Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Gloria Chou who is a small business PR expert and coach to 10k+ entrepreneurs worldwide. Gloria teaches early-stage founders how to “hack their own PR” with her proprietary 3-step CPR Pitching Method™, one that’s helped thousands of small businesses get over a combined 1 Billion organic views in top tier outlets such as the New York Times, Vogue, Fast Company, Forbes and more. We talk all about how to do your own PR for your small business with practical tips you can do in order to get more coverage for your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- You can’t just keep feeding the beast of ads – you need to reach your audience in other ways!
- The biggest myth is that there is a certain type of company that is and isn’t ready for PR
- PR is a great way to build credibility for your business
- PR is a tool just like social media
- It takes 25 touch points from when a customer first becomes aware of you and gets to know your brand to actually buying from you – PR shrinks this down to 3!
- There are different tiers of PR – local/low, medium and top.
- Ask yourself – is your perfect customer going to read it? You want to be in the places they are going to be.
- Any type of business can create a story/angle! You need to step away from your product – you are not selling to the reporter.
- The CPR Pitching Method™ by Gloria Chou
- Credibility – One sentence on why you are in a position to pitch – talk about your experience
- Point of view – Three things you have learnt helping your customers overcome their problem
- Relevance – The most important part! Why is it relevant right now? Is it something about your industry, the world or season?
- Make it as easy as possible to cut through all the emails they will be receiving – use bullet points
- Your pitch needs to be strong and confident – they need to think you are an expert and have a point of view!
- Can you make predictions on where things are going in your industry?
- Install Google News Alerts – this will give you all the articles about your key words. You can then copy the journalist contacts over
- Sign up for HARO which connects journalists seeking expertise
- Search #journorequest on Twitter for opportunities
- Everything you want is on the other side of the send button!
- It’s not just about awards and accolades, you need to be a real human as well.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Every business no matter how big or small can use PR!
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS
- How Gloria became a PR expert and coach
- What sort of PR you should be looking at
- What makes a good story?
- The CPR Pitching Method™
- How to find media contacts
- How often should you be pitching?
CHECK GLORIA OUT:
RESOURCES MENTIONED
TRANSCRIPT
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 that point pitch to something that's top tier, maybe after you have some data, maybe you have even, maybe you did a survey or you have something truly proprietary or interesting to say.
Teresa: Okay, so you just, that's a really good point. You said up there in terms of, How do I know that it is a story, like so many years ago when I started my agency because I had a marketing agency and I started saying marketing and PR. Now I never did PR in my life PR and marketing at that point. And still now maybe of very different skillsets.
And then I worked with the local PR guy and my clients had come to me go, oh, can we get this in the paper? And I'd give a hit here local steps and you'd go, no, that's boring. No one's going to want that. And I'd always take his advice because he knew what he was talking about, but how do we know what they want from us? So what do they want to hear from us? What makes something interesting for them?
Gloria: Yeah. You know, another that's that makes me come to myth number two. So the first, first myth is. Oh, you know, you have to be at a certain place to be ready for PR that we know that that's not true. Number two is there are some companies who are newsworthy and some kind of companies who are not, and that is simply not true.
I have written pitches for bath towels, for candles and for like, you know, pediatrician. So, you know, it doesn't really matter. Like there's always an angle, but the first thing that founders should think about is you need to step away from your product. You need to understand that you are not selling to the reporter.
Okay. I'll repeat myself. You are not selling to the reporter. And the more you're trying to market to them, the more you're trying to speak to them, like they're your customer, the more it's going to be rejected. And this is from years of cold calling. Because the reporter, if they're a legitimate journalist and not an influencer who wants a free product, they're there to communicate data points, insights, and it just means that the more you sell to them, the more they're like, honey, why don't you buy an ad? We have an entire ads department.
So how can you go? How can you work around that? Right. You have to make sure your pitch is relevant. You have to make sure it's not about you.
