We need to talk about how midlife women are changing the online marketing landscape.
Earlier this week, I received a message in my inbox asking me for my take on Jenna Kutcher’s recent announcement that she’s leaving her podcast, and Amy Porterfield’s announcement that she’s closing her flagship course, Digital Course Academy.
I’m not one to shy away from a hot take, so let’s talk about it. 😉
Full disclosure: I stopped listening to Jenna & Amy’s podcasts a few years ago; so, like most people, I was alerted to their pivots via Michelle Gifford’s articles on Substack.
My initial reaction was, “Yup, of course this is happening because the online business world is changing and what they’re doing isn’t working anymore“, which was Michelle’s hypothesis as well.
But, are their pivots purely financial? Maybe?
I figured the best way to get a read on the situation was to listen to the podcast episodes where they announce the change.
Amy’s here. (side note: Amy recently ended her Online Marketing Made Easy podcast & now has a new pod called The Amy Porterfield Show)
In their announcement episodes, Amy shared that her last launch of DCA was a multi-million dollar launch, and Jenna shared that her podcast is a million dollar revenue stream for her business.
Sooo… maybe not the money?
If we had visibility to the financials, they may indeed indicate a very pragmatic reason for their pivots, but neither of them said their decision was related to any loss of money. So, we have to take that at face value.
Ultimately, they’re both CEOs of corporations that are operating in a highly profitable niche, and while the digital economy is changing, it’s still expected to hit $28 trillion dollars in revenue for 2026.
What they did cite as their reasons are an echo of what I’m hearing from so many (midlife) women who are running online businesses right now.
“I’m ready for something new”
Is that the perimenopause speaking? Is it the state of online marketing in 2026?
Likely both.
I’ve been in the online business world for 20 years and 2026 feels similar to how it felt when Instagram first came on the scene in the early 2010s, or to 2020 when everyone realized how easy it was to sell pretty much anything online.
Except that the changes we’re facing in 2026 aren’t nearly as exciting or fun. Marketing in 2026 is often cheap, performative, robotic, and AI-augmented. It feels deeply un-trustable, and is literally robbing our creativity.
My career in digital marketing began in 2006 when I started selling hand-made designer cloth diapers using a storefront called Hyena Cart. This was before social media when we connected in chat rooms, used Flickr to share our photos, and sent payments manually through PayPal.
When I started my coaching business in 2016, building a brand and selling online was significantly easier than it is today, and much of what I learned about marketing was from listening to Amy & Jenna’s podcasts every week.
2016-2020 was arguably the “golden era” of digital marketing.
Your followers actually saw your content on social media (before the ‘forever scroll’ interest-based algorithm), Facebook ads were cheap, you could grow your email list to 1000 subscribers relatively quickly for less than a $50 ad spend, and Chat GPT didn’t exist.
Today, digital marketing is a much different landscape.
Not only are we trying to run our businesses while the world is falling apart around us, we’re also competing with literal robots to get even a tiny shred of exposure to our ideal audience.
In her final podcast episode, Jenna shared,
“And here’s the truth, I spent a lot of years feeling like I have needed to perform on the Internet. As the algorithm has continued to change, as the way we consume content has evolved, I feel like what used to be a very pure and authentic expression of who I am and what I think and what I do, it’s turned into this place where it just feels like you have to perform”.
Yup.
I’ve watched Jenna & Amy grow their businesses to multi-million dollar empires. I’ve watched them morph into increasingly un-relatable versions of themselves. I’ve rolled my eyes at their casual-business-owner-laughing-while-brushing-their-hair-to-the-side ads. I’ve also observed that the challenges ordinary business owners face have became further and further removed from their purview.
Could they sense this shift? Did they notice that we’d fallen away? Was trust broken?
Did they intuit that if they didn’t change—they’d lose us?
What Jenna and Amy are doing next is arguably the most interesting part of this conversation.
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I want to begin this part of the conversation with a caveat: We’re allowed to leave things behind. We’re allowed to pivot. We’re allowed to stop doing something because it no longer brings the joy it once did. We’re allowed to end something because the effort is no longer worth the reward.
