How the Trust Recession Changed Buyer Behavior & Marketing in 2026 with Sheri Moise #276

Emily Reagan 0:00 We don’t want the out of touch person. We want the person who’s like really in it and doing it at a level that relates to what is actually achievable and realistic for me. Hey, happy 2026 Welcome to the show. I’m Emily Reagan, a fellow marketing freelancer, and this is the marketing freelancer, and I want to talk about something big, something I’ve been feeling, something I’ve been seeing across the entire online space. You see it, you see the threads post. You see the rumbling and grumbling and the shocking news. Something is shifting, and it’s not panic, it’s not doom, and it’s honesty. So 2025 was a big year for me. Personally, my marriage ended. I closed that chapter with a divorce, getting the house in my name, and walking away with the business that I own. And because of that, I’m very clear about the kind of work and the kind of life I want to build, and what I have capacity for, and what works and moving forward that really awakens you to what you put up with and what you settle for and what you choose for your life. If you’ve been through a divorce, you understand this. The clarity is showing up for me right now, big time. It’s everywhere. It’s not just for me. And I have some really good episodes planned to talk about this in the future and some of the shifts we’re seeing in the online marketing space. But I still believe that people will always need implementation. Implementers are not going away, and freelancing still matters. It is one of the smartest moves that you can make to have a digital service, to start a side hustle to offer services on the side that can grow and evolve and change with you. Whether you’ve had a baby break, a career pause, a resume gap, a freelancing is a quick way that lets you get relevant fast without having to do another degree. And it’s it’s how people move into fractional roles, consulting and higher value work, instead of staying stuck in the low hourly admin rates. And so that’s what we’re talking about here on this show. And you don’t actually have to know where your business is going. You just have to start and get it moving and keep showing up, keep investing in yourself, keep working on your marketing and visibility and delivering good work to your clients and and different pathways will open up to everybody. And so freelancing is a very safe thing to add, whether you’re in a nine to five or you’re dabbling with going back to work and haven’t decided yet. It is something that has made me employable and hireable again after being a stay at home mom for over 10 years. It also helped me qualify to own my house and and get the mortgage all in my name. Congratulations to me. I was recently on my friend Natalie Gingrich’s State of the Union panel. This is on the ops authority podcast, where she has content dedicated to those who are directors of operations. And it was a really great podcast. She brings in top quality service providers and coaches and people who are really in tune with how this industry is shifting. But I gotta be honest, panels don’t leave enough room to riff. And so this episode is really my version. It’s simply understanding where the industry is going, what I see happening, how we can make ourselves more valuable to our clients, because we can’t ignore the shift, not like I ignore red flags in my marriage. You can’t ignore it, right? People aren’t panicking right now. I think they’re just getting better at asking questions like, Is this working? Do I have the energy to deliver it? Does this align with the life I want? And that’s not a collapse at all. That’s maturity. And we are seeing this online space mature. It’s not dying, marketing, e learning, digital businesses, e commerce. It’s all growing. You can go look at the numbers like trillions and billions of dollars, but where we’re done surviving on the 2020, models, like the bro models that just taught us to hustle and do all of these revenue streams and try everything and just copy one another and make it a copycat business. And that’s what we’re not about anymore. And so the elephant in the room is watching all of our industry leaders simplify and make some shocking news, and a lot of them are quite simply, pausing, simplifying, repositioning or rebranding, and we’re not privy to all of the information, and there’s a lot of chatter. There’s a lot of people who are upset to see their leaders quit. There’s a lot of people who understand and can respect the decision, but bottom line, and that’s what business is about. Business is about choice, and it’s about freedom. We’re not doing it to just make a buck over here. We want to align our time and our energy and our passions with what actually makes money and what makes an impact. And so Amy Porterfield just announced she’s retiring digital course Academy. So everyone’s up in arms that this means courses are dead. Jenna Kutcher is closing her podcast. Everyone’s up in arms because she has a course on podcasting. They take it to mean signaling podcasting is dead. Kevin Rogers just shut down copy chief his community for copywriters. Abby Ashley just announced that she’s retiring the savvy system. So there is a lot of important nuances getting lost online. Amy didn’t announce the end of courses. She made a business decision about her revenue, her life and her stage of business. And quite honestly, she’s really rich and she doesn’t even need to work, and so she has the right because of her financial freedom, especially her visibility, her leverage, to move however she wants. And that’s not the reality for most of us, business owners. We’re learning our chops. We’re playing around with courses, different revenue streams, and we’re trying to learn what’s working for us. And there will always be a place for courses, especially people who can’t afford the done for you or the done with you support. People want to learn and be empowered. Courses are still how people learn skills, but what’s changing is the expectation. Information