A very warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are things? So this week we have got the excellent Gloria Chou on the podcast. You know what, just before I record the intro and outro because I do it separately after the interview. I went back and just watched sort of some of the key points and it was so good.

I pretty much watched the entire thing again. Obviously I can watch it cause I record it, but you know, otherwise you'd listen to it, but it's so good. There's so much good stuff coming. And as I mentioned last week, PR is something that I've been doing a lot more of. And I think it's just different ways of looking at it as to why you would do PR. If you're a local business, then it can really help in terms of customers and getting you seen and getting you out there.

But for someone like me, who's audiences worldwide. Then it's, that's a bit trickier. So for me, it's more about credibility. So, uh, recently I've been featured in Authority magazine on Yahoo finance on CBS, on Fox News, on an Australian news. I was interviewed for a TV thing. So the credibility of me being chosen to do those things. It's really awesome.

So that's how I'm currently using it for me. And also it was a lot of PR around the book and writing the book and all that sort of stuff. So, so it is really good, but I don't want you to be put off thinking, you know, it's that kind of PR. She gives some really good practical things that you can do as a small business owner in order to get that PR and get that coverage.

So, oh, and what's really nice for the the intro is because obviously when members of the club are in the club, I get to know them. One of the things that I love and I do kind of fairly often is if I think of a member in the club where actually their business might be a good example for, you know, this or for whatever the subject is, I'm interviewing someone about, I use businesses from the club.

As a sort of case study or as a test or as a, can you give me some advice about this? So what's really lovely is they get a bit of free advice from an expert, which is ACE. And I have used a, one of the club members in this one in particular, who is a online cooking class, a creator. So, yeah, so we talk about her and how it would work for her business, which is really, really cool.

If you are interested in joining the club and maybe getting, you know, featured on a podcast, uh, then you can go to teresaheathwareing.com/theclub and if this is the first time, if you hearing about the club, let me explain what it is. The dream business club is an online business building membership and community for business owners who want to build a successful business that they love and give them the life they dream of.

Now, what do I mean by a dream business? I don't mean someone else's idea of a dream business. I don't mean you know earning loads of money on a yachts, uh, being a billionaire, unless you want to, of course. I'm talking about maybe you only want to work three days a week and earn more than an average full-time salary, or you want to get the kids from school.

Maybe you want a team in a big office and earn 7 figures. Uh, maybe you just want to make a difference to the world and have a legacy to leave. So whatever your dream business is, it's about you and helping you. And I do this through teaching and inspiring and leading you. I do it through the dream business growth pathway, where which is the only thing you will need in order to grow your business. Because it talks about all the different aspects of your business, like social media and content and your email list and selling and your team and building a community.

And I take you through each stage so that when you hit one stage we take you to the next level. And when you hit that, we take to the next level. So whatever stage you are in your business, we have got you. Also, as well as that we have obviously the monthly mindset calls, coaching calls, live Q and A's, uh, inspired actions every week, challenges. So much because of oh, content hours. They're really good.

The lovely Becci McEvoy does a content hour. So yes, so much good stuff. So if you are interested in joining, come and head over to teresaheathwareing.com/theclub.

So let me introduce the lovely Gloria. She teaches early stage founders, how to "hack their own PR" with her proprietary three step CPR Pitching Method™.

This method helps thousands of small business owners get over a combined 1 billion organic views in top tier outlets, such as New York times, Vogue, Fast Company, Forbes and so much more. So she came up with this format herself and now teaches it around the world. I think you're really gonna like this. She's got some great ideas for you. So without further ado, here's Gloria.

So I am really looking forward to today's conversation with my lovely guests, Gloria Chou. Gloria how are you doing?

Gloria: Hi. I'm so happy to be here.

Teresa: Super happy to have you. I was just chatting to Gloria telling you that we don't track many people on talking about our subject.

So I'm excited to dive in and get some great stuff from you guys. But before we do that, we always start the same way, which I'm sure my audience get bored of but we do it anyway. Where we ask you to introduce yourself to my audience and tell them, How you got to do what you do today?

Gloria: Oh my God. If anyone is looking for a career change, this episode is for you.

I actually used to be it's the truth. I actually used to be in the government. I was a bureaucrat. I was a US diplomat. And then I made the switch to become an entrepreneur and small business PR coach.

Teresa: Wow, that is quite a switch. So like there's some, some jobs that you think you just probably born to do that type of job.

And I would say that working in the government is one of those things. How, try and explain to us how warm day is sat at your desk in the government. And the next day you're like, "Oh no, I'm just going to throw all that away. I'm going to start something new."

Gloria: You know, what's so funny is when I had the picture perfect job.

I had a pension. I could go through the diplomatic land, the airport. I do miss that though, by the way. Everyone thought I was, you know, living the best life. It just was not aligned with me. And now for the first time in my life, I feel completely aligned. I'm doing things that I love and I just wake up every morning feeling so enthused and energized.

The reason why I got into the diplomatic service was I grew up in a bi-cultural bilingual household. So I always was so interested in international relations. So I was going down that path. I studied political science. By the way, I never studied PR so, you know, or anything that I'm doing now. So I was completely different and I was on that path and I realized, you know that I kind of just I, I really wanted to be creative.

I wanted to take risk. I wanted to work with female entrepreneurs. I wanted to work with small businesses and it just wasn't allowing me to have that kind of like draw outside of the box kind of life. So I had to make the hard decision at age 30. I call it kind of like my mid-life crisis. You know, quarter-life crisis. And moved back home from having a pension and a condo to living in my parents', you know, house.

