Happy New Year, everyone 🎉.
I was driving recently, letting my car do most of the work. It has Level 2 “driver assist” functionality (my husband’s term, not mine—he’s the car guy). It’s not fully autonomous, but smart enough to cruise through rush hour traffic on the freeway without me doing much.
As I watched the wheel turn itself, I realized something: the system relies heavily on what the cars around it are doing. It follows the flow. If traffic slows, it slows. If the pack speeds up, it speeds up.
It struck me that this is exactly how too many leaders are running their organizations in 2026.
We are operating on cruise control, making decisions based on what the company in the lane next to us is doing or what the GPS says, rather than looking at what we can see with our own eyes and ears.
(Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate ALL the extra help with crash prevention and monitoring systems I can get… my siblings had a song about me as a young adult: “bad driver, bad driver, bad drriiivveeer”… alas).
But while we all benefit from systems that monitor, we lose a lot when we forfeit our own thinking, our own strategic approach, or our own response.
We see it in the “copycat” layoffs among major firms these past few months. We see it in the rush to implement AI without a strategy. We see it in RTO mandates that are based more on vibes (or a nephew of someone working in commercial real estate) than data.
For this first issue of the year, I want to talk about the danger of following the pack—and why the most impactful leaders this year will be the ones brave enough to turn off the autopilot and start driving.
The “Best Practice” Trap
Early in my career at PenFed Credit Union, our marketing team fell into the “Tool Trap.”
We had archaic systems and wanted a fix. But instead of auditing our specific needs, we looked at what the “big guys” were doing. We saw major banks using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) and Salesforce. We thought, “If it works for companies like Chase, it must be the right move for us.”
We signed the seven-figure contracts. Everyone was excited. High fives all around.
Then came the reality check.
We hadn’t paused to consider our underlying architecture. We were so excited about what we had seen in demos of AEM—alongside Adobe Analytics, Target, and Campaign—that we overlooked the reality of our own infrastructure.
It wasn’t until our IT implementation team looked at the specs that the bubble burst: AEM required a modern cloud environment that we simply didn’t have.
We ended up spending over a year—and a massive amount of budget—pivoting from aging on-premise Windows servers to the cloud just to get the tool running. We were paying licensing fees while twiddling our thumbs, all because we bought the software before we built the environment to support it.
I saw it again years later at Earnest. We needed to migrate off Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The pressure was to pick a tool that “plugged into Segment.” We were already using Segment as a “CDP” (cough, cough), and the theory was that this integration would speed up the implementation. Plus, we were largely looking at tools other top fintechs were using.
I leaned into it. I fell for the slick demo. We went with a tool we thought would help us be, well, absolutely engaging.
The problem? At that time (circa 2021), the tool was designed for mobile-first platforms. We were web-based. Email, our core channel, felt like an add-on feature that was still being refined. There was no drag-and-drop editor back then—not a problem for me, per se, but a massive headache for our less technical users.
Functionally, we hit a wall. The segmentation capabilities didn’t work well for our specific use cases out of the box. And while the platform did have a Web SDK, the documentation was spotty at best, and the implementation was far from intuitive. Many of the turnkey integrations available today required a ton of developer time to properly implement back then.
On top of that, I underestimated the cultural friction. For some reason, most of the folks I was working with on the migration project internally had hard time wrapping their heads around the attribute and event-driven logic of modern customer engagement platforms (CEPs). It’s a translation layer I didn’t account for.
Instead of a quick implementation, we spent months creating new data pipelines and processes just to fit the tool. We were following the herd rather than looking at our own data architecture.
In hindsight, there were other options that would have been faster and less painful. But more importantly, we ignored the larger underlying data and platform issues that needed to be addressed before any migration occurred. We tried to buy a shortcut, but you can’t buy your way out of bad architecture.
Important Note: Don’t get me wrong—my former employer is still using the tool we selected six years later, and the platform has made massive headway since then. In fact, I’m a proud partner of theirs today (and currently work in the tool day-to-day for one of my fractional clients). For many companies, it is an excellent fit. But it wasn’t the right tool for us at that time. Today, the decision might be different, but back then, we forced a fit.
