Writing your Own Bio: Do’s & Don’ts

If you ever find yourself in a position where you feel like you have to convince someone or to prove yourself, then there’s work to be done in the Soul Track of your business.

Welcome to the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Podcast, unconventional business advice for the highly, creative secretly sensitive and wildly ambitious entrepreneur. I’m your host. Christine Kane. Let’s do this.

Hello my friends. This is Christine Kane and you are listening to episode number 54 of the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Podcast. And today we’re going to talk about your bio or maybe it’s just your about page, or maybe it’s just your about paragraph for that event you’re going to speak at, provided it’s still happening or hasn’t been canceled. Yes. We’re going to always assume the best, but whatever it is, we all know that your bio, your about page, is a key piece of your marketing materials. And we also all know that whether it’s in first person or you’re talking about me and I, or third person you’re talking about she or he or they, you’re the one who wrote it. We know we all know that. And that’s because even if you have the world’s best copywriter on your team, no writer in the world is going to be able to take on writing your bio without a heavy dose of your input. So it’ll serve you to know what you’re doing and also what not to do in this activity of writing about yourself.

So this episode was inspired by two things. The first was a question that was sent into me from my Uplevel Cafe community, and we will get to that question. And then also last week I did an in the moment, kind of an overhaul and rewrite of a bio for one of my colleagues, who came to me, uh, kind of struggling with writing her own bio. And this is not an uncommon situation, by the way, it is hard to write your own bio because you know, none of us feel comfortable with that, and that’s why we need to talk about it here. And let me just go ahead and say, by the way, I change the names of people I mentioned here, unless they give me permission to share their name. So if you hear a first name and it happens to be yours, and if you were a client of mine at one point, and you think I’m talking about you, I am not. I’ve changed every way anyone could recognize those who are mentioned in this episode.

So first, the question I got, it was from a woman. We will call her Sheila. She is a few years into her business and she has left behind academia and the institutions of formal education to become a consultant in her field. And she was told by a potential client that he wanted to see her resume. And she went on to describe how icky this made her feel, because some not so great experiences at various institutions she worked at, and she mentioned her own fears and obsessions and self doubt. And I’m not going to go into all that, but here’s the key part of her question. And I am, I’m quoting her note right now. She says on a purely practical level, I wonder what the best way is to highlight my educational experience without having to dredge up the fact that I worked at four different schools for just a year each. I don’t want to share a resume again, as part of my promotional material. I’ve added my degrees to Facebook, as well as LinkedIn. Should I be more explicit about my teaching experience anywhere? So I can point people there who ask for a resume or how should I respond to that request in the future?

So before I go into do’s and don’ts of writing your bio or your about page, let me say this first in response to Sheila’s question. If people are asking you for a resume, I want you to please consider two things. The first thing to consider is about you. And that is to consider that you are perhaps still holding the energy of job mentality. So as an entrepreneur and a marketer, you know, most of us didn’t just like pop out of the womb as entrepreneurs and marketers. We we’ve had jobs. We’ve been in institutions. We’ve been in various lives that propelled us to make our own business. So a lot Of times we’re still holding onto the remnants of those old things.

So even the fact that Sheila had this simple preference that she expressed, which was, I don’t want to give out my resume anymore. That’s enough for me as a coach to say, great, you’re a marketer. You don’t have to. But the mere fact that this request sent her into a place where she’s questioning herself, tells me that Sheila, maybe you haven’t fully embraced the ownership, the entrepreneur mentality. And that is a big shift. And I understand that it might take time. And we always have these ways that, that old job stuff still shows up for us, but it’s a worthy thing to examine. And this is what we call here at Uplevel, the Soul Track stuff. It’s the mindset stuff. It’s the soft stuff. And I realize that in the words that you wrote leading up to your question, you even mentioned that this was the key issue.

