Cheryl Hunter - Best-selling Author and Resilience Expert | Magnifying Your Message On TV

I want to speak about failure and rock bottom as a catalyst, and I think that what you've become is the best possible outcome of rock bottom. I grew up in a horse ranch in rural, super remote Colorado. I longed to get out and see the world. I was there captive and thought I just need to be free. Everything in life is going to be amazing. The moment I'm set free and I started volunteering at all the age homes. These people were Holocaust survivors of war events and survivors of unthinkable things. Of course we can speak about human trafficking and rape, and those are very sad, disgusting, horrible topics. But I think that what I want to focus on you is how you heal. I spent a night looking in the mirror all night long going, what are you hiding for? Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot is a huge supporter of the show. I'm a huge fan of HubSpot. Not just because they support the show because they support entrepreneurs. And if you are an entrepreneur, you have some problems that a lot of entrepreneurs have productivity. And it's not a secret. It's not going to be ashamed of. You're not the only one that has this problem. And why do we have this problem? Well, all the tools and the tech that we're using, they're massively overcomplicated. We have tons of time consuming tasks. Our teams are not getting the information they need to close the deals, connect with customers, whatever it is, as entrepreneurs and our teams, we all have productivity problems. But HubSpot's customer platform truly helps. It was built to save time and make your job easier. You can get back to building your business. No more hours, waste it on time consuming tasks, no more chasing down prospect info if you're trying to close someone. No more one system for this, another system for that. HubSpot can help you find leads, reach prospects, deliver the insights you need to convert them to customers all in one place. Plus HubSpot AI can literally do more work for you so you can focus more on scaling your business because HubSpot knows you have massive growth goals and they're here to make your productivity problem go away. Visit HubSpot.com to learn how they can help you grow better. Sharel, thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you speaking about your story. I think to start this off, I want to speak about failure and rock bottom as a catalyst because I think that rock bottom can push people in two directions. I think that what you've become is the best possible outcome of rock bottom. I think most people would hear your story and think that that's something that has never even come close to happening to them. So let's speak about rock bottom. Let's speak about something that most people can only have nightmares about that happens to you when you're much younger and maybe think about how that's pushed you in the direction that you are in right now, how you sort of dealt with it but also used it as a catalyst to a degree. It's fascinating how rock bottom is as a phenomenon, right? There's no further to fall and one could argue that no, there's always further. But there was this time where, so let me just cut to the chase. I grew up in a horse ranch in rural, super remote Colorado. I longed to get out and see the world. I went with my best friend on a trip to Europe. Two men asked me if I was a model told me they could make me one. I thought I'm smart at my ranch girl. I'm tough. I know I want to drive a tractor and break a horse and wrestle a cow. I mean, hell, I can do anything. My smart says this naive teenager and strength or nothing compared to these criminals who held me captive tortured me did every you can fill in the glory details with your mind, but I was there captive and thought I just need to be free. Everything in life is going to be amazing. The moment I'm set free and after a period of time for Lord only knows what reason I'd seen their faces, they dumped me off on this grassy area of ground left me there for dead. And I thought, wow, okay, I'm free. We hold up as time progressed days, hours, time went on and I thought I feel worse now. I'm still captive. It was absolutely vexing to think that wait, everything I was lying there for all this time. On, basically, cement and in my own urine and praying, bargaining, bartering with God, I'm going to be a good person. If I, if you, if you let me go, if you let me live, I'll be nice to my brother and sister instead of always bossing them around. I'll hold my grandma's hand in public when she tries to hold my hand in the mall. I'm going to be a good person, you know, and here I am, I'm free and there's no freedom. And there's this phenomenon that I recognized where captivity, where captivity really lives is between our ears. And thank God I had the insight to say, I'm not the first person to go through something awful and unexpected that I didn't choose for myself. What have others done? I've got to learn from them, but first there was that phenomenon of rock bottom. And while I was captive in my mind, you know, to Z, and by captive, I mean, couldn't stop the negative spiral, downward spiral of thinking. My thoughts vacillated between, how am I going to get back at these men? How am I going to make them pay to, how am I going to survive, including, how do I let it, how do I ensure that nobody ever finds out that I'm so damaged and ruined and filthy and used up? Why, why was that? Why was that? It's just crazy thoughts, you know, and I've worked, I worked with survivors for then for many years following this, but it's a common phenomenon of surviving something like that violent crime, rape, etc. To think that we are to blame and that we are now soiled and solid and ruined. And I speak a lot, do public speaking and every time invariably someone will come up, wait in line afterward and say some version of I have never told anyone this, but so it's just a common phenomenon. It's not, it wasn't just a thing that I was doing, but as I was at rock bottom and feeling captive in my mind, I thought, I started having thoughts that terrified me where I thought, if I have to live like this, I'm a teenager. If my grandma was old, if I have to live like 80 more years like this, I can't do it. I started, the thing that scared me the most was I started, emphasizing with people who had taken their own life and going, okay, I'm not, I'm not predisposed to thinking this, but I get it, I can't continue, I cannot, I got to end the suffering or I've got to end it, I can't continue this cannot, this cannot be. So then it was a matter of, well, what have others who've gone through trauma, learned, what have they done, I've got to find a way to talk to these people, I didn't want to read a book, it had to be, for it to be cathartic, I thought it had to be more active than simply reading a book. And so I started, through pure grace, I was told, well, there's an old adage that says, if you've got it hard, somebody's got it worse, find them, help them. And I started volunteering at all the age homes. And these people were Holocaust survivors and war vets and survivors of unthinkable things. And at first I just sat and listened to them all day long. And eventually I thought, way, that worked, but that didn't. This guy went through the same thing that one did, and he overcame and lived a fruitful productive life, and that one is bitter understandably, but bitter and never lived his life. Why? How? And I codified it. My mom designed curricula and education for school districts and was a university professor. And I asked her so many questions, like, how do you create, I'm fascinated by adversity, but never said why, but hypothetically speaking, with one had experienced something not good. What? How do you create something to help others? But it was the rock bottom that I never realized until you said that though, Scott, was the catalyst. It wouldn't continue down that road. