Esther: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and my guest today is the Founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Peter Shankman. Peter is also known, nationally and internationally, for founding the newsletter "Help A Reporter Out," which, if you don't know what that is, you are about to get the keys to the proverbial castle. So Peter, welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.

Peter: Thanks, Esther. Good to be here.

Esther: So, first and foremost, what is The Geek Factory?

Peter: The Geek Factory is really right now it's a holding company. It was originally a PR firm. It started back 11 years ago and I built it to pretty large – about 25 employees and a pretty good agency. I sold it back in 2001 – sold the clients and the staff, kept the name. And now The Geek Factory is really sort of a repository for every crazy idea I come up with, ah sort of lives in The Geek Factory.

Esther: So you're a serial entrepreneur? That's what you are.

Peter: I am. I am. I – when I first – someone first told me that, I said, "I don't make breakfast food," over and over again, but no, it turns out I am a serial entrepreneur.

Esther: But that's really cool. A lot of our listeners really have a lot of great ideas but they don't necessarily know how to get 'em off the ground. What do you think is the number one thing you have to do if you want to be a successful entrepreneur?

Peter: Not listen to people who tell you you won't be. First thing I ever did when I st- first started my first agency, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna incorporate, call it The Geek Factory," and I, I needed an accountant and I, I asked my parents for an accountant and they gave me an accountant's name and he said, "Well, you know, son, you prob'ly don't really wanna call it The Geek Factory. People aren't gonna take you seriously." When I sold it –

Esther: He didn't know it was coming.

Peter: - when I sold it for quite a lotta money, I uh, I called him I'm like, "So, you know, um, yeah, you suck." So yeah.

Esther: (Laughter)

Peter: Gotta sorta learn that.

Esther: So one of the things that you seem to be pretty evangelical about is teaching executives to think differently.

Peter: Uh huh.

Esther: What does that mean?

Peter: Well, I think that if you look at history, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world – those are the ones who actually do. Everyone else just sorta sits there and they do what they're supposed to do and it keeps them out of trouble and they don't get, you know, a lot of flak from their boards, but they never really achieve greatness. The ones who achieve greatness are the ones who are constantly fighting with their boards. You know, it's like, "We're gonna do this!" "No, that's crazy." "No, it'll be great!" and they, they do it and they wind up getting great stuff out of it. It's really just a way of thinking – you know, everyone says they're outside the box, so maybe it's time to go inside the box again. You know, just thinking a little differently and, you know, why wouldn't you try something? Just because it isn't done before, doesn't mean it won't work.

Esther: Right. How hard is it to start your own agency?

Peter: It is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will live, breathe, eat, sleep, everything it but if you love it, it doesn't feel like work.

Esther: Right.

Peter: That's the big difference. Right now, everyone who has a job they hate, "I wanna start my own company but I can't work 24 hours a day. It's gonna be miserable," you're thinking about working 24 hours a day at the job you currently hate. Think about working 24 hours a day doing something you love. It's not work.

Esther: Or it's totally different.

Peter: I am on my Blackberry 24/7 but I love it. It's never –

Esther: And your friends hate you.

Peter: Yeah. But, you know, you get over that. I don't need friends, I live in New York. But um – (Laughter) You know, you get over it and it becomes uh, it becomes a part of you. I've, I've been doing this now for 11 years. It has never, ever, ever felt like work.

Esther: So when did you know that you were gonna be your own boss?

Peter: My first job outta college, I worked for America Online. Yeah, I was actually one of the founders of the AOL Newsroom. It was great and I had a great time doin' it. With about two and-a-half years into that, about 200 of us got laid off all in one morning.

Esther: Sounds like a bad day.