So Sheila, you already coached yourself on that, but for the Strategy Track stuff where you are, the thing we’re talking about, like coaching would be this, your action step here is to create some kind of script that you write down. And you know, when you’re getting this question, if this a common thing that throws you off have a script that you’ve written down and rehearsed that responds to this. And by the way, this is true for all of us. Anything that throws you off in your business. Like if you get questions that send you into these lapses at where you’re defending yourself, or you’re trying to convince anyone of anything, it might be worth taking some time to craft how you are going to respond from here on out. And if you have my book, the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Entrepreneur, by the way, which Amazon put on sale this week. So it’s a good time to get it. If you don’t have it, they don’t tell us when they do this kind of thing. But there it is, it is on sale now. But if you have my book, I would point you to page 213 to find the key phrase and a whole little conversation about this. It’s, it’s how I guide my clients to deal with any of these kinds of situations. But in Sheila’s case, my response would be something like this. And, and this is not it, but you kind of got to tweak it to make it your own language, but it’d be something like, you know, oh wow, that’s an interesting question. Now that I run my own business, I don’t have a resume because I’m not in the job market anymore, but I will point you to the about page on my website. And you can let me know if you have any further questions.

So the second thing I want you to consider, and I feel like I’ve just completely gone on to a little rant, so you have no idea I was doing a first and a second thing, but this is the second thing that I want you to consider If somebody is asking you for your resume, all right? And by the way, if they’re asking you for your resume and you’re a business owner, you most likely need to consider that you have to, UpLevel your marketing and probably even your sales sequence. And that’s because if you’ve done the work of positioning yourself, like on your about page with your marketing materials or on your social media platforms, your ideal client, isn’t going to come looking for a resume because you’ve done the foundational work that positions you in a way that that’s not going to be top of mind for them.

Now, with that said, you may have gotten some random referrals somewhere. And if you are in an arena, like, you know, say the academic world, where people don’t understand service-based businesses, and they’re still caught up in the game of resumes and cv’s or whatever, then your job is to have that aforementioned script and you point them in the right direction. And you tell them how you do things, not be running around like they’re the ones in charge.

All of this is to say, that as a rule, if you ever, if you ever find yourself in a position where you feel like you have to convince someone or to prove yourself, then there’s work to be done in the Soul Track of your business. So just in case some of you don’t know what that means, we at UpLevel, I teach that we, or our business clients, I teach them that we have two tracks in our business. One is the Strategy Track, which is what everyone thinks is what business is all about. But there, right alongside it is what I call the Soul Track. And that tends to be where the problems really reside, because it’s all the little ways that you have your blind spots. You have your patterns, you have your mindsets and all these little things that can trigger you not to do the right things in the strategy track or to blow them off. So the key thing is that you’re the owner, you’re the service provider. And as such, you are in the alpha role, you lead the way you lead the path. And if someone tries to step into the alpha role, they’re either not an ideal client and will constantly be doing power plays with you If they do become your client and you don’t want that shit, or alternatively, as I said, you have marketing work to do. All right?

So with all of that out of the way, let’s dive into the do’s and don’ts of writing your own bio. So our first do is simply that you got to write many, many, many, many, many drafts of your bio, read it out loud, share it with other business owners or with your coach or with a peer. And if you know, people who are great writers get their input as well, or if you have trusted former clients or even current clients, you can ask them to read it over. But the bottom line is that your bio needs more than one quick cursory throwdown, it’s worth writing. And let me just add that the practice, this is important, Okay, the practice of thinking about and writing about yourself, it’s such a great deep dive into understanding who you are as a business and as a service provider. And that includes things like, you know, what is your message? Where, where are your credibility factors, your career highlights, and maybe even the most important part of this is that as you write and rewrite all of these drafts, you’re going to learn what you can simply stop talking about, like what goes to the cutting floor, because ultimately it’s not relevant to your ideal client. It is so great to, to write about yourself and really understand who you are as a business owner, not as a little, you know, ego that’s out there running around.

And this brings me to the second do, very conveniently. And that is to write for your ideal client, not for your ego. So when we’re writing for our ego, that’s when we’re coming up with all these like, well, what about the fact that I worked at four schools at four separate years? And, oh my goodness, we can only think about all the, like, really, either the super dramatic bad stuff, or, you know, we go right into like, I’ve got to puff myself up. And, and that takes us into that level where we’ve stepped conveniently out of integrity. Who your ideal client is will determine things like whether or not your about page on your website should be in first person or not. That’s a common question people have, and there is no rule that says to do it in first or third person. It’s really all about the context. Who is reading this and how would it serve them and their needs and preferences? If you wrote it in a more casual style, how does it position you? Why would it be in first person. As the owner of your business, you’re the one who decides what is relevant to that client.

