Brent Peterson (00:02.087)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Chantal, Cornelius Chantal. I hope I got your name right this time since she's been on before. She is the founder of Apple Tree Marketing. Chantal, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and tell us a new passion in life.

Chantal Cornelius (00:08.942)
Yes, he did. Well done. Well done.

Chantal Cornelius (00:20.942)
Okay, hi Brent, thank you for having me back on your podcast. I set up Apple Tree Marketing in 2000. So that makes 2025 my 25th anniversary and I'm going to have a big party this year. Apple Tree Marketing is all about supporting coaches, consultants and speakers, people who run their own businesses, who are super passionate about what they do.

and who are not very passionate about marketing. And I get that, that's fine. Most of my clients don't like marketing or don't want to do it. So I show them how to do it. I mentor them to keep them going through it and getting good results. I also do a lot of speaking. I run workshops and seminars and I speak to CEO and peer groups. go in and run workshops for them, showing them how to get more from their marketing.

New passion for me. well, it's not it's not a new one, but it's it's one that I reinvigorate every year about this time. We're recording this in January, which means in the northern hemisphere, it's ski season and I love skiing. So my partner and I had 10 days away at Christmas. We went to France and two weeks or so from now we're going to Italy.

And he actually sent me a video earlier. Our rep out in Italy sent him a video of what the slopes look like. And they just look fabulous. I love skiing. It's a crazy sport. But I love it. yeah, this is the time of year for that passion.

Brent Peterson (02:00.007)
Yeah, last year I went skiing for my first time in 25 years and I went to Colorado to Vail and with the new skis, it makes it very easy to ski again. was, I can say I I did snowboarding and I, and at some point I just got too old to fall down a lot and hurt my butt, but it was so much fun skiing and I had, you the runs and you know,

Chantal Cornelius (02:04.898)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chantal Cornelius (02:13.205)
It is they, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (02:27.485)
We used to live in Minnesota where we do have skiing in the winter, but the run, the longest run you're gonna get is maybe three quarters of a mile. So Colorado has seven mile runs, it's fantastic. You can keep going for a while.

Chantal Cornelius (02:35.2)
Okay, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes, you can. Yeah, I skied in Aspen a few years ago and I've skied in Banff in Canada and the runs are long and wide and empty. And we have some pretty long wide empty runs in Europe, but you have to hunt them out. but yeah, they've major changes to skis in the last...

even just in the last 10 years and yeah it does make skiing an awful lot easier definitely.

Brent Peterson (03:08.455)
Alright, so we aren't going to talk about skiing all day today, but you did volunteer to be part of the free joke project. So what I'm going to do is just tell you a joke and all you have to do is give me a rating 1 through 5 on the joke. So here we go. Hold on one second. Yeah. I just ask you not to give me a negative. And I did the pronunciation one today, so I don't think I'm going to get that wrong.

Chantal Cornelius (03:14.764)
I did.

Chantal Cornelius (03:20.942)
Okay. And five is really funny, isn't it? And one is must try harder.

OK, all right.

Chantal Cornelius (03:34.678)
Okay, go for it.

Brent Peterson (03:35.731)
For me, the urge to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight is always just a whim away. A whim away, a whim away, a whim away.

Chantal Cornelius (03:46.35)
Five! I love that joke. I have heard it before and I absolutely love it. yeah, that was actually one of my favourite songs back in the 80s when I was a kid. So yes, fabulous joke. yep, five stars.

Brent Peterson (04:01.555)
All right, good. I made it. I did it. All right. All right. All right. So you have a new book out. Tell us about your new book.

Chantal Cornelius (04:09.688)
Do I have written a book, may I wave it at the screen for anyone who's watching? It's called Standout Strategies. I started researching this book back in 2015. So nine years ago from when we're recording this episode. It came about because I kept hearing coaches and consultants and speakers talk about their USP, their unique selling proposition.

but they were all saying the same thing. So the coaches were all saying phrases like, I help you get from where you are to where you want to be. And I started thinking that that doesn't really help anyone. So I started digging into this and realized that actually when we focus on the emotions that our customers want to experience from us when they work with us, we can build much better connections with them. And through

a lot of reading and writing and listening and questioning and digging and researching. I've identified five strategies, which I call the standout strategies. And so I've written a book about them. And yeah, it was it was published. I published it about three months ago. It was a labor of love. I'm really proud of it, though, because it did take a long time to do. And it got to one point where I just kind of tore up the first draft and chucked it in the bin and in the trash. Right.

start again. So yeah, very, very proud that my book is finally out and on the shelves.

