Minter Dialogue with Chantal Cornelius

In this episode, I spoke with Chantal Cornelius, founder of Apple Tree Marketing. We discussed her journey from working with horses to becoming a marketing consultant. Chantal shared insights from her books, “Magnetic Marketing” and “Standout Strategies,” emphasizing the importance of emotional connections in marketing.

We explored the evolution of unique selling propositions (USPs) and how they’ve become less effective. Chantal introduced her concept of five standout strategies: certainty, connection, contribution, growth, and significance. She explained how these strategies help businesses create emotional connections with clients.

We delved into the differences between marketing products and services, with Chantal highlighting the crucial role of emotions in service-based businesses. She also shared a personal anecdote about buying her blue MG electric car, illustrating how emotions influence purchasing decisions.

The conversation touched on the challenges of standing out in business and the courage required to be different. Chantal emphasized the importance of being true to one’s convictions and providing honest advice to clients, even if it means facing criticism from peers.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Chantal Cornelius:

• Check out the AppleTree Marketing site here
• Take the free test on AppleTree, Find Out Your StandOut Strategy here
• Find/buy the book Magnetic Marketing (4th edition),” here
• Find/buy the book Standout Strategies,” here
• Find/follow Chantal Cornelius on LinkedIn

Other mentions/sites:

• The Feeling Economy with Ming Hui Huang – podcast with Minter here

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes. Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Chantal Cornelius, Apple Tree Marketing. Are you a woman after my own heart in terms of your approach both to marketing and branding. But let’s start with my old first trick question, which is who is Chantal?

Chantal Cornelius: That’s it. That’s a very good question. It’s one I’m, it’s one I’m struggling with at the moment actually, because, yeah, it’s who am I? Okay. The business answer, Minta, is Chantal Cornelius is a marketing consultant and mentor who has been consulting and mentoring in marketing in her own business, Apple tree marketing, since 2000. So, if you’re listening to this in 2025, this is the year of the big birthday party. It’s coming up this summer.

Minter Dial: Hallelujah.

Chantal Cornelius: Yep. In the non business sense, Chantal is a horse rider, skier and grower of vegetables, but not all at the same time.

Minter Dial: How lovely. I, I’d like to just tail in on that. The, the idea of horse riding. I, I’m my co founder, my current business is a tremendous horse rider, show jumping in France and, and tells me a lot about it and I was just wondering what, what is horse riding brought to you?

Chantal Cornelius: It has bought an awful lot of joy and pleasure over the years. I, I learned to ride as a kid, didn’t get my first horse until I was 27 and I’ve had a horse, I’m now 54. I’ve had a horse since then, all the way through, since I was 27, apart from a nine day period when I, when I had a bit of a gap. They have taught me patience. Some horses can be very scatty and wild and you have to treat them with a lot of respect. I’ve had horses that have helped me through illness when I’ve been almost so burnt out I can barely get the saddle on, but I do get saddle on and I go out for a ride and it gets me out in the fresh air. Just before we came on this, this call, I suddenly realised the time and had to grab my horse’s rug. She’s across the road in a field from me at the moment because my field is flooded and it, but it was really lovely to just dash out, get my boots and coat on, dash out, put her rug on, sort her out, make sure she’s okay for the night. And it gives me a bit of, a, bit of a, a jolt of fresh air and a freshen up before I come back and talk to you and record a podcast. So, yeah, they’ve been a big part of my life for quite a while now.

Minter Dial: I’VE had on various individuals, my French podcast in particular, who like to talk to animals and, and suggest it is a very therapeutic thing to learn how to do. And, and, and I, I imagine your horse at this time, when you were feeling burned out, was able to detect your energy levels or somehow did you feel that there was some kind of symbiosis going on?

Chantal Cornelius: Definitely that the horse I had at the time was a thoroughbred. She was an ex race horse and I used to do a lot of dressage with her and she would get very wound up and very tense and then do very fabulous dressage tests when I was ill. I would just sit there like a heap of potatoes. And she was so relaxed because I wasn’t pressuring her. I, I was just sitting on her back saying, please carry me around the village. I need, I need some fresh air. I need to be able to get out in the sunshine and peer over people’s fences. So, she, she knew definitely they, they, they pick up very, very easily on emotions. The horse I have now, a few years back, I did probably the biggest competition of my life with dressage and I’d qualified for it. And I was very excited and very nervous and it went horrendously wrong. I got my worst score ever. We came last in the competition and my coach said, what on earth happened? Because we were expecting me to do much better, go through to the. Qualify and get through to the finals. And because I’d been so nervous, my poor little horse was there going, I don’t know what you’re asking me to do. And she was doing things like cantering in the wrong way and not cantering, and yet all this. She didn’t know what I was asking her to do because I was so nervous. They pick up very, very easily on our, on our feelings and our emotions.

