Mid-Year Marketing Reset: How to Refocus Your Strategy for the Back Half of the Year

We're halfway through 2026 and if your marketing has felt like it's held together with sticky notes and willpower, this episode is your permission slip to pause, pull over, and get pointed in the right direction.

In this solo episode, Ruthie walks through what a mid-year marketing reset actually looks like using the Cornerstone Framework, the same five-phase process she uses with every single client. And yes, she finally ran her own business through it. What she found? She'd never drawn the full route. Not once. And she's been driving this car for years.

Whether you mapped out a marketing strategy in January or you've been going on instinct and good momentum, this one will help you figure out where you are, where you're headed, and whether you actually have the capacity to get there.

You'll walk away knowing the five phases of the Cornerstone Framework, how to think about your campaign calendar outside a January–December grid, why your documented brand strategy might already be outdated, and the one question to answer before anything else this week.

This is the fuel stop, not a whole new route.

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@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:02.069)

I gotta ask you, how did we get here already? How did we get to the end of June? I can't even believe we are halfway through the end of halfway through 2026. I feel like I blinked somewhere around February, and now we're steering down July. And the year moves so fast, and it moves faster when you're running a business and a family at the same time. And here's what tends to happen around the halfway mark for a lot of us. You realize that when it comes to your marketing,

You haven't looked at the marketing plan since January. You or you realize you never actually made one, like you kept meaning to, but it just never happened. You set some intentions, you maybe even set some goals, but you got busy and you've just been moving ever since. So today I want to talk about a mid-year marketing reset. Not the kind where you're throwing everything out and saying start over, start from scratch, but the kind where we pull over, look at where we are.

get pointed in the right direction for the back half of the year without losing any of the ground that we've already covered. The reset is a fuel stop, not a whole new route. Okay.

Ruthie Sterrett (01:21.166)

All right, let me tell you the two kinds of drivers, marketing drivers I see out there because you'll know right away which one you are. The first driver mapped the route in January, sat down, picked a destination, planned the trip. They've been driving it ever since. And for that driver, a mid-year reset is just a dashboard check. Are we still on track? Do we need to refuel? Is there anything we need to adjust? The second driver got in the car and started driving. No full map.

Just a general sense of direction and some good instinct and a lot of momentum. And that driver has covered real miles. And they're not lost, but they never fully drew a route, so they're maybe not going quite the best path to get to where they want to go. And I gotta be honest with you, this year I'm driver number two. Even though I wish I wasn't. It's kind of like black SUV bomb versus white SUV bomb. I don't know if you know this trend from the internet, but

Black SUV mom is supposed to be like the type B fun, funny. She has a you know, backseat full of snacks. She's always late, but like she's got the best playlist and she tells the best jokes. And then there's type there's white SUV mom who's like clean, always on time. Type A, white SUV vacuum to perfection. that's kind of where we are right now. Like I'm

Black SUV mom, but I I kind of wish I was white SUV mom. And that I bring up that analogy because I'm literally shopping for a new SUV right now and trying to decide if like I actually want black or I actually want white, having nothing to do with the social media labels. But we're getting off track. I'm gonna tell you something that I've never said publicly about my own marketing strategy. I have never taken my business through the entire cornerstone framework, which is my

proprietary framework that I use with every single client. I've never gone through it step by step in order start to finish. I've used every piece of it and taken clients through it step by step. And I've even used pieces of it in my own business, but I've never sat down and ran the whole thing on my own business from start to finish. So I'm doing that right now. And the reason I'm doing it is what we talked about last week in our channel check-in.

Ruthie Sterrett (03:45.027)

That channel audit, when I was asking each of my channels what their job was, it sent me down a longer path. And I realized that I couldn't answer the channel questions cleanly because I had never drawn the whole route. So I'm drawing it now. And what I want you to hear about this mid-year marketing reset is that it's not starting over.

