Ep 232: Can You Cold Pitch the New York Times with Zero Experience? Gloria Chou Tells You How

“Sometimes being an outsider is actually your best kept secret.”

Gloria Chou knows a thing or two about being an outsider—and turning that into a superpower. In this episode, she shares how she went from cold-calling journalists with no connections to getting clients featured in major outlets like Forbes and Vogue. If the idea of PR feels overwhelming or off-limits, you’ll want to listen to this.

Gloria Chou is a former U.S. diplomat who transitioned into the world of PR without any agency experience—and built a thriving business doing just that. She’s helped thousands of underrepresented founders get media coverage by teaching them to cold pitch with confidence, authenticity, and purpose.

WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT

• Why you don’t need a big following or fat budget to land media features
• The surprising difference between PR and marketing (and why PR might suit you better)
• Gloria’s sweaty-palmed journey into cold pitching and how she cracked the code
• The mindset shift needed to show up and share your story
• Why authority alone isn’t enough—you need psychological resonance
• The power of niching down and getting specific in your messaging
• How to create pitches that are timely, relevant, and irresistible to journalists
• Gloria’s thoughts on building inclusive communities and leading with values 

Tune in and get ready to rethink your approach to visibility. Get regular access to tips, techniques and advice from experts about growing your business: https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter/

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• • Gloria’s free PR masterclass: gloriachoupr.com/masterclass
  • DM “Trudy” to @gloriachoupr on Instagram for a bonus PR pitching freebie

My newsletter is for people who need a way to make money from home so they can build a better life for themselves and their families:
👉 https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter

_____________

Trudy Rankin is the host of the Online Business Launchpad Podcast, Director of West Island Digital and the founder of the Online Business Lift-Off program.

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click on links on this page and then make a purchase, I may earn a commission (at no extra cost to you).  I am a proud affiliate of these resources because I use them in my own life and business.

TRANSCRIPT

Episode 232: Can You Cold Pitch the New York Times with Zero Experience? Gloria Chou Tells You How

Trudy Rankin:

[00:00:00] Have you ever felt like getting media exposure was only possible for the rich and famous? Well, you might wanna think again. What if cold pitching journalists could land you in the New York Times without having to use a PR agency or having a fat budget, or even having a big social media following? In today’s episode, I’m talking with Gloria Chou.

A former US diplomat turned PR powerhouse about how small business owners, especially those without traditional connections, can punch way above their weight when it comes to getting press, we dig into why marketing might not be the best approach for getting noticed how to pitch with confidence even if you hate selling, and why showing up as your full, authentic self is the key to standing out.

Now I’ve followed Gloria for a while now, both through her podcast and her value packed newsletter, and what always strikes me is how down to earth and [00:01:00] tactical her advice is. She’s helped thousands of diverse founders get featured in places like Opera’s, favorite Things, Vogue and Forbes, and she’s doing it all without the usual smoke and mirrors of the PR world.

Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast. I’m your host, Trudy Rankin, and this podcast is for small business owners and solopreneurs who would like to run their business without their business running them. I bring you stories, tips, and advice from online entrepreneurs and experts who have overcome problems and challenges to get to success because if they’ve done it, so can you.

My mission is simple. I want to help you solve the challenges you face as an online business owner so you can have more time and money for yourself and your [00:02:00] family, and reclaim your sanity.

Trudy Rankin: Welcome to the Online Business Launchpad podcast.

I just wanna say welcome to the show, Gloria.

Gloria Chou: Thank you for having me, Trudy. 

Trudy Rankin: So I really am seriously quite interested in speaking with you about this because it’s something that I think you have a special skill and a special set of experiences to bring to the table that I think will help every single person who’s trying to start a business or to grow a business.

You might already have a business and be wanting to grow it, but it’s especially. Important for people who are thinking, I’m just getting started. I don’t have a big audience, or might not have any audience at all, have a really important thing that I can share that’s gonna help people. But I have no idea how to get that message out there.

And a lot of people just quit and give up at that point. And I would love it if you could just share a little bit about why they shouldn’t be giving up. But let’s start with your backstory. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do, and where you’ve come from. 

Gloria Chou: So I’m actually on my third career.