Minter Dial: What a lovely story. Nine days. It sounds like that was a, a fairly important nine days.

Chantal Cornelius: No, it was, it was because I’d had, I’d had a friend’s horse on loan. She, she’d lent me her horse for, for a period of time. She then decided to take him back, which was fine. And somebody, a friend had put me in touch with another lady who was looking for her horse to go out on loan and, and horse number one went back to his owner and then there were nine days before horse number two arrived. So, I’ve always had, I’ve always had an overlap with horses. When my last horse, when she died, I already had my, the other horse. So, it’s, it’s quite nice having an overlap. Because otherwise they. I mean, they do leave a massive gap.

Minter Dial: So, they’re grieving.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, yeah. No, it was, it was. That was an okay nine days. That was. That was quite. Oh, I’m excited. My new horse is coming in nine days time.

Minter Dial: Well, enough about horses. 25 years ago, you began your crusade, if I may used to go out there and push for a different type of marketing. Different type branding. Tell us about why you felt the impulsion to go out and do your own thing.

Chantal Cornelius: It was. It was mostly because it turns out I’m rubbish at working for anyone else.

Minter Dial: Very, very truthful. Very true.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, it’s. It’s the absolute truth. I left university and went and worked with horses for three years because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. In three years, I had four jobs. I then somehow fell into a job in marketing with a. With a training company in Oxford, near where I lived. And I spent the next four or five years working for three different companies. And the job I ended up in was not what I wanted to do really, at all. It was. It was a business that didn’t actually value marketing. And I had friends who’d gone off and set up their own businesses. And because I’m a bit crazy and adventurous, I thought, oh, maybe I could do that. And so, I did. I remember going home to my husband at the time and saying, I’m thinking of quitting my job and setting up my own business. And he was like, oh, okay. We’d also been talking about getting a dog. And he’d said, well, you can’t get a dog because we’re both at work all the time. So, I said, right, well, I’m going to quit my job, set up my own business and get a dog. And I did, within about three days of, you know, left the job, picked up the dog, started my own business. Two days later, it did. I did spend about three months planning it before I handed in my notice.

Minter Dial: Right.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah. So, it was the fact that I’m not good for working for other people, but it was also because I wanted to do more for more businesses rather than being stuck in an office where nobody appreciated me. I thought, I know I can go out there and make a difference to a lot of small businesses who really need marketing help.

Minter Dial: Right. Well, I do want to get into magnetic marketing before we talk about your latest book, Standout Strategies, but I’ve observed that many companies actually still don’t really know what marketing is or many top executives. And certainly in amongst entrepreneurs, I would say the Idea of brand is an afterthought. It’s less the preoccupation. It might be something you end up talking about over a fireplace 30 years along in, in a, you know, entrepreneur, startup kind of conference.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah.

Minter Dial: What’s your experience?

Chantal Cornelius: Marketing is. Marketing is what you do if you don’t want to have to do sales. I tell people that when you get your marketing right, the sales becomes incredibly easy. My sales pitch, when I’m having a conversation with a potential client, my, my. My sales pitch is, when do you want to start? It’s as simple as that, because I’ve spent time nurturing the relationship, getting to know them, understanding who they are, who the business is, what they do, what their needs are, so that I can then present the best solution to them. Then they go, actually, that sounds really interesting. And at some point, I say, do you want to know how much it costs? Because we’ve already had a conversation about what they need and what they’re looking to spend, so they see the value. And then I go, okay, when you want to start? And we get a date in the diary and it goes from there. Brand is an interesting one because it is an afterthought for a lot of people, but for me, I don’t spend time talking to clients about their brand. I don’t say, right, what does your brand look like? Unless they don’t have anything at all. If they’re a complete. If they’re a startup with no logo, no website, nothing, then we do talk about the brand. And that, for me, is. It’s everything to do with the business. It’s not just the logo and the colours, it’s how they answer the phone, it’s what they wear to networking events, it’s how they speak to their clients, it’s how they build emotional connections with their clients. So, it’s, it’s all of it, I think, depending on the size of your business, that will determine where you are with brand. Because I know a lot of multinationals like Nike or Adidas, they’ll spend millions on the brand, which a lot of it is the logo. Whereas those of us who run smaller businesses, we don’t have those budgets. But also it’s, it’s. Yes, it’s a logo. I’ve got a gorgeous little green tree with a blue apple. I’ve had it for 25 years. But that is a tiny, tiny part of my brand. And the brand is just. It’s everything. It’s who I am and what I do. Does that make sense?

