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018: Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out (HARO) | Why Nice Companies Prosper + Book Giveaway
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast, episode number 18. This is John Corcoran, and in this episode, I talk with Peter Shankman, who's the founder of the Helper Reporter Out website, and he's the author of a new book, "Nice Companies Finish First." So let's go. Welcome to the Small Business Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Do you want a revolution? You say you want a revolution? The revolution? It's going on right now. Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution podcast, your source for how to grow your small business without working 24/7. Now, now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran. Hey, everybody. This is John Corcoran. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Smart Business Revolution podcast. Peter Shankman is frequently seen on cable TV news. He's a talking head. He's always talking about a range of different topics from pop culture to social media to the days of events. He's also the author of a number of books, and he created a really helpful website. If you haven't checked it out before, it's called Helper Reporter Out. It's at Helper Reporter dot com, and it basically allows sources and journalists who want to get together. Journalists need quotes. Sources want to be quoted in media. It allows them to connect with one another. He also has a boutique public relations agency called the Geek Factory that he's had for a number of years, and as I mentioned, he's written a couple of other books. His latest book is Nice Companies Finish First, where a cutthroat management is over and collaboration is in. Peter was nice enough to come on the show and talk about his new book, and also was nice enough to donate three copies of his book to give away to listeners of this podcast. If you want to enter, all you have to do is go on your computer, go to this blog post for this episode at smartbusinessrevolution.com/podcast18, that's 1/8, and enter a comment. That's all you have to do, and we will be announcing the winner probably within about a week, week and a half. So if you're listening to this after that, then the books will probably be gone already. So finally, if you like this episode, please go into iTunes and subscribe. You can receive future episodes of the podcast instantly without even having to think about it. Also, if you sign up for my email list at smartbusinessrevolution.com, I will send you all kinds of other goodies, including videos and free reports and webinars that I do from time to time. And finally, as I mentioned, if you're driving or if you have the gym and you want to see the show notes where I'll have links to any of the resources we mentioned in the show, you can go to that same URL smartbusinessrevolution.com/podcast18. And so here is Peter. Okay. Welcome, everyone. This is John Corcoran, and I'm very pleased to welcome to line Peter Shankman. Welcome, Peter. Hey, good to be here. Thanks. Good to talk to you about your new book, which is Nice Companies Finish First, Why Cutthroat Management Is Over and Collaboration Is In. And congratulations on finishing the book. And I think, first of all, one of the most amusing things is the fact that somehow you managed, and you have a reputation as being quite a multi-trasker and a world traveler you're constantly on the road, constantly working on different projects, but you actually managed to release a book and have your first child in the same month. Yeah. I probably, in retrospect, should not have done it that way, but you know, can't really plan those things. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Nature and publishing are a little bit difficult to coordinate, I guess. So, yeah, well, congratulations on both. So the book is really interesting because I think there's a general perception or a long time understanding that the corporate world can be quite cutthroat and that many businesses will do anything to get ahead. But you're saying that that essentially is the outdated model and now Nice is the new black. Why do you say that? Well, it really is. I mean, the research that we've done, you know, in my writing that's both the research that essentially shows two things, number one, that never before have we been in such a collaborative time in terms of our purchasing power or our buying power. So in the respect that, you know, when I buy something, I no longer just go to a store because they have it. I check out the store. I see what my friends are doing. I go online. It's ever been easier before to find that information and to choose what companies you want to purchase from based on the results you're getting from finding this information out. Because of that, companies really need to understand that the sort of authoritarian days of Jack Welch and of Gordon Gekko era have really ended and the companies that are just a little bit nicer to their customers, both in business to business and business to a consumer, you know, are the ones we're going to get talked about and who we're going to get explored more and as such, they will actually wind up being more profitable. And is it the review sites that are out there, websites like Yelp that are out there that are allowing people to share reviews? Is that what's making the difference or is it more like the social media, Facebook, Twitter, that aspect? Yeah, more specifically, it's people talking to other people, people that they trust, people that they know, people that they've known for a while, you know, you look at Yelp is a great site, except that if I'm on, if I don't know you, why am I trusting your review? This is really about people whose reviews are trusted because they're my friend or there's someone I know, things like that. Some people say this is kind of a return to even simpler days when we were more of a parochial communities organized into small little villages. Do you see that? Well, yeah, what's really interesting about that is that, you know, back in the days when we were small little villages, look at the 50s, right? We had something called the sewing circle where dads would go to work and moms would sit around and they'd sew and they'd, but more importantly, they'd gossip and they'd talk to their friends about, you know, what butchers serve the best kind of meat or what makers serve the best breads and then when both parents started working, that really went away. Well, that sewing circle is really kind of back now, it's back in terms of be it online and people hanging out in person now really sharing information to help each other out. It really is. I'm calling it the movement of nights and it's amazing. And you wrote a whole book about customer service and how significant you felt that was in today's modern world. How does this book complement