A Major Shift in The Online Business Space

In this episode, I’m sharing something I’ve been sensing more and more clearly; a real shift happening in the online business space, and what that means for business owners heading into 2026 and beyond.

This conversation isn’t about calling anyone out. It’s about patterns, signals, and paying attention. I’m reflecting on recent industry changes, buyer behavior, content trends, and trust (and how all of this affects how we show up, sell, and stay relevant without burning everything down).

In This Episode, I Talk About:

• A behind-the-scenes recap of the holidays, getting sick as a family, motherhood, and easing back into work
• Why recent pivots from long-standing industry leaders signal something bigger happening
• How overly polished, scripted content is creating disconnect
• The difference between “perfect” messaging and believable messaging
• Why trust, not urgency, is the real currency right now
• How buyer behavior has changed (and why impulse purchases are down)
• The rise of lower-ticket offers, extended payment plans, and memberships
• Why careless AI-generated content is hurting connection
• How launches are evolving and what buyers need during the decision window
• Why clarity matters more than scale in today’s noisy online world
• How to stay nimble, human, and sharp in 2026 and beyond

Resources & Concepts I Mention:

• The E-Myth – A book I love that explains the three roles in every business: the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician
• The Coven – Creative Bodega’s membership for female entrepreneurs focused on content creation, Canva education, and ongoing support

The Major Shifts I’m Seeing Right Now:

1. The Buyer Has Changed
Buyers are more thoughtful, less impulsive, and far less motivated by artificial urgency.

2. Trust Is the New Currency
In a world flooded with AI content, human voice, honesty, and lived experience matter more than perfection.

3. Launching Looks Different Now
Traditional launch formulas aren’t hitting the same. Buyers need clarity, support, and connection - especially mid-decision.

4. Payment Behavior Is Telling a Story
Extended payment plans often outperform pay-in-full, signaling a shift toward flexibility over rigidity.

5. Memberships Are Rising
People want continuity, ongoing support, and relationships. Not just one-time transformations.

6. Sharpness Over Scale
Clear messaging, honest positioning, thoughtful offers, and consistency now beat chasing growth at all costs.

My Biggest Takeaway:

The businesses that win right now aren’t the loudest or the most polished, they’re the most human!

You don’t need to reinvent yourself or your business. You need to pay attention, stay flexible, and build trust before urgency.

Stay Connected With Me:

