Ep 50 - Media Visibility and Entrepreneurship for Introverts and Neurodivergent Folks

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Welcome to Thinkydoers.

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I'm Sara Lobkovich, strategy facilitator and OKR coach, and I'm

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here for the strategic thinkers, the behind-the-scenes force multipliers,

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and anyone who's ever felt like a square peg in traditional business culture.

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If you're wired for change but struggle with organizational friction, moving

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goalposts, or feeling like you're speaking a different language than your leaders

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and colleagues, this show is for you.

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Here, we explore how to move from insight to impact turning your

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strategic vision into undeniable outcomes that actually matter.

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Today I have for you a short, as our 50th episode.

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I'm.

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celebrating with Peter Shankman — five-time entrepreneur, author, and

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co-founder of Mental Capital Consulting.

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Peter didn't realize his ADHD was an asset for him until he became a founder.

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Now he's helping companies build neuroinclusive workplaces.

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If you've ever been told you are too much or wondered whether entrepreneurship

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might be the path because traditional employment just doesn't fit you,

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this conversation is for you.

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It's also for you if you're a high-expertise introvert.

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Media, and earned media, and being a media source, are some of the ways that us

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high-expertise introverts can help get our message and expertise out into the world.

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And that's also part of Peter's background.

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And while I don't get the impression that Peter himself is an introvert,

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he does have quite a bit of insight into media and how that works.

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You'll learn a little bit about SOS, his project that helps match

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reporters and sources, and I'll include those links in the show notes.

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So, Peter, I'm really delighted to meet you and to have you on the podcast.

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For folks who don't know who you are, tell us who you are, what you

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do, and why you were interested in speaking to Thinkydoers.

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So My name is Peter Shankman.

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I am a born and raised New York City kid, still living here after 53 years.

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I am an entrepreneur with five startups and three exits under my belt.

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So I'm currently running two companies.

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Most notably, I created a company that connected journalists

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with sources around the world.

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I sold that countless years ago, and then when I heard it wasn't doing that

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great, I rebuilt it under a new name.

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I currently run it as sourceofsources.com, a very easy, simple free newsletter

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that goes out twice a day.

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You get queries from journalists all over the world, and if you can answer them, you

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reply directly to the journalists and you get quoted in media all over the world.

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I co-founded Mental Capital Consulting, which is a company that helps companies

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attract, ,hire, and retain neurodivergent employees while helping to make

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their companies more neuroinclusive.

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I've written several books on both customer experience and neurodiversity.

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I'm talking ahead on most of the networks of a corporate keynote

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speaker with a couple of thousand speeches in my belt, and I'm a single

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dad to a 12-year-old girl, which is just more fun than anything else.

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Yeah, I've been a Peter follower since the beginning of the first

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project way back on the bird site place.

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what I'm most curious to have you talk about with my folks, who are not all

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neurodivergent, but we've got a lot of neurodivergent folks, lots of introverts

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here, people who are strategically wired.

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So we tend to be the quiet ones in the background.

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Your projects help folks like us get out there or find ways

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to put ourselves out there.

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How did you wind up focused on PR and media awareness?

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I started my career having no idea what I wanna do with my life.

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I was hanging out in an America Online chat room back in the

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nineties when AOL was the internet.

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Someone in the chat room said, "My company's trying to build a newsroom. Send

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me a resume." Like, sure, I'm fresh outta school, I have absolutely no experience

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of living in my parents' basement.

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This will be great.

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I learned that sarcasm does not translate well on the internet.

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And I was hired two weeks later as one of the founding editors

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of the America Online newsroom.

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I moved down to Virginia and helped launch a newsroom with no experience whatsoever.

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We built “Welcome, you’ve got mail” in today's, the little newspaper

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icon in Today's News, we built that.

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And it was an incredible experience.

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I learned very quickly that if you didn't know what to

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do, fake it and figure it out.

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And that was awesome.

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I figured every job was like that.

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I left AOL three years later, and I was wrong.

