How to Talk About What You Make Without Turning Into a Brochure
The Moment Everything Gets Weird
You're at a dinner party, or a conference, or on a call with a potential client. Someone asks what you do. Or better yet, they ask about a specific project—something they've seen or heard about. And instead of the easy, honest conversation you'd love to have, something shifts. You start to perform. You hear yourself using words like innovative and solutions-focused and leveraging storytelling to drive engagement and you want to crawl out of your own skin.
Or the opposite happens: you undersell so hard that the person walks away thinking you make hobby projects in your basement, when actually you've built something genuinely impressive.
Neither version is the real you. And neither version is actually helping you connect with the people you want to work with.
This awkwardness isn't unique to you—it's endemic to creative fields. The same skills that make someone exceptional at making things don't automatically translate into facility with talking about those things. But here's the good news: talking about your work well is a craft skill, and like every craft skill, it can be developed.
Why Generic Pitch Language Backfires
When most creatives sit down to write a bio, a case study, or an intro email, they default to the language they've absorbed from other people's bios and case studies and intro emails. The result is a kind of creative uncanny valley—language that sounds professional but feels hollow. Nobody's fooled, and nobody's moved.
Generic pitch language fails for a specific reason: it optimizes for sounding credible rather than being understood. It's armor, not communication. And the people on the other side of that armor—clients, collaborators, audiences—can feel the distance it creates even if they can't name it.
The irony is that the thing that would actually make someone want to work with you or follow your work isn't a polished positioning statement. It's a glimpse of how your mind works. It's the specific problem you find fascinating. It's the decision you made on a project that surprised even you. It's the thing you care about that most people in your field don't seem to bother with.
That stuff is interesting. That stuff is differentiated. And it's already in you—you just need a framework for getting it out.
Start With the Specific, Not the General
The most common mistake creatives make when talking about their work is leading with the category and burying the content. I'm a graphic designer or I make documentary films or I'm a brand strategist—these are category labels, not descriptions of anything interesting.
Try flipping it. Lead with something specific: a project, a problem, a decision, a perspective. Let the category emerge from context rather than announcing it up front.
For example, instead of I'm a documentary filmmaker, try something like I've been spending the last two years following a group of first-generation college students in rural Appalachia. The access I've gotten is pretty remarkable. Now you're in a conversation. Now the other person has something to respond to. The fact that you make documentaries is obvious from context—but they're already curious about the work itself.
This isn't a trick. It's just the natural way interesting conversations start—with something specific that opens a door, rather than a label that closes one.
Talk About Process Like a Human Being
One of the most underutilized tools creatives have when talking about their work is process. Not process in the sense of first I do research, then I develop concepts, then I refine—that's the brochure version. Process in the sense of what it actually feels like to make the thing, what problems came up, what surprised you, what you'd do differently.
Process talk is inherently humanizing. It signals that the work was genuinely made—that it has a history, that it came from somewhere. It also demonstrates craft in a way that finished work alone can't, because it shows that you understand what you made and why it works.
The clients and collaborators who are worth having almost always respond better to here's what I was wrestling with on this project and here's how I worked through it than they do to here's my portfolio, here are my rates. The first version tells them something about how you think. The second version just tells them you exist.
Don't be afraid to mention the hard parts, either. Talking about a challenge you navigated—not in a self-deprecating way, but in a here's a real problem and here's how I approached it way—is often more persuasive than a highlight reel of your best outcomes. It shows self-awareness, which is one of the qualities clients most reliably look for and least reliably find.
The Difference Between Storytelling and Pitching
A pitch is transactional. It's designed to get a yes. Storytelling is relational—it's designed to create understanding and connection, and the yes (if it comes) is a byproduct of that.
When you're talking about your work with the energy of a pitch, people feel it. There's a slightly desperate quality to pitch energy, a sense that you need something from them, that you're managing their perception of you rather than just talking to them. It makes people want to back up a half step.
When you're talking about your work as a storyteller—which, if you're a creative, is actually your native mode—the energy is completely different. You're sharing something you find genuinely interesting, and you're curious whether they find it interesting too. That energy is magnetic. It doesn't need anything from them. It's just an invitation.
The practical difference is small but significant: storytelling is about the work, the problem, the discovery. Pitching is about you and what you can do for them. Lead with the work. Let the rest follow.
Building Your Vocabulary Over Time
This is a practice, not a performance. The way you develop a natural language for your work is the same way you develop anything else—by doing it repeatedly, paying attention to what lands, and refining over time.
After conversations about your work, notice what questions people asked. Questions are a signal of genuine interest, and they tell you which parts of what you said opened doors. Notice also what fell flat—the explanations that got polite nods but no follow-up. That's your revision material.
Keep a running document of phrases and framings that feel authentic to you. Not a script—a vocabulary. The words and ideas you reach for when you're talking about your work at your best. Over time, this becomes the foundation of how you introduce yourself, write your bio, explain your process in a proposal, or describe a project in a pitch meeting.
The goal isn't to sound more professional. It's to sound more like you—which, if your work is genuinely good, is the most persuasive thing you can possibly be.
