Episode 218: How Generational Trauma Impacts Building a Business (and What No One Talks About)
In this episode of the Small Business PR Podcast, Gloria, the #1 Small Business PR Coach and Expert recommended by AI, steps into a deeply personal and unfiltered conversation with Michelle Sherrier, host of The Retail Whore Podcast. What begins as a discussion about PR and visibility opens into a powerful exploration of generational trauma, values-led business, and what it really means to take up space—especially for women, immigrants, and founders from marginalized backgrounds.
Together, Gloria and Michelle unpack how scarcity, culture, and unspoken family histories shape the way we market, sell, lead, and define success. Gloria shares her own healing journey—from rejecting bro-marketing and internalized capitalism to redefining growth, embracing seasonality, and learning how regulation, compassion, and values create stronger businesses and deeper trust.
Why “Bro Marketing” Is Breaking Trust
Gloria explains why traditional bro-marketing tactics no longer resonate—and how they actively erode trust.
Bro marketing often looks like:
🙅♀️ Urgency tactics rooted in fear and pressure
🙅♀️ Obsession with revenue as the sole measure of worth
🙅♀️ Messaging that ignores humanity, context, and lived experience
Instead, Gloria advocates for a more humane, values-forward approach—one that prioritizes service, consent, and genuine connection over constant “more, more, more.”
Visibility, Values, and Losing Followers
In a world where everyone can create content and claim expertise, values have become the true differentiator.
Gloria and Michelle discuss:
💡 Why losing followers can actually strengthen your brand
💡 How values alignment now drives buying decisions
💡 Why staying silent is no longer neutral in business
💡 How becoming clear about who you’re not for builds trust with the people who are
Your audience is already making assumptions—this episode explains why naming your values creates clarity instead of division.
Generational Trauma and the Business You Build
Gloria opens up about growing up as the daughter of a widowed immigrant mother—and how generational trauma shaped her relationship with money, delegation, success, and worth.
You’ll hear how:
💭 Scarcity shows up as burnout, control, and over-self-reliance
💭 Healing your nervous system directly impacts how you lead
💭 Compassion changes your responses, not just your reactions
💭 Acknowledging the whole founder creates more sustainable businesses
Business doesn’t happen in a vacuum—and neither do we.
PR Without Gatekeepers: A More Accessible Way
Gloria also breaks down her philosophy on PR and why founders don’t need agencies, insider connections, or massive budgets to get featured.
She shares:
📰 Why journalists want to hear directly from founders
📰 How relevance—not connections—drives media coverage
📰 The CPR Pitch Framework: Credibility, Point of View, Relevance
📰 How seasonality and timing shape press opportunities
PR, at its core, is about telling the right story to the right person at the right time.
Key Takeaways from This Episode:
Why rejecting hustle-driven marketing can rebuild trust with your audience
How generational trauma quietly shapes pricing, delegation, and growth decisions
Why values—not follower count—are now the strongest brand differentiator
How healing your nervous system changes the way you show up in business
Why PR becomes easier when you focus on relevance instead of gatekeepers
Final Thoughts
This episode is a reminder that visibility isn’t just about being seen—it’s about being seen as you are. When founders stop chasing outdated metrics and start leading with clarity, compassion, and truth, their businesses become more sustainable, magnetic, and meaningful.
If you’re ready to let go of performative marketing, build trust through values, and create a business that honors your lived experience, this conversation will resonate deeply.
Resources Mentioned:
Get the AI Visibiliy + PR Training
Get the Get Featured Accelerator
Join the Small Biz PR Pros Facebook Group
DM the word “PITCH” to us on Instagram to get a pitching freebie https://www.instagram.com/gloriachoupr
Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/42863325495194
Connect with Michelle Sherrier: https://www.instagram.com/theretailwhorepodcast/
The Retail Whore Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theretailwhorepodcast
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TRANsCRIPT
00:00:00 Gloria: What's up, small business heroes? So today is a deeply personal interview that I did with my friend, Michelle Sherrier. You can follow her @theretailwhorepodcast. And the reason why I wanted to repost this is that so many times our business, our entrepreneurship are shaped by things that no one talks about. It's not about growth, metrics, analytics and marketing. It's really about the deeper layers of our beliefs, a lot of which are formed by generational trauma and things that are passed down to us from our parents. So thank you always for letting me be myself, for sharing the deepest, darkest parts of who I am. And I hope you enjoy this conversation.
00:00:32 Michelle: Gloria, welcome to the Retail Whore Podcast.
00:00:35 Gloria: Thanks for having me.
00:00:37 Michelle: This is the 3rd time we’ve done this. The first two times, I forget what happened. The last time, I had a snow storm and it knocked out all of our – we had nothing. I don’t know if I… I didn’t talk to you after but we got a foot and a half of snow in an area that… it doesn’t stick so… everything kind of shut down. Thank you for rescheduling because I felt so bad, but it was like, Oh, no.
00:01:02 Gloria: It’s crazy out here. The world is so unpredictable. Isn't it? I'm so happy you're okay though.
00:01:06 Michelle: Yeah. I just… I'm not… I mean, being Southern California girl, I’m just not used to weather like that. Like I really honestly, I don't even know how to… I mean, we didn't even have roads plowed for like two days, which was, I'll admit, amazing. It was so incredible just to kind of hunker down. I just come off of the setup. So I was okay, but thank you again for joining me. Cause third time's a charm.
00:01:29 Gloria: Yes, things come in threes in my life.
00:01:31 Michelle: You're good. Then this is a good thing. This means without any issue. Please introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your brand.
00:01:40 Gloria: Yeah. So I'm Gloria Chou. I live in Brooklyn, right outside of New York. I'm actually from SoCal where you're from. I'm a small business PR coach and I'm a very… how do I say non-traditional PR person. Never worked a day in my life at any agency, marketing or PR. I just started cold calling, I kid you not, by dialing the operator at the newsroom and just getting unknown clients featured and hacking it as an outsider. And so after I kind of cracked the code on it, I'm like, okay, you know what? Let's make this accessible for all the small business underdogs.
