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- [00:00]
A
Here's where most people get tripped up. Do not send the pitch to infozzfeed.com or editorlora.com no one's going to read that. You need to find the commerce or shopping editor or writer. If someone has the word commerce or shopping in their bio, it means that they are responsible for recommending products that people can shop from. I have a database in my PR program of 100,000 journalists and 1 of the lists is hundreds and hundreds of journalists who are just covering gift guides. But you can start to do it on your own. You can start to put a Google News alert and type in Gift guide Gift Roundup gifts for him and it'll ping you with all the articles written about your industry. And it trains your brain to think in terms of subject lines, which is good. And it also you can start to copy and paste the name of the journalist writing the article into your ever expanding Excel spreadsheet, which becomes your own.
- [00:49]
B
Media database welcome back to Built Online, the podcast where we dive into everything online business. Here we explore the minds of of creators who are building online businesses to power their dream lives and ultimately transform economies. I'm your host Cody McGuffey and if you're new here, I'm the founder and CEO of Ever Be, a Creator commerce platform where we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue their passions and to live life on their own terms. We're on a mission to make creator commerce accessible to everyone throughout the world, no matter where they are, and to make a positive impact in our families and our communities. And and we believe that everyone that truly commits to a vision and pursues it with an undeniable force of will that they will ultimately succeed. I'm really excited about today's show. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to ask a quick favor for anyone that's listened to the show before. If you haven't already, please let us know if these episodes and these conversations are are helpful or not. Share your feedback in the comments and review it if you if you would. It truly helps the podcast. It helps our team, it helps me personally understand what types guests that we should have on the podcast that really just helps us improve the show to make it better. We need your feedback. We would not be able to operate without your feedback. So be sure to follow the podcast, subscribe to the channel wherever you're watching this. So you really never really miss out on that. That one nugget that can really change your business and Change your life. Enough of that. Really excited to have you here. Let's jump into today's show. Gloria, what's going on? How are you?
- [02:20]
A
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to dive in.
- [02:24]
B
I'm happy to dive into. I'm happy you're coming on. So thank you for being here. I'm really excited to learn about your story, learn about kind of your experience. There's so many people here that can benefit from understanding what PR is and all this stuff that you, that's your world and that's not personally, it's not my world at all and it's definitely not our listeners world. So first maybe we can just start with like who's Gloria Chow? And then your story a little bit.
- [02:50]
A
Yeah. So I actually this is going to be a good one for you guys because I've actually never worked a day in my life in any PR or marketing agency. And so the whole story about how I do PR is a very disruptive way. I really believe that PR agencies are not built for small businesses and no one's really serving the small business e commerce founder and from hacking, literally hacking PR from the outside and cold calling. I'm going to share with you the methods that make PR accessible for everyone because I think it is our duty and our responsibility as founders to advocate for ourselves and be our number one cheerleader. Let me back up a little bit. I actually used to be a US diplomat and I never worked in pr, but I always wanted to be. I always call myself like everyone's unofficial hype woman. Like I'm like that hip hop MC who's like on stage hyping the crowd up. It's going to be my next career, I think, and I love to see people win. And when I was in diplomacy, because, you know, I studied international relations, I was always very curious about different cultures. When I got into government, I realized like, wow, you know, there's a type of personality that's really suited for bureaucracy and a type of personality that's suited for entrepreneurship. And I am a creative person and I realized it just wasn't a personality fit. And so I probably applied for over, I kid you not, like a thousand jobs in PR and communications because I was very, I was a very strong communicator. I was also a film producer before that. And so I always wanted to work in pr, but I quickly realized that the PR industry is very gatekept and very traditional and they wanted people with very specific experience which is working at an agency. And so I Quickly realized, like, wow, like, this is not really something that's open to outsiders. And so I just had to start getting tiny clients. You know, this person was. Had a fintech startup. I didn't know what fintech was really. And he was like, yeah, I'll pay you a couple hundred bucks if you can get us featured on tv, on cnbc, on Wall Street Journal, on New York Times. No idea what I was doing. I didn't have any connections to any journalists because, remember, I never studied media or journalism. And I had to pick up the phone and started cold calling the operator at the New York Times after googling their number. And I think just from thousands of cold calls with sweaty hands and getting rejected, I started to pick up on a pattern on when the journalist or the producer or the writer or the podcaster would say, yes, tell me more. I ended up getting my client featured on cnbc, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, ft. And I started to basically, you know, think about how can I productize PR and make it accessible so that everyone can take it in house so that you don't have to keep giving your power away to an agency. Because remember, PR agencies are very expensive and not built for. For many small businesses.
