How to Describe Your Own Work Without Cringing

You are good at the thing. You have the proof, too: people have paid for it, or you have done it long enough that the hard parts have gone quiet. Then somebody at a party asks what you do, and you hear yourself say oh it is nothing really, just a little side thing, while the sentence is still coming out of your mouth.

That gap is not a confidence problem you have to solve before you are allowed to speak. It is a sentence problem, and sentences can be written in advance. There is a version of the answer that is completely true, takes about eight seconds to say, sells nothing to anybody, and leaves the other person holding a clear picture and an obvious next question. Write it once and you will use it for years, at parties, in captions, on the phone, and in the first line of every message you send to somebody who might buy.

Why does talking about my own work feel so bad?

Because you are trying to claim rather than tell, and a claim is a performance you then have to keep up. Telling is describing an object that already exists, and almost nobody feels awkward describing an object.

Watch the difference in two sentences about the same business. "I'm a passionate creator building beautiful heirloom pieces that tell a story" is a claim, and it asks the listener to agree with an evaluation before they know a single fact. "I make leather work bags, mostly for people who cycle to an office, they're around 180 dollars" is a description. The second is easier to say, easier to hear, and much harder to feel embarrassed about, because there is nothing in it to be caught out on.

There is research on the move most of us reach for instead. Sezer, Gino and Norton studied humblebragging, where a boast gets wrapped in a complaint or in false modesty, across seven studies, and found it consistently less effective than plain straightforward bragging: it reduced how much people liked the speaker and how competent they judged them to be. The self deprecating wrapper we add to make a claim survivable is doing the opposite of what we hoped. Plain is not only more comfortable. It performs better.

What is the sentence, exactly?

Three parts, in this order: what it is, who it is for, and what it costs. No adjectives about quality, no origin story, no mission statement.

Six real examples:

• "I make ceramic planters, mostly for people who kill plants in plastic pots. They're 40 to 90 dollars."
• "I do the bookkeeping for small building firms, so the owner isn't doing invoices at eleven at night. About 300 a month."
• "I photograph food for restaurant menus. Half a day is 600 dollars and you get around thirty images."
• "I fix and resell old bicycles. They're 150 to 400 and they come serviced."
• "I write the product pages for shops that have good products and bad words. Usually 250 a page."
• "I teach guitar to adults who quit as teenagers. Thirty five an hour, at my place or online."

Every one of them contains a number. The price is not a separate awkward conversation you have later, it is part of the description, it tells the listener immediately whether they are the customer, and putting it in is the fastest way to stop feeling like you are hiding something. Keep a version without the price for the times you genuinely are not selling, and use the full one everywhere else.

Which words should I delete?

Just and kind of, every single time, plus any word somebody would have to be inside your trade to understand. Those deletions do more for how the sentence lands than any amount of rehearsing.

"I just make a few candles kind of on the side" contains a whole apology, and the person you are talking to will match the framing you handed them. Say I make candles and they ask what kind. Say you just make a few, and they say that is nice and turn to the person on their left. You taught them how much to care.

The jargon problem is separate and just as expensive. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group found that plain language is preferred even by expert readers, so simplifying is not talking down to anybody, it is being understood by more people at once. If your sentence carries a word you learned at work, swap it for the word your first customer used when they described the same thing back to you.

There is a practical edge to this as well. The Federal Trade Commission's guidance for small businesses is that claims about what a product does have to be truthful and backed by evidence. Description is always defensible. Best is not.

What do I do after I say it?

Stop talking. The sentence is finished, and the next move belongs to the other person, who will almost always take it.

This is the part people cannot do and it is the part that makes the whole thing work. The urge after saying something true and plain about your own work is to fill the space: to add the caveat, the story of how you got into it, the reassurance that you are not making much money at it yet. Every one of those additions hands back exactly what the sentence just gave you.

The silence is not empty. It is the other person deciding to ask you a question. Their question is worth more than anything you would have said into the gap, because it tells you what they actually care about, and now you are having a conversation instead of delivering a pitch. It is the same muscle that makes the price conversation survivable later, when a number is sitting in the air and the temptation is to explain it away before anybody has objected to it.

How do I practice this without practicing on myself?

Describe somebody else's work out loud first, in public, and name exactly what they did. The sentence is easy about another person, it is the same muscle, and for the person you are describing it is worth a great deal more than it costs you.

Do it specifically or do not bother. "Her work is amazing" is noise and everybody has received it. "She rebuilt the ordering page for the bakery on the corner and their weekend orders doubled" is a sentence somebody may repeat in a meeting you will never attend. Vague praise is a feeling. A specific public commendation is a piece of evidence, and evidence travels on its own.

Three ways to do it this week, none of which take more than a minute:

• Say what somebody did, by name, in a room where people who could hire them are listening.
• Write the one sentence version of another maker's work in a caption, and tag them in it.
• When somebody asks you for a recommendation, give the description rather than the adjective: what they make, who it is for, what it costs.

Then notice what just happened to your own sentence. You built that exact structure for another person, out loud, with no cringe at all, which means the structure was never the problem. Say yours the same way.

The three versions to have ready

Write your sentence down while it is fresh, then make three versions of it and keep them somewhere you can find them again.

The caption version, which can drop the price if the price is already on the page and must keep the who it is for. The stranger version, all three parts, said out loud at normal speed. And the version for your mother, or whoever in your life keeps introducing you inaccurately, short enough that they can repeat it correctly to somebody at their own party.

Say each one out loud once now, alone, before you need it. A sentence you have never spoken sounds like a lie in your own mouth the first time, and the first time should not be in front of somebody who could have been a customer. Say it four times and it becomes ordinary, which is exactly what you want. You are not trying to sound impressive. You are trying to be understood accurately by more people, faster, so that the ones who want what you make can find out that you make it.

Sources

• Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, Humblebragging: A Distinct and Ineffective Self-Presentation Strategy
• Nielsen Norman Group, Plain Language Is for Everyone, Even Experts
• Federal Trade Commission, Advertising FAQ's: A Guide for Small Business