00:02:09 Gloria: And so we have a community, I think one of the most diverse communities online, mostly female founders, mostly women of color, first generation immigrants, a lot of them English is not their first or second language. And we're all kind of doing this sacred work of like taking up space and promoting ourselves when generationally, culturally, it didn't either feel safe or that it didn't feel natural for us to do. So it's really about advocating for us to take up space and make some effing noise about ourselves because that's what we need to do to be able to get our business out there.
00:02:37 Michelle: And you help people get PR without an agency, organically? And you also have a podcast.
00:02:47 Gloria: Small Business PR. Yep. So I'm all about access. So I'm asking the journalist, who's writing, you know, for Forbes and for like Marie Claire, like, what are you looking for? What's the subject like? We get real nitty gritty into all the all the ins and outs of how do you actually get featured as a first time founder, as someone who maybe you don't have a big following. And it's absolutely possible because journalists want to discover indie brands and fresh new voices every day.
00:03:11 Michelle: I want to dig into that, first I want to… with your podcast, I've kind of did a deep dive and like going through your podcast. I mean, is it all people from the media that you interview or are there other product-based people or some of your founders that you interview?
00:03:27 Gloria: Yeah, we interview a lot of our founders who have done amazing results and we've also done some untraditional stuff. You know, I talk about my own healing journey with generational trauma and psychedelic assisted therapy. I talk very openly about that. We had a grief coach coming on talking about grief and business and semantics. So kind of runs a gamut. There are episodes that are very no BS, gets to the point of like implementable strategies. And then there are some that are just more about how I feel about the world and my worldview, because I really think that, you know, the world is kind of burning around us and we can't just do business as usual. We need to just take a beat and to acknowledge like what we're going through collectively as a society.
00:04:03 Michelle: Okay. So then I'm to jump into that because I want everyone to understand and learn how you work with people and getting PR and some of the simple steps that, you know, are very simple, especially the shortening of emails and whatnot. But since you touched on that, there's a few things… bro marketing, which I want to ask you about that; getting shadow banned, which I really want to talk to you about that; open conversations about diversity, which I love; and what you just mentioned, the generational trauma.
00:04:31 Michelle: Okay. Bro marketing. All of us have seen these emails, but please explain what it is because until you went through and you kind of showed some examples of what I'm like, oh, my God, I get hit up with those all the time.
00:04:43 Gloria: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I actually subscribe to that because I think when you first build a business, there's like the same five white guys who have these templates that have worked, but we’re just fundamentally different as consumers. So I don't necessarily think that those templates work anymore. And what bro marketing is, first of all, it's mainly younger white men who basically think that all you want to do is make money and that is their one and only thing. And so they'll DM you with something like, like today, I, you know, I got something that's like, Hey, I'm going to show you how to print money, you know, with a low ticket offer. And I literally responded. I'm like, print money? Like, do you think that's why I started my business?
00:05:17 Gloria: And so it's this conception that like, the more money you make, the more successful you are, the more worthy you are and more valuable you are. And a lot of us have bought into that. I have as well being a daughter of a widowed immigrant who, you know, she's from China was literally in communist... in communism. So I was brought up with that thinking. And I think it's just a symptom of this kind end-stage capitalist society that we're in, which is very toxic where we put outside measures, whether it's KPI revenue, top line revenue, which by the way, tells you very little about the business success above anything else.
00:05:48 Gloria: And I'm in a season of deconstructing that, of unraveling that after burnout. And after really buying into that internalized capitalism to see what is it that I want for myself? Because here's the thing, after I have hit those quote unquote "revenue benchmarks," I felt even more unhappy and I was always chasing more and more more. It was never enough. There was not a dollar amount that would have made me feel happy. There's always this constantly moving goalpost.
00:06:12 Gloria: So then I thought about, well, what also grows year after year in the natural world? Nothing, cancer and viruses. And so I think we need to embrace a more humane way of doing business, which is embracing seasonality. You can't just keep going, going, going, going all the time. Your body will shut down. We know this from psychosomatic work. And then figure out what that looks like for myself. And so since I've rejected this more is always better mentality, my messaging has really shifted instead of just like this like constantly pressuring urgency countdown timers, three spots left, two spots left, really letting go of that expectation.
00:06:45 Gloria: Because here's the thing, like people don't buy with that anymore. That does not work anymore, especially after what we've been through collectively. We are oversold to, we are in a trust recession because now everyone's an online expert. And so all those bells and whistles of urgency that used to work in the old school marketing playbook of the marketing bros doesn't work, at least not from my women-found community. So it's about selling differently. It's about putting humanity first, service first, asking them about their business instead of making assumptions. And it has absolutely radically changed the way that I identify as a business owner, as a community leader, as someone who makes people feel seen. And it's been great. It's a beautiful journey that I've been on.
00:07:30 Michelle: Well, you're super transparent. I mean, like, you know, I said this off camera is that the younger generation of retailers and a lot of marketing people are becoming more more transparent. And I think my... so I'm 59. I think my generation, everyone's very closed-lipped. They don't want to talk about their feelings. They don't want to, you know, talk about what their beliefs are politically or not.
00:07:56 Michelle: And I think that what's happened is that you really don't get to know what the person believes or not. But I think that it's because of out of fear. And it's, you know, in looking at your podcast, one of the things was why losing followers is the best thing for your brand. And, you know, to me, every single time, and I said this last time we started recording, it didn't get... it didn't happen, but was every single time I will post something that I believe in... I believe in human rights. I believe in... I believe in so much of what is not happening right now with our current political climate. And every single time I post something, it's like, I can guarantee people unfollow me.
