Renia (pronounced R-EE-n-a) Carsillo hates business silos and marketing hacks. So, she spends her days working with mid-size and small companies to integrate their business strategy with their impact strategy, design sustainable marketing frameworks, and find a growth cadence that works for their team and their lives. Renia believes founders are uniquely positioned to create a kinder, more equitable world. She is passionate about bringing C-level strategic support to the small and mid-size companies shaping their communities every day. Renia says, "Sustainable marketing is built on a solid business strategy. A solid business strategy is built on values-driven habits. Values-driven habits are built on healed/healing leaders. We can’t do these things separately. They’re all interconnected. ”
The AI Plot Twist No One's Talking About & Its Impact on Your 2026 Strategy [Two on Tuesdays]
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Happy Tuesday, Reader! For all the "AI will change everything forever" rhetoric dominating the tech news cycle, we've noticed something interesting happening in the business models: a pivot toward making a quick buck. OpenAI and several other AI-oriented companies we're watching are starting to look a lot less like revolutionary disruptors and a lot more like…well, Meta and Alphabet (i.e., Google). What We're Watching About AI (And Why You Should Too)The evidence is piling up: OpenAI is adding porn, staffing up for advertising, and launching a browser. In short, it's starting to look like Sam Altman and the rest are following the same playbook as other big tech players. Plenty of others in the business world are talking about the investment bubble that could be coming from this. What we care about here at Realign Consulting is what these shifts mean for marketers and small businesses. And, we have two contrarian hot takes for 2026 based on how we see things evolving right now. Hot Take #1: The More AI Companies Lean Into Monetization, The Less Transformational They'll BeHere's the reality: Porn, sports betting, and gaming are really good ways to make money from the internet. But while these three things are certainly creating transformational (and we would argue terrible) consequences, they are not producing much in the way of innovation. The more the biggest and best AI companies lean into revenue generation through these familiar channels, the less transformational they will be. That means the pace of innovation might be slowing down—at a time when Google seems to be clearly in the lead. So yes, AI matters. But we know this playbook. And we know how to deal with it. Hot Take #2: The Social Web Is Going to Get Even Less Valuable to Most Micro BusinessesUnfortunately, this also means that the rate of what Jonathan Gilmore perfectly coined as "AI Slop" will only get worse in 2026. None of the major platforms seem to have any will to regulate or moderate it, and tools like Sora make it ever easier to generate garbage at scale. That means we're likely to see more noise and less engagement on social platforms. The signal-to-noise ratio is about to get even worse, and your ability to cut through organically is going to get even harder. What The AI Playbook Means for Your 2026 StrategyThis might be the most reassuring news you'll hear all week: Our 2026 strategies look an awful lot like our 2025 strategies. You don't need to panic. You don't need to pivot to some shiny new platform or master the latest AI tool. You need to double down on what's always worked when done well:
Because here's what we know about tech and human connection:
The businesses that will thrive in 2026 are the ones who understand that technology amplifies strategy—it doesn't replace it. And the strategy that works is the same one that's always worked: Be distinctly human. Show up for your community. Build relationships that matter. And use technology strategically to amplify what makes you uniquely you. Don't get distracted by the hype: the fundamentals haven't changed. In fact, they might have just gotten more important. Until next time, Renia C.
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Renia Carsillo
Renia (pronounced R-EE-n-a) Carsillo hates business silos and marketing hacks. So, she spends her days working with mid-size and small companies to integrate their business strategy with their impact strategy, design sustainable marketing frameworks, and find a growth cadence that works for their team and their lives. Renia believes founders are uniquely positioned to create a kinder, more equitable world. She is passionate about bringing C-level strategic support to the small and mid-size companies shaping their communities every day. Renia says, "Sustainable marketing is built on a solid business strategy. A solid business strategy is built on values-driven habits. Values-driven habits are built on healed/healing leaders. We can’t do these things separately. They’re all interconnected. ”
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Happy Tuesday, Reader! We've spent the last few weeks holding some hard "ands" together: resist and reconnect, Placebinding™ and globalization, scale and sustainability. This week's “and” might be the most defining one of our professional lives right now. Let’s talk, again, about AI and humanity. AI isn’t a technology we get to uninvent. We must learn to live with it. One of my favorite, not-to-be-named app developers and podcasters has been making a lot of noise lately about running an...
Happy Tuesday, Reader! If you've been around here for any length of time, you know how much we talk about sustainability, particularly when it comes to business strategy and the marketing pillar of the Do Better Business™ framework. We believe it's the foundational place every strong, values-centered organization has to build from. Sustainability is at the core of what we do. But I want to clear something up, because I think it's an assumption that follows us around: Sustainability does not...