Because, when we let go of something that isn’t working—we create space for something new and more rewarding to replace it.
Jenna and Amy don’t owe us anything. But, should we trust their next iteration? (I’ll leave that up to you)
Amy announced on her podcast that she’ll be launching a coaching program for women earning $150K annually in their business and want to scale to double or triple their revenue.
She’s shifting from the one to thousands DIY courses model to a more intimate, high-end, more access, business coaching model.
As Michelle Gifford mentioned in her article,
“People want experiences, not just information. They want access. They want connection. They want someone walking alongside them—not another perfectly packaged module to watch alone at night.”
Amy’s smart and she’s positioned herself well.
In her podcast about ending DCA she positions her pivot as an “uplevel”—or, rather, an “earned elevation.”
She explains the difference between a “shiny object” pivot and one that’s earned through “doing the reps,” and building something that invites you into your next iteration.
Oh! And BTW, if you make over $150K annually, you might also be ready for your earned elevation too—be sure to join the waitlist! (🙄)
Amy shares,
“A new chapter, a huge announcement, and I’m not just proud of this decision I made. I’m excited about it. But more than that, I hope this conversation helps you see your own crossroads more clearly. I hope it gives you permission to expand when you’re ready…”
Wait, is this podcast about… us?
Despite my tendency toward cynicism in situations like this, I do think Michelle’s conclusion is correct. The digital marketing landscape has shifted and these days you can just ask Chat GPT to help you build your course instead of paying for Amy’s $2500 course.
(I don’t actually recommend doing this, but this is the timeline we’re in folks)
Because of this shift, savvy consumers are looking for something different. They want experiences, access, and connection.
Amy’s ideal client for her new coaching program is a completely different person than DCA and her pivot with the podcast clearly indicates that her business is model is changing. (I still think it might be due to 2026 digital marketing reality & the impact that’s having on DCA revenue.)
Jenna, on the other hand, has made her pivot to…. Substack.
Her business runs as usual, but her content strategy is shifting.
From Jenna’s first Substack article:
“I think a lot of us are here, aren’t we? In this weird middle place. Women who built the thing and are now wondering what else might be out there. Women who followed the blueprint and achieved the goals and are now curious about what lies beyond them.”
Wait, was this also about us? 🧐
As un-relatable as they are, Jenna and Amy are midlife (or approaching) women existing in this bizarro-world of late-stage capitalism who are just trying to figure out how to be fulfilled by the work they’re doing.
What they’re expressing isn’t unusual.
They too feel the unease that comes up when you realize you’ve built something good but don’t have the energy or desire to do what it takes to maintain it. This is a deeply uncomfortable truth for women who have had any measure of success in our current economic landscape.
It can be exhausting.
And when you get to a certain age….
You reach a crossroads where you’re not going to do the exhausting things any longer.
The question is: will you stop?
And, is it realistic for you to stop?
Digital marketing is changing.
The world is changing.
And we’re all craving something different when it comes to the way we market our businesses.
Instead of making yet another trending meme that has nothing to do with our brilliance or our business, we’re creating in places where we can take the time to settle in and be with one another in a meaningful way.
Instead of shouting into a void, we’re putting up a beacon and calling our people into a safer space for connection. Whether that’s in our programs or with our content.
Because the world is a lot right now, and witnessing it as a 52-year-old Gen Xer who is fully fed up with *gestures around* “all of it,” I’m purposely seeking out these kinds of spaces.
The spaces where we have the power to impact our small corner of the planet in a positive way.
I trust this is a significant motivating factor for both Amy & Jenna along with countless other business owners I see sharing similar sentiments on this (and every other) platform daily. My clients are experiencing it too, and I think the only way through is to allow ourselves to explore something different.
To give some measure of grace to (no matter how much my cynical ass resists this) to the big names who are just doing normal midlife women things.
As much as I wanted to write this essay as a hot take on the “industry” or as a critique piece of big brands being completely out of touch with reality, when I sat down to put it all on to (proverbial) paper, all I could see was the humanity of it all.
And, that feels like a better thing to share right now.