Brent Peterson (05:37.895)
That's great. I go to a conference every year that is just solo entrepreneurs or solopreneurs and it is just, content creators expo or content entrepreneurs expo. It's in Cleveland, which I would recommend going despite Cleveland. I don't want to bash on Cleveland, but they talk about some pillars that solopreneurs need and one of those pillars is a book.

Chantal Cornelius (05:43.565)
Uh-huh.

Chantal Cornelius (05:48.654)
Hmm

Chantal Cornelius (05:53.292)
Okay.

Brent Peterson (06:06.715)
Tell us, well, let's just tell us about the book a little bit and maybe give us the highlights of the five strategies.

Chantal Cornelius (06:13.262)
Okay, they're absolutely right that having a book, it's not essential when you run your own business, but it is really useful. This is, I don't mean to gloat, but this is actually book number three. And when I wrote my first one, people said, oh, what's the second one going to be about? And I said, no, no, I'm not doing a second one. And then I did. And then they were like, what's the third one about? No, I'm certainly not doing a third one. But the more research I did into these strategies, I thought I have to write a book about it.

And it's actually been really good getting all the information out of my head and onto paper. The five strategies, the way they work is that every business will have one of the five. This is not about trying to use all five. It's about identifying which of the five is the right one for you to use and then using it in your marketing. I'll do a quick run through. Number one is called certainty. This is about being a safe.

of hands. This is where clients want to feel safe, they want to feel looked after, they don't want frills and fuss, they just want somebody to tell them what to do and to get the job done. Number two is called connection. This is where clients want to feel a sense of belonging, they want to feel connected.

not just to you, but to something bigger than themselves. It works really well for networking organizations. They use Connection really, really nicely. It's about being part of something bigger, about expansion and friendship. The third one is called Contribution. And I see this working really well for charities. When a charity wants to get a donation from somebody, they could say, please give me $10.

Or they could say, when you make a donation to our charity, you're supporting not just this family, you're supporting the whole community. You can talk about it in your marketing. You know, it's about being part of something bigger than just yourself. It's about supporting the planet. It's that sort of thing. So that's contribution. The fourth one is growth. And this is where...

Chantal Cornelius (08:33.08)
Clients will work with you because they want to feel excited and empowered. They want to feel a sense of freedom and imagination. I have a brilliant business coach and he uses growth for his strategy. It can be used for personal growth and business and quite often both. So usually with my coach, we start talking about personal growth, my development, which then leads into the business. And the fifth one is significance. This is where...

Clients want to feel heard, respected, listened to. They want to have a bigger impact. I was talking to one of my clients recently who has recently started coaching a member of parliament over here in the UK who's giving speeches and he's not having much of an impact. So my client is working with him to help him be seen and be heard and do bigger and better things. So those are the five.

Brent Peterson (09:32.593)
And how do you determine then, do you let the client determine what is the best or is it part of the process that does the client kind of figure out what is the best one for them and I'm assuming there's some overlap. us a little bit about that.

Chantal Cornelius (09:46.53)
Yeah, yeah, good, good, good question. When I first was looking into this and I identified the five, I thought that for my business, for Apple Tree Marketing, I thought the strategy to use was growth. I thought my clients come to me because they want to grow their businesses. They're excited about marketing. They're excited about growth. And then I started actually asking them, why do you work with me? How do you feel when you work with me why do you recommend me to people?

And over and over they were saying, well, you're a safe pair of hands. I was going, but that's really boring. I don't want to be a safe pair of hands. And they said, but that's what we like. That's, that's what we pay you for. So that happened when I've been in business 15, 16, 17 years. So I had, I was developing a track record. had a whole bunch of clients who came to me for that reason. When you've been in business for a while.

the best thing to do is talk to your clients and say how do you feel when you work with me? What feelings do you experience? How do you want to feel? And it's about those feelings and emotions. If you're brand new to business and you don't have any clients, you can pick whichever strategy you like. It's much more fun. I could have, when I discovered that my clients wanted certainty not growth, I could have changed my business and gone, no, I'm going after growth.

but I'd have lost all the clients that I had and I liked them. So I wanted to keep them. So it does depend on where you are in your business, but generally if you're already in business, talk to your customers, find out why they come to you. There is also sometimes some overlap between some of the strategies. I've worked out a test that helps people work out for themselves which is the right strategy for them.

And originally on my website on the test, I had five columns of words and I asked people to tick the words that resonated with them. And there are some words that are in more than one column. We've actually revamped the test for this year and it's much better. We're much better results from it. But there are still some words that people might look at, look at words. So I'm just thinking, I'm not going to be able to think, think of particular ones now, but there are some words that fit.