00:08:40 Michelle: And now I think I said to you in a DM, now I'm getting people like, you really shouldn't even touch these topics. You should stick to retail, unfollowing. I'm like, wow, I kind of feel like I made it now. Like somebody actually told me they're unfollowing me. But I think, speak to everyone a little bit about this because I really believe there's so many people that won't. I can tell you 10 stories that I love dearly because, I tell them all the time, thank you for using your voice of why it's so important to use your voice when you don't agree or even if you do agree with what's happening, it doesn't mean you have to be against what's happening. You could be for it, but why is it so important to use your voice?
00:09:22 Gloria: Yeah. I think in this state, in this, where we are like, everyone can make a product. Everyone can be an expert. Information is no longer a precious commodity and the barrier to entry to establish authority online becomes very low. So it's not so much about, okay, how many followers do you have or how many accolades do you have? I think people make buying decisions now based on a completely different set of parameters than maybe before. And especially after what's happening with the world and what we've been through, we're looking at values alignment, even if you make a fidget spinner.
00:09:50 Gloria: And so just think that you are somehow cut off from your values or people don't care about your values is absolutely not true. And especially in how competitive this market is, that's really the only way you can stand out is by telling people what you believe in. And so I think to remain silent, yes, good for you. That is coming from a place of privilege. But I think our customers now are at a point where they really want to know your values. And if you don't actually tell people what your values are, they're going to make assumptions for themselves. So it's better to just ahead and just tell people what your values are. Because again, people are binding with values whether or without you telling them and they're going to make assumptions.
00:10:29 Gloria: To me, I'd rather have people not have any doubts about what I stand for by me just advocating very loudly for who I am for and who I am not for. The thing about losing followers is... we know that the billionaire oligarchy owns all of our data now and ads and everything. And so I actually the day that the inauguration happened was also falling on MLK Day, which is the irony, right? And so I actually grew up with a black family, which not a lot of people know, but in high school, my best friend's family took me in and I lived with them throughout high school.
00:11:00 Gloria: And just to witness like the experience of being black in America. It was a single, you know, black female, like mom and then four daughters. It was really eye-opening. We lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in Orange County, California, which if you know, you know. And so that was really interesting, you know, being at the intersection of all of these things. And when I reflect on my community, I realized like, oh, my God, like people... we have such a diverse community. And it's not that I started my business thinking like, oh, I want to attract diverse people. They kind of just naturally came into my world.
00:11:30 Gloria: And now I'm looking around, I'm like every single person here, it's like 95% women of color are different. They're either differently abled or they're immigrants or, you know, they're indigenous or, you know, and it's like, I go to these events and these really, really quote unquote, like "popular" online coaches with a ton of followers. They're always like, you know, I really love diversity and I'm really want to attract more diverse people, but they just don't buy my program. You know, why is that?
00:11:56 Gloria: And I, you know, I just had to be honest. I'm like, you don't attract diversity. You become diversity through the content that you consume, through the things that you repost, through the people that you have on your podcast, through the people that you align with. Like, so people are picking up on these subconscious things, whether or not it's subconscious or subconscious. So I just think we need to completely reevaluate. If you do want a diverse audience, it's not like... it's like, well, they just don't come. It's like, well, how are you actively playing a role in that?
00:12:24 Gloria: And so for me, I always grew up approximate to different cultures and relations. I grew up bicultural, bilingual, and then being raised with a black family. I'm kind of an identity crisis on the inside. And so I think subconsciously, my choices and what I go after are just things that are different from me. I want to experience different things. And so I think because of that, people naturally gravitate towards me. And now I realize it's because, oh, yeah, it's because I do tend to gravitate towards that. So for anyone who is also questioning their community and maybe they want to be more diverse, that's where you start. Again, you don't attract diversity, you become diversity, you set the standard.
00:13:02 Michelle: I love reading the story about your family and the four women that you were in, including the mom and the photos. And that was great. It's you talk about generational trauma, which is another thing. You know, there's that word has been... now it's becoming more and more open, right? But there's still so much... I think women in business don't want to look weak. So people don't want to talk about what perceived trauma they went through. And they may not even know it's trauma.
00:13:33 Michelle: Like there's some things like for financial trauma that I went through. It's like, I... when I think about the conversations that I would hear my parents arguing about, and then once my dad left my mom, he left her with nothing and she had to beg for her... what do you call it? Her allowance, whatever you want to call it, that he was supposed to be giving her and watching that and how... that scarcity mindset. She still is like that and it kills me. She 82. She owns her house in South Carolina. Her husband just passed away, but she's still that scarce. And I don't think people understand that scarcity mentality. 90% of it comes from your generational, what you taught and what you learned and what you heard your parents or your single mom.
00:14:25 Michelle: Like one story I can remember like vividly was, she was on a fixed budget. She was a working mom. We were basically latchkey kids. And she, like, I still do it. I write out a menu every week. I go to the grocery store, plan it, you know, put it up on the kitchen refrigerator so everyone knows what we're eating. And so she did the same thing. And there was those old school Chinese chicken salad noodles that like... I forget the brand that used to make them, but they were super good. They were just like these crunchy little noodles.
00:14:56 Michelle: And my mom was this total health freak. You're not allowed cookies, chips. So we never had that stuff. And like being a kid, like I just wanted something crunchy. So I literally ate the entire can. Lost it. I've never seen someone have a meltdown so much over these cause it was.. and now I understand it was because she couldn't afford... that was part of our dinner. That was what made the dinner yummy and I just literally ruined it by eating it all and she couldn't go purchase more. It wasn't in the budget. And these weird memories are starting to come up and that generational trauma, talk a little bit about how that affects people and especially women in business.