If you want more conversation, by the way, about ideal clients, um, Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Business Podcast, number, uh, episode 24 is one place that you can start for sure. And if you’re in the Uplevel Cafe community like Sheila, there is a training in our Strategy Tracks suite of trainings on ideal clients. You have to know who they are first and then be able to communicate to them very, very succinctly in all your marketing materials. So just as an example, like I said, I get a lot of client, uh, clients asking about, you know, should my about page be in first person because yours is. So mine is in first person and it tells the story of me starting my whole business life off as a songwriter and performer. And that may, you know, it’s a kind of a thing I questioned because that was a while ago, but it’s still relevant for a lot of reasons. And the first is because I’ve, you know, I’ve walked where my clients are walking. I always say it’s like, sometimes some of us are the after of our clients before. I have been there, I’ve been that solo person, that artists trying to figure it all out, so it matters.

The second thing is that it also, sort of like the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Entrepreneur, it positions the kind of person I am and kind of talks to my client in that I am not naturally some left brain data driven, aggressive business type. And typically my clients aren’t either. And also it answers a very natural question that is kind of, you know, what the fuck is a former songwriter doing coaching people in their business? And that’s, that’s similar to Sheila’s issue of people asking for resumes. And that’s a key thing here is that sometimes the pushback you get from people will show you exactly what needs to be in your bio. And if you scroll down on my about page, on my website, you’ll see where I made that exact objection. And it actually turned into a headline because it is something that matters when, when somebody asks you these things, you want to make sure that you’re getting over some of those objections subtly or not so subtly in your about page.

And lastly, the reason that I have my, uh, that story in there is that I left the music part there, because if someone can be successful in the entertainment industry, I always say this, if you can be successful in the entertainment industry, then you have kind of proven that, you know what you’re doing with having a business and being a marketer. So to be, uh, an artist and to also be your own manager and record label and office, that’s a big deal, even if you might not know it’s a big deal, ’cause I never had managers or marketers on my team. I did it myself. And so when it came time to be a business coach that wasn’t just me putting up a shingle and calling myself a business coach, it came because people kept asking me over and over and I had walked my talk for years so I could talk to them about it. And then I went on to coach people on that. And then I went on to build a company after that. So my about page positions all of that and I want that to be there. At some point, it may not be relevant, but for when I, I need to redo my website, I am, I totally get that. But when I did that one, that was relevant. Okay, I’m moving on.

Now, our third do is something that will prevent overwhelm simply because you’re armed and ready with this knowledge. And that is that you should plan on writing, not just one but many bios for many different places. Your about page on your site might be in first person, but you’re still going to need bios that are in third person. And you’re going to need bios that are much more professional and much more polished. And some that are very short and succinct. And I have files of different ones that I’ve done in my I’ve worked with my copywriter on that all, all have different tags and labels for what they are. You’re probably going to need to know how to highlight just the basics for those shorter bios, just really cut to the chase on them.

And that leads right into our next do, which is that for every bio you write on social media, you have to consider the context of social media and or the platform of that particular social media channel. And what that means is that your bio on LinkedIn won’t be the same as your bio on Twitter or Facebook or your book jacket. They’re all different. So I just made my first appearance on Clubhouse last week on Dr. Finance and I had to get my Clubhouse bio written, which was a radically different bio from all the others that I have out there. And it required really researching what clubhouse is. I haven’t been the one of the first people to dive in. I know I’m behind the times, but I just, I, I live what I teach and what I teach is that, you know, if it’s too overwhelming at first, you don’t need to go rush in and do it. And if your peeps aren’t on it, then don’t go jumping into the latest, greatest new social media platform go in slowly, which is what I’m doing. But all of this is to say, I had to write a whole new bio on clubhouse.

So our final do is an assignment to do before you even write your bio. And that is to make a list of your highlights. Like what are the little things that you want to make sure are in there and not even necessarily that you want to make sure are in there? What are the little things that you might dismiss that are kind of cool that you’ve never really shared with anybody? So I had a client who, uh, at one point had sat with the Dalai Lama and never even brought it out. And granted she’s a Buddhist and so it’s not going to be something where she goes, you know, her context is not going to be being a braggart, but it would serve her to even have that mentioned in there. And she was so nervous to even say it, but it was kind of a big thing. So make a list. Like if you wrote a book, if you had did a TEDx talk, a lot of my clients have done TEDx talks. If you’ve spoken at a certain event, if you’ve won an award, just put it all out there on, in bullet points and just don’t disregard your coolest highlights.

