreciate Source of Sources. I think it's a great platform. I appreciate you taking some time out of your busy life uh to chat with me and you know just a little podcaster here in rural south dakota but i'm really appreciative of what you've built and i was so happy to have just a few minutes to let you share a little bit of your story and to talk about your platform so any of our media people that are watching uh musicians and stuff as well uh who i'm always encouraging to start their own podcast to get out there and this is how you build your career, by building a network of people that will care about you. And that's what's been so exciting about working on Source of Sources is there's some really interesting people on there already that are interested in what you have to offer to the world. And it's been a blessing to me. So Peter, thank you for taking some time for me today. And thank you for being part of the scene. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Bubba Startz opens the episode by introducing the Scene Projects podcast network and welcoming guest Peter Shankman. The conversation delves into Peter's backstory and his career journey, highlighting his experience building and selling Help A Reporter Out and founding Source of Sources. Bubba shares insights into his own podcasting journey. They discuss the role of AI in podcast production and the importance of community building. The episode emphasizes the effectiveness and importance of community and connections, with Peter sharing how he uses ADHD as a superpower. The episode concludes with contact information and closing remarks.

#independentvoices 
#music 
#comedy 
#digitalmedia 
#careerjourney 
#SourceOfSources
#communitybuilding 
#AIinpodcasting
#adhdsuperpower 
#connections 


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