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, um, probably misconceptions about trauma and how to heal from it. And with all the learnings and the things that you've codified over your lifetime and, and how you even healed, I want to speak just very briefly about, because this is, this is not going to be a podcast about, of course, we can speak about human trafficking and rape, and those are very sad, disgusting, horrible topics. But I think that what I want to focus on you is how you've healed, because I think that's the most important takeaway for somebody that has gone through something like this, even remotely close. Because I feel that I was listening to a couple of shows that you were on before, and you were saying something about how the, the average friend will say, oh, don't worry, like we're here with you, but that doesn't do much. It doesn't really help the person who's going through it. So then not only is it not helping the person who's going through the trauma or the post trauma, but it's also the person who wants to help really isn't doing anything effective. Also, like the adage, like time heals all wounds, you don't feel like that's accurate, and it doesn't, it's not, it's not truthful. It's not real for a lot of people, because you see people that go through trauma, and to your point, some people heal, some people don't. So when you look at the things, you've exposed exposure to all these people helped you the most, but outside of exposing yourself to these people, and hearing their stories and understanding, and you said you codified a lot of what worked and what didn't. What do you think is the things, is it the people, is it the process, is it therapy, is it trying to get back to like quote unquote normal, is it having loved ones understand what you went through, is it sounds like for a period of time loved ones didn't understand what you went through. There's so many different things that you're dealing with on top of the fact that you just went through the worst part of your life ever. If somebody is gone through anything like this, what would be the few different things or pieces of advice you could give them that actually sort of move the needle in their recovery. So you said something and I'm going to paraphrase it, but you said something along the lines of not everybody goes through something like this or we don't all go through however you said it. What's universal is every one of us goes to something we would never have chosen for ourselves. That is universal, we all face circumstances that were like, oh hell no, no, I don't want, I don't choose, I decline. And yet here is the steaming pile of crap in front of us and there's no saying I don't want it, it's here and that is what life has given us and everybody deals with that and that is what's universal. But here's the biggest thing that made the difference for me, mission. What do I mean by that? When I was a cowgirl in Rai Colorado or near Rai Colorado, we were so remote, so middle of nowhere. I used to lie on the meadows like among the horse patties and the cow patties and the horses and cows and just lie in my back and look at the planes flying over. We were in the flyover zone and I'd go, God, I just want to be the girl in the play looking down at the girl on the ground. But if I were to beat her, I'd have to have some way to help people, I'd have to have something I could do for people. And I'm good at riding horses, but I'm not that good because, you know, I don't always win when I compete and I'm just not that good, it's not the thing I could give to people. This whole thing, this kidnapping gave me the thing that I could give to people. Now, my first mission became, I codified this education and I started working with other survivors, reaps, sexual assault, violent crime, trafficking, and it worked and it really helped them. And I thought, God, this is something I want to give away to the world. So my mission became, give this away. Now, it wasn't my day job, my day job at the time, I started writing, it was always something I loved to do and I wrote and sold and original television shows. And I was, I had deals at studios and networks, like the, you know, big time stuff and I thought, aha, you know, I can see the power that major media has to shape the entire conversation and the collective narratives that we have. I, what if I could use major media some the hell how to get this education and this message about it's possible to overcome adversity, what if I could get that out to the world? I thought I'm connected enough sort of, but it was, it took me over a decade to finally do that, but my mission back to your question, wasn't just the girl lying on the ground looking at the airplanes, it became after I had this method to help people overcome adversity, it became my mission I must, I must give this away. And every time I helped anyone in any regard, my pain lessened and my experience of being alive transformed and I got to know myself as someone different. So I became less constituted by the past trauma and more constituted by the mission to give away what I'd learned. And so the mission was everything. It's, it's so interesting. It's like you frame, you frame the trauma in a way that you can now use it to help improve other people's lives. And this is what actually gives you purpose. And I think that that's very, I truly believe that that's like the highest form of what most people aspire to be. I think humans are good, humans are good. I believe I believe the humans are good and they always aspire to teach and to guide and to help others. They get life gets in the way a lot of the time, but I think it's very powerful what you're, what you're saying is I think there's a lot to it in reframing trauma in reframing. If it's not trauma regret so that it can be used as like a very powerful tool again like a catalyst. You can go back to that word, but it changes your entire perspective on life. So now you have a mission. What actually I'm actually very curious because obviously I see a massive mindset shift in between not telling your parents what happened versus telling the world what happened. What allowed you to because it seemed like it was a healthy evolution of how you internalize what happened