I don't want to put anyone on the spot, and it would be unfair. In this company I have never stood out as someone who develops software. Why would the person across from me think I had built a product? His picture was a reasonable conclusion from what he knew.
The problem was not his picture. The problem was that I had not given him another one.
With a big name, we ask about the price. With something we can't place, we wonder how hard it can be. That is not malice, it is estimating with what you have: if you don't know what is behind it, you assume a weekend of work.
Let's not kid ourselves: we like to talk small about what we built on the side and out of conviction. "A little project." "Just a thing I made." The word we choose becomes the value others accept.
I talked about my tool as a small tool myself, at the beginning. Only later did I realize what power is behind it.
This is the point that has become most important to me: it matters how we talk to ourselves. The words I have in my head for my work determine how I present it, how I price it and how seriously I take it myself. If you think "just a little thing" inside, you talk about it that way, and others hear it.
It happens quietly. Nobody decides to talk down their own worth. It is a habit, a sentence we have said often enough that it feels like a description and no longer like a choice.
Talking accurately means neither bigger nor louder. It means being precise: what I know, I also say. How many people use it, how much time it saves, how much work is in it. That is neither bragging nor modesty, it is accuracy.
It became clear to me that I had to follow up there: the website, a presentation and the numbers. How many people use the tool. How much time it gives back per person per year. No justification and no plea, just what is there.
Being aware of your own worth does not mean demanding more.
It means knowing for yourself what is there and saying it so that someone else can understand it. I talk about ownership for a living. If you talk down what is yours, you don't really own it, and others take over the interpretation.
How do you talk to yourself about what you have created? And what would someone who doesn't know you conclude from it?