For the first driver, it is a dashboard check-in on a route you've already mapped. For the second driver, driver, like me, it's finally drawing the route that you've been improvising all year. It doesn't mean I'm burning down what I already did and starting at zero. Either way, you're keeping your mileage. You're not throwing away the first half of the year. Every mile you've driven, every post you put out there, every conversation you had, every email you sent still counts.

You're not back at the starting line. You're somewhere down the road, getting clear on where you're headed from here. So the map I'm using, the framework, the cornerstone framework, the easiest way to understand it is like a road trip. So there's five parts and they go in order because each one builds on the last. Number one is conversion and context. What is the destination? What are the business goals we are trying to reach? And context.

What's happening in the market? What are my competitors doing? What are business adjacent businesses doing? What's happening in the greater attention economy? What's going on? Right. That's the context. And what are my goals? The campaign calendar is our timeline. What's happening over the next 12 months for my IDO client? What am I talking about when? What's going on in my life when? Right? We're mapping all of that out into a calendar.

And a lot of marketers will tell you to plan 90 days at a time, but my personal opinion is that you need a 12-month map. Even if you don't stick to the exact map over the 12 months, every single 90 days is a runway to the next 90 days. So it's important that we can always see kind of that entire 12-month year. So step two, campaign calendar. Step three is capture or clarify and capture brand details.

Ruthie Sterrett (06:08.354)

Now, this is a really, really important point for somebody who is looking to increase their marketing capacity by outsourcing some marketing. I have got to get all of those brand details, my messaging, my positioning, my language, my offer suite, my audience out of my head and on paper in a way that is accurate so that someone else

Can create my content. And not someone else, whether it be Claude, my best buddy, the AI robot, or a team member, or a combination of the two. I've got to clarify all of those brand details and capture them on paper. And then number four, channels and content. What are the roads we are traveling and what are the vehicles we're putting down those roads? And I started this whole process thinking I could just do that. But the thing is,

Phase one, phase two, phase three, they all inform the decisions that we make around channels and content. And then ultimately, once we've chosen the channels that we're going to travel and the content that should be put on those channels, I have to check in on phase five, which is consistency and capacity. Do I have the capacity to do this consistently? What's the fuel needed to make this work? Right? The destination, of course, comes first.

Most of us think we can start at number four, like plan posts, plan content. And then we wonder: like, why does this feel so hard? Why is this not working? But if we can go in order the way that I'm running my own business through right now, we can get to a route, a plan, a strategy that feels doable, right? So

I'm gonna run through them one more time because I did it pretty quickly and I just want to make sure that we all understand kind of those five phases. Because you can do this for yourself. You can take yourself through this same exercise. Number one, conversion, the destination. Where are we going? What is our business goal? And for me, it's not just about how many clients do I want to bring on, or what is the revenue that I hope to bring in, but there's also

Ruthie Sterrett (08:29.57)

the lifestyle piece of it. If I set this revenue number and this number of clients to get to this revenue, do I have the capacity to do that on my own? Or do I need to hire and take some things off of my plate? Because I'm sure y'all have seen the reels and memes about being a business owner that like I left the nine to five so that now I can work 247. Even though that's like haha funny, we don't want that. We don't want that. Most of us are entrepreneurs so that we can have

Some time freedom, but you don't get time freedom if you keep putting more work on your plate. And if the only way to get to the revenue number is for more work on your plate, we've got to think about outsourcing and capacity and team. But then team requires more revenue. So that's the destination that I have to define. And also, I've got to understand as I'm getting to that destination what's happening.

At the other destinations around me, what it's happening with the other cars on the road, meaning what are my competitors doing? What's happening in the market? That's the context. So don't just ask yourself, how much money do I want to make? Or how many units of XYZ do I want to sell? But ask yourself, what do I want to make, or how many do I want to sell that I can sustain?

Or our current team can sustain, or the team that we need to bring on can sustain. Number two, campaign calendar. this is interesting to talk about in July because everybody wants to talk about calendar planning in Q4 or Q1. And a lot of businesses, I would say even most businesses, run their fiscal year from January to December.