I recently saw someone in Uplevel Cafe, she’s an intuitive healer and an energy worker. And she happened to mention that one of her clients is an Olympic medalist and that’s worth a mention, that’s worth a highlight. And this is the crafty part of how to position these things. You don’t make a full paragraph out of it, but you know, one of my past clients was an Olympic gold medalist and I added that one line in one of my bio’s as well. It’s not the major highlight, but it matters to me. I think it’s a cool mention. It’s cool for her. It’s cool for me that I got to be around her and those things stand out in your reader’s mind as well. So don’t diss them.

Okay. So now let’s get to the don’ts. And I just want to say just a little side mention here. I’m not really a black and white kind of person, so I don’t like do’s and don’ts. If we had room on the podcast title, I’d probably call this, you know, try this, avoid this, but then that probably wouldn’t make sense. And we don’t really have room on the, on the little thing, the image of my podcasts. So let’s just say that all of those do’s I just mentioned were, Hey, try this and these don’ts are kind of just, Hey, consider avoiding this.

All right. So our first don’t is to avoid, avoid saying things about yourself, that, that make you sound kind of like a douche bag. And I know that this is kind of the weird part about all of this, because I’m sitting here talking about like, oh, make sure you brag about yourself, and we know that you have to do, do a little bit of a brag about yourself and you have to say things like, well, you know, you don’t have to, I’m not, you know, there’s no one holding you down here, but it’s good to say things that you’ve coached dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of clients. And that includes a CEO of a fortune 500 company or an Olympic gold medalist. But there’s that weird, fine line between that necessary brag. That sounds very succinct and clear and cool. And then that factor that sort of like turns you into like, you know, the cringe-worthy kind of mention, but I will say with that said, there are a few kinds of things to avoid.

So for one, don’t call yourself things like world renowned or world class, or say that you’re a revolutionary or that you’re legendary. Those are kind of things that other people say about you. Or, you know, maybe you’ve earned your way to the very top and someone else’s writing your bio and they say it about you, but I just would kind of consider avoiding it. Like I said, it’s tender territory when you’re saying them about yourself and I don’t want to be judgy about it, but I’ve seen some otherwise very cool centered grounded people do this. And to me, it kind of just points to the fact that they didn’t take the time and spend good quality writing and rewriting time, what they really wanted to say and what they’ve really accomplished and thinking about who they’re trying to say it to. Okay.

So, uh, it is early morning, by the way in the birds are now coming out, you can probably hear them in the background. Our next don’t is to please avoid thinking that you have to cover every last little role and position and every single year and month that you’ve ever lived and held and done. So in service to Sheila, this is not a resume. And that’s the gift of writing your own bio or your own about pages that you get to simply highlight the gist of it all. So in Sheila’s situation, she could simply say something like to, to address the question she had there. She can say something like, you know, uh, Sheila taught this subject to hundreds of students working in the school system for four years when she began getting requests for private coaching, she left the educational system and started her own business. It’s as simple as that. So, you know, Sheila’s obsession around It is like, you know, it would have her writing something like, you know, Sheila worked for four different schools over the span of just four years.

And you might think that makes her look like she’s a flake and she couldn’t hold a job, but really it’s because the administration didn’t appreciate her genius or whatever it might be and go into all the drama behind it only, you know, the drama or only you know, all of the little nitty gritty details about it. And guess what? We all have nitty gritty details. We all have ups. We all have downs. We all have those moments that, that didn’t work very well. As the marketer, this is the good news. You get to determine how you position the story. So I sometimes tell my clients that marketing is a little bit like a Byron Katie’s The Work. And you’re asking a question sort of similar to the work where it’s like, what’s a better story I could tell here, how might I frame this? So I don’t get all bogged down by my various dramas that happen along the way.