📧 Email Me! I want to hear from you: amanda@onewildbrand.com

👉 Explore my services: www.onewildbrand.com

📸 Follow along on Instagram: @onewildbrand

Transcript

0:30

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the One Wild Brand Podcast. I'm Amanda Demora, and today recording day is Friday. I always give a little glimpse as to what's going on in my world and my last. From now until this episode, the holidays have happened Christmas and New Year's, and man, I've talked about this on my social media, but my whole family had the flu quite literally starting like Christmas Eve and then just spiraling over the next like 10 days. And I am being very. Honest, when I say this was one of the worst weeks of my entire life, it was just, I've been through this once before when my daughter. Well, I guess earlier in 2025, my daughter was only a few months old, but we all got really, really sick and I just don't think anyone quite warned me of this part of parenthood. I do remember seeing commercials for like NyQuil, that was like a. Moms don't get sick days. And I have never felt that more in my life because I quite literally could not take care of myself. And, the kids were super sick too. I was. In bed for days, and my husband was sick, but a lot less sick than me, so he kind of had to really step up to the plate there. And when I can't take care of my own kids, it starts to weigh on you a bit mentally and I was in a rough place there for a couple days just feeling so guilty that my husband was doing all the workload just so desperately wanting to feel better, and our Christmas party was canceled and New Year's was quite dull. And that part is just kind of all a bummer when you have young kids, of course. So, anyhow, we're over it now and looking forward to the new year. Today is my husband's 40th birthday. He's older than me. I'm just throwing that out there and, and we have a very rare night out to go out for dinner and I'm excited about that. and then. Today on my agenda is mostly just doing some client work, some revisions for a client website. I also do a little bit of business coaching, so I have a business coaching call today with one of my clients, and I'm excited about that. I'm always excited to hear progress that my coaching clients have made since the last call. I think part of business coaching is kind of like. Accountability. You know, I had my own business coach years ago, and I remember when we would, you know, plan for our next session, I'd be like, okay, well I don't wanna go back to him and let him know that I haven't done a thing that he's told me to do. So, a a bit of it is just motivation and accountability. So it's always nice to hear what they've accomplished and what they've, got going on since our last session. but that is about it for, for my world today. So this episode I'm really excited about. I think it might be a long one, so buckle up. But the basis of it is I am sensing a major shift. Going on in the online business space, and I know that others have seen it too because I've been seeing some little squeaks about it on social media and people are kind of in tune to it. So. I want to preface this by saying this episode comes from a place of respect and honesty, because I'm gonna talk about two people, specifically whom I have followed for years, and I, I will continue to follow. but, they are two kind of like big industry titans in this online business space. Whether people kind of want to admit that or not, they most certainly are. So. the two people that I am talking about are Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher again. I've really respected them and listened to them for many years and bought some of their materials, taken their classes and all of those things. So. I'm not reacting emotionally, I think I'm just kind of reflecting thoughtfully. And this episode is more about patterns than people, so I just kind of wanna say that these two women. Really opened my eyes to an entire new world, especially when I had my previous business, which I sold in 2024. when I was seeking to take over our company's marketing and online presence and all those things, discovering these two women really changed the game. for me. So I just wanna, I just wanna get that out there right from the start. I. Found, I think Amy Porterfield first, and I binged and still do all of her podcasts, learning business language and frameworks and just the possibility of this online marketing space. And it felt like it led me into something bigger. Listening to their podcasts and things. I feel like they didn't always give every answer. and that is fine because, you know, I know what they were doing. It was kind of like a lead in, it was bait, it was, you know, you're getting a little taste, but you wanna know more. And therefore they wanted you to take some kind of action from podcast episodes, whether that. Be, buy a course or download this, or whatever it is, but it got my wheels spinning no matter what. Even if it wasn't all, all the information that I needed or, you know, I felt like they could have given more. It was enough for me to get a bit of a foundation and then like build from that. So. I get the model, give value, leave people wanting more, invite them to the next step, and that is not wrong. I try to do things a little bit different on this podcast. I'm not trying to omit things because I want people to do something more or pay money for something or anything like that. So anyhow, there. Work again, really just opened my eyes to a whole new thing. A whole new thing. I think depending on what. Business you have, or you're in a lot of entrepreneurship specifically in the beginning is like you are head down in the work. You're one of the technicians. I talk about this a lot. There's a book I love called the E-Myth, and essentially what that covers is in every business there's three roles. There's the entrepreneur, there's the manager. And there's the technician. And when you're early