- [05:25]
B
Can I pause you for a second? What is so beautiful? Some people right now are listening and they're maybe just getting started in the marketing world, like marketing their own brand. And so they're hearing this word PR for kind of the first time. Like, really, how would you define PR to like, break it down to the fundamentals and then we can jump back. Like, what would you consider pr? What are some examples of this?
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A
So I feel like marketing and ads and social media is you talking about you, but PR is your industry talking about you.
- [05:50]
B
Beautiful.
- [05:51]
A
And it's really about getting that third party validation. And so when we think about the buckets of marketing activities, there is no higher leveraged activity than pr. I'm talking about the earned organic pr, not the one, the Pay to Play logo seen here. That's just an ad. Don't fall prey to those scams. I'm talking editorial. So like you're on TechCrunch or you're being featured on an article in Business Insider that's going to give you powerful SEO backlinks. It's going to give you that traffic authority, that visibility. No other marketing activity can check all those boxes, right? We don't own our social media. It has no SEO your ads. Maybe more people will see it, but it doesn't give you SEO. It doesn't give you credibility. So PR checks all of those boxes and it really comes down to knowing how to write a good pitch and knowing who to send it out to. And it's really just if you put the two and two together, you can repeat it as a system in your business. Don't let anyone make you think that. It's so complicated and so difficult. They're just trying to monetize you. Journalists want to hear from you, they don't want to hear from a PR rep. So let's just remove that middle layer and get to it, right? They want to talk to you. And here's the thing. If they only talk to the big box brands or the Walmarts or the targets, they probably would lose their credibility very quickly. So journalism, the news really relies on fresh voices, indie brands, people from all walks of life to make it credible.
- [07:10]
B
That's why I have like these friends. Like for example, sometimes I have these friends who I never actually had this conversation with. So I'm actually going to ask you about them, even though I could ask them, but I just haven't. So for example, I have some friends that are been featured in msn, right, for example, and they're telling. MSN is telling their story. Like Jackson Thomas did this and he created a, you know, multiple $300,000 in sales doing, working three, three hours a week and all true stuff, very cool. But that is pr. That's what we're talking about. That's an example of pr.
- [07:40]
A
Well, it depends. It depends. It's a very murky area because there's a lot of ads that you can buy on Yahoo Finance and there's a lot of Forbes contributors who are going against the rules and like getting paid for these things. So you want to make sure that it's editorial, not advertising. And it actually say it on the, like, there's a lot of ads that are parading as articles and it'll say advertisement or advertising. You get that in your news app. Like something that seems like it's a story, but it's actually sponsored content. And so is it still valuable?
- [08:12]
B
Like, is it still valuable to or not?
- [08:15]
A
So it depends on what you're paying and what you're getting out of it. So a lot of times you're paying thousands of dollars for one thing. Maybe it'll hit the right people. Maybe we don't know. Right. So the thing is, is that if you don't learn how to pitch for yourself, you don't learn how to do pr. If you don't create the relationships with the media. You're going to keep paying and paying and paying and paying. And so one way to, to take ownership of that is just to know what your positioning is and who to pitch it to and get that organic pr, which again, gives you that SEO that no advertising content will give you.
- [08:47]
B
Beautiful. Can we run through an example, like how somebody, like a specific business can actually take advantage of this and what that would look like, what would be the ideal outcome for them?
- [08:57]
A
Yeah. So we talked about the mindset thing is that we don't need to be a huge business. We don't need to have a big following. Journalists, repeatedly, and I bring the top 1% of journalists into our program, and they always say it's not a popularity contest. We want to know someone that has a story, the right positioning that fits. So let's talk about E commerce, physical product, right? There's a huge untapped space for them for PR because there's so many gift guides, Oprah's Favorite Things, TechCrunch, Wirecutter, all these things. It is absolutely possible for a very small brand who doesn't have a huge following to get featured, but you just have to know how to pitch it. And so my CPR method is the method of how to write a pitch that gets the journalist to quickly say, ooh, tell me more. And so CPR stands for credibility, point of view, and relevance. And from the thousands of cold calls and pitches, I found that good pitches has those three elements. So let's start with the subject line, right? Give me an example of a product.
