Scan time: 2-3 min / Read time: 5-7 min
Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸♀️🦸♂️
Most solopreneurs post content for months and never build a real following.
The posts get a few likes. Some comments from friends. Then nothing.
Here's the part nobody talks about: people don't follow content. They follow people.
And they only follow people they feel they know.
That gap — between strangers scrolling past and people who actively root for you — gets closed by one thing. A backstory.
Not a resume. Not a list of credentials. A story that says: I was exactly where you are now. And here's what changed.
Without it, the best content in the world still sounds like it's coming from nobody.
🧩 You provide:
What you sell or do now (e.g. "freelance copywriter helping SaaS companies")
Who you want to help (e.g. "people leaving corporate to go solo")
A rough sense of where you started — the struggle, the low point, the before
🍿 What you get:
First — 7 transformation angles that show your audience the exact journey they want to go on
Then — a complete 7-part backstory built around the transformation that fits best, ready to use in LinkedIn posts, your newsletter, or any time someone asks "so what's your story?"
These are raw story building blocks — not finished posts. Post the backstory as a thread or your About section and watch which parts get the most response. The sections that land become your best recurring content angles.
⛳️ Here's the scenario
Alex had been a marketing manager for 8 years before he quit to consult on his own.
He helped small e-commerce brands grow their email lists. He got clients mostly through referrals — and the occasional cold DM.
The DMs were going nowhere.
His LinkedIn profile read like a job application. "8 years in marketing. Specialising in email growth for e-commerce. Let's connect."
He'd been posting for 4 months. Decent content. Low engagement. Zero inquiries.
One morning he was at the dog park, watching his labrador ignore every other dog.
A woman nearby was typing on her phone, laughing to herself. He asked what she was working on.
Turns out she'd spent 15 years ghostwriting founder stories. She'd helped dozens of founders raise money just by telling their story differently.
She glanced at his LinkedIn bio on his phone.
"People aren't following you because they don't know who you are yet," she said.
Then she rewrote it on a napkin in about 90 seconds.
❌ What Alex had: "8 years in marketing. Specialising in email growth for e-commerce. Let's connect."
✅ What it became: "I spent 8 years growing someone else's email list. Then I burned out, quit on a Tuesday, and spent 3 months wondering if I'd made the worst decision of my life. Now I help e-commerce founders do in 6 weeks what took me 8 years to figure out."
Same person. Completely different pull.
"How is that so much better?"
"Justin Welsh calls this the Founder Story Framework," she said. "Seven pieces. Used it for years."
"Most people write about what they do. Nobody cares about what you do until they know why you do it."
"The transformation is what your audience is buying. Show them you've already made the journey they're trying to make."
"Two steps. Run them in one prompt. You'll have a working backstory in 15 minutes."
She handed him the napkin.
Alex opened his AI sidekick and got to work.
🎯 Step 1: Find your transformation and build your backstory
⏱️ 15 minutes
This prompt does two things in one run.
First, it surfaces the 7 transformation angles hidden in your story — so you can pick the one that speaks most directly to your audience.
Then it builds a complete 7-part backstory around whichever transformation you choose.
Here's what it produces:
❌ Before: "Hi, I'm a freelance email marketing consultant with 8 years of experience. I help e-commerce brands grow their lists and increase revenue. Previously worked at two agencies."
✅ After: "Obstacle: I spent 8 years climbing someone else's ladder — until I got laid off from a role I'd given everything to.
Internal struggle: I was 34 and terrified I'd wasted my best years building someone else's brand.
External struggle: People kept asking 'so what are you going to do now?' — like losing my job meant I'd failed. My savings were shrinking. My confidence was gone.
Change event: I landed one small client — a friend's Shopify store — and helped them 3x their email revenue in 90 days.
Spark: That client referred me to two more. I realised I was worth more on my own than I'd ever been inside a company.
Guide: A mentor told me: 'You already know how to do this. Stop asking permission.'
Result: I walked away from corporate for good. Now I help e-commerce founders grow their email lists the way I wish someone had helped me — fast, without the 8 years of trial and error."
[Alex's AI sidekick filled in the remaining backstory sections with his specific details...]
Here's the prompt that did that:
I'm going to give you my topic and target audience.
Topic = {What result have you achieved? e.g. "Left corporate to consult",
"Grew my email list to 5,000", "Built a daily writing habit"}
Target Audience = {Who do you want to help? e.g. "People leaving
corporate jobs", "New freelancers", "Solopreneurs starting out"}
STEP 1 — List 7 different transformations my target audience is trying
to make. Each one should be 10 words or fewer.
Use the format: "From [current state] to [desired state]"
Cover these 7 transformation types in this order:
1. Material/Financial
2. Emotional
3. Physical
4. Behavioral
5. Knowledge/Skill
6. Relational
7. Belief
Then ask me: "Which transformation resonates most with your story?"
Wait for my answer before continuing.
STEP 2 — Once I've chosen a transformation, write my backstory using
this framework. Fill in each section based on my answers:
Obstacle = {What struggle did you overcome? e.g. "Got laid off 3 times"}
Internal Struggle = {How did it make you feel? e.g. "Zero confidence,
felt like a failure"}
External Struggle = {What did others say or do? e.g. "People ridiculed
me for losing my job"}
Change Event = {What one decision changed everything? e.g. "Took a
chance on a small consulting client"}
Spark = {What moment made you realise things were turning? e.g.
"First client referred two more"}
Guide = {Who helped you see your potential? e.g. "A mentor told me to
stop asking permission"}
Result = {Where are you now? e.g. "Full-time consultant, helping others
skip the hard part"}
Write the backstory in 7 short sections — one per step.
Tone: direct, honest, no fluff. First person. Like talking to a friend.
Each section should be 2-4 sentences.
Finally — review all 7 sections and tell me which one is the strongest
hook for my specific audience. In 2-3 sentences, explain why it will
resonate most with them.
Alex had been trying to sound professional for 4 months.
He hadn't realised that was the problem.
The backstory the AI built wasn't polished. But it sounded like a real person. That was new.
One section made his stomach drop in the best way — the external struggle. He'd never written that out loud before.
That was the section he posted first.
🏆 Alex's results
Before:
A LinkedIn bio that read like a job application
4 months of posting with almost no new followers or inquiries
No reason for strangers to care who he was
After:
A complete 7-part backstory — ready to use across LinkedIn, his newsletter, and sales calls
The external struggle section got 3x his usual engagement when posted as a standalone thread
Two inbound inquiries in the first week — both said "your story sounds just like mine"
Total time: 15 minutes. Not 4 more months of guessing.
The AI found the transformation angles he'd been sitting on the whole time. Alex made the editorial call on which one felt true. BOOM.
One prompt. Two steps. You go from a forgettable bio to a story that makes the right people stop and think "that could be me."
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'proving you don't need a team to build something big' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️