My Phrase of the Year

Happy New Year! Wow. Can you believe 2026 is finally here?

I was getting ready to log off for the year yesterday and felt myself getting a bit reflective and ended up rereading some of my early Beehiiv newsletters. I fully expected to cringe but ended up feeling something closer to fondness for the version of myself who wrote them.

It surprised me to feel this way, in part because I am a perfectionist but also because I hadn’t set out last year to become a writer. Or to publish a book! I simply had chosen a phrase for the year—following my curiosity—as a way to anchor how I wanted to show up for myself and to my business in 2025. It became a personal mantra that I could return to throughout the year when things felt misaligned or overwhelming. And this, apparently, is where my phrase led me: becoming a better writer!

The other interesting thing to think about re: all of this is how we don’t usually notice progress while it’s happening. We only see it later, in retrospect. But, there we have it: twelve months of consistently showing up to tend my curiosity—mostly without ceremony—has quietly formed a new skill. I feel alive in it now. It’s making me think I should make more of an effort to take stock throughout the year to better appreciate the progress I’m making, not just December.

Anywho, I’m doing this phrase of the year exercise again given my success with it in 2025. My phrase is be a lil punk about it and start the conversation—to motivate myself to reach out to the people who genuinely interest me and to have the courage to say the quiet parts out loud as I start engaging in real conversations with people around the themes in my book.

If you’re intrigued and want to try setting your own phrase for 2026, I’ve created a Phrase of the Year reflection workbook here. It’s free! Just make a copy of the template and have a little fun with it! It’s from a workshop I led for the Strategic Pivotery community back in mid-December, but the same ritual applies.

First Pod Drop of 2026

New year, new podcast episode 😉

EPISODE 10 → Saying Goodbye to Your Corporate Self

I started out the pod this year with a candid conversation with my friend Julie Fedele. I had every intention of dropping this closer to my book launch but decided to post it today given all the digital chatter about the millennial career crisis.

In the episode, Julie and I chat about the current state of the corporate world and the identity grief that surfaces in big life and job transitions. We also discuss both of our experiences in the first year of building portfolio careers. If you are the least bit portfolio career curious and want to get an early scoop on my book (Julie was a beta reader!), give the episode a listen.

Listen now:

Spotify / Apple

💅 The Fun Stuff

If the cat has got you curious, here is a list of the things I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, or writing about of late:

✍🏻 My Recent Substacks →I published a few different pieces on Substack this month having felt oddly liberated from book publishing to do’s. One piece is a response to the recent Forbes piece on the so-called millennial career crisis. The other is more practical, widely shared essay on how to go about positioning your portfolio career. And today, I published a piece on the energy of 2026. It’s called the Year of the Horse.

📚 Books → I read the final chapter of Severance by Ling Ma last week while in Wisconsin. I had finished the remainder of the book months ago but was waiting for the right moment to finish it. It was such a well done ending, I love a good bit of suspense and room for reader interpretation. Am also in the thick of Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver delivers yet again!

🎵 Music → Obsessed with Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged set this month for some reason and have been listening to it on repeat.

As always, building with you,

Brie