and differ from customer service? Well, there's no question customer service is still the key, you know, if you're, if you're connecting to your audience by providing customer service that's simply one level above what they normally expect and let's face it, we live in a society that normally expects customer service to be right around the level of crap. So one level above crap will really get you customers for the long term, treat them well, go out of there, go out of your way, you know, to really treat them well and you're looking at customers for life, we're going to go out and tell the world how awesome you are based on that. So the book, I love the way you organized the book because you broke it down into the nine nice characteristics that you felt were incredibly significant for companies that want to succeed in today's day and age. You want to explain why you identified those nine characteristics? Well, yeah, I mean, you know, people talk about, oh, it should be nice. It should do nice things, but they don't really define what that is. You know, one person's question of nice might not be what fits. And so we really worked in terms of defining the nice qualities. We looked at different companies the way they work and we looked at the ones that really generate revenue and make a profit from this. And those companies, we analyzed what they were doing specifically. And that's where we came up with these nine nice qualities as it were. Okay. And so the first one that you talked about is enlightened self-interest, which you defined as the act of doing something that benefits you and your constituents, whoever they may be. Can you tell us a little bit more about that first concept, first trade? Yeah. And light and self-interest is very simple. It just simply can't be all about you anymore. And the more you make it about yourself and others, be those others, your clients or your customers or your, even your employees, you know, doing something for the greater good actually does have a higher level of financial return as it were. As a great example of Paul O'Neill, the former treasury secretary who took that, I think it was in Good to Great by Jim Collins, where he talked about how they focused on safety, worker safety, and that really led to their turnaround. Is that the sort of thing that you're talking about? No question about it. You know, it really is focusing on the employees, focusing on the customer, focusing on every level where you look at how can this benefit not only me, but everyone else in my universe, because, you know, again, a rising tide lifts all boats. Yeah. The second trade you talked about was the accessibility factor. And you give this example of how the CEO, who was completely inaccessible to his employees and you had a friend who worked for this company and he wrote up in an elevator with him one day and the CEO hardly said a word to him. So other than the obvious personal awkwardness of being next to your boss's boss in an elevator, how does that reflect on the business in a poor way? You know, the thing that I always find funny about that story is I couldn't imagine working. First of all, if I first of all, if I was in that position where I was talking to the boss's boss's boss's boss, and I knew he wasn't responding and he was being, you know, part of the expression kind of a douche, right there, that tells me that I'm probably not going to want to stay at that company for long. You know, it really comes down to why shouldn't the CEO be friendly? He's the CEO. He has all these people who believe in his vision, wouldn't you, why don't we want to reward that? Right. And so just to be a devil's advocate here, I'm sure there are some leaders who have led, you mentioned Jack Welch earlier. Another one comes to mind is maybe even Steve Jobs, who wasn't known as the friendliest guy, could be kind of prickly. What do you have to say about those types of leaders? You know, there are always exceptions to the rule, as it were. But you know, you're looking at Apple where, keep in mind, Steve Jobs was once fired and, you know, was brought back and they'll always be exceptions to that rule. But you know, if you're a CEO of a company that has 35 people and you're eeking out, you know, a five, six percent profit margin every year, to think that you have the same ability to be untouchable as Steve Jobs, it's just, it's just, it's probably not gonna work in your face right now. That's true. Not everyone can be. If you could be as visionary as Steve Jobs, then you can be a little prickly. Exactly. But again, I would still say that that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be. Just because your company is growing to that extent or you're doing that well, you know, it still doesn't necessarily benefit you that much to be that prickly. And actually, I'll also point out, you know, you go into an Apple store in the mall these days and the customer service guy behind the counter is not prickly. In fact, he goes out of his way to help you with your whatever problem you have. So they do a great-- That's an excellent point. That's an excellent point. Yeah. So as far as the public is concerned, they didn't really experience that. Correct. And does that mean that Steve Jobs shouldn't have been nice? His employees? No, of course he should have been. You know, again, it's not had Apple started doing something like, "Oh, you know what? We're Apple. Sorry, your product broke. It's definitely our fault. But we're not going to fix it. You know, trust me. They wouldn't have grown as quickly as they did." Yeah. So another trait you talk about is strategic listening. And why do you say it's so important for companies and leaders to be listeners, to listen to their employees and their customers? Biggest problem you see is big companies who don't listen, who feel like they can control the direction of the wind. No one can control the direction of the wind. You want to control the direction of your company, you listen to the wind. You listen to what your audience is saying, what your company is saying, what your customers are saying. And you react based on that. If you isolate yourself in a bubble and you don't bother listening, you know, it's never been easier for your customers to go somewhere else. That's really the key. They like to go, if they want to go somewhere else, they can. They can simply walk away. And it's never been easier for you. Want to change a bank? It's three clicks. You know? So never before have customers had that opportunity to, if they don't like something, they'll walk away so you have to listen. Yeah, another one that you talked about, another chapter in the book is Good Stewardship. And you wrote in that section that Good Stewardship is about responsible management and ethical standards that are in sync with the concerns of all constituents who are important to your business. So tell me some more about