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Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸♀️🦸♂️
Someone asks: "What do you do?"
A paragraph gets written.
Job titles. Skills. Years of experience.
Nobody follows.
There's a reason — and it's fixable in 15 minutes.
⛳️ Here's the scenario
Meet Alex.
Six years in corporate HR.
Now solo as a career coach helping mid-level managers land executive roles.
He had the credentials.
He had the results — three clients promoted in the last four months.
But his LinkedIn profile read like a CV.
"6 years in HR. Now helping managers get promoted. DM me."
He posted twice a week.
Solid content. Smart takes.
Eleven followers in two months.
Eight of them were people from his old job.
He couldn't figure out why nobody was connecting with him.
Then one Saturday morning, he was at the dog park — coffee in hand, mentally drafting another post nobody would see.
A woman sat down on the bench next to him.
Quiet. Relaxed.
Watching her dog run across the grass.
"Career coach?" she said.
He explained. The clients. The results. The silence.
She listened. Then asked: "What's your story?"
"Six years in HR—"
She shook her head.
"Not your resume. Your story. Why are you here? What did you go through to get where you are?"
Turned out she'd spent 25 years building personal brands for some of the most-followed creators on LinkedIn — including a guy named Justin Welsh who'd built a $4M one-person business off the back of telling his story everywhere.
(Alex nearly knocked his coffee over.)
She pulled out her phone, opened a notes app, and rewrote his LinkedIn bio on the spot.
❌ What Alex had: "6 years in HR. Now helping managers get promoted. DM me."
✅ What it became: "I was passed over for promotion three times in four years — each time watching someone less experienced move up. I spent a year figuring out what I was missing. Then I got promoted twice in 18 months. Now I help managers skip the part where they wonder why they keep getting overlooked."
Same career. Completely different feeling.
Alex stared at it.
"How did you do that?"
She leaned back and explained two things — slowly, like she was talking to someone who had never thought about storytelling before.
💡 "First — people don't follow credentials. They follow transformation.
Your audience isn't thinking 'this person has six years of experience.'
They're thinking 'has this person been where I am right now?'
A backstory is a short account of how you got from a painful starting point to where you are now.
When it's done right, your ideal reader reads it and thinks: 'I'm living that first part. I want that second part.'"
💡 "Second — most people skip the specific pain.
They write the result. They list the job titles.
But they leave out the exact moment things were bad.
That moment is the whole story.
Without it, there's nothing for your audience to connect to."
Then she nodded at his phone.
"Justin Welsh breaks this down into seven steps. Two prompts will get you through the whole thing in 15 minutes."
Here's what each prompt does:
▶️ Prompt 1 — Find your transformation: Maps out the exact journey your ideal reader is trying to make — so your story speaks directly to what they want for themselves.
▶️ Prompt 2 — Write your backstory: Takes the raw facts of your journey and builds a complete, ready-to-use backstory in seven steps — the same structure Justin Welsh uses in every post, interview, and piece of content he creates.
Alex opened his AI sidekick and started with Prompt 1.
🎯 Step 1: Find your transformation
⏱️ 5 minutes
A backstory only lands if it mirrors the change your reader is desperate to make.
This prompt finds that exact change — so every word of your story speaks directly to what your audience wants for themselves.
I am going to give you a topic and a target audience.
Topic = {e.g. Getting promoted to executive, Building a daily writing habit, Landing first freelance clients}
Target Audience = {e.g. Mid-level managers who feel stuck, Beginners who want to write online, Consultants going solo}
Your task: list 7 different transformations this target audience is trying to make — 10 words or less each.
Use the format: "From {Current state} to {Desired state}"
List only the transformations. No labels. No numbering. No explanations.
Use these 7 transformation types:
1. Financial transformation
2. Emotional transformation
3. Physical transformation
4. Behavioral transformation
5. Knowledge transformation
6. Relational transformation
7. Belief transformation
Alex filled in his details and the prompt came back with seven transformations in seconds.
One of them stopped him cold:
"From invisible employee to the person the company can't afford to lose."
That was exactly what his clients were trying to do.
Now he had the lens for his story.
But a transformation only connects when there's a real story behind it.
That's what Step 2 builds.
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "Topic: Career. Audience: Freelancers. From stressed to organised."
✅ After: "From overwhelmed and reactive to working 4-hour focused blocks by 10am."
"From trading time for money to building systems that earn while they rest."
"From feeling guilty about saying no to protecting their best hours without apology."
"From proving value to every client to being the person clients fight to hire."
[Alex's AI sidekick filled in the remaining sections...]
📖 Step 2: Write your backstory
⏱️ 10 minutes
This prompt takes the raw facts of your journey and builds a complete backstory in seven steps — the obstacle, the struggle, the turning point, and the result.
Fill in each field from your own experience. The more honest and specific you are, the stronger the story.
Act like a professional storyteller who helps founders, freelancers, and solopreneurs build audience loyalty through personal narrative.
Your task: write my backstory in 7 steps using the framework below.
Here are my details:
Transformation: {paste the transformation you chose from Prompt 1}
Obstacle = {e.g. I was passed over for promotion three times in four years}
Internal struggle = {e.g. I felt invisible — working hard and going nowhere}
External struggle = {e.g. People assumed I was fine, and nobody spoke up for me}
Change event = {e.g. I hired a coach who showed me what senior leaders were actually looking for}
Spark = {e.g. I got promoted twice in 18 months and realised I'd been missing one thing the whole time}
Guide = {e.g. My coach Sarah showed me how to make my work visible without feeling like I was bragging}
Result = {e.g. Now I help managers get promoted without waiting for someone to notice them}
Write the backstory in 7 steps:
Step 1: Obstacle — one sentence that grabs attention and sets the stage
Step 2: Internal struggle — how I felt inside because of the obstacle
Step 3: External struggle — what others saw or said
Step 4: Change event — the one decision that changed everything
Step 5: Spark — the moment I realised things were shifting
Step 6: Guide — who helped me see my potential
Step 7: Result — where I am now, leading into what I do for others
Tone: conversational, no fluff, honest, human. No buzzwords. No corporate language.
Write a short version (3-4 sentences) and a long version (2-3 paragraphs). Both must feel like something I'd say out loud.
Alex filled in each field from memory.
It took about five minutes.
The short version came back first.
He read it twice.
That was his actual story.
The exact version he'd been trying to tell — and failing to — for two months.
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "6 years in HR. I help managers get promoted. I know what companies are looking for. DM me to work together."
✅ After: "I was passed over for promotion three times in four years.
Not for lack of effort — for lack of visibility.
A coach showed me one thing I was missing, and I got promoted twice in 18 months.
Now I help managers stop waiting to be noticed — and start becoming the person the room remembers."
Same career. Completely different story.
Alex posted the short version on LinkedIn that afternoon.
Forty-three new followers in 48 hours.
Four DMs from people who said: "This is exactly what I'm going through."
🏆 Alex's results
Before:
A bio that listed experience but told no story
Eleven followers in two months, zero inbound messages
Content that was solid — but connected with nobody
After:
A complete backstory — short version and long version — ready to post
43 new followers in 48 hours from one post
Four DMs from ideal clients within the week
Total time: 15 minutes. Not two years of wondering why nobody's connecting.
His AI sidekick mapped the transformation and built the structure.
Alex made the final call on what felt true. BAM.
Two prompts. 15 minutes.
You go from a list of job titles to a story that makes your ideal person stop and think "I've lived that."
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'proving you don't need a team to build something big' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️