Minter Dial: It totally. And I I think that in, in branding, a lot of people just wish to be, you know, the logo, the, the type face that, all that element of it. Whereas it’s a much messier thing in my experience. And I feel like that, that notion not only has changed, it’s become more essential in today’s world.

Chantal Cornelius: Definitely. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s about how, how you treat your customers. I’ve, I’ve had some pretty rubbish customer service recently from a couple of companies where I am the customer and I’m not being treated like the customer. And for me, that’s, that’s ruining their brand. One, one company, I’m not going to mention it, but it has the word trusted in the title and at the moment I don’t trust them because of how they’re treating me as a customer. So, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s not. They, they might have a gorgeous website, it might look pretty, but if they don’t treat their customers with respect as I expect to be treated, then that, that’s damaging their brand.

Minter Dial: Yeah. At the end of the day, there are many people who like to say, well, it’s all about the guarantee of the product, the trust in the product. It’s not just the product, it’s going to be the customer service, it’s the price you sell it at place where you do it and the experience that comes with it, you know, more or less according to your.

Chantal Cornelius: Exactly. And it’s the, it’s the journey that the customer goes on from seeing some initial marketing through a sales conversation to the delivery and the customer service. And if you don’t have continuity and consistency through that journey, that’s going to affect the brand as well. And I talk in my, in my book about, about standout strategies, about when you know what strategy to use. It’s got to be in your marketing and your sales and your customer service because otherwise there’s a, there’s a big mismatch and customers will leave because they’re not getting from you what they thought they were going to get.

Minter Dial: That might be even more radical. I say it should be in the way you hire people.

Chantal Cornelius: That too. Yeah, absolutely.

Minter Dial: How you introduce individuals to your company.

Chantal Cornelius: And, and, and freelancers or subcontractors that you work with. Because I, in my business, there’s just me and I have a number of freelancers and subcontractors. I expect them to adopt the Apple Tree brand in inverted commerce when they’re doing work for me. I have a, I have a virtual assistant who’s brilliant. And she speaks directly to my clients. Now she runs her own business, but when she talks to them, she has her apple tree hat on. And she knows she and I are very similar. She knows how I want her to treat my customers. So, it works.

Minter Dial: Yeah, I mean in a world, I mean I worked at L’Oreal for 16 years and a lot of our customer service was outsourced or at least, I mean some of it was anyway. I can’t remember exactly what percentage it was. But the end of the day, customer service, these people are representing your brand and whether they’re out. So, outsourced or not, you need to go and, and they’re usually multi brand anyway.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah.

Minter Dial: You know, so they’re dealing with a lot. And how do they actually have your voice? And then they have X’s voice. Then they have, I was not mentioning Twitter but you know, another voice. So, Chantal, you, you wrote Magnetic Marketing, a really great title. I, I, it really struck me. When did you, when did you publish that? When did you first publish that?

Chantal Cornelius: I’m going to have to check. I have a copy with me.

Minter Dial: She says on the screen with the magnetic and the sea of the magnetic.

Chantal Cornelius: Has it is fabulous designer who does this for me. I first published this book in 2011 and I published the fourth edition in 2022. So, it’s, yeah, it’s getting on a bit.

Minter Dial: Well indeed. Which was good. My next question. But let’s just start with Magnetic Marketing. Why was the need for magnetic marketing 2011 and is it more important today or less?

Chantal Cornelius: It is just as important. It comes from a nine-stage marketing planning process that I first learned in one of those proper jobs I had before I walked out of is massively important. In fact, it probably is more important today because what I find with far too many businesses is they jump straight into the tactics of marketing. The how somebody. Yeah, the how somebody was saying to me today, well, should I be on LinkedIn or Instagram or this or that? And the other. And I said at the moment it doesn’t matter because you don’t have a strategy. Magnetic Marketing. The first four chapters are all about the strategic thinking of marketing. Where is your business now? What are your products and services? What makes them different? Where do you want to get to with your business? Who are your ideal clients? Until you have the answers to all of those questions? What I find is that people rush off into marketing and then they waste their time and their money. So, the lady I was speaking to today is a coach and a consultant and she was saying, but should I be on Instagram? Well, my answer is no. Nobody in business should be on Instagram if you’re providing a service. I said no, because your, your clients, from what I know of them, are not looking for your services on Instagram because they don’t, they don’t look for coaches and consultants on Instagram. So, I’ve encouraged her to go away and do the strategic thinking, the big picture stuff because that somehow just help work out what marketing is. Is Right. So, for instance, knowing if a client is looking to bring on three new clients this year, there’s a different type and amount of marketing that they need to do compared to somebody who’s looking for 100 clients. It’s very different. So, yeah, it is. It’s very important. And I think it’s also probably more important today because there are so many different marketing tactics that we can use. And I meet too many people who are totally overwhelmed. They just don’t know which way to turn and which ones to do and how much to do them.