on in business ownership, you are all three of those things usually. And it wasn't until I stepped out of being all three and I just took on the role of entrepreneurship. I hired a COO, I had, you know, quote unquote technicians, which were. Were my team who were actually, you know, in there doing the work on all the separate client accounts that we had. That my business really took off and get, but getting to that point was hard, right? Because I had to do all three things to grow and grow and grow and get to a certain amount of revenue, monthly revenue, yearly revenue, to where I could hire. For those other positions. And my position would just be the entrepreneur's role. And what I got to do when I was strictly in that role was focus on our marketing and our online presence and, me getting out there and networking, me getting out there and speaking at events and just getting my business to be. More well known in the particular industry I was in. Coincidentally, that is when I fell in love with web design and content creation and things, and little did I know that I would, my second business would be. A web design studio and, content creation and branding for women to help 'em do exactly what I did, which was grow their businesses, and I was able to scale and sell mine. Not everyone has that goal in mind and that is totally fine, but my ultimate goal with the web design now is to. Allow women to show up in the online space confidently with a brand that they love and a website that really feels like them, because I saw what it did for me, and that was kind of where a spark was lit. In addition to me really actually loving the design process and creativity behind it all. So, okay. That was a little, that was a little side spin there. I didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but sometimes you gotta, so anyhow, that opening my eyes to marketing and online marketing and newsletters and email lists and all of these things was a tremendous, tremendous help. And. Jenna and Amy have, you know, I certainly am not the only person that this happened to. This is. Oh, I, I think Amy said something the other day that was 27,000 people have taken her course. Amy's biggest thing that she kind of had was called Digital Course Academy, and this was a really in-depth course where she taught people how to launch online courses. This was her bread and butter. Of course, there were other little things here and there. Probably not little that she did, but she had a podcast, she had some masterminds and, and other things, and some lower ticket offers as well. Digital Course Academy was quite expensive, or you know, a few thousand dollars I think. but she had some lower but. Ticket options for courses and such. And I have done some of the lower ticket ones for sure. I still have all my materials and things. I'm always thinking I should revisit that. But anyhow, and. Jenna, her biggest thing really was her Gold Digger podcast in my opinion. She also obviously had some different courses that she offered, most notably lately, I think is her Pinterest marketing kinda workshop and course, but um. Anyhow. They had these for years and years, and just at the beginning of this year, things have kind of shifted. So. Amy announced that she's no longer going to be offering Digital Course Academy, and Jenna announced that she will no longer be doing her podcast. And she kinda left that a little bit open, like, yes, it's not like shut off completely. Maybe she'll come back with an episode or whatever, but these are major, major shifts and to me. One of the things that I don't really love is I don't feel like they're being totally authentic with the reasoning behind this. I think if these were both super profitable, I think probably profit has gone down in the last couple years as probably specifically for Amy. I think she's actually talked about it, where enrollment is lower each year for her digital course academy, and she announced that she's not gonna be doing it anymore, and she's more so pivoting towards a business coaching structure for female entrepreneurs. I believe female entrepreneurs who are making $150,000 or more per year. And the purpose of this is obviously to help them scale and grow and. I think a lot of us are kind of just wanting more of the real answer there, which is, yeah, this model that I had isn't quite working and now it's time for me to pivot. But I think what we're kind of being pitched is, oh no, this totally came from the heart and blah, blah. I don't know if that's like the true answer there. So anyhow, I think the downfall with. these two women, and where the cracks started to show is. Their content got more and more polished. Their messaging became more and more scripted. It was less lived in language, fewer raw moments. If there were raw moments in their social media that they were showing. To me, I felt like they were not organic. they felt forced a bit, or definitely planned. And I think people can feel that for sure. So it started to feel more robotic and less human and less them. And there is a quote that I love and it. Says that you will always be too much of something for someone too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. But if you round out your edges, you lose your edge and. I've always just tried to remember that like I am not going to dull myself down or change or anything like that for anybody, and I've kind of always been like that since I was a little kid, but I think this is something that kind of happened to these two women is. You know, they kind of got larger teams and people guiding them. And when you have other people doing your content for you, it's not gonna feel a lot like you. And it does feel a bit watered down for sure. And I think listeners and viewers and their audience started to really feel that. They both have big teams and big success, and that kind of equates to. A relatability problem. I think once you are a multi multimillionaire, you're playing