Why Your Marketing Feels Like Pushing Water Uphill – Understanding the Flywheel Economy

I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately with founders who describe their marketing the same way: it feels like pushing water uphill.

Not hard work. Not “I’m busy.” But that specific sensation of effort that shouldn’t require this much force.

Water doesn’t want to go uphill. Water wants to flow downhill. And when you’re constantly pushing against that natural direction, your nervous system starts to register it. Tense muscles. Can’t sleep. A constant frazzle.

This is what 2025 has felt like for a lot of us.

Full of proving energy. Full of convincing energy. And if you are coming to the understanding, as many of us in leadership position are – that strategy and energy are not separate—then you know: this is not sustainable.

We’re not designed to live in a state of convincing. We’re designed to live in flow, in invitation, in a state of both give and take.

So when I say the funnel is broken, it’s not me trying to shill an alternative to you. It’s more my act, or attempt, at naming an energetic truth: the way we’ve been taught to sell is exhausting. And it’s exhausting to receive that way, too.

The Irony of the Funnel

Here’s what’s interesting. The funnel—that V-shaped progression we all use to describe sales—was literally designed to funnel liquid in a direction we wanted it to go.

It’s a tool for controlling flow.

And for a while, that worked.

You could take the energy of your content and your offers and direct it.

Top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. People moved through stages. You optimized each stage. You got results.

But what I’ve been noticing—and what dozens of coffee chats with founders across North America and Europe have confirmed—is that the energy of the funnel has become what’s exhausting us.

It’s exhausting to sell that way. It’s exhausting to be sold to that way.

And with all the shifts we’ve seen in the last eighteen months—political, economic, social, AI saturation—the flow has changed.

The “water” wants to move differently now. And we need to accept that. Which means we need to change.

But change is scary. It’s scary for our nervous system, scary for our business, scary for our brains. So a huge portion of us are resisting it.

(And I’m not discounting me from this equation. I’m simply taking on the role of the observer here, not the immune).

What I’ve Actually Been Doing Since 2012

Here’s the irony: I’ve been subversively rebelling against the energetics of the traditional funnel since I started my digital business more than a decade ago. I just never described it this way until now.

When I taught organic traffic and SEO in one of my signature programs (aptly named The Organic Traffic Academy; a retired program from 2021)… I used to describe the act of both content creation and ‘feeding the hungry algorithm’ less like a funnel and more like a chocolate fountain. (Because our brains like food, and chocolate fountains are delicious.)

If you’ve ever seen one, you know how it works: a stack of bowls—small, medium, large, larger—and you pour the chocolate at the top.

It cascades down, self-sustaining.

The chocolate you pour at the top does eventually reach the bottom, but here’s the key: you can stick your strawberry in at any level and get chocolate. You don’t have to start at the top. You don’t have to “qualify” for the middle tier. You just get value wherever you enter.

That’s how I’ve always thought about my content. How do I make it so that no matter where someone enters my world, they get something delicious—and they want to come back for more?

Now I don’t call it a chocolate fountain. Now we have a word for it that is a little less abstract – we call it a flywheel.

It’s a system where every point of entry has value.

Where people move at their own speed. Where nothing is wasted. Where re-engagement is rewarded, not punished.

The funnel was designed to force transaction at scale. The flywheel is designed to build relationship at scale.

Do you see the difference?

What the Flywheel Actually Requires

Now, here’s where this gets uncomfortable.

A flywheel is less prescriptive than a funnel.

There are fewer rules. And that makes people uncomfortable, because people like to be told exactly what to do and when.

But here’s what a flywheel really requires: your offers have to be clear.

Because if everything around your offers is your brand – your content, your leadership, your point of view, your thought leadership, the way you serve the world—and your offer is wishy-washy?

That’s where you fail.

This is, yet another, energetic shift.

With a funnel, your offer could be kind of vague, but if your content was pressurized enough – urgent enough, scarcity-driven enough – you’d still get transactions.

People would buy. Then they’d get inside and realize it wasn’t what they thought.

This is what happened to the coaching industry.