And then I just, you know, started to rebuild my life from there. And I applied, I think, to over a thousand jobs at that point. I wanted to work in PR because I knew I was a strong communicator. I love to see people win. And so, you know, I'm like everyone's unofficial cheerleader, hype woman. But no PR agencies would hire me.

They're like, you don't have agency experience. I'm a little confused by your resume. And so I just, I just had, it was like, you know what, I'm just going to do it on my own. I started picking up the phone. I started calling newsrooms at, you know, New York times and, and, you know, fast company entrepreneur.

And I just started cold calling to get these tiny little small businesses unknown into the top tier outlets. And they, I think they paid me like a couple hundred bucks here and there. And that's how I built my business just by cold calling.

Teresa: That's crazy. Like say what, what was it about PR like did, when you left that job, you knew you wants to go into PR at that point.

Gloria: I knew I wanted to go into communications because in the, in the government I was doing some communications work. So I was writing speeches for the ambassador. We would do some like video scripts, but that was unfortunately a very, very small part of what I did. And I wanted to do more. You know, and so doing communications, external communications was something I wanted to do.

So PR was for me kind of a natural thing that I wanted to get into. But again, you know, they want a very fit in the box type of, type of thing. And I just, I didn't have that experience and thank God for it. Thank God for it. Because now I have my methods that I teach to founders to kind of crack the code on PR like the way I did.

Teresa: Yeah. And I think the reason, I think one of the reasons we haven't probably had a lot of PR people on, is because, and I, I come from very traditional marketing. I have a degree now I've spent like years and I worked at big, big corporate companies heading up their marketing department. And PR always felt like something that that's who that was for.

The PR isn't like, you know, we've got the devil wears Prada kind of scenario. Like, you know, that PR is really kind of that kind of life. And I'm thinking lots of small businesses when they're looking at their marketing strategy, when they're looking at ways in which they can get out there. Maybe they're not thinking that PR is for them. Is that something that you've seen with your audience?

Gloria: Yeah. I, I think that the old school playbook is you need someone to do it for you. You need to pay them a lot of money so that they can go into their Rolodex and tap on their friend's shoulders. But in this age of working at home, no, one's going to fancy dinners.

The your chance of getting into that editors anymore.

Right? Look at iOS. Look at privacy blocks. How are you going to reach your audience? You just can't, you just can't keep feeding the beast of ads. So that's why I always say the biggest myth. Is that, you know, there's a certain type of company who's ready for PR and there's a certain type of company who's not, because I'll tell you what 90% of the people I work with are super bootstrap.

They're super early stage. And they don't have that many customers, but they have the longterm vision of saying that I'm here. I need to build credibility and getting eyeballs is simply not enough. People need to believe that I am here because of my mission and my value, and nothing communicates that, like getting a media feature, you can not communicate that in an ad.

Teresa: Yeah, no, you're right. And it's that whole thing of like, um, you know, when you put posts out saying, you're great, that's one thing when someone else post that saying, you're great, that is entirely different. And that's what PR is basically. Isn't it? Like the credibility of someone else going, Hey, listen to this person or look at what this person's done. This is really, really good.

So now I think there's some differences in PR in the sense of like, so we've had PR done, I'd like in local stuff, but obviously now I serve across the world. Like I have customers from all over the world, the local stuff doesn't serve me anymore. So as much as I know, I could probably head to my local regional paper and say, Hey, I did this cool thing.

Do you want to, you know, know the story about it? That obviously isn't going to hit my target audience. But then I look at like the big stuff, like Forbes, like entrepreneuring, like all these big places and things, but what would I have to offer them? Like, am I missing something in the middle? Or what's your thoughts on, like when you ask, when you are serving a bigger audience or a wider location audience, what sort of counselor I'd be looking at?

Gloria: So I, I will say, you know, just like social media PR is a tool, right? And I read somewhere that it takes 25 different touch points from when a customer meets you and gets to know your brand to when they are convinced that they buy. So I think of PR as a tool that shrinks those 25 touch points down to 3.

All right. So, so that's the way you think about. It doesn't mean that there's no room for social media. It doesn't mean that there's no room for ads. It just means that DM-ing people five hours a day it's just not a sustainable model. It's just not. So, so that's kind of a top-down. Now in terms of the media landscape it's complex, right?

So you have your top tier that may be reaches 30, 100 million people, and then you have your kind of mid tier and then you have your local and they all have their room in place. So for example, if you are a brick and mortar store, or if you're heavily invested in your local community, then I think 100%, you should definitely get into the local papers because you have equity in that community.

Right. You're helping people out. Now, if you're an online business, maybe if your product can be anywhere like for example what you're doing with coaching, then it might be more helpful to reach more of the top tier your audience. Right. And also using podcasts as well. Right. So it depends on where your audience is.

Now I always say, one thing you want to do is, you know, a lot of small business owners, like, well, I want to get into Forbes or I want to get into this. And it's like, number one, ask yourself, is your customer reading that? And number two is if you want to pitch to an audience like Forbes or Entrepreneur or Fast Company that has, I don't know, 80, 100 million audiences is your pitch relevant to a hundred million people.

If it's not keep working on it, don't worry. I'm going to share with you the CPR method to get there. But if your pitch is not relevant to a hundred million people, then it's probably not going to be the right fit. Right. So you're probably going to want to start small and there is something great to be starting small because the pressure is a little bit easier.

You learn how to talk to a journalist, maybe start locally and then maybe do two or three more podcasts. And then, and then at...