Peter: It was, it was actually about 8:00 a.m., we were all had jobs. At 10:00 a.m., we're in the parking lot drinking. So it really wasn't that terrible. But um, and by the next day we all had jobs again 'cause everyone was like, "Oh, you worked for AOL, that's great." But you know, the problem was, workin' for AOL was a blast. I mean, literally, they let us do our own thing, as long as you got the work done, and it was great. It was my first job outta college, so it sorta set that – if you learn at an early age it's okay to eat Big Macs every day, you're gonna have a really hard time when you, you know, you're 400 pounds and you go, "Damn, now I have to eat, you know, lettuce," and so for two and-a-half years, we had just a blast workin' at – had the greatest time in the world and then finished that and I get into a real job. I'm like, "What do you mean I have to wear a tie? Wait, wait, woah, woah, woah, woah. Yeah, how does that work?" and so I'm like, "There's gotta be a better way, so I can do this on my own."

Esther: And what do you think were the biggest obstacles you faced? Other than people telling you no, like you personally, what did you have to face?

Peter: Um, when you don't have a lot of experience, it's kinda hard to get experience. You know, so, so what I would do –

Esther: It's a double edge sword.

Peter: - is I would – they'd say, "Do you know how to do this?" and I'd go, "Yes, I do." And I would go and quickly learn it. It didn't matter if I didn't, I would. By the time I needed it, I would. Other big thing, I was workin' in my apartment. I lived in a studio apartment about the size of you, you know, in New York City and, and I'd hear all my neighbors goin' to work every mornin'. And even though I was working, even though I had clients that paid, I felt unemployed, for like a year. Took about a year to get over that. I'd hear them leave in the morning. I'm like "I'm unemployed."

Esther: Now what do I do?

Peter: But it's like I really had clients and I think the big thing for me was to always have a TV on on CNN. Not Oprah, not daytime TV, but CNN. I'd leave it on the news and at least I knew, they're, they're people watching this all over the world in offices. So, maybe I'm doin' somethin'.

Esther: Right. And a lotta people say that it helps to get dressed in the morning.

Peter: Oh, I – every day. I'm up at 4:30 in the morning, every morning. I'm at the gym or I'm, or I'm running the park. I just completed a half iron man triathlon.

Esther: Congratulations.

Peter: I will work it into every conversation for the next four months.

Esther: (Laughter) It's a big accomplishment. It's pretty awesome.

Peter: Um, (Laughter), so you know you always get up early, you get dressed, you make your coffee. You don't sit there in your jammi- and I, I know people who – I don't understand people who go, "Oh, I work in my pajamas all day!" I would kill myself if I worked in my pajamas all day.

Esther: I know, I would, too.

Peter: I don't own pajamas.

Esther: I never – I get dressed pretty much every single day.

Peter: Yeah.

Esther: Sometimes I'll wear jeans.

Peter: You're dressed now.

Esther: I am. I did put clothes on this morning.

Peter: It looks good, yeah.

Esther: Thanks. So, I love to ask this question. What was your very first job? Before AOL –

Peter: Wow.

Esther: - what was your first, first job?

Peter: I was like ten. There was a fruit and vegetable stand down the street from my house and I walked down the street and I asked them, "Hey, I'm tryin' to earn money for," like, it was Hanukkah. "I wanna get my parents a gift, can I do stuff?" and they, they slave labored me. I think they had me probably, like at nine hours sweeping up garbage and like throwing stuff out. At the end of the day, they gave me five dollars.

Esther: Oh my gosh, though.

Peter: But it was the greatest five dollars ever 'cause I worked for it.

Esther: Well, you could – right. You could buy your parents some nice –

Peter: Well, I think I bought 'em like a pack of gum, but it was a – it was my five dollars, you know?

Esther: That's right. That's awesome.

Peter: But I totally became like Mr. Burns, like, "It is my five dollars. I will now strive to make millions more," you know? (Laughter)

Esther: Well, this is The BusinessMakers Show and I'm speaking with Peter Shankman. We'll have more with Peter Shankman after this. You've been listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at The BusinessMakers.com.