So our next don’t is a little more broad, but I do think it matters when it comes to about pages and marketing and writing about yourself. So I’m going to say it here. Don’t for a minute think that if you go out and get one more certification or degree, that this will make your bio writing easier because everybody will be so very impressed at the fact that you have more letters after your name or that you can call yourself certified. There’s a syndrome that some business owners have, I call it degree addiction and people who have degree addiction are often the very ones who simply want to avoid the discomfort of learning how to market themselves. Because somewhere in our adult, little egos, we hope against hope that if we get one more accreditation or one more certification, or one more set of letters after our names, that, that this is going to be a golden ticket.

And I don’t know, man, I’ve been doing this for, I don’t even remember the last time I had a job I’ve been, uh, you know, 25 years, you know, and I know there’s just, there is no golden ticket. There’s no golden ticket. And that includes all the little things like, you know, sharing the stage with John Mayer, to going and getting whatever set of letters you have after your name. It just doesn’t matter. I’ve, I’ve had it all. And it really comes down to, we all just have to learn how to be better marketers and understand how to communicate with our ideal clients and share the message and services that we offer with the world. And it’s a bummer. I get it. But most of us are avoiding marketing, which the way I teach it marketing is nothing more than learning how to communicate well. That is often the missing ingredient to you getting clients. And that’s it.

So our next don’t, I’m just going to call our next don’t, you know, don’t pad your bra. And I say this as somebody who grew up, you know, flat-chested her whole life, so I can say things like that, but it was, it’s a laneway of putting it. But the bottom line is don’t try to add shit that just isn’t there. You know, it kind of just helps us just, let’s just cut that down. Don’t add stuff that’s not there. Don’t try to make your education sound like it’s Ivy League. If you went to the community college of Cambridge county, don’t, don’t write that you went to the college of Cambridge and hope that you can get away with sounding impressive. You will get busted on these things. And, and again, if you’re doing little things like that, and you’re, if you’re even sort of considering stuff like that, we love you. We support you in everything about yourself, but it’s, it is worth taking a walk into the Soul Track of your business and maybe looking around at the neediness and self-worth issues within those little dark tunnels, because the truth is that you are enough. You don’t got pat it, you don’t gotta lie. You don’t got to make yourself seem more impressive. It’s just a matter of learning how to highlight the highlights and, um, yeah, along the same topic of, uh, saying things that aren’t really putting things that aren’t really true in there. I would avoid trying to fill your bio with impressive sounding words to make up for again, that little part of you that thinks it’s not very, it’s not impressive enough, everything that you’ve done.

So I’m finding a more recent disease among podcasters and bio writing and stuff. People use words like literally a lot when they’re trying to pat it, as in, you know, she has literally coached thousands of people or a lot of varies or reallies, or, or they say things like highly successful, you know, you could just say successful, you don’t need those words. Simple is impressive, because it cuts right to the, the point. And along that same vein, I would watch how many times you’re using the same words because you think your creativity has run dry. And this is where I’ve been given permission by my colleague to use one little piece of her Bio is an example of some of these little foibles. This is not at all intended to make her seem like she’s done something wrong here. She saw what I was staying here. She could see where she was getting all lost in it. And then she said, you know what? Go ahead and read it. All right? And so you can listen for the padding. You can listen for the repeat words and the unnecessary fluff that waters down what actually could be a very strong bio. And, and I rewrote it and I’ll show you, I’ll tell you how I rewrote it. But I also want to let you know, I’ve changed this person’s name to Jill. All right? So this is what she had.

Jill is a world-class coach, mentor, consultant, and developer of people. She has traveled the world training, comma, coaching, comma, and consulting in a 30 year career as a professional leadership development and behavioral development consultant, comma, executive coach, comma, mentor, comma, and business coach. And I’m saying the commas, because I want you to see how much padding and stacking is trying to go along here. Jill has created comma designed, comma and delivered internationally successful cutting edge leadership programs, comma coaching programs come and behavioral skills training. She has literally developed thousands of leaders comma coaches comma therapist, comma business owners and consultants in large international organizations comma medium-sized businesses comma small businesses, solo businesses, freelancers comma and individual private clients from a wide range of professional fields.

She is a professional developer of coaches. Jill has trained slash accredited slash certified slash leaders, HR professionals, professional coaches, more commas. You get the idea. So it’s somebody who is, is really trying to just get it all in there and add some extra words and make it, you know, just more impressive than maybe she felt. So based on what you’ve heard, you can probably spot the many places where the, the little insecurities are woven within what could be a very impressive bio.