[00:03:00] If anyone’s thinking about a change, this episode is for you. Before this, before I was a small business PR coach. I was a US diplomat, and on the outside I had the picture perfect life. I had condo paid for by the government. I got to travel. But I was actually dying inside because personality wise, being a bureaucrat just wasn’t a fit for me.

And I wish, I so wish I could have stayed in it because I had a pension. I had a 25 year long, very cushy career. That was pretty much guaranteed. But deep down I knew that this was not an alignment for me. Someone who likes to be a little bit more entrepreneurial. I’m very creative. I don’t necessarily love following all of the rules, right?

I like to be a mold breaker, so I had to start over. And I always loved to see people win, so I was always that super connector in my friend groups and always hyping everyone up. And I love communications because I was very strong in writing speeches for our ambassador, so I was already doing communications type work, but when I wanted to leave the diplomatic service, I probably applied for over a thousand jobs [00:04:00] in PR and communications.

I couldn’t get a single one, and it absolutely killed me inside because I knew I could do it. But the PR industry was very gate kept. They wanted a very specific pedigree where you had to come from a PR agency, which I did not, and it felt like I could not break into it. So as an outsider, I felt like (a), I didn’t have the contacts or the connection, so I had to start from literally the very bottom, which is cold calling.

I got a private client who gave me a couple hundred bucks and said, we are an AI FinTech startup. I had no idea what any of that was. And they said, if you can get us on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times, we’ll pay you a couple hundred bucks. And I said, okay. So I rolled up my sleeves and I had to start by Googling the newsroom. I I kid you not. New York Times newsroom operator, and I had to cold call with sweaty palms and get rejected thousands of times until I cracked the code on what is it that makes a person who doesn’t know you say, tell me more. I ended up getting my clients onto every TV show as you could imagine.

And now I turned it into a formula. But it [00:05:00] really goes to show that sometimes being an outsider is actually your best kept secret and is actually your greatest advantage. 

Trudy Rankin: I’m smiling a little bit because I’m pretty sure that I speak for a lot of people when I say that thinking about doing cold calling, I can basically empathize with the sweaty palms.

You sit there and look at the phone and then turn around and find something else to do, anything else to do instead of ringing. So that’s pretty brave. Can you just maybe just share a couple of really quick tips about cold calling that might make it easier for somebody to do that who just dies inside at the thought of having to do it.

Gloria Chou: Yeah, honestly, if you think about it this way is that you’re not selling cigarettes. You are actually helping the journalist because they’re looking for new content every day, whether it’s a journalist or a customer. I really think about selling as, serving as an act of service, and I think a lot of times, maybe we haven’t done the inner work to really remain firm in our mission and our values and why we do what we do, that we keep, we get muddied by the judgments of others. [00:06:00] But the more we can tap into why is it that I started a business? Why is it that I have this product? It’s probably to solve a problem. It’s probably to make someone’s life better. And if you can just keep grounding in that every single day, then it doesn’t sound like you are being sleazy or that you’re a used car salesman.

You’re just simply providing a point of connection to offer as a resource, an insight or something. And here’s the thing about journalism. ’cause you know what I do is helping people get features, get PR features with no context, is that journalists aren’t looking to interview only the Fortune 500 CEOs.

Like they’re looking to highlight indie brands and fresh voices and new perspectives, and they actually depend on us to tell them what’s happening in our industry. And I think a lot of times we think, oh I don’t have any groundbreaking research that’s going to shatter the world. And journalism is not about groundbreaking research, right?

That’s really for science. Journalists are just looking for a commentary about what people are already talking about. So it could be a trend, it could be an insight for example, what we’re talking about here. Nothing is technically groundbreaking, but it’s from a certain specific point of view. So I always say, if you want to establish [00:07:00] yourself as an authority. It’s not about having credentials or experience, it’s really about having a specific point of view.

Trudy Rankin: I think that’s really important. It’s a really important point, and having that point of view and being not afraid to share it. And sometimes that can be a little scary in this day and age.

Do you have any thoughts about, looking at and we won’t get into politics, but looking at the general climate, do you have any sort of tips around that concept of maybe speaking your opinion or maybe keeping it to yourself? 