You have to make sure that the subject line is really tight and concise and doesn't have your name or your company. You have to understand the season that we live in now. So for example, right now, you know, we're in Q4, it's all about gift guides, right? All about black Friday shopping season. So if you make a product right, instead of trying to sell why your product so great, you might want to step away from it and say “Here are the three gifting trends that I'm seeing for children under five.” right.
“And here are the three things.” and then maybe one of them could be like your product. So that's kind of how you work around. And obviously we can go into the CPR method that I came up with from years of calling, which can definitely help, help you write your pitch.
Teresa: Okay. So let's have that method.
Gloria: So when I started, so again, I remember I never worked at a PR agency. I don't know any publicist. I was never a part of the cool kids club. So I had to just call the operator and try to see how that person could say on the phone with me enough to get me to the intern, to the associate producer, to the producer, and from thousands of cold calls and thousands of emails, I started to pick up on patterns.
When would an email be responded to. When would someone be like, okay, tell me more. And I realized that the pitches that got responded to have these three things in common, are you ready? Sorry. It stands for CPR. So C stands for credibility P stands for point of view, R stands for relevance. And I want your email pitch to have all those three things.
It can also be in a phone call, but usually it's in an email because no one's really going to call an editor. I do recommend everyone to do it once. So because it knowing how to call, call someone, I think, I think you've started to really build up that toughness that you need. Right. So, please do it. It's not nice but that's how I had to do it.
So for example, a CPR, so credibility is one sentence on why you're in a position to pitch. And again, it doesn't mean that you've had Ords. It doesn't mean that you have a million dollar product doesn't mean that you need many years in the industry. It could be as simple as I am a single mom and I have seen this firsthand.
Right. So maybe you make, I don't know, some kind of tactical tools for kids who have ADHD, I'm just gonna split the layer. And then the point of view could be about like three things that you've learned, like trying to help your kid or someone else's kid overcome that problem. Right. And then R means relevance.
It is the most important part of your pitch. It tells the editor, it should be open now. It tells the editor. It is not from five years ago and that this is urgent to right now. So what are some of the relevance, for example? COVID right. We're homeschooling, we're adapting, parental roles have been changed. The way we manage time has been changed.
I don't care what industry you're in the last two years have definitively changed. Everything about the way we operate. Yeah. Another, another reason you can think about relevance is if you work in a highly regulated industry, for example, healthcare, uh, you know, uh, uh, financial services, maybe there's some new policies or regulations, maybe it's something about SBA loans, small business loans, repayment, maybe it's something around taxes.
If you work in e-commerce it might be about, again, like I said, like the seasonal holidays, black Friday shopping trends. Ends of your, uh, you know, things, if you work in skincare, it may be fall winter skincare, eczema treatment. I mean, I could go on and on and on, but you want to have something relevant.
Teresa: Yeah. I love that. That's so good. So I like the credibility, not necessarily being, I am a award-winning blogger, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like the reason I know this is this or the reason my experience is this. Then, and your points of view is that always like, funnily enough, as we speak, I'm actually writing some articles, potentially for Forbes, fingers crossed so I can get it into Forbes.
And it is like a three thing. It's like my three points on this thing. Is it always best to structure it in that kind of way where it's broken up? Is that probably how you do it?
Gloria: I mean, that's, that's how I pitched you. Right? So the, the reason why I say bullet points or numbers is if you're getting hundreds of emails per day and am I'm opening up your email and it's got tons of texts and screenshots, and I'm like, I don't know who this person is, but if it's really simple, the subject line says seasonal hiring trends for, you know, 2022 grads. And it has three bullet points that makes it easy for me. You're doing the job for me.
I can envision what the story might look like. Right. I wrote a pitch for someone who was launching a video app. Which, you know, there's so many, there's FaceTime, there's zoom and she knew she needed PR. And so the pitch I wrote for her right around COVID this was, I don't know, probably may of 2020 was, you know, I have I'm, you know, I am a career coach.
There's so many of them in the marketplace, but I've noticed that these are three differences between like older job interviewees for not familiar with video and the younger ones. So here are three tips to help you ACE your first virtual interview. That pitch ended up getting her onto fast company and she wasn't even launched at that point.