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Every job was pretty boring and kind of like, "Hey, do your work," and you

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have an 8:00 a.m. meeting, an 8:30 meeting, 9:15 meeting, 10:15 meeting.

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And my ADHD, which I didn't know I had at the time, I knew that

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a was a great place to work.

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I didn't realize why it was off the charts and my next job because they had us come

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in every five seconds and I'm like, oh "Oh my God, this is Russia and this is

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terrible." I lasted a week and I realized, okay, apparently the only way I had to

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work is either at AOL or by myself.

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And so I started, with no experience, a PR and marketing firm that I figured

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would cater to the dotcom set since I had AOL experience, and I built it.

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In three years we had the darlings of dotcom, clients,

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Napster, Juno, things like that.

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Sold it to a larger agency in 2001, and that was the first of many.

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I realized that I play well with others when I can make the game, and

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we wound up just doing a lot of fun and having a lot of every company

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I've done has been a lot of fun.

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The goal is to have a blast with it, to enjoy it first and then figure out

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what to do and how to make money second, and that's sort of how it's been.

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I love that you talk about entrepreneurship the way you do.

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I get as many questions about being self-employed as I do about the

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substance of my work from other people who are neurodivergent.

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I'd just love to hear a little bit more about your entrepreneurship

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journey with your wiring.

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I think that started to change.

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I think we are starting to see CEOs and founders and startup entrepreneurs

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lean into that a little bit and say, "Hey, yeah, my brain does work

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differently, but here's how it benefits me." I've given a ton of talks.

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And listen at a ton of conferences where people say, "Yeah, I am

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neurodivergent," and it wasn't until I became an entrepreneur or CEO that

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I realized there were benefits to it.

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You gotta realize the majority of us, especially in my mind, my timeframe,

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and my age group, have been told our whole lives that were broken and have

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been told that, you know, "sit down, you're disrupting the class." I mean,

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my mantra in junior high was, "sit down, you’re disrupting the class."

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And it took about 20 years after high school to get diagnosed and to realize,

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"Hey, I can make this my superpower," or not even superpower, "I can make

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this my benefit." And when I finally realized that it took a lot of undoing.

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I've been in therapy for 25 years, took a lot of therapy to get over the

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fact that I constantly felt broken.

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I'll have great days and I'll still believe that.

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It's just luck.

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It's a constant battle, constant struggle to get that done, but over time you do.

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And you know, over time you realize that, "Hey, maybe I'm doing something cool here.

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Maybe this is worth it." It takes time.

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And some of us have to make our own sandboxes to do it.

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My last guest, we got into the conversation of being strategic isn't

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necessarily an asset as an employee.

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It can be in the right job, but it can also be something that makes

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it even harder to be an employee.

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Let's talk about the role that media visibility can play for folks

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like me who really struggle to put themselves out there, the folks

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who are more shy, more introverted.

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What do you think the role is of media visibility in a

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shy entrepreneur's toolkit?

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The nice thing about media visibility is that it

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does the talking for you.

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Being able to showcase, to not have to say anything about yourself, but

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rather, look at this article, look at me on tv, look at this thing that I'm

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listing linking on my website to this, to this 30-second clip or whatever.

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It's does the talking for you.

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It tells the world that someone other than yourself has already thought you

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were great, and someone than yourself thinking you're great is a benefit because

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no one believes how good you are if you're the one who's forced to tell them.

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But if everyone else, other people tell you, you know, "Oh, that

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person's amazing, you should go talk to him," you're gonna believe

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that it comes from a trusted source.

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So, you know, media availability plays a great role in that because it allows

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you to be that person that everyone wants to know, everyone wants to talk to,

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without you having to talk about it to say, "Hey, look, I'm perfect," and lets

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other people do that homework for you.

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You mentioned in the intro you work with companies that

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need a better understanding of neurodiversity in the workplace.

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What do you wish that more companies knew about cognitively diverse workplaces?

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I think it comes down to the fact that companies are afraid of change.

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That's the way we've always done it before; that's what we'll continue to

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always do it." Companies don't realize that there's tremendous benefit in

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accepting change and embracing change and realizing that the people who can lead

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your company into some of the best times are people who think a little differently.