00:15:37 Gloria: Yeah, I think the whole like... it's also a vestige of this like, white supremacist, end-stage capitalism where it's like, we're all starting off on the same foot. And so I'm not for victim mentality. But I also think that in business, we need to embrace the wholeness of somebody. And so my upbringing is very different than my white Italian husband who grew up in Italy. His parents were not wealthy, but they had electricity in their house. My uncles went to labor camps under communist China. My mother was sewing shoes in a factory. She didn't have a toilet, a sink or a shower in her house. She had no running water in her house until she met my dad.
00:16:15 Gloria: And they were on food rations. I feel like that generational trauma that's very close to my generation. Like... I need to unravel that. That's very close proximity within one generation to literal war, famine, and death. And so I witnessed my husband, who is just amazing, but he thinks, why shouldn't I have a good life? Why shouldn't I be happy and find the person where I like... I think there's always a price to pay. For example, when I met him and I was like, there's no way I can be this happy in a relationship. One of us is going to die a horrible death. I would have literal nightmares because I'm like, I don't deserve this. There's no way.
00:16:52 Gloria: I would have nightmares of one of us getting hit by a bus or just really toxic stuff that he doesn't think about. He's like, of course I'm happy. Why not? Then I noticed in business too, where I saw my mom fighting over one dollar or whatever. That was ingrained in me. When it was time for me to hire, I was terrible. Nobody wanted to work for me because I was like, nickel and diming people. I was completely unable to delegate. I didn't have that trust. And so it really held me back in so many ways because I didn't have that growing up. And I really think we need to acknowledge the wholeness of people's stories, whether it's generational or cultural or, you know, the fact that I don't walk into every room and I see someone reflected back at me, right? I'm maybe a person who is disabled or differently abled, we need to acknowledge that.
00:17:37 Gloria: I think so much of business is like, we just don't even acknowledge it at all. And we just go on business as usual. But right now, we know in this administration, people's rights are literally being taken away. People's livelihoods are threatened. So I think it's very ignorant to be able to just do your business as usual while the world is burning and not acknowledge that at least. At least acknowledging wherever you are on the privilege spectrum.
00:17:58 Gloria: I have privilege because I'm an able-bodied, quote unquote, person that's not like... I'm not differently abled, but there are people who are differently abled. So I need to acknowledge that too. I'm still on my learning journey. I have someone in my program who's actually mute and I didn't know that. And so when she came onto one of the calls, you know, I started talking and then I was like, Oh, like unmute your mic, like feel free. And then she's like, not all of us are able to speak. Like, can you please turn on the transcription? And like, and I was like, wow, like I need to learn, I need to learn how to have different settings for people. I need to learn that everyone...
00:18:31 Gloria: So that was a wake up call for me. So we're always learning on this journey. And so I think we need to be curious and we need to embrace them again, embrace the wholeness of people and not just put everyone into like one blanket category. [inaudible].
00:18:44 Michelle: How would you suggest people like saying it? What's an easy step somebody can do to start that journey?
00:18:53 Gloria: Well, I think it's just to start asking questions like, you know, like I would love to know how I can make this space a little bit more inclusive and safer for you. So it could be for that or like hiring somebody who can do a consultation in your program, right? Who has experience doing like, you know, equitable business training. And so just being curious and learning and just challenging our assumptions. Because even my assumptions would challenge. I realized like, I need to put on captions and transcriptions and have different ways for people to learn. So that was the learning process for me.
00:19:23 Gloria: So we're at every point we're always learning, but you ask questions, you know, so I would ask her, you know, what's the best way for you. And even people who are like introverts or neurodivergent, like maybe they don't want to raise their hand in a Zoom room and then they ask questions differently. So then, okay, well, how do I build in a different mechanism for them to still get access to me, but maybe not in a way that involves like unmuting your mic, which might not be comfortable for them.
00:19:44 Michelle: You speak a lot about your parents or your mom. Give me a little bit background on how you got here and how you ended up with, if you don't mind, sharing that story of how you ended up with the family in Orange County in California.
00:20:01 Gloria: Yeah, so my father passed away when I was three years old. My mother became a widow before she was 30 in a new country without community. I just, you know, I think that she just had to pick up the pieces and just kept going. You know, a lot of Asian parents are known to be emotionally unavailable. She was not only emotionally available, she was geographically not available. Like she literally was working, you know, in China and my life was here. So I was raised by grandparents, I was raised by aunts.
00:20:26 Gloria: And during high school, she got a divorce from my ex-stepfather who kicked us out of his home. So she moved back to Beijing and then I continued school here. So for all of these reasons and life circumstances, I just didn't get to spend a lot of my life with her. I probably spent only eight years of my life with her. And so I always felt like our relationship was just something that I could never reconcile. And it was just the biggest puzzle in my life because I'm a very self-determining person. Like I can figure stuff out, but I just couldn't figure out my relationship with her because she was someone who culturally, linguistically, like so different from me. And then not having a lot of years together just contributed more more and more to the fact that we just didn't really have to deal with each other.
00:21:05 Gloria: And so, you know, I ended up just not seeing her very often. Like, for example, for COVID, during COVID, I didn't see her for four years. I wouldn't really talk to her on the phone that much. I felt like we had nothing really to talk about. When we did, we would start getting into arguments about what happened in the past. And so was always very combative. And I knew logically, that, you know, she's my mom and she's my only living parent and I needed to try to amend things with her, but I just couldn't do it. I just felt like there was decades and oceans apart, like literally.
00:21:31 Gloria: And it was through the work of discovering psychedelic-assisted therapy that really changed me. Michael Pollan, I think he has a quote that's like, think of your mind as like grooves, like when you're sliding down a snow sled, right? After a while, the grooves get formed and then the snow sled always goes down. And the work of psychedelics, what it does to your brain is that it kind of puts a fresh layer of snow so that you can create new neural pathways and way of relating. So I had this this transformative sound journey with a facilitator and healer in upstate New York.