Minter Dial: Yeah. Spending inevitably. In my book, the future Proof here, I, I talked all about the new technologies disrupting and what you say reminds me of how I started that book. The first three chapters have nothing to do with technology. All about the mindset before you go into it.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And the thing that I’m. I. The drum I beat is adding meaningfulness into what you do. So, of course a lot of companies don’t have a very clear strategy. If you ask everyone around the table, you’ll end up with as many people as there are around the table’s version of the strategy.

Chantal Cornelius: Absolutely.

Minter Dial: Which knocks them down. So, your four editions of Magnetic Marketing, how has it evolved over the 13 years?

Chantal Cornelius: It has evolved because I. Well, the, the date, the latest edition that I did in 2022 as I actually need to do a fifth edition because it’s, it’s out of date again. It was because back in 2015 I started researching emotion USPS unique selling propositions. I was hearing more and more particularly from coaches. Oh, what makes me different is. And they were all saying the same thing.

Minter Dial: Right.

Chantal Cornelius: So, I started looking into this and I started calling what I’d found emotional USPS Emotional Unique Selling Propositions. And it was a, it was a mouthful. But I then called it something completely different, wrote a page about it in, in the current edition. And so, it was kind of a lot of the, the book was the evolution of that. I’ve also added some diagrams. It’s. It’s a workbook. So, there’s space to write in it and scribble all over it. But I’ve added more space for WR writing and I’ve added a couple of diagrams which, which help explain some of the concepts. And, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot more in there about what are now called the standout strategies, which means I, I need to update it again, but not just yet.

Minter Dial: Right, well, all in due time. We’re going to get into that in a moment. But I, I definitely. It’s, it’s rather provocative to say that USPs don’t work anymore. Is it that they actually don’t work or that we don’t actually provide a unique selling proposition?

Chantal Cornelius: They don’t work because they’re not unique, because most people can’t, can’t come, can’t come up with something that is unique. The, the line that I used to hear from coaches, and I actually still hear it, is I help. I’m different because I help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Every coach on the planet does that. And I love coaches. I love working with them. If I had a pound or a euro for every time I’d heard that. So, they, they. A lot of coaches are a lot of business owners, yet we’re encouraged to think of a USP, what makes us different. And there actually aren’t that many ways of being different. So, that’s, that’s, that’s one of the reasons they don’t work. The other reason is that unique selling propositions, they’re all about selling. They’re about me saying, look at me, I’m different, and therefore I’m going to sell you something. I flipped it around and said, let’s put the focus on the customer, the client, what do they want and how do they want to feel? And the work I’ve been doing with the, with the research and the writing of the new book over the last nine, 10 years has really shown me that there are much better ways of standing out through understanding the emotions of the customer, finding the right language to go with the emotions that they want to experience. And that way you can craft. You could probably still call it a USP or a sales proposition or a pitch or I don’t know what, whatever you want to call it, tagline, strap, line, you could craft that that is completely different to everybody else’s and there’ll be a very different way of saying saying it.

Minter Dial: So, if you add emotion.

Chantal Cornelius: Sorry, say it again.

Minter Dial: If you add emotion.

Chantal Cornelius: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It’s. It’s about understanding the emotion that the client wants to work with you. So, it’s not about how I want to feel as the marketing consultant, it’s about how my clients want to feel. And what I did with the. With the new book was identify five different strategies and the majority of businesses will have one of those. I was talking to a client, a potential client today who actually has two, and it’s a. It’s a very close match on the two, but most people will have one. There’s then a list of language that I’ve worked out to go with each strategy and when you get that language, it’s. It’s emotional language, but it’s getting the right emotion in and it’s positive emotion rather than. Some people talk about using negative emotion and talking about the pain. This is all the positive stuff.

Minter Dial: When I was at L’Oréal, we used to have a little quip which was, it has to be either the only. The first were the best. And this was how we organised our marketing spiel.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, that’s brilliant, love.

Minter Dial: That didn’t always work nonetheless, but it’s.

Chantal Cornelius: Good to have something like that to aim for.

Minter Dial: Yeah. Well, in, in standout, you. You talk a fair amount about the difference between service and product. How does the standout strategies change when you’re dealing with a product versus a service? Or, or do they or don’t they?

