Transcript Ep #204: Time To Rethink Your Relationship With Your Business? Gloria Chou Has Advice.

[00:07:13] Heather: Well, hey friends, welcome back to another episode. Today I am bringing you an interview with my dear friend, Gloria Chou, who I had the opportunity to meet real time in person at a peer mastermind I was invited to. I felt super lucky to be invited to go to this peer mastermind. It was like, woo, I felt like, Ooh, look at me, I’ve arrived. I’ve been requested to come which is a funny thing to say. 

It’s one of my previous clients was hosting it in Phoenix and invited me in March, and so I very eagerly moved my calendar around to make it happen, and I’m so glad I did because one of the incredible people that I met there was Gloria. Instantly, you’ll hear this in the episode why I love her so much. She’s real, she’s vulnerable and she’s so focused on helping business owners, specifically women and underrepresented women in business, small business owners, get their message out into the world. Now, she does that through media. It’s a really, really great alignment to what I teach in speaking. She has built her business organically through media. She teaches people how to do that too. She has an incredible program. We’ll talk about that a little bit on the episode, but here’s the interesting thing. 

Today, I didn’t wanna have a conversation around her expertise in media, but we do talk a little bit about that and we’ll talk about how you can learn more about that if her style resonates with you at the end of the episode. But today’s conversation, I wanted you to be able to connect with the heart that I connected to in person and we had a beautiful conversation, we’ll talk about in the episode. 

I finally will release part of the story around my third baby pregnancy. This is gonna sound really weird, but it’ll make sense in the episode around how Gloria is part of that story. That sounds really, really weird. You just have to listen to the interview for that full story but we also talk about how her relationship with hustle and her relationship of how she shows up in business has changed. 

[00:03:43] Now, an interesting thing about Gloria’s business is it has grown extremely quickly over the last two years. It’s like a rocket ship, kind of taking off. And the last 18 months for her specifically, is she’s really had to rethink how she approaches things. We’ll talk about in the episode. We’ll talk about the catalyst that really led to the change. But here’s just some, I have to read you this because you getting some business advice today from a real badass. 

So, first of all, if you wanna connect with Gloria, you can connect with her on Instagram. I will link to her Instagram profile in the show notes. We’ll also link to all of the resources she talks about if you DM her the word hint of hustle. She has a special pitch freebie for you so you can grab that from her and also just give a shout out and say, I mean, how much she loved the show, but her interview in particular was fricking wonderful. But Gloria has helped over 10,000 small business owners get a combined 1 billion. Yes, I said billion with a ‘B’, organic previews in top tier outlet outlets such as New York Times, Vogue, Fast Company, Forbes, et cetera. 

[00:04:56] Now, I see this because one of the things I love about what Gloria teaches is this whole idea that if you have something to share, it’s should be heard and media outlets are a really great way for you to reach more people and we want to see more diverse faces and voices in the media. Another thing that she’s really passionate about is the idea that you shouldn’t have to pay for media, so you don’t have to pay to play. You also, we talk about the end of the episode. You don’t have to like, subscribe to the gross marketing tactics that sometimes we feel like we have to use. She talks about how she ditched those and how they made such a transformation in her business. 

There’s just so much good thing here, but one of the most beautiful things that I really wanna hit on here is the, one of the parts I love about Gloria’s story so much is the fact that she had no formal background in PR. She literally built her skills by cold calling and pitching media outlets as she built up her initial business which was she was kind of agency pitching on behalf of people. And this was like, a couple of my first questions are like baffling because I’m like the idea of cold calling outreach makes my whole skin just like crawl. I don’t love the idea of like putting myself out there. I am a total introvert. I know it’s surprising, but I have mad respect for people who are able to like walk up to others and introduce themselves and strike up conversations and the idea of reaching out to people like cold calling, that is terrifying to me. 

I know that might be surprising to you, but the fact that that’s how she developed the skills for what she teaches now. That is just so badass, like, so mad respect for that path and you’re going to learn so much. I know you’re also gonna be inspired and you’re going to get goosebumps on this episode because Gloria has some insights that are just going to knock your socks off. So without further ado, as they say, here’s my interview with Gloria Chou.

