When It Comes To Your Personal Bio, Don’t Be a “Visionary”

It’s time to talk about your personal biography, whether it’s online, in a conference program, on social media, or anywhere else. A bio is incredibly important for your career. Its purpose is to showcase your experience, credibility, and expertise, but far too often, bios go way overboard and just aren’t believable.

A strong bio answers three questions:
1. Who are you? (role + positioning)
2. Why should I care? (credibility, results, or impact)
3. What do you do now? (current focus or mission)

Most bios fail because they try to tell a life story rather than make a point. So here are some tips to help keep your bio from driving people away and instead, make it compelling so people want more.

1) People who call themselves “visionary,” “imaginative,” or “world-changing” usually aren’t. Ease up on how spectacular you are. Those superlatives are great, but even if true, let other people say them, not you.

2) The conference speaker with the longest bio in the program is usually the least experienced. The most experienced and respected speakers at conferences don’t need to jazz up their bio. So you can always tell the less-experienced, insecure speakers because their bios drone on and on…

3) Have some fun. People love it when you know how to be self-deprecating and make fun of yourself. This short bio my friend and marketing expert Jonathan Bock often uses, is a fantastic example:

Jonathan Bock is the founder and president of Grace Hill Media. Mr. Bock began his career in publicity at Warner Bros. Prior to that, he was a sitcom writer, widely regarded throughout the industry as “not very good.” Father of two beautiful daughters, he remains married to his first wife, Kelly. He also, with a few warm-up frames, can consistently bowl in the low nineties.

4) If you have a fascinating incident in your career, mention it. Early in my career (before drones), I was doing some aerial filming in Jamaica and literally fell out of the helicopter. It’s a long story, but I survived because I was tied in with a rope (which left me dangling under the chopper). So I often put that incident in my bio, and it’s the thing most interviewers, TV hosts, and podcasters want to talk about.

5) Did I mention keep it short? Nobody wants to hear your life story, so I recommend you create these versions:
     A byline – one line that captures who you are. Bylines are used when you endorse a book, write a magazine article, or in other places where space is limited. So pack a punch.
    A short bio – keep this a short paragraph. Plenty of places don’t have space for something long, so this will often be your most used version.
    A medium bio – this will be used quite a bit, so make it two paragraphs at the most.
    A long bio – sometimes, people will want more. Perhaps it’s a job interview, a client proposal, or another use where they want the whole story. But even with a long bio, keep it to a few paragraphs, not an entire page.

Now, let me offer another perspective. If I could go deeper and boil it down to one thing, it’s this:

Your bio isn’t about you—it’s about the problem you solve.

That’s the shift that changes everything. Instead of it being about, “What have I done?” It should be about, “What happens when I show up?”

One is information. The other is transformation.

And transformation is what people pay for.

A great bio can make a huge difference in your career, so learn how to make it work for you. Length, how you describe yourself, which accomplishments you mention (or don’t mention), and your vision are all critical for sharing your story with the world.

So make it count.