2025: The Year I Realized I Wasn't a Marketer

2025 was a year of experiments and strategic shifts for my business. As a brand and marketing specialist, my goal was to find a way to work with more small businesses in a meaningful way. I spent the majority of the year testing pitches, lead magnets, pricing structures, and packages.

The conclusion I reached by the end of the year? I’ve been wrongly positioning myself as a “marketer” this entire time.

I know what you might be thinking: Doesn’t this make me a fraud? I’ve been calling myself a marketer, but I’m not actually a marketer?

The answer is complex. Am I qualified to be a marketer? Yes. I have extensive experience launching ads, email campaigns, and social media strategies. But that’s not my focus, and honestly, it never has been.

That was my mistake. I’ve been using a title people associate with advertising and content creation, and then getting disheartened when I wasn't attracting the deep, structural work I wanted to do. The irony of a branding specialist having her own brand identity crisis is not lost on me.

But this is actually a good thing.

It proves that when we run our own businesses, it is nearly impossible to see the cracks in our own foundation. We are simply too close to the situation—too familiar with the context—to understand it from the customer’s point of view. If someone with over a decade of branding experience has this blind spot, it’s safe to say we all do.

This realization leads directly to my shift for 2026. While branding and marketing remain tools in my kit, they don’t accurately describe the problems I solve.

Using my background in business and human behavior, I solve foundational problems. These issues create a ripple effect that damages customer experience and stunts revenue growth. These problems must be solved before we talk about advertising. Why? Because marketing acts as a magnifying glass. If your systems are failing silently, marketing will only broadcast those failures to more people.

My expertise is the customer experience at every single touchpoint of your operations:

• The Front End: The visual, public-facing side of your business.

• The Back End: The systems and logistics side.

• The Shadow Side: The small, unnoticeable areas where things silently break.

I am here to identify exactly where your business needs to focus to grow, saving you time and energy. To reflect this high-level strategy and implementation, I have rebranded as a Strategy & Experience Architect.

While this transition builds on my past experience, the approach is inherently different. I audit your business for Revenue Leakage—identifying where money is dripping out of your systems—and develop a strategy to seal the leaks.

Some leaks are visual (inconsistent branding or confusing messaging). Others are structural (outdated systems, manual workarounds, or a lack of automation). And some are subtle, requiring refinement to turn a clunky process into a well-oiled machine.

Whatever your leakage point is, I am confident I can find it, design a custom plan to fix it, and even implement the repairs for you.

If my pivot has you intrigued, you can see the process for yourself. Book your Revenue Leakage Audit on my site. Let’s stop you from leaking money and start earning more.