Episode #86: 5 Lessons From 48 Business Owners About What’s Actually Working in 2026

Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
I have just wrapped up the 4th annual Soulful Sales Summit where I spent time with 48 business owners talking about what’s actually working and selling for them in 2026. And honestly, what they shared was both reassuring and surprising. So in this episode, I’m breaking down the 5 biggest lessons I’ve learned from my speakers, the shifts I’m noticing, and what they mean for those of us who want to sell in a more sustainable and human way in 2026. Welcome to the Soulful Sales Show, where we talk about believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people, and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hi and welcome back to the Soulful Sales Show. So today I wanted to do something a little bit different and share with you some of the key selling lessons that I have learned after speaking with almost 50 amazing business owners as part of my most recent Soulful Sales Summit. So I am going to share the top trends that I’ve been noticing, what is working in 2026, what is different in 2026. And yeah, let’s dive in because I have so much to say.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:10]:
So I know that things can feel kind of exhausting online lately. Things have definitely been changing at rapid speed since ChatGPT came out and has become mainstream. And it’s really honestly hard to keep up. It has definitely affected how people are engaging with our content, how people are deciding which offers to buy. And actually, I talked more about that in one of the recent episodes, so go have a look at that. But what was really, really reassuring for me and the attendees of my Soulful Sales Summit was the fact that we had all of these brilliant business owners come together. And while we definitely acknowledge some of the truths of this situation, a lot of it is also how we feel that we are behind and we have to reinvent the wheel when actually we don’t. So on that note, I want to share the trend that I noticed after speaking with almost 50 business owners as part of the summit.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:09]:
And my business buddy Kate Cordesmire summed it up really, really well when she said that boring makes bank. So what she was getting at, and I think this was something that we talked about in a live speaker panel about what’s working in 2026, is that the core strategies that are still working are the tried and true basics. I actually saw a post. It was so funny. I saw a post on Facebook somewhere the other day that said, is email marketing still working? People are saying it’s not working. And then literally everyone in the comments was like, where on earth are you hearing this? Email marketing is absolutely working in 2026. Another example of kind of boring core strategies that are still working is Manual human connection, follow-up, asking for email replies, manually following up with those replies. We can totally automate all of this stuff, but in a world where you can automate all of these things, it kind of makes the human boring basics of just sending a manual email and talking to people more valuable than ever in many ways.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:03:31]:
We also talked about how, you know, a lot of the fundamentals of SEO are still very, very much relevant in a world of AI when, you know, people are finding us in, in different ways through AI, but many of the principles through which we support our content to get found in the first place are still working. So boring makes bank really, really sums it up. And although of all the business owners I spoke to, some of them had definitely been testing new things. Most people shared that they are not completely throwing out what they have been doing. They’re just making small tweaks, focusing on that human connection, and keeping on showing up the way that they always have. The second trend that came up throughout the entire Solvable Sales Summit was values-led selling. I really, really loved this conversation, and I think there’s a key theme actually among most, if not all, of the trends that I’m sharing with you in this episode, and that is human connection. So human connection in the AI era is everything.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:43]:
When AI can literally have videos that have us all fooled, even, even people who are working with AI every day can’t tell the difference sometimes. That human connection is really key. So one of the points that came up through from many of our speakers was definitely being vocal about your values, sharing what matters to you as a human and the values you live by in your business. Claire Panacea, one of the speakers at the summit, has an offer about creating a value statement. I have put my value statement on my website. I also put it in the rules of my school community. And literally a couple of days before the summit started, I had someone emailing me saying that they loved seeing it and really appreciated it. Definitely a point of human connection.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:34]:
We also talked a lot about kind of ethical marketing. I’m, I’m always— I always want to caveat that by this, by saying that although some people will say that certain strategies are bad and certain strategies are good, I very rarely see it that black and white. There are certain things that I do that I know some of my clients don’t want to do, like using countdown timers, for example. And I feel very good about my decision to do it. So it’s definitely subjective, but what I will say is that we had an excellent conversation about how— I think, I think one of the common themes about this human connection is that people are feeling kind of exhausted by the absolute, like, content that is being churned out and how we are bombarded at the moment from all directions about what we are doing wrong, what is wrong in our life, where we need to be better. And the flip side to that is really focusing on what feels good, speaking to desire, speaking to community, to our shared values, acting from that place and speaking from that place in our content. So value— all of this stuff comes under the umbrella of values-led selling, which is nothing new, right? Again, boring makes bank. It’s nothing new, but it’s a reminder to really lean into this in the era of AI.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:01]:
