Episode 191: Why I Am Being Unapologetic AF in My Content This Year
Register now at www.gloriachoupr.com/masterclass.
In this deeply personal solo episode, PR strategist and podcast host Gloria Chou shares the story of how she rebuilt her brand by ditching outdated marketing templates in favor of authentic messaging, values-driven branding, and emotionally resonant content.
You’ll learn how Gloria’s radical shift in content strategy—fueled by personal healing, political clarity, and business burnout—transformed not just her marketing, but her entire business model. This episode is packed with insights for small business owners, thought leaders, and online creators who want to connect more deeply with their audience and grow a sustainable, purpose-led brand in 2025 and beyond.
Why Authentic, Values-Driven Messaging Outperforms Templates, Authority, and Approval-Seeking in 2025
Why template marketing strategies don’t work anymore in the saturated digital landscape
How to shift from approval-seeking content to a values-first marketing approach
Why emotional resonance and identity alignment matter more than credentials
How to use your personal story and brand values to attract ideal clients
Why rejection and unsubscribes are signs of strong messaging, not failure
How personal healing and self-awareness can fuel powerful brand positioning
The difference between authority-based PR and values-aligned visibility
In a digital world overflowing with templates, quick hacks, and bro-marketing playbooks, the brands that rise above the noise are the ones that lead with authenticity, emotional connection, and clear values. As Gloria Chou shared in this episode, sustainable growth doesn’t come from chasing followers or authority—it comes from remembering who you are, speaking your truth, and letting your brand be an extension of your personal evolution.
Whether you're a small business owner, coach, or creative, the future of ethical PR, personal branding, and values-based marketing lies in showing up unapologetically and creating resonant content that feels as good as it converts.
Product Businesses! Download my free HOW TO GET INTO A GIFT GUIDE/PRODUCT ROUND UP roadmap for free HERE to get more sales and traffic to your site this season.
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to 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.
Resources Mentioned:
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Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/428633254951941
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TRANsCRIPT
00:00:00 Gloria: Hey, small business heroes. Welcome back to small business PR where we make PR and marketing super accessible for the everyday small business hero. Today, we are doing something very personal, honest, and authentic. This is not going to be about PR. This is going to be about if you followed me for any point in the last six, twelve, or twenty four months, you have seen my radical change in messaging and content and how I position myself.
00:00:23 Gloria: And I wanted to go a little bit deeper because I think our business is really a mirror of our personal work. And as our businesses evolve, so do we. Any of the triggers that we have play out in business, any of our scarcity mindsets, we see it. Any of the healing work that we do, our businesses also benefit. So today is going to be about this really big fundamental shift I have made in my business, how I message, how I show up with the content, and just the energy of how I am now. So it's going to be about the three big shifts that I have made.
00:00:53 Gloria: Now I wanna preface this by saying that we have gone through so much collectively from a pandemic through a really turbulent political time where we are more divided than ever. People's rights are being taken away. Entire histories are being erased, wars still raging. And I think throughout, collectively, just even outside of marketing, I don't care if you have a business or not, you probably are tired and overwhelmed and burnt out from being spoken to and sold to.
00:01:21 Gloria: And even with AI content saturation, I feel like the fact that we are now in this age of overwhelm, being burnt out, desensitization, constantly being triggered. What we have developed as a consumer are these extra, sensitive digital online spidey senses, is what's my branding coach and friend Sarah Ashman says. We have developed a hyper awareness for people's energies if they vibe with us or not.
00:01:46 Gloria: And I know this kind of a gen alpha term. It's like, what's your vibe? Do we vibe? But outside of just the woo-woo stuff, customers are making decisions of buying just from the first three seconds of a video. They can tell from your energy if it's a fit. And all this to say is that we have arrived at a point in time where authority alone is not enough. Period.
00:02:04 Gloria: I think that now people know, okay. This works. This person has expertise. This thing can help me. This product can help me. But that's not enough for them to buy because not only are they inundated with other information, we have the attention span shorter of a goldfish now, and they know they can get the same thing somewhere else. So authority alone is not enough. The question we need to all collectively answer through our messaging, our marketing, and how we show up is, I know this will work, but will this work for me?
00:02:31 Gloria: And there's a couple of theories around this. I know that Simon Sinek talks about, like, start with why. And I think it's not enough even just to start with your why. I think we're at a point where with the digital spidey senses, people want to see psychological safety. They wanna see identity resonance. They wanna see what your values are. And I don't care if you make a fidget spinner or if you're a consultant or a coach.