Gloria Chou: Yeah. It’s funny that you said that is because, as you followed me throughout the years, I’ve taken a very different turn in the way that I message and for a lot of online coaches, the common complaint is that people just aren’t buying, or my content’s not working.

And I think the reason why it’s not working is because we’ve gone through a global pandemic, we’ve gone through so much, and with inundation of everyone being an expert, it’s no longer a precious commodity. So I always say to, to my PR students, that authority alone is not going to get you where you want to go.

That’s really the first answer that people already know. It’s okay, can this person help me? The answer is usually [00:08:00] yes. I know that this product or this expert, they know their stuff. But the question we need to answer now in this day and age after everything we’ve been through collectively, is, I know that it’ll work, but will it work for me?

And you can’t answer that question with authority. You have to answer that with psychological safety. Some kind of identity resonance. Do our values match up? And it means that you’re gonna get some people who don’t match up with you because what it means to take a stance. It means that you are calling in certain things and calling out other things.

And I always tell people like, you don’t wanna be a McDonald’s. Like you don’t, you’re not here to serve everyone. And I find that the businesses who really stand out in this market, when everyone is an expert and everyone can have an online business, is having a very specific point of view, which is scary, it’s daunting.

But the more that you take a stance, the more you are going to attract those “hell yes” people who will keep working with you. And yeah, maybe you’ll get some unsubscribes, but those people were never going to buy from you anyways. 

Trudy Rankin: I think that’s really interesting. And, for my listeners I’ve been following you for a while.

I’m on your newsletter list and if you’re listening and you’re [00:09:00] interested in pr, sign up to Gloria’s list because it’s actually, she’s got a lot of really useful and valuable things to say, but you also share a lot about what’s going on in your life. And one of the things that you’ve been doing or doing more of over the last little while has been changing your

internal willingness, I would call it, to speak out more and be who you are and basically, and not try to be a shrinking, violent, I guess is would be the way I would describe it, because I. For my listeners, I’ve, I’m just say this I’ve lived in a lot of countries and I, for me, it’s always been a matter of, when I come to a new country, what do you do?

You try your hardest to fit in as quickly as you can, as quietly as you can, and try not to make waves. And when you have got a small business, that is probably the worst thing that you could possibly do, is to try and fit in and not stand out. Can you just talk a little bit about your journey [00:10:00] of going from that whole let’s not make waves to just standing out and saying, Hey, this is me. 

Gloria Chou: Yeah. So I am a five foot tall daughter of a widowed immigrant, right? I was told all my life to keep my head down and say, yes, sir, if someone is paying me. My mother was very upset at me when I gave up my diplomatic career. She thought I ruined my life. So she comes from a different reality.

She grew up in communist China. Her brothers went to labor camp. She didn’t have running water in her house. So that generational scarcity and proximity to literal violence and famine has passed down to me in one generation, whereas I look at my husband, right? He’s from Italy. His parents weren’t super wealthy, but they had running water.

They weren’t in labor camps. So I think a lot of it, it’s generational. And especially for me as a woman of color, I live in Brooklyn by the way, so it’s very loud. As a woman of color it’s a lot of okay, do I feel safe speaking up? And, let’s advocate for everybody around us, but I’m the behind the scenes person.

And if you do have an online business now, you absolutely need to not be in that perspective, it’s almost like everything that we’ve been taught is not what’s going to help us in [00:11:00] business. So for example, in the Chinese culture, we really favor group harmony. So it’s about what the group wants versus what you want.

We know that in, in entrepreneurship it’s usually the bold one that gets a lot of success. So it’s a lot of unlearning for me, generationally of everything I’ve been taught that kind of held me back to be able to be the entrepreneur that I am now. But I’ve also tested this, right? Like I followed other people’s marketing templates. I tried to be the friendly PR coach online. And honestly, my content didn’t grow. Like I hired A CMO who worked with all the online coaches. She applied her frameworks. I couldn’t grow my account for five months, and the moment I took it back, the moment I started talking about what I’m doing even minuscule things like planning for my wedding or the nightmare that I had, people started leaning in, I started getting responses, and that’s why I’m here on your podcast now because otherwise I don’t think you would’ve probably invited me. If there’s something about my content that kind of let you into my world in a layered way, where you realize, okay, this is not just someone who is selling goods and services, but this is someone who is all very much on her journey, whether it’s healing or, death [00:12:00] of a parent or undergoing whatever that is.

