Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
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Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♂️ Wes’s bio that lists everything
Wes is a data analyst with a newsletter explaining money numbers in plain words.
He is writing the bio on his social media profile.
He lists his two degrees, four job titles, and an award from 2019,
because he is afraid readers will not trust him without them.
🧩 His struggle:
He writes his bio about himself, so it never says what a reader gets from him.
On the train, he’s reading a newsletter with the real story of a former trader
who also had an impressive old job for his bio,
and whose writing program has helped over ten thousand people start writing.
He fit both of those into one short bio.
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✍️ The old job that stayed in the bio
Dickie Bush and his business partner, Nicolas Cole, showed their newsletter readers a bio full of impressive job titles.
A bio is the short description of yourself on your profile.
Their example listed the person’s roles as a company boss, board member and investor.
That was a looong list of achievements for a bio that never said what the person wrote about.
Dickie and Nicolas pointed out what was missing: they couldn’t tell what a reader would get from following that person.
Then, in the same article, they showed examples of bios that gave readers a reason to follow.
One belonged to Dickie.
This was June 2023, in their newsletter, Write With AI.
The two taught online writing through their program, Ship 30 for 30.
Dickie’s bio included his old job at BlackRock, a major investment firm:
“Former @blackrock trader turned digital builder”
He’d kept his career change in his bio: from working for a financial firm to working for himself.
His online writing program was one of the things he had built since leaving.
For someone hoping to make that change, his experience could feel encouraging.
And he included what he’d done for other writers.
Get this — his bio said he’d helped over 10,000 people start writing through Ship 30 for 30.
The bio full of job titles had left readers guessing what they could learn.
Dickie’s gave a new writer a reason to pay attention: he’d already helped thousands of people start.
Turns out he could keep his old job in his bio and still make the bio useful to a reader.
His background explained who he was.
The writing result explained why someone might want to follow him.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ Cut to One Line
Dickie’s bio told new writers he’d helped over 10,000 people start writing,
and that gave them a reason to follow him.
He chose details that helped people decide whether they were interested.
This tactic is called Cut to One Line: give your intended reader one reason to follow, in one sentence.
The finished bio can be longer, as Dickie’s was.
He didn’t cut his old job out of his bio.
He kept it, and added the line about helping over 10,000 people start writing.
So the next time you edit your social media bio, start with what makes it useful to the person reading.
You can be proud of your experience without listing every job.
Save the full work history for your About page.
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🛠️ Wes’s turn
Now, back to Wes, whose bio lists two degrees, four job titles, and an award,
but never says what a reader gets from following him.
That evening, he runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and gives it his bio exactly as it stands.
His AI sidekick doesn’t waste words:
Open your bio with what a reader gets from following you, and keep just one job title.
He deletes the two degrees, three of the job titles, and the award.
His new bio says he explains money numbers in plain words, and that he works as a data analyst.
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🌅 A month later
Forty-two new people have followed Wes’s profile since he changed his bio.
Nine of them have signed up for his newsletter.
Your bio doesn’t have to list everything you’ve done for readers to trust you.
Put the one reason a stranger should follow you in your bio.
That’s it, my fellow outliers!
Yours ‘showing you that building a business is fun, not a drain’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below uses Dickie and Nicolas’s five bio types to draft newsletter bios you can test with real readers.
🧰 What you’ll need
Your current bio, exactly as it stands
- Copy it straight from your profile.
- e.g. “MBA. MS in Statistics. Data analyst, finance analyst, reporting lead, analytics manager. 2019 Analyst of the Year. Views my own.”Everything you have actually done, and the skill people come to you for in real life
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. twelve years on finance teams and a weekly company report, and people ask me what a number in the news means for themThe people you most want to reach, and what those people are worried about
- e.g. people who read money news and feel lost, worried that they are making money choices without understanding the numbers
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my files, my notes, and my drafts, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people who want money numbers explained in plain words.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- Write five genuinely DIFFERENT bios, not five edits of one. Keep the intended audience consistent so I can compare five ways of writing a bio for the same work. Leave out unrelated experience. Use these five types: Outcome = what readers can achieve; Aspirational Brand = who readers hope to become; Credible Category = your field and point of view; Credible Talker = topic, real results and relevant experience; Specialist = a specific skill for a specific reader. Never invent a result, qualification or promise. Under 20 words each.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
My current bio, exactly as it stands:
{e.g. "MBA. MS in Statistics. Data analyst, finance analyst, reporting lead, analytics manager. 2019 Analyst of the Year. Views my own."}
Everything I have actually done, and the skill people come to me for in real life:
{e.g. twelve years on finance teams and a weekly company report, and people ask me what a number in the news means for them}
The people I most want to reach, and what those people are worried about:
{e.g. people who read money news and feel lost, worried that they are making money choices without understanding the numbers}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. What my current bio is doing — read it cold and say which intended reader, if any, would want to follow.
2. Five bios — five different ones, each under 20 words, each naming the intended reader and using one of the five bio types.
3. What each leaves out — for every version, the credentials it drops and why that is the right trade.
4. My pick and why — which one you would run, with the reasoning.
5. How to test it — where to try each bio and which reader actions to compare, such as profile follows or newsletter signups.
Then tell me which fact, if any, has no clear connection to what my intended reader needs.