Stop Selling Boats—Start Selling the Ocean

Mar 19, 2025

So, you think entrepreneurs are looking for a video guy? A web developer? A graphic designer?

You post content, push out ads, and throw up images trying to bait business owners into paying you for creative assets—videos, flyers, logos, websites. You tell them how amazing your work is, how refined your craft is, how no one else does it quite like you.

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I get it. I’ve done it too. But here’s the truth: we’ve all been getting it wrong. Real business owners—real entrepreneurs—aren’t looking for any of that.

They’re looking for two things:

Freedom

Profit

That’s it.

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The plumber, the electrician, the doctor, the general contractor, the dentist, the restaurant owner—they don’t want a website. They don’t want a video. They don’t want a logo.

They want a solution.

They want to keep running their business, living their life, and making money without being weighed down. Or they want to build passive income and automation so they can finally live the life they envisioned when they first started.

And yet, when we offer them creative services, we talk about them as if they’re the goal. But they’re not. Creative assets are simply tools operating within the global infrastructure of the internet—nothing more.

The River, The Boat, and The Ocean

Imagine a business owner wants to sail to the ocean, but they live inland. They want the journey. They want the view. They want the freedom of open waters.
In this analogy:

The river is the internet.
The boat is the creative services—websites, branding, marketing, video.
The ocean is the life they actually want to build.

Now here’s where most of us go wrong: We keep trying to sell them the boat.
We tell them how beautiful it is, how well-crafted, how durable, how unique.
But they don’t care about the boat. They just want to get to the ocean.

The right business owners—the ones who are actually going somewhere—aren’t looking for a flashy boat. They’re looking for a way to move forward without worrying about the boat at all.

Because if they’re obsessing over how it’s built, what it’s made of, and why it’s different from other boats, then their mind is in the wrong place. And if their mind is in the wrong place, they’ll never get where they’re trying to go.
That’s your job.

You build them a boat that just works, that doesn’t sink, that keeps them moving—so they can focus on the journey ahead.

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Be the Builder, Not the Salesman

Most business owners right now are either:

Hiking the riverbank, struggling to keep up.

Lost in the woods, stuck in survival mode.

Or worse, they’ve set up camp and given up, thinking this is as far as they’ll ever go.

But the ones who are truly trying to reach the ocean? They want the easiest, most reliable way to move forward.

That’s where you come in.
Be a boat maker—but don’t sell the boat.
Sell the unburdened convenience of what the boat allows them to do.
The website, the design, the video?
They’re all ingredients of the same vessel.
But the business owner—the client—sees none of it the way you do. They don’t care about the fine details. They care about their life. Their family. Their freedom.

They care about breaking free of the daily grind and doing what they love without being weighed down by things they don’t understand or have time for.

Sell Them Their Vision, Not Your Services

Sell them the future they want.
Sell them the ease of moving forward.
Sell them the ability to get where they’re going—without stressing about how.
That’s what we do at Bahlr.
We don’t just design, build, or create.
We solve problems.
We alleviate burdens.
We make the journey easier.
Because at the end of the day, business owners don’t want websites, logos, or videos.
They want the ocean.
And we get them there.