Teresa: That is crazy good. So good. So, and then obviously the agency thing, I think that's so right. And, but then that made me think like, does that mean I've got to be up and on it all the time? Like, cause now I'm sat here thinking, oh, there are so many things like, could I tell them like COVID hit, but obviously we're way too late for that.
So does that mean. It's always gotta be. You've gotta be trying to find things that happening right now.
Gloria: You know, when I think about pitches, it's kind of like copywriting, right? There's no crystal ball, you gotta test. But if you, if I have limited hours of the day, I'm not going to write 50 pitches. I'm going to write the pitch that's most lime timely.
That's most seasonal. Maybe it has a data point. Maybe it's a little contentious. So things like three things people get wrong about first time, whatever. Right. So I like that. That's going to make me look right. So think about yourself as a journalist because journalists are generalists.
They're not people that are going to be doing the deep dive. So if you have data points, if you have a very simple survey, for example, you survey habits of people who work from home versus people who decide to go back into the office and you kind of pulled together that data, right. You can literally go on LinkedIn and be like, Hey friends, $5 Starbucks card, answer this Google form, whatever, like whatever kind of proprietary data you have.
That's something that, that journalist does not have, automatically it puts you in the spot of an expert. And here's another thing is I want you to have a point of view and not be like oh, you know, everything's going, well, maybe this is interesting. No, you need, your pitch needs to be strong and has to be confident, even if you don't feel confident yet, because they need to be convinced that you are, you are a conduit of information that you are familiar with your expertise, because they want to interview people who have points of view.
You know, all of the time I am looking at my TV screen and I see these people and I don't know who they are, but because they have a very strong statement, I predict like we're going to go, you know, have an implant in our brain in five years, and then they get on interviewed on TV, right? There's no like legal repercussions, it's a prediction.
And so that's another hack is can you make some predictions about where things are going for your industry? Can you predict that maybe sustainable, you know, like it's, it used to be about sustainable fashion now is going to be about circular fashion or, you know, I just wrote a pitch yesterday for like a tour group for Ireland.
And instead of saying, here are three reasons you should visit Ireland with the pitch I wrote was here are three new trends in sustainable food travel. Right? And so like foraging mushrooms, like that's one of them. And then, and then we tied the, what they're offering to it to one of the three points.
Teresa: Nice, nice. So I love some of the things you said there, the data points that's really good. The contentious. It's hard because I think some people want to be like, they're nervous about putting themselves out there on the line and kind of really like nailing themselves to the all go. This is what I believe in.
And, but I really do like the prediction thing, because like you said, it's not, there's no legal thing cause you're just predicting it. It's not like I'm telling you this is going to be the case. So I wrote up the questions down. So let's say I've put together a piece. I think this is really good. And you, sorry, are you writing it for them to put it straight in? Is that the aim or are you just pitching it?
Gloria: So I used to pitch, but now I realize like, Journalists don't want to talk to all these PR people, because they're just going to say, let me get on the phone with the expert. So why are we adding friction? Why are we putting an extra layer? So the way I do a PR now, and no one's really doing this is, you know, I write the pitch for you, right?
In my starter pack, I have all the templates and you can upgrade to work with me one-on-one. I'm running the pitch for you. You can send it out on a team app your company.com email, you can delegate it to an intern, but that way you take control of your PR, you can have an email tracking software to see exactly when the email is being opened so that, you know, who's reading it.
I mean, all of these tools, it allows you to have the power of an agency without having to break the bank. So that's how I've been doing my own PR. Like for example, my assistant, she sends out like 10 podcasts pitches for me per week, so that, you know, her KPI is getting me on a podcast per week. Right. It's still the email that I'm sent I'm writing and she just writes it as, as if she was me.
Yeah. And I've asked a lot of people like editors and journalists, and that they're not impressed if they get someone that says “I am preaching on behalf of so-and-so.” It just honestly just makes it a little bit more like, um, annoying to me. Like I got a pitch the other day and it's like, I'm pitching on behalf of my father. I'm like, does your father not pitch for himself?