[00:07:13] Heather: Gloria officially, welcome to the Hint of Hustle podcast. This is a long awaited interview on my side. I’m so thrilled you’re here. 

[00:07:21] Gloria: Woo-hoo, me too. 

[00:07:23] Heather: I’m also laughing, for context for those of you joining us today, Gloria and I had an hour scheduled for this podcast interview and we just spent the last 40 minutes just catching up and talking all things business.

[00:07:35] Gloria: Oops. 

[00:07:36] Heather: Which is, I think, I don’t know. I think as business owners when you connect with another person, as I feel like you and I have connected over the last couple of months, sometimes it’s just really good just to catch up with people without the expectations of being on record. 

[00:07:49] Gloria: Yeah, 100%. 

[00:07:52] Heather: So that was good, but now we’re gonna talk about the stuff that you all get to be part of. I am so thrilled for you to hear from Gloria today. As I mentioned in the intro, Gloria and I had the opportunity to be in person in March and instantly we developed business and person crushes on each other. 

We just have a lot of shared kinda outlooks on things and just connect really well and I knew you guys were gonna love her. So today we’re gonna get into all the things. I wanna hear more about your business backend, Gloria, so why don’t we start by talking about tell us a little bit more about your business model and how you serve your audience. 

[00:08:28] Gloria: So I am a small biz PR coach that has never worked a day in a PR agency. I actually used to be a US diplomat, so if changing careers is something that you were thinking of this, this episode is for you. So I started my business really during covid, right? I was doing PR consulting, covid happened. So all the retainer kind of melted away, and I thought how can I scale my time and productize my offers? 

So I created my PR program called the PR Starter Pack with my proprietary pitching framework from literally, I kid you not, cold calling thousands of newsrooms. I came up with a pitch framework that works for any business to cold pitch and get a yes and the program has served hundreds of small businesses now from every single industry, whether it’s service or product based.

[00:09:10] Heather: Yeah. Okay. I freaking love this. I didn’t realize that your business really like took off like from Covid being like that time period. I had in my head that you had been doing this way longer than that so that’s just like a tribute to how much of a rockstar you are. I’m curious, okay, around the cold pitching thing is that like natural for you when you like went out of the gate and started cold pitching people? Is that like a natural tendency for you or not so much?

[00:09:38] Gloria: I think I have a really thick, shameless skin. And I just go like if, and I always say like, there’s, it’s never a no, right? It’s just like, not right now. So how do you find the way to get a yes so I think that’s just my personality. I’m really relentless and I love to do it when I can help other people win. So I just thought PR is perfect because you just elevate people and you get that journalist to say yes. It’s absolutely game changing for that small business. 

And so, and I think because I never worked a day in PR, I didn’t have any contacts or kind of a guidebook on how to PR, and just by throwing spaghetti on the wall, I was able to kind of crack the code of how to do it in my way, which is like through the back door and now that’s what people want, like no one’s really serving the small business owner, right? 

If you look at the traditional way that PR is done, it’s very kind of mad men ass. You gotta pay $10,000, you know, a month on retainer and there’s not really guaranteed results. So I really think that what I’m doing is not only, you know, disrupting the space, but also really shining a light on so many diverse small businesses who traditionally have not been heard. 

[00:10:43] Heather: Yeah, and I freaking love that because most often when people do think PR, they think of people who have agents or they’re represented by agencies and you think like big names. I think about people who are on the Today Show or even on like more regional networks. Television is what comes to mind for me, but you think there’s something big behind it and what I fricking love about the work that you do, so many things. 

I’m just gonna have like a gush on you this whole episode, but the fact that you teach people how to do it for themselves, not only do they get media appearances from it, but I would imagine their confidence in articulating the value of what they do and the value of their own voice is like, skyrocketed so tell me why. I know that’s one of the things that’s really important for you, helping people see be seen, valued, heard. Tell me a little bit about really what drove that for you. 

[00:11:38] Gloria: Well, I think growing up as a child of, you know, Chinese immigrants, I never saw anyone who looked like me in the media. And I was always told culturally to kind of keep my head down and say, yes sir, and all those things and I didn’t really fit in that. And I think through finding my own voice and breaking out of a really comfortable career, you know, I was a US diplomat. I had a pension waiting for me 25 years of career stability and after I kind of just broke out of that, I help broke loose. 

