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Episode #77

Your Perks Will Win You Clients

Your quirks and strange personal interests are what make you magnetic online. Embrace them intentionally and use them in your marketing.

9 min 16s
Listen on:SpotifyApple PodcastsYouTube

Key takeaways

  • Identify three to five personal quirks or interests that feel a little strange to others, then use them consistently in your content as storytelling anchors.
  • Connect your personal perks back to something useful for your potential customer. Strange is interesting, but interesting still has to be relevant.
  • Accept that some people will be put off by your quirks. If you do not scare anyone away, you are not attracting anyone either.
  • Use what you already do and already love. Performing a perk you do not actually have will feel hollow fast.
  • Normal content is the most expensive choice you can make online. Standing out starts with being fully, specifically yourself.

Timestamps

00:00Your perks will win you clients
00:15Why normal is boring and costly
01:09Real examples: the Dutch carnivore and the nerdy million-follower creator
02:43You want to be you, not them
03:54How Paul uses his own perks in marketing
05:39Find your three to five strange things
07:16Dare to talk about it, even if it scares people away
09:12Don't be normal, be a little bit crazy
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Read the blog article

Why Should You Talk About Your Perks in Your Marketing?

Show notes

Your perks will win you clients

Paul Veth opens with a direct claim: your personal quirks are a competitive advantage online. In this episode, he makes the case for why normal is the worst strategy an entrepreneur can choose for building an audience and attracting clients.

What this episode covers

  • Why normal content does not stand out and does not win clients
  • Real examples: the Dutch carnivore cyclist, a nerdy creator with 1 million followers, and the suit entrepreneur who lives what he sells
  • How personal quirks deepen your perceived personality and make your content more human
  • The Identity First approach to marketing: find who you are first, then use it in your content
  • How Paul uses his own perks: high-intensity interval training, carnivore eating, fantasy books (Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings), and a lifelong obsession with jaguars

Key framework: find your three to five perks

Paul recommends identifying three to five personal interests or habits that other people might find a little strange. These are not invented for marketing purposes. They are things you already do and already care about. The marketing comes after. You use them as lenses to talk about what matters to your potential customers, adding storytelling and human depth to otherwise predictable content.

Why scare-away is a feature

If your content does not push some people away, it is not pulling the right people in. Paul is direct about this: sharing that he reads fantasy books will lose some potential clients and gain others. That is the mechanism. Filtering out the wrong fit is part of what makes Identity First marketing work.

Paul Veth builds technology to increase human potential. This episode applies the Identity First framework from Identity First Marketing to content strategy and online positioning.

Topics

personal brandingidentity first marketingcontent strategyentrepreneur marketingstanding out onlineauthentic marketingPaul Vethquirky brandingattract clients