00:02:49 Gloria: We know for a fact that people are buying now because they wanna shop with their values. And it's actually a good thing because that means that a lot of people are actually looking under the hood of the car to see who is the maker behind this, who is the person that is behind this product. I want to know. And if their story resonates with me, I will shout them out from the rooftops. I will recommend them to all of our friends. You probably feel the same way when you buy from a small maker, and they have a really good email sequence, and they tell you about the how, what, when, where, why. You are deeply invested in something that maybe could have been an impulse decision.
00:03:19 Gloria: So we know for a fact that that's where we are. And what I have noticed too is about twelve months ago, as you know, the online business world has shifted. They don't wanna buy another course. They don't wanna be in nonstop Zooms. We're all very busy, and we want that personalization. We are craving that connection. And I think a lot of times we're still using a lot of the 2020 templates that don't create connection, but are just content for content's sake.
00:03:43 Gloria: And I'll never forget, spiritually I was in Oaxaca for Dia de los Muertos, beautiful celebration of the dead. I love Mexico as you know. I wanna host a retreat there. But I got connected to a… I wanna say kind of like a medium, and she also does birth chart readings. And for some reason, I connected with her out of everyone, and I just felt like it was meant to be for me to work with her.
00:04:03 Gloria: And she recorded this three hour reading with birth chart, tarot cards. And she kind of went through all the aspects of my life from love to health to work. And I'll never forget this. She said that with my business, the main theme that's just so loud and roaring in her head is to remember who the fuck I am. And she kept repeating it. She said, Gloria, you need to remember who the fuck you are. Your business needs you to remember who the fuck you are.
00:04:26 Gloria: And I think two years ago, I didn't really understand what that meant. I always think of myself as a bold person. I'm very extroverted. Right? But now with everything we've been through and the radical messaging shifts that I have, to be super unapologetic about my values, maybe even a little bit polarizing, I now know that I am here. I am in alignment. And that wisdom, that download that she gave me, I am living it. And it seems really funny because when you do open up yourself and you're kind of in your lane, if you will, the universe is always speaking to us.
00:04:56 Gloria: And a few days ago, I had my first rejection from a podcast, not in a typical way, where it's like, oh, we're full or, oh, not right now. But this was a different type of rejection. So I was referred to this person from a podcast host who absolutely loved my podcast interview, and she said that I gave so much value that she wanted to introduce me to someone else. And this person responded and said, hey. I took a look at your social media, and we are not a values fit, and I don't think that we're aligned. So I will not be pursuing any further contact.
00:05:22 Gloria: And I was brushing my teeth. I remember vividly, and I have foam in my mouth standing over the sink. And usually, the old Gloria would be, like, resentful. Like, what? Like, embarrassment. But I felt pride, and I actually smiled. And so I spit out my toothpaste, and I kind of just looked at the email and I took a pause. And I remembered, wow. When you speak so clearly from a place of your truth and your intention, of course, you're gonna have people who immediately recognize that as a fit or not a fit.
00:05:48 Gloria: And it's the law of polarity. When you are so magnetic in your field, you're going to attract the right people and repel the wrong people. And that's just the law of physics. And when I think about messaging and the work that I am here to do and the work that we're all here to do is just to become more of ourselves. I am inviting you to do that through my recent content, and it means that people will unsubscribe.
00:06:05 Gloria: I'll never forget. I had 150 people unfollow me around the time of Trump's inauguration where I spoke up about how it's ironic that it's on Black History Month and what's happening. And the fact that I grew up with a Black family. In high school, I was raised by my best friend's family. And seeing how a Black, single, female household raising four kids in a predominantly white neighborhood, it really taught me so much about interracial dynamics in America.
00:06:25 Gloria: And, obviously, I am a daughter of a widow immigrant. I have my own perception of things. But being at the intersection of so many worlds with the way that I grew up just made me open my eyes to so many things. And so that's why when people say, wow, Gloria, you have such a diverse audience. You know, I really want to attract diversity in my program, but people just don't come. I have to be honest. I have to say, you don't attract diversity. You become diversity.
00:06:46 Gloria: And it's a subliminal subconscious things that you do, not just the conscious things, but, like, the content you consume, the places that you inhabit. How approximate do you get to other people? And how curious are you about other people's cultures and traditions? What kind of questions do you ask? What kind of people you have on your Instagram feed and the people that you are close with? So all of that together, you're sending a message to people about diversity. And I'm very outspoken about my values now.
00:07:10 Gloria: These are kind of the three major changes. So the first one is going from template to truth. So I was a new online business owner. I had no idea. I didn't start off with an audience. I had no audience. And so to build from scratch, you follow all of these gurus and experts of you should do this and you should do that. And I think in the beginning, it works because you're just trying to get people through the door. But then everyone starts to sound the same same.