I was like, you know what? I’m really gonna just lean into doing things my way. And then when I started doing this work, I realized that there was really no one serving, like the bootstrapping small business owner, maybe selling something on Etsy or an author. And the more I tapped into this online world, I realized that it’s not the startup bros who are small business owners. It’s really kind of the people who are from different backgrounds, maybe first generation immigrants single moms, military wise. These are the people who make up the small business fabric of our country, and you don’t really see that when you think about small business or the word entrepreneur, right? 

If I say the word entrepreneur, even if you like, do a stock image, it’s mainly white men and I think that’s really not representative of the landscape. So my work is really to make media inclusive so that we can, even the playing field, because it’s really not the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world that’s, you know creating jobs for everyone. It’s really the people in our local communities who are starting small businesses and making an impact in their community and those are mainly women and women of color. 

[00:13:03] Heather: Yes. Okay. Can y’all see why I resonate with this so much? I think it’s so important for people to have not only the ability to like raise their hand and speak up and use their voice, but having the ability to hear from more diverse voices. I think, I dunno, I just, I love the work that you do. 

Let’s go back to the early days in your business when you were pivoting into this online business model. Let’s explore your relationship with the word hustle. I’m just curious outta the gate when you hear the word hustle or you think about the term hustle, what’s your like, instant reaction to it or what’s your interpretation of like hustle culture?

[00:13:42] Gloria: Ooh, circa before Covid, it was like, yeah, like hustle is the your golden ticket to being seen as successful. And I think, again, from my immigrant childhood, I was told that the more money you made, the more worthy you were as a human being and this was something that was passed down to me from my mother, from her parents and that’s a survivalist mentality because she was living in communist China. And so when I first started doing this online thing, I was working 10 hours, 12 hours a day, seven days a week in front of my computer. I didn’t even know what a funnel was, let alone email marketing so I had to kind of figure all of that out.

[00:14:16] I remember drinking coffee like I, I didn’t even eat. I just drank coffee until probably three to 4:00 PM. I would have my first meal then, and I keep going at it to the point where I pretty much burned a hole in my gut, like I went to the acupuncturist and they’re like, you have all these issues because your body is full of like acidic things, right? You need to create more balance in your life and I wasn’t sleeping, of course, right? 

I had, I just, it was just a lot of uphill struggle and I think in the online world when you join the online world, you’re always looking at the people who have achieved so much and you just see the gap of where I am versus where they are and it’s just this insatiable thing that’s like, it’s never enough. It’s never enough and no matter what I did or how much I did, it was never enough to the point where I just completely burnt out, and then through that journey of really treating myself not as a human being with the kindness I should have shown myself, but as really a robot and a machine, I started to realize like, maybe there’s something deeper in the way that I equated my worth with hustle that I needed to fundamentally rewire because here’s the thing. 

I did achieve all of my goals, like I did have the six figure launches and then I was absolutely miserable like I was so, I was such a terrible leader. I was berating my team. I was doing things I was not proud of. I was so focused on maybe the few people who wanted a refund instead of celebrating the success that I just completely disempowered my team and myself. And when I look back to that person, I just, I feel bad for that person because it was that hustle, that nonstop scarcity that drove me and everything that I did. That I couldn’t even celebrate the fact that I had that launch. I was just so focused on the things that I didn’t have, right? So I don’t ever wanna be that person again. 

[00:15:57] Heather: Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s a hard lesson. Okay, this is gonna sound kind of weird. It’s almost like, it’s also a rite of passage, that burnout mode in hustle. That’s just my take on it is I think there is this interesting belief in the online space. It’s like one of two camps, right? 

It’s like I gotta work my butt off. I love how you said the, like the, we see the benchmarks of other people and then there’s like this like insatiable, like chase of it, like that perfect word to describe that so it’s like the hustle piece. But on the other side I see a lot of like, ah, I’m not gonna hustle. I want it to be easy. I’m just gonna like do the minimum and be as efficient as possible, and I think that a lot of the biggest lessons that we have to have for ourself come from doing it the hard way cuz we gotta learn what works for us and what doesn’t work for us.

