Strong Examples of Online Bios That Tell a Personal Narrative

The art of telling your personal narrative online, especially in a remote-first world, has never been more important. We can talk about principles of storytelling all day but sometimes it helps to just see how others have done it. Here's a list of some awesome personal bios I've seen - Jason

I'm no stranger to change.

I went to 8 schools, lived in 7 countries, and cycled through careers.

I’ve been a nomadic only child, a NYC party girl lost under strobe lights, a summa cum laude NYU grad student, a journalist in Sri Lanka, a media consultant selling Ad space in Bahrain and jumping off yachts, and a 6-figure, award-winning creative director for some of the biggest brands in the world, and now founder of kollektiv studio.

I’ve lived many different lifetimes in this one life.

I learned how to live in and create different worlds.

Now, I channel what felt like a curse into a superpower.

Creativity is change. It’s alchemic.

It’s taking the abstract and transforming it into an idea, a brand, a product, a poem, a business plan.

There is nothing more creative or radical than designing your life and building a conscious business aligned to that life.

And I am uniquely placed to help you do just that.

LFG

P.S. I'm the brand midwife, business bestie, creative coach and partner for visionaries ready to build the dream, the brand, the business.

Your turn.

What are you creating?

Let's get reacquainted (I'm pulling up a chair).

I don’t have a classic marketing background. In fact, I never thought I would become a marketer. I was first a tech news journalist.

Then my quarter-life crisis hit. I realized a passion for food. So I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, set on building culinary credibility so that I could become a food writer. But... there were only like, 8 food writing jobs, and all of them were taken. Oops.

Jobless, with some money saved, and needing to pay my monthly $700 rent, I started picking up random work. Running social media for a restaurant. Basic email marketing for a tiny startup. Taking orders for pies.

Months ticked by. No job.

Content marketing became my fallback plan.

So I researched the well-funded food startups and started applying. Eventually, one of them took a chance and hired me as a Content Marketing Manager. The rest is history.

Without formal marketing training, I learned much of what I know today through trial and error, following my intuition when in doubt.

I never really understood most of the paid side of marketing — PPC, display ads, buying lists — because it wasn’t how I, as a consumer, found beloved products.

So I stuck with organic & brand marketing. I was convinced that the best way to market is through your audience’s sources of influence: marketing to and connecting with your audience where they’re already paying attention.

That’s why I’m so passionate about what we do at SparkToro. We help you do effective, more sustainable marketing.

It’s a way of marketing that I’ve always believed in — and that always made me the odd one out.

And now, 30,000 followers later, I think people are starting to agree.

Thanks for joining me here. Please say hello in the comments and tell me what you believe about marketing!

(And maybe, consider creating a free SparkToro account. Link below in the comments. 😏)

Amanda Goetz is a 2x founder, 3x CMO, brand builder and content creator on personal and professional growth and brand building, inspiring over 150,000 people every week through her social insights and weekly newsletter, 🧩 Life's A Game.

Amanda Goetz, was the founder and visionary behind House of Wise, a wellness company focused on creating space for more sleep, hotter sex and less stress. She started House of Wise during the pandemic in her garage, raised two rounds of venture capital and sold it in 2022 all while homeschooling three young children as a single mom.

Born and raised in a single traffic light Midwest farm town, Amanda is a first generation college grad. Her dad is the town plumber & electrician. A self proclaimed over-achiever, Amanda worked three jobs in college while maintaining a 3.9 GPA and graduating early.

Fast forward to 2017. Amanda found herself in NYC with 3 children under the age of 5 and navigating a divorce at the height of her career. Living life by a societally-approved checklist of success left her nearly broken. She spent the next 6 years unlearning hustle culture and learning a new way to approach her ambitious life.

Amanda was the former head of brand for The Knot - the global leader in weddings. Previously, Goetz served as a startup founder building availability software for the wedding industry after spending years analyzing companies for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program. She also worked for celebrity wedding planner David Tutera as Head of Marketing developing the go-to market strategy for his brands, licensing deals and client partners.

She has built an audience of over 150,000 in the startup and business community learning to live a life of ambition and success without subscribing to today’s hustle culture. She launched a newsletter called 🧩 Life’s a Game with Amanda Goetz to help high performers learn actionable tips for living a life of intention.

Amanda’s been featured on Access Hollywood, The Skinny Confidential, Forbes, Business Insider and more.

On a mission to create financially free and free-thinking humans.

I founded a media company that teaches people to think critically and cashflow unconventionally with boring businesses called Contrarian Thinking.

