I need to work on my marketing.

I hear this from founders all the time. Revenue is slow. Growth is stalled. And they think the answer is more marketing.

More posts on X. More content. More brand awareness. More followers. More newsletters. More SEO.

Meanwhile, they haven’t talked 1:1 to a single potential customer this week.

That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a sales problem.

The confusion that kills companies

Marketing and sales are not the same thing. But founders, especially technical founders, use these words interchangeably. And that confusion is costing them.

Here’s the difference:

Marketing is about awareness. It’s about getting people to know you exist. It’s about building brand, creating content, generating inbound interest. Marketing is one-to-many. You put something out and hope the right people see it.

Sales is about conversion. It’s about taking a specific person and turning them into a customer. Sales is one-to-one. You identify someone who might need what you have, you talk to them, you understand their problem, and you close.

Marketing fills the top of the funnel. Sales empties the bottom.

If you’re not making money, you probably don’t have a marketing problem. You have a sales problem.

Why founders hide in marketing

Let’s be honest about why this happens.

Marketing feels safe. You can post from your bedroom. You can write blog posts without rejection. You can build an audience without anyone saying no to your face.

Sales is scary. Sales means reaching out to strangers. Sales means hearing “no” over and over. Sales means putting your product and yourself on the line in direct conversation.

So founders convince themselves they need more marketing. More awareness. More followers. More content.

What they’re really doing is avoiding the uncomfortable work of actually selling.

Marketing lets you feel productive without risking rejection. Sales forces you to confront whether people actually want what you’re building.

Awareness is not dollars

Let me say this plainly: your product can be popular and you can still go broke.

We’ve all seen it happen. Founders with thousands of followers. Products with viral tweets. Landing pages with impressive traffic numbers. And bank accounts trending to $0.

Awareness doesn’t pay rent. Followers don’t cover payroll. Impressions don’t keep the lights on.

You know what does? Revenue. And revenue comes from sales.

There are graveyards full of startups that everyone knew about but nobody bought from. Products that were “loved” but never purchased. Founders who were famous in their niche but couldn’t make the business work.

Popularity doesn’t pay the bills. Sales does.

So before you chase that next viral moment, that next follower milestone, that next feature in a newsletter - ask yourself: when was the last time I actually closed a deal?

The math doesn’t lie

Let me give you some numbers.

If you have 10,000 followers and a 0.1% conversion rate, you get 10 customers.

If you have 100 conversations and a 10% close rate, you get 10 customers.

Same outcome. But the second path doesn’t require you to build an audience of 10,000 people first.

Here’s the thing founders miss: you can start selling today. Right now. With zero followers, zero content, zero brand awareness.

Find someone who has the problem you solve. Talk to them. Understand their pain. Show them your solution. Ask for the sale.

That’s it. That’s the whole playbook.

You don’t need a marketing funnel to make your first $10K. You need conversations.

Don’t build a brand

I know what you’re thinking. “But I need to build my personal brand first. I need credibility. I need people to know who I am before they’ll buy from me.”

No. You don’t.

This is another excuse dressed up as strategy. Another way to feel productive while avoiding the work that actually matters.

Here’s the truth: nobody cares about your brand when you’re starting out. They care about whether you can solve their problem. That’s it.

You know what builds credibility faster than a thousand LinkedIn or X posts? Helping one person get a result. Then another. Then another. Those people will tell others. That’s how real reputation gets built. That’s how growth by word of mouth is built.

And here’s what most founders miss: selling gives you better feedback than marketing ever will.

When you post content, you get likes. Maybe comments. Vanity metrics that tell you almost nothing about whether people will pay.

When you sell, you get truth. You hear objections. You learn exactly why someone won’t buy. You discover what features actually matter and which ones you invented in your head. You find out what price point works and what doesn’t.

A hundred sales conversations will teach you more about your market than a year of content marketing. And the people who do buy? They become your real fans. Not followers who scroll past your posts. Actual customers who got value, who trust you, who will buy again and refer others.

Followers are spectators. Customers are believers.

The founders obsessing over brand colors, tone of voice, and content calendars at zero revenue are playing pretend. They’re building a house of cards that looks impressive but generates nothing.

Brand is a luxury you earn after you’ve proven you can sell. It’s not a prerequisite for selling.

Stripe didn’t have a brand when the Collisons were grabbing laptops. Airbnb didn’t have a brand when they were knocking on doors in New York. They built their brands by selling first.

So stop hiding behind “brand building.” Stop telling yourself you need more followers before you can sell. Stop waiting for permission that will never come.