- [09:49]
B
Hmm. Let's do, let's go to Etsy right now and do it. Just give you an example. Let's do a mom shirt. And I can go more specific if you want me to.
- [10:01]
A
So. So let's talk about the mom shirt. Right? But by the way, this is not rehearsed. This is like on the fly. So with a, with a mom shirt, a lot of times when we're pitching, we know how to do our marketing pitch, so we know how to sell to our audience. But here's the thing. The journalist is never going to buy from you. And so we need to step back and have a different way of writing to them that's not marketing yourself. And so what do we want to do? We want to figure out what are the categories, what are the themes that will get a journalist to write about it. When I think of mom shirts, I think of gifts for moms for Mother's Day, but I also think of personalized gifts. There's a huge category for personalized gifts. And there's also stocking stuffers. There's luxury gifts, there's budget gifts. So all those different categories and you can do a quick Google search and you can find out what those buckets of gifts are. There's so many of them. And then you can start to tailor your pitch or your product for that angle. So if you have a mom sweatshirt, it could be something for the fall and cold weather, personalized gear. If it's something that's more beachy, it could be something for your summer travels. So think about all the different usages and use cases and how you can pick the right product for that season. And that's really kind of how you can get into gift guides. And writing a pitch is about picking the right product for that season. It's not about having a newsworthy product. There's no such thing. I've written stuff for candles and bath salts and it. And they all get featured. So you do have a story. It's just about knowing how to position it.
- [11:24]
B
Everyone right now, I want you to say that again because I think everyone right now is probably listening to this and they're just like, oh, that sounds great for that specific product, but not for my niche because mine's just like my, my just mom shirts, which is. I want to debunk that actually. So can we, can we spend a little bit more time just thinking about that? Because I only sell clothes to new moms. Or, you know, they feel like it's so saturated in their world. They feel like they're just 1 in 10 million. But so the fact that you just said that you can actually be featured.
- [11:53]
A
There'S so many like gifts for new moms, care packages, you know, how to like, new baby gift, new home gifts. Like there's so many of them, so why have it not be you? That's just a mindset like these, these articles are being published with or without you, so why not go and pitch yourself using the CPR method? And there's so many different whimsical gift ideas too. We have people who make drinking card games, we have people who make intimacy card games, and they all get featured. So there's, I think as the online world gets more and more saturated, the frequency of these gift guides just get more and more. I talked to someone who writes one gift guide, perhaps day leading up to the holidays, and each one probably could have 10 or 30 different items. So if you do the math, that's just one journalist. Think about all the tens of Thousands of journalists in the world. So that's just a mindset thing. You're telling yourself you don't know until you pitch it. Now there might be something that's really strange and can't be giftable. Giftable, you know, like if you do like, I don't know, outer extraterrestrial, terrestrial tarot card readings or something, you know, but there's always a way to spin it. So don't let that, don't let that influence you. So think about the three or four themes or buckets that your product can be. So let's say candles. We have a lot of candle gifts. There's so many different angles because candles are a great welcome home gift. They're a great gift for her, him. And depending on the scent of the candles, it could be something for your upstate getaway. It could be something that's for a design conscious person. If it's sustainable, it could be something, a wellness gift for, you know, people who love sustainable and non toxic gifts. There are so many different angles. So, so think about leading with the trend or the theme and not your benefits and features. I think a lot of times we're so bogged down with our benefits and features that if we just kind of zoom out a little bit and realize, oh, there are actually four ways that I can pitch this candle, then you start to think about, okay, well then how do I write my pitch for that? So it's the same product. You're not changing a product, but you're just repurposing it for the different season.
- [13:44]
B
And the different reason is the goal to the ideal outcome is to have a journalist say yes and they actually write an article about you and your product or is it just about your product? Or either one.
- [13:59]
A
So, so there's different, there's, you know, obviously founder features like on Business Insider, but in terms of direct to sale, if you want to make more sales as holiday 100% get into a gift guide, you know, because, because people are not going to be clicking on the article best home gifts unless you're probably wanting to buy something. It's a much higher buyer intent than 20 people liking your Instagram.
- [14:17]
B
You're saying there's already editors WR gift guides coming up for let's just say like Christmas every day.