Trend number 3, I’m kind of questioning my decision to even call these trends. They’re not trends really, but just key lessons from the summit and our brilliant speakers. Lesson number 3 is very, very much related to what I just shared, but basically it’s the old imperfect visibility and not having to show up polished. Now, this is something that I have been talking about ever since I started this business. So if you don’t know my story, I first started out as an online copywriter in 2008. I wasn’t really— didn’t have so much of my personality in the brand. I was very, very afraid of injecting my personality into the brand. But when I decided I wanted to leave that business behind and start working with other business owners who felt different like me, shall we say, I very much leaned into just showing up imperfectly.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:56]:
And although I was terrified to get visible, me showing up as my imperfect self was actually the best way to connect with my right people. So again, it is nothing new, but it is so much more important than ever in the age of AI. It was really funny, I was actually delivering a presentation, a training for my members in the Soulful Sales Society this week, and I had a typo on one of the slides and I was like, here you go, this is evidence that I’ve actually written my slides myself and not just copied and pasted from AI because there would not be that typo if it was AI. Now actually, there is nothing wrong with using AI to help you write your slides. Obviously it should have your own unique injection of your unique views and magic and stuff as well. But the point I’m making is that the imperfections are actually showing that there is a human behind the scenes versus the polished AI content. And it’s not just AI, right? It’s the way social media has been going for many years. Very, very curated.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:09:00]:
Everything is bigger and bolder and shinier and better looking and more filtered than ever. So showing up as your imperfect self, having, you know, sharing selfies versus professional photos or AI-generated photos, sharing behind the scenes— people are loving behind the scenes offers right now. So one of my offers is the Extra $10K Experiment where I’m sharing my journey and my experiments to add an extra $10K of evergreen sales, primarily through Facebook ads. That’s something I have recently started. Actually, if you’re interested in that, I’m going to add the link to that to the show notes. And yeah, behind the scenes, hearing how people are doing it, hearing struggles that people have, and just seeing people who are normal, real humans with issues and imperfections and worries and fears. Because if we see those people doing it, it gives us the belief that we too can do it as an imperfect human. There was also a lot of talk around using, um, showing up imperfectly as an energy-saving tool as well, because if you’re not It’s kind of like how I’m recording this episode right now.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:08]:
I have an outline for what I want to talk about, but I don’t have a script. I definitely um and ah and make a few mistakes as I go, but it’s such less of a barrier for me to actually show up and record my podcast if I’m okay with putting myself out there like that. I always use the example that when I first started this podcast, I used to edit out every single little hesitation, and I actually think it made the podcast better, when I stopped editing it so heavily, and it certainly saved me a ton of time. I can’t believe how much time I used to spend listening to, to and editing my podcast. So yeah, massive energy saver if you’re low on time, capacity, you’ve got chronic illness or any of that going on as well. All right, lesson number 4, and I would say if we’re talking of trends, maybe this is more of a trend, but it’s a trend in the very best sense of what a trend should be, in that it’s actually helpful to people, and that is focusing on implementation versus information. Again, this was something that I touched on in my episode a few weeks ago where I talked about how things are selling differently in 2026. But most of the, uh, most of the people I spoke to who were talking about what’s working in terms of the offers that are selling, uh, currently, most of them agreed that there is definitely at the moment, a focus that is working on having a space where you can actually be supported to take action.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:38]:
So whether it’s literally having a community where you show up to co-working, or you can ask questions as you go, or running a get-it-done week where there’s some sort of incentive or reward for actually getting it done in a set period of time— that’s something I do every single month in my Soulful Sales Society membership, by the way. We have a Get It Done Week so that you can layer on a new selling strategy behind the scenes to help untangle your sales from the effort that you’re putting into selling at any given time. So we do that every single month in the membership, which is ruthpoundwhite.com/ss, by the way, if you want to read more about that. Um, we also spoke about communities. Again, I mean, a lot of these points are kind of tangled up in each other, but having communities to help people connect or implement without having to show up perfectly. So for example, a lot of us have a Telegram channel. That’s something that I’m doing for my Extra 10K Experiment, and just, you know, connecting human to human, voice to voice, voice to ears, whatever it is. But yes, definitely a focus on being surrounded by people who are doing what you’re doing and being supported to actually implement.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:12:53]:
