The First Marketing Decision That Reduces Overwhelm (and Creates Clarity)

Need to make decisions on your 2026 marketing strategy? Join the next Marketing Strategy Lab. 

Marketing doesn’t usually feel heavy because you’re bad at it — it feels heavy because you’re carrying too many unresolved decisions at once.

In this solo episode, Ruthie breaks down the first marketing decision that creates clarity everywhere else: choosing a clear priority offer. Before you think about platforms, content calendars, or how often you “should” be posting, this decision determines how simple or complicated your marketing feels day to day.

If marketing feels loud, scattered, or mentally draining right now, this conversation will help you slow down and refocus. Ruthie explains why decision fatigue is real work, how unresolved choices increase cognitive load, and why clarity — not more tactics — is what actually creates momentum.

You’ll learn:

• Why marketing decisions stack (and why that’s exhausting)
  
  
  
• How prioritizing one core offer simplifies content, channels, and campaigns
  
  
  
• Why clarity isn’t about deleting offers — it’s about creating hierarchy
  
  
  
• How strategic decisions reduce mental load for you and your audience
  
  
  

This episode is especially for founders who feel capable, but tired of carrying marketing alone — and who want their strategy to feel lighter, not louder.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:00.886)

We are officially past the new year, new me era. I mean, I hope so. Come on, already in mid-January if you're listening to this live. Before we get into it, welcome back to the Consistency Corner podcast. And I'm guessing that some of you listening have started this year strong and you're already feeling like, let's go, let's get it. I've got the momentum behind me. There might also be some of you that are feeling like I started strong, but I've already fallen off.

or I'm getting tired and I'm seeing that I might be falling off. And others might not have really even started 2026 yet. Like we're using January as our free trial month and that's okay. But what usually happens right around this point mid January is that marketing for our business starts to feel louder.

instead of clear, like all the different opinions, ideas, advice, people telling you what to do, how to do it, the you should be doing this energy. So this month, I've actually been teaching a live workshop inside the Marketing Strategy Labs called the 2026 Decision Sessions. And the whole idea of that workshop is to help you make decisions so you can ignore all of that noise. And today we're discussing just one of the decisions that will become the backbone of your entire

marketing strategy. But one of the things that I want to name right away is this marketing is not just one decision. It's hundreds, sometimes thousands of decisions layered on top of each other, on top of each other, on top of each other. What to talk about, how to talk about it, where to talk about it, which offer to lead with, how often do you show up? What trends should you try? What should you ignore? What's actually working that I'm doing?

What do I do if it's not working? And it's enough to spin anyone into analysis paralysis because to be honest, decision work is real work. Even if we feel like we have nothing to show for it. I mean, listen, I am a box checker, to-do list lover, and I often don't write on my to-do list, decide what type of content I want to create or decide which platform I'm going to prioritize.

Ruthie Sterrett (02:18.146)

But when we do make those decisions, everything else becomes clearer because unresolved decisions actually create friction, even when you're super capable. And the consistency corner ultimately exists to lighten the mental load of marketing for founders. And today, we're doing that by getting really specific about where your thinking actually needs to start. So before we talk about platforms or content or channels,

or messaging or any of that, before you answer the question of what should I post or how often should I show up, I want you to ask a couple of these decisions because those decisions don't exist in a vacuum. They're all downstream from one core question. What is the priority offer? I'm building my marketing around right now. And what I wanna be really clear about that is I don't mean like,

what's the main, the best offer, or what's the offer that makes the most money, or what's the only offer I'm gonna talk about. But what's our main offer? And there's a couple of different ways that you might decide your core offer to talk about. It might be your highest revenue driver. It might be a new offer that you're introducing and need to gain traction around. It might be an offer that you've revamped and you want to grow.

And it's going to be different for different people depending upon your business goals. But we want to define what is our core offer. And we're not deleting other things. We're not committing to this forever. But we're deciding for right now, for this season, maybe even for 2026, what's the core offer? And you might be thinking like, oh, really? But I sell a lot of different things. OK, think about this. When you go to the grocery store.

You walk into the produce aisle and in the produce aisle they sell produce. They don't sell milk or Cheetos or wine. They sell produce. In the next aisle they sell bread and then in the next aisle they sell crackers and water. I mean I'm going through my grocery store but I know everyone's set up a little bit different but you get my point. There are logical flows to it but the through line

Ruthie Sterrett (04:43.904)

of all of those aisles is that they all sell food. But they're categorizing them to make it easier for you as the shopper to navigate so that you don't leave thinking like that was exhausting. And that's actually what could happen if we're trying to market multiple offers without a clear campaign calendar or hierarchy.

