Sample Business Bio Makeover
"After" Version
Review the
"before" version of this sample
revision of a business bio.
Denise O'Berry's
bio, along with her Web sites at
whatspossible.com, teamtrac.com and schmooze-ability.com,
gave me the impression that she was targeting
new, naive business owners and moderately
experienced sole proprietors who took in $50,000
to $100,000 per year.
The term
"small business" means things to
different audiences, and thus should be treated
with extreme care. Although the Small
Business Administration considers "small
businesses" to include those with up to 100
employees, to many people the phrase would not
encompass thriving businesses with $2 million in
revenues. Therefore I used the phrase
"business owner" instead of
"small business owner" in rewriting
this for Denise.
My second concern
was that her bio sounded like her market wanted
cheap, easy solutions — again, not consistent
with her target market of experienced business
owners pulling in $250,000 to $2 million per
year. I decided to get rid of the phrases
"ways to grow their business with less
effort" and "get more with less"
in favor of more sophisticated business
concepts.
Third, from the
original version I did not get a clear sense of
the nature and depth of her business
experience. I asked some questions,
elicited a fuller picture of her credentials and
rewrote the bio to better position her as an
expert. For instance, I didn't think serving on
the boards of local organizations gave her
"expert" status as well as did her
media appearances, which I inserted in the final
bio.
Now here is my
revised version of Denise O'Berry's bio.
The "After" Version
With more than two decades of
operational and management experience, Denise
O'Berry has developed a sharp eye for how
businesses get bloated with inefficiencies,
cross-purposes and miscommunication — and how
they can retool for a sleeker, smoother,
strategically focused organization. As an
entrepreneur who quickly built her own
successful consulting business, she also
empathetically helps other business owners set
priorities and create the balance they want
between life and work.
Her clients have ranged from
telecommunications giants like GTE to
Mom-and-Pop retail shops, with most having 10 or
fewer employees and up to $2 million in annual
sales. She writes a regular column for both
Tampa Bay Wired and BrainBuzz.com and has been
featured in the Tampa Tribune and on BayNews9.
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Copyright 2000 Marcia Yudkin.
All rights reserved.
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My fee for writing or
rewriting a business bio is $300.
"When I hired her to write me a new bio, Marcia Yudkin was fast,
professional and extremely helpful. I appreciate the fact that she took
time to get to know my language, as Australian business-speak is somewhat
different to that of the US in that it's not good to speak ourselves up too
emphatically. Where I had been struggling, she got it perfectly right." -
Teresa Keleher, Sydney, Australia
Inquire
about having me create a dynamic new bio for
you.
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