The best brand strategy at zero revenue is simple: go make money. Your brand will figure itself out along the way.

The founders who get this

Look at the early days of most successful companies. They weren’t doing “marketing.” They were doing sales. They were doing things that don’t scale.

The Collison brothers at Stripe didn’t run ads. They literally were signing people up for Stripe by themselves. “Collison installation” became famous. They’d ask if someone wanted to try Stripe, and when they said yes, Patrick or John would say “give me your laptop” and set it up right there.

That’s not marketing. That’s sales. Aggressive, direct, uncomfortable sales.

Airbnb’s founders went door to door in New York, taking photos of apartments and convincing people to list them. They weren’t building brand awareness. They were selling, one landlord at a time.

Salesforce, a company literally named after sales, started by cold calling. Marc Benioff and his team picked up the phone and pitched enterprises directly.

The pattern is clear: early-stage companies that win are usually the ones where founders are willing to sell.

The titans were salesmen

Go back further. Study the people who built empires that lasted generations.

John D. Rockefeller didn’t become the richest man in history by running ads. He sat across tables from railroad executives and negotiated deals that crushed his competition. He sold. Relentlessly. One contract at a time until he owned 90% of American oil.

Cornelius Vanderbilt built his shipping and railroad empire through direct negotiation. He didn’t wait for customers to find him. He went to them, undercut competitors, and closed deals face to face. The man was a closer.

Steve Jobs? The greatest showman of our generation was actually a salesman at his core. Watch him in meetings with record labels for iTunes. Watch him convince AT&T to give Apple unprecedented control for the iPhone. Watch him sell his own board on ideas they initially rejected. Jobs didn’t just present. He sold. He persuaded. He closed.

These men understood something most founders today have forgotten: the salesman makes the money. Marketing creates awareness. Sales creates wealth.

The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts of the world didn’t build dynasties through brand awareness. They built them through closing deals that other people were too scared or too proud to pursue.

The uncomfortable truth

If you’re a founder and you’re not hitting your revenue targets, ask yourself honestly:

How many sales conversations did you have this week?

Not social media posts. Not content pieces. Not “marketing activities.”

Actual conversations with potential customers where you tried to close a deal.

If the answer is less than 10, you don’t have a marketing problem. You have a sales problem. More specifically, you have a “not doing sales” problem.

But I’m not a salesperson

Neither was anyone before they started selling.

Sales is a skill. Like coding. Like design. Like writing. You learn it by doing it badly, then doing it less badly, then eventually doing it well.

The first time you try to close someone, you’ll be awkward. You’ll stumble over your words. You’ll probably fail.

Good. That’s how learning works.

The founders who succeed aren’t the ones who are natural salespeople. They’re the ones who were willing to be bad at sales long enough to get good at it.

Your discomfort with sales is not a valid reason to avoid it. It’s the reason you need to do more of it.

Marketing has its place

I’m not saying marketing doesn’t matter. It does. Eventually.

Once you’ve validated your product through direct sales, marketing helps you scale. Once you know exactly who your customer is and what message resonates, marketing amplifies that.

But marketing without sales validation is just noise. You’re shouting into the void hoping the right people hear you, when you haven’t even confirmed that those people exist or want what you’re selling.

Sales first. Marketing second.

Get to revenue through conversations. Then use marketing to multiply what’s already working.

The prescription

If you’re a founder struggling with revenue, here’s what I want you to do:

1. Stop hiding in marketing activities. The content can wait. The tweets can wait. The funnel optimization can wait.

2. Make a list of 50 people who might need your product. Be specific. Names, companies, contact information.

3. Reach out to 10 of them today. Not tomorrow. Today. Email, LinkedIn, Twitter DM - whatever channel you can access.

4. Have actual conversations. Not pitches. Conversations. Understand their problems. See if you can help.

5. Ask for the sale. If there’s a fit, ask them to buy. Use real words: “Would you like to move forward?” or “Can I send you an invoice?”

6. Repeat. Every day. Until revenue isn’t a problem anymore.

This isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t scale elegantly. It won’t get you Twitter followers.

But it will get you customers. And customers are the only thing that keeps a company alive.

The bottom line

Sales is not marketing. Stop confusing them.

If you need revenue, you need sales. Not more content. Not more followers. Not more brand awareness.

You need conversations that end with someone giving you money.

That’s the job. Everything else is procrastination dressed up as productivity.

Pick up the phone. Send the email. Have the conversation. Ask for the sale.

That’s how companies get built.