Use your weird to build an identity moat customers remember

A soft‑spoken engineer wanted clients to remember him. He was skilled, but his proposals read like everyone else’s, and his emails sounded like a manual. We made a quirks inventory. He loved aquariums, hand‑drawn diagrams, and 90s arcade games with his kids. He chose two to signal: aquarium metaphors and hand sketches.

He added a single page to proposals with a rough pen sketch of the architecture and a caption, “Here’s the system in plain English.” He renamed his weekly email “Filter Change Friday,” sharing one short maintenance tip, like you’d swap a filter in a tank. It felt a little odd to him at first. Then a client said, “Your sketches sold me, I finally understood the plan.” Another forwarded his email to a colleague, writing, “This guy explains like a human.”

Micro‑anecdote: at a meetup, someone said, “You’re the aquarium guy, right?” He laughed, but inwardly, he knew it worked. Not because it was cute, but because it made abstract systems feel concrete and trustworthy.

Identity theory says people act in ways that reinforce who they believe they are. Signaling theory says distinct, costly‑to‑fake signals help others sort choices in noisy markets. When you choose a couple of honest quirks and weave them into useful work, you reduce cognitive load for your audience. They know what you stand for. This is not cosplay. It’s alignment. The goal is memorability through coherence, not performance.

List five quirks people already associate with you and circle two that feel fun and true. Add them to your bio, your next intro, and one deliverable this week, like a sketch in a proposal or a metaphor in a lesson. Share a short mess‑to‑message story that teaches something and watch for replies, saves, and referrals. Keep what lands, drop what doesn’t, and keep the signal steady for a month. Update one page or profile tonight.