Chantal Cornelius (12:11.754)
two different strategies. Most businesses will have one strategy that works for them. Some businesses have two. I actually spoke to somebody earlier today who has a really even balance of connection and growth. That's really unusual. She's the only person I've met. But sometimes, sometimes it happens. There's a bit of both.

Brent Peterson (12:32.251)
Yeah, and every client has some end goals that they'd like to get to and you kind of opened with I want to get from here to here and every strategy I would imagine has a different way to get there,

Chantal Cornelius (12:46.214)
Not necessarily, no, because it really depends on what the business is about. So I'm in marketing, so I do help my clients get from where they are to where they want to be in terms of their business growth. But it's much more about, it's not so much about what the clients want to achieve. It's about how they want to feel. So for instance, if I go to an expensive restaurant, if I go to a cheap restaurant, I want

To get the food that I've ordered, I want it to be hot if I've ordered a hot dish. I want the service to be okay and I want to pay what I'm expecting. I actually went out for a meal with friends recently and we were given a set menu and we were told how much it was gonna cost. When it came to pay, they tried to charge us extra. That's not certainty. And I was like, hang on, but you told us it was this much. Why are you now trying to charge us extra? So for a restaurant like that, I want to feel a sense of certainty.

in a cheap restaurant. If I go to an expensive restaurant, that I take for granted, yes, I want the food to be fabulous, but I actually want, it's almost more about significance. I want to be really well looked after. Now, if I'm going to an expensive restaurant, I want somebody to open the door for me and take my coat and say, good afternoon, madam, how are you? Would you like a glass of champagne? It depends on the service that you're looking for as to what strategy suits you.

So an expensive high-class restaurant should probably be using a strategy like significance. Whereas McDonald's, Burger King, it's certainty. You just want to turn up and get exactly the same. So it's much more about the customer experience than the end result, if that makes sense.

Brent Peterson (14:38.195)
Yeah, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about AI. It's coming in. And I think that we all look at AI, just generative things. I think that a lot of opinions are that generative AI is making a lot of garbage for marketing. And maybe something a lot of people don't look at is the analytical portion of AI, which has been around for years. There's been algorithms, essentially Google in their

Chantal Cornelius (14:41.87)
Okay. yes.

Chantal Cornelius (14:50.99)
and

Chantal Cornelius (15:04.5)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (15:08.149)
since day one has used machine learning to do that. How important is it in your business and in marketing in general to employ some of that analytical portion of AI to help them with their strategy, to analyze their strategy, to find gaps and find patterns in what's happening in marketing?

Chantal Cornelius (15:10.06)
Yeah.

Chantal Cornelius (15:32.718)
That's a fascinating angle. this is what I being on people's podcasts. People give me ideas. I need to look into that. I haven't used the analytical side of AI to be looking at this. What I have started doing, and I've been encouraging clients to do this, is when one of my clients knows which is their strategy, which of the five to use.

we can then go to an AI system and say, write a blog about this, but weave this language in. Because when you know which is the right strategy for you, there's a set of language, words and emotions that go with it. And the AIs are getting better when we feed them this information. My partner is a complete techie AI geek, and he actually has prompts set up now. His strategy, the one he uses for his business is certainty.

and he is best friends with things like chat GPT who know the language that he uses. So when he says to his system, please write me a blog about this topic, it's using the correct language. So that hasn't quite answered your question, but I don't have enough experience on the analytical side. If you say to an AI, tell me about the standout strategies, I haven't actually tried that. I should try that.

It knows who I am, but I should go and ask it. But this is very new work. The book's only been out for a few months. So they may not know about it yet, but it's definitely something I'm going to be looking into. Thank you. Good plan.

Brent Peterson (17:05.747)
Yeah, I think that maybe one mistake that people are making today is depending too much on AI and not allowing the human to come back in. And one thing that we see, especially in a lot of these models, and Chachie P.T.'s not an outlier, is that they change rapidly on every iteration. like you talked about your partner having some instructions.

Chantal Cornelius (17:24.76)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (17:29.871)
Sometimes those instructions will change and if you don't go back and just look at the stuff that it's created that you could start veering off into the wrong direction and pretty soon because of those changes that that direction has gone completely different and it requires that constant updating of not only the instruction part but just making sure that you're attending to it. Do you think so? The question here is then like

Chantal Cornelius (17:40.053)
Absolutely.

Chantal Cornelius (17:44.494)
Mm. Yeah.

