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What hasn’t changed in marketing? I asked Dr. Christiane Schroeter that question because I’ve been doing SEO for 18 years and I can’t remember a stretch with this much change at once. She teaches marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, earned her PhD in applied economics at Purdue, has written three books she uses in the classroom and with coaching clients, and hosts the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast. Her answer took about four seconds: storytelling. The rest of the conversation was about how you actually do that when AI is writing half the internet. You can also listen to the full episode on the podcast page.
Storytelling is the part that doesn’t change
Christiane’s point is simple. The more content gets generated by AI, or by brands nobody knows anything about, the more your own story is what sets you apart: why you built the thing, the struggle you overcame to solve the problem, and the opportunity you saw.
So the more authentic you are, the more you really resonate with the consumer because consumers become a little bit more, let’s say suspicious. Is this real? – Dr. Christiane Schroeter
Her fix for that suspicion is to put yourself out there with “as little editing or scripting as possible.” That’s a fair description of how this show works, too. Bruce Ashford made the companion point on an earlier episode: your customer is the hero of the story, not you. Your story is how they find out why you’re worth trusting.
AI is a yes man, so you need someone who says no
I told Christiane that AI can’t do genuine experience. It only has the math of what’s likely to come next, and similarity to what already exists is the opposite of a unique experience. She went one step further.
AI tends to be a little bit of like agreeing with you no matter what you say, I like this. It’s like, yeah, you’re right. It’s like, I don’t need somebody that constantly says, yes, this is right. – Dr. Christiane Schroeter
That’s why I think coaches and analysts who are willing to give negative feedback get more valuable over the next five years, not less. Christiane described how she does it with students and clients. She opens with “this is a good start,” then names the three things that definitely need to change. The first pitch is always messy, and she expects pivots and iterations before anything goes out into the world.
How do you stay authentic when you’re selling yourself?
A lot of small businesses sell something that’s functionally the same in every city. Commercial real estate in Atlanta works a lot like commercial real estate in Seattle. So your experience has to become the selling point. Christiane’s test is whether people would know it’s you before they see your name:
- Use your brand colors and your logo consistently.
- Use the same words and the same way of describing things, every time.
- Carry it across what people see, read and hear, from your emails to a podcast or a YouTube video.
To stand out, you just need to be a little bit different and you need to make sure that we understand what makes you different. – Dr. Christiane Schroeter
The alternative, in her words, is “a very generic, very, you know, vanilla ice cream sales proposition.”
Pick one channel and own your list
Forty or sixty years ago a small business had maybe five channels. Now you’ve got email, social ads, SEO, paid placements, radio, TV, Roku and more. If you try to do all of them, you probably won’t do any of them well. Christiane’s books are a good example of choosing on purpose. They’re print on demand and sold through Amazon, because her ideal reader already shops there. She won’t have piles of books at home, and she can upload a new version whenever she updates one. She also skips TikTok and Snapchat because her ideal client isn’t there, and puts her effort into her email list “because it belongs to me.” I went deeper on that part in how Christiane picks one channel and builds a list she owns.
Find your voice by reading your own transcripts
I asked for the single highest-value sentence she’d said to a client that week. She didn’t hesitate.
Finding your voice. Finding your voice and figuring out what makes you uniquely you. – Dr. Christiane Schroeter
Here’s the AI-powered version I’d recommend. Record a real conversation about your business, with a peer, a paying client, a former client, or someone who decided not to hire you. Then paste your last three transcripts into Claude and ask it to pull out every place you talk about what makes your company different. You’ll probably be surprised at how well you talk about yourself when you’re not thinking about it too much. The same trick works for SEO, where you can pull seed keywords from customer conversations instead of guessing what people call your service. My friend Keith Breseé adds one question worth stealing: if you were selling my service to your grandma, how would you phrase it? (His episode on the people-first framework is worth your time.)
Then use what you find on your about page. Everybody says they strive for customer excellence. Nobody says why.
How she lets students use AI without letting it think for them
Christiane encourages ChatGPT in her classroom and even builds custom GPTs for her students. Her workbook, Discover Your Superpower, is shaped like a laptop so it sits next to one. But the exercises get filled in by hand, initialed on every page, photographed and uploaded for credit. If two submissions come back in the same handwriting, she notices. I wrote up the rest of that approach in why your AI is a yes man and what to do about it.
What’s next for Christiane
She had just given a TEDx talk about accomplishing big goals with small steps, and that talk is now live: Want big change? Start with small steps at TEDxFolsom. When we spoke she was writing two books in parallel, one on how she got to the TEDx stage and one on finding your voice, which she planned to use in an eight-week program with clients. So what would people say makes you you, if you asked them?
Connect with Dr. Christiane Schroeter
- Website: doctorchristiane.com
- Books: the full library
- Podcast: Happy Healthy Hustle on Apple Podcasts
- LinkedIn: Christiane Schroeter
- Instagram: @doctor.christiane
More episodes like this one live in Small Business Growth and Entrepreneurship.
The Unscripted SEO Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and find every episode at unscriptedseo.com.