Aflac Commercial

Esther: You're back with The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at The BusinessMakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and I'm speaking with Peter Shankman, founder of The Geek Factory and "Help A Reporter Out". So, Peter, let's switch gears and talk about your super, super popular newsletter, "Help a Reporter Out."

Peter: It was originally a newsletter. It is really now sort of become a social media company in the respect that it's making a ton of revenue and um, very few social media companies can claim that. Simply put, HARO, "Help a Reporter Out," HARO is a three times a day newsletter that goes out to a little over a 100,000 members now where we, every day, send out queries from journalists to sources. These queries range from "I need a finance expert," to "I need someone who has a dog and has to go home to walk it." Whatever it is, our um, our tag line is everyone's an expert at something. You get these queries every day. If you can answer them, you simply email the reporter directly and everyone wins. You get quoted in the paper or on TV, they get their source, everyone wins.

Esther: It's pretty amazing. So –

Peter: It is – and it's totally free.

Esther: - tell me how I can get it.

Peter: You can sign up for free – it is – there is never a charge, at www.helpareporter.com.

Esther: Pretty fabulous. I mean, I, myself – I'll tell you – I have a quick story. I actually told somebody about it, a CEO friend of mine, the CEO, Robby Rutan of Cufflinks.com –

Peter: Uh huh.

Esther: - and the next week, I had a giant, I mean, I'm – giant – 20 bags of popcorn, gourmet popcorn from him sitting on my desk. "Thank you, it was a great resource." It's like, this is amazing. What do –

Peter: I, I notice a severe lack of popcorn in my office. What's up with that?

Esther: Well, I have a lot of it.

Peter: Send me some damn popcorn, woman.

Esther: I'm gonna send you some.

Peter: Good.

Esther: So, you've had great success and you've had tons of recognition for this product. Why do you think it's resonated so loudly with people?

Peter: The best way to describe HARO, it's, it's sort of like email cocaine. Here's what happens. When you get the HARO, you immediately open it and scan to see if there's anything you can answer. If there is, you answer it, then you get quoted in the paper and then, because we're humans, we send it out to all our friends and we send the article out and we put it on Facebook and, "Hey, look where I am! Look at me! Look at me!" and all your friends say, "Hey, how'd you get that?" and you go, "Oh, I got this newsletter, HARO, you should check it out." And they do and they send you popcorn. Let's say you look at the HARO one day and there's nothing in it for you. Just, that, there's no, nothing you can answer but there's a query that your best friend can answer. You forward it to your best friend. Your best friend answers it, gets in the paper, is just, "Oh, my God, where'd you find this?" "Oh, I use this service called HARO." I'd be totally surprised.

Esther: That's exactly what happened. My best friend was on BBC World News because –

Peter: There you go.

Esther: - 'cause I sent her a query.

Peter: We're moving into an age in this world of social media, which is coming down to relevancy and trust and HARO is the perfect example of that. You want to forward it, not because you can win something. You know, that's why so many people say, "Oh, forward this to your friend and get entered into a chance to win a car," you're not forwarding 'cause you care, you're forwarding it 'cause you want the car. HARO has – we don't, we don't do that. We don't – if they just want to send it to some friends, they do and we have the huge, high forward rates. We've never advertised. We're over 100,000 members and not one penny of advertising.

Esther: It's amazing. How did you come up with the idea?

Peter: I'm a big believer in Karma. In my spare time, I jump out of airplanes for fun. I'm a licensed sky diver and I have just under 200 jumps. That's my Twitter name, Sky Diver. With just under 200 jumps, you, you, you kinda become a believer in Karma. You know, the last thing you want as you're plunging towards earth at 120 miles an hour is, you know, "Ahhh, I should helped the woman across the street!"

Esther: (Laughter)

Peter: So you, you, you become a big believer in Karma and I was raised to help people. That's, that's how my parents raised me. They did really well. Um, you know –

Esther: Good job.

Peter: - when they weren't sending me off to work in slave jobs at fruit and vegetable stands.

