My About Page Failed a Pop Quiz I Wrote Myself

Last month I did something that felt like a personality audit with a side of public humiliation. I texted twelve people a single prompt: 'Without looking at my website, describe what I do in two or three sentences. Don't be nice. Be accurate.'

Twelve people. Three friends, four clients, two former coworkers, one person I met at a wedding, and two strangers from a group chat I'm in but rarely speak in. I promised anonymity and no follow-up arguments. Then I opened my About page, which I had rewritten in the spring with the confidence of a person who had read three branding newsletters, and read it out loud to my dog.

The dog did not clap.

The Prompt Was Simple. The Answers Were Not.

The first reply came back in four minutes: 'She writes essays about creative work and then makes the creative work sound more complicated than it is, in a good way.' I stared at that for a while. It was warmer than anything on my website.

A client said: 'Hayley is a writer and maker. She does websites, newsletters, and that project where she tracked her time for a year. She is very honest about invoices.'

A former coworker said: 'A creative director for people who can't afford a creative director.' I have never called myself a creative director. I have also never wanted to frame that sentence and hang it above my desk more than I did in that moment.

One friend wrote: 'I think she does branding? Or maybe she's a copywriter? She definitely sends long emails.'

Another said: 'She's the person you call when you have an idea and need someone to tell you which part of it is real.'

Then there was the wedding acquaintance, who offered: 'Graphic design, right?' I do not do graphic design. I have never done graphic design. I once made a PDF look nice and now this is apparently my life.

And a stranger from the group chat—bless her—wrote: 'She makes things and then tells the truth about making them.'

What I Thought I Was Saying

My About page at the time opened with a sentence about being a 'multi-hyphenate creative partner.' It mentioned 'narrative systems.' It used the phrase 'at the intersection of strategy and soul.' It was the kind of copy that sounds like it was approved by a committee of people who all wanted to leave early.

No one remembered 'strategy.' No one remembered 'soul.' One person said I have a lot of opinions about fonts, which is not true, but I understand why they think that.

What people remembered were objects and verbs. The invoice article. The spreadsheet. The unsent mail museum. The fact that I once wrote about keeping ideas on life support for a decade. Specifics survived. Positioning language evaporated like a conference room bagel.

They also remembered what I'm like to work with. 'She asks a lot of questions and then sends you a document that makes you feel like you're not crazy.' That is a better description of my job than anything I have ever paid a website template to display.

The Gap Was Not About Accuracy

None of the twelve were wrong, exactly. They were compressed. Memory is a bad stenographer and a great editor. It keeps the weird details, the feelings, the thing you said once in a meeting that made everyone laugh, and it throws out every adjective you spent an afternoon choosing.

That is the competition. Your About page is not competing with other About pages. It is competing with the sentence your friend says about you when you leave the room.

The Rewrite (or, Goodbye, Committee Voice)

I rewrote the page with four rules.

If a friend wouldn't say it out loud at a barbecue, delete it.

Replace every abstract noun with an object. Not 'narrative ecosystems' but 'essays, websites, newsletters, and a spreadsheet with too many tabs.'

Keep one sentence about what I'm bad at. I am bad at saying no to a good idea and bad at estimating how long a rewrite will take. Both are on the page now.

Use contractions. Use short sentences. Use the word 'I' more than the word 'we.'

Before: 'I partner with brands and individuals to craft narrative systems that align strategy with soul.'

After: 'I'm a writer and maker. I write essays about creative work, build small websites, and help people figure out what they're actually trying to say. Sometimes I make a spreadsheet about it.'

Before: 'My work lives at the intersection of storytelling and strategy.'

After: 'I like the part of a project where everyone is confused and then, slowly, it becomes a thing you can hold.'

The Stranger's Sentence

I kept one line from the group chat stranger: 'She makes things and then tells the truth about making them.' It is not a tagline. It is not a brand position. It is a memory. And memory is what an About page is actually competing with.

The updated page went live two weeks ago. One friend texted: 'That sounds like you now.' Another said: 'It's still a little long.' Both are correct. I'm leaving it up.

If you want to test your own About page, send the prompt to five people. Don't explain. Don't defend. Just read the answers and notice which sentence makes you want to argue. That's the sentence to rewrite.