Our newsletter has over 250,000 weekly readers, here: http://contrarianthinking.co/join.

Our Mastermind has taught 2,000+ members biz buying, biz growing, and doing deals.

This is how I got here:

• Got my degree in PR & Journalism from ASU's Honors School (honored to be partying mostly); MBA from Georgetown University; Ph.D. from Fundacao Gestulio Vargas.
• Started as a journalist at the Mexico border. I witnessed horrors there that made me realize money = power to change the world. I wanted to speak the language of freedom ($$), so I went to finance.
• Joined Vanguard ETFs in 2008 (wild timing). Then: Goldman Sachs→ SSGA → LatAm investments for First Trust → MD/Partner at the largest cannabis private equity firms.

Then, candidly, I got tired of the rules and trappings of the traditional finance world. I went a little rogue, and not everyone always liked that.

Now, I value experience over degrees.
Betting on myself over making $$$ for other people.
Main Street over Wall Street.

My mission is less suits, more boots. Meaning: we the people holding the power… and the purse strings.

Having been in business over 15 years, and started, scaled, and sold 4 business, I have pretty much seen it all, from pandemic and recession to success and failure.

Following an ADHD diagnosis in 2020, everything changed for me when I realised that life didn't have to be so hard and I could build a business that worked for my brain... and my bank balance.

I sold my agency and started working on a business that prioritised my time, and energy and - as I was confident would happen - everything else followed.

I now work with neurodivergent founders to create their brain-first business, and support companies to understand the benefits of, and help integrate a neurodiverse team.

Identity 1: Refugee
On April 30th, 1975, my family and I fled Saigon as the U.S. withdrew. Although Saigon is where I was born, America has become the only home I truly know. Despite best-laid plans, I have never been back.

Identity 2: Designer
My search for self-discovery leads me to the Art Center, a place where I finally feel aligned with my true calling. This institution is not just a place of learning for me; it's where I meet lifelong companions, including my best friend and eventually, my wife.

Identity 3: Audacious Manifestor
At the age of 15, I harbored dreams of starting a business by the sea. This vision turned into reality in 1999 when my company, Blind, moved from downtown Los Angeles to Venice Beach. The initial setup was modest, featuring furniture from IKEA and Staples.

Identity 4: Developer
Embracing the mantra, "If you build it, they will come," I took a significant step by purchasing our first building. This wasn't just a property; it was the inception of our dream design studio. In 2 years we outgrew the space.

Identity 5: Teacher
An unexpected opportunity to teach a title design class arose when my friend Michelle recommended me as her replacement. What started as a temporary role turned into fifteen years of enriching teaching experience, proving to be an invaluable part of my life.

Identity 6: Director
My career in motion design has been a journey of evolution - from design to animation, compositing, editing, visual effects, and ultimately, live action directing. On location in Taiwan for a documentary shoot.

Identity 7: Reluctant Creator
Encouraged by my friend Jose, I ventured into creating YouTube videos. This was around 2014, in an episode titled "The School with Jose." My background in teaching proved to be significantly beneficial in this new endeavor.

Identity 8: Facilitator/Strategist
Jose introduced me to CORE, a user experience design framework. This knowledge was not just theoretical; it became a cornerstone of our brand strategy, transforming Blind into a brand design consultancy.

Identity 9: Loud Introvert
I accidentally became an 'influencer' through my engagement with social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. These platforms became avenues for sharing my insights on the Art of Business and the Business of Art.

Hi I'm Jay Acunzo

My Mission is to Make Help Others Make What Matters.

That’s why I founded the Creator Kitchen: to help others create more meaningful things. To resonate more deeply and, in doing so, better serve your career, company, and community.

After starting in sports journalism and shifting quickly to marketing, I worked in roles at ESPN, Google, two startups (including HubSpot, where I was head of content), and the VC firm NextView.

Since becoming an independent creator in 2016, I’m grateful to have worked on projects like these:

• My award-winning podast Unthinkable — a narrative-style exploration of how and why some creative people trust themselves more than “best practices.”
• My books, Break the Wheel and The Creator’s Compass — fun, funny, but challenging journeys to understand ourselves and our roles in shaping more powerful creative work.
• The docuseries Against the Grain — a travel-based docuseries about values-based businesses, which I wrote, co-directed, and hosted.
• Consulting and/or developing shows for brands like Salesforce, Drift, GoDaddy, Wistia, Help Scout, Podia, and more.
• Years on the road as a professional keynote speaker, delivering talks to everyone from 4,000 marketers to 400 people ops professionals to 40 small business owners.