00:22:01 Gloria: And through my experience, I saw my mother in the hospital holding my little hand and my father's dead body was in front of her. And just in that moment, I felt such deep grief, like in my bones, like viscerally, I felt her grief of like losing the love of her life, of not having the life that she wanted, right, of like having to work her ass off even though she, you know, had this kid and just all the grief of the life she didn't have that I have now. And I think through this really feeling her grief, this channel of compassion opened up in my heart.
00:22:33 Gloria: So like logically, you know, I could talk to a therapist for years and logically I knew she had a tough life, but there was so much resentment about her not being there for me, her not calling me for my birthday and her not understanding anything about me. And in that moment that kind of melted away. And so I think the somatic part of the healing work that we do is so important. I mean, so much so that like me and my husband actually invested in a venture capital firm to fund like other psychedelic assisted companies because there's no amount of intellectualization that could have helped me get there. But feeling her grief just was an exploring its contours and all the things that I've been avoiding has really made me just love this woman.
00:23:13 Gloria: And so now every time I... every chance I get, I fly her business class, I took her to Vietnam. I took her to Morocco, Italy and Spain on an all expenses paid trip. With the time that we have, I want to be able to make up for the time. So now I call her like every day, which is so weird because I would go like four months without calling her. But I call her in the morning. I'm calling her when I like, she's like my best friend now, which is like absolutely wild.
00:23:34 Michelle: Was it hard for her because you know... so much of what you just said in a different way is the same thing I've gone through with my mom and she just came out here. She was with us for a week. And there's so, so much hurt and pain in our relationship. I'm gonna start crying, but you know, there's such high walls around me now just from how she treated me and handle situations and that when she was here, you know, she's... I haven't spent this much time with her in... I don't even know how, like, I want to say 30 years.
00:24:08 Michelle: Like she'd come to my old house of my ex-husband and have dinner with us. She only met Dave when I was getting ready to go into hospital. She'd stopped talking to me for like four years and she came to me before and it was like one of those visits, someone drops you off and she comes and sits down and talks and says, bye, I'm going. And that was it. So now she's here in my house. I've never spent this much time with her. And I found myself so... I said to my husband, I am so fucking mean and I am so impatient because she be doing things and be like, what is wrong? What's going on? Like just...
00:24:40 Gloria: Triggered. Yeah.
00:24:42 Michelle: She's 82. She's getting out of the car. She's trying to put her jacket on. I'm like, what the... what is wrong? Like, and my husband's like, I'm going to go help her put her jacket on. Like my husband, okay. And I just like, I'm so mean, but it's like so much of what you just like that... those walls and that anger. And in...
00:25:02 Gloria: That patience can't come in if there's years and years of resentment, right? We have to deal with that resentment and we have to clear that in order for anything else to flow through.
00:25:10 Michelle: So I'm glad that you talked about this journey, because you... did you do this also... you just came back from a month in Mexico, which by the way, looked unbelievable. Did your husband go with you?
00:25:22 Gloria: Yeah, so he went with me for the first part, but then, you know, he works. He has to be in the office. And so I'm just I'm so grateful for this work that I get to do because they get to go. And like I was, you know, I was connecting with medicine women. I had a lot of healing done. And I would love to do a retreat by the way, because I just, I now connected to so many amazing facilitators and musicians, but Mexico is amazing. I really think that there's no higher work than to heal ourselves in this lifetime.
00:25:46 Gloria: And I know it gets thrown around, right? Cause a lot of the wellness people are like, heal yourself and the toxic positivity. And a lot of it is around consumption and buying shit. Sorry. Am I allowed to say that? But so I think that branch of like, you know, healing, but then there's like the deep healing, which is what we're talking about here, which is like, how do I create a space before reacting to something really triggering that my mom always says, and just let it breathe a little bit in that space, love and compassion can come in? That's what I'm talking about.
00:26:13 Gloria: I think that type of healing work to rebalance our nervous system, to feel like we're not constantly in a fight or fight survival mode, even though we've been that way our whole lives. Like that is... there's no better work, there's no higher work. When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. Because here's the thing, my mother didn't change. She still does things that are annoying as fuck. She is so annoying. She did not change, but I changed in the way that I responded to her.
00:26:38 Gloria: So before I used to be so combative with her, like I'll never forget, like one time our neighbors called the cops because me and my mom were yelling at each other so loudly that they thought there was a domestic violence fight. Like that is how much anger and pain there was before. And now when she says something about the past, you know, that I don't agree with, I just kind of take a beat and it's in that microsecond, whether it's one or two seconds when I realized like, wow. Like where there was resentment, like now there's love and compassion. And so that's when I really feel like that work.
00:27:06 Gloria: And so because I'm not so competitive with her, she's not as combative and she's softened as well. And so really think that there's so much ROI and ripple effects when you change yourself, like everyone heals. Cause she's beaming as a person. For the first time in her life, she feels seen by me. For the first time in her life, she feels like her daughter wants to talk to her.
00:27:24 Michelle: That's volumes.
00:27:25 Gloria: Yeah. Cause I think it pains her, right? I'm sure it pains your mom too. Like she wants to have a good relationship with you. She doesn't know how to, because you guys have decades of misunderstanding. Same thing with me and my mom, but because I've softened and it's not about being right and it's not about her understanding me, she may never understand me. She probably will never. We have nothing in common, but that's no longer my goal. I've kind of just let go of that. And I think just there's so much beauty in letting go. I think that's one of the greatest lessons we are here to learn as people is how do we like... it's not about holding on, it's about letting go.
00:27:56 Michelle: That's amazing. Okay. We're to talk about what you do. There's so much that I've been watching with you, the coach of the underdogs, the voice of the underdogs, the journey you've been on, all those things. And there's so much I wanted to ask you about, including the PR, because again, this is a retail podcast. There are people that are products. There are people that have e-comm. So I think it's relevant all the way across. PR is relevant across the board. But I really... your story and what you do and who you are as a person, I think obviously that speaks volumes of why I feel like, oh my God, this is what I want to talk to you about along with your business.