to you. What do you think allowed you to make that switch? I think I've ever been asked that that's such a good question Scott. So there was here I am. I'm like, okay, I am alive. I feel alive when I'm helping people overcome their adversity. And when I'm sharing the message that it's possible to overcome anything that we've faced. And so I've got to get that out to people and I kept trying knocking my head against the wall to get major media to pick up my message or my story or my expertise or my commentary or all of it. And every door was closed. I said, even though you worked in the industry, even though you, yeah, even though I asked for introductions to gatekeepers and, you know, the people I knew made them and I did not know that was the worst thing you could possibly do. And I had no media trading and I didn't know how to speak in soundbites and it was just it was a disaster. I still have never recovered from some of those, I was introduced to somebody from Good Morning America. I've still never been on that show because I made such a, I was blacklisted for making innocent mistakes that I just didn't know any better. But I had this mission. I was saying I feel alive. I'm going to give this away. I'm connected and I'm going to I kept sharing about adversity and it's possible to overcome adversity. I still wasn't sharing my story. I was still embarrassed. I was sharing the possible to overcome adversity and I've learned from these. It was nice. It wasn't here. It's nice. Survivors who taught me things and I've learned from many of them. It's all hypothetical. And I finally had this real heart to heart with myself. I spent a night looking in the mirror all night long going, what are you hiding for? You are no longer a teenager. Are you going to share this with the world or not? Now look. It was all hypothetical. You know, if you hypothetically went through something, you know, not good. You. And when I started finally sharing the story and I'd learned all the other things that I had done wrong and stopped doing those, but then finally the media became interested. We have learned since time immemorial through story. I mean, the pictographs, the cave wall paintings. It's how we teach. We learn. We know ourselves and evolved and take things to heart and grow and all of it. And I was keeping the most important element out. You know, there's a lesson there because I think that that that disassociation with your own learned experience is the most significant blocker that people have when they tell their story, but to a much lesser degree than what you went through. So this is actually probably a very, a very good lesson people that are trying to put themselves out there trying to tell their story, trying to tweet, go on social, whatever, go on podcast. How many people speak about what they think is other, you know, what other people's wisdom is or what other people have experienced. And they actually don't talk about their own wisdom. They don't talk about their own life because well, it's scary. It's like you open yourself up. But at the end of the day, people want to connect with people, even if it's through, doesn't matter what format, it could be, it could be through print. It could be through MSNBC Fox. It could be through Good Morning America. It could be through Twitter. If you want to connect with other people. So you see the most successful people in the world, the best storytellers, other people that literally speak about the shit they went through yesterday this morning, whatever, 10 years ago. So now you see it. So now I'm seeing the evolution as to how you've done this for yourself. And now this was like an aha moment for you, obviously, because the second you bring out your own story, your own learned experience, then now it's received and now people listen because they know that it happened to you. And that experience is so raw that it like it strikes a court like no matter what it's rock any type of experience from somebody else that had trauma so raw and real, but it's not as real as if you're telling your own story. There's a common human phenomenon, which is there are things that we hide, things that we think aren't the best about us. Maybe we should not tell people that they may judge us. They may not like us. Let's share the really nice parts, the polished out pretty parts. I, after the whole kidnapping happened, one of the things that I did was I said, screw it. All that happened so that I could become a model. I'm going to become a model. And I did. I was successful. I lived over all over the world. And you know, did some big campaigns and things, but when I learned in the heart process, I lived in Japan for a while. And I learned this principle called Wabi Sabi. And it was explained to me like this, Wabi Sabi is I was told the most essential of all Japanese principles. It states that the beauty of any object lies in the flaws of the object. So something can be seen to be beautiful, exquisite, magnificent, only to the correlate degree to which it contains damages, imperfections, flaws. And at first I thought, what could this mean? Could this mean me? Because I felt completely ruined as so many of us do because of, hey, I grew up in poverty or my, hey, my dad was abusive or I, I failed third grade three times or I can't add very well or I'm dyslexic or whatever the hell we think about ourselves isn't great. And we hide those things rather than sharing them. And the moment we share them, and if you're an entrepreneur, along with what you do, the genesis of how you came to do what you do. People beat a path to your door then. And it's, it's remarkable and so often it's counterintuitive to think, wait, if I share, and I don't need trauma share, I mean authentically, just be candid and transparent about stuff. Hey, I went through this. It's sweet. If we shared that which we have previously believed is wrong with us. That profoundly connects us to everyone else who believes there's something wrong with them, which is virtually every human being, right? You know, I didn't know if you're going to keep going. Sorry. I can jump in anytime if you want. I was just giving you the stage. You're on at something there. No, I fully, I fully agree. I mean, I think that that's the human condition that people that I think socials devoid of that. I think many people are very afraid to lean into that, but like you notice it when people do so on a, on a business side, some of the most successful creators are the people that tell their own story. And they tell again, like the hurdles that they've dealt with. But I think that this is like the one thing that's very difficult to teach when you're trying to get somebody to get in front of a camera. It's very difficult to teach it when you're trying to get somebody to try and build up a quote unquote personal brand. I don't come from traditional media the way you do. I come from more of like social and YouTubers and people on Instagram and prolific, you know, creators on Twitter. But still it's like the rule is the same. It doesn't change across the media. It's the realness. How do you, how do you