But the real problem, like I said, this is not an issue of like Jill’s got problems. You know, it’s just that Jill didn’t take the time to read this out loud and clean up the fact that she used words like coach and consultant and mentor and professional and development, like she had them in a salt shaker, and this is what her, her, what I saw in her first draft is what Ann Lamont would call the shitty first draft.

And the problem that many of us face here, the problem that we all have is that we write our bio and then we’re so uncomfortable that we want to just avoid the discomfort of facing it after that. And that’s kind of what Jill here, because like many of us, she does not enjoy writing about herself and doesn’t want to face that fact. And so I sat her down and I forced her to face it. You know, she has the chops, she has the credibility, but again, it’s, we, we all have this little thing of like, they might’ve missed one of the great things about me. So all of that is just to illustrate, It’s very easy when you don’t feel quite impressive enough to overdo it, to avoid your discomfort. It’s worth taking the time to face that discomfort and write and rewrite and rewrite and ask yourself, what is the most pertinent to your ideal client?

So I walked Jill through this draft, and I talked with her about her ideal client, what exactly needed to be conveyed here. And based on our conversation, I took those first three paragraphs, and I just kind of boiled it down into one, and it might not go into many details, but it, I think it still gives the needed punch. And here’s how it ended up reading. Jill is a coach, mentor, consultant, and developer of people as a professional leadership development consultant, she created and designed programs in leadership, coaching and behavioral skills, delivering her trainings to fortune 500 companies and small businesses around the world, working with thousands of executives, managers, and leaders. So we still have some commas. We still have a lot there, but it kind of wraps all of that verbiage up into a more concise paragraph. And it was a little scary for Jill to let go of all the details of all the years that she had spent doing various things, some of them slightly different, you know, of course she wanted to make sure everyone out there knew all of the stuff that she’d done, but in the end, I think she was relieved to keeping it simple. And I think it’s going to be much more hard hitting for her ideal client.

So, um, yeah, with that said, I want to finish up with two common questions that I get about bios. One is like any advice for writing my about page and first person, you know, people get very scared to write their about page in first person, because I think they think it might seem unprofessional. Like I said, a lot of my clients have been incorporate. They’ve been in environments where professionalism is, is key and they’re scared that it might make them seem flaky or a little out there, or no one will like them. And that’s fine if you don’t want to do it, that’s great. You know, but in my experience, it’s actually not been the case. One of the things that we have to understand is that people buy from people. They don’t buy from an entity. They don’t buy from a business card. They don’t buy from a company. They like buying from people. And so with that said, what I’d like to do is just simply give you permission to have fun with your bio. And I would say to insert a little bit of humor, or maybe poke a little bit of fun at yourself, be real, talk about your hobbies, joke about your introverted nature, whatever. But then of course, you know, with that humanity that you bring to it, that lightness that you bring to it, you want to make sure that it also includes your mission. You know, why you’re doing what you’re doing, why it matters. And then of course you want to make sure that the highlights, the, the credibility elements are there as well.

The next question that I get, the second question is what if I am new to my business? What if I haven’t established any credibility yet? And I, I understand that I pretty much spent my time talking to people here who, who have done a bit of work and they’ve done some stuff. And they’ve, they’ve sort of got a lot going on in their background, or maybe even a little bit to be able to put in their bio. The key thing is that bios do take time. The building credibility factors do take time. You aren’t going to just sit there and fake it all. So you, at first in your business, you might have to do a little extra work to get some of those things rolling so that you can add to your bio.

You might have to call a few more people back. You might have to reach out to a little bit more. And like I said earlier, one of the gifts of doing what I do and having done, what I’ve done is that the entertainment industry is just harsh territory to have gotten my feet wet in. And when I was a songwriter before I had a bio where that, you know, was even sort of impressive, I had to work harder. So, so that I could get those experiences that I could then put it into a bio. And I actually did start looking at it as like, you know, what, if even if I completely fall flat on my face doing this opening act or doing whatever, I at least get to put it in my, about page or in my bio. And that’s how I started to look at all of this.

