The Proving Years

For a long time, I thought being mighty meant proving I was not small. Now I know small was never the problem.

I know what it feels like to be underestimated before you’ve even opened your mouth.

I’m 5 feet tall. I’m Asian. I’ve always looked younger than I am. For most of my career, that meant walking into rooms where people had already made up their minds about me.

Sometimes those assumptions were subtle. Other times, not.

Early in my agency career, I was in a meeting with a large client. I was a coordinator, brand new, low on the ladder. The room was mostly men. I was paying attention, taking it in, learning how authority moved through a space.

Then someone made a joke about taking the conversation to the sauna and “bringing the girls.”

Everyone laughed.

I sat there watching the room shift. A real business conversation had become a punchline, and somehow the women in it were part of the joke.

Was it acceptable? No. Was it uncommon at the time? Also no. That was what stayed with me. People laughed because that was what you did in rooms like that. You absorbed it. You moved on. And you learned something about the culture you were in.

Those moments shaped me more than I understood at the time.

What I Learned to Do Differently

I would have told you back then that they made me work harder. That would have been true, but not the whole story.

They made me sharper.

I learned to read a room fast, to come prepared in ways that weren’t obvious, to build a kind of presence that didn’t depend on being the tallest or loudest person there. I was rarely going to be either.

So I learned to back my words with value. To think a few moves ahead. To understand the strategy, the client, the dynamics, and the possible next question before anyone asked.

Being underestimated taught me to be ready. Not from strength, at first. From something closer to necessity.

The Proving Years

Some of that came from ambition. A lot of it came from what I now call proving energy.

Into my 30s, I carried so much of it. I wanted to prove I belonged. Prove I was smart.

Prove that my size, my face, my age, my gender, my race, and where I sat in the room didn’t determine the weight of my contribution.

Being small felt like something to overcome. I thought being mighty meant becoming bigger somehow. Louder. More undeniable.

There was an ache underneath all of it. The kind that keeps you moving but never quite lets you rest.

When Small Started to Feel Different

The shift didn’t arrive all at once. It came through experience, through mistakes, through rooms I survived and rooms I eventually learned to lead.

One moment I still think about: when I was preparing for my master’s degree, someone said to me, almost in passing, “You’re tiny, but when you speak, you have so much impact.”

That landed differently than I expected.

For years I had been trying to create presence. And here was someone reflecting back that I already had it. I didn’t have to become someone else to be powerful. My voice already carried weight. People listened when I spoke.

We don’t undo years of proving energy in one conversation. But it gave me a new way to see myself.

Being mighty wasn’t about proving I wasn’t small. It was about knowing my value and learning how to use it well.

What This Has to Do With Business

That lesson has quietly shaped how I think about small businesses.

When I talk about Small But Mighty agencies, I’m not talking about businesses trying to act bigger than they are. I’m talking about businesses that understand their size as part of the strategy.

A small agency can’t be everywhere. It can’t chase every market or serve every kind of client without paying a price. That can feel like a constraint in a world that celebrates scale.

But it can also create something most large businesses struggle to buy back once they’ve lost it: focus.

If you’re a specialized agency you know exactly where to show up. You understand the problems your clients are solving. Your reputation has a specific place to land. Compare that to a generalist agency trying to serve everyone -- every conference could matter, every message has to stretch, every referral is harder to place.

Bigger can outspend the room. Smaller can out focus it, out care, and build trust in ways that compound quietly over time. That’s a different kind of power, and it’s one that belongs to you.

Keep Your Eyes in Your Own Boat

A mentor once told me something I still come back to.

She was an Olympic rower, and she said that in rowing, one of the lessons is to keep your eyes in your own boat.

If you want to win, you can’t spend the whole race watching everyone else. You have to know your rhythm, your direction, your team. The work happening inside your own boat is what matters.

Proving energy made me look sideways. It made me measure myself against rooms I was never designed to fit neatly into, wonder if I needed to become bigger or louder to deserve to be there.

Resilience brought me back to myself.

That’s what I want for the small businesses I champion. Stop apologizing for small. Know your strengths, choose your race, and stay close to what you actually do well. In a world getting bigger, faster, and louder, that kind of clarity is rarer than it looks.

Small was never the problem.

The problem was believing I had to prove I was more before I could trust what I already had.