capture that like when you when now this is what you do for a living. You literally help people understand what their core messaging is and what real parts of their past and their history. They should bring forward and use to tell a compelling story about what they're doing, what they're building, what they've experienced. How do you, how do you figure out what those pieces are? It's often in the things that are hidden. So as soon as I had gotten my own message out in front of, you know, just a large group of people. I said, you know what? My mission is changing. I am no longer going to help people overcome adversity. There's an industry dedicated to that. I am going to help to me 10 years to do that. And I was in the industry. It is impossible to figure that out. And so I brought together producers and directors and writers and journalists from TV and media and said, let's do this. Let's surround people and help them get known. And it's oftentimes the things that we want to hide. I think of there's this husband and wife call their college planners from Atlanta. They came to us, Danny and Karen, they're phenomenal. And they came to us saying, hey, wow. Like it was during the pandemic saying, no kids want to go to college anymore because it's virtual. No parents want to send their kids in case it goes back to being in person. We're going to close our doors after 10 years in business. What do we do? And I said, aha, I have some ideas. So let's let's get you in media and Danny at first said, okay, I think we should sign an NDA and I said, okay, you got it. I mean, obviously there's mutual confidentiality. What's the deal? And he said, I cannot let anyone know my story. And I was like, I'm listening. That got my attention. It is already a good client. You know, there's something there that you've got to pull it out of the, yeah. And you like, they're so wonderful these two. And they have this great way of solving problems for people who want to go to college, getting them. Four years of education for the price of two and ensuring they graduate on time. I mean like a parents dream, my kids dream, who wants to go to college. And Danny's like, I cannot tell my story. Nobody can find out. I'll be out of business. And so, okay, well, what is the story? He says, I, you know, I was the quintessential son of an immigrant. My mom's from the Philippines had five kids who worked five jobs, raising us on our own college. Are you kidding? We couldn't keep food on the table. How was I going to go to college? I never went to college. But I want to ensure that every kid who has the dreams that I did can go. And I was like, that is what we're going to lead. We'll help you tell this. People get in their head a lot, don't they? Right? That's why it's such a beautiful story. It's a great story. No, he's not quite how he told it up front. But he was like, we can never say this. We cannot say I didn't graduate college. I couldn't go. I had no money. We were broke. That's what has people beat a path to their door. And they went from, hey, we got to go out of business to hiring when he ate other college planners. I mean, it's the kind of thing that, you know, you get two college planners. One, they say, hey, we're good. We can meet with you on Tuesday. And the other one has this story. Who the hell you were to work with? You're going to work with the person who's a human. 11 out of 10 times. It's not even a question, really. 11 and a half. I mean, why would you not? Like, I like, listen, so I'm trying to play. I'm trying to play like, you know, nonsense. I'm not trying to lean one way or the other, but like. I'm building personal brand every single damn day. Like, I mean, I believe in the celebrity CEO, I feel like you have to remove the corporate veil and be a human. Some of the worst podcasts that I do are people that are are buttoned up to the point where they can't be themselves. They're so buttoned up. And like, people don't know this, but sometimes when we do these podcasts, I'll remove the, the, what's it, what's a colleague, the third wall or the whatever, the, I can't. More the wall, more the wall, whatever. I'm not, I'm not a drama. Yeah, it's either yet. But like, sometimes when you get on with these CEOs, like, you'll have people from their HR and their legal team sitting off camera, making sure that they don't say the wrong thing. And I'm like, listen, like, I can sign whatever you want me to sign to say that if this isn't perfect, then we won't air it. But like, please just have like the comfort of being yourself in this moment. And if you want to go off script and you want to talk about whatever shit happened to you that day, all of that is you and that creates that creates trust. If you are somebody who says I won't go on the show unless we prep every single question and I memorize every single response, I'm sorry, but no one's going to give a shit about you. It's going to be boring. It's going to be non emotional and people can pick up on that. And they'll find they'll find someone else who they trust more who is more real. So I'm not saying you don't work on your story. You don't work on your pitch. You don't work on how to tell it and how to communicate it, but it still has to be real. I'm sure you do with that all the time. So I mean, you're like really preaching to the choir, but it's so you bring up such a good point. There's when I first started writing, I. What I did instead of like going on shooting a TV pilot because I didn't have any film background. I thought what could I do quick and a ways to have like a proof of concept and see if people liked it. I did stand up and I did I wrote plays because it's way cheaper to stage a play than try to shoot a movie. And then I realized a lot of actors were really flaky. So I just started doing one person plays. Because I was like, oh my god, these bastards won't even show up for me. So I'll just be all the parts. But they, you know, it did well enough, but I started to take acting class because I didn't know what I was doing. But the acting teacher who was phenomenal used to have this saying she would say, pray for mistakes. And I was like, wait, wait, wait. Because no, I wanted to go perfectly. And she said, that's the time when your essence comes out. When things are not going the way you planned and you can be real and raw and authentic. Pray for mistakes. And if that what I plotted before is true, that we all have something we're trying to hide in some way, that part that we think is wrong with us. Pray for mistakes. You know, a lot of mistakes occurring gives us a chance to show those things reveal those things and become profoundly related and connected to everybody else who's trying to hide the same shit. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast never for supporting success story. We're part of the network. If you love podcasts, the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like entrepreneurs on fire hosted by John Lee Dumas. Entrepreneurs on fire is one of the OG entrepreneur podcast. It really stokes inspiration, share strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial journey to create the life you've always dreamed of. It has unlimited energy value and consistency. The podcast is truly for anyone who wants to learn more about entrepreneurship. If you like fast paced packed with value stories as shows for you, John brings on great guests. He speaks about failures, aha moments, what's working for them currently. If you love podcasts, go listen to entrepreneurs on fire wherever you get your podcast. Well, I know I have a question for you because one of the one of the beliefs that you hold this is going to turn this is going to turn this on a tad a little bit, but I know it's going to end up in the right spot. So one of the beliefs that you hold is that you shouldn't tell your story. You should tell their story. So now everyone's like, what the fuck's got? You just said, tell my story. You just said, you should see it. Like I don't I don't understand what you're what you're going on about. You just said, tell my story. Be authentic to me. What do you mean tell their story? God's your good. This is what I mean. Sometimes when we do an interview, it's like we will talk about the things that we think people want to hear like benefits, deliverables. This is what I'm good at. This is how this is where I studied. These are that it becomes kind of the me me me show. Nobody gives a shit about that. Nobody really wants to know all that they want to know how does that relate to me? How how do I hear myself in that? And if you can tell your story through their eyes, finding universal human things like the underdog or good versus evil or David versus Goliath or something to have people go, yeah, I need to. The audience comes to life. There was this. I think of things that we share. You know, so many of us have like body image things and there was this campaign that came out. I don't know a few years ago, Victoria Secret had the love everybody campaign or love my body campaign or something like this. And it had the angels, you know, these perfect women. And with bodies that do not exist outside of some labyrinth or here what that forgot black stuff. But like these women, it was the love everybody campaign or something like this. And I was like, who do everybody? I don't know one body. And I was a freaking model. I don't know anybody that looks like that. Not anybody. I know or have ever been. But then. Dove is the soap brand came up with a campaign right on the heels of that. And it was called something like forgive me for not knowing the name. But so it was like love your body. It was like it was like the love your body. It was something just like it. Like one word different. And it was like all these women in their underwear, just like Victoria Secret. But it was like old young, all colors, shape sizes abilities. And I'm looking at it. I found myself even recounting it to you now getting moved and inspired by it. People started sharing a fucking ad on their social media. Because they're like, oh my god. There's a fat short woman. I'm a fat short woman. I've never felt pretty enough to be in my underwater let alone they got a campaign. And people would say, oh my gosh, that's like my neighbor, my my mail carrier, my me. And does sales like almost doubled like 160% or 170% just jump in sales because people felt like wait, this is me. They're celebrating me. I've got these motherfuckers right here Victoria Secret talking down to me. I will never look like the body. I'm supposed to love. And then I've got people celebrating those who actually look like me. And that makes me feel celebrated. And I feel included and known and seen and heard. So if you can tell your story in a way that people say, oh, I feel that way too. That's what we all want to be known and heard in a world where by and large, particularly now with everybody having a microphone, we commonly feel unseen, unheard ignored. You know, so this is interesting because then the second thing that you do believe that I think ties it into this as well is that. And there's going to be a path here and I because I know when you said being special buys you nothing, I know you meant it in a different context. I know you meant it from the context of, oh, I'm a successful entrepreneur. Why can't I get media? I think that's the context you meant it. But I also think this ties into that thought you just had, which was being special buys you nothing. First of all, because there's someone who's more special than you, but also because it's not a relatable story. Because being special actually isolates you from the majority of people. And I think that I mean, there's a news maybe there's always shock and awe, but I think that a better version of a story to present if you are successful is actually not shock and awe. It's somebody that is could be similar to you that achieve something great and not something that resonates with me, not somebody that is above and beyond. Like if I think about the above and beyond the stories that I care about are maybe like the people that are worth tens of billions or the Forbes 30 under 30 that end up in jail. I know I'm not going to be those things. So it's like it's, it's like a, you know, it's like a thing that I see and I watch, but really that's not what really inspires me to resonate with me. The stories that resonate with me is the entrepreneur that the couple steps ahead of me that I can see their journey and see where they came from. And like that's what I want to read about. Those are the podcasts that I listen to. Those are the people that I'm like, shit. Yeah, he she is not above and beyond what I am. They're just somebody that did this that and the other thing to look at where they're at now. So it's not because they're special. It's because they're actually not special, which is why I actually like listening to that. It seems again, I too can do that. It's I want to speak to the not being special in a moment, but I just saw a comedy special with Nate Bergathley. And it goes like he talks about not being in shape. And then he sees this before and after shots and the, you know, the guy who's so fit. It's like impossible. And it's unattainable. The guy is so fit. And he goes, can I, it's the guy who did the before shot is he doing a fitness class because I want to learn from him. Yeah, exactly. You want to see people and you want and this is another you you follow the journey. This is why if you follow the fitness journey, you follow the entrepreneur journey, you tell people when you're starting to build stuff and you're trying to go on a diet, whatever. And you follow through those are the people that are super inspirational. This is now I see it a bit like a lot. There's some guy on a TikTok Instagram, whatever. I think he's like a Russian guy like shaved head. He's like, he was like 400 pounds. And then he now his entire audience is like has like the all the content to create the audience, which is like hundreds of thousands of followers, which is him just showing before and after of him putting on all this weight. I think he was a personal trainer. He like put on weight to prove a point. Then he lost it all. And this is