alone is no longer enough. Courses need to work now with support, application, action, real world use, feedback. We’re not just consuming. We want transformation out of it, and making sweeping business decisions based solely on what a top tier industry leader does, instead of using your own data, your own audience, your own capacity, is risky. It’s not failure for them, seasoned business owners are auditing the cost, the energy, the alignment and choosing something differently. Now, some people are a little bit sus because, you know, we see Mel Robbins Hawking protein powder. Now, immediately, Jenna Kutcher is posting all these influencer content and trying to sell biohacking and beauty products. So we’re always going to question, are we getting accurate data? It’s kind of like, when somebody does a launch and they’re like, Yeah, I made a million dollars in my launch, but you didn’t see that, like, what’s the gross, what’s the net revenue, right? The affiliate payouts was half of that, and then the team payout, and they actually didn’t really net as much as we think. It wasn’t quite the big launch that we think, when the costs are so high, and I think the one time big launches are risky, they’re freaking stressful. And even myself, in my own business, I’m like making those choices to move away from it. My six figure launches have also gone down. I can’t imagine Amy Porterfield style launch that takes months, that I’ve heard makes her team cry. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and stressful because there’s all this pressure to do it the tip top and do it so well. I can’t imagine putting time and energy into that when your heart isn’t really in it, and you’re finding yourself worn out and burnt out. And I think it would be doing everyone a disservice to act like it’s normal to be able to do all these things and do them all. Well, that’s not sustainable. We don’t want business leaders who are burning themselves out too. And I think there’s something that happens too when people get really big and famous and they’re a little bit out of touch. It’s like when I see these VA coaches who never really did the VA work, who immediately started scaling, who never really were in it the trenches with their clients. It’s like, those people quickly get out of touch because they don’t know what they’re talking about. So I see more people wanting to go learn from smaller courses, right? I can talk about spotlight versus signature courses here in a second, but I want smaller containers. We don’t want the out of touch person. We want the person who’s like, really in it, and doing it at a level that relates to what is actually achievable and realistic for me. Like, I don’t want to go be a faceless person in a big mastermind where the person doesn’t even show up, the big name doesn’t even show up. I want coaching from the person who’s really in it, not just popping in a zoom and logging off for the day. Business has maturity cycles. Every industry goes through this. What works in the growth phase eventually gets audited for efficiency, profit and sustainability. And that’s where we are in the online space is quite simple. We’re in the phase where the SMART operators are simplifying. They’re keeping only what delivers results and for for their clients and for themselves. And Amy and Jenna, they’re no different. They’re basically saying that I believe maybe this is my spicy take. It’s not worth it for me to run this anymore, because of a couple different factors, right? But you also maybe you heard that story about Lewis house, how he had a business coach and he encouraged him to simplify, go all in with a podcast, and look what he did with his podcast. It got huge, millions of downloads, but he was spread too thin doing all the other stuff, and so it took him focusing his time and effort on that it’s so easy to be spread thin. I mean, I feel like I’m in that in my business and with motherhood and being the default parent. I don’t think this online market is dead. I know it’s not dead. It’s just discerning, and I’m bringing a podcast guest in to talk about this market saturation, this discernment that we have of buyers, because buyers have more options and they have a memory of what didn’t work in the past. I mean, hands up if you’ve been burned by a course that was recorded poorly or didn’t have the exercises you need to actually implement. Or left you feeling stuck, vague promises, bloated, offers, information only. Courses just aren’t cutting it anymore. We need specific and skilled and outcome driven, driven courses, and so I see that big doozy of a big Signature Course, which was a lot to take in, a lot to implement and execute. Well, it’s all being broken down into smaller, what Amy would call spotlight or starter courses, where it’s very specific focused is a quick win. People want transformation. They don’t just want the information. And so what this means for service providers is that if we’re moving away from one size fits all courses, these students, these clients, of our clients, they want implementation, they want accountability. They want feedback, proximity, and they want results. So now it’s our job to deliver that. And this is why community is working so well. This is why program managers are working really well. This is why evergreen funnels and ongoing monthly webinars are working well for a lot of people, and so you tailor your services to match the new revenue streams, adjust to there and support the client there. We have seen a couple years ago, all the big launch agencies are starting to shut down because that was no longer sustainable, and also people were like, the profit isn’t here. It’s not worth it to hire a 30, 50k launch agency to run this launch, right? So things are moving in in house, and things are being all the eggs aren’t being put in one basket anymore. So when it comes to these courses that are really big, I mean, the marketing assistant school that I read it is big. It is meant to be a foundational course to go in there, like, like, you know, an encyclopedia, pick