- [14:23]
A
Like every, every single day. I'm actually doing a training in my PR program like giving them. So another thing is how do you find the journalist? Right. Because we talked about what to write. Substack is a treasure trove and I'm actually sharing with my group, like all the substack journalists you should follow because a lot of these journalists who write gift guides, and I'm talking like they write a gift guide every single year. They're just actually updating the previous one. So it's like, like best gifts for dads best. They're just going to update the list for this year and they're looking for new products. And substack is a great way to find those journalists because they're telling their subscribers, here is what I'm working on this week. Here is my email. Here's how to pitch me. So it's, it's like having their editorial calendar and knowing what they're pitching even before it hits the stands.
- [15:06]
B
I can just click for me. Yeah, just click. Like your goal, like somebody listening to this goal right now is to go and get inside of. Of a writer's gift guide. They already have a gift guide. So go and get inside of it now. How to get inside of it. That's what you're going to cover next is like, yeah.
- [15:25]
A
So the CPR method teaches you how to write. So you want to start your subject line with something that reads like an article. Don't say your name, the word pitch or the company name. It does not mean anything to the journalist. So let's say if it's bath salts, right, it can be like best stocking stuffer for the wellness enthusiast. Best under $5 or whatever, under $10. You see how that reads like an article. You want your subject line to almost read it like an article so that they know what is the category and what is the price point. And then let's start with. So let's start using the CPR method. I like to have R as in relevance first in the email. Because what is news if it's not relevant? You want to catch their attention right away. Start with the relevance. As we head into the season of baths and coziness, your readers will be looking for things to elevate their bath time routine. You see how that is a beautiful way to paint relevance. Instead of saying our bath salts are blah, blah, blah. No, you're starting with what people are looking for. And P in CPR stands for point of view. It's usually three bullet points on why your bath salts are perfect for the season. Is it good for travel? Does it have non toxic things? Does it have a special scent? You know, is there a charitable component? Does it come in really interesting packaging that also melts in the bath? I don't know. And then you want to conclude with the credibility, which is one or two sentences. Don't go crazy here of your story. It could be we are a mom and daughter team that started it, or I founded this with an ancient ayurvedic formulation, you know, and also in the gift guide pitch, always put in where it's available. Is it on Amazon, is it on Marshalls, is it on your website? So link to that, how much it is. And if it's available for shipping for US only or US and Canada, put all the thing in there. And if you make a product visually, you can put one photo. So put one photo. Don't go crazy with the photos because you're going to hit their spam inbox, but put one photo and then hyperlink for the rest. Happy to send you a sample. Here's my affiliate link, if you have one. Here's. Here's more. More photos. And so that way the email is very clean, it's very polished, it's not overwhelming. And it has all the different things that they're looking for when deciding whether or not it fits into a gift guide.
- [17:23]
B
Wow, that's interesting. Do you need to have an affiliate link? Is there some. Some of the things that you need to have in order to do that?
- [17:31]
A
Yeah. So I just had someone from today's show in Good Morning America come in and coach my PR students. And she said that it is for gift guys and commerce. It is going that direction where they want to have a win, win. And I still think it's better than paying for an ad. Right. Because it's a win for you and one for them. Because, you know, it's all. So if you do have an affiliate link, you can get, if you have one on Amazon, if you have your own, if you have skim links, share that with them because it gives them an extra little incentive to feature.
- [17:55]
B
You now have a percentage that needs to be kind of over.
- [18:00]
A
I would feel like at least 20. 20 to 30 is a SW spot.
- [18:03]
B
20 to 30%. Okay. Beautiful.