[00:16:50] So it’s interesting when I think back on my burnout moment, I think back with gratitude, like I’m sad, I’m sad for earlier me, as I’m sure you are for earlier you but I also have like huge gratitude that for walking those paths because, holy crap. The lessons that we have now are ingrained in us of not doing that shit, right?

[00:17:09] Gloria: Yeah. And one thing I didn’t tell your audience is during that time when I was building my business, this insatiable hunger for more and just ignoring my husband. I remember we had like one date night and I was literally in the DMs like trying to get someone to join my program and he looked at me and he’s like, you haven’t talked to me all day and this is a one time a week we get to sit in front of each other. Is it really worth it? 

And I started to realize, like I was being a terrible partner, right? I was being a terrible person for my health and through that time, the two years that I built my business at a really rapid speed, I discovered that I had a 11 centimeter fibroid in my uterus that just, I don’t know. Like I, I think it’s because I hustled so much, but I don’t know how it grew so big and for me not to notice it, and so obviously I had to get an a, kind of like a c-section, an open abdominal surgery to remove it. And when I saw that tumor, it was literally like scarcity in physical form and I think for the first time in my life I understood how our bodies are so connected to everything that we’re feeling. And I think it just grew so much because of the fact that I was hustling. 

And here’s the funny thing is after I had the open abdominal surgery, just like a c-section. You’re supposed to rest for many weeks, right? For any woman that’s listening, like you’re not supposed to be getting back into it for less than four weeks after my surgery, I pulled off my first six figure launch. I was wearing bandages. I remember like giving webinars and I was like, and I just feel bad for that person when I think about her, like pushing herself to that end. And so after I had the you know, six figure launch, I did it. I went into a mental spiral. I had like, you know, repeating thoughts. I just was so burnt out where anything that went wrong in my business, I just started crying and I had to go into bed and lay in a horizontal position and so I think my body was like in complete meltdown mode.

[00:18:59] Heather: Yeah. 

[00:18:59] Gloria: And I was questioning, I was like, why is it that I achieved this benchmark, right, in such a short amount of time? But I was completely miserable and I was sad and I just, and then that’s, I think the one, the pivotal moment where I started to really look at my relationship with money, my relationship with scarcity, what success means to me.

[00:19:17] Heather: Yeah. Oh my goodness. There’s like so much to unpack there, but that physical manifestation of stress and hustle. I like side tangent here for a moment. I’m working with a client right now on her webinar and she actually talks about this, the scientific link between how stress creates physical ailments in our bodies. And she, I don’t know anything about this, but we were going through her webinar slides and she has all of this like medical research backing up the physical manifestation of stress. 

So the fact that you’re saying that it’s very, like timing is a really interesting thing that that message has now shown up twice this week. So I’m listening to that right now as I’m in a stress season of life to like ease it out. But I think it’s really something that we have to really consider with what you’re saying here is that like wake up call of that physical manifestation of stress. It’s interesting that you achieved such a huge win right on the coattails of such a hard, like obviously hard, hard, traumatic thing that you went through.

[00:20:20] What’s interesting is, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this before, but when you hear like look at you, you like pulled off a six figure launch less than four weeks after surgery, like you can easily hear that narrative go two ways. 

You can have like, whoa, that is so impressive and people being like, wow, that’s so amazing. You’re such a badass which is an interesting celebration of that hustle. And it would, I think it’d be perfectly normal for people to celebrate in that way and I wonder if actually you felt that at the time, I have no idea. 

But the other way is like the way that you said, you’re so sad for her, like that hit me deep, right? Isn’t it interesting that the same amount of facts could happen, but we can have such different perspectives on those two, like two scenarios. 

[00:21:04] Gloria: Yeah, because I really felt what it means to have everything that people would wanted to achieve on the outside and feel absolutely terrible inside, and I think that’s what happens when we disconnect from ourselves, right? And so I think I heard somewhere who was the person who was a CEO of Yahoo. 

She famously like, took, I don’t know, like a few days for her maternity leave and it was like celebrated and I think there is a movement now of like anti hule because I do think it’s very toxic what we expect women to do like after giving birth and all of these things that are really kind of like heteronormative and also like you know, wrapped up in white supremacy and capitalism. 

