EP 185 - Gloria Chou

Ellen Yin57min

Ellen Yin

00:00

You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 185. What gives you the marketing ick? If you're tired of seeing gurus pose in front of Ferraris and reliving the same formulaic webinar, complete with inflated value stacks and fear induced FOMO. Today's conversation will feel refreshing in more ways than one. We're joined by my friend Gloria Chow, an award winning Small Business PR coach, who has helped her community generate more than 1 billion free organic views for their businesses through features and top tier media outlets. GLORIA brings us a brutally honest analysis of her most recent program launch of PR starter pack, where she tested rejecting the most popular bro marketing tactics that have dominated the last decade. Her experiment resulted in not only a six figure launch, but half of her previous refund rate. She'll walk us through exactly what she ditched why, and how that had a positive impact on her bottom line, mental sanity and relationship with our students keep listening to usher in a new era of transparent ethical marketing. Welcome to cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On the show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports and behind the business solo episodes, subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.

Ellen Yin

01:57

Hello, friends, I am excited to have my friend Gloria Chow here on the podcast today. This is long overdue. Gloria and I have been friends for I think close to two years now. And I actually got the chance to hang out with her when I was in New York City last summer. She hosted us at her apartment afterward, and we had dinner together. And it was it was just an amazing time. She is truly one of the most genuine human beings you will ever get the chance to meet. So Gloria, I love you. Thank you for coming on the show today. And I'm really excited to jump into your case study.

Gloria Chou

02:29

Love you right back.

Ellen Yin

02:30

All right, Gloria, you have a cubicle to CEO story. That's not necessarily super traditional. But I still want to hear it like our listeners, tell us how you made that jump from employee to entrepreneur?

Gloria Chou

02:42

Well, I was the employee of employees, I was actually in the government. So I was locked in for 25 year career with a pension. So I used to be a US diplomat with a security clearance. And I was looking at a very comfortable career, you know, got to go through the diplomatic line, have diplomatic need all of the things right. And I was just deeply miserable, because it was very much military ask hierarchy. And it works. For some people. It didn't work for me. And I felt so stuck. Even though on the outside, I had a picture perfect life, right, I got to travel, I got to work abroad. And I basically after my first tour abroad, I was a cat three more years of doing the same thing. In a different country. And I just couldn't do any more. I probably applied to over 1000 jobs to try to leave well, you know, having a job. I but I just couldn't I actually wanted to work in PR because I love seeing people when I knew I was a great communicator. But I probably had over 1000 applications. I had people putting in like references for me and they all wanted very cookie cutter PR agency experience which I never had. And to this day, I've never worked at an agency. So basically, I had to move home kill my ego got got back on unemployment, and started to rebuild my life from there. And I started my PR literally and like can you googling if there's like a siren going on what's up Brooklyn, literally googling the newsroom of New York Times operator, and then dialing zero, and then convincing that person to pass me on to the next person and just cold calling because I had no contacts in the media. I never studied media. And I think from Cold Calling 1000s of times, getting rejected phone slammed in my face. That's how I came up with my CPR pitching method that I now teach to entrepreneurs. So that's my story.

Ellen Yin

04:26

I am obsessed with your story for so many reasons. One being that I think you and I are maybe in the small percentage of people who actually enjoy talking on the phone. I think a lot of people like hate phone calls for a myriad of reasons, obviously, but I don't know there's something very comforting to me about just being able to discuss in real time with someone collaborate with someone in real time in a way that doesn't feel as energetically draining or draining may not be the right word but energetically present as sometimes being on video because You know, you're active listening, your whole body is participating in the conversation. Whereas I feel like phone calls are just very kind of, you know, you can be walking about doing your thing and still in conversation with someone. So I love that you cold called, you actually kind of just worked your way through all of the gatekeepers that you needed to get to the source or the journalist or the editor, whoever, and that you're so self taught in this area, I bet that actually plays to your advantage, sometimes not having a formal background in PR, because you're not so boxed in by the limitations of what like textbook PR is. So if you're a founder, especially if you're a woman owned business, or women of color, Glory's approach to PR, I think is just so simple yet so revolutionary, and highly recommend you spend some time googling Gloria Chao, or Small Biz PR podcast, if you want all the details on her background there. But, of course, the purpose of our show is to talk about stuff that you can't google. So that leads us to your case study today, Korea, which is all about comparing the launches between your February 2022, and your October 2022. Launch for PR starter pack, which is your signature program, and how in the most recent one, you actually intentionally rejected a bunch of traditional marketing or bro marketing tactics that led you to your best launch ever in an economic downturn. So let's just start by setting the stage, what were your revenue numbers from February 2020, to that launch, compared to the October one.

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