- [18:05]
A
Yeah. It's not necessary, but the ones that do have affiliate links probably can entice a journalist more. But it's not a requirement, you know, and. Yeah, and so now we talked about the pitch, like what to write. Like, now let's talk about who to send it to. Because remember, PR is writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. Here's where most people get tripped up. Do not send the pitch to infozzfeed.com or editoralora.com no one's going to read that you need to find the commerce or shopping editor or writer. If someone has the word commerce or shopping in their bio, it means that they're responsible for recommending products that people can shop from. I have a database in my PR program of a hundred thousand journalists, and one of the lists is hundreds and hundreds of journalists who are just covering gift guides. But you can start to do it on your own. You can start to put a Google News alert and type in gift guide gift roundup gifts for him, and it'll ping you with all the articles written about your industry. And it trains your brain to think in terms of subject lines, which is good. And it also, you can start to copy and paste the name of the journalist writing that article into your ever expanding Excel spreadsheet, which becomes your own media database. And you can also sign up for things like Haro, like help a reporter out as a source. Or you can use a tool like quoted, which, if you sign up as a source, journalists are asking people to be interviewed and asking for certain items. And if you fit that category, then boom, of course you can do that. Someone in my program use a CPR method to get featured on seven different things just using HARO alone, right? Just answering these inquiries. You can also follow hashtags on social media like journal request or like hashtag giftguide. And so that way you can find out if journalists are looking on X or on Instagram or on LinkedIn for certain things to feature. But those are kind of the grassroots way and also substack following these journalists who write about small businesses and write about products, whether it's travel, how many.
- [19:57]
B
Outdoors, how many inquiries are these journalists getting per day, per month? Like how, how competitive is that?
- [20:04]
A
They are tasked to write a gift guide per day sometimes. So they are scouring the Internet right now as the time of recording in Q4, they are. Their frequency of writing is insane. So I say there's no better time to start this. You know, knowing how to write your pitch, the best time is yesterday. The best time is today to write. Look at the CPR pitch, think about what products are best for the season, because again, you don't want to send them 50 products, send them three max that are perfect for the season. If you have a special bundle, if you have something for winter skincare, if you have something for the season that's, you know, a special, a limited edition, I would pitch that. And then when springtime comes around, pitch something different.
- [20:42]
B
If you're trying to get inside the journalist's head a little bit, if they're tasked to write a gift guide per day. They probably don't want to be recommending the same products in each gift guide every single day that they're writing a new one. Right. So they always are looking for new products. That's kind of more validation for your point.
- [20:56]
A
Yes. And one product can work. So if it doesn't work for one, one gift guide, pitch it again. We have someone who makes. Who doesn't even make her own products. She. Her. It's my trove box, and it's like a home decor box. And so she curates cups and different things, you know, and she's gone into so many different outlets by just repurposing her angle best. She got one that was so funny. It was like, best gifts for the newly divorced dad in your life. Another one that's like, best home gifts for the, you know, new. The couple who bought a new home. Gifts for mom, gifts for her. It's still the same.
- [21:28]
B
So many things.
- [21:29]
A
There's different angles. It's a blue ocean strategy. Once. Once you learn to think about in this way, and hopefully this podcast has helped you, you realize, like, oh, man, there is a blue ocean of opportunity for me to get featured all year round. Yeah.
- [21:41]
B
We're only limited by our creativity at that point. It's just like this unlimited amount. It's interesting. It's almost like a muscle. We have to, like, flex in order to get stronger and almost, like, see opportunity.
- [21:50]
A
You're like, I'm going to let go of all this Instagram nonsense because we don't even know if people are ever going to buy from us. And then just focus only on pr.
- [21:57]
B
Which I like this because it fits into, like, this whole methodology or this whole way of thinking about, like, you know, you, you. That's like more of a traffic strategy awareness. Traffic strategy drives people to your sites and you capture the customer. You definitely capture the email. Yep. Gives you all that stuff and you.
- [22:12]
A
Still capture all of the boxes.
- [22:14]
B
Yeah, exactly. And basically that now, ideally they go on your customer list. And now you've kind of like, own that customer now. And now you can always market them internally, closer to. And you almost like, rinse and repeat this entire strategy, which is something that we recommend actually on the podcast quite a bit.
- [22:28]
A
Yeah. And not just pitching for E Commerce. Pitch your founder story. Because a lot of times it's not just your product. If you make, let's say if you make adaptogenic coffee or tea, you can be on a wellness and health podcast. You can talk about your journey Healing your illness. You can be on a founder feature about, like, there's so many different ways that's not just your product. We just today just talked about product. But think about the three or four other themes that you can talk about.
- [22:53]
B
It's interesting because I like having this conversation because so many people listening to this, including myself. We think about PR and we think about it's for the big guys. We just think about, like, oh, it's more like the Jeff Bezos of the world. It's like everybody's writing about Elon Musk and. And Spanx and all this, you know, big brands and big personalities. And we don't think that it's for us. And what's interesting is that there's strategies to. Absolutely. They actually want us. They want you listening to this.
