A Practitioner's Optimism

2026 has perplexed me. I have the most experience, training, connections, and inner trust than any of my prior years as a practitioner. Yet, I have such a dearth of business and pipeline for future business I'm shook. Truly wondering what are the cause, the meaning and the "right" next steps.

If, like me, your marketing and sales experiments leaned on content like social media posts, articles, SEO, newsletters, thought leadership then know that these channels are collapsing for everyone, because the supply of competent-sounding content went infinite and search stopped sending traffic to humans.

What AI has not touched is demand for a real person holding a real conversation with a human who's frightened and can't say so anywhere else. That demand is, if anything, going up.

There's a term I learned in Supervision a couple of years ago: Edgewalker. And I'm one of them. What it means to me at least is that I don't get in too close in any one group, community, or cohort and stick with it exclusively forever. I dabble. I collect. I connect. And then I go on exploring some more. I used to hate this part of me; thought there was something wrong with me. The community of Edgewalkers themselves is far larger than I was aware of. I like this tribe (I like me) even if our membership isn't gathered in one place. I like how we roll and I trust we're out there doing our thing with shared values and ethics.

Edgewalking I imagine has contributed in lower referral volume than need, given I work in a high-trust, low-conversion field. If you're working in a field with lower traffic at the moment, know you're not alone. Dialogue helps. Brainstorming, vulnerability, curiosity, experimentation also helps.

I am more or less off of LinkedIn as of about a month ago. In fact, I claim it as a victory that I only had 105 impressions on my content last week. I'm truly detaching in ways that are improving my mental health, my creativity, attention and intention. Don't get me wrong, I am not without worry that I could be missing opportunities. But I'm willing to trust the upside of my turning elsewhere, at least for now. It's my experiment.

To be more direct: I'm experimenting with behavioral change. Which is exactly what I help my clients shape, for themselves. Eating my own dog food! It's not bad. And you can too.

Trust yourself. Listen to your instincts. Try some things out. Walk down a few potential dead ends; you have no idea what they might offer you. Ask yourself: which experiments could I compound, rather than run concurrently?

Listen, notice, reflect, experiment, repeat. You got this.