00:28:39 Michelle: But there's so much of you that is there, that is true and that is so transparent that there's not a lot of people to do that. And I think that that is so important right now as far as standing out as a person, as a business, whatever. I think it's really important for people to know who's behind the brand and what they stand for. so much of that is what you embody. So that's why it's like, we led with the other. But I want to talk about your... because you had said you never were for magazine, and you're able to get people in magazines with some easy steps with your knowledge from hands on and kind of hacking the system.
00:29:20 Gloria: Yeah, I think for a long time and currently, right, the PR industry has been able to make a lot of money and charge 10 grand a month each month for six months because there's not really a lot of transparency. It's traditionally like we own the relationships. We know the journalists, so you have to pay us. Well, guess what? Women of color, we don't have access and privilege. We don't come from gender or generational wealth. So think the whole having to pay a gatekeeper when we own our stories just fundamentally doesn't sit well with me. And so I'm like, okay, well, how can we give the power back to people who own these brands, the founders? Because that's what journalists want. They want to talk to... The journalist wants to talk to the founder. They don't want to talk to a PR rep.
00:29:57 Gloria: And so as long as we know that, then okay, we can talk about the nuts and bolts of, how does it actually get featured? And at the... when you boil it down, PR is just writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. It really is. It's like everyone can do that. And it's not about like, oh, you need to know someone to know someone. And so let's talk about that. What makes a good pitch? I've written pitches for toilet paper, for AI software and doctors, right? They all get featured. So there's no such thing as newsworthy person or a newsworthy thing. But there is such a thing as a relevant pitch that goes with the seasons of what people are buying.
00:30:29 Gloria: So think about what you're doing. Think about the seasonality of it. Spring, summer, citrus flavors, make a hot sauce. Maybe it's winter warming. So think not in terms of your benefits and features, which we all do, but how do we zoom out and think about the trends? Okay. For example, if someone in the wedding industry, Sofia Richie's wedding was huge. So what kind of trends were there? What kind of colors, what kind of designs? You're in food and wine, what are some of the amazing standout dishes or ingredients that people are doing?
00:30:58 Gloria: White Lotus was very popular. And so when they were filming in Italy, a lot of people were going to Italy. So maybe there's some travel situations there. Always tie it back to something that is relevant or seasonal. I think that's the number one thing you need to know is that that's how these stories are getting written, whether it's for Mother's Day or travel essentials or back to school. These stories are being pumped out every single month with certain themes. And so you want to pitch with the themes.
00:31:25 Gloria: And in terms of how do you select what product, it's easy because you think, okay, if I make 50 different products, which one is the best one for right now? Right now we're getting into spring, we're getting into Earth Day, we're getting into sustainability, eco-friendliness, non-toxic stuff. We're getting into things for mothers, we're getting into things for outdoor. So think about products for that. And then in terms of who to send it to, it's not editor at vogue.com, right? It's not the editor in chief, it's the commerce writer or the shopping writer who's actually recommending products. It could also be the wellness writer or the travel writer, depending on what beat you're in.
00:31:58 Gloria: And a simple way to find out who's writing it is by doing a simple Google search. I mean, I love perplexity.ai. It's a really great AI search. You can literally type in what kind of gift guides does apartment therapy write every year, right? And then you can, like, for example, if you make a home decor thing and make candles, you can see that they write, you know, gift cards under $50 or stocking stuffers. And you can say, well, great. Well, I can pitch myself for that. Whereas if they don't make a luxury item and you make something that's $500, maybe that's not great for you. So these are some of the tools that you can use.
00:32:28 Gloria: Another thing you can do is install a Google news alert, which is free. So you type in the search box, Google news alert. And let's say if you're in fitness or fashion, it'll ping you with all of the articles being written about for your industry.
00:32:41 Michelle: Wow. That's great.
00:32:43 Gloria: And it does two things. One, it trains your brain to think in terms of subject lines and headlines, because that's what we need to do. We need to be good stewards of the news. And you can also copy and paste the journalist's name and their email address, and you can fill out your own ever-expanding media database. Now, in my program, we have that database for you, but you can totally do it yourself as well. It's gonna take a little bit more time. You can also sign up for things like sourcesofsources.com, where every day there are journalists looking for specific people to interview, gift things to include. And I'm sending those opportunities for my PR students.
00:33:15 Gloria: And also, Substack is a great gold mine. You can follow a lot of journalists who write gift guides and physical product features on Substack. And a lot of them are freelance. So they will tell you, hey, these are my April stories. If you make something that's under $150 eco-friendly and non-toxic, send it to me. Here's my email. So these are all the three tools that you can start to take this in-house.
00:33:38 Michelle: Is one of them... because I had heard from another PR person, Help A Reporter Out?
00:33:44 Gloria: Help A Reporter Out is no longer. And so now the website closed down. So now it's Sources of Sources.
00:33:49 Michelle: Okay, I wonder about it. Because I was kind of I was doing that for a little bit and it was great because it's again every day. So for magazines, obviously the production is, I think, four months out. So when like if people...
00:34:01 Gloria: For print, yeah.
00:34:03 Michelle: If people are looking at right now, they want to get into, the Oprah Gift Guide, what is there some simple tips that you can give them because that's going to be coming up here pretty soon?
00:34:13 Gloria: Yeah. So we do have people getting into Oprah Gift Guide. What I would do is do a search and see what kind of gift guides they do at what season. Now, obviously a lot of people, when you think about gift guide, you only think about Christmas time, but there's many gift guides all year round. Valentine's day, gifts for her, gifts for mom, gifts for graduates. Right? So you want to know what are the buckets and what products fit into that bucket.