- [23:22]
A
And the PR agencies don't want us to know that. And that's why they charge a lot of money. So, of course, traditionally, we think it's for the big guys. Right. And so I think by what I'm doing, I'm really disrupting this industry and making it accessible for all of the small business owners out there who have. Who have not been had the privilege and access to the media. And so this is why this work is absolutely sacred to me. To help people, to own their power, to take up space and to be like, we absolutely deserve to be seen. Why not us?
- [23:51]
B
Absolutely. Especially if you really believe in your product, you really believe in your customer, like the mission, all this stuff. Like, yeah, we have an obligation to do that. I'm curious, like, what is an ideal outcome look like for one of your star, let's say students or people like your friends or somebody like this? Like, is it. I always like to look at metrics right in my head, Almost like a goal. Okay, I want to get featured in five this quarter. Is that a lot or is that a little?
- [24:15]
A
Is that totally doable? We had someone who has never done PR before. She's in her 50s, she's from Brazil. English is not her first language. She makes swimsuits. And the pitch I came up with for her was like, remember that show White Lotus on hbo? It's like, how to pick the best swimsuit for your Italian vacation this year, because Italy was like trending destination. And she ended up using the CPR method. She got featured in Elle, Cosmo, Allure, Popsugar, Desert Magazine, or Sunset Magazine. And then she used a CPR method to reach out to a stylist who then like, pitched it to Oprah's favorite things. So she got on so many things just by this one CPR pitch. Oh, and she's using a CPR pitch to pitch to wholesaler retailers so that she can be in stores. So there's no limit to the ways that you can do this. It's a way of having a value driven conversation where the person on the other end doesn't know who you are. Because remember, that's how I started. I didn't know these journalists. How do you quickly get someone's attention? How do you make it so that they say, yes, tell me more? And that's really the beauty of this.
- [25:14]
B
Can we talk about that? Like that after they say, let's say you do everything perfectly CPR method, they reply back. And now they say, yes, tell me more. What should someone listening to this expect that process to look like after that? Let's say it's a physical product.
- [25:28]
A
It's pretty simple. If it's for product, it's just like, cool, we're going to feature it. Because in the pitch you already said everything you need to say. It might be okay, send me a sample. So make sure that they're a legitimate journalist and not a fake influencer. Parading. You can ask questions like, when is this editorial going to be featured? Use the word editorial so you know that it's not advertising. And then, you know, maybe after they try it and they love it and they're going to feature it. So it really depends on the outlet. You can have something featured in 24 hours or you're going to send them a sample and they're going to try and they're going to put it in in the next issue. So it really, it really depends. But what's important is for you to keep pitching far and wide. Not just to five journalists, but I'm talking 50 journalists. Like cast a wide net. So that way you are constantly planting the seeds because you never know when that person's going to need to write a story about your product.
- [26:16]
B
When you say 50 journalists, you mean like 50 journalists per month? Per quarter? Per year. What does that mean?
- [26:20]
A
Just starting? Just starting with 50 per year. And some of those journalists could be podcasters.
- [26:27]
B
Okay. And then momentum, you know, you need.
- [26:30]
A
To start because once you start getting featured, it becomes so easy because then it's like you can put in your pitch, I've been featured.
- [26:37]
B
Yeah, you're safe now. You're safe for them. You almost like, yeah, you're a safe investment for them. Interesting. And how many, how many people respond back to a pitch typically is it like, no thanks, or is it just like you ghosted a lot? So just expect that.
- [26:51]
A
Again, it depends, right? Some people will say, no, this is not for me. But here's another hack for your people. Before you send out an email, install an email tracking device. And that way you know if your email is being open, if it's not being open, it could be a deliverability issue. Could be they don't work there. If it's being opened multiple times, it means that they really like it. They're just trying to find a place for it. And that's where you want to engage with their content. Be patient. Journalists are writers. They have egos. Stroke their ego. Say, I love the roundup that you did on 40 best golf gifts for dad. Are you doing it this year? Because we have launched a brand new line which I think will be perfect for dads. You see how that's a great way to have a conversation with a journalist. So compliment, engage. It's kind of like a customer, right? You, it's, you just want to build that relationship with them.
- [27:34]
B
So, and you, it should come from an authentic place. Like it's not just all about you. It's. It very much needs to be serving.