all of his content, but it shows the journey. It shows that it's possible. It shows that average guy will, I'd say most people are not 400 plus pounds, but guy who has gotten to this level with work and diet got to the end result of looking in shape, looking good, whatever. But the point is, yes, I think that the journey and the ability to see yourself in that person, that story really resonates. And that story will touch the most amount of people in a positive way, which is really what you want. You don't want to. Again, I don't like if I'm going to do media, I don't want to be shocking on. I don't. I thought that's not what that's not what my I want my story to be. I want my story to be inspirational. That's really what I want. But anyway, go ahead, sorry. And that that in a world of shock and awe, what stands out is the inspirational is the calm when everything is clickbait and shock and on breaking news, that stands out. What I what I was speaking to with the special like being special buys you nothing, there's patterns that I witness. There's a lot of people reach out to us every month. I don't know thousands. And then we speak to a lot of them and I listen to the calls and what occurs and what is said and one of the most common themes that I hear is, yeah, well, we're first to market or we're different than what everybody else in our field doesn't do this. We're special. We're different. We're better. I'm front end to the bell curve. It that mine is patented, but know everybody else in my field does it that way. We do it this way. And all of that, it stands to reason why it would be in the mind of the entrepreneur or the inventor. It guaranteed success. But the biggest thing that I hear is that I'm special. That's a myth like that's going to ensure success. I mean, I remember listening to your interview about the red queen effect and how no nothing is guaranteed. We've got to go. So fast to catch up and it is not that I'm different or special that is going to guarantee me anything that coupled with everything else may be helpful or may give me a leg up, but there's none of being special without attention. Without people knowing you or seeing or hearing, it doesn't matter. And I say that not to disavow anyone of their belief in being special, but rather to say, God, if you've got something that can help people, you must let them know. You must make it your job to get in front of them and let them know people are quite literally dying without help. We've got a client who helps and eating disorders. And she's helped over a thousand people and it's remarkable. I guess she got I got a peak behind the curtain and working with her and I was saying, well, what happens to these? She specifically helps women and girls. What happens to them without you? They die. And if you've got something that saves lives and I don't care if you're a real turn, you got a better way for a person to get into a first time home or you're a dentist and you've got a mouth guard that stops concussion. I don't care what it is. Let them know you're here. But you can't ever do that if you get bought off by the fallacy that because I'm different, the world will find out about me. They will not. It is no longer the I'll hang up a shingle and people will find me. That world is dead and gone. Don't be special. Be useful. But let them know your. And then let them know your. Well, I'll tell you. So like I probably get 30 to 40 pitches for this show per day. And it's all about why am I special. Why am I special? You know, comes on this show. People that will teach something to no one else has taught before. People that will help people in a way that no one else has ever been able to help people before. If you if you write a book. Don't come on the show and tell me that everything I ask you's in the book. That's not helping anybody. So you're laughing because you're part of this world, right? But you know this happens. You know that this happens. Yes. You know, when you when you said you made a whole bunch of mistakes when you were trying to tell your story. And you got like blacklisted from Good Morning America. What were some of those mistakes that you made? Like how do you get blacklisted? Good morning America. Help the help people learn from that so they don't screw it up too. People think another common thing that I hear all the time is, well, I know somebody or who are you going to introduce me to at the today show or 60 minutes or whatever. Oh, you do not want to be introduced to them until you are media trained until you can speak in sound bites. You have talking points. You know how to speak in such a way that other people are served until you know how to tie your expertise and your work into current news cycles. So that it's about something topical and not about your widget. But I didn't know that. And so I I wasn't media trained. I wasn't any of these things. I was so verbose. I sent her paragraphs and pages and thousands of words. That was one thing. But then I did this, this huge mistake that I see people do all the time where they reach out to a media gatekeeper and say, hey, I do this. How can you use me? It's like, hi, do my job for me. No, your job is to go research. What kind of a show do they use? What kind of segments do they have? What do they talk about? What do they talked about in the past? How is the evolution of what they talked about? How long are their episodes? How long is the segment? What kind of guests have been there before? What kind of guests in your space? What are they talking about? What are they not talking about? What are they never ever ever address? Don't talk about those things. You have to know all that stuff going in and you pitch the segments. You talk about the visual aids. You talk about the B-roll. You talk about all the things that they could incorporate. And why does their audience hair? I did none of those things. I asked her to do my job for me. I did all these bad horrible things. And I blew it. Do you ever know your blacklist? Well, by this point, I think it's... Is there a big difference if you're going to, you know, media train somebody for prime time news or talk show? What is the biggest difference who somebody is heavily involved in social, who's built an audience or a brand between all traditional media, whatever you want to call it, and YouTube and Reels? Like, what's the thing that they are going to miss? Because there's going to be somebody who's listening to this who has built an audience on YouTube. And they're like, I have like two million subs. I think I media trained enough. They're probably missing something I know for sure they are because I know people that also just do traditional media and there are nuances. What's the difference? Your audience that you've built has a particular way they like to consume content. There's a particular kind of value you provide for them. You give them tangible takeaways and whatever way you do. The media source that also has millions of followers or not subscribers, perhaps, but how they do it, they have an audience that consumes content in a different way. They want takeaways