Episode 113: Doing it For the Attention: Equitable Media & Visibility with Cher Hale of Ginkgo PR
Podcast
Episode 113: Doing it For the Attention: Equitable Media & Visibility with Cher Hale of Ginkgo PR
"We are allowed, and we must ask for attention if we wish to see a world that is more creative, restorative, and mutual.” — Cher Hale
This episode is a reminder that you are not only allowed to ask for attention, but you must ask for attention. I’m joined by Cher Hale of Ginkgo PR, an agency that uses public relations to create a more equitable media landscape.
Cher defines creativity as any medium that helps you bring clear, sharp, attention to your life. She emphasizes the importance of bringing loving attention to one’s life and creative endeavors.
She also opens up about the importance of taking care of her body, so that she can create a clear channel for ideas and nudges to move through her. She also share a Visibility Practice with us that I hope you will return to often.
Listen to the Episode: Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform while you cook, clean, or create.
Join Cher and I inside Hit Send: Create, Complete, & Share Your Work it’s a three-week co-sprint container starting December 5th for creatives and entrepreneurs who are done sitting on ideas and ready to share their work.
What’s in This Episode:
The Reclamation of Attention: Cher has shifted away from the cold PR “how to write a pitch” work and towards the work that prioritizes reclaiming the attention that has been weaponized against us in an oppressive system.
Visibility Meditation: Cher shares her experience of creating a visibility meditation to help people remain grounded before public appearances and times when you need to be visible. Here is the practice, I reference.
Creative Process and Critique: Cher talks about her experience with receiving critique in a writing workshop, describing it as uncomfortable yet valuable for her growth as a writer.
Ethics and Integrity in PR: Cher reflects on her shift from traditional PR practices to a more ethical and integrity-driven approach, focusing on mutuality and genuine connections rather than transactional relationships.
Symbolism of the Ginkgo Tree: Cher shares the symbolism of the ginkgo tree as a representation of resilience and natural restoration, which she incorporates into her work and personal philosophy.
Intention in Creative Work: Cher discusses the importance of intention in her creative projects, such as the Lunar New Year guide, and how she follows creative nudges to bring meaningful work into the world.
Questions to Reflect On:
Sit with these questions: Journal, take them on a walk, create a voice note, chat with a friend, or sit with a cup of tea and reflect on them.
Leave a comment on Substack or connect with us on Instagram @chefcarlacontreras & @___whatthehale to share your takeaway from the episode.
How do you feel after listening to the visibility practice?
What is it like for you to ask for attention?
How can you bring clear, sharp, attention to your life?
xo Carla
PS: Substack curious? Listen to the podcast episode about building your new digital home on Substack. Join the Build Your Rising Substack Accelerator to share your creative projects and work in the world. Create, Launch, & Grow Your Substack
Disclaimer: Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare provider for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your health, lifestyle, or to answer questions about specific medical conditions. If you are driving or doing an activity that needs your attention, save the meditation practice for later. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
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About Cher Hale
Cher Hale is the founder and director of Ginkgo PR, an agency that hopes to use public relations to create a more equitable media landscape. As a Taiwanese-Black American woman, Cher is passionate about leveraging the power of the media to take back narratives that have been traditionally told for historically-excluded authors and entrepreneurs.
When she’s not pitching her clients, you can find experimenting in the kitchen, tending to her garden, or learning Italian. She lives in Spokane, WA (unceded Coeur d’Alene tribe territory) with her partner and her toddler.
CONNECT WITH CHER:
Website: https://ginkgopr.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cher-hale-0b082932
Substack: https://fortheattention.substack.com
Carla (00:01):
Welcome to Nourishing Creativity. The cycle of the last few years has left you and me feeling mentally, physically, emotionally, and creatively drained, nourish your very full life through interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs about how they create and move through their creative blocks. If you don't know me, I'm Chef Carla Contreras, a food stylist and content strategist. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras, across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. Episode one 13 was Share Hale. There is a visibility practice inside of this podcast that I hope you'll return to often. You can use it before an interview, a speaking gig, or maybe a difficult conversation. Note if you're driving or have an activity that you need to pay attention to, please save this for later. I also want to let you know Thatcher and I will be hosting a container called Hit Send, create Complete, and share your work starting the first week of December, 2025. You can learn more about this in today's show notes. Share. Welcome to the podcast, my dear friend. Can you please introduce yourself and how you serve your community?
Cher (01:31):
Of course, I am happy to be here. Creativity is one of my favorite things to talk about. My name is Cher Hale. On my day job side, I'm a publicist, but I think on my creative side, I can describe myself as someone who is obsessed with the practice of both asking and reclaiming attention, and I write fiction.