Chantal Cornelius: If you’re selling a. Stack it high, sell it cheap product, generally, there’s very little emotion involved in, in buying it. You know, I. I might. I might want to buy some new toothpaste. I have no emotional connection or attachment to what toothpaste I buy. It’s usually whatever’s cheapest when you’re buying or selling an expensive product. So, a car, a Lamborghini, then saddle.

Minter Dial: A saddle.

Chantal Cornelius: A saddle. Saddle for the horse. No, I don’t think there’s any emotional attachment there because it, because it. But it’s a good point. But it’s a necessity. Now, if you’re buying a horse. Yes, absolutely. There’s an emotional connection there because you might buy a horse. Because, you know, I know people who bought dressage horses. They spent a lot of money because they want a horse that will make them look good. When I bought my horse 10. Yeah, 10 years ago, I wanted a safe horse. I’d had this ex, thoroughbred, thoroughbred, X racehorse who was rather lovely and rather crazy towards the end and I needed something safe, so I needed a horse that I felt safe on. So, yeah, if you’re. If you’re buying something expensive, Like a horse or a, or a Ferrari. Then you can still use the standout strategies. They don’t work if you’re buying or selling cheap products. It’s anything that you think of that’s like a necessity. I need a new computer. Great. Okay, well I’ll go to the local computer shop and see what they’ve got. Slightly different. I often use Apple as an example of one of the strategies because I’m sorry to anybody listening. I’m not an Apple person. I don’t have a phone. I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Minta. My partner isn’t, is an Apple freak and he doesn’t understand that I don’t have anything appley at all apart from an apple tree business name.

Minter Dial: Right, there you go.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah. And I’ve used Apple as an example of significance, one of the strategies because I think Apple do a very clever job of helping their customers to feel special, feel part of the club. If you’re an Apple person, Minty, you’ll get this. It’s a bit of a tribe and Apple people talk appley language and swap notes. Those of us who use. Well, I have a Microsoft, I don’t know, it’s a Dell computer or something and Microsoft on it. And I’ve got a Google Pixel phone. There’s no plug there, there’s no. Those are bought on necessity. I need something that works and it’s a decent price. Whereas people who buy Apple products will, I’ve heard, queue up overnight in the rain just to get the first one because of the club that they’re in and how special they feel as a result of buying them and using them.

Minter Dial: Yeah. So, they feel significant.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, yeah.

Minter Dial: So, in the product world what you’re saying is best to have higher end, big ticket items and then your strategies will work. What about with service?

Chantal Cornelius: Yes, services work in the same way. So, the five strategies. I’ve always worked with service businesses. So, when I was researching and writing the book, I focused on service businesses and then a few products started, started jumping out. But yeah, generally with services it is about the emotional connection. Because when you provide a service, you’re a coach, consultant, speaker, mentor, you’re selling yourself, your time, your expertise. There is no product that you can hold up and go, well look, there’s this one and it’s blue and it’s round as opposed to the yellow square one. Clients have to trust you before they’ll give you their money. If you’re a coach, they especially have to trust you with your, with their deepest, darkest Secrets. So, it’s very much about building a very strong emotional connection with them before they’ll go, okay, yeah, I will pay you €2,000 before you’ve even done anything for me. So, that’s even more important with service businesses.

Minter Dial: So, the issue or the idea of emotional strategies, the pushback is. Well, you know, if you’re buying a car, you want it to be safe and is, is safety a, an emotional criteria? Your horse, it has to be safe. What about the speed of the horse or the speed of the car? Is, is that just an emotional desire or could we call it a technical specification?

Chantal Cornelius: They, they are, they’re two different things. So, the, the speed of the car, I would say, is a technical specification. How you feel when you drive the car, that’s what’s important. I, about a year or a bit ago, I bought, I didn’t buy, I got a new car. I always have cars on, on a three-year lease and the lease of the current car was, was coming up and I had decided it was time to go electric. So, I did some research and I decided that the MG4 was the one I wanted for a number of reasons. It’s electric, which allows me to give back to that. That’s the strategy I call contribution. I can be greener. It is frighteningly economic to run that car. It costs me about £15amonth to run it, which is brilliant. And it’s plugged in at the moment, charging up, ready for tomorrow. When I’m driving it, I feel, I feel kind of, oh, it’s a bit fun and exciting. It is great fun to drive. You put your foot down at any speed and the acceleration is phenomenal. So, I, I feel, I feel like I’m standing out in it. It’s also bright blue. For the last 14 years I’ve only had bright blue or bright green cars. And everybody knows, I mean my, my brand, my colours are blue and green. So, when I went to the MG garage, I’d phoned them up and said, I’d like a test drive, please. Certainly, madam. Come on in. Took me out in, in a black one. It was all going really well actually. And then I, I flipped the indicator switch and the noise of the indicator is really clunky. So, I just decided, well, maybe I just, I just won’t use the indicators, you know, like a, like a BMW driver. But I went back to the garage and said, right, I want one. And they said, right, well we’ve got a black one that you can have here in the next couple of weeks. I was like, no, no, I want the blue one. I have to have something that makes me. That makes me stand out, that makes me feel like I’m making a difference and that I’m a bit stand out. And it’s. It took longer to arrive and it was more expensive and it was. Boy, it was worth it. So, people wave at me in my blue. In my blue MG, they’re driving blue MGs too. There’s a bit of a club. So, it does. It does depend on the type of car you buy or the type of horse. But, yeah, there are still emotional connections versus technical specification.

