Peter Shankman is a successful author, entrepreneur, corporate speaker and innovator and achieved all of that while being diagnosed with ADHD in a career that deals with a lot of math and comprehensive thinking.  Quite the anomaly.

He also wakes up and works out everyday before 5am. That’s an anomaly.

Last week, Peter Shankman connected with our class through Skype for a Q&A about media marketing. The experience was eye opening because not many people as successful as him are so willing to give back.

When I approached Peter I asked him for some advice on how to get sponsorships for my podcast, he gave a very simple response: “Just get the first one and use that as leverage.” While the words were simple, the advice was helpful.

I have spent all of the last two years finding ways to get sponsorships for my podcast by approaching companies and offering my platform. But what Peter told me has totally changed my mindset. I now have confidence when it comes to negotiating with companies because I know that I can leverage other companies against each other. It sounds like a simple economics concept, but that’s a class I finished with a 1.0 GPA so safe to say economics is not my forte, I’ll stick to the media world.

I was grateful for this advice, but Peter wasn’t done.

Next he searched my podcast and gave me advice on how to make my podcast page more aesthetically pleasing and attractive to viewers. I never thought simple things such as changing the titles and descriptions could make my podcast look so much more attractive to my potential audience.

Peter showed me that naming every podcast “Strictly Hoop-Talk Ep.1” or “Strictly Hip-Hop Ep. 5”  I was being redundant. Of course people knew this was Strictly Hip-Hop or Strictly Hoop-Talk; the name is on the podcast channel. This made me take a second look at my page and when doing so I noticed that my listeners were not getting the right message about each podcast. iTunes on the desktop only lets you display the first four words of the title and description so it made me realize that for every new viewer I have to make every word count so they can clearly know the topic of conversation for each podcast. People always reference this era of media consumption as a “microwave era” where people consume content at a rapid pace for a short duration of time before going to the next medium to consume their next content of choice.

The way Peter went on to give thoughtful answers with the exact same level of passion to each classmate was inspiring. Throughout the whole Skype call he was engaged and showing us all the possibilities with a great work ethic. Very few business professionals are able or willing to help young people like Peter did. In an industry that teaches people to be ruthless Peter is caring the odds of that are probably the same as having his success with ADHD.  Quite the anomaly.