You Don’t Hate Marketing–You Hate Being Online All The Time

---

Here’s the Deal:  You don’t actually hate marketing. And you don’t suck at it either. But the one-person marketing show you’re running isn’t sustainable…or doing you any good.

---

Let’s get one thing straight before your brain starts acting up again: you don’t actually “suck at marketing your business.”

(And no, you don’t secretly hate marketing either.)

What you hate is the version of it that expects you to be online 24/7 with a ring light and a perfectly curated take on everything, all the time.

• The version where you’re filming your own face 47 times to maybe get 3 seconds of usable Reel.

• The version where “I should post more often,” “I don’t want to be an influencer,” and “maybe I’m just not cut out for this” run laps around your brain while you stare at yet another blank caption box.

• The version where you’re shouting into the LinkedIn void while Gary from “Australia’s Best Online Business School” slides into your DMs. Again.

If that’s what “good marketing” is supposed to look like, of course you’re over it. 

But when this is the only version of marketing you see, it slowly rewrites the story in your head. 

Suddenly, it’s not “this setup is ridiculous.” It’s “I’m clearly bad at marketing,” and “I must be missing the magic trait everyone else has”: the discipline to post every day, the confidence to talk to your camera like it’s a best friend, the bottomless pit of “valuable content” ideas.

And from there, every marketing decision you make is coming from that place: I’m behind. I need to catch up.

When “I’m Bad at Marketing” Becomes Your Default Setting

So you do what any responsible, slightly-freaked-out business owner does: you go looking for the fix.

Which is how you end up in that very specific rabbit hole where you’re:

• Saving every “social media tips” post you see
• Downloading content calendars you’ll never look at again
• Googling “how to grow on Instagram” at 11:37 pm
• Grabbing “30 days of Reels ideas” even though you don’t actually want to make Reels in the first place

If marketing = being online a lot, then better marketing = being online more and better, right?

And somewhere in that swirl, the story becomes:

“Once I have the perfect plan, system, or content strategy, this will finally feel easy. I won’t hate marketing. I’ll stop avoiding it. I’ll finally be ‘good’ at all of it.”

Which would be great if the problem actually was your lack of discipline or strategy.

But it’s not.

Because your business isn’t built on content. It’s built on experiences.

• You’re the retreat host trying to get jet-lagged humans to open up and share stories, not Stories. 
• The tour guide clocking the tide, the weather, and your guests’ faces, not your engagement rate.
• The therapist in the room for the big feelings, not the “3 signs you need therapy” carousel.
• The pilates instructor cueing breath and alignment, not trending audio.

Your business is beautifully, stubbornly offline-first. On purpose.

And yet every “here’s how to market your business” post in your feed is written for people who want to live online and build an audience like an influencer.

No wonder it feels like your only options are:

1. Glue yourself to your phone and pretend you’re thrilled about it
2. Or cross your fingers and hope referrals and repeat clients never dry up

Spoiler: there’s a third option.

You Actually Like Marketing (And You Do It All The Time)

Here’s the part you conveniently forget the second someone says the m-word:

You actually like talking about your work.
Just…with real people. In real places.

At the studio front desk before class.
On the boat while everyone’s zipping up life jackets.
On a trail when someone asks, “How did you even start doing this?”

You read their faces, you ask follow-up questions, you tell stories, and you explain what you do in a way that makes them go, “Wait…that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

And all that? That’s marketing, baby. 

Not a content calendar. Not a funnel. Not a “three-part nurture sequence.” Just you, helping someone understand what you do and whether it’s for them.

But when you’re forced to do that to a pinhole phone camera, day in and day out? That’s when it starts to suck. 

So no, the issue isn’t that you hate marketing or that you’re bad at it. The issue is where your marketing is being asked to live, and how much of the load it’s carrying.

Because underneath all the “I just need to be consistent” noise, what’s usually going on is more like:

• Your website technically works, but it doesn’t make anyone excited to hire you. 
• Repeat clients are doing 90% of the work, and you dread the day they don’t rebook. 
• Any time you step back from posting, inquiries dip, and you immediately blame yourself.
• You don’t have a clear path for how someone goes from “who are you?” to “take my money.”

Right now, your “marketing system” is basically you, performing online. Forever.

10/10 unsustainable.
0/10 recommend.

And this is where the third option starts to come in:

Shifting things so the parts of marketing you’re already good at get baked into places that don’t disappear in 24 hours.

What Your Marketing Could Look Like Instead

Instead of treating “marketing” like “whatever Instagram wants from me this week,” think of it like a tiny ecosystem.

At the center? Your website and core messaging. That’s the place that should:

• Explain what you do clearly (not your industry, but you)
• Show who you’re for and who you’re not
• Answer the “should I book this?” questions that are clogging your inbox
• Make it easy to actually book you

In a healthy setup, your website does most of the explaining and selling while everything else (socials, referrals, emails, ads, podcasts, brochures…) nudge people toward it. 

Which means you can post less but with way more intention, reuse your core message instead of copying the latest trends, disappear for a week without your inquiries flatlining, and drop your website link knowing it can carry someone from “this looks cool” to “I just paid the deposit.”

That’s literally what I do: I write websites that bring in bookings for experience-based businesses so you can spend more time doing your work and not just yapping about it to a screen. 

And from there?
We get you out of “I hate marketing” land and into:

“My marketing feels like me, works like a system, and doesn’t require me to sacrifice hours a day to the feed.”

Which, frankly, is the bare minimum.