Minter Dial: Well, what I was really getting at was rational expectations and just to what extent rational strategies still have a place.

Chantal Cornelius: The research that I read shows that 95% of our decisions are made irrationally, emotionally, subconsciously. The brain is working away in there making decisions. The rational side is only 5%. I might look at a horse and go, oh, she’s gorgeous, I want to buy her. And the rational side says, hm, yes, well, you’ve just won the lottery, you can buy the horse. Or the rational side says, yes, you can buy that more expensive car because it’s electric and it’s green. We. We do make the, you know, 95% of our decisions are made without us really realising what’s going on. The rational bit then backs it up to say, yes, you can or no, you can’t. Quite often we probably spend too much time listening to the irrational than the rational.

Minter Dial: But we’re listening if we can do it intentionally. Yeah. I was thinking about that statement you made, about 95%. You quote it in the book. And there’s another type of suggestion, which is the way we communicate. We only ever capture a very small part of the words coming out of my mouth. What. What is much more impactful is the sort of. The emotion, how I make you feel. You’ll. You’ll check my. My voice intonation and validate for authenticity. Or not this and that.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Yet that. That’s actually, as I recall, only true when we’re dealing with an emotional topic. If I’m to give you the specs of my computer or my car, I do not expect you to say it’s more or less two and a half thousand to three thousand GP or whatever you kind of expect that to be.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Dang on. And if you’re talking to your finance, your CFO or someone, you probably don’t like an emotional version of things that kind of have that focus. But anyway, yeah, I mean, of course, the idea of emotions Is the first thing that, that’s how we operate. We, the first filter comes into our brain is, is an emotional reaction. Then the brain kicks in and post rationalisation. So, makes total sense. But then you, you chose five strategies and in. And whenever I’ve done frameworks like this and I have my own framework of five and the question is, why these five is there not a six that’s missing? Or how did you, how did you structure your thinking to get to these five? What was the, the framework that allowed you to say this is it. This, this cat carries all the space there.

Chantal Cornelius: There were originally six and I had to, I had to ditch on. I’ll tell you why in a minute. Tony Robbins, the great Tony Robbins claims to have invented six or discovered six emotional human needs. I’m not sure he did. I contacted his team and said, was it him? And they went, yes, yes, of course it was. Other people have said no, it wasn’t him. So, I don’t, I don’t actually know where this came from.

Minter Dial: Send that message to chat GPT or you know, perplexity, the truth.

Chantal Cornelius: You’ll get lots of different, lots of different suggestions. So, that, that’s where, that’s where the names came from. And I then looked at how so, so he talks about, so for instance, he talks about significance as being a human emotional need. I have a need personally me for being seen and heard and for people going, oh, you did a great job, well done. Hat on the back. What I then did was, was take it and apply it through various other thinking and reading that I did and applied it to business to look at, okay, what are the needs of the business? Business and the, or the business owner or the client and whatever, whatever we sell, we are selling to people and they have emotions. Now they, it may not be their personal emotions that are involved. It depends on who, who you’re selling to, whether it’s a bigger business or it works beautifully with individuals. You know, I work with coaches so I can be talking to them. Hello, Mr. Mrs. Coach. What I can figure out what their emotional need is. So, yeah, it, it kind of came from there and evolved through, through, into businesses. The sixth one that I dropped is called variety or uncertainty. So, one of, one of the strategies is certainty, safe pair of hands, you know what you’re getting, people turn up, do the job. Uncertainty. Variety is the total opposite of that. And I could only find one example of a company that promotes itself on variety and uncertainty, and that’s Amazon. You can buy anything. I think pretty much apart from the everything store. Yeah, exactly.

Minter Dial: Including Heinz with 57 varieties, whatever it is, only 57.