So that’s really my journey that I’ve been trying to realize is I have a lot of internalized capitalism, you know, growing up as an child of immigrant like having money was your key to success. And I think that might have worked in my parents’ generation where they were literally surviving and I think I don’t necessarily need that anymore in my lifetime because I don’t, I have the privilege of not being raised in communist China and that survivalism mentality, I don’t need to carry it anymore and so now I’m in my late thirties, I’ve done a lot of work and also around psychedelics and, you know, healing my childhood trauma and has really allowed me to release a lot of these narratives that led to me burning myself out and led to me treating my body that way.

[00:22:25] Heather: Yeah. So you said that with money was your definition of success, like that was the badge that you wore. I’m curious now, how do you define success for yourself? 

[00:22:34] Gloria: Ooh. So that’s, it’s funny you asked because I just took my team on an all inclusive expenses paid team retreat in the Philippine Islands, right?

[00:22:42] Heather: Yeah. Oh, she fancy y’all. 

[00:22:44] Gloria: I’m not cheap, and the Gloria a year ago would’ve never done anything like that and I think leaning into this abundance of knowing that it’s not just about like holding onto everything you have, but letting it flow has really helped me realize that like money is when it’s held, it’s kind of like a toxic pool of water. 

I read this book by Lynne Twist called The Soul of Money that like changed my life and I think the way I acted with money was everything I earned, I just tried to hoard and I didn’t let it flow into the universe, right? And I realized that like you have to let it circulate into the universe so that you know the abundance can multiply. 

So I’m learning that and while I was taking my team on a retreat, and as you know, I took a 30 day sabbatical, so I was not away from the business for 30 days. I finally saw my mother for the first time in four years. The numbers weren’t looking great, like my, all of the numbers were to a I to level that I haven’t seen yet in business. 

I’ve had my business, I was pretty lucky to have it go up, up, up, up, up and it was like the first time that, you know, we had like a quite a negative month while I had all these expenses to pay, right, with the flights and the team retreat and I realized just being there and like, you know, getting all these dinners and I didn’t feel, I felt happy for myself because I feel like the old Gloria would’ve been like pinching pennies and trying to like, see how I can save or maybe acted in a way that, you know, didn’t make me feel so present and I’m really glad that I didn’t lean into that scarcity that really was my default wiring, and instead just was like, you know what, we’re here, like, I’m gonna just have the best time. I’m gonna have my team feel like the best. I’m not gonna start like cutting corners now that we’re here. 

So we just leaned all the way into it and it was transformational, like we had team members who like cried and they said this was an absolutely transformational trip that they’ll remember for the rest of their life. And I, you know, you can’t put a dollar amount on that. 

[00:24:34] Heather: Yeah. So, for you now, so I’m gonna answer with that context. Tell me again, how do you define success?

[00:24:42] Gloria: Ooh. I define success as achieving what I want while feeling a sort of spaciousness in my body. 

[00:24:52] Heather: That’s beautiful. That’s really beautiful, like that sounds like a chill, like goosebumpy just hit me. I love, I love that. You know, one of the things that I’ve noticed in your language. People use certain words and a couple of the words that you’ve used in our conversation today, but also in yours and I, private conversations. You talk a lot about that contrast between scarcity and abundance. I’m curious, was this something that you were always aware of or is this a more kind of recent, intentional thing that you’ve been focused on here in the last couple years? 

[00:25:22] Gloria: I think after I had my fibroid tumor and then I got burned out and I had a lot of abundance in terms of revenue. I didn’t feel that way. I started to understand like your, you know, your client with the body, the body’s always talking to us, the body keeps the score. I realize everything is psychosomatic, everything is connected. 

And the funny thing is, is the uterus is the sacral chakra which controls money and I literally had a block, a physical block of stuck cells. And so I think once I saw that and the location of that tumor, I started to connect the dots between everything and so that word of flow and of, you know, scarcity, it just became just embedded in who I was because I literally saw what it meant to have stuck energy inside of me. 

[00:26:07] Heather: Okay. I didn’t know about the uterus and the whole money flowing chakra thing, like that’s new information for me. And now I have so many questions around when you said flow, hello, uterus and flow. And now I’m like, I have a baby in my uterus so what does that mean? 