Here's the thing that happens for a lot of moms that I don't think like we acknowledge. We might run our life and we might run our business on the calendar year calendar, you know, January to December. But a big portion of our lives, for those of us with kids in school, that part of our life runs from August to August, right? Back to school to out of school and summer vacation.

Ruthie Sterrett (10:53.814)

And this kind of hit me this this month because I w I have a calendar on our kitchen wall and I was gonna go write the camp dates for July and I open up the calendar and gonna flip to July and there's no July page. And I realized it was because I had bought a school year based calendar that went from June to or from July to July or August to July or whatever.

So, and there's I mean, there's like a whole planner industry that sells new planners based upon the school year. And so if we didn't plan our year in January, who cares? Plan your next 12 months in July. It's totally fine, right? But also ask yourself like which mode of planning feels best for you? Planning a fiscal year from December or from January to December.

Or planning your fiscal year from August to July or July to June. There's no wrong way to do it. Like you get to decide your own fiscal year. And I think this is why a mid-year check-in is helpful because you can decide what makes the most sense for your business and your life. So for me, part of that calendar work I'm asking is: okay.

Instead of trying to force my business into a January through December grid or four-quarter grid, I actually even look at it in quintiles, which meaning like I look at planning projects and campaigns around five phases of the year. And those five phases are

Starting with back to school, right? After back to school, we've got the holidays. Then after the holidays, we have kind of that like early spring, you know, get through. We're back from Christmas break. We're getting to spring break. That's, you know, for me, quintile number three. Quintile number four, then is that spring break to summer vacation, like that May Sember period, right? And then the fifth quintile is summer break.

Ruthie Sterrett (13:05.112)

So those are the time frames and the time blocks I'm thinking about when I'm planning launches, when I'm planning campaigns, when I'm planning promotions, because that's what makes sense for me, and it's what makes sense for my IDO client. So the campaign calendar, there's no right way to build one. And those are just different ways that you could look at it. So clarity. That's the brand piece that we talked about, and capturing it and clarifying it and getting it out of your head.

You know, I'll be honest, the last six to nine months, I have done a ton of clarifying in my business, my positioning, my messaging, my offer suite. And all of that clarity has come from taking action, right? It came from testing things, it came from trying, it came from doing and then reflecting. And I'm clearer and more confident about my messaging and positioning now than I ever have been in my business. And I'm so excited to have that clarity, but all that clarity still lives in my brain.

And there's tons of documents in my old Google Drive that have outdated messaging, positioning, offers, IDO client avatars, pricing. So if I'm gonna bring on a team member or even an AI tool, I have to give it the right information. So I have to give it what's been clarified in my brain on paper. And so ha doing this mid-year marketing reset is helpful because you can ask yourself.

Is what I have documented actually accurate? Because if it's not, like it's a good time to update it so that the people who are supporting you or who are giving you more capacity have the right information. And if those things are not clear for you yet, if you're in a season of like, I am still trying to figure out exactly who my ideal client is, or exactly what my positioning is, or exactly what my offer suite are, that's okay.

You still want to get it documented as best you can. Because this type of work is not a one-and-done thing. We will do this strategic work. I mean, I think at least once a year, but sometimes twice a year, depending upon where you are in your business. Sometimes more often as your business is evolving. Shh. Sorry, I know you probably don't want to hear that, but it's true. okay, so let's move on from the brand clarity piece to

Ruthie Sterrett (15:24.536)

The big chunk that we talked about last week, channels and content, the roads and the vehicles. So channels and content are the roads you take and the vehicles you're driving, and how they are how you show up and move towards that destination. If you did not listen to last week's episode, go back and listen to it because we we really got into the weeds on this of choosing your channels and figuring out your content strategy. But I will say this: it was that step.

That made me go back and say, we gotta look at the whole map, not just the actual roads. And so this mid mid-year reset, as much as I wanted to say, I'll do it in Q3 or I'll do it in Q4, I'll do it when things slow down, I it was this step, step number four, that I realized, no, we've we've got to do all of these steps. And then finally, phase number five.