Chantal Cornelius: You know, if I’m looking to buy. I bought. I bought some hand puppets recently and I went straight to Amazon, to find them and the first ones that came weren’t big enough so I sent them back and, and tried again and found them on Amazon, but with. I couldn’t find any other business that used uncertainty or variety. Because if you’re a coach, consultant, trainer, nobody is going to book you knowing that they don’t know what you’re going to deliver. And if I was sitting here as the coach saying, well, I don’t know what I’m going to deliver to you, I’ve got 6 million different tools that I could use, but I don’t know what we’re going to do. Nobody’s going to sign up for that.

Minter Dial: At some level, it’s the antithesis of strategy.

Chantal Cornelius: It is, yeah, it is, absolutely. So, I dropped that one and stuck to 5 and 5 happens to be my favourite number. So, there we are.

Minter Dial: Well, certainty, connection, contribution, growth and significance. Is there a hierarchy in this list or is that merely depending on the circumstance or the context of the business?

Chantal Cornelius: It’s alphabetical, Minta. It’s purely alphabetical. No, there’s no hierarchy because this is not about trying to use all of them, this is about figuring out which one is the best one for your business. Very occasionally a business will have two and I have a test on my website and some results came through today which show almost identical match for two, and then the other three were virtually zero. But it’s generally about one. So, yeah, it’s not trying to remember, this is about being unique. So, it’s not trying to use all five, it’s one. And it’s about really focusing on one strategy, one set of language to use, which then makes your marketing message much clearer.

Minter Dial: So, you. Have you just mentioned a test. Is that something that people can go and run along and do?

Chantal Cornelius: Absolutely, yes. If you go to appletreeuk.com and click on the Take the test button page link, there’s a test there. What I’ve done is I collected a whole load of words, phrases. It’s the emotional language. There are certain words and phrases that go with each of the five strategies. I’ve muddled them all up on the page. It’s just a great alphabetical list and it’s about ticking. I ask people to tick no more than 15 and it’s about. So, if, if, if you say to one of your clients how do you feel when you work with me? How do you feel at the end of a, of a coaching session? Or how do you feel when you, when you’ve heard me speak? It’s listening out for the emotions. Tick 15, fill in the, fill in the, the contact details, hit submit and that sends an email through to me and then I can analyse the results. And like I said, usually there is one strategy that, that jumps out and then you can use the correct language with it.

Minter Dial: So, I, I’m just, I wanted to look at. I had on my podcast a woman who wrote the Feeling Economy, Ming Hu Hyang, Taiwanese teacher and a professor and, and talked about this notion of feeling. I’m just wondering to what extent the. If we’re all about gauging emotions, empathy becomes a critical skill in the marketing playbook.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah. Oh, it’s essential and I think preceded by listening, listening to what clients say, knowing. And even that’s preceded by knowing the right questions to ask. So, asking questions, listening to what they say and then the empathy to be able to understand them. There’s also a big dose of humility needed and flexibility. When I was early on in the, in the process of all this research, I realised that some of my clients were leaving and then they weren’t, they weren’t happy with, with what we were doing. So, I said to them, why do you work with me? Why do you work with me? And the team that I had at the time and the answers they gave me didn’t match with what I thought they would do. So, I thought that my clients were coming to me for the strategy I call growth. It turns out they weren’t. They wanted certainty. They wanted a safe pair of hands. Now, I could have said, ah, but I want to do growth. I want to help you grow your business. At which point they would have left and I would have had to rebuild the business looking for businesses who wanted growth. Instead, I went, oh, oh, okay, sorry, you don’t want growth. Right. Well, we’ll, we’ll do certainty then, and we will deliver. We will be a safe pair of hands for you. And it was, it was a bit of a slap in the face, I guess, of stop trying to do what you think you want to do, Chantal, and listen to what your customers actually want.

Minter Dial: Thus the humility to be able to sort of eat humble pie, as we say. Of these five strategies, as you talk with customers, you’re positioning them through wondering which of them provokes the most resistance or is most easily overlooked.

Chantal Cornelius: Two brilliant questions. I don’t think any, anybody’s ever asked me that before. And the answer is, the answer is certainty. But for, for both, for the. Yeah, certainty is the least exciting of the five. It’s the least glamorous and the least sexy. And I think this is why when I realised that certainty was the best strategy for my business, I went oh, I don’t want any certainty, it’s boring. And then my client said yeah, and it’s what we want. I do, I do meet people who say similar things. It’s like, oh no, can’t I have, can I have growth? And I, I ran a, I ran a workshop a little while ago for a CEO group and the owner of the group was there and we had I think about 10 members, members of his organise of his, his club who would get together every month and sort out their business issues. And the owner was saying ah, yes, they, they, they come to me for growth. They really want to grow their businesses. And I looked around the table at the faces of, of the members and I said okay, well let’s ask them. And they went no, no, we come to you for certainty. And the owner was like, oh, but, but, but I, I and his customers are going no, we don’t want that. We want this. So, it can take. There was resistance there. He, he came around eventually.