[00:26:22] Gloria: It means that you have a lot of amazing creative, abundant energy and you’re not afraid to use it.

[00:26:27] Heather: Or for me thinking about already having children, thinking about how babies cost a lot of money. 

[00:26:35] Gloria: I mean, that’s also why I, on a more personal level is I never wanted children, like I told my husband on the first day, like, we’re never gonna have kids so I hope that’s not a deal breaker for you, and only recently through my trauma work through psychedelic assisted therapy, have I been able to like unblock my relationship with my mom because I think that was what was keeping me stuck is because I had an un unhealed mother wound, and at the same time of healing that. 

For the first time in 37 years of my life, I think maybe one day I might be, might wanna become a mother, like I didn’t even freeze my eggs, like I just, it just always was not an option for me but this was pretty recent. This was a few months ago where I had this, this, 

[00:27:16] Heather: Yeah. 

[00:27:17] Gloria: And it was just like, what is this feeling? I’ve never felt that before so 

[00:27:22] Heather: This is crazy. It’s wonderful. It was kind of looping things together. That was one of the first conversations that Gloria and I had was okay. Side note I think I’ve talked about this before. I am not a small talk person. I have like very low tolerance for small talk. I don’t do chitchat. I don’t talk about the weather, like when I meet someone and I connect with them, I wanna know, like, tell me your inner fears, like what’s actually, like what’s going on right now? What are you struggling with? What’s in your brain? What are you excited for? Like, I want the deep stuff and I could tell you were that way too. 

So Gloria and I happened to sit next to each other at dinner when we were together in March at a peer mastermind and that what you just shared is what you shared with me at the dinner table, and I shared with you, I haven’t talked about my story of how I got pregnant on the podcast yet or the whole story behind it, but I remember sharing with you that I had a vision, like in a manifest, like I was doing, like some meditation work a couple years ago and I envisioned having a baby girl next to a Christmas tree and how was a very weird. 

And I remember you looked at me and you’re like, goosebumps, this is a thing. Are you gonna have a baby? Is it your time? And I remember thinking like, I don’t know. I’m too old, like it’s not in the cards, but I’m kind of playing with this idea again that I think I want a third baby, and kid you not, y’all. I got pregnant that weekend. I got home like literally two days after having this conversation with Gloria. I put a baby in my uterus. It happened, like that is part of the story, but you were like that conversation where we just like, were real and raw and talking was a huge part of me being open to that. That’s crazy. 

[00:29:04] Gloria: We gotta take a goosebumps moment for everybody. Yeah. Let that sink in. 

[00:29:09] Heather: Now everyone’s thinking, Heather’s a baby girl. I don’t know. We’re gonna be surprised. I have no idea if it’s a boy or girl and we’ll wait until that time comes, but either way I’m gonna be happy with it. But, I just love how open you are when you’re vulnerable, you sharing your stories. I’m very grateful for that. 

I know those listening are grateful too. I also love how open and willing you are to explore how the inside world for you is connected to the outside and vice versa, like, that’s just a really interesting thing and it’s really refreshing to talk about it so openly because I think it’s so easy for us to get swept up, caught up in all of the data, the processes, the like getting everything dialed into our business but you can go at a pace that on paper makes. It look like you’re doing really great, right, but if your inner world is rocked, it’s not really, it’s not really working out. So I’m curious, how has since that moment for you, with the cyst, with the surgery years ago, how has business for you changed?

[00:30:07] Gloria: Ooh, so that happened a year and a half ago and since then I’ve been focused on one thing which is stepping into leadership because here’s the thing about scarcity is when you live in fear of trying to hold on to everything, you will never build a great business because you’re not gonna be able to empower people. You’re going to be nickel and diming people. You’re gonna be micromanaging people. You are going to create a team of robots who come with come to you with problems, not solutions and because I didn’t have the patience, I didn’t have the abundance. I didn’t have the energy to lean into truly investing in people. I saw hiring as very transactional. 

And I remember, you know, sitting one night and I was completely burnt out again. And I said, why is it that I have five people working with me, but I am doing everything? And then I started to realize, like, maybe it’s a reflection of me because let’s be honest, our businesses are a reflection of me, a reflection of everybody. And I realized that my weakness was not being able to really learn what it takes to be a leader and that was what separates the really admirable like business owners from the people who are just kind of hustling and grinding, right? 