in a distinct fashion. You can still impact that audience positively, but you have to first put your ear to the ground and find out how does their audience consume content? What do they leave with? What kind of segments do they get the most bang for their buck on and that they continue to repeat? And how can I approximate what I do in that format and presented in such a way that the media platform is, oh, this is a no brainer because I have relationships with, I don't know, 50 or more. 45, 50 gatekeepers at that different media platforms and they say something similar each time, which is every time I put someone's name in the hat or pitch them up the food chain at work. My job is on the line. It may sound counterintuitive. One of our producers on our team has been producing network television for 30 years. How could her job be on the line? She said, been the DGA and the BGA and the ball. Every time if someone goes in and screws up, they're like, Barbara, never again. She can't afford to have that happen. Nobody can. So you've got to make the decision for the gatekeeper such a no brainer by removing all the barriers to entry for them so that they have no fear of pitching you. No fear of throwing your name in the hat and once you've done that, you've let them know what's in it for them, the gatekeeper personally, what's in it for the media source, what's in it for their audience. What all of those things once you make that crystal clear and doing the size way that's a sound bite that when they get 500 emails a day, they're going to go, yes, you've done it for me. That right there can help remove those barriers to entry. And if you've got two million subscribers, by all means, say so. But it's not their decision way easier and removes the barrier to entry. So you're not launching into a vacuum. You want to substantiate that you're the expert in your field long before you ask for funding or what happy it's there's two different kinds of lanes that we go in with you know, yes, we do spoke PR. But mostly what people want is to learn how to become their own publicist for the life of their brand. And we help them do that. And for those people, you want to start building relationships with the right gatekeepers at the right major media sources for you. Yesterday, 20 years ago, so that by the time your book comes out, or you've got an opening or a launch or something, you've got such a relationship with them. So you're no longer put a position to someone who's like, please, please, it's me. How could you use me to know your appear or even a resource when you're positioned as a resource with this gatekeeper. All bets are off. Those people appear on media all the time. And you see them like you see them repeatedly. You see them all the time whenever there's a segment. That's when the gatekeeper reaches out to those people, but they've had the relationship for X amount of years ahead. Or weeks or months, it's look, it's no longer the media. I talked about how it's no longer the business days of old where you hung up a shingle, put it up on Main Street. We're now open Saturdays and people wouldn't run to you. Excuse me, media is not to say many more either. It used to be back in the days of Walter Cronkider, Edward R. Murrow. They had one hour of news to fill a night. That's it. They had a team of people working around the clock to fill an hour. Now they got 24 hours and your boss is on your back day and night. What are you good and what do you got for me? I need something good. This one's got to hit. We got sweeps coming up. No producer can come up with that much content on their own. So if you've got a message and you've got expertise and you can serve their audience, you need to get out there to them and have a relationship with them because they need you as much as you want them. And if you can leverage that, that 24 hour news cycle to your advantage by creating things that they want to feature, they will be reaching out to you all the time. I've got clients like that right now. Anytime there's something political, anytime there's national security, I've got this client Jean Moran and every time there's something happening, some drone strikes, some this, some action, some some. That's the go to they have to call him. When you say when you say the problem isn't the mess, the problem is the messenger, not the message. What does that mean? Because then again, these are all these are all ideas that without context that counter their counter, their counter to what we just spoke about. It's that, that kind of bravado like, yeah, yeah, I did toastmasters or I, yeah, I've been I've found in three companies. I don't need me. It's the ego. It's the ego. I mean, that's it, right? I'm going to just, I know they said not to talk about my business, but I'm going to talk about my business. Talking about what you're there to talk about and weaving through your business story such that people will beat a past to your door, but it's, it's the arrogance of thinking. It'll be different with you because after all, you're special. You know what it is? I think that social media removed gay keepers from creating audiences. So you can build an audience, but a lot of people don't monetize their audience the way they should. They don't leverage the audience the way they should. And they probably don't have a lot of people telling them that they suck that they, I'm saying, yeah, you get a lot of trolls in the comments. People actually saying that your messaging is not good. You should do this that or the other. Or if your messaging is really bad, you're just not getting accepted. But if you press your test yourself against media gay keepers that they need your message to hit and drive ratings at a massive scale that you probably day one will never have access to on a YouTuber or a Tik Tok or whatever. This isn't actually a really good way to see if your message hits home because now it's no longer you just putting out content and you building an audience with an algorithm that may or may not serve you. It's putting out content that there's there's professionals that gay keep and will tell you if you suck, which is actually a very useful feedback for a creator. If you're like a prolific creator or if you're just starting out, but I'm just thinking through this now I don't do traditional media. I do podcasts unless you tell me that it sucks like I guess downloads whatever but maybe it could be 50% better. If I, you know, buttoned up my media training went to try and talk about entrepreneurship business whatever trying to get on squawk box or something like that. Nobody's listening to me. I'm like, oh shit, I better figure out what I stand for the story that I want to tell and then maybe I carry that into my actual content. I don't know. I'm just thinking me. And ball or die, right? It really it's such a smart idea. Like in one regard, you don't have to. And at the same time for each of us, if we don't evolve, if we don't iterate and optimize and test and continue to push outside of our comfort zone, somebody else will. And I do believe that storytelling is the single most