Brent Peterson (17:59.079)
Do you think that eventually there's gonna be AI shoppers that are out there just buying stuff for you and AI is gonna be written for AI? you think at some point, do you think that humans should always be involved in that process? And that's a rhetorical question, by the way. I mean, I we already know the answer, but I wanted to get your opinion on it.

Chantal Cornelius (18:14.34)
Yeah

I know yet. I've been saying for years about AI, don't let the machines do all of it. I can ask an AI system to write an article for me, but it won't have my voice, it won't have emotions or feelings in it, and it won't have my way of saying what I want to say. So if I use it to create some content, I will always go in and look at what it's done.

I do use it for some of my clients. Quite often I will record a conversation with a client. It might be on Zoom. It might be when we're out walking. Run it through. I like using Cast Magic. That's a good one. Run it through one of those. But because a lot of these systems, I think, are US based, the language that they come back with is American. And that's fine. But I'm in the UK. And so are most of my clients.

So that's one thing we have to check. We have to check the Americanisms because we spell words like organization differently to you. We put an S in it and you put a Z or a Z. So there's even little things like that. But also the language that some of the systems use because in the UK we're terribly reserved. I know this is a sweeping statement, but we're generally much more reserved than our US friends. So the language that it uses sometimes will be

completely wrong and so there's, yeah, humans always need to go in and check.

Brent Peterson (19:48.379)
Yeah, I went to school in Birmingham and so I did make a lot of those faux pas. This was in the 80s. And I did quickly learn that there are a lot of words that have different meanings than English, in English English than in American English. And I do think it is a conspiracy by all the big tech companies to really make the language what it should be, the American version of it, right?

Chantal Cornelius (19:54.456)
Mm-hmm.

Chantal Cornelius (20:04.43)
perhaps.

Chantal Cornelius (20:08.952)
Mm-hmm.

Chantal Cornelius (20:13.038)
Yeah, but did you know that a lot of, you know, we use the word pavement, whereas you use sidewalk. And we say, oh no, sidewalk is wrong. But apparently we used to use sidewalk. And then it went to the States and then we changed. So actually, yeah, you have got it right, because you got it from us in the first place. Yeah.

Brent Peterson (20:34.931)
We got everything from you. Let's just, let's go back to your book really quick. Tell us what are the five, give us the top points, the top three points that somebody's gonna get out of your book after they read it.

Chantal Cornelius (20:47.35)
Okay, the first element is they're going to understand which is the right strategy for them. Within the book, there's a do-it-yourself version of the test. There's also a link in the book to take you to the website where you can go and do the test and you get sent a report. So that's the first point is understand which of the five is right for your business. When you know that, you can then go to that chapter. I sent a copy of the book out to somebody today and I put a postcard in marking

the start of the chapter on certainty. And I just said, read this one. Because the chapter on that strategy shows you how to use it in your marketing, how to use it in your sales, how to use it in your customer service. And it's about, there are all sorts of tips and advice on how to live certainty. So it's not just about using the language in your marketing, but it's also about how to live it. So taking certainty as the example.

I have rules like I will, if a client phones me and I can't answer the phone, they can leave a message and I will get back to them within 24 hours. That's a kind of a, that's a certainty. My clients also know that if they phone me out of hours, I won't answer it because I'm probably riding a horse or skiing or drinking a glass of wine or something. it's, part one is figure out which is the right strategy for you.

Part two is learn how to use it in your sales and marketing. And part three is learn how to live it so that it becomes part of your brand, a part of who you are really. Those are the three.

Brent Peterson (22:27.187)
That's good. So Chantal, we have burned up hours quickly or minutes quickly. Yeah, as I close out, I give everybody chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today?

Chantal Cornelius (22:34.606)
How did that get in?

Chantal Cornelius (22:42.316)
I'd like to plug my book, obviously. It's called Standout Strategies with the subtitle of, outshine your competitors, win new clients, and build lasting success. It is available from my website, which is apple treeuk.com. It's also on amazon.com. If for any reason the Amazon links don't work, message me and I can get a copy to you.

But also on my website is the test, the revamped version of the test. So if you go to appletreeuk.com and click on the Take the Test link, the test is completely free to anyone who wants it, no obligation. So fill that in if you want to know which your strategy is. And then buy the book.

Brent Peterson (23:26.621)
That's awesome. And I'll make sure I get those on the show notes. Thank you so much, Chantal Cornelius. It's been such a pleasure to speak to you again. And I look forward to the next visit.

Chantal Cornelius (23:30.19)
Thank you very much.

Chantal Cornelius (23:39.288)
Brilliant. Thank you, Brian. Good to see you again.