The Lesson: “Best practices” are often just “common practices.” And common practices can be disastrous if they don’t align with your infrastructure, your team’s skillset, and your specific customer journey. A 40-point vendor evaluation matrix and an exhaustive RFP process do you no favors if your underlying selection criteria—and your understanding of your current “state”—are flawed to begin with.
2008 vs. The “Vibe-Based” Economy
While a lot of us have been going through the “2016 Camera Roll” trend on social media lately, I’ve been thinking about 2008 a lot this past year.
I don’t think many of us knew at the time exactly how bad of a national and global financial crisis we were living through. At Freestyle Marketing Group, we called it “200-Hate.”
It was brutal. Clients started taking longer to pay invoices. Budgets were slashed and in many instances vanished. But the atmosphere was different then. We didn’t live in the social media echo chamber we do now.
Back then, I worked for Erni Hernandez Armstrong. When the crash hit, the “standard operating procedure” for agencies was layoffs. Cut costs, save the ship.
Erni didn’t follow the pack. She knew the economy would eventually rebound, and she knew her people were her greatest asset. Years later, I found out she didn’t take a personal salary for an entire year just to avoid letting anyone go.
Compare that to today.
We see profitable companies laying off 10-20% of their workforce because “efficiency” is trending on Wall Street or they “followed the pack” in 2021 and over-hired to begin with. It’s decision-making based on board room vibes rather than long-term strategy.
There’s a famous case study about Kellogg’s during the Great Depression. While competitors cut ad spend, Kellogg’s doubled theirs. They owned the market when things bounced back.
The leaders who win in 2026 won’t be the ones firing talent to boost this quarter’s stock price. They will be the ones scooping up the incredible talent that is currently on the market, building their bench strength while everyone else is retreating.
Why I’m Getting Quieter on Social Media
Speaking of following the pack… you might have noticed I’ve been a little quieter on LinkedIn (and if we’re friends on FB/Insta, those too) lately.
The “Gurus” say you need to post 3x a week. You need to comment on 10 posts each day. You need to feed the algorithm.
Why?
Let’s look at the metrics that actually matter. I think less than 50 people have visited my LifecycleIQ website this year. In my line of work, a website is a “proof of life” verification, not a sales funnel. Clients check it to ensure I exist and look professional, but they don’t go there to “shop.”
Now, I’m not saying this applies to everyone. If you’re a creator, a coach, or running a high-volume B2C brand, those 3x weekly posts might be your actual bread and butter. We are playing different games.
But for me? I’m selling high-touch expertise, not volume.
So I’m ditching the advice my Gemini 3.0 Pro “Social Media Strategist” has offered and am doing what I know is best and works for me.
My fractional consulting practice, LifecycleIQ, has grown to the point where I have a solid stream of prospects coming in. All of my new business in 2025 came from past colleagues and referrals—not from a viral LinkedIn video.
I want to focus on doing the work. I want to focus on delivering results for my clients, refining my processes, and protecting my peace.
So, in 2026, I’m choosing to be deliberate.
I’ll still be here writing MarTech Seth because I genuinely enjoy the exercise of thinking through these topics. I write this for me as much as for you.
But for the foreseeable future, I’m done posting hot takes for the loves, laughs, and likes (but also… I LOVE validation, so I hope this declaration doesn’t come back to bite me).
The Challenge for January
If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?
In the corporate world, the answer is usually “Yes, as long as we have a McKinsey deck justifying the jump.”
My challenge to you this month is to find one area where your team is operating on cruise control.
- Is it a tool you’re buying because “everyone has it”?
- Is it a hiring freeze you’re enforcing because “the market is weird”?
- Is it a social media strategy you’re executing because “we have to be there”?
Sit down. Pause. Look at your circumstances.
Turn off the autopilot and drive the car.
Let’s make it a great year 💪.
Seth
P.S. While I’m posting less, my DMs are always open. If you want to kiki, vent, or talk shop, reach out. I’m always up for a virtual coffee chat, or if you’re in the Salt Lake City area, let’s grab a real one.
A Note on Process & Transparency: In the spirit of full disclosure, I partnered with an AI thought partner to help organize my scattered notes on 2008, self-driving cars, and MarTech migrations into this cohesive newsletter. The stories, the scars, and the opinions are 100% mine. As I always say, AI isn’t going to take your job, but people who leverage AI to their advantage will. Be one of those people.