And it doesn’t mean that you have to share all your secrets, right? You can be a very private person. You can still have content and messaging that makes you a real human. And so that means layers of complexity, of identity, of hurt and pain and joy and struggle, and not just sharing the highlight reel.

I also think, like I said, that people don’t want a guru. Like people are not buying from people because this person is an expert. We all know that you can do it. So again, authority doesn’t answer the question. How are you going to answer the question well, of is this person going to be. For me, and you don’t answer that with authority.

You answer that with content about your personal life, your values, your perspective, and how you navigate through the world. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah. So that psychological fit, the values fit and how that resonates with people. In terms of, if, for somebody who’s listening, who’s got a small business and they’re either

just at that cusp of ready to reach out to the world and grow beyond where they are. Or they’re, they’ve already reached a peer, a point of stability, but now [00:13:00] they really want to get out there and thinking about what you’ve said. What would be the most important things that they would want to do, that they should be doing in order to get to the point where they can, with some confidence, reach out and figure out or reach out and actually get public exposure?

The whole PR side of things.

Gloria Chou: So I will say that, fundamentally as founders, we’re really good at marketing. So we’re good at our benefits and features, but journalists are not gonna buy from us. So we can’t talk to them like they’re our customers. And instead, you gotta take off the hat of marketing and put on the hat of someone with a point of view.

And that’s what experts have. They have points of view. It doesn’t mean that one is better than the other, it just means you have a specific point of view. So you wanna be very specific in what you’re pitching. So for example, I also have a podcast called Small Business PR and I get pitches all the time.

And the ones that always get thrown in the trash are the ones that are very general and fluffy. For example, I am a female empowerment coach. [00:14:00] I, really wanna help women lead and succeed and show up. That pitch is great, but it could work in 2000 years from now and maybe 2000 years like it. It’s like I don’t know what time, what relevance we’re in.

And so I always say the best pitches have two things, which is relevance and specificity. So if you imagine pitch writing like a layer of an onion, that very general fluffy pitch, it’s the top layer. It’s not very juicy. It’s not going to flavor your dish. So how can we do the work of peeling the layer of an onion to reveal that juicy core?

And we live in a time where you can use AI tools like perplexity.ai, which is my favorite research tool. It’s free by the way, and it’s the best web search tool. And you can literally type in, I am a. A caregiver and what are the trends or what are the insights or topics or whatever that is, whether you’re a fitness coach or a speaking coach, perplexity will scrape the internet for you and tell you what is happening right now.

And so from that research, it sets up the context really well for you to be able to pitch with that level of specificity and relevance. [00:15:00] 

Trudy Rankin: I’m finding it interesting because for a lot of my listeners, they the word marketing actually strikes fear into their heart. And so when you say some things like marketing’s not quite the right approach to take here, I’m pretty sure they’re getting ready to dance, get up and dance because they don’t have to focus on the marketing.

Could you just focus for a little bit on the benefits of actually seeking out pr? And being out there in the public eye.

Gloria Chou: Yeah. I always say that marketing is you talking about you, but PR is your industry talking about you. And PR gets a bad rep because a lot of times we think it’s a celebrity thing or it’s like a government or crisis communications, and the PR industry has traditionally kept it very expensive.

They’ve kept their contacts very hidden. And so it’s this thing that no one can achieve. But my whole mission is to deconstruct that and shatter that status quo and say we actually can be our own publicist and journalists actually wanna talk to us directly, so how can we just easily position ourselves and write a email, a cold pitch and get a response?

And we’ve been able to do this. [00:16:00] Hundreds of times. I just think it’s just simply choosing to, to not accept that, journalists, you have to go through a gatekeeper. So that’s one. And like what I said, another one is like feeling like you have to be ready for pr. And it’s if you’re ready to take a customer’s money, you’re ready for pr.