And so I vowed to just really try to lean into leadership, reading all the books, doing all the training, spending the time to have systems and processes and onboarding, and really have the patience to invest in someone where maybe for the first 30 or 60 days, you don’t see an ROI whereas before it was like, okay, you’re here, go do this. Bye, right? And then people left. 

So my style of seeing my team is so different. I see my team as an essential part of my business, not just someone that I’m hiring to do a job so I can make money. I really see myself as this is a person I’m becoming by helping other people become the best versions of themselves. And so through that team retreat that I just held two weeks ago that was the first time in my business that I felt like I was truly stepping into leadership and like I said, the numbers are down right for the first time in my business, but it felt so great inside to be able to make an impact like that because I know that the ripple effects of what I taught them and how I got them to think about their work will ripple through throughout their career, whether or not they continue to work with me. 

[00:32:21] Heather: Yeah. I just got emotional as you said, that maybe it’s hormonal, I’m not sure but contrasting that, what you said earlier where four weeks post surgery, right? You had the best launch, six figure launch, amazing thing and you felt like crap on the inside compared to what you just said were the numbers are down, right? That you’re not, the quote- unquote performance is not there, but it was the best feeling, being able to create that for your team, like when you contrast those two moments, how does that feel for you? 

[00:32:50] Gloria: I feel like now I’m leaning into abundance where I just trust that I’m doing the right thing and it’s it’s an energy, right? We all feel it because I think the old Gloria was like, well, I did this for you, like you need to do this for me and it’s very, this kind of, different thing, but when you truly lean into abundance and you invest in people and you don’t need this like, handcuff, that’s like you are beholden to me, people flourish. They can sense that energy and they naturally want to take care of you because we know the research shows and through our own personal experience that people are not motivated by money. 

People leave jobs all the time. So if it’s not the money that’s keeping them there, how else do you get them to feel like they’re a part of something bigger especially when they’re working across time zones and they also have other clients, right. So that’s really, now I finally understand why there’s so many like webinars and courses on like leading during a remote time cuz for us it’s like everything is remote. 

But I realized like, wow, this is really what it comes down to because there’s so many little moments of leadership that we don’t talk about that is either missed or just not looked at when you’re leading a remote team and I think being able to truly invest in them with not expecting anything in return and just truly being present for them like I felt like those little moments were achieved. 

[00:34:08] Heather: Yeah, I love that and it’s the idea of like, when you have remote teams which I think most people listening do is I think a lot of times people think of leadership as the moments where you’re interacting with your team but I think leadership has felt the most when you’re not interacting with your team. It’s how they perceive you and what’s the culture look like and how they feel about their jobs and about the team when you’re not around and I think that’s really hard for people to grasp onto cuz you’re like, everything’s fine, like I only have to think about it when I’m on but it’s really the culture you create when you’re not quote-unquote on with your team. That’s a really beautiful thing.

 I have one last follow up question and then let’s talk about how people can stay connected with you and learn more about your CPR method and the things that you do in PR because I’m sure people are like, Heather, you teased us with all this great shit that Gloria does, like, why are we not talking about that? This conversation was like way fricking cool today so I know everyone got so much out of it. So we’ll talk about your masterclass and where they can learn more about you. But I wanna make this slightly tangible for a moment. 

When you talk about the abundance piece, I know we hear it and I’m like nodding my head going like, yes, step into abundance. This is great. Do you have any advice or just words of wisdom for people listening who might be really in that mode of like, yeah, I hear you. Think bigger, think abundant but like right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to pay my mother fricking bills, like I, like they’re scraping to get by or they’re really in that bootstrapping mode of their business. 

Based around what you went through, right, maybe with them not having to walk through surgery or some kind of big life event, any like words of wisdom for them around how they could take steps towards that more abundant mindset?

[00:35:49] Gloria: Well, I think it is really about, leaning into trusting your future self without expecting an ROI. So it’s kind of like, you know, like the whole detachment theory. [00:36:00] If you can realize that you’re not in the business to just make money, like of course we are but that money and abundance and all of those things that can flow towards you will happen when you truly give away your energy and service in a way that’s not nickel and diming people, like, it’ll just flow.