One of the ways, one of the great benefits of AI as well is in helping people to implement. So in my membership, the Soulful Sales Society, for example, I have created and trained a number of AI chatbots on the different strategies that will ask you step-by-step questions about your business, questions about your offers, to help you plan out things like tripwires, upsells, offers, so that you actually get it done. You’re not just consuming more information, and information is available absolutely everywhere in the age of AI. You are actually implementing that information, answering questions about that information, making a plan of action, and actually taking action on that plan. Okay, so the final lesson that I am taking away from these brilliant business owners is to take advantage of tech in the right ways for you. Now, tech can mean all kinds of things, although I’m gonna zone in a little bit on AI because of course it is a very hot topic right now. There are definitely some people in my world who are very anti-AI. We all have our unique reasons, and I totally get it.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:02]:
It is not, uh, it is not black and white, that is for sure. But if you are anti-AI because you think AI content is bad and churning out schlock, that is just the surface of what AI can do. You do not have to use AI in any of your content, and you can still massively benefit from the capacity it will free up for you in your business. So there were a number of presentations talking about being able to sell when we are not directly there. This is the core theme of my membership. The core promise that I want to help you with is to make more sales when you are not directly there, and AI and tech done right is a huge huge thing you can leverage to get there. AI is not going anywhere, and I know it can feel overwhelming. It can feel overwhelming, the pace at which it is changing.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:59]:
It can feel overwhelming knowing whether it’s the right thing to be using or which companies are the right one to use. It can feel definitely overwhelming to think about the future of AI and the implications it has. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have feelings about the stuff because I do. But in the day-to-day running of my business, I feel really great about the way I am utilizing tech and AI to protect my capacity and to help me with the behind-the-scenes stuff so that I don’t always have to hold it all, and I can set up systems that can help my business run without me and make sales without me as well. And this is, of course, something we talked about in way more depth in the Aligned AI Summit as well. So actually, that’s a good point for me to share that you can get all the replays from the Soulful Sales Summit at soulfulsalessummit.com. You can also get the replays from the Aligned AI Summit that I did a few months ago at alignedaisummit.com if you want to go deeper into any of these topics. We had some amazing speaker panels in the Soulful Sales Summit.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:16:07]:
Like I said, one of the panels was about what’s working in 2026. We had presentations about all of the things that I have spoken about in this episode. And I ultimately want to say, one of our panelists, Dara Paddy, said, in what’s working in 2026, in the panel, she said, everything is working, everything works. And that’s always how I have felt about online business. Technically, everything works, but it depends what works for you as a unique human. So although it can feel like things that used to work aren’t working the same, and yes, maybe tweaks are needed, we’re bringing in more human connection over here, we’re automating more stuff behind the scenes over there. Ultimately, what has worked before is continuing to work. In fact, uh, one of our speakers, Monica Froese, shared that her best-selling offer is an offer she has been selling for 6 years.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:00]:
And I just loved that example because there’s There’s been so much talk about how things have changed since the COVID and immediate post-COVID years, but she has tweaked her course and included more implementation focus and support with AI tools, but ultimately it’s the same course. So everything works, but it depends what works for you. So think about what I’ve shared here. Think about what boring stuff is helpful for you to keep up with or to outsource to tech. To keep you showing up? Where can you be more vocal about your values? Where can you show up less perfectly and focus on that human connection? Where can you add an implementation focus? Maybe you do have a course that you’ve been selling for years and years, and all it needs to have a boost in sales right now is a simple shift towards implementation, one that actually won’t require you to put in tons more work but will make a huge difference to the results people have. So yeah, I hope that this has been helpful. It was super inspiring for me to talk to all these amazing business owners and to feel really grounded in what I knew already, is that everything works. The boring stuff still works.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:10]:
There are some tweaks that are helping us right now, but it’s not about reinventing the wheel. And as sensitive, heart-led business owners, one of our strengths is that human connection. So it is absolutely time to lean into that strength. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference. And if you would like to carry on the conversation, then you can connect with me in the free community at ruthpoundwhite.com/community, or my personal favorite, join me inside the Soulful Sales Society membership at ruthpoundwhite.com/membership. And keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.