Special Thought Leader Edition - Summer Issue

BY: David Fagan

Your resume or CV is more about your work history, but a good bio for speakers, authors, experts, influencers, and leaders is all about your accomplishments. It is no longer enough to have just one bio that you use for everything - rather, your bios are best when they are targeted toward specific audiences or purposes. 

Short bios, long bios, speaker bios, author bios, and so on are more required nowadays. Still, at the core, every "best bio" comprises some combination of 15 significant accomplishments, which are:

There is also an art to listing your accomplishments with attention-getting short sentences that start with verbs. I have hundreds of them that I often use because of their proven effectiveness. These include:

Once you understand the essential pieces and parts of a great bio, you can then build something special. We have a proven bio template that we often use for ourselves and our clients, shared below for your convenience. It's highly effective; if nothing else, it's a great kick starter for the process, which is usually the most challenging part of building a bio.

Finally, here's a fun way to share your accomplishments that stands out from the typical bio that's easier for people to read or choose talking points from when introducing you:

Remember that so much of inspiring and influencing comes down to positioning. These tools, templates, and strategies will take you from Invisible to Invincible.

About the author:

David T. Fagan is the former CEO of Guerrilla Marketing, which sold over 23 million books in 62 languages all over the world, as well as the former owner of LCO Communications, a Beverly Hills PR firm that represented 58 Academy Award Winners, 34 Grammy Winners, and 43 New York Times Best Sellers.

He has been featured on Fox & Friends, the Today Show, The Washington Post, Forbes, Investor's Business Daily, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox's The Five, and What's Happening Now, to name a few. He also won major awards for publishing, publicity, and even the Entrepreneur Educator of the Year Award from Inc 500 Infusionsoft.

David is the best-selling author of several books, including “Word Genius: What to Say and How to Say It”, “Guerrilla Parenting: How to Raise an Entrepreneur”, “Cracking the Icon Code: How to Become an Icon in Your Industry Through Your Advice”, and “Image and Expertise, and Becoming Significant: How to Invoke Sacred Words that Unlock Real Power”. He is an International Speaker in places as far away as Dubai, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Australia, and has shared the stage with everyone from Former Secretary of Defense Dr. Bob Gates to Mark Victor Hansen.

David is the father of eight children (four girls and four boys) and has three grandchildren. He is married to Isabel Donadio-Fagan, and they live in Phoenix, Arizona.