Esther: (Laughter)

Peter: And um –

Esther: Well they must, you must have cared about them a lot.

Peter: Exactly, to buy them a gift with my five dollars.

Esther: Yeah.

Peter: One of the things I, I would talk to reporters and say, "Hey, you know, I know a lotta people." And it's true. I mean, I have the worst ADD in the free world. Mine's actually so bad, it's called ADOS, which stands for Attention Deficit Ooh, Shiny." And it's so bad that I talk to everyone, everyone I meet, I talk to. So, I know a lot of people and I wind up helping reporters all the time. Peo- reporters used to call me, "Peter, I'm doing this story on blah, blah, blah, who do you know?" I'm like "Oh, call this person. Call that person." Over time, it would lead to my tryin' to find people – reporters then call and say, "Hey, I need someone I don't know," I'd have to do a little more research. Finally, I'm like, "Lemme just push it out." HARO was born.

Esther: It's amazing. So, you know, HARO really is at the forefront of social media and it's actually, as a PR professional, changing the way PR professionals and journalists interact and do business. So how do you think it's doing that?

Peter: One of the main reasons is is HARO's a teaching tool; more than anything else, a teaching tool. We will teach you how to pitch. You know, again, totally free. If you send it – we get emails all the time, "You know, I sent out five pitches, no one responds," and I was like, "Well send us a copy of the pitch," and we look at it and it's like 14 pages and it has two .pdfs and eight .jpgs. I mean, like, "Okay, well here's maybe why." So you know, we're, we're working to, to bridge that gap. I don't believe in my heart that journalists and PR people wanna hate each other. I really don't. I believe they wanna like each other and the funny thing is, we started out going after PR people, you know, to get them on the list. A year and-a-half later if you, if you don't know HARO and you're in PR, prob'ly not doin' your job so well.

Esther: That's right.

Peter: That's like the automobile mechanic who doesn't know how to change a tire, you know? So, we, we got – if you're in PR you're on HARO. What we're lookin' at is people who are not in PR, marketing people, small business. Ninety-seven point seven percent of all companies in this country are small business and why should they have to pay 20 grand, 30 grand a month to a PR firm, they can't afford or, or pay $6,000.00 for a subscription to somethin' like this when we're gonna give it to 'em free and say, "Hey, if you have something, great. Go for it."

Esther: Right. It really has helped so many small businesses. Do you feel that's part of your mission?

Peter: It is part of the mission and the other, the other fun thing is it's helping small businesses also because we, we have one ad, one small advertisement at the top of each email. That's how HARO makes money and we're sold out until mid-February on those ads right now.

Esther: Wow.

Peter: And all these small businesses – we had a small business last week that advertised a woman who wrote her first book and she was on Amazon. Before the ad ran, she was like 337,000th or something on Amazon. She ran the ad, three hours later, she's number 3 –

Esther: Oh my gosh.

Peter: - on Amazon. We do this every day.

Esther: It's amazing.

Peter: It's amazing. We sold – a woman uh, has a website called, "She's Got Papers," where she sells magnets and papers and she came up with this new thing called a "Child's Learner's Permit," where they can – little magnet you put on your kids' 'fridge where they can learn to read. She, she sold 500 in 45 minutes after her HARO ad. I mean, it's, it's incredible.

Esther: Is this what you saw happening to HARO? What did you think was gonna happen to this service?

Peter: HARO was a website – a little email list that I was using so that I could help out some reporters and they'd remember me when I called. I never expected it to be this and the funny thing is everyone says, "Oh, you know, you're – you've created this overnight success." Well, it's an overnight success that took ten years.

Esther: Right. No one's ever an overnight success.

Peter: I've been working with journalists for ten years and getting them to trust me. It's only n- it's like, it's like walking up to a bunch of cats going, "I have food!" You know, there totally not gonna get it and run the heck away. But if over the course of ten years you go, "Here's some food. Here's a," they're gonna trust you and come right up to you.