on an entirely different game, and when your audience is trying to get to their first $50,000 a year or their first a hundred thousand dollars a year and they're not there yet, it can be really hard to hear advice from someone who hasn't lived there for a very long time. The gap just kind of widens quite a bit. It doesn't make anyone wrong, but it can definitely create disconnect and I definitely think that's kind of what's happening here. And one of the people that I follow whom I think is quite authentic, I really love her content. Her name is Emily. She runs the creative Bodega. She has a wonderful membership called The Coven. And this, I have been in it before. I'm not in it anymore, and that is no slight to what she has going on. I don't wanna say like I'm too talented to be in there 'cause that's not true. But she does a lot of Canva courses and stuff and I feel as though I'm pretty darn savvy on the Canva myself and creating content and kinda like keeping myself accountable. so honestly I probably will rejoin at some point because I felt as though it was great. But anyhow, I love her perspective just as a business owner and sort of someone larger in this space. And she is someone who I originally kind of saw, bring attention to this big shift with Amy and Jenna, and she was mimicking all of my own thoughts as well, and. One of the things that she mentioned was she didn't love how they kind of started throwing out numbers and salaries, and I think that kind of contributed a little bit to this disconnect among their audience and, and things so. Another thing that, Emily mentioned was that this whole, oh, my heart told me to do it rather than an honest thing. I think as your, their audience and, and viewers and consumers. Are all, or you know, all either business owners or hopeful business owners someday, and they wanna hear the truth. They wanna know what happened here. Like if this was a business model that was no longer serving you or working for you financially, people kind wanna hear that and I don't think that should be glossed over. And transparency builds trust, and I think that's kind of what's lacking here and probably has been lacking in their messaging for quite a bit to lead to this. In my opinion right now, trust is the real currency. There needs to be trust in messaging and delivery in tone, and then just trust in truth in people's truth. People don't want perfection. They want believability. All right, so. I wanna kind of talk about what all these industry shifts actually mean for your business. So beyond these two women, or any one person or brand, I think this is all kind of signaling something bigger. And what is that gonna mean for us online business owners and. How do we prepare? How do we shift what we do in this coming year of 2026 and beyond? What does this mean for you? So to me, these aren't isolated decisions. These are kind of indicators that the environment is changing whether we like it or not, and that is just life and business, right? There always has to be shifts. Otherwise, we would just stay stagnant. That is just not the way the world works. So. You don't need to blow up your business, okay? But you do need to sharpen it and stay nimble and shift that is how businesses continue to succeed. So let's talk about these shifts that matter most right now and what they mean for you and how to show up and sell and stay relevant. So shift to number one that I think is happening is the buyer has changed. What's actually changing isn't the offer, right? It's the buyer. So what I see buyers doing as a buyer myself. But they are making less impulsive decisions. It's not like they're not reacting to urgency anymore. Like time's running out, not, I don't see that anymore. There's more discernment. There's fewer last minute decisions. There's more. Lower ticket offers going than big ticket offers. And to me that can be for a lot of reasons. You know, I don't want to get too into the economy and all of that stuff, but people, that is something that people mention as the economy has changed. People are nervous., To make these big ticket purchases. So lower ticket purchases are more appealing and they're selling more. I absolutely see that and honestly. I'm guilty of it myself. I, myself, I'm a business owner, but I'm also a consumer. I am buying things from other online businesses out there, whether that is, memberships or resources or templates or whatever it might be. I am out there just as much as people are out there buying my things and my services and offers, so. This sense of urgency, I think, you know, deadlines still matter, but they're no longer doing the heavy lifting that they were. So if your strategy is built around like last minute urgency, I think you're gonna feel frustrated. And this is a time to really think about that. Shift number two is. Again, going back to trust being the real currency. Right now, AI is rampant. I don't think I need to say that like, and hammer it home too much because we all should know that and see it. And speaking from a personal level. I use Facebook a lot for just professional relationships and things, not so much personal stuff. So most of my quote unquote friends on Facebook are professional connections and. One thing that I'm seeing a lot is they're wanting to get content out there too. Talk about their business, talk about their life, you know, just keep engagement up. Most of these posts are being written by AI and not polished at all to sound like the person, or it's very little. And us who use AI for writing and whatever. I mean, I can spot this a million miles away. So if I see one M Dash, I'm not reading it.'cause I know that they didn't because I know that they didn't write it themselves and I don't. Particularly wanna read anything that AI wrote and wasn't polished enough to even try to let people know that maybe they wrote it themselves, like they're just laying it out there and they don't care. another thing is. Sometimes when I'm