Consistency and capacity and checking in on that fuel and that dashboard. And this is a step a lot of people skip. The checkpoints, the playlist, the fuel, the part that keeps the trip from becoming a breakdown on the side of the road and like actually a fun experience. And this is where your mid-year reset gets real because if this is a dashboard check for you, if we're checking in on what we planned earlier in the year, we've got to ask, not just what are the numbers say, but what's draining me?

What's energizing me? What can I keep up? What can I not keep up? What do I desperately want to get off my plate? And I want to give you the line I come back to time and time again, that your capacity is going to tell you the intensity you can sustain consistently. Not the intensity you can hit for one good week in January, but the intensity you can hold all year.

Through the launches and the sick kids and the summer and the back to school madness and the holidays and May simber and all the things. Because consistent doesn't mean constant. You don't have to go full speed, pedal to the metal all the time to get where you're going. And if you can't keep up the pace a goal requires, that's information, not a verdict about you. Slower isn't a failure, but unsustainable is.

Ruthie Sterrett (17:48.589)

And I'll plant one more thing here and then leave it because we're gonna pick up next week and talk a little bit more about capacity. But sometimes you can run the whole dashboard check and the plan is sound and the route is good, and you still come up against a truth that you do not have the capacity to keep driving along. Because as our business grows, that's like a good problem to have. And

That isn't just a marketing problem. It's a planning problem. And it's a different conversation that, like I said, we're gonna dig into more next week and throughout July. But here's what I want you to take away from this today. A reset is not pulling over. Or I'm sorry. Scratch that, start over. A reset is not starting over. It's pulling over. It's checking the map, refueling, getting pointed in the right direction with all your miles.

Still on the odometer. And you can do this mapping work at any time. This is the thing I most want you to hear. You don't have to wait till January. You don't have to wait till August. You can do this whenever you want. You don't have to feel behind because you didn't do it in Q1 or Q4 the previous year. If you never drew the route, or you drew it and life redrew it for you, you can still sit down and draw it again or draw it for the first time. So why not now?

Mid year is a perfectly good place to start. And if you do one thing this week, start with what's the destination. Get honest about what success looks like for you the back half of this year and whether or not you have the capacity to sustain it. Everything else on the map hangs on that one answer. Now, I'm gonna be transparent with you because I'm all about highlighting the real and not just the highlight reel.

Everything I walked you through today, this whole five-step process that I'm running through my own business right now, it takes time. And it's the exact work I do with clients inside of our cornerstone strategy. It's the foundation work. It's if you and if your marketing has felt like it's being held together with sticky notes and willpower and duct tape and paper clips.

Ruthie Sterrett (20:04.436)

That's what this is built for. It's giving us that roadmap for your marketing so you don't feel all over the place. I'm not gonna sell you in the middle of this episode about doing your own reset. I'm just gonna say that I'm here to help you and do this with you. If you're like, my gosh, Ruthie, this is a great idea, but like I can't see the label through the inside of the Coke bottle. Like I need help thinking through all of this. That's that's what I'm here for. I'm already in your corner, I'm already cheering you on, and it's why I'm so passionate about.

this particular offer, our cornerstone strategy, because it is so incredibly helpful to setting you up for success with your marketing strategy. Next month we've got an episode that I'm planning right now that is gonna backwards plan your Q4. So if you're like, my God, I there's no way I can plan out a whole year and I haven't planned the whole year and I'm feeling so behind, like it's okay. It's okay. There's an episode coming for you where we're just gonna look at Q4, which is for a lot of

people, a big point, a big of make or break in your business. But for a lot of moms, it's where we are balancing the most in life and in business. So today was about drawing the route. The one and that episode will be about planning a really specific trip during the back half of the year. And you don't want to miss that either. So that's all I've got for you today. Start with the destination and always keep sparkling.

I'm cheering for you. I am in your corner and we'll see you in the next episode.