- [27:39]
A
Them because that's serving their audience. Yeah, I mean, it is about you. They're not stupid. They know it's, it's. They. You want to get featured. But you, it's. But using the CPR method, it's. You don't feel icky about it because you're positioning yourself as just someone who's presenting a solution to a certain trend or an insight or a problem that the customer is having right now. What are people looking for and how are you in a position to just fill that gap, fill that need?
- [28:02]
B
How many sales should someone, maybe not someone should expect? How about some of your, some of your people that you were already talking about a little bit?
- [28:09]
A
Oh, I've had people sell out of their stuff and, and get featured so many times that they got investor money. Like I had people who raised, you know, I've worked with startups who raised hundreds of millions of dollars after working with me. I had someone who opened up their first brick and mortar store. You know, after, after being featured many times I've had people exit their company. So it's, it's really positioning yourself, but then also establishing yourself as like an industry authority. Like I said, you know, marketing is, is you talking about you and PR is your industry talking about you.
- [28:36]
B
Interesting. I think about PR too, and this is a limiting belief I think is when I think about doing PR forever be, for example, which is. Right, is our main thing. I think about PR is almost like, oh, I don't, I don't want to do pr. I want to be like only doing product and like focus on the business and focusing on the customers and like PR is just mostly like for people that raise money and like all that stuff. And I don't want to, I want to get distracted. Is there, can PR play a role for a founder like me where I don't necessarily want to be my face out there and doing all these interviews and all this stuff. I just want to really focus on the business. Can PR play a role in our strategy?
- [29:12]
A
Well, you don't need someone to be like, you can have someone else be the face. But I will say people buy from people. And if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to be on those panels, if you want to be up there on stage, then like someone needs, there needs to be a human. Right. We need to know who the person is so you don't have to. There's different mediums, there's. You don't ever have to get on the phone with anyone. You can just purely, just do digital and that'll keep giving you the SEO and the authority for when you do close those deals. You can repurpose it in so many ways every time you go into a customer call. Right. It allows you to position yourself so that you can increase your prices. It allows you to differentiate yourself when you have something that's. That, that's very saturated. Because if everyone is doing that, how are you different? And PR can help you do that. PR can also help you protect your IP if you're the first to do something. If you're truly a category disruptor PR will help you do that because it'll say that you are truly innovating in your space.
- [30:05]
B
I love that. I love that. I think a lot of people listening to this can. They probably took a little bit of a fresh breath because a lot of people listening to this, they're not necessarily the content creators. I mean a lot of them are, but they're not always the face. So the fact that PR doesn't have to mean you have to go out and on a road show and doing every single in person event possible and be on stage talking. You can do the gift guides and then you can also do virtual stuff and then you can also do article stuff. It sounds like there's.
- [30:30]
A
Yes, there's so many opportunities.
- [30:33]
B
Interesting. I think it's a perfect transition time to kind of go into our rapid fire questions.
- [30:38]
A
Let's do it.
- [30:39]
B
Let's do it. Let me pull em up here. What is your favorite business book?
- [30:44]
A
Ooh, there's so many. But I recently read 10x is easier than 2x and I love, love, loved it.
- [30:50]
B
That's on my list. I have not read that yet. What is the worst business advice that you've ever received?
- [30:54]
A
Oh my God, there are so many. I find that now in this day and age where, like, information is so everywhere and everyone's following the same templates, I actually find that going against what everyone's saying is what made me successful. So don't be afraid to do something that what no one else is doing. Because think about if everyone is doing the same thing, then how are we being different? So that's my business advice, is just be different.
- [31:19]
B
What's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?
- [31:22]
A
How it was going to be a mirror into my own healing journey. The things that I need to work on, my scarcity, my trust issues, my money issues, all of it will come out in your business and it's a privilege, but it is definitely like, wow, you really see it in your business when you own your own business.
- [31:40]
B
Love that. How many hours do you think you work on your business every week?
- [31:43]
A
I'm not a morning person, so I refuse to have a meeting before 11am and so I don't, you know, my days are kind of scattered. I would say I probably work about 30, 30 or more. I mean, I'm always working because I'm on my phone. Right. I have slack on my phone, but I'm not like in front of the computer. I don't think more than 30 hours a week.
- [32:04]
B
What would your family and your friends and your customers say about you if they had to get together and summarize kind of who Gloria is without you being there? Like all the good things, all the bad things. What are some of the things that.