So for example, like. I just, I started to think about my business and I thought, why is it that we’re in business, right? Like, what is it like, of course we want more people to join our PR program, the PR Starter Pack. But the more I thought about that, the more my message became really the kind of pressure and the more I like was hard selling, people didn’t join, but the moment I changed and I was like, how can I help people for free? How can I get so good at helping people for free that they just can’t get enough of me and they wanna be in my world? 

That’s when I started to see the revenue numbers go up because I tried all those hard selling tactics and it doesn’t work, like all those pressurized timers, you know, the false scarcity. it, it like Those funnel magic templates that we all use, right? I’m guilty of that myself. I realized it didn’t work anymore. 

And so one of the things I did, for example, on my webinar is I revealed the price at the beginning. Thanks to my copywriter, Britney McBean, who basically told me like, this is, like you leaning into to ethical marketing, like, tell them in the beginning what you’re gonna sell and what the price is. And guess what? Like no one really left, like people stayed on, right? Another thing I got rid of is the value stack. You know how like traditionally you have assigned arbitrary number. It’s like you get this for $99,000 today for $200, like people are not stupid and yeah, I think we’re past that time so I got rid of all that as well. You know, fake timers, fake urgencies, three spots left, kind of bullshit and it really helped me.

[00:37:39] So for anyone out there that’s listening, think about in what ways are you brainwashed into like the old funnel marketing things that maybe don’t work anymore for today’s audience, at least it doesn’t work for my audience of diverse female founders and so in what ways did I have to retrain myself and to see what was true for me. So that has been a very beautiful journey of like unlearning of what I have been doing and the data tells me that it works, like when you do things that are aligned for you, the money will come and it has. So I’m living proof that, that it works when you do lean into abundance. 

[00:38:15] Heather: I love that. I think it’s that really that nuance shift around, one, confidence in your future self. I wrote that down. I thought that was a really brilliant, just line, little golden nugget right there but that other piece of shifting the focus. If you find yourself like stressing about money, stop worrying about the money or the tactics, the techniques to like create the money piece and shift your focus to the person you’re serving. I love that, like, that speaks to my heart and I love it so much. All right, Gloria, where is the best place for people to go to learn more about your PR program and to consume all the things, to learn how to be seen, heard, and valued in the media? 

[00:38:51] Gloria: So I’m on Instagram @gloriachoupr. That’s spelled Gloria, C, H, O, U, P, R. I also have my own podcast called Small Business PR Podcast. I interviewed [00:39:00] journalists and we really just try to make PR accessible. I ask them all the questions, what do you like to see in a pitch? What do I write in the subject line? Like all the different things that no agency will tell you, I ask them. And then if you wanna see exactly what the structure of a cold pitch looks like, that has helped hundreds of small businesses get featured on podcasts and magazines and outlets, go to gloriachoupr.com/masterclass and you can watch that right now. And if you DM me, if you DM me, hint of hustle, I will give you a pitching freebie. 

[00:39:29] Heather: Ooh, okay. We love free shit, so heck yes. We will link to all of that and I’ll type those instructions in the show notes. So y’all, we got you there. Please, please send Gloria, a DM at a minimum to tell her thank you for sharing her stories today, being so vulnerable and real and raw. This is one of the big reasons why I switched the show from the Heather Sager Show into Hint of Hustle because I wanted to have these real and raw conversations around what it really looks behind the curtain in, like in these online businesses, we see the pretty shit [00:40:00] on stage all the time. We see how people show up, but it’s these real stories around what built our businesses, both from the structure but also from the beliefs. That’s really what the heart of this is about. And thank you for showing up like a thousand percent today. I just appreciate you so much. 

[00:40:16] Gloria: Thank you so much, Heather. You’re amazing![00:40:19] Heather: All right, friends, thanks for joining another episode. And hey, by the way, go, definitely check out Gloria’s podcast because my episode on her show also released this week. So we will link to that there and you can do a little love swap back and forth between her show, my show. If you love this show, you’re gonna love her, her sassy style on there too and I love the fact that you interview, like you ask all the questions of reporters and other people, so you’re a great interviewer so we’re gonna go bounce over there too. All right friends, we will see you on the next episode.