How to talk about your work without sounding sleazy

Because your work will not speak for itself

One of the most common objections I hear when I talk to people about marketing is, “If I’m really good at what I do, I shouldn’t need to do any marketing. My work should speak for itself!”

I agree. It should.

And it’s not going to happen.

In a perfect world, your work would get the love and recognition it deserves simply by virtue of existing. The right people would immediately be able to find your work and see its value, and sales would be effortless.

We do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes you get lucky, but talent alone is rarely enough to grow a sustainable client base.

Your work won’t speak for itself. You have to speak for your work.

I grew up believing that if I worked hard and followed the rules, the right people would eventually notice and reward me. And it worked, for a while. When I got good grades in school, I didn’t have to trumpet those grades to anyone. I just automatically made the Dean’s List. The school was even nice enough to tell my parents for me!

Then I entered the working world and suddenly, the game changed. The people who got promoted weren’t the most competent; they were the ones who knew how to promote themselves to the right people (they were probably also beneficiaries of a lot of systemic privilege because corporate America sucks that way).

If you want your endeavor to get noticed — whether it’s a business, a Substack, a creative project, or a job search — that’s what you have to do, too. Your work won’t speak for itself. You have to speak for your work.

Perhaps you feel like you haven’t earned the right to promote your work yet. Maybe you’re just getting started, or you haven’t sold very much, or you think you need a bigger following before you can talk about yourself to other people.

Here’s the rub: how can you expect other people to love and promote your work if you don’t love and promote it first? You have to be your own best advocate. No one’s going to speak up for you if you don’t speak up for yourself first! 

How can you expect other people to love and promote your work if you don’t love and promote it first?

If the thought of speaking, out loud, publicly (gulp!) about your work makes you want to run away and hide, don’t despair. You can market yourself without being sleazy — that’s the whole point of Easeful Marketing, after all.

In fact, you can even speak for your work and build trust with your audience at the same time. Here are a few things that have worked well for me and my clients.

5 ways to talk about your work without sounding sleazy

• Share a success story from one of your clients. If you helped a client* do something awesome, tell that story! I love this tip because you hardly need to talk about yourself at all. Make it all about the client and their success. Just make sure you use the words “my client” somewhere in there so people know you helped them.

• Answer questions about your field. Where do your people — aka your target clients, readership, audience, etc. — hang out online? Find the subreddits, Discord groups, Slack communities, Substack chats, and other places they hang out, and make yourself helpful there. Answer their questions. Offer recommendations. Be generally useful, and you can build a lot of trust without ever having to pitch yourself.

• Work in public. Hats off to ConvertKit for this excellent advice. Working in public means going behind the scenes of your work and sharing both your challenges and your successes. Your struggles are just as compelling as your wins. Did you make a big mistake? Write about what happened and what you learned. Have a recent success? Share exactly what you did so others can learn from it, too.

• Be honest when you’re promoting yourself. Sometimes, you just need to make the ask. When you do, be honest and genuine about it. Don’t try to couch it in marketing-speak. Don’t pretend to be flippant or act like you’re doing the other person a favor. Just ask, with sincerity and gratitude, if the person would like to learn more about working with you. Even if you get rejected, I guarantee you’ll learn something.

• Support others in your field. Your fellow practitioners are your colleagues, NOT your competitors! Yes, even if they work in the same field with the same kinds of clients. Especially if they work in the same field with the same kinds of clients, because then you can refer business to each other! Take every opportunity to support the other business owners in your network. Share their work. Praise them publicly. What goes around comes around.

*I’m referencing clients in the tips above, but all of these suggestions work in a non-business context, too. You can try them with fans, followers, newsletter subscribers, creators, random people you meet on the street… okay, maybe not that last one.

Teeny Tiny Marketing Homework

Pick one thing from the list of ideas above (just one) and commit to giving it a try. For extra motivation, leave a comment when you’ve done it. Let’s celebrate our wins together!

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