Incredible top-of-funnel content, driving into massively expensive programs that didn’t make good on the promise.

But with a flywheel, your offer has to be locked. Because people can enter anywhere.

They can buy immediately, or they can circle for six months before buying.

You don’t control the timeline anymore.

So your priority as a leader – your need for clarity at the baseline level—has actually increased in a flywheel economy.

( Btw that’s precisely why I launched the Clarity to Conversion Diagnostic. And why I’m working on a lite version called a Clarity Scorecard because this is literally the most important new measurement you need in your business moving forward).

Why Most Branded Podcasts Fail (And What That Tells Us)

I do actually want to take a minute and talk about the elephant in my room, because I needed to reconcile all of this revelation with the fact that I’ve run a branded podcast company since 2021. We originally ‘sold’ top tier branded shows with high five and low six figure price tags as ‘highly effective TOFU’ … or the pithy concept of ‘brand awareness’.

Now not to shoot myself in the foot here, but I think it’s fair and fine to say I’m evolving in the way I see brand podcasts and the manner in which I offer them to my clients.

Because if we truly are in a flywheel economy, then the value of a branded podcast is different than it was four years ago.

Not less or more. But different.

For years, companies came to me wanting a show. They thought it would be “top of funnel.” They thought more visibility would solve their problem.

But here’s the pattern I kept seeing: companies launching podcasts without clear editorial strategy. No through-line. No coherent message. Just “we need a show because everyone has a show.”

And then, ten to fifteen episodes in, they’d start thrashing. Changing the format. Changing the topics. Changing the hosts. Not because the show was bad, but because the company itself wasn’t clear.

Consider now, if your podcast is a flywheel, not a funnel. It builds momentum over time—but only if your positioning is clear first. If it’s not, you’re just amplifying confusion at scale.

This is why I now turn away projects that aren’t ready. You can’t podcast your way out of strategic confusion. Get clear first. Then amplify.

How do you know if you’re stuck in a broken funnel?

Or better put, how do you know if you’re ready to build a flywheel?

Stop asking: “How do I get someone to do something?”

Start asking: “How do I make an invitation? What’s the next logical thing they need? How do I make someone feel comfortable?”

That shift in language is everything.

And then ask yourself:

Can you describe your offer clearly? Because if your offer is wishy-washy, the flywheel won’t work. People need to know what they’re buying, no matter where they enter.

Is your content reinforcing a central message? Or are you posting about leadership on Monday, AI on Wednesday, mindset on Friday—with no through-line? If nothing connects, nothing compounds.

Are you reassessing the value of people who haven’t bought yet? In a funnel, if someone doesn’t convert on your timeline, they’re dead to you. In a flywheel, you ask: where are they? What do they need? How can I bring them value where they are?

Are you rock solid on who you are, what you do, who you work for, and how you show up? Because once you are, this gets pretty stinking simple. It’s just linking it all together.

We Are in a Relationship Economy

The world has gone through so much energetic shift in the last eighteen months. And nobody wants to be forced anymore. Whether they can articulate that or not doesn’t matter. Approaching your sales like it’s still 2019—like people are transactions to be funnelled—is not going to work.

We’re in a relationship economy now. The flywheel is how you build relationship at scale. The funnel was how you forced transaction at scale.

And yes, you can still have funnels within a flywheel.

But the binary thinking—it’s either a funnel or it’s not—has always been wrong. We’ve actually always been in a flywheel scenario. We just refused to admit it.

So your expectations of speed and velocity are going to change. It doesn’t mean you won’t make big sales. It doesn’t mean some people won’t read your content and buy five minutes later. But it does mean you’re going to reassess what momentum looks like. What compounding looks like. What flow looks like.

Because water wants to flow downhill. And when you stop pushing it uphill, everything gets easier.

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If your marketing feels like pushing water uphill—if you’re exhausted by the proving energy and nothing is compounding—the problem isn’t your tactics. It’s your clarity. Book a Clarity to Conversion Diagnostic below and I’ll show you exactly where momentum is leaking.