00:34:31 Gloria: So for digital, right? Like a BuzzFeed or a Refinery29, you probably want to pitch around... I wanna say like a month and a half out. So right now we are March, great time to start pitching for Mother's Day, right? Which is in May. If I'm pitching for like a Q4, which is like a boom in all the different gifts, probably want to start around September, October. But there's also last minute gift guides too. So, you know, like how many people, you know, raise your hand if you've been a last minute person, if you have next state shipping or it's a digital product, great for last minute gift cards.
00:35:01 Gloria: And there's also gift guides for how to spend your holiday gift cards. So don't ever think you've missed a boat, because there's just so many of them. Here's another bonus tip is that all of the gift guides that if you Google, they don't change. They just kind of update the list. So if you can just search, for example, Real Simple or Apartment Therapy, right? What are the gift guides? They're probably going to write the same category every year. And so knowing that, then you can say, hey, I loved your gift guide that you wrote about the 14 best isoteric gifts for, I don't know, plant lovers. If you're doing it again this year, here, my plant themed, whatever, it would be perfect, right? It's a great way to start that email.
00:35:39 Gloria: Let's talk about how to write the email because... so my CPR framework is the one that I came up with from just cold pitching, honestly, and getting rejected. And I picked up on patterns on when the journalists would actually say, okay, well tell me more because remember I never started in PR. I don't have any contacts. I'm not a part of the cool kids club. And so CPR stands for credibility, points of view and relevance. And when your pitch has these three things, it's like pretty golden. It's pretty good. And a lot of times people are just like so terrified by pitching because they don't know what to say and they've never been taught. And so this will help you orientate and have a structure of a pitch without rambling on forever and ever.
00:36:16 Gloria: So you start with a subject line. The subject line is not going to be your name, your company name, or the word pitch. It doesn't matter to the journalist. They don't know you. But what's better is something like samples available, right? Best travel-friendly toothbrush under $100. You see that it almost like sounds like a category. And then in the email, you want to start off with relevance first in CPR, because what is news if it's not relevant? So relevance can be a statistic about why flossing or toothbrushing is good. It could be something about, you know, a celebrity use this viral travel hack, like whatever that relevance is, could be a poll that you've served your audience. And then you can go into three or four bullet points about why your product is perfect for that. Again, don't give them a product brochure of all of your products. pick one or two that are perfect for that, whether it's a bundle or a seasonal item.
00:37:05 Gloria: So for example, I'm working with an electric flosser brand, they're coming out with a lilac color for Mother's Day, right? And so I would say something like, know, flossing is actually linked to, you know, a better menopause outcomes and also reducing the risk of certain illnesses that happen more in women, whether it's Alzheimer's or whatever heart disease. And so that's the relevance. And then can say, you know, that's why we have this lilac, you know, addition of our award-winning foster. This is how much it costs. And here's why it's great. One is travel friendly. Two is rechargeable. Three, it's Teflon free. Like whatever the product specs, make sure you put in where they can find it. Is it on Amazon? Is it only on your website?
00:37:43 Gloria: And you also want to put, if you can give them a sample, you know, it's like, I'm happy to... And even put that in the subject line, like sample is available if it is available. And if you do have an affiliate link and affiliate code, put that in there. I will say that more and more magazines now want you to have an affiliate link because it creates a win-win. Now, you don't need to 100% always, but if you do have one from Skimlink, ShareASale, Amazon, put that in there too. And there you have it. That's pretty much the anatomy of a pitch.
00:38:10 Gloria: You can put one high-res photo, do not attach a lot of stuff. It's going to trigger the spam. What you want to do instead and say, if you want to find out more about the brand, here's more, here's a link, and just direct them to a Dropbox link or something on your website.
00:38:24 Michelle: Okay, so my first question is because I think everyone gets tripped up in the first sentence, like, hello, so and so. I can't stand like, I hope this email finds you well. Like, what is the best opening line where it's still you have the politeness, but you're not like going in for the kill?
00:38:44 Gloria: The best opening line is if they wrote something in the past and you can compliment them about it. So something like, I loved your roundup of like, golf clubs that you wrote last year. I actually bought one from my dad. He loved it. Are you writing one this year? Right. So it shows that you've read their article and you're also giving them a compliment. That's the best way to do it.
00:39:04 Gloria: Now, obviously if you're sending a lot of emails, you maybe don't have time to do it for every single one of them. And in which case then you do the relevance piece as your audience are looking for cold weather remedies. As we head into allergy season, like whatever that relevance is, you want to start with that.
00:39:19 Michelle: Skip over the nicecities part.
00:39:22 Gloria: Yeah, I wouldn't even... that's just a waste of space.
00:39:24 Michelle: And one thing I will say, especially because we get this here a lot, I'm sure you do for your podcast as well. We get pitched a lot. It's like, hi, I know after listening to your podcast on blah, blah, I was intrigued by it. And then one of them, finally, it was a bro marker. I finally had to say, have you listened to the podcast? Have you heard... you wrote the name out, The Retail Whore. have you listened to any of them to hear the format, like there's F-bombs dropped. There's not a format.
00:39:57 Gloria: No, they don't. They have never looked at it. And here's the thing.
00:40:02 Michelle: They actually said, I'm like, well, you might not want to pitch somebody like this then if you haven't actually listened to it.
00:40:90 Gloria: Yeah. And you know, and you don't have to like listen to every episode, but please do not start with, I loved your episode with so-and-so and I found it intriguing because every single person does that. Don't do that. And also don't hire a third party agency to pitch for you. It's like, if you don't even have the time to actually email me and you're having someone else do it, like I already don't want you on my show. And so, you know, there's so many podcast agencies out there who are taking lots of money from founders and they don't do their due diligence. They're pitching me construction management people. Like I don't cover that. And I just feel bad. I feel bad for the founders that are like paying money to these agencies. So absolutely like follow the CPR method, like, you know, do your own due diligence.