- [32:17]
A
They would say that I am a mold breaker. I'm not afraid to go deep and I really make people feel seen. And I'm. And I can be quite intense because I don't do any surface stuff. Like we just get right into it.
- [32:28]
B
Yeah. Kind of same as. Same as me. I agree with that. This actually wasn't a question, but I'm curious to get your opinion on this. The final question. Do you think that every single person should be a business owner to some degree or an entrepreneur?
- [32:42]
A
Absolutely not. My husband is not. Thank God, we cannot have two entrepreneurs in the house. It would be madness. The level of the emotional rollercoaster, the volatility. I think we need one partner to kind of be the grounded one. For me, it's given me so much peace that my husband is not an entrepreneur because he's able to hold space and to have some kind of stability as we ride the turbulent waves of entrepreneurship. So I absolutely don't think that everyone should be there. I think you should pick what is good for your personality. My husband doesn't have the personality for an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur, you have to be relentless about selling all the time. And he doesn't like that. But he's really good at other things. I think he's way better at managing a team than me. And so working in corporate, like people love working for him. I can be a nightmare to work with as a founder, as a visionary. I'm all over the place. So I don't, I absolutely do not think everyone should be an entrepreneur.
- [33:35]
B
Now it's interesting and I tore with this question in my mind too because there's a part of me that. I agree with you completely. Like the level of thinking and the level of stress that entrepreneur has to go through, they're always on and they're, you know, so, so stereotypical what people talk about. But like at night you're always thinking about the business and you're always thinking about the worst case scenarios. But at the same time I'm like, everyone should do this because to some degree, sorry, if you hear in that background banging by chance.
- [34:02]
A
No.
- [34:02]
B
Okay, beautiful. What was I saying with that?
- [34:05]
A
You agree with me.
- [34:06]
B
I do. I do agree with you. There's parts of me feels like everyone should be a business owner to some degree because you stretch yourself so much. Like you learn about yourself so much and you get so creative with certain problems and how to solve them that I feel like if you're not a business owner that you never really will get to experience like the next level of yourself. And so I toy with this. I struggle with this. Well, everyone should be a business owner or like, no, it's only for these types of people. But I'm like, everyone should. Doesn't mean everybody could or everybody will, but everyone should. And does that mean that they need to be full time entrepreneurs? Not necessarily. They probably shouldn't be. But should they be some sort of business owner? Like maybe a side business? I don't know. I'm curious to get your opinion.
- [34:50]
A
I think there's pros and cons. I I do think you're right that the pace at which we experience evolution and shifts is at a pace that's way faster than anyone who's not a business owner. Now, does everyone need to do that? No. But in terms of personal growth, there's. There's no, there's no quicker path to personal growth.
- [35:07]
B
Interesting. Gloria, where can people find you? Where can people learn more about you? Do you have any coaching or services or training on on all this stuff?
- [35:16]
A
Of course. I also host my own podcast, Small Business pr, and I interview actual journalists who are covering all different things from forbes and business, etc. And Wall Street Journal, New York Times. I ask them the questions that you can't find anywhere else. So follow up the podcast if you are interested in being on your PR journey. I also am on Instagram @Gloria Chow PR@Glorious C H O U P R. I share very openly about my life and my healing journey and my relationship with my mom and all the things. And then if you want to watch the CPR method, like word for word, you know, like from beginning to end, I actually show you and how that got someone featured a dozen times who doesn't know person in the media is very bootstrapping. Solopreneur. You can go to gloriachowpr.commasterclass that's gloriousch o-u p r.commasterclass and you can watch that training for free. I've had people watch that training and get featured within like a week of watching it. Like, I get DMs all the time from people I've never met who are like, I watch your training and I pitch and I got on local tv, I got my, you know, I got my event funded or you know, I was on Buzzfeed like all the time. So it's one thing that you do watch that masterclass.
- [36:27]
B
Beautiful. And by the way, for anyone watching this or listening to this, depending on where you are, we'll drop the links and the YouTube description below or the. Or the show notes. Gloria, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your time and your and your expertise and all of your experience with us. I know that somebody, I know at least one person will take away and actually be featured. And by the way, if you, if you are that person, email Gloria, tell Gloria, tell me too. I'm very curious to know this and yeah. Or thank you.
- [36:54]
A
Thank you.
- [36:55]
B
Awesome. I'll see you soon.