communicating with people, whether it be a client, if I'm just only getting responses that were run through ai, I find that so frustrating that people can't even string together literal two sentences of their own. They have to run it through ai. I write all of my own emails and. Occasionally if it, this is a long instruction or there's a lot of points that I need to make and to dos for me and my clients, I will put it into AI to help me organize it. But I still refine it quite a bit. so I find that very frustrating and I think a lot of people do. And I think if this is something that you're doing. You need to change it because again, when I'm seeing posts that are all AI captions that are all ai, I'm not reading them and I'm skimming right over it so people don't want more AI generated content. It's like information overload. It's. Leading to skepticism and it's really leaving people craving authenticity. So both in your content and the way you're showing up and all of those things, that is what they are really wanting, and I don't see that going anywhere. I don't see this problem going away. Anytime soon. I mean, AI is here to stay and, we as humans are going to crave human connection more and more and more. So please keep that in mind when you are making your content and writing your newsletters and writing your website copy, all of those things. People wanna feel that human connection behind it. All right. The next shift is. It really has to do with launching various offers. If you have a course that you're launching or whatever it might be, a webinar. this has changed a bit. I feel like previously a lot of people are kind of using this same launch sequence, which is you might have it all planned out on a content calendar. Maybe six weeks prior to the launch of this webinar or the launch of your course or launch of enrollment, you start rolling out this sequence of emails, of social media posts, et cetera, et cetera, and. This has changed quite a bit to where enrollment and engagement is just really tapering off. Now I have a feeling that some of this has to do a little bit with saturation, and that's fine. There's really like nothing to be done there. The online marketing and business space will continue to get more saturated. I firmly believe that people who do things differently, who do things correctly, who do things. Authentically are always gonna shine. And you know, the people who don't give up too, it's very easy to give up and a lot of entrepreneurs do. But, I think clarity is gonna be urgency for a launch sequence. the middle of. Cart days. So by that I mean if let's say you're launching in six weeks and you're kind of right in the middle of it, you're three weeks in your consumers, your audience needs to be really supported during this time. if you're not supporting them during the decision window, you're kind of just like leaving trust on the table. So some things that I've seen are, you know, personalized little loom videos you can send. I mean, this really depends on how many people you, you have signing up, but if it's a manageable amount where you can send them something personalized, be that in an email or whatever it is. I've seen that work quite a bit and people have success with it, so people really wanna feel spoken to. Again, this all goes back to, people craving human connection. So think about that. They're very easy to do. And, in this video you can kind of say something like, if you have any questions, please reach out to me, et cetera, et cetera. Fourth shift is payment behavior is kind of telling a story. So the way our audience and consumers and clients are paying or wanting to pay extended payment plans are just outperforming full pay. I have a feeling that this has something to do with some generational habits and. The generations below me. Maybe even my generation too. This is just not how I was particularly raised and taught about finances, but they like spreading things out. Everything's like a payment. Everything we see when we go to a website to buy something is like split this into however many payments with Klarna and whatever. It's like people are essentially financing. a tub of moisturizer or whatever it might be. But that is kind of where we're at, right? That is just the way things are right now. I don't see that going anywhere. I think it's a little unfortunate, but I think that again, has to do with education. just me personally. Kind of growing up, if my parents didn't have the money for something like it just wasn't purchased and my dad, I remember just always instilled in me like, okay, you need to save your money for. emergencies to come up, let's say some day your washing machine breaks, like do you really wanna have to go finance that and pay more for it than, than it's sticker price? And the answer to that is no. So I do not keep any kind of financing on anything except our home. Any credit card debt like I, that is all paid monthly and I don't ever wanna pay finance charges on anything. I don't know if that's just me and I get a little too crazy with it, but that is just the way I was raised. However, this younger generation has kind of grown up in something completely different, and as this younger generation rises.. They're in it. They're already in it, but there's more and more of them coming in. We're gonna see that more and more. So they want extended payments. And flexibility in payments will lower friction. So if you're launching something of, of a hi higher ticket value, I'm only laughing 'cause I was just saying people are financing a tub of moisturizer. but if you have a higher ticket offer, this is something to definitely think about is. Using a payment system that offers some longer term flexibility, generally this equates to you making a bit less, but it is something to be considered and weighed out for sure. So offering flexibility in the payment structure doesn't signal weakness. It just kind of signals responsiveness to this current age that