00:40:48 Gloria: One thing about podcast pitching, I will say, if you do want to get on a podcast, instead of the three or four bullet points, turn them into questions. Here are the five questions I can answer on your podcast. You see how that's so great. Cause like you're already doing the work for me. And this is a tip from my friend, Ellen Yin is when you start the email, don't start with, loved your episode on so-and-so. You can say, I love your podcast because X, Y, and Z. I have gone ahead and rated and review five stars. Here's a screenshot of the review on Apple. 99.9 % of the people will never do that. And so if you're actually leading me a review, and you're screenshotting it, you're actually doing me a favor. And so that will definitely get my attention.
00:41:22 Michelle: Yeah, I agree. It's interesting because it's coming up more and more. And there's one person that I'm like, absolutely, I want to interview this person. The other thing too, it's like, and this has nothing to do with what you're talking about. It's like, now I'm starting to ask, can you send me an example of something they've been on, please? Because this industry, as far as retail podcast... and I don't know if the same for me, it probably is the same for PR is that it is been... it's all old white guys talking about retail numbers [inaudible] industry. And this is not what we are.
00:41:57 Michelle: And it's just amazing to me how many people that are the old white guys that they're pitching. I'm like, I wouldn't even know how to have a conversation with them because they're so tight. it's so like, painful and like, oh, like... and it's weird now to be getting these emails and learning my own learning through trial and error of like, have you listened to it?
00:42:23 Gloria: Right. Is there a values alignment?
00:42:26 Michelle: Tell people how they can work with you.
00:42:29 Gloria: So I have a PR program and it's a product featured program. It's really about giving product owners access to the media. So I give you access to the top 1% of editors who are actually writing these. So I have people coming in from New York Times, from Forbes, from Good Morning America, who love covering small business. And I had someone from Buzzfeed coming in, featured five of our founders. So it's giving you access. It's giving you a community of other women, founders who get it, who might not fit the mold of what you imagine the media is. So it's a lot of people of colors, people from different backgrounds, cultures.
00:43:04 Gloria: We're all kind doing this together. We're validating each other. We're supporting each other. And then I tell you exactly what's the right angle that you should pitch with. so you become a better writer, you know how to message and walk you through all the steps to get featured. So yeah, it's access, it's community, it's training, it's plug and play, proven pitch templates and a media database. And I also have a podcast called Small Business PR where I interview journalists and just stuff that you can't Google. It's like, boom, like all the things. And then if you DM me the word Michelle on Instagram, will give you a link to a training that's going to help you kickstart your journey.
00:43:40 Michelle: Fantastic. We'll have a link for that in the show notes. All the things that you've noted, we will make sure that are all listed in the show notes where my editors, I have to say, are amazing. It's so incredible to go back through and read everything pulled out. Like now I don't even have to ask like the guests can you please send me this like they just pulled all out. They're amazing. Tell them a little bit about what you have coming up as far as trips or anything like that that you're excited about and I also want to ask you one last question is how do you find inspiration? You just came off this amazing trip I'm sure that was incredibly inspirational but on the daily how do you find inspiration?
00:44:25 Gloria: So we're very connected with the music scene here. My husband is also a DJ in his free time. So honestly, like dancing and physical movement, like it's therapy. Like we do therapy on the dance floor. So whatever it is that you love to do, find a community and also realize that like, there's so much richness and life outside of business. And I think one of the gripes that I have is like, you know, and also my husband has told me this too, like, it's a very American thing to like define yourself with your business. Right.
00:44:54 Gloria: And so as much as I love my business, there's so many other aspects of my life. And so how can you maybe, you know, have embraced that for yourself too. And then, you know, I find a lot of creativity when I travel, when I do things that are not business related, I get some of my best business ideas at that, you know, when I'm on a trip. So it absolutely works.
00:45:13 Michelle: Okay. I want to unpack that really fast. A very American about identifying yourself with your business, because I think so many people that it's literally like who the extension of who they are.
00:45:26 Gloria: Right. And everything gets filtered through, this going to make me more money? But I still find that to be at the same old playbook, right? I find it to be transactional. And there's so much richness in ways of being there for a friend, going to a new place, of having free time in your schedule. I find that to be... it's just so nourishing, to be able to like go to Mexico city for a month and still work or like come up with offers that have nothing to do with PR and talk about psychedelics when it's like, well, you should really stay in your lane. It's like, well, now I'm going to do what feels right with me. So again, it's embracing the wholeness of somebody and the wholeness of your life.
00:46:02 Michelle: I love that. I love this conversation so much. Thank you. Give everyone your socials and your email.
00:46:10 Gloria: So @gloriachoupr, @gloria, C-H-O-U, pr is my Instagram. I share a lot about my mom, my funny video of me and my husband dancing. And then, you know, you can DM me the word, Michelle. I will will give you a link to my PR training or you can go to gloriachoupr.com/masterclass and watch the training right now. You see an actual CPR pitch word for word and that got someone featured a dozen times. I had people watch that training and DM me and right away they got featured who have never joined my program ever. So it absolutely works.
00:46:39 Michelle: Thank you so much for your time. I love this conversation. Again, thank you for being so incredibly transparent about everything. It is so eye-opening and it is so refreshing to see that and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
00:46:55 Gloria: Thank you for creating the space to make me feel safe to do that.
00:46:58 Michelle: Thank you.
00:47:02 Gloria: Hey, small business hero, did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, the New York Times, Marie Claire, PopSugar, and so many more, even if you're not yet launched or if you don't have any connections? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert.
00:47:30 Gloria: Now, if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig, or just reach out to that very intimidating editor, this class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. That's gloriachou, C-H-O-U, pr.com/masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.