Esther: So, what does it take to earn that trust? If somebody is trying to talk to journalists, maybe they're not using HARO, or they're just starting out –

Peter: Best bet is don't pitch yourself, pitch an idea. Pitch an idea. Pitch a uh, trend. You know, call the reporter or email the reporter and say, "Hey, I have some info. You know, this is what I know. This is what I'm expert at. Feel free to put me in your Rolodex. Call me if I can help you, I'm happy to do it."

Esther: More conversational, not necessarily so –

Peter: Yeah, you're not saying, "Write about me!" Right, saying "Write about me," is the equivalent of going up to the cats, "I have food!" I'm gonna try to use that in every possible sentence now for the rest of the interview. Um –

Esther: It's wakin' me up. That's for sure

Peter: Um, you know, so you wanna, you wanna be able to go up to the journalist and say, "Hey, I have info. If you need it, I'd be happy to help you."

Esther: Well, that's great. I'm talking with Peter Shankman, founder of Geek Factory and "Help A Reporter Out" and we'll have more with Peter after this. I'm Esther Steinfeld and you're listening to The BusinessMakers, heard here and online at The BusinessMakers.com.

[Aflac Commercial]

Esther: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at The BusinessMakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and I'm continuing on with Peter Shankman. So, a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs or they wanna be entrepreneurs. What does it really take to find success in PR?

Peter: I think one of the key things is have a thick skin but be a little smarter than everyone else. If everyone else is out there pitching stories and going, "I have this great story," go, go and say, "I have a great trend. I have a great idea." You know, here's something you might be interested in. Be a little bit smarter and you will win. Be a little smarter you can own the world. It is amazing as a collective society how incredibly stupid we are. You know, I'm, I'm including myself in that. The majority of us here, we're just not very smart. So, by going in and saying, "Hey, I have a couple of ideas that are just a little bit above the," be a little bit better at customer service. Talk to your clients better. Talk to your journalists better. Send your journalists information that have nothin' to do with your clients but might actually help them one day when they're on deadline. You will make friends and it's the easiest thing in the world.

Esther: Right, make friends. That's a great tip if you're in PR.

Peter: I thought so.

Esther: What are some of the resources or the websites or the books? Like, what are your things that you resort to in times of need?

Peter: I – one of the biggest things I ever do is I make sure that I read things that are not related to me, um, as much as humanly possible. I will go on blogs and find blogs that have nothin' to do with me and just read because you never know where you're gonna spark interest. On the same note, I try to use my time wisely. If I'm going out for a run or a bike ride, I'll take a podcast with me. A couple podcasts on PR or marketing or tech or entertainment, things that interest me or that can somehow help me and I'll listen to them and I'll kill two birds with one stone. I'll come back, I'll be a little bit smarter. So I might be a little bit fatter. I don't know how that works, but, but I do tend to, to try to listen as much as possible to get that information that's you know, an hour run is made a lot easier when you're going through a podcast.

Esther: I have one last question for you –

Peter: Surely.

Esther: - and it's something that we ask all of our guests because it's, to me, really interesting and if you could give one piece of advice to our listeners, what would it be?

Peter: Never shoot yourself down. Too many ideas are killed because people kill them before they ever try to launch them. The worst thing that can happen is it will fail. You will then go and do something else. Edison was asked, you know, you tried 2,000 times to invent the lightbulb. You finally got it, didn't that take too long and Edison goes, "No, I learned how not to invent the lightbulb 2,000 times." It really is so true. It's – you know, we – "Oh, that'll never work, I won't do it." Well, you don't know now, do ya? And you just sorta guaranteed it won't.

Esther: Well somebody else is gonna do it.

Peter: Exactly!

Esther: I really appreciate your time. It's been great talking to you and getting all this info from you, it's awesome.

Peter: My pleasure.

Esther: And that does it for our chat with Peter Shankman, Founder and CEO of The Geek Factory and "Help a Reporter Out". I'm Esther Steinfeld and you've been listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.