Even if the offers themselves are really, really good, when we're talking about everything, everywhere, all at once, the audience will feel that friction. And you will too, as the marketer and the content creator. Confusion increases cognitive load for both the people consuming the content and the person creating it. So if you don't know which offer is the priority, every piece of content, every time you sit down to

a content strategy or a content calendar requires more thought than it should. Every decision feels heavier, nothing compounds. So when we work with clients one on one inside the consistency corner, this is one of the very first things we align on. What does your entire offer suite look like? And then what's priority number one and what's priority number two? Okay, maybe we'll talk about priority number three, but only because we're figuring out where we can fit it in.

not so that we're throwing spaghetti at the wall and like dropping sprinkles to confuse everybody. Because clarity is what creates momentum. But what I said about the grocery store, how every single one of those aisles, the through line is that they're all food. When we sit down and we look at our offers, we can decide what's the through line of everything that we sell. For me, it's that we lighten the mental load of marketing.

whether that's through this podcast, whether that's through our retainers and done for you work, our workshops where we're teaching and guiding our GPTs that we're developing as thinking partners, our done for you nine grids, which takes something off of your to do list and so on and so on. The through line is lightening the mental load of marketing. But for me, for 2026, I had to pick what are my priority offers so that

Ruthie Sterrett (07:06.796)

I could focus in on the customer journeys. I could map out the campaign calendars. And I could really make sure that we're becoming known for those one or two things that we do. And that doesn't start from a content calendar. That starts from a decision. So once offer priority is clear, something really interesting starts to happen. Channel decisions get easier.

Ads stop feeling like a shortcut and maybe they feel like a tool that we can leverage. These aren't separate decisions. They stack on top of each other. But none of those additional decisions, and you and I both know there's dozens more, but none of them work well or feel like they really click in place if this first one hasn't been resolved. So that's why we start here.

And I want to tell you something as a strategic marketing partner for a lot of business owners and a former corporate marketing director, you are the CEO of your business. You get to decide what is the offer priority. I can give you my opinion. I can talk you through like why this one might work as a priority versus why that one. But at the end of the day, it's your business. And this is a super important decision to make and to communicate.

if you outsource your marketing or have any sort of marketing support, making sure that everybody knows what is the priority and the why behind why it's the priority. So this is just one of the decisions that we talk about in the 2026 decision session. And the marketing strategy labs are actually quarterly workshops that we're gonna be doing all in 2026. January just happens to be our first one. And this month is about slowing down and making these decisions thoughtfully instead of reactively.

The labs are gonna be hosted January, I gotta look at my calendar, April, July, and October, and they will be included inside the Strategy Studio, which is a membership opening later in February. And it's an ongoing container for this kind of thinking. A place where decisions don't just live in your head and recycle or loop endlessly, but a space where you have a thinking partner to guide you through these decisions.

Ruthie Sterrett (09:28.242)

ask strategic questions and give you the feedback necessary to create an effective marketing strategy. The wait list is open now. It's linked in the show notes. If you want to learn more and get first access and a special offer when the doors open, but I'll share more as we get closer in mid February. Listen, you don't need another motivational poster, a personal development book, a six week course.

that you'll never implement. this.

podcast was not meant to be about motivation or education and neither is the workshop. It's about getting clear on your strategy by making intentional decisions so you actually take action. Having a place for your thinking to land so that marketing stops feeling like this constant cognitive drain is so important because when we don't take action, we don't close loops.

It just keeps circling and swirling in our brain and continues to add to that mental load. I want you to take action. I want you to take strategic action. I want you to take action that you really took the time to deliberate on, and then I want you to make those decisions. And that's what we're gonna do together this year. So, if marketing decisions keep swirling around in your brain, that doesn't mean you're behind.

It usually means that the mental load is heavy and on top of every other thing on your to-do list, it can be draining. You need clear starting points. And once you have those in place, everything else gets lighter. Maybe not easier, because let's be honest, entrepreneurship isn't easy. Nobody said it was, but it gets lighter. So if you're interested in joining us in the next Marketing Strategy Lab,

Ruthie Sterrett (11:22.506)

For January, the next one is January 26th and then we'll have them quarterly. The link is in the show notes for that as well as the wait list for the strategy studio, which I would love to see you inside of because I want to help you make these decisions. I want to help you make the decisions so that you take action, so that you get the results. I'm cheering you on and can't wait to see what's in store for you in 2026 and I'll see you in the next episode.