00:07:30 Gloria: And with now everyone being super hyper aware and having these digital spidey senses, it's just not gonna cut it anymore. And I had a moment where I had the biggest team I've ever had. I had seven contractors. I had a CMO who was really brilliant, and she actually came super highly recommended from another online expert who did really, really well and she couldn't grow my audience.
00:07:50 Gloria: For five months, our Instagram following stayed flat. We weren't really selling our emails. And that's also around the time that I got married. And so I didn't have the bandwidth to really do much. And I think because I was traveling so much and had so much family time and because the CMO and I parted ways, everything kind of just, like, fell apart, and I had to start from scratch.
00:08:09 Gloria: And creating the spaciousness in my business where I let go of my revenue goals, launch goals, I do talk about my journey with burnout and money scarcity, realizing that, like, you know what? This year is gonna look different, and I'm not gonna have these crazy quarterly projection and goals, and I'm just gonna let go and enjoy my fucking wedding instead of worrying about this launch, that launch. It created a different frequency in me.
00:08:30 Gloria: I found myself getting back on the computer late at night writing emails. This was before AI, by the way. I found myself being so connected to my mother after I did a lot of psychedelic plant medicine healing where I took her to her first all expenses paid trip. And just having spaciousness and pause made me way more creative.
00:08:49 Gloria: Before, content was such a factory. And it still is to some extent. Like, content is what we do. We have to constantly create content. But for me, it was just, like, such a drag. It's such a burden. And by creating that spaciousness, letting go of my CMO, and realizing that the previous urgency and scarcity just wasn't selling, I just started from scratch. What is the rubric now? What is the blueprint now when all of the things that you've been told by other online coaches just aren't working anymore? It's not about timers. It's not about three spots left, two spots left. It's about how can you create that connection.
00:09:17 Gloria: So I started talking about my truth, things that were true to me, about how I was a terrible manager, about how I was a very cheap person, about how I nickeled and dimed and micromanaged my team, and I lost a lot of good people. About how all these things about my generational trauma and living in scarcity. My mother grew up without electricity and food, like water. She was on foods rations in communist China. My uncles went to prison and labor camps.
00:09:43 Gloria: That proximity to war and famine, how that's affected me and my self worth and how I had to rewrite that entire narrative of thinking that nothing was ever enough to trusting that in the here and now, there's always enough. And that is deep, soulful work that I will continue to do for the rest of my life. But along that journey of my truth as it was revealing itself, I started to share that. And we started to get people coming out of the woodwork saying, this resonates with me so much. I also have a difficult relationship with my mother. I had people DMing me from years ago who came out of nowhere and was like, this really touched me. I wanna know how we can work together.
00:10:14 Gloria: So my truth wasn't like, oh, I wanna turn this into a sales funnel. It was like, here's what I'm feeling. It probably doesn't have anything to do with PR, but this is what's authentic to me. I was calling out the stuff that I was tired of seeing. It was calling out BS, calling out all the shoulds, and how we trap ourselves into what other people think we should do. And in embracing that truth, I just felt like, wow. I had a steam belt. I finally let go, and I was able to speak from an unconstrained place, and people came.
00:10:42 Gloria: So that was the first thing is from template to truth and really coming full circle with the moment when the Oaxaca birth chart reader said, Gloria, remember who the fuck you are. And here I am taking rejection as a sign that I have finally arrived in my messaging. It's a pinnacle of messaging, isn't it? When you can really attract the right people and repel the wrong people, and that is a damn good thing.
00:11:02 Gloria: The second thing I think that we all need to do, but especially what I have done in my messaging to make my business more profitable than ever, but also attracting just really good humans and not having people who maybe want refunds or hard to deal with. The second thing is going from being very approval seeking to values driven. So I am a people pleaser. I didn't grow up with a traditional mom and dad. My friends were my lifeline. And so I always was the one with a billion friends, but always doing whatever they wanted. So I was a chameleon. I could adapt to different situations. I probably moved 13 times as a kid. I never really had my own childhood home.
00:11:35 Gloria: And so I was very good at seeking people's approval, asking for permission, getting people to come into the conversation to tell me what they thought, getting feedback like it was a tick where I literally would iterate and iterate and not really do something until I got feedback from, like, 20 people. That was ingrained in me, and it also was in my content. I was always, like, looking for what other people were doing. I watered down my opinions so that it was nice and palatable to everyone. And, I thought, oh, well, these are the online coaches who are doing really well. They have this persona. They're the nice girl next door, and it just wasn't working for me.