And it’s not anything groundbreaking. We had someone in our PR program, she’s a Pilates teacher and she got featured in an article called, what is Pilates in 2023, right? So it’s like everything is constantly being spit out and recycled again and you’re not really inventing anything new, you’re just pitching a specific point of view.

PR is great, I think, and it’s the best leverage activity you can do as a founder because it’s the only thing in all of your marketing that gives you that SEO credibility and sales. So if you think about social media you maybe get views, but you don’t get the SEO, you don’t get the credibility.

For ads, right? You definitely don’t have SEO and credibility, you just have views. So what is a one marketing activity that simultaneously checks all of those boxes that’s pr, those valuable backlinks is going to push you higher in the [00:17:00] search engines for you to be found. That is setting you up for long-term success.

And not only that, it’s third party validation. So if I read somewhere that Trudy was in a magazine, for me it gives me a stamp of approval. If I were to think about working with her more than, what her Instagram content is. Everyone can buy Instagram followers now.

So it’s not really a marker of credibility, I think, especially if you make a product in a saturated environment or if you’re a coach having that distinction is really important and it gives your customers that kind of, that trust to, to work with you. 

Trudy Rankin: Yeah, I think that’s, that there’s so many benefits to it, and I think a lot of small business owners come to an understanding of what those benefits are quite late in the piece.

Whereas actually you could utilize pR to actually just really jumpstart things. I wanna circle back to something that we touched on a little bit. And it’s coming back to that whole, you need to have a point of view aspect to PR and successfully being able to pitch your yourself to people who are into PR.

[00:18:00] One of the things that I’ve experienced in my life and I’ve observed in multiple cultures is that women are socialized not to have opinions or not to speak their opinions out loud. Do you wanna just touch on that and what some thinking that might help women specifically get past that? 

Gloria Chou: I think women, especially when women of color are told to be everyone else’s advocate and elevate other people and women are known for, inclusion, right?

So how do we especially promote the, what the group wants instead of what we want? And so a lot of that is, is very much built into society. So it’s hard. It’s, we live in a very loud man’s world. But I also think that we’re at a time now where it’s easier than ever to be able to pitch and get featured and there’s so many opportunities out there.

But I think it starts with knowing yes, this is a radical act that we’re doing and we are doing something that’s maybe not our default nature, but by doing this work, we are also pav the path for so many people and we are also building a table for other people to come to it. So for example I dunno if you read my [00:19:00] email, but I had 20 people respond to it in this.

The title of the email was, I Got Rejected by a podcast. And it was funny ’cause it was like a referral from somebody and I thought it was like a no brainer. Okay, I am gonna be on this podcast. It’s really aligned. And she actually responded and said that, I took a look at your social media and I don’t think we’re a values fit, and I will not be pursuing collaboration.

And that was so interesting to me ’cause it was the first time happened. I’ve been on over a hundred podcasts, and instead of feeling like resentment or hurt I felt really proud actually, because I think, especially now more than ever, we need to be so clear in who we are and what we do and who we stand for.

That it’s like undeniable that we attract the right people and in return we, we repel the wrong people. And if you think about that level of clarity in your messaging, that’s really the pinnacle of messaging, isn’t it? Is messaging that speaks clearly to everyone. So I was really happy that happened and it made me realize, wow, I’ve come really long way from my kind of di diluted and marketing templates that I’ve been using, and I’m not afraid to write things that are polarizing and [00:20:00] maybe can get me unsubscribed.

Actually put in the email, in the PS section. If this doesn’t resonate with you, please go ahead and click unsubscribe. And that is such a empowered place. Whereas before, I think when you start your business, you are at McDonald’s, you just want as many people as possible. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right?

Or do you have bills to pay? But I think after you’ve established expertise, after you have repeated results for your clients and you’re known in a space you need to really step up as a leader and you really need to get super clear on who you’re serving. And. I’m actually also niching down with who I’m serving to.

And so it’s this constant level of refinement and I really think we live in an age where, it’s about, not about more, it’s really about going deeper and how can we provide better services to a smaller group of people. And that’s really the season that I’m in as well. 