Carla (01:53):
Cher, can you share with us the last thing that has sparked your creativity?
Cher (02:00):
Yes, you're going to love this, Carla. I haven't told you yet. I am pregnant. I'm 14 weeks pregnant and becoming pregnant again because I have a daughter who is four, has been a resurgence it feels like, of creativity in a way that I did not expect.
Carla (02:20):
Congratulations, this is incredible.
Carla (02:22):
Thank you. I feel so honored that you shared this with our community. Can you tell us how you define creativity? And I want to ask this through the lens of PR and visibility.
Cher (02:37):
Yes. So I have come to define it or my current definition, the time that I'm working with is it's any medium that helps you bring clear, sharp attention to your life. And I find that whether that's through creative writing or that's through needlepoint or weaving or just taking a walk outside or showing up to a stage of a hundred people at anything, that helps you see your life clearly and bring that kind of present loving attention to where you are.
Carla (03:12):
And you have a practice that I have been using for years, literally years. I want to say that's a visibility meditation. I'm not even sure of the exact name, but I do know that it's part of my practice when I am speaking, coming on a podcast, doing any big thing, I land on this practice and I'm curious how it came to be.
Cher (03:38):
Yeah, I am not the kind of person who creates meditations. I would say that I am like Woo, curious. I'm a little bit witchy, definitely into nature, and I have my own meditation practice, but it's very informal. I think it was for a couple of weeks in a row, I just kept getting these lines coming through to me like, that would be really interesting. Maybe I can help people right before they have an interview or a speaking gig or anything where they have to be visible, maybe a conflict situation, and I can help guide them through so that they remember what is clear and coherent in their hearts and they can stick to their message and stay grounded in who they are. I began to let the words come through me. It really was channeling. I don't feel like I was the original creator of this meditation. I recorded it and I listened back and I thought, oh my God, there is something here. There is something here, and I hope it's helpful for folks. While I did forget that I create it often, I have used it in the past before my own interviews as well.
Carla (04:45):
I'm curious now that this came through, what is your current relationship with creativity?
Cher (04:53):
I feel like right now I'm in a constant cycle of healing, just spiraling up in the layers of healing. I recently joined a community in-person writing workshop, and I had my first formal critique after 17 years, Carla. So I sent my manuscript my first 3000 words. There was a limit of course, and just had to sit in the room and be quiet and receive what people experienced from my work and come home very humbled. It was something that I wish I had done sooner and something that I'm glad that I had the courage to do now.
Carla (05:33):
And what was it like to receive critique?
Cher (05:37):
I mean, uncomfortable? It was so uncomfortable because I thought, oh, they don't get the whole context and I didn't explain it well, and the synopsis is incomplete, and I just wanted to, and my way to explain like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You don't get it yet. And none of that mattered at the end, right? What mattered was that they have these 3000 words, is what I'm trying to convey is the experience that I'm trying to walk people through present in these 3000 words. And the answer faltering lately was no. What I wanted to create and bring forth was not present in those 3000 words, which is a really tough pill to swallow when you, I've been working on this novel since late 2023. I'm in my third rewrite and it just continues to, a wisp of wind evade me, so it was difficult to receive, and I was also simultaneously grateful for how present and kind folks were about their attention and their feedback.
Carla (06:39):
I'm curious how you nourish your creativity, and I would love to talk about, because we've talked about attention a number of times, and can we talk about that through the lens of your substack in the shift of your substack as well?
Cher (06:53):
So how I nourish my creativity and the shift between my previous work in pr, which was much more like how to write a cold pitch to now where it's much more about the reclamation of attention that has been weaponized against us by oppressive systems. I would say I nourish my creativity in all kinds of ways. The number one way that I find most restorative these days is the people around me. So that's accountability. Writing dates, community writing workshops, having folks who have gone through the wringer and asking them, how did you handle critique because your girl having a hard time bouncing back, that's been most nourishing for me. Also, taking care of my animal body is probably one of the top three because I, like you have struggled with many chronic symptoms over the past, I would say five years, and I'm only now getting much, much better.
(07:47)
So it was a long road to learn, you must take care of this if you want anything to come through you. My visualization is always, you have a channel, but it's your job to keep it clear and clean so that what needs to come through can come through. And then I noticed, I think taking care of my body, having people around me too can encourage me, help me realize I am bored of pr as it stands as I've been teaching it. I'm bored of the way that we talk about having a big network, about meeting new people who we can be transactional with. All of that just felt extractive, and I thought, there's something deeper here and I want to explore it. And I myself have always struggled to ask for attention from a very young age. And so I realized, oh, we as children learn that we're not supposed to ask for attention, that we're not supposed to be inconvenient to others.