and choose the three services you really need to know well, understand how they relate to everything, and then move on. But people get stuck in the, like, linear Oh my gosh. I have to watch all 47 modules in this library, and it makes them feel like a loser when they can’t actually do that and they don’t make progress. And so that’s why people piecing out the smaller courses or maybe repositioning how they offer the course, like my course, I might not run it live again. I don’t think anyone’s gonna be shocked, but it is not always worth the cost to deliver it. I love the people we’re getting in the program. I get really smart people who want to add marketing services, but it might make more sense for my type of positioning, where it is a resource for people to go in and pick and choose what they need. I think in the case of maybe Jenna Kutcher, I mean her podcast, I don’t know her very well. This isn’t me talking bad or anything, but I don’t want to learn podcasting from somebody who is so out of touch and doesn’t actually do any of the work for the podcast. This is my biggest beef. I don’t want to learn Pinterest from someone who doesn’t do her own Pinterest. I want to learn from the service provider or the agency owner who has their hands in multiple accounts and is doing the work and seeing the results. Yeah, like they hear from them, but I want to talk to the person doing the work. And I think that’s why this is so powerful for the service provider, because you are in that position. I was in that position working with all the clients, right? I mean, I’m still in that position, and so thinking about and choosing who we learn from, or more discerning than ever, we want shorter offers, we want quicker wins, and we want a clearer scope, but we want to learn from the person actually doing the work. And that is why I think I was frustrated years ago and even started my business. I was like, all these business coaches are charging 1000s of dollars to teach strategy. Well, that strategy is all frickin common knowledge. Now, not really, but a lot of us understand webinar launching. We understand email lists like this isn’t new. Oh, a book funnel, a trip wire. I can do all that. All these people without marketing knowledge, are able to do that where they still need help is doing the work they’re still going to need us. And what we’re seeing is courses that are going more into a hybrid model. I think that’s the rumor on the street with Abby Ashley’s course is more of an accelerator. It’s more of keeping the work in the house, helping people get that quick win. It’s offering implementation within the course my friend Allie Bjork, she’s doing that. Yes, she helps you build the tiny funnel, but for extra money, her team can do it. And that’s what people want. They want help with the doing. So there might be opportunities for you as a service provider, to get in with the coaches who are teaching and doing and be an in house technician or specialist or whatever. So I see in 2026 coaches are gonna do well, not because information is scarce, but I think implementation is hard. Courses give the answer, but coaching helps people apply it in real time, get over the roadblocks and the mindset things that are keeping them stuck and in a discerning market, human judgment, feedback, making it personal and customized to my business, not trying to act like I’m Russell Brunson anymore. That’s going to matter more in 2026 so clients are getting better at marketing themselves, but they also expect us as marketers to bring this answer. Analytics, awareness, to have automation and AI literacy and fluency to already know project management skills, to understand copy messaging judgment and understand that you don’t need to be an AI expert, but you are going to need to be a modern marketer. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, the pure task, the doing work is being commoditized. It’s being shipped overseas. And what that doesn’t include is judgment, ownership and leadership, and that’s what we can all bring to the table. And that’s why you’re here listening to this podcast, because you want to charge more, you want to be a well paid, well positioned expert in your field, and you want that you’re not shying away from it as the minimal order taker. The thing to think about going into 2026 is not coming from a scarcity or lacking mindset. If you think you are doomed, if you think AI is coming to get your job, if you think nobody wants to pay your rates, you are you are doomed. You won’t be successful. If you act like an expert in 2026 you’ll get paid like one. This is about confident posturing. It’s about believing what you bring to the table. And the podcast here is dedicated to help you do that. We’re helping you be smart. We’re helping you learn from other experts, you don’t have to go spend a bazillion dollars on other courses. And there’s something beautiful that happens in our digital marketers, our work group, our community and mastermind is like the point was not to have to buy another $3,000 course. What if you could just learn the quick hits and shortcuts from your peer group so that you can step into new roles confidently, because AI can give you the information. If someone just gives you a breadcrumb, you can go there easily. I just don’t think people are going to be spending $3,000 on these big doozy courses anymore, because the information is at their fingertips. So surround yourself with people who can help you excel and help you not make mistakes, help you get there faster, because clients do expect more from their teams. Teams are leaner. They want more from you. They expect to cross over marketing skills and learn from people who can help you get there quicker. 2026 is going to be fun, and you’re not late if you’re just starting freelancing. Like I said at the beginning of the episode. Freelancing is the quickest way to make yourself relevant. Start getting paid. You can position into new careers. You can do it without having to go get a four year degree. You can get positioned very quickly as fractional and consulting and working with corporate. I mean, there are so many jobs on LinkedIn right now like the job market is just shifting about what they expect out of people, but the roles are out there. 