Teresa: Yeah. Doesn't he got any an email, but you're right. I think it can be really frustrating. Someone is pitching up is a funny one because partly thinks, well, does it make me look really impressive? And like, I'm really busy. And, but then actually with things like that, then no, I don't think that's right. Is it?
Gloria: I think anytime you're acting from a place of like, how do I project myself or how can I, you know, if you're feeding that ego, then you're probably far off from the mark. So just be genuine, be awesome, you know? And if you're so worried, You seeming busy or not that's attention you're taking away from working on your actual pitch.
Teresa: Yeah. So just get on with the pitch. So, uh, how do we get hold or how do we know who to email? How do we, like, how do we find that stuff out?
Gloria: So obviously inside of my starter pack, I have all of the media contacts, but if you're starting out, I want you to do two things. One is, I want you to install, uh, a Google news alert.
So you literally type in Google search, Google news alerts, and it gives you all of the different articles, run about your keywords. So for you, it might be female entrepreneurship, empowerment, confidence coaching for someone else. It might be, you know, vegan baking, whatever it is, right. They're going to send you every single article that's being published and you can start to populate your Excel spreadsheet by copy and pasting you know, the journalist.
Another way is if you sign up for HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Out, it's kind of like a service that gives you hundreds of different journalists increase every day. It's kind of insane. The amount of increase it's PR it's bloggers. It's also editors. And, and there might be saying, I'm looking for someone to interview right now who fits this and this, right.
So it can get crazy because there's hundreds of emails and there's like my a hundred thousand people on the platform. And so if you go on my website, Gloria Chou that's choupr.com/resources I actually have a five minute training on how you can use HARO. So you're not spending hours digging through this email. It does work.
I have had people land fast company and Forbes just on HARO as well. And of course you can pay for kind of search, you know, like hunter.io or kind of, you know, whatever, like search results. So there's all these ways that you can DIY it.
Teresa: Love it. Love it. Okay. I do particularly like your tip on the Google news and then find out which ports they are.
And then that's great. And lots of them on Twitter as well only. So if you are on Twitter then that's a really good place and they have, what's the hashtag called on Twitter. Oh, just a conference call.
Gloria: It's journal a journal or request.
Teresa: Journal request. That's it yet.
Gloria: Yeah. And also on LinkedIn, here's the thing that people are doing is a lot of, you know, I feel this in my podcast, the first episode I interviewed someone who writes for Forbes and Britton co, and I'm like, how do you feel about founders reaching out to you in the DMs, on LinkedIn. And for all of us, we're like, oh, look, that's like a no-no, but it's like, why not they're people? And you know what she said? She's like, so few people do that. That when I actually get a LinkedIn message directly from the founder, I'm like “This is awesome.” Like this person's confident I'm refreshed.
So do that because no one's doing that. No, one's gonna everyone's so like caught up in like, oh, I don't know how to press send everything you want is on the other side of the sun bunny. So the, so she actually told me like, because so few people are actually having the courage to do that. Like there it is there, there's your, there's your answer?
You know, like just go find journalists on Twitter, on LinkedIn follow hashtag. I don't care if it's like retail trends or whatever, and then just start messaging them, using the CPR method.
Teresa: Yeah, that's so good. So how often bearing in mind, let's imagine a small business owner. They do most of the things themselves, like, is this something that they need to bring in strategy every so often?
Do they need to do it once a month? What do you, did they wait until they've got something good to say? What's, what's your thoughts?
Gloria: I think the first step is obviously to use a CPR method and think about all the different angles. Right? So I, obviously I do this on my pitch writing sessions. We go in, we might have 20 different angles and we slowly start to chip away at them and we ask which one is the most timely, which one is the most relevant to this season, which one maybe ties to something in the news.
So for example, I worked with a small Etsy jewelry shop founder. She sold bracelets. She was 22 years old. She didn't really have a big business or anything, but she told me about her troubles with Etsy, that Etsy was kicking her off her platform, that they had actually very predatory policies like you have to pay for shipping.
