The Power of Personality Marketing: How to 4X Your Business with Lasagna

This is a picture of my boy, Hasan Adkins. He’s a member of the Wellspring Society, a great coach, and a wonderful human.

Like any of us, he’s got some quirks. For example, dude just loves lasagna. I mean, this kid just fucking LOVES it.

Which is why you see him here, holding a tray of lasagna.

And he used that very tray lasagna to 4X his business with personality marketing.

Here’s how…

Like any fairly new online fitness coach, Hasan is in the part of his business requiring a lot of differentiation. He needs to stand out from everyone else.

Certainly, Hasan needs to do this with his skillset: he needs to prove through his writing and his client’s progress that he knows what he’s doing. Building and displaying credibility is important.

But, while Hasan is a capable coach, he’s not reinventing the wheel. He’s not doing anything so innovating it’s going to stand out on its own. He gets his clients great results, but he’s not rewriting their DNA or countermanding the laws of thermodynamics.

At the heart of it, he gives them good programming and sound nutritional advice. They train with weights 3-5 times per week, do some mobility work, and eat in a caloric deficit steep enough to facilitate fat loss but not enough to create metabolic issues.

Hasan has a long career ahead of him, and he’s going to keep proving himself to be an effective coach who cares for his clients and gets them results. Over time, he’ll develop a huge catalog of testimonials, transformations, and other kinds of social proof.

All of that is great.

But…anyone can do that.

I’ve been saying this for years, but the straight-up fact is this:

Your prospective clients are more interested in how you’ll connect with them than they are your methods for helping them.

People don’t buy coaching, they buy coaches.

Everyone in your industry offers some variation of the same service. And you can try to trick everyone into thinking you’re better than the rest of the world (you’re probably not), but that’s not the most effective strategy.

To build a successful business, you need to do two things:

1. Have a way to stand out in the marketplace

2. Work with clients who love you.

The key to the second is to focus on the first.

Your prospective clients are more interested in how you’ll connect with them than they are your methods for helping them.

What I mean is this:

If you focus on personality marketing, wherein you make the things you love/hate/use/need in your everyday life part of your brand, the vast majority of those who approach you for your services will be those who feel similarly about those things.

When you put your personal interests, experience, and perspective into everything you do, you’ll find that you just keep winning.

These things help you stand out in the marketplace and expose you to a wider audience.

But they also guarantee that you’ll attract the clients most likely to love you, continue working with you, and rave about your services.

Bringing Us Back to Hasan And His Lasagna

When he first started working with me, Hasan was dead-set on keeping an air of professionalism in his social media at all times. Especially in terms of fitness—portraying himself as an example.

That’s bullshit.

Your clients are human, and they expect you to be, too.

As I mentioned, Hasan eats an entire tray of lasagna every week.

Each Friday, he goes to his favorite Italian deli, grabs a tray, and crushes it.

But he still has an impressive physique, a healthy lifestyle, and an overall sense of balance in what he does.

And that is exactly what his clients want: the tools and knowledge to be able to indulge intelligently, while still making progress.

So, as part of his business development, I had Hasan start talking about the lasagna.

And shit blew up. People loved it. He’s got his own hashtag with #hasagna.

Now, every single Friday, he eats his tray of lasagna while doing a Facebook Live.

During the broadcast, he talks about nutrition, balance, how he trains in preparation of the feast. Some people want to know how they, too, can Garfield-the-fuck-out and still make progress. Others want to know if it works with fried chicken, or burgers, or whatever.

He spends this time giving value and talks to his people about their favorite foods, their indulgencestheir version of lasagna.

And people respond like crazy. They appreciate his personality, his perspective, and his candor.

Lo and behold, inside of six weeks, Hasan had increased the number of weekly applications for his coaching program by FOUR TIMES the average.

Now that it’s been long enough to judge, we’ve seen things level out to a solid 3X the previous conversions.

People don’t buy coaching, they buy coaches.

The lasagna is a marketplace differentiator. It helps him stand out and brings people in, accounting for the increase in applications.

But it also brings the RIGHT people in—which is why the conversions have increased so much.

And THAT is the difference.


In the Wellspring Society, I work with a lot of people interested in building a profitable online business.

Having done this for years now, one of the (false) narratives I see over and over—and one my clients most need to discard—is the idea of the market being over-saturated.

Over-saturation isn’t a myth. It happens. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still crush it in a crowded field.

Yes, there is a ton of competition out there. Everyone has a coaching program, everyone has a product, an offer, a way to help.

But they’re all valid.

Because everyone is different. Every coach and every client.

And if you’re good at what you do, learn to communicate effectively, and then use those skills to put your interests out into the world in an intelligent and well thought out way, you’re going to win. 

Every time.

I mean, just look at me: I’ve made a career out of posting about grammar, 2000s emo, butt stuff, superheroes, and Final Fantasy.

Sure, I’ve given insane value in my content, but is my article on fasting really telling you anything different than anyone else’s?

No. The information is the same. It’s the presentation that stands out.

As a result of running my content creation this way, I don’t attract clients who want to work with “a coach.” They want me. And that’s fucking incredible.

Some coaches would feel wildly uncomfortable talking about butt stuff.

Some clients would die before they’d share intimate details with their business or fitness coach.

For my people, it’s the thing that makes them feel comfortable—like they can tell me anything. And if they can share a story about that, of course, they’re going to feel okay talking about their fears in business.

I’m a great coach. And I believe I can help anyone whose needs align with my skills and services.

But just because I can help “everyone” doesn’t mean I should work with just anyone.

For the best relationship and results, coaches and clients need to be aligned in more than offerings and needs.

My point is, we’ve all got a unique perspective on the world. What makes you special is YOU.

And that’s how you stand out. By being YOU.

You’re the only one who offers that. When it comes to being you, there’s literally zero competition or saturation. You own the marketplace.

Learning the deeper mechanics of running a business is important, but at the heart of it, better funnels aren’t really what you need.

What you need to do is find the clients who are exactly right for YOU.

The way to find those clients—and help them find you—is to be you all the time. Everywhere.

Put your personality into everything you do. In your emails. In your captions. In your stories. In your articles. Develop your voice, and learn to showcase it effectively. That’s personality marketing.

To fear oversaturation is to drift into scarcity mindset. It’s falling prey to the false belief that you’re the same as everyone else.

You aren’t.

You just need to learn how to show this to the world in a way that brings people closer to you; a way that follows a well-structured brand narrative, and leads them to feel connected and comfortable.

Personality-driven marketing and branding—especially through writing is (gasp!) precisely the focus of the Wellspring Society.

In the most literal sense, I teach people how to build 6-figure businesses talking about lasagna. Or whatever else is important to them.

The obvious pitch: we’re opening the doors for new members into the Society.

As of today, we’re looking to work with a few awesome people who want to run a business that helps people, serves the world, and makes a fantastic income—while never deviating from the stuff you love.

So stop being boring, or thinking you need to be. Click this link and we can get started today.

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"I dislike writing; I love having written." Nothing counts until it's done. I'll teach you to finish.
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About The Author
John Romaniello is an author, consultant, and coach who helps people and brands find their voice through writing. He's published hundreds of articles, dozens of courses, and one New York Times bestselling book. Might wanna check out his Instagram, he's pretty easy on the eyes.