(08:43)
And of course, we take that behavior into adulthood and as creatives, it stops us from not only getting our work out into the world, but connecting with the folks who can help us in a resourced and mutual way. But it stops us from building kinship. And I thought, oh, this is the opposite of extractive PR is how can we ground ourselves in why we want attention? So not they like, rah rah, look at me, Kim, Kardashian attention, but much more generative attention. What's going to bring people into my world? How can we help each other? How can we create a circle of mutuality where everyone gets their needs met? That's what I was really curious about. And so I've been writing about it ever since. And it comes through different ways. It comes through mentorship, it comes through quiet attention, exploring subversive areas of marketing or asking for attention and try really to show folks that we are allowed and we must ask for attention if we wish to see a world that is more creative and restorative and mutual.
Carla (09:52):
Cher, I'd love to know about creative blocks and we just spoke about being bored. I'm curious about that. What is it like to be bored with something and to move through? Because I remember reading your substack the previous substack, and there was tension there and you're like, I don't know what's coming next.
Cher (10:16):
Yeah, for context, the previous iteration of the Substack was a list type subscription where you got, I think it was like six or 12 podcast suggestions a month with contact info and pitch tips. People found it incredibly helpful. They were like, we love having this insider view. It's like having a little black book. This is wonderful. And every month that I would sit down to create it, I would think to myself, why does this feel like a heavy lift? I'm literally just copying pasting. I know that these are helpful for folks. What is the missing ingredient here? And for me, it really came down to ethics is I was not asking folks in my network, is it okay if I share this with my list? That little wedge of a lack of integrity just really bothered me. And then so I began to ask folks, can I share this with my list? And there was a breakdown. There was a breakdown in communication and intention, and I just thought, this isn't working anymore. There is a way that I could serve people with more integrity and with more heart. I just dunno what it is yet. So I had to really sit with it. I think it took probably three or six months to really sit with what came next. And that time I effectively ended revenue stream for my business and trusted that something would come through next.
Carla (11:41):
Can you talk about that trust, but I also want to tie in the ginkgo because the ginkgo is resilience.
Cher (11:49):
Yes, yes. There is so much resilience and a natural trust in how the world will restore itself in the symbolism of the ginkgo plant. So for those who don't know, think ginkgo tree is one of the oldest, if not the oldest tree on our earth. And in the World War ii, there were several ginkgo trees immediately next to the blast of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. And all the scientists predicted that they would never, ever grow again. No plant would ever, ever grow again. But the very next spring, the ginkgo tree began to blossom and sprout. And so it's this beautiful story of what's possible when nature is allowed to do what comes naturally to it, and a story of resilience, right? Both for the folks who experienced the atomic bomb, the devastation of the impact, and for all of us who have been oppressed or underrecognized around the world, there is something about the symbolism of the ginkgo that I carry with me wherever I go, and that I hope I can weave into my own practice as a mother and a friend, as a creative. And yeah, that trust comes part and parcel with that.
Carla (13:06):
And that's why you named Ginkgo pr?
Cher (13:09):
Yes, that is the name of my public relations agency, and mostly because I can't do anything without imbuing deep attention and meaning into it.
Carla (13:18):
And that also is the deep attention and the meaning towards your substack and towards all of the different layers of the work that you do. I would love to know what it's like to bring in intention to things that you create, like the Lunar New Year guide.
Cher (13:37):
Yeah. There is a lot of following the lead that happens here. So like I mentioned earlier, with meditation, much of my writing, a lot of what I create, and this is not unique for me as a creative or for any creatives here, but it comes through. So I have to listen to the nudge. I don't always do a good job is the problem. And you can tell when there is tension or resistance in your life, you are often not following the lead of what must happen next. So something like the Luna New Year guide, which I have not created anything similar since or before, and that's very true for the meditation too. I felt like this is what I want to stand for in this moment. I really want to bring all of these people together. I want to have these conversations, and I want to try harder to have a community of people around me who are of Asian descent because I have historically had a hard time creating the community
Carla (14:33):
Share. How can we find you? How can we work with you? How can we support you?
Cher (14:38):
You can find me on Substack at doing it for the attention, which is for the attention substack.com. I publish personal essays there, sometimes Q and As, but everyone seems to really enjoy the attention where they digest, where I shout out people's work in the community. And you can work with me only through PR intensives these days.
Carla (14:59):
Thanks so much for tuning in to Nourishing Creativity. You can find me Chef Carla Contreras across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. While you have your phone out, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. This is how others find this show. I really appreciate your support sending you and yours so much love.