Full transcript

View full transcript
0:00
0Your perks will win you clients. There I said it. I and the rest of the world want you to be strange. Not too much strange, I know, but just strange. Not normal.
0:15
0Normal is boring. Normal is not standing out and normal is definitely not going to win new clients. To be honest, I love to watch some accounts on TikTok, on Instagram, on X and yesterday I was looking at them and I like I thought something like, they are strange and I like people to be strange because strange is unique and it's amazing. I see people and maybe you think, okay, the best clients I am following are like the big business guys who are acting very normal as successful men and women. Think about maybe Cody Sanchez, Dan Martell, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, the normal ones.
1:09
0They are not normal, but these are the usual suspects. No, I like to watch there's a Dutch guy, he's the Dutch carnivore. He's talking about eating only meat and he is cycling a lot and he's just this scientist guy. He looks strange. He talks about strange things.
1:32
0He has a strange mindset. Everything is strange about him and I love it. It's not the normal charming actor who wins all the women. No, he just has a lot of followers and a good business. It's just like that.
1:49
0And I don't know his name. Last week I saw some guy, very nerdy guy talking in a not very charismatic way on video and I was looking at his follower count 1,000,000. It's really not about being the most beautiful person. It's not about being the most dressed well person. It can be if you want to be that guy.
2:18
0In Holland there's also a guy, he's from 26 suits, I believe his business is, and he's very charismatic and he dresses very well. He sells suits, so he must do that, but it suits him well. So that's connected to his unique character. It suits him. But you don't want to be him.
2:43
0You don't want to be the nerdy guy. You don't want to be me. You don't want to be the Dutch carnivore and you don't want to be Dan Martell, Elon Musk or Cody Sanchez. No, you want to be you and you have to find out the perks you have that make you interesting. And talk about these things and look at the world through the lens of these perks and still talk about what matters for your potential customers, because that's very helpful.
3:14
0I can talk about the jaguar because I like the jaguar since I was a small child. But when I talk about the jaguar, I'm not going to do it right now, but if I do it, I talk about the jaguar, what passion I have for this animal, what connects me to this animal, but what's suitable for you, what's helpful for you. But then you are thinking about me and the jaguar. You connect the dots and you think that's strange. A lot of people think about lions or maybe a snake or a hummingbird and he's talking about the jaguar.
3:54
0That's strange. And then he also says and it's like, it's strange, but it's fun because you want to know more about it and you see me as a human. Your perks as well. For me, example, I like to do high intensity interval training. So every time I train I do compound exercises.
4:15
0So the back squat, deadlift and bench press, in one training, but I always do high intensity interval training and it's amazing. I cannot breathe anymore after twenty minutes and I love it. But it's a little bit strange because I'm the only one in the gym pushing myself without doing it in a group and people think I'm strange. But it works for me because it's good marketing, but I like to do it. So it's not I do it because of the marketing, I like to do it and I use it in my marketing.
4:51
0And that's what I want for you as well. So what are your strange, strange things, your crazy things that other people might think are crazy, but are crazy enough so you don't look normal. You look more as a human because you it deepens the personality you have and use it in your marketing to talk about, because otherwise it can be very boring if you are the person who sells suits and you are only talking about suits. That can be very interesting. Until it's not anymore and then people want to know more about you.
5:39
0And therefore I always recommend people, okay, find three to five Things you might think they are a little bit crazy for me. For example, I'm eating carnivore as well. I'm doing the high performance in the gym. I like high performance as well. I used to coach and help high performance performers.
6:07
0I like to read fantasy books. So these are a few things. The Jaguar and sometimes I'm switching them up. For me it's five to seven because I'm a little bit more crazy than the normal person. But start with three to three to five and they can change.
6:25
0Yesterday I was talking to another entrepreneur and he is passionate about old vintage watches at this moment. Use it in the marketing, talk about it, but always think about, okay, I see this at vintage watches, but help your potential customer with something you tell about it. So, at that moment it becomes more storytelling and I really love it to see people who are a little bit strange, a little bit crazy. And if they do something on social media, like and I love it to watch these videos or read about some stuff I normally don't read about. It's interesting and you want to be interesting online.
7:16
0So yeah, write them down and dare to talk about it. Maybe in the past I even shamed myself for my perks. Now I use them because I'm like, but I'm not even the only one who does it. So there are a lot of more people doing it. And yeah, I can scare away customers because I can say, I love to read fantasy books like The Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings, even Harry Potter I love to read.
7:45
0No, not so much anymore. But I can scare away some people who are thinking, that guy is into fantasy. I'm totally not. I don't want to work with him. Okay, it's okay, because a lot of people think, hey, that's great.
8:01
0I like to read fantasy books as well. Maybe some different ones than I said. Wheel of Time is the the best series ever. So if you don't read it, no, no, no, it's Okay, but. If you read different fantasy books or you like reading and you're like, Okay, he likes to read as well, you see the bookshelf here as well.
8:20
0Yeah, we have a tree in our home, three bookshelves and even boxes with books upstairs because we don't have enough room for all the books. Yeah, I'm addicted to books and it can attract people and it can scare away people. But that's how it works. If you don't scare away people, you are not going to attract people. So that's why it's important to talk about your your parts of yourself that people find a little bit crazy.
8:50
0So find them, find them for me. So go look online in all my content and see how crazy I am, uh, or just how normal I am and how you can feel crazy as well. Because maybe you want to. To think about it, I just want to be normal. No, you won't.
9:12
0Don't be normal, be a little bit crazy.

Frequently asked questions

What does Paul mean by 'perks' in this episode?

Perks are personal quirks, interests or habits that make you slightly strange in the eyes of others. Paul gives examples from his own life: high-intensity interval training, reading fantasy books, eating carnivore, and a lifelong fascination with jaguars. These are real interests he uses in his marketing.

Do I need to be charismatic or good-looking to stand out online?

No. Paul points to a nerdy creator with no obvious charisma who built an audience of one million followers. Standing out is about being distinctly yourself, not about being polished or conventionally attractive. Specificity beats performance every time.

How many personal perks should I use in my content?

Paul recommends starting with three to five. They can change over time as your interests shift. The point is not to fix them permanently but to have enough to rotate through so your content stays human and layered without becoming predictable.

What if my quirks push potential clients away?

That is the point. Paul is direct: if your content does not push some people away, it is not attracting the right ones either. Filtering out the wrong fit through your personality is a feature of Identity First marketing, not a bug.

How do I connect my personal perks to what my clients actually care about?

Paul's approach is to use your perk as a lens or story, then bridge it to something relevant for your audience. He uses the jaguar as an example: share the passion, then draw out what is useful or meaningful for the person reading or watching.

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Discussion

The idea that your strangest personal interests are actually your biggest marketing asset flips a lot of conventional advice on its head. What's one quirk or niche obsession you've always kept separate from your professional identity, and what would it look like if you stopped hiding it?

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