00:12:06 Gloria: I feel like there's so much depth and complexity to all the layers of what we're doing that we are rejecting our humanity and the wholeness of ourselves if we do that. And with the work that I have done through psychedelic plant medicine, actually witnessing my mom's grief of losing the love of her life, realizing that there are emotions like grief that we don't wanna talk about. That's not sexy. That's not marketable. But talking about it will really make people realize, like grief is here to teach us. It's through exploring the depth and contours of my mother's grief that I was able to heal my relationship with her and have compassion.
00:12:35 Gloria: That is what I mean by going from the content that is approval seeking, things that you're doing a little dance, you're doing a little tips, and you're giving guidance to just being values driven for what I value. I value so many more things than just business and success. I think grief is our greatest teacher. I think we need to sometimes go through the hard times and not have a solution.
00:12:55 Gloria: My values are very clear now. I talk about race a lot. I talk about shopping small a lot. I talk about anti-Amazon a lot. Now I still do shop at Amazon, but not to the point that I did. I'm looking at labels. I'm looking at who this person is from. I am inviting people to my podcast from all different walks of life, people who have demonstrated that they care about small businesses. I like to feature diverse founders. I like to go to events where there are diverse founders.
00:13:17 Gloria: And so that is very carefully curated now where I'm very intentional about not just making besties with, the people who are the most popular or maybe who can benefit my business the most because they have the most following, but who are the people who are in my vibe tribe, who understand this journey that I'm on. Values, values, values, values of inclusion, of equity, of diversity, of going being proximate and getting curious to different lived experiences, of not projecting this toxic internalized white supremacist end stage capitalism of what success should look like with jets and money and glitz and glam.
00:13:52 Gloria: But it's really about how do we elevate other people and not this whole toxic positivity of, oh, if I can do it, you can too. Which, by the way, I think is very egregious is making space for the fact that not everyone can invest in an online coach. Not everyone can be broke and invest in a $20,000 mastermind. People have generational shit that they're dealing with. They have parents who don't speak English that they have to take care of.
00:14:13 Gloria: So that's what I mean by really going from approval seeking, watered down content to my values, calling out the BS in bro marketing, calling out the fact that a lot of these bro marketers think that money is the only thing that I'm after, and I've evolved to embrace a richness and fullness of life where it's there's so much outside of just money that makes me feel so good inside.
00:14:35 Gloria: For example, we had a person has not been in our program in four years, but I saw a Forbes PR opportunity, and I remember her name and exactly what she made. She made leather handmade bags. And I sent that Forbes opportunity to her, and she got featured. And I started crying when she told me. I was literally in a busy intersection in Downtown Brooklyn going to my physical therapist. And at a stoplight, when I saw that message, I recorded back to her because nothing makes me happier than seeing people win.
00:14:58 Gloria: She hasn't been in my program for four years. So much life has happened. Moves relationships, but that made me so happy. So that's what I mean by values is I am choosing to define things differently by the way that I seek is important, and it's going to not vibe with a lot of people. I had a lot of people unsubscribe, tell me that I should stay in my lane, to not talk about politics, calling me fake, calling me whack, all those things.
00:15:19 Gloria: But it's okay because then I have 10 times more people leaning all the way in, and I wanna attract my health, yes, people. And that starts with speaking about what you're for and what you're against. And I think we cannot live in this neutrality anymore, not only for our own being, but also in the world of business. Same-same and neutrality is just not cutting anymore. People wanna know who you stand for, what you stand for, and we have to take a stance. I'm sorry, but we cannot be silent anymore, especially with everything that's happening politically, socioeconomically. We just can't. And that's how I really feel.
00:15:50 Gloria: So, yes, my audience got a little bit smaller, but those people leaned all the way in. And after I got those 150 people unfollowing me, I started to skyrocket my follower count. And I was looking at the analytics on Instagram. I was like, wow. Like, we've never grown this quickly. But I had a good, like, three weeks where people were just dropping off.
00:16:08 Gloria: And then boom, there was a rush because now people out of the woodworks find me who are so aligned and who resonate with my life story, who I would have never reached in a million years if I still have done the approval seeking templated same-same, Instagram approved things. So that's really what I mean is I really went from approval seeking to being so bold and unapologetic about who I am. It's undeniable why I stand for and what I stand against.
00:16:32 Gloria: The third one, which I touched upon in the earlier, is going from authority to resonance. So authority alone is not getting you anywhere. I don't care about your accolades. I don't care about how many followers you have. Honestly, I wanna know, is there a psychological safety? Is there a shared human experience? Is there resonance with your lived experience in mind? And it doesn't mean that you have to be a daughter of a widowed immigrant who grew up with Black people. It could be that we share the same values, the same grief journey, the same traumas and triggers, and we're aware of it, and we're very much still evolving and in the process of becoming.