And I, I remember, uh, speaking to that whole working harder thing, um, there was a club that opened up in Greenville, South Carolina, which is about an hour from Asheville, where I live and lived then. Um, and a guy named John Jeter was the owner and John is a novelist in his own right. But, um, he was the owner or manager. I can’t remember which, but he, uh, I sent it in my, you know, all my stuff, my whole press pack and everything with my bio. And he wrote me, it was at least he wrote me and he did say, you know, we’re not gonna, we’re not going to have any unknowns appearing as opening act. And I, of course, first I had to go fetal and get rejected and feel all the things that people like us feel. So we’re going to go ahead and get that other way. And then I crafted an email to him. I wrote him an email and I essentially just begged him in a non beggy way. And what I think I did is I think I managed to walk just right up to the line of totally pathetic and then I stopped short and I pulled back and I stayed clear and he called me the next day and he gave me my first opening act. And I just, for anyone who knows the coffee house circuit, I opened for Greg Brown and I got my first chance. And, and then after that, my bio said something like, you know, Christine Kane has performed in dozens of local coffee houses and clubs. And she’s opened for several acts, including Greg brown. And it’s like that, that one name in there that could then maybe get another club owner to be like, okay, well, she’s got some, she’s got a little bit going for, so that’s the kinds of things that we have to do.

And I know the impatience you can feel. I know that you’re like, I’ll never get there, but I can tell you, I’ve worked. Some of my clients I’ve worked with for, you know, it’s, it’s not just two years. It’s three years. It’s four years. Some of my clients I worked with for 10 years. In fact, I was just, I just opened up a newsletter of a client of mine who I’d worked with for eight years. She now has a company, um, that is profoundly successful. And I was reading through her newsletter that came out this morning and I got to her bio and, and it was funny right before I recorded this. And I just went, man, it is wild, ’cause her photo, she, she is a different energetically, she is a different person than who walked in my door the first day.

And we all want that kind of thing, but it’s like, it’s not just getting the, the left-brain words to say about yourself. It’s also entering into the energy of ownership and an exiting out of like the little reactionary stuff and the I’m not enough and all that. And that takes time. So recognize that you’re, you’re creating something very big and you’re, you’re embodying something very big when you really step into the role of service, because it wasn’t just that her bio and her newsletter was so impressive, and she looked like this big, huge giant force-field of, you know, all kinds of ego and stuff, it’s that she just freaking owns it. And that was really cool to witness. So that’s how you start. That’s how you start to build the elements of your bio and your about page.

And for anyone out there who is starting to realize there’s a lot of cool stuff to be learned in your marketing and the Soul Track and Strategy Tracks of your business, then you are officially invited to visit and, uh, www.uplevelcafe.com and join the community there.

It’s 47 a month. We have a, and speaking of Strategy Track, there is a whole Strategy Track suite of trainings. And speaking of Soul Track, there is a Soul Track suite of trainings. There is a monthly coaching call with me, and that’s where I got the question that sparked this episode today. There is also the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ mindset intensive that happens. It’s a daily coaching lesson that you get on the mindset of entrepreneurship. Like there’s just a lot going on in this membership. We have an amazing community as well.

So, um, we are also by the way, closing out the month of August with our two final Sunday Summit Sessions. And these are not open to the public for those of you who have joined the ones that we’ve had, their, uh, only open to my peeps in the Uplevel world. And I’ve also upped the ante. I’ve added a bonus this month to people who sign up in August for Uplevel Cafe, and that is my never before, for sale, Uplevel Your Productivity program. And that is a five-part mini training. And that’s expressly for people like us, for those who get overwhelmed easy, it’s not like your typical, like, Hey, just do, you know, get things done. Kind of thing. It really is for the brain of the entrepreneur who, who leans a little bit more to the sensitive creative side. It really teaches you how to navigate the enormous amount of stuff that you have to do each and every day. And I, I did it. I, I made that training partially for me, but also ultimately serving my clients as well. So that is the bonus for when you sign up for Uplevel Cafe in August. So go to Uplevelcafe.com. That’s it. So hope to see you there in the group.

You will see everything on the page, by the way, that you get. And again, you guys, thanks a bazillion for listening to the Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Business Podcast. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate the reviews you’ve left. It’s been heartwarming to see some of the things you’ve written and, uh, I’ll see you right here next week. Bye everyone.