useful skill that a person can master. Because it translates into raising money, selling to a customer, bringing an employee into your company, building an audience, whatever it's so, so valuable. Anything that tests your storytelling ability, I think it's something you should lean into. When you look at the clients that you've worked with over your career, what is the biggest misconception that they think about when they're starting to go into media? We'll leave everyone with like one last final lesson that you've sort of seen again and again and again that you just want to like squash right now. Whether or not they work with you, somebody else, what is the one thing they have to really get out of their head? That being introduced to a gatekeeper is a big one. But you know, look, I, this is, it might sound counterintuitive like I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but people think, oh, I'll just go hire a publicist. And that's going to do it for me. And the challenge with that is, but there's a lot of publicists on every main street and every town in the world because people have to be seen. Particularly if you've got a business and want to help people, but the way publicists work is they have to have something to publicize. And the publicists that can get you on TV, the publicists who can really get a plus major media for you, the kind that everybody comes in our door wanting. Those people only work with celebrities when I used to write TV at like I remember being on one show at Paramount Pictures when I used to write at Paramount Pictures. I saw the line item for publicity and I was like, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars and what, why did they get that kind of money? Well, because if they get even one appearance, it's worth 10 times a thousand times the ROI. But the problem is, you know, if you just go to a main street publicist, they don't have connections and they own the connections that they do have and anything that they do for you, like you don't get the messaging that you are exerped and from the process. Like if you were to miraculously with some main street publicist, I'm calling it land, some media appearance, they would go with you and speak to the media person as your proxy, they circumvent you at all, at all turns. And it's the weirdest construct. You're there to be an expert, but you can't even speak to the person. Wait, what? It's furthermore, they may have 50, 100 clients, a thousand clients. Do you think what you do matters to them when you're handed off to some junior associate? There's some value in actually learning to do it yourself, kind of like doing your own social or doing your own. I don't know marketing. I mean, yes, some people outsource that, but if nobody's ever going to be a brand champion for you, like you will be for yourself. And there's a lot of things that as we grow in business, we want to outsource. Oh, my God, I can't possibly do that anymore. I got to hand that off. It's taking all my time. I have no more time to eat or talk to my family. There's a lot of things to outsource, but be judicious in what those are very, very smart. If you wanted to tell your 20 year old self, even even younger, you want to tell your younger self one thing. What would that thing be after life has happened to you, careers happen to you, horrible things, positive things, you go back, what's that one lesson? Oh, God, I want to quote Bob Marley. You're good at it. You've got some good fire quotes going. I appreciate you a lot. Not everyone has it. Don't worry about a thing. It's every little thing is going to be all right. And I mean, I think that is seminal for us to keep in mind at any time, right? It is all, what is that quote? Oh, God, it's all going to work out in the end. And if it hasn't worked out yet, it's not the end. I like that a lot. Where, where should people connect with you? Where do you want to send people? So you have a couple of different things that you're working on when I look at your Instagram. So what do we have here? We have. Oh, don't, don't shame me on my Instagram. I know I've been bad and not posting. I've just been serving our clients. I'm like, oh, must to two post on social media about something other than its international French Friday. Okay, but listen, that's the human in you coming out. Nothing wrong with that. French fries are to live in French fries. Yeah. You got Cheryl Hunter calm. That's where a lot of a lot of this is that that's the best place. Yep. Okay. So you have, first of all, like you have incredible interviews. I'm very honored to be interviewing you have incredible interviews up here. Obviously, if people want help with their PR, they work with you in the capacity where they're learning to do it themselves, but you're also helping them with it along the way. Right. So you do both, you know, depending on what somebody needs. And you know, whatever was the right fit for them. So yeah, Cheryl Hunter calm is my website. If that is a path, you want to go down Cheryl Hunter.TV is the place to go. Now it's not always TV, but that's what, you know, we'll talk. We'll talk. And I think the Instagram is fine, but it's it's Hunter Cheryl on Instagram. But you have listen, you can you can keep you can keep building that there's some there's a beautiful video from Goldcast. You have your books on there, like whatever French fries are fine. No problem with that. Last question that I ask everybody before we before we close this out, if you're going to look at your life and your future and forget for rear success, because we can all talk about how baby want to build their business or how much money you want to make or how much wealth you want to create or how much impact you want to create. But for you personally at this stage in your life, what does success mean for you? When I look at the challenges that we are facing in life and in the world, right? The problems of the world right now. I think they could all be solved if people who had great solutions had a microphone and had a real platform. And they could like there's this client we have who is an is a is a professor and a data scientist who is using AI with other physicians and doctors around the world to cure cancer right now. And I'm like, what? I'm not worthy. What? And these people had access to a real microphone. The same way that somebody the guy who what's the guy right now who's eating raw chicken on. Oh, I don't know yet. I saw that very strange, you know, if the people who were doing good work had as big of a platform. And their voice was heard that that would be true success. I think we could solve everything that a also says a species. I love that. Cheryl, thank you for coming on. Thank you for thank you for everything you've done over your career. Thank you for everything you've done with helping people have gone to very difficult times, but also thank you for everything you're doing now to amplify people's voices because I agree that is success. That is success. If more people had that microphone, I think a lot of people would benefit. So thank you for doing thanks for coming on. You