SUMMARY

This episode of Behind the Brand is a Best of Summer 2026 roundup, a mashup of the conversations from the past few months that Taylor and Kelly keep coming back to. They’re taking a short break before the fall rush hits, but they didn’t want to leave listeners without something useful in the meantime.

The episode opens with a catch-up with Isabella Severson, a former Moxie team member who left the agency to travel solo through Europe and has since built a career as a UGC (user-generated content) creator. She talks candidly about walking away from esthetician school once she realized it wasn’t the right fit, the fear that came with leaving a stable job for an uncertain path, and how stepping away from the noise of her day-to-day finally gave her the clarity to figure out what she actually wanted.

From there, Taylor and Kelly dig into one of their most requested topics: why Q4 winners are actually made in July. They break down what needs months of lead time (website audits, campaign optimization, creative development), why a slow summer for your business doesn’t mean your marketing should slow down too, and what a first meeting with Moxie actually looks like. Spoiler: they’d rather you show up with questions than a fully formed plan, and they’d really rather you not show up with an AI-generated logo mockup.
The episode also revisits a conversation about surviving slow seasons, with Kelly drawing on her 17 years of experience to explain why cutting your marketing budget during a downturn is one of the worst moves you can make, and why a slow stretch can actually be the best time to realign your team and get back to basics.

Finally, Taylor and Kelly sit down with the team at Bad Habit Brewery, a longtime client, to talk about how a brand builds real staying power in an industry with a lot more closures than openings these days. From treating the taproom as a neighborhood gathering place instead of a distribution business, to letting beer tenders test new flavors on real customers before a label ever gets designed, Bad Habit’s approach is a case study in knowing exactly what your brand stands for.