But few things have been as rewarding and as transformative to me than my writing practice, established in 2005, which I do on the side of everything else.

It’s there that I found myself and learned to trust myself — and to imbue the work with the kind of personality, personal stories, and problem-solving vision that makes me and my work identifiable and unique.

I want this same outcome for every member of the Kitchen: more personal, more powerful work, executed more consistently. This is what makes you irreplaceable in the face of endless competition and increasing pressures from algorithms and AI.

I am a world-renowned expert in product management. Through my companies Product Institute, Produx Labs, and CPO Accelerator, I am pushing boundaries in product management education. As a consultant, I have advised Fortune 500s such as Capital One, Vanguard, Walmart/Sam’s Club, and JP Morgan Chase. I am also a board member and trusted advisor for SAAS scaleups and late-stage startups.

My superpower is making complex ideas accessible for different audiences. I translate hard concepts into familiar language so that anyone can understand them. This makes me an invaluable partner to ambitious leaders with a vision for success.

Highlights of my career include:

· Accelerated value creation for Forsta as CEO advisor and board director.
· Appointed to teach at Harvard Business School as a Senior Lecturer.
· Wrote the book Escaping the Build Trap on great product management.
· Launched 2 fast-growing e-learning businesses to develop product leaders.
· Trained product managers at companies like J&J, Capital One, and Liberty Mutual.
· Delivered keynote presentations at conferences in 40+ countries.

When I’m not at my desk, you might find me in the kitchen. With a hammer, not a spatula. I’m an overconfident DIYer and currently renovating my house. I’m also learning how to golf... slowly– I’m terrible, but I’m getting better!

Please connect with me to expand your network of high-impact global executives. I am also happy to discuss new partnerships, including board opportunities.

I was born in Detroit, but because my father was in sales we moved a lot. I attended 12 schools in 15 years, and graduated from high school in Grosse Pointe, Mich.

During summers, we would return to Detroit, where my grandfather, a high school teacher and later a school superintendent, would teach my brother and me how to fix things around the house and build projects, like a soapbox racer, in his workshop.

Computers have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. In grade school, I took a summer programming class, using a mainframe computer with punch cards. My grandfather helped me buy an Apple II; he didn’t know anything about computers but recognized that, for me, it was an important tool — just like his hammers and drills. In high school, a friend and I started a small company, Quality Computers. We worked from his parents’ basement, reselling Apple II hardware and writing software.
In 1987, I entered the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, to study computer engineering. But my classes didn’t satisfy my interest in computers, so I founded an educational software company and another company to design computer processors for the Apple IIgs model.

After I graduated in 1991, I moved to Silicon Valley to pursue my dream job: working with General Magic, whose founders created the first Apple Macintosh. I knocked on their door until they hired me later that year. I spent four years there, developing hardware and software to create personal hand-held communications devices, including Sony’s MagicLink. In 1995, I pitched a hand-held product to the C.E.O. of Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. He hired me to build its mobile computing group to develop the Velo and Nino personal digital assistants.

Music has always been one of my passions. Philips wanted to expand in the United States, and the company named me vice president for business development to manage its digital music strategy and investments. Being a corporate guy wasn’t enough for me, so I left to start Fuse Systems, a consumer electronics company. But it foundered when the Internet bubble burst in 2001. That same year, Apple Computer hired me as a consultant in designing what would become the iPod digital music player. Computers plus music plus Apple — it was another dream gig.

Eight weeks later, I approached Steve Jobs with the initial iPod concept and was put in charge of building and leading the development team. One iPod led to another, eventually becoming 18 generations of iPods — and then three generations of the iPhone.

My wife also worked at Apple. Eventually I wanted to spend more time with our two children, and I also wanted a break. So in 2008, I stepped away as senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division and became a strategic adviser to Mr. Jobs. He was an incredible influence on how I think about bringing products to market.

After leaving Apple, we decided to build a “green” home in Lake Tahoe, Calif. While researching heating and cooling systems, I realized that the thermostat was ripe for innovation. I founded Nest Labs to build the self-programming Nest Learning Thermostat. When owners are away, sensors adjust the temperature to save energy. The thermostat has been selling in the United States and Canada for 20 months, but because the device is Wi-Fi connected, we know that it is being used in more than 80 countries.

We designed the thermostat for do-it-yourself installation, and we even include a custom screwdriver in each box. I think my grandfather would have liked that.

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