The Best Marketing Advice I Ever Got

Some lessons don’t show up where you expect them. It didn’t come from a marketing course or a mentor in a boardroom. It wasn’t something I underlined in a business book or picked up in a podcast. It happened while I was sitting on the floor of a small villa in Turkey, watching Life of Pi on a laptop, trying to keep it together after losing someone I loved.

At the time, I wasn’t working for a brand; I was the brand. I was leading retreats, teaching yoga & breathwork, studying Ayurveda, writing every word of my website, and building trust with an audience that followed me not because of paid ads, but because something about my voice felt real to them. It was marketing, technically. But it didn’t feel like marketing. It felt like survival, service, and figuring it out as I went.

Back then, my days were a mix of early-morning teaching, late-night writing, and plenty of time spent in LA traffic thinking through workshop themes or class sequencing. I was building something without a content calendar or growth strategy, just real connection. I built an audience one person at a time, through word of mouth, community referrals, and showing up consistently. I updated my website manually, wrote every single word myself, and learned how to explain what I offered in a way that felt honest. This was before ChatGPT and AI copy tools. The words were mine. They came from lived experience, late-night reflection, and years of learning how to speak to people in a way that felt human. And that foundation still shapes how I write and build today. And then one night, sitting on that tile floor in Turkey, I watched a movie that caught me off guard.

The part that stuck with me was near the end, after Pi and the tiger survive everything. Storms, hunger, isolation. They finally wash up on shore. And without any real goodbye, the tiger walks away. No dramatic ending. No closure. Just gone.

Pi says, “I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go.”

I paused the movie and just sat there. That one line cracked something open. Not just in my grief, but in how I saw the work I’d been doing, this constant grasping to get it right, to be heard, to hold it all together.

Over a decade later, now working with startups and founders and platforms that want to say something meaningful in a crowded, noisy market, that line still comes back to me.

Letting go. Not of the vision, but of the noise around it. Of trying to be louder than everyone else. Of the pressure to cram everything into one headline or one post.

Because what I learned then and what I still believe now is that the best marketing doesn’t scream. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t hold on so tightly that it forgets what it was trying to say.

The best messaging is clear.
It breathes.
It resonates.

Back then, I didn’t have a budget. Or a strategist. Or a media buyer. But I had a voice. I had presence. I knew how to meet people where they were. And I let the rest go.

Today, I work with brands that have funding, pressure, growth goals, and teams. But my approach hasn’t changed that much. I still ask: What’s the truth here? What’s the message that matters? Can we say less, but mean more?

No one remembers the perfectly optimized caption. They remember the line that made them feel something. They remember the story that hit at the right time. They remember whether the brand sounded like a person or just a persona.

So no, the best marketing advice I ever got wasn’t in a workshop or a book. It came from a movie. From a moment. From sitting still long enough to hear something that wasn’t trying to be advice at all.

And that’s the lesson: not everything needs to be packaged to be powerful. Sometimes it just needs to be honest.

That’s the kind of work I want to keep doing. Whether I’m helping a brand launch, a founder write their voice, or a team get unstuck. I’m in it for the moments that feel clear and true.

The kind that make someone stop scrolling.
Not because it was loud,
But because it felt real.