TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Gloria: It’s Gloria Chou here, your host, and today’s gonna be a little bit different because usually we talk about marketing, PR, AI visibility, but for those of you who are woo or just a little bit woo and wondering what the hell is going on and why things feel so unsettled, this episode is for you. So I was at a dinner and I had a really interesting conversation with a friend. She said something that really stopped me in my tracks. She said, we are entering into a 200 year cycle of air. I was like, what does that mean? She’s like, well, every 200 years, there’s a different sign, right? Whether it’s air or earth or fire or water. And we literally are switching gears, ending 200 years of earth domination, earth signs ruling, into 200 years of air. 

00:00:41 Gloria: It means that if you feel like things are untethered or amorphous or hard to grasp, or that maybe old structures and hierarchies are crumbling, well, that’s exactly what’s happening. When I distilled it down, I was like, this could be a woo concept in many ways but this is exactly an answer to why we feel things are just so crazy right now. If your instinct is like, something’s going on, I don’t feel the same, that’s exactly why. 

00:01:05 Gloria: Let’s talk about why you might feel like things are a bit, as my friend Sophia Parra says, unhinged right now. It feels like systems are breaking, structures are collapsing, the old rules of marketing and life just don’t apply anymore. What used to work just don’t work anymore. We’ve seen that a lot in the online business. Advice from gurus and experts, they just don’t work anymore. Or maybe they just don’t sit right with you or you don’t feel like it’s aligned. There’s a lot of that going on. 

00:01:32 Gloria: To bring us into where we are now, the air cycle is basically telling us to untether ourselves from the material structures of Earth, like the real estate and hard assets. If you even think about right now, we’re going into like crypto and like network effects like that’s more amorphous. That’s more in the air. And if you also think about how people buy, they don’t buy because of authority and hierarchy anymore, which is again, very rooted in like material, earthy things. They’re because of shared ideas, shared values, communities, relationships. That’s also very air-like. 

00:02:03 Gloria: I just thought that was really interesting, kind of this whole like move from like credentials and physical assets and predictable paths into one that is a bit more non-linear. And as someone who actually was in the government, I was a bureaucrat, that was as linear as it could be. It was like rank and file, here’s your path, 25 years. And I knew that wasn’t the path for me and I chose to be an entrepreneurship. But even so, even like our trust in system and government is also eroding as well. Our trust in people who have lots of credentials, it doesn’t really sway as like it used to. 

00:02:37 Gloria: But I thought that was really interesting that the air cycle is now demanding that we have more trust, more connection, more shared ideas. And I thought, wow, that’s really interesting because from a marketing perspective, it also causes us to shift as well. I always say that now the area of marketing belongs not to those who are authoritative or the loudest in the room. It’s the ones that can create ideas, values, psychological resonance. So it’s not like, oh, I believe this girl knows what she’s doing. People already know that. What you need to be doing to convince your customers to really get them through the finish line to buy from you is not like, is this going to work? Is this going to work for me? Does this person understand where I’m coming from? Is her weirdness, her vision, her worldview aligned with mine? That’s really the thing that we need to solve. 

00:03:21 Gloria: And I gave an entire workshop on this at my New York retreat, The Unapologetic Messaging workshop, which is messaging from a place of authority. It just doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t matter if you’re in service or product. This is something that probably you might have seen as well, because when you’re doing your due diligence of who to work for or who to work with and who to buy from, it’s not the person that has the biggest credentials to the fattest resume anymore.

00:03:43 Gloria: There’s something you can’t quite put your finger on it, but there’s something that resonates with this person, whether it’s their vibe or their energy that makes you go, oh, yeah. I have a good feeling. And you kind of go on that instead. That was really interesting. And then when she told me that we’re going into a 200 year cycle of air, I was like, huh, that’s really interesting. Careers are not linear anymore. Systems are not linear anymore. Authority is not inherited. It doesn’t have the same weight and trust comes in different ways. Like this is all kind of a confluence of what is happening.

00:04:14 Gloria: And even though that’s scary because we’re so used to following playbooks or like this marketer said this and this strategy works and do this, everything’s crumbling and it allows us to be quiet and be like, what is it that I really want to do? From what place do I want to create from? That’s terrifying because we want to, as entrepreneurs, have a stepping stone of what’s going to happen. We want to have the path illuminated before us 10 steps ahead, but we just don’t have that anymore.

00:04:37 Gloria: And so yes, it’s terrifying. And yes, the revenue is suffering for many people, but it also allows us to create from such a beautiful blank canvas, innovative point of view where we can really just tap into the artist and creator that is in all of us of like, what is it that we want to create? What is our imagination, our vision, our purpose? Where is the intersection of all of that? And how can I create a business from there instead of following another person’s rule book?

00:05:01 Gloria: So I thought I have to record this short episode, especially as we head into the new year for people who are woo or not woo, for people who believe in astrology or not, that we absolutely are experiencing a fundamental shift in how we are as people, how we connect, how we relate, how we distill information, and how credentials, information, and authority impacts us. So you’re absolutely not alone. And that’s why I wanted to record this episode, which is that if you are feeling that the old structures and systems just aren’t working, you’re not alone.

00:05:31 Gloria: And I have so many peers who have had this conversation with me. And even when I hosted a retreat for C-level executives, they’re like, I know what I’m doing in my career, but I think as a humanity, we’re all kind of looking around like, what is gonna happen? Are the robots gonna come for us? What’s gonna happen with AI? We survived a global pandemic. The world seems more unstable than ever, even though it’s been six years. We’re all kind of wondering what’s next because nothing is predictable anymore. And when nothing’s predictable, anything is possible.

00:05:59 Gloria: This is your chance to connect with the values, the people, the words, the thoughts, the ideas that you resonate with, and then really be unapologetic and standing firm in that and then being loud about that because there’s no like the shoulds anymore of what you should do. I’ve tried all the shoulds and it didn’t work. So finally this 200 year air cycle is asking us what is it that we really want and what a beautiful way to reflect and start the new year.

00:06:23 Gloria: I hope that every year when we begin anew, when we have a billion things, when we always feel like we’re playing catch up, we just started the new year and we’re still processing last year to come back to this episode and to be like, you know what? It’s okay. It’s okay because fundamentally it’s not just you, we’re all experiencing something. We’re all going through something. And it’s not like, oh, this is something that always happens. No, I truly believe that this time is a little bit different. I truly believe that we are really in unprecedented times.

00:06:50 Gloria: And of course people have said that in the 1800s, but there definitely is something going on. So I just want to record this quick episode because my friend telling me that story. And by the way, tip, you can absolutely go on ChatGPT and have a long conversation with it, like an internet black hole. In the middle of the bubble bath, like I was literally chatting with ChatGPT for hours about this, you can put in your human design, your astrology, your other types of personality assessments, Chinese astrology, what have you, and really start to prompt it and see like, where am I in all of this, according to my birth chart or according to my personality? And it actually maps out for you, your career, your action steps, your relation, your health, even like the cities that you should visit that ignite something within you. This is for another conversation, but if you really want to get geeky with it, you can.

00:07:33 Gloria: So at the beginning of the year, everyone’s trying to figure out what’s going to happen. I don’t have a crystal ball. This is not a prediction episode, but I just thought that was a really interesting way to frame things that I wanted to leave you with. As always, thank you so much for listening. I know that this episode is not like our usual ones, but I couldn’t help but feel to validate you that you’re not alone in feeling that because I’m here too. Thank you so much for listening and until next time.

00:07:59 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.

00:08:27 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.