we're in. All right. Shift number five is the rise of memberships. and why this matters. One of the biggest movements I've seen over the past few years is the rise of memberships, and I don't think that's slowing down. People are always wanting ways to create, quote unquote, passive income. And I'm raising my hand, myself included. These are some things that I have ideas for and plans for, hopefully in 2026 is to have some kind of low ticket to me, low ticket, high value membership, but, but low ticket offer nonetheless, and. I mentioned before in case anyone kind of wants to check her out, is the creative bodega. Emily Connors, she has a membership program for business owners, for female entrepreneurs to, it's called the Coven, but ultimately what she does in there is help you plan and create content, give you access to her Canva courses. she has live meetings and they do various things there. I think sometimes she has guests, That can come in and talk about different business topics, but she does a lot of like social media audits and, and things like that. but again, the main focus I think there is creating content for your business yourself. If you're kind of like a DIY and you want it to be authentic to you and be in control of it. and that is, I don't know the cost of that. It's fairly low ticket though, right? It's not thousands and thousands. I believe it might be around a hundred a month or something like that. That is one thing. there are other lower ticket memberships out there that. people have. I've seen this with, you know, female accounting firm owners who have some kind of financial membership, where they have resources and monthly meetings and things to keep you on track. I just love the idea. I'm in a few, I have a few of these. What memberships help your consumers do is they have, you know, it's an ongoing support, it's relationship driven, it trust kind of compounds over time with these, people don't just want transformation. They want continuity too. So that is important. And memberships reward, consistency, not hype. So if this is on your radar, I would definitely try to hone in on something there, because I feel like. It's a great way for, again, I'm saying quote unquote passive income. That really depends on what kind of membership this is. If it's a membership which you're having, you know, live meetings and coaching calls and things, that's not quite passive because there's, there's work that goes into it. there's work gonna be work that goes into any membership. You have some, a little less than others though., the next shift I'm calling sharpness over scale. So I think the goal right now isn't to be bigger but of course, you know, we all need growth, but I think it's to be sharper. So by this I mean clear messaging, honest positioning, thoughtful offers, real connection. And it like in this current world where content is everywhere, clarity becomes a competitive advantage. I also think here, consistency. So you have all of these things in place, your messaging, positioning, offers and, connection. And then showing up consistently in the place that you wanna show up in. For me, right now, my focus is Instagram. That is where my ideal audience and like age group lives. So that is my focus. but this can be various other platforms depending. All right, to wrap this all up and my thoughts on how to keep your business sharp and fluid for this year and coming years is I thinking about the shift that you need to make. The shift isn't going to be you reinventing yourself. It's going to be you paying attention. To me. This is the ideology of a true business owner that's going to be successful for years to come because business doesn't always stay the same as I've been talking about, and as we have seen with these two industry titans here. So my checklist for you is, are you listening to your buyer? Does your content sound like you? Are you building trust before urgency? Are you making it easy for people to say yes? I think the business that wins isn't the loudest, it's the most human. That is my, if I had to wrap this whole thing up into one sentence, that is what it would be. When I am writing my newsletters, my copy, my resources be that for, you know, one wild brand. But before you know, my previous business, before, I always put myself in my audience's seat and I would pretend that I was the consumer and I would think. What's gonna make me wanna open this email? What topic, what piece of valuable information are they wanting? You know, what is, what is gonna help me not get deleted right out of their inbox? And of course, like I always didn't wanna just have them open my newsletter. I wanted them to read it. I wanted them to take something from it. I wanted it to be valuable. My goal now is again, to help women do what I have done before, which is grow and scale a business and have the profit from that business truly benefit your life in a positive way for yourself and for your family. And I. Get to do that now in my own voice, and I always get to be in control of my copy and my content and what I'm putting out there. So that always feels nice to me. So staying nimble and open-minded,, constantly observing what is going on out there, both in your consumer space, but also just the business space is really important. So that is why I always loved to listen to various podcasts and have people out there in the industry that I looked up to. For good advice and to keep my finger on the pulse is important that as a business owner, that is what is going to help you succeed. So. Don't ignore those things. Don't be overwhelmed by changes. I think a lot of my coaching clients and things get quite overwhelmed, and there just isn't any need to do that. Just start writing things down, jotting ideas down, and jotting plans down, and revisiting those notes often and. stick to schedules and those things will always be your friend. So thank you so much for listening and I will catch you on the next episode.