that concept. I think that, you know, in terms of good stewardship, what you're really looking at is, again, and it gets similar to the rising tide lifts all boats, does a company want to help not only the company succeed, but does the CEO want to help the company succeed, help the employees succeed? You know, Good Stewardship could be defined as something as simple as doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do all the way up to, yes, co-signing a loan for, you know, one of your younger employees to try to buy his first car. You know, Good Stewardship is really, do I want to, I'm here at this company spending 40, 50, 60 hours a week because I respect the CEO's vision. Do I want to emulate that CEO? If you do, that's Good Stewardship. You know, one of the most interesting developments in recent years, I think, is companies like Tom Shoes that followed the one to one model or the greater good model where they're, they're not exactly a non-profit, they're not a non-profit, they're a for-profit, but they pour their profits into some purpose. Do you think that type of company is going to continue growing in the 21st century? Yeah, I do. There's definitely a market and a place for companies that are doing that level of sort of decency. What we're seeing now is, you know, nice companies do that, but they also realize that they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, to their investors, and they're finding a way to do that middle ground. The concept of, hey, we're donating money because we want to look cool in our PR release is, that's what's dying. What do you think in this point in time, and we're talking in 2013, why do you think that more consumers are interested in companies that give back or that have a greater purpose to them? And you know, and I'm thinking a lot of times people just go to Costco, they just go get the cheapest price that they can. So what do you think it is that is driving consumer behavior in this way? We're seeing consumers change because they realized, and again, I think this comes down in the fact that we have a bigger audience, we have bigger people that we can read, things like that. We're looking at the concept of people wanting to do things because they see the benefit. Does it mean they're going to spend $400 more on a product? Of course not. But we're getting to the point where we seem to understand they're willing to spend a few cents more or even walk further away to buy a different product because they understand that there's a better, the company that's doing it will help them long term, and whether it's help them, help their kids, whatever it is, will help them long term. I wanted to ask you just this kind of also another Dell's advocate type of thing, but a lot of companies thrive by having what's called kind of a velvet rope policy where they essentially say we're exclusive, we're only going to take a select group of customers for our buyers. That's only what we want. It's almost like they turn away customers. We're not interested in you kind of thing. Is that a different concept? Does that conflict with what you're talking about in this book? No, that is a different concept. Every customer wants to feel like they have something, they're special, they're look what I got invited to. It's one of the reasons that social media exists is so that we can share, look at how cool I am and you're not. But the concept of select customers, that's not necessarily disinclusionary or de-inclusionary. More than lines of, it allows companies to grow their audience and grow their product the way they want. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, it's a big difference between choosing which customers should get the first edition of something and then not helping in a PR or customer service way. You have that product now, it's not working, but we won't help you. There's a big difference between the two. I guess if we go back to Apple again, you could say they both have a velvet rope policy and good customer service because on the one hand, not everyone's going to want to buy a Mac, not everyone's going to want to pay the additional premium to buy a Mac. But once you own one, you do get that good customer service. You can walk into a mall and someone will help you with whatever tech problem you have. Exactly. Exactly. Now, you recently had a big change in your life because you parted ways with VOCUS, which is the company that purchased Help a Reporter Out, which you're really well known for. How does it feel at this point in time to be coming out with this book, have a baby on the way and be saying goodbye to the company that you created out of your house six years ago, I believe? It's pretty exciting. I have a ton of really good things coming on the way. I'm actually starting a new company that's a little quiet now, but I promise we'll announce it soon. So we have some really good things starting and, yeah, I'm super excited. I had a great time with VOCUS, they did a great job with Harrow, they're keeping it still the way it should be, they're doing a great job. But there's a lot of exciting things going down the fight. I'm psyched. I'm in a good place. So I was wrong at the beginning. Releasing a book, baby on the way, and new company as well. Right. Yeah, you know, because Dr. Bennett's just, it shouldn't be easy. Right. I have to. And actually, that's a great segue into the last question I was going to ask you about, which was on your blog, shankman.com, you wrote about workaholism. And you wrote that to prevent workaholism or to recover from it, all we need to do is find other things that we love just as much and to do those on a regular basis. What are your thoughts on balancing workaholism? I think that, you know, look, I have a blast doing what I'm doing. I have a great time doing it, but I also realize that there's a middle ground. You have to have a better life, you know, and you can only do so many things, so many of one thing for one for that amount of time. So I'm having a lot of fun putting other things into play. I'm sure that once I have a child, things are going to change massively, but I'm still looking at having a great time. And as long as I keep having fun at the end of the day, if I'm having a good time, I've done well. Absolutely true. And I know that you're going to really enjoy being a father. So congratulations on that, it's been one of the greatest things in my life. And for me personally, it definitely has made a difference for me in balancing my workload and wanting to get home at the end of the day. So congratulations with that. Thank you. Yeah, it's going to be fun. I'm really psyched. I really am. And good luck with sales of the book. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Good to be here. Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you're there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution podcast. [MUSIC PLAYING]