00:17:02 Gloria: And so that's why my New York messaging event, the Sacred Messaging Event, it's not about attracting your clients. It's about remembering who the fuck you are and becoming more of that because that's what marketing needs to be. For us to be more of who we are so that we can take off all of the layers and really attract that with strong frequency who we are here to attract. And I think it's the same in relationships and dating as well. Roommates says you are what you see. And so how can we be more clear about who we are so that we are only in alignment and build a world around us that's a mirror of exactly who we are? And that starts with us, honestly, peeling back the layers.
00:17:35 Gloria: I've been open to share my struggles, not just the highlight reels about, oh, like, how do you 10X this or 2X or 3X this, but the realities of business. And the realities of, okay. Yeah. I did my 6 figure launch, and I was absolutely miserable. The fact that online business sometimes isn't what it's all chalked up to be, but I also express immense gratitude. The fact that I get to have freedom and I get to fly my mom business class. So all of those things can exist at the same time.
00:17:59 Gloria: And I think where the oppression comes from in the oppression of society that whether it's sexism, whether it's ableism, whether it's racism is that people are being split into, living in a duality where you have to pick one or the other. And I think understanding the nuance of it all and the spectrum nature of who we are, that we can understand many different things to be true at the same time, that is what creates beauty, abundance, and to embrace the wholeness of someone.
00:18:21 Gloria: The first step into dehumanizing someone is by labeling them and categorizing them and objectifying them. And so the more that we can be fully multifaceted, we reclaim our humanity. And that's really the messaging work that I'm doing, that I am helping other people to do, which is, yes, you can be all these things. No. You don't have to figure it out, but it is your job to be unapologetic and clear about where you are on your journey and not just sharing the destination because we will never arrive at our destination. We will always be impacted by what happens. We are getting you information, downloads. We are never the same. We are evolving.
00:18:54 Gloria: So that's what I mean by how do you create that psychological resonance with someone so that they feel safe knowing that their lived experience is somehow connected to yours? Maybe not in the connection and the same that we grew up in California, but, like, that these emotions, that these underlying things that there is a resonance, there is an understanding, there is a safe space for that. And so that's really the journey that I've been on to redefine not only myself, but how I do PR.
00:19:16 Gloria: I've always said, I've really radically changed how I do PR. It's not just about logos. It's not about, oh, get featured here, and it looks great, and it's credible. No. It's about doing the work so that people who have been traditionally marginalized and don't feel safe advocating for themselves feel safe to finally make some fucking noise about themselves. I think especially as women and women of color, we have spent our lives advocating for other people because we've seen our mom do that and her mom. And so how do we reclaim that and feel safe to finally advocate for ourselves knowing that there is judgment, knowing that maybe some tables were not meant for us, but we're gonna do it anyway, and that starts with community.
00:19:49 Gloria: And this business has evolved so much more than just a business. It's a community. It's us sharing resources. It's us connecting with each other, elevating each other, celebrating the highs and lows. And me when I host events, like, I am only featuring products from our small business makers. I am not getting big outside sponsors. I do not want dilution of energy.
00:20:05 Gloria: And so that's what I mean by living with my values. And so those three key pivots has made my business 75% more profitable while having less team. Because now what I've done is I've used AI tools to train my AI to really understand my tone of voice. So, of course, I am still the originator. But I'm not depending on a social media person to write my caption. I'm not depending on a CMO to tell me, here's what you should talk about. It is flowing from me.
00:20:27 Gloria: And we have to feel safe to do that first. We have to create spaciousness from our to-do-list to mentally tap into that curiosity and artistry, and it's not easy work. But if it's one thing that you take away from this is that rejection and unsubscribes are a good thing. It's a sign that you're getting somewhere. It's a sign that you're being more courageous. And by doing so, you are inviting people to do the same.
00:20:47 Gloria: Thank you so much for listening. I so appreciate you being here week after week. We do not have the biggest platform. We do not have the biggest podcast. I am not doing tons of advertising. I'm actually doing no advertising. But the fact that you still show up week after week, if you tell a friend about it, it means the world. I really hope that more people who resonate with this message can hear it, and the people who don't can unsubscribe. And both are really great things.
00:21:09 Gloria: Thank you so much, my friends, and I will see you next week. And, hopefully, I will see you inside of my program or at one of our in-person events, experiences so that we can go deep and I can hold space for you. Thank you
00:22:15 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 are not yet launched or if you don't have any connection? 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.
00:22:45 Gloria: Now if you wanna 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 Gloria Chou, C-H-O-U pr.com/masterclass so you can get featured in thirty 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.