The hits, misses, and lessons I am taking into 2026

Happy 2026! 🎉

(Now, it’s not the first time I am showing up in your inbox this year, but it is the first “newsletter” of this year, so I think it deserves it’s own wish.)

I hope you had a beautiful time with your loved ones, or perhaps you chose to travel, or work, or spend some time by yourself thinking through the last year. Either way, I hope you feel rested and recharged to take on whatever this year brings with it.

I, for one, definitely feel ready to take on my first mini-challenge for this year.

I’ll be running the 2nd edition of my cohort: Strategic Brand Identity Masterclass. We’re taking on applications from Jan 10th, so if you’ve been craving some accountability, support, and a final push to WIN the first quarter of this year, be sure to check your inboxes!

But this email’s not about that.

It’s a bit personal… And I want to share my reflections from the past year, and giving you a birds-eye-view of what energy I’m entering this new year with.

Starting on a happy note:

This year had some BIG wins.

Not just in terms of revenue or follower counts, but more holistically, in terms of the life I'm building and the business I'm creating to support it.

I became the most physically active I've ever been.

I prioritized my health in a way I never had before.

I worked out consistently. I moved my body. But more importantly, I pushed my limits in terms of what I thought my body was capable of. And that shift changed how I felt about everything else. When I pushed myself to do more in one aspect of my life, it carried that energy in the rest of my life too. I could see the difference in the way I showed up for work because I could think more clearly and handle stress a lot better.

I pushed myself to socialize more.

This one was uncomfortable.

Do you know the sofa vs treadmill analogy?

I'm someone who gets drained by social interactions, and feel like lying on the "sofa" right after. Some people get energized by them, and could run on the "treadmill" after meeting with up people.

I know I’ve isolated myself a lot, and even more so ever since I didn’t have to “go to work”.

But I realized that it wasn't serving me. So I made an effort to show up, connect with people, and build relationships even when it felt hard. And I'm glad I did.

I spent the year living in the UAE with Jack.

Moving to a completely new country on a different continent was probably the biggest life decision of the year.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably remember my newsletter where I wrote all about the different reasons for making this decision. I was lucky to have a business that allowed me to make this shift and support that kind of freedom.

I saw more of the world, travelled in bits, pushed myself, and got surrounded by like-minded people, who are slowly becoming a part of my life.

I ran my first-ever Strategic Brand Identity Masterclass cohort.

This was a huge milestone.

I had been tossing with the idea for a while, but things didn’t seem to fall into place. But this year, we decided to go all in. Amongst other things, it reminded me how much I love working with designers and helping them build strategic skills that move their businesses forward.

Which is exactly what’s making me take the next step and run it again this year.

I took on my first B2B strategic brand identity project.

Up until this point, most of my work had been with consumer-facing brands.

But this B2B project forced me to think about positioning in a completely different way.

How businesses sell to other businesses. How decision-makers evaluate brand value. How to communicate trust and ROI in ways consumer brands don't need to worry about.

I learned more from that one project than I could have from any course.

All in all, it was a good year!

Now, while there were wins, it wasn’t all smoothing sailing.

I want to be honest about the mistakes because I think they're more useful than the wins.

I didn't protect time for YouTube.

Getting back on YouTube was on my list of goals this year.

But when projects started piling up, it was the first thing to go. I kept telling myself "I'll get back to it next month." But next month, I was still overwhelmed. I let reactive work crowd out the intentional work that builds long-term momentum.

And that’s something I am hoping to work on, this year.

While there are systems for my client work, I need some systems for my Creator Business, too. Something that allows me to see the bigger picture, and gives me a direction that I can double down on.

I almost took on too many projects at once.

Since I run essentially two businesses, I should clarify that I take on client work very intentionally.

But since my creator business still has more scope to “scale”, each opportunity felt too good to pass up.

But I didn't account for the cumulative weight of all of them happening at the same time. I wasn't being strategic about my capacity. I was just saying yes and hoping I'd figure it out. While I did finish a lot of things, there were times when that led to burnout.

I had to take constant breaks, to pause and zoom out, and it could be perhaps because I hadn’t done that towards the beginning of the last year.

I'm still working on creating better hooks for my Instagram content.

You probably wouldn’t have guessed this one, right?

No matter where you are, trust me, there’s always room to grow.

And for me, I realised it was the reels. You probably know that while creating short-videos, hooks matter. They determine whether someone stops scrolling or keeps moving. And that is a place I have been constantly experimenting (and sometimes struggling with).

I'll create content I'm proud of, post it, and realize later that the hook could have been sharper.

This has been something I actively worked on towards the second half of last year, and it's a work-in-progress.

(My favourite ones are when I am able to create a seamless loop, but I’d love to hear if you have anything to share about my hooks with me 😊)

Now, of course these mistakes weren't catastrophic.

My business didn't fall apart.

But they taught me things I needed to learn.

Looking back, three big lessons stand out from this year.

Lesson 1: Your business should serve your life, not consume it.

This is the lesson that keeps showing up in different forms for a while.

When I moved to the UAE, it was a life decision. My business had to adapt. When I prioritized health and working out, my business had to make space for that. When I pushed myself to socialize, I was choosing my wellbeing over just grinding on work.

But then I fell into the trap anyway. I still took on many projects. I almost burned out. I had to prioritise.

The lesson is this: If you build your life around your business, you'll always be reacting to what the business demands. But if you build your business around your life, you get to choose. And that choice is what creates freedom.

Lesson 2: The goal post keeps moving, and that's part of the growth phase.

A few years ago, my challenge was to just start freelancing.

Then it was charging more than a few hundred dollars.

Then it was building systems.

Then it was positioning myself strategically.

Today, it’s figuring out how to balance my desire to scale, but sustainably.

The goal post keeps moving. As soon as you level up in one area, a new challenge appears. And for a long time, I thought that meant I wasn't making progress. Or that maybe I just needed to stop everything, and be grateful.

But I've realized that's actually how growth works. The goal post moving means you're in the growth phase. You're solving harder problems because you've already solved the easier ones.

And as long as you're approaching it with that mindset, with curiosity and intention to grow, the moving goal post is a good sign.

Lesson 3: The first time you do anything takes way more time than you expect, but there’s a way to make it through

Running the masterclass for the first time was hard. Way harder than I thought it would be.

The prep work. The live calls. The energy it took to show up for a group of designers and deliver value in real time.

The B2B project was the same. I had to learn a completely new way of thinking about positioning. I spent more time researching and strategizing than I would have on a consumer brand.

Neither of these paid off immediately in terms of ROI. But that's not what the first time is supposed to do.

The first attempt is Proof Of Concept.

It’s core purpose is to validate that what you have in your mind can actually become real.

It gives you the foundation to do it better the second time. And the third time. Until eventually, it becomes something you can do with confidence.

So when you're avoiding doing something for the first time because you're scared it won't be perfect, remember: The first time is supposed to be messy. Just like how your first pancake is the worst. But it only gets better from there.

That was all there was!

For this year, I'm taking these three lessons with me and letting them guide my decisions:

• Build my business around my life.

• Stay curious as the goal post moves.

• And give myself permission to be messy the first time I try something new.

If I can do that consistently, I'll be proud of how 2026 looks when I'm writing this same email next year.

Now I hope some of this resonates with you as you reflect on your own year.

What did you get right? What didn't go as planned? What are you learning?

Take some time to think about it. And share it with me, it’s a safe space here.

Chat soon,

Abi 😊

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