And so she actually took that pitch. And so we wrote one about how, you know, Etsy and Amazon and all these quote-unquote pro small business platforms. We're actually not pro small business. And so she actually pitched that and she connected with a journalist, I think for Vox or I think like a slate on Twitter.
And the journalist is like, Hey, I'm writing a story about like, you know, all of these big, you know, pro small business, like Shopify, Facebook, that actually aren't pro small business. So I want to hear it from your perspective. And she got on the phone with a journalist that day. So, you know, it, that definitely helps.
So definitely, you know, work on your pitch. And honestly, like I hear very few people who are like, just waiting to send. I think we just gotta do that mental work to get us to the point where we're ready to press send. And I'm not worried about what time is it or follow up. Like the more comfortable you are sending the better you are at like the, because the biggest thing, as you know, you're in this industry is mindset.
Well, I work with founders who have the best innovative products and also work with pro founders who don't have the best products, but they have like millions of dollars in funding. Right. They all get different results because of what they believe that they're worthy of. So I tell my, my pro my people in my starter pack is I want you to get five rejections per week.
So whether that's, you know, a messaging editor, like I said, or on Twitter, because if you can't even get five projections, there's no way you're going to compete with those 10 grand a month agencies. So just, just do what you need to do, like mentally to get there.
Teresa: I love that. I love, when I talk about this all the time, in terms of like, what's the worst that can happen, they'll say no. Right? That's it.
So you've lost, I don't know, 5-10 minutes reaching out, particularly to that one. Cause you go to any pitch, you've already put your things together. So I'm assuming, and then she tells me otherwise that if I've written a good article or something, I can't, I can send to multiple places.
Yeah. So, you know, I think, yeah. So you spent like 5 minutes finding the person to send it to and they'd come back and said no, or not come back, but think that kind of mindset. And it does come down to a bit of a numbers game. Doesn't it?
Gloria: It's like dating you just gotta get out there. You gotta do the scary thing, you know, and if you're so caught up with, oh, I needed someone to represent me.
Oh, I, I don't know if is the right time, like you're already off the path, like just press send, you know what? I'll tell you something. At the beginning of this year, I sent an email to my entire subscriber, my entire database, and there was a typo in the first sentence. I said, I said, I am so excited that we are in 2020 now it was 2021.
And people were like, you mean 20, 21? And I was like, oops, I already sent it to thousands of people, but you know what? It didn't matter.
Teresa: Yeah, you're right. The fear is holding people back so much, weirdly that that's what my house comes about it's about like, you know, knowing how to do something is one thing. Like I know, you know, I have a degree in marketing at a mounted a long time. When I started my own business marketing myself.
Cool. That was like another thing because of my mindset, because of the fear of what will people say? What if they don't agree with me? What if this, what if that, so you're right. Like just do it because if they say no, they say no, if they don't, brilliant. So just have this thought as we record this it's November.
And one of my students does baking classes. She's really good at them. She teaches all sorts of different things and I'm celiac. So I can't have gluten. And she's done a gluten-free baking class with me for breads. And it's the main thing. Like it's the best part I've ever tries and I'm in a gluten-free group and a UK group.
And at the moment they're talking about like how all the supermarkets in the UK are really struggling with gluten-free food. They're just not, they don't seem to have it on the shelves. They're not like driven as much as they used to. And I'm just sat here listening to you, thinking about her, thinking about this scenario, thinking surely there's an angle here for her to go. Like maybe why they should be baking it themselves or like what, what's your thoughts on that?
Gloria: Oh my God. So many, first of all, I'm not celiac, but my body does not like gluten either. So whatever this group is a recipe, I'm an awful baker though. Like I once put easy bake cookies and I went to sleep and then we'll set the house on fire.
Teresa: She does it with you alongside in zoom you'll be fine.
Gloria: So, I mean, so many headlines, like for example, It's holiday season. There's more and more people with food allergies. Why are there no gluten-free options, or what about three easy ways to incorporate gluten-free cooking for your holiday baking or best, uh, you know, best recipes to make sure that you are able to satisfy all the different dire restrictions on your Christmas table.
