173 Evolving Your Work to Have a Social Justice Lens with Cher Hale

Today’s conversation is with Cher Hale, a publicist & founder who’s using her PR company to amplify the voices of underrepresented and marginalized groups. 

After a year of offering podcast pitching services, Cher started noticing that the clients coming to her were mainly white upper-class life coaches. 

They were paying her well and sustaining a good, consistent business. BUT she was telling the same stories, “I was moderately unhappy in my life and so I hired a life coach which helped me a bunch and so I became a life coach to help others who were in my situation, too.” 

And while that’s a totally valid story, she knew it wasn’t what moved her. 

But it was scary to make a major shift in business when she was getting consistent revenue and had bills to pay. 

Then her mother passed away at the young age of 49 without fulfilling the dream of being a published erotic romance author. Her mother, a Taiwanese Black immigrant, hadn’t had the privilege that so many of us, as online business owners, have – to have created a platform. 

That’s when Cher knew she wanted to use her skills as a publicist to tell the stories of underrepresented and marginalized voices. 

Now she’s proud to say her client roster is about 70% BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ or disabled. 

But it didn’t happen overnight. And it wasn’t a matter of simply updating the copy on her website. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear what it took to get there and what it actually looked like to make those shifts in her business. 

Listen in.

Cher and I talk about:

• The intentional decision she made to surround herself with the kind of diversity she wanted to serve in her business

• Why marginalized and underrepresented communities need advocacy, NOT charity

• The very real ways the DEI journey is like learning Italian, from starting without a vocabulary to the moment you hit a critical mass of education and start speaking up 

• Why it starts with digging into your own “diversity story” (as her former client JenniferBrown calls it)

• All the ways our intersectional diversity has impacted our voices — or made us feel disconnected from our voices 

• Why we have to take the word “feminist” back and make it our own (and how the conversation around feminism has always been very white)

• The shifts she made to the very female-centric copy on her website, based on feedback from my her LGBTQIA+ clients

Deeper support from me:

• What’s your Messenger Archetype? Take the quiz.

• My Messenger Mastermind is an intimate circle of up to 6 women coaches & leaders who want to feel solid, confident & consistent in their messaging and grow a movement that matters ~ both to the world and to their business’ bottom line.

• As a Copywriter + Messaging Expert, I craft websites that make your dream clients feel SEEN and convey the true value and impact of your work so that it moves them to sign up. 

Cher’s Links:

• Ginkgo PR Website
• Cher’s Pitch List Freebie
• Ginkgo PR Instagram
• Unforgettable Podcast #62 Evolving Your Message With Your Clients with Cher Hale 
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk – The Danger of a Single Story
• Jennifer Brown – Cher’s former client “Everyone has a diversity story”

What sparked for you from my conversation with Cher? Let us know in the comments of this episode’s post over on Instagram.

Warmth, Adria