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If you think the way you've always thought, you'll get

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the results you've always had.

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Being able to think about new ways and new ideas and ways to run your company and

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ways to grow that you haven't thought of before, that you've been afraid to think

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of before, tends to bring great results.

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And people who are neurodiverse tend to think differently by default.

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So allow that in and allow your company to embrace that.

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You'll find an amazing experience waiting for you both financially and,

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from a work standpoint, from a corporate culture standpoint in all aspects.

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Do you run into leaders who are resistant to the dissent?

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And when you do, how do you work with them?

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All the time.

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You're gonna get people who are afraid of change, and you have to help them

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understand that if their goal is to generate revenue and to grow and to

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increase profits and to grow their business and to take over new divisions

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and sectors in places that they haven't been before, they're gonna have to

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do things they haven't done before.

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And a lot of the resistance we get is that they have never seen it done before.

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They don't realize that it's been done in other ways.

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And so helping them understand that and saying, "Hey, look, here's the

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benefits, here's the people that can help you do that," showing the results

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from other companies that tends to work.

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Showing them results from other companies tends to make them very happy.

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Awesome.

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Well, I know you've got a sick kid that you need to go pick up.

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So, where can people find you if they wanna learn more about your work?

Peter: 00:09:43

Yeah.

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I mean, my entire life is at shankman.com.

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I’m @petershankman on all the socials except Twitter.

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I don't use that anymore, but you can find me at Peter Shankman everywhere

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else — Instagram, Threads, even Peloton.

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So if you wanna catch an early 5:00 a.m. ADHD-fueled ride with me one morning,

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feel free to follow me on Peloton.

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I answer my own email, peter@shankman.com.

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I'm not allowed to run my own calendar; my assistant takes that away from me.

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But I'm allowed to answer all my own email, so I encourage you to reach out.

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I love, I love talking to people.

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Your podcast is great too.

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Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to riff on?

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I just think that people need to understand that neurodiversity, if you

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are neurodiverse and you're coming out and saying you're neurodiverse, sharing

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that cannot be the center of your life.

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It doesn't have to be that which you start off every introduction with.

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But on the flip side, don't be shamed by it either.

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You have a brilliant brain.

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No matter what your brain is like, it's simply a way to

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grow it and benefit from it.

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Don't hide it.

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You don't have to make it the centerpiece of everything you do.

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But don't hide it.

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Don't hide behind it.

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Don't be afraid to embrace the fact that you're different and

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embrace the fact that you have these gifts that not everyone has.

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You're speaking to me.

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The pandemic made it impossible for me to mask my neurodivergence.

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But you're sitting here hosting a podcast, so congratulations.

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You're doing really well.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, putting the pieces together, I made my own sandbox, and I put

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together the environment and ways to meet my support needs with

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what I can do in my own business.

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I'm about to do a really big talk about being neurodivergent, so it's gonna

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be out there, but it still feels like a risk with working with other CEOs.

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And I just remind myself that a good number of them are also neurodivergent,

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whether they know it or not.

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So it shouldn't be a disadvantage in our work with leaders.

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Amen.

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All right, Peter.

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Well, it's great to meet you.

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Thank you for coming on.

Peter: 00:11:27

No, I'd love to come back on when I'm not rushing out

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the door to pick up a sick kid.

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Not at all.

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Girl dad comes first.

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Thank you, Peter.

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All right, friends.

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That's it for today's 50th episode of Thinkydoers.

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You can find Peter at shankman.com, @petershankman on Instagram and Threads,

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and his podcast Faster Than Normal.

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He answers his own email at peter@shankman.com.

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You can find at saralobkovich.com or on any social media platform — I'm

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pretty much anywhere @saralobkovich.

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Please subscribe to Thinkydoers wherever you listen to podcasts,

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leave us a review, and share this 50th episode with your connections.

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Thank you for being here.

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These conversations matter, and they reach more people when you

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help spread and amplify them.

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Until next time.