It could be something like, uh, you know, You know, gluten-free baking gifts for, for, you know, like gifts, like actual baking gifts for, for like Christmas cookies or something like that. Or easy ways to incorporate gluten-free cooking with the pantry, with the items you already have, or three things people get wrong about gluten-free cooking, three ways to make gluten-free cooking that tastes like chalk. I mean, I'm just spit balling.
Teresa: Yeah. Like so many of them and you're right. Hooking up with that kind of, you know, it's the holiday season and this is the time. Whereas someone with the, you know, I can't eat it. Like all the nice food comes out for Christmas, all the beautiful stuffing, all the lovely, like can of pay stuff.
And of course, all of that I can't eat. And it's so frustrating. So of course, like I said at the moment in this group, they are like, okay, I just need to this supermarket and they've got this thing it's gluten free or I've just been here. And I can't find that thing. And it's like, you know, if she could create like some nice kind of pastry that someone like gluten-free kiddie like brilliant. I love that.
Gloria: And one more thing is not only is it relevant because you want to feel, make sure everyone feels invited, but maybe there's a data point around people who don't test positive for celiac like me, but I can't eat gluten. I'm sure there are so. Because so many people that eat meat who are gluten-free are actually not celiac, it doesn't show up in their blood results, but they just don't eat gluten. So they feel uncomfortable telling them. So maybe it's something about that. So add the data point in there about how it's really common and two how you can work around it, to make everyone feel welcome at your Christmas table.
Teresa: I love it. I love it. Gloria you've been such a great guest. I've loved all these ideas. You know what happens when I have people onto the podcast. This is why I try so hard not to like overwhelm my audience, but I sit here thinking I should totally be doing this. Why am I not doing this? This should go in my list. Why am I not pitching these things?
And like I said, I am, we are trying to like get into a couple of places at the moment. Cause I'm, co-authoring a book and it's part of this kind of thing is that we're doing some other bits around it. You know, but it, that credibility of going, like I'm a TEDx speaker. So the credibility of saying I'm a TEDx speaker is actually been phenomenal.
Like it's a really good selling point. So again, like anything of these things. Like, I don't know about you, but being able to promote, Look, I'm here. Look, someone's had me on their podcast. Look, this thing, this thing, like all of that is so good. Isn't it?
Gloria: It is. And honestly, even if you feel like you don't have credibility, use your failure as credibility, because I'll tell you what, the moment I tell people I applied to over a thousand jobs and couldn't get any, they immediately, they body relaxes. They feel like this is an authentic person I can relate to. This person has something to share. So like, it's not just about awards and accolades. Like those are great, but also you want to be a real human being as well.
Teresa: Absolutely. I love it. And that is a perfect way to end it. What a great statement. So Gloria we obviously going to look up to everything in the show notes but where's your favorite place to hang out? Where can people come and say Hi.
Gloria: Aw, thank you so much for having me. So I have a free Facebook group that I go live in every single Friday.
Uh, it's called the small biz PR Facebook, you can go there @getfeaturednow.com. I also have a free masterclass where I show you the exact pitch that we talked about that got on to fast company word for word and more so that you can actually watch this class and start pitching right away. I have people in the DM all the time.
I watched your masterclass and I got my bedsheets into Canadian, but it happens. You can watch that class right now @gloriachoupr.com/masterclass now it's C H O U not C H you know, something it's C H O U gloriachoupr.com/masterclass.
Teresa: And we will link up to that in the show notes. So wherever you are, look for the show notes it's in there.
Gloria thank you so, so much, it's been a pleasure having you on. There we go. That was the lovely Gloria. So many good ideas. And I loved the kind of case study we looked at at the end with the lovely Hunkington House Kitchen. So if you want access to anything we talked about in today's show, then please head over to the show notes, which you'll find it teresaheathwareing.com/240 as in numbers, not words. And you'll find all the links there. Also, don't forget to check out the club at teresaheathwareing.com/theclub. Okay. I will be back next week for a solo episode. I will see you then.
