How to Write an About Page When You're Not a Coach
Most About pages read like a résumé. Here's how to write one that sounds like the person clients are about to hire.
About pages do one thing. They help a person decide whether to book the call. Everything else is decoration.
Most coach About pages don't know that. They read like résumés, list every certification, drop into third person halfway through, and end with a generic line about helping people reach their potential. The right reader scrolls to the bottom, finds nothing they can recognize themselves in, and closes the tab.
If you're not a coach, the standard About page is even worse. The credentials section is half-empty. The third-person voice sounds borrowed. The result is a page that quietly admits you don't know what to call yourself, which is the same admission everyone else in this lane is making.
Here's a different way to think about it.
What an About page is actually for
It's the page that closes the loop on every other piece of content you've ever made. Someone reads an essay, watches a talk, gets a referral. They want to know who you are before they spend the half-hour booking a call. The About page is the room they walk into to find out.
What they're trying to assess is roughly this:
- Are you the person you sound like in your writing
- Have you actually done the thing you're claiming to help with
- Will sitting in a room with you feel like the relief I'm hoping for
- Are you safe to trust with the actual problem
A list of certifications answers none of those questions. A photo helps with one of them. The body of the page is where the assessment happens.
So the About page has one job: make the right person feel the room before the call.
Open with one specific sentence
The first sentence does most of the work. If it's generic, the rest of the page doesn't get read.
Most coach About pages open with one of three patterns:
The credential opener. "I'm an ICF-certified Master Coach with over 20 years of experience helping high-performers reach their full potential." This sounds like a LinkedIn profile read out loud. It does not pass the first sentence.
The transformation opener. "I help women release the stories holding them back and step into their fullest expression." This is marketing language. People can smell it within a beat. They've read fifty pages that sound exactly like this one.
The "my story" opener. "Ten years ago, I was lost. I had a successful career, but inside I knew something was missing..." This is a memoir prologue. The reader doesn't have the patience.
None of these work because none are specific.
What works is a single sentence that sounds like only you could have written it. The test: if any other coach in your niche could put their name at the top of this page, the opening line isn't right.
Examples of openings that pass:
"I'm a guide for people leaving the kind of career they spent fifteen years building."
"My practice is small and quiet. I work with mothers in the year after their last child leaves the house."
"I write to people who are most of the way out of a religious tradition and are trying to figure out what to do with the part of themselves that still wants liturgy."
Each tells you who isn't being served. Each tells you the writer is in the room before the next line.
If the first line you use at dinner parties is working, it's usually a strong candidate for the first line of the page.
Tell the part of your story that has a price tag on it
Most About pages either tell too much story or none of it. The trick is to tell the part of the story that connects directly to why someone would pay you.
The questions to answer:
- What you used to be before you did this
- What made you stop being that
- What you learned through doing this that someone earlier on the path couldn't get without you
The "what made you stop being that" is the part most people skip. It costs something to write. The right reader needs to see it.
You don't need confessional detail. You need one true sentence about the cost. Six years between my first panic attack and my first session is the kind of sentence that does more work than three paragraphs of context.
If your origin story doesn't have a sentence with a real cost in it, the page won't carry weight. The reader will feel the missing thing without knowing what it is.
What to do about credentials when you don't have many
The default move is to either list every workshop you've ever taken (which signals insecurity) or to dismiss credentials entirely (which signals defensiveness). Neither lands.
The cleaner move is to put a small, honest section called something like Background and list two to four things that actually matter. Not every training. The ones that show you've spent real time in the territory.
If you don't have formal credentials, that's not the problem most beginners think it is. There's a whole post on why certification isn't the missing piece. The About page should not perform credentials you don't have. It should make the case for the kind of expertise you do.
Years of doing the thing. Years of being on the receiving end of the thing. Lineages you've trained in informally. Communities you've been part of. These are real and they carry weight, especially in the wisdom economy, where depth is what clients are actually paying for.
The photo
One photo. Clear. Recent. Looking at the camera. Looks like you, on a normal day, not at a brand shoot.
Avoid: laughing in a field. Standing with your arms crossed. The headshot taken six years ago. The carousel of seven photos in different moods.
The point of the photo is for the reader to recognize you when you appear on the call. That's it.
End with one true line
The closing line of the About page should not be a call to action. It's the second-most-read sentence on the page. Don't waste it on Book a free clarity call today.
Use it to say one true thing about how you work. The kind of sentence the reader will quote back to themselves later in the day, when they're deciding whether to book.
Examples:
"I keep the practice small. I take on four new clients a year, sometimes five."
"Most of my clients have been with me for over two years. I write each one a long letter at the end of the work."
"I do this slowly, on purpose. The discovery call is forty-five minutes. There's no upsell."
A line like that does more for conversion than any urgency pattern ever will.
A small checklist
- One specific sentence at the top
- A story with one true cost in it
- A small Background section, not a CV
- One clear photo
- A closing line that sounds like the person, not the marketer
If the page reads like a guidance practice being described by the person who runs it, you've got it. If it reads like a coach's brochure, it's still the wrong page.
The work isn't to make yourself sound impressive. The work is to make yourself recognizable to the right people. Recognizable converts. Impressive doesn't.