Minter Dial: Love it. That’s great insight. You know, when I was reading I, my, my a priori is the desire for significance, perhaps that says much about me, but I feel in this changing world that we are in that there’s a deepening lack of significance and a consequential or commensurate amount of looking for significance which, because I want to stand out from the crowd, I’m different, look at me. How do you square that peg with standing out for the brand? In the end of the day there’s the individual egotistic, narcissistic. Look, look at me, I want to stand out. And the other side I say is there’s a lack of meaningfulness in our lives.

Chantal Cornelius: Yeah, that’s, that’s fascinating. What’s key with this is making sure that individuals personal needs don’t get in the way. I can think of somebody who I know personally is really high on significance. It’s very, look at me. Very needy, very. I’m amazing, aren’t I? Wonderful. If that gets into the business, that’s poisonous because it’s then not about the business, it’s about them. So, if you’ve got a business leader who is going, I’m really needy, I need to stand out. If that flows into the business, the business is in trouble because they’re not listening to what the clients want, they’re listening to what the boss wants.

Minter Dial: One of the last question, Chantal, which regards the word courage. If you want to stand out, you might end up being ostracised or pointed finger at or blamed for some kind of ism or other that might be not inclusive because standing out means somehow being a little exclusive. In other words, not for everybody. Is that something that you’ve run across and is that a challenge for organisations today? Actually.

Chantal Cornelius: It’s something that I personally have been dealing with in the last six months and it’s actually, it’s actually made me more courageous and stronger. Yeah, if. If you want to run a successful business in this day and age, you have to stick your head above the parapet and be prepared to have rubbish thrown at you because otherwise you’ll just be the same as everybody else. I’m. I’m known for being quite outspoken, very straight talking. If somebody comes to me and says, oh, I think I should be on Instagram, I’ll go, don’t waste your money. There’s no point. If you’re a coach, consultant, speaker, there is no point in you wasting your money on, on this, that and the other. And I do meet a lot of other marketing consultants who go, oh, no, no, you mustn’t say that. We must, we must all, we must all be the same. We must all talk about xyz. I’m like, no, my, my clients know me as being straight talking. They trust me to give them the straight talking, honest advice of, don’t do that, don’t waste your money. Do this instead. So, yeah, it’s, it’s brought, it’s brought me under fire quite a lot in the last, the last six months or so. And that’s fine. If people want to throw rocks at me, they can. I’m still a better marketing consultant than they are. So, yeah, just, just be brave. Be brave. Also get your strategy right and be true to your own convictions. You know, when you, when you know what works for you and your clients, be brave, say, yeah, this is what works. I got the experience of how many have however many years do this and it will work and clients will respect you more for being more honest.

Minter Dial: No, Dad, I just recently had on my show a Canadian friend and consultant and we were talking about this notion of fanning out and it reminded me, or you were talking, reminded me how when I was running Redken, we had an entire three day immersion in our strategy. And we used a consultancy that was brilliant. Gutman was their name. And the idea was let us Tomorrow invest in 80% of all our resources on one pipeline. We had five different categories and the idea we kind of more or less twenties each and stuff like that, but we still 80%. Which one? Why and how and that act, you know, well. But I’m going to let go of this client who loves this brand or, you know, this is a promotion. We always do. Every September we have to anniversary it. And the whole process was extremely sharpening. It focused us in on how are we going to become the brand of the future. And I must say the exercise, of course, we didn’t end up investing everything 80%, but the exercise was extremely structuring and very bold and brazen. Chantal, it’s been ran chatting with you. You. Lovely to meet you like this talk horses and marketing and stuff like that. And blue. Blue. Blue Martinis. No, blue BMWs, whatever. Electric cars.

Chantal Cornelius: Anyway, blue Martini sounds fabulous. I might just go into one of those.

Minter Dial: There you go. So, I’m wearing blue too. How can people track you down, Chantal, and get your book or your books.

Chantal Cornelius: In fact, the website is probably the best place to go. So, appletreeuk.com you can also find me on LinkedIn. The last time I checked, I’m the only one with this spelling of my name in the UK, so I’m quite easy to find. But otherwise come to the website.

Minter Dial: Many thanks. Thanks for coming on. I look forward to one day meeting you.

Chantal Cornelius: Thank you for having me, Minto. It’s been great fun.