2026 will be about alignment. For you, what kind of work do you want to do? How can you meet the market demand and what people are willing to pay for and align that with what you love, being very clear with what you bring to the table. That’s how you stay in demand. And if you don’t believe in yourself, your clients won’t either. I would absolutely love to continue this conversation. And these are the types of things we’re nerding out over in our work group, we have guests, incredible guests lined up for 2026 we just had a teaching with Megan Hale about income, revenue, cash flow projecting, and this is so incredible for setting the tone of your business and where to focus your own time and energy, but it leads so much into our client work. If our clients don’t understand their numbers and their marketing budgets and can’t set goals based on that, then what are we even doing? Really leaning into 2026 people are doubling down on the analytics and what’s working and what’s no longer serving them. And so your job is to help do that within your department, within your scope, or step into the leadership where you can. So that training was really good. It was focused on us in our own businesses, because we have to do the same thing. I want to address some of that financial stuff here on the podcast. We also have Stacey brass Russell coming in. You heard her talking about high ticket offers over in the fall to teach starting your signature framework. We all need proprietary and intellectual property. We need a signature framework or a method to sell better and to sell to higher tier clients. So to follow up that podcast, we are going to be working on that in the work group, we have Rob Marsh teaching persuasion copywriting tactics, because we’ve got to bring copywriting to the table, even if AI is helping us get the first draft. We have to know this as marketers, I have another friend coming in to teach the steps to getting your business organized and ready to bring on your first subcontractor and start an agency, because that is a very scalable and lucrative model. I’m so freaking tired of VA coaches who are like, 10k months. You do that by having an agency. You do that because your own capacity is limited. You have to start outsourcing as well for somebody to do some of the I don’t want to say lower end. Sometimes lower end, more time consuming or more specialized work that complements into a full service package. So that’s going to be coming up. I have a fractional cmo coming in to share insights into her work and her packaging and her pricing, because I know our ears all itch, and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m already running my client’s marketing department, and I’m starting to set the strategy while you might be ready to be a CMO, so we’re gonna bring in my friend Katie Woodruff over there. You’ve also heard her on the podcast. We have really good talks line up so that you can do better behind the scenes of your business and in your forward facing client work. But it’s so much more than sharing jobs and referrals. There’s something to be said when you are in the loop with what’s working, whether it’s the snarky marketing tactics that are working on threads or the community based and the eye and knee hooks that are working on Instagram and social media like you need to be in the loop for yourself and for your clients so you can figure out how to bring it all together in very clear packages that deliver. I believe in you. I am proud of you for being here, for getting through 2025 I keep hearing all of this talk about the year of the snake ending and the year of the horse and how big things are happening in 2026 I wish I knew more about astrology and all of that, but I did read something interesting about Sagittarius being in a nine year. I don’t know what it was, Saturn and Pisces stage. And I was like, Oh God, that tracks with my marriage and everything I’ve been experiencing. And it was just talking about how Sagittarius, that’s my sign, talking about myself for a second, we’re gonna have an incredible shift in 2026 and I freaking feel it. I feel like we put in the work with systems, in the work group, making some team changes, building out an air table. I have a really fun q1 project happening with a rebrand and really revamping how we’re doing some things in 2026 and where I’m showing up, I’m so excited to bring it here to you on the show. Please hit subscribe, so you don’t miss out. I want to continue to help you make your business better. I also want to hear from you over on Instagram. You can DM me at Emily Reagan PR, I would love to hear your thoughts on all the changes in 2026 What are you seeing? And I also have a list I would like you to go check out. It’s the top services, the top most requested crossover skills. If you go to Emily Reagan pr.com/list, or if you DM me on Instagram list one, I’ll send this over to you. It’s not gated, but it’s a lot of information about the jobs that we’ve collected over in our work group, we’ve had over 3000 opportunities shared that I have actually tracked to spend more than that, and inside you’ll find what are clients looking for right now, we always expect a job, job surge in January, February. It’ll be interesting to see what happens as launches change, and if that affects our hiring surges. But I like to keep a pulse on this so that you know how to position yourself and what niches to focus on, what services and skills to develop, because it is evolving game and it’s fun, and we like the challenge of thinking on our feet and figuring it out, and that’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re a marketing freelancer. All right, I’ll see you in the next episode. Go ahead and leave me a five star review while you’re here. It’ll be so fun to hit 200 reviews this year. Love you. See you next time.