What a Top Marketing Strategist Wants You to Know About Growing Your Business in 2026
I recently interviewed Kelsey Reidl on the Unfiltered Tea with Evie podcast and walked away with pages of notes. Kelsey is a marketing consultant, host of the Rain or Shine podcast and someone who has built her business by doing things the right way, the long way and with a lot of intention.
If you have ever felt like you are throwing everything at the wall and nothing is sticking, this one is for you.
Here are the biggest takeaways from our conversation.
Stop Scatterbrain Marketing Before It Drains You
This is Kelsey's term for what most of us do in the early days of business. One week you are starting a Substack. The next week you are setting up Pinterest. The week after that you are launching a YouTube channel. Every platform is talking about something different and none of it is working together.
Scatterbrain marketing is not a character flaw. It happens because we are not trained marketers and running a business means wearing a hundred hats at once. But it is costing you time, energy and momentum.
Kelsey's fix is straightforward. Write down the three to five things you do every single week to get eyes on your work. Then identify how you nurture those people once they find you. Then make sure you have a conversion event, something that invites them to take the next step.
Stick with that plan for a minimum of 90 days before you judge whether it is working or pivot to something else. Two weeks is not enough time. Most people quit right before they would have seen results.
Know Your Mission Before You Choose Your Marketing Strategy
Kelsey breaks her framework down into three M's: Mission, Mindset and Main Ingredients. And she is very clear that they have to happen in that order.
Most people jump straight to the main ingredients. They want to know what to post, which platform to use, whether they need a website. But without knowing your mission first, you might do all the right things and still end up in the wrong place.
Your mission right now might be visibility. It might be landing two more clients this month. It might be building a community so you can launch something bigger next year. Each of those missions calls for a completely different strategy. Knowing yours keeps you from wasting energy doing things that do not actually move you toward your goal.
Mindset Is Not a Soft Skill. It’s a Business Strategy.
This is the part people skip and Kelsey does not let anyone off the hook for it.
She shared a conversation with a client who knew she needed to build a personal brand on LinkedIn. She knew it would help her reach her goals. But she was so afraid of being judged that she was not doing anything. That fear was costing her real opportunities.
Marketing requires experimentation. Some things will not work, but that doesn’t mean you failed. It means you gathered information. When you can separate your identity from your results, you show up differently and more consistently.
Two Ways to Measure If Something Is Working
At the end of 90 days, Kelsey uses a simple two-part check.
First, did you actually enjoy doing it? On a scale of one to ten, how much did this strategy light you up or drain you? If you dreaded every single post or email, that matters.
Second, did it produce results? Did it bring in clients, leads, revenue or visibility?
When you look at both scores together, you get a clearer picture. A strategy you love that brings zero results needs a tweak. A strategy that converts but makes you miserable needs a system so you can get out of the way.
The Human Element in Marketing Is No Longer Optional
This part of our conversation hit me hard.
Kelsey talked about landing on a sales page for a course and having a gut feeling that the creator was not a real person. She scrolled all the way to the bottom and confirmed it. An AI-generated persona selling a real product. And in that moment, all the trust she might have had was gone instantly.
We are at a point where people are incredibly sensitive to what is real and what is not. Things like chatbots managing your DMs, automated webinars and AI-generated images are tools that can work at a certain stage of business but right now, in this season, the brands that are winning are the ones making people feel something real.
Kelsey's take is that the person who can build the most genuine relationships will win over the next year. That might look like voice notes in your DMs, in-person events or a podcast where people hear your actual voice. Anything that makes someone feel like they know you for real.
Getting Found on ChatGPT Is Simpler Than You Think
AI search engines can only pull what already exists on the internet about you. That is it. There are two sides to it: what you have said about yourself and what other people have said about you.
If you want to show up when someone searches for a copywriter, a brand photographer or a marketing strategist in their niche, you need to give the internet more to work with.
More pages on your website.
A Google Business profile.
Consistent content on social media.
Guest features on podcasts and blogs.
Other people tagging and referencing you.
Kelsey's tip is to go search yourself on ChatGPT right now and see what comes up. If the answer is not much, or if it is not accurate, that is your starting point.
Why You Might Need to Rebrand (Even If Everything Is Fine)
Kelsey rebranded her podcast after eight years and over 350 episodes. Not because it was failing, but because she was not feeling aligned with it anymore.
She went on a rainy day walk with her dog and stumbled across a concert at a pavilion with almost no audience. A talented musician playing to an empty park because people did not want to show up in the rain. That image became the foundation for her new brand, Rain or Shine, built around the idea that the people who show up no matter the conditions are the ones who build something real.
Her decision came down to one question: what is the biggest thing I can do right now that will not ruin the business if it fails? Rebranding the podcast was that thing. And it re-energized her as a creator.
If something feels stale, trust that feeling. Sometimes a shift does not have to be dramatic to change everything.
The Long Game Is the Only Game
When Kelsey was asked for the best business advice she has ever received, her answer was simple: Play the long game.
Do not expect overnight results from anything. But extend the time horizon out to three, four or five years and ask yourself what becomes possible if you just keep showing up. That question changes the way you think about everything, from a reel that did not perform to a launch that fell flat to a podcast episode that got ten downloads.
The slight edge is real. Small, consistent actions compound into something much bigger than any one big move ever could.
If you want to hear the full conversation with Kelsey, catch episode one of the Unfiltered Tea with Evie podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.