Trudy Rankin: Can you just and just very quickly, because I’m watching your time carefully ’cause I know that you’ve got another appointment straight after this. You mentioned that you’re niching down even more than you already have. Just talk about that process and the thinking behind it just [00:21:00] very quickly. 

Gloria Chou: So I read this book called 10 X is Easier Than two x, and it’s a really great book by an entrepreneur mentor who’s coached so many entrepreneurs.

And I believe his name was Dan Sullivan. And I had a light bulb moment because in the book he says that you cannot make 10 x leaps in your business and unless you’re able to let go of like 80% of what you know, right? And so we can keep making these kind of little two x increment, growths.

Or we can do something that’s a little bit dramatic, but then we can unlock higher levels. And so what that means often is not serving everyone, but niching down on serving one customer type, but doing it. 10 times better. And so then your delivery becomes more optimized, your marketing, your message, everything becomes more streamlined because you’re speaking to a more narrow group of people.

And I think that’s really great, and that’s what I’m doing now, so that way I can just be a much better PR coach to a smaller subset of people instead of being, a, like you said, like a McDonald’s for everyone. Now I still have my free podcast. I still have tons of [00:22:00] resources so that I can keep being of service.

But my signature program and the way that I work with people is going to become way more defined and specific so that I can keep getting those 10 x results for people in a much better way. 

Trudy Rankin: I think I, I think that’s really interesting and I’ll be watching with interest as you do that. Do you wanna talk just a little bit about your community and the people that you serve before we finish up?

Gloria Chou: Yeah. It’s funny because when I started doing this, I didn’t think that I was building a community. Honestly. It was just start online business, try to keep, afloat, try to be profitable. But as I started to do this messaging work, I started attracting really amazing, diverse people. And now I think we have one of the most diverse communities in the online world.

We have 95% women of color. We have people whose English is not their first or second language. We have people who are neurodivergent, who are physically differently abled and disability advocates, and it’s been really great. I think the reason why that is is because a couple things is, I was once at a conference and this course creator who was, had way more followers than me, and she kept saying, I really want [00:23:00] to attract diversity, but I just don’t have a lot of different types of people buying from me.

I had to look at her and be honest. I said, you don’t attract diversity. You become diversity through the content you consume, through how you get proximate to different groups, through the people that you elevate on your podcast and the people that you decide to be close with online. People are watching and you’re sending, subliminal messages to people.

If you do want to attract a diverse community, you have to first embody those values. And so it’s been really great to have a community of just really incredible makers and founders and people who are the first, in many ways, like first to. Start a business first to immigrate to a new country, first to speak English.

And I think together we are all shining a light on each other. 

Trudy Rankin: And that’s really important because whether we like it or not, the world’s changing. And anything that’s gonna help us get in there and be part of a community where people, by definition have had to be different and have developed those skill sets for basically adapting.

I think that’s really important. So Gloria it’s been really interesting talking with you. I’ve loved speaking with you. [00:24:00] If people were interested in reaching out to you, either to connect with you or to find out more about what you do, where would they go? 

Gloria Chou: So the first thing is I have a free PR training that walks you through exactly what to say in a pitch, how to say it, and people have watched it and gotten featured left and right.

People around the world I’ve never even met. So you can watch that for free at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. That’s gloriaChoupr.com/masterclass. And I am on Instagram where I share a lot about my story, my healing journey, my relationship with my mom and that’s @gloriachoupr. And if you DM me the word.

Trudy, I’ll give you an additional pitching freebie so that you can get started on your first PR pitch. 

Trudy Rankin: Fantastic. Thank you so much, and I’ll put those in the show notes. So once again, Gloria, thank you so much. 

If you’ve ever thought pr or public relations wasn’t for someone like you, and I’m saying someone like you in air quotes, I hope today’s conversation with Gloria Chou flipped that script.[00:25:00] 

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re ready to grow, you’ve got a story and the world needs to hear that story. Remember to check the show notes for Gloria’s free PR masterclass and her special bonus if you DM her the word Trudy. Trust me, you’ll want to take her up on it. If you enjoyed this episode, I love it if you’d hit that follow button and leave a quick review.

It helps other people find the show and it helps me keep bringing you conversations that move the needle. So until next time, keep going, keep growing, and don’t be afraid to take up space.