Most marketing advice isn’t built for solopreneurs or small businesses. It’s built for teams, budgets, and structures you simply don’t have. So you end up doing more—more platforms, more tools, more strategies—while getting fewer results.

But in reality, your marketing results really depend on only two things: how your funnel works and what’s happening underneath it.

Marketing is like a water game

The goal of marketing is easy to understand: we want our clients to know about what we offer. And we want them to buy our products. In other words, marketing is a big funnel.

At the top, you have the awareness stage. This is you “yelling” at the market to let people know you sell lettuce. You want the attention of as many people as possible—but preferably people who could actually be interested in your lettuces. If you’re shouting in a market where everyone is purely pescatarian, that doesn’t make much sense. At the end of the funnel, you have a client who is so happy with your lettuce that they start talking about it to all their neighbours. Perfect.

Marketing is like a water game: your job is to direct the flow. You make sure there is enough water at the top of the funnel so you can direct it toward the stage that really matters: sales. Marketing without sales doesn’t exist. And that’s important to remember, because as a solopreneur or entrepreneur, your job is to make sure you are watering your sales.

Your marketing reflects your inner state

Because your funnels will always mirror your unconscious and nervous system. And your entire business will reflect your fears, internal beliefs, and limitations. Why? Because you are human.

This is why you can apply the best marketing strategies and advice, and still struggle to make your marketing work. Not because you don’t understand the techniques, but because your unconscious and your nervous system are running the show. The way you behave, the way you feel, how you perceive yourself—all of this influences your decisions: how you allocate your time, how you present yourself, your products, and your actions.

The two things that move the needle: your funnels and your unconscious

Clear funnel(s).
Key numbers.
A precise understanding of the bottlenecks.

Then comes the second part. Once you see where the bottleneck is, ask yourself: what’s actually missing? Is it a strategy problem? Or is it something deeper? Be honest. Are you not doing the one thing that would unlock the bottleneck because you don’t know how—or because something in you is resisting it?

That’s where the real work is.

Because when you understand both your funnel and your unconscious, you can finally build a real water game. And sell lettuce to people looking for lettuce.

Other articles that you might like:

What is holding you back from reaching the next level in your business?

The feminine longing: desire as direction

Why the future of business leadership is nervous-system informed