“My About section is fine,” he said. “I just need better lines.”
He’d sent it over already. I read it twice before the call.
Certified business coach. Fifteen years of experience. Passionate about helping entrepreneurs unlock their potential.
“What does someone actually get from working with you?” I asked.
Silence.
“I mean, what changes for them. Specifically.”
“They grow their business,” he said.
“Everyone on LinkedIn says that.”
He laughed, a little uncomfortable. “Fair.”
We didn’t touch a single sentence that call. Instead, I asked him to read his own About section like a stranger would, someone who’d never heard of him, scrolling past a hundred profiles that same afternoon.
“Would you stop on this?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t say anything a hundred other coaches couldn’t say.”
That was the actual problem. Not the writing. Fifteen years of experience and a list of credentials had never been translated into what a stranger would actually care about: what breaks for a business owner, and what he specifically does to fix it.
So we started over, not with sentences. With questions.
What’s the one problem you solve better than almost anyone else. Not everything you can help with. The one thing.
Who is this for, specifically. Not “entrepreneurs.” Which entrepreneurs, stuck at what stage, dealing with what exact frustration.
What does a client’s business look like six months after working with you. Not a feeling. A specific, describable change.
He had answers to all three. He’d just never been asked to put them in that order, in public, on his own profile.
Twenty minutes later, we had one sentence that did more work than his entire old About section. It named the exact business owner he helps, the exact point they’re stuck at, and the exact thing that changes because of him. No credentials up front. No “passionate about.” Just the problem and the proof.
He messaged me two weeks later. Three inbound DMs that referenced his About section directly. That hadn’t happened in over a year.
Nobody rewrote his sentences that day. We just stopped guessing at what mattered, asked him directly, and let the answers do the writing.
Most About sections don’t fail because the writing is weak. They fail because nobody was specific enough to be asked those three questions first.
Three takeaways:
A stranger scrolling past your About section decides in seconds whether you sound like every other coach, or not. Credentials don’t answer that. Specificity does.
Before rewriting anything, answer three questions: the one problem you solve best, exactly who it’s for, and what specifically changes for them.
A single specific sentence outperforms a full paragraph of vague credibility markers, every time.
If you want help finding the one sentence hiding in your own About section, subscribe to The Content Brief. I break down exactly this, every week.