👀 My 2026 strategy unfiltered [SAF #164]

Hey Reader,

I’ve never done this before; I’ve never shared my year-long strategy before I’ve had the chance to implement even 5% of it. But I’ve gotten so many questions about what I’ll sell this year and where I’ll show up that I decided to answer in an in-depth, unfiltered way.

So today’s email is a bit self-centered. Before we dig in, I want to add an important caveat: this is my strategy, based on my goals, and on my history. It’s not translatable 1:1 to another business.

I’ll do my best to add the train of thought to each of the decisions outlined below, so you can decide whether it’s a good idea for you, too, or not.

We’ll talk about: what I’m selling and where I’m showing up, aka which channels I’ll be focusing on the most.

Speaking of channels, LinkedIn is my main social media platform, so I’m happy to introduce today’s partner, a platform that makes LinkedIn’s notoriously murky reporting more palatable.

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Before we tal,k about the strategy itself, let me tell you about the question that started it all for me:

"What’s one HARD thing that I can do and that no one else in my industry wants to do?"

This is the question that fueled my strategy. It’s a paraphrase rooted in some of Mark Manson’s ideas that we all eventually go through hardship — and that we shouldn’t try to avoid the hard things. (I heard about it from someone else, but for the life of me, I can’t remember who, so please forgive my incomplete citation.)

Mark Manson often phrases it in more plastic ways:

Image source

For some reason, last year I became obsessed with answering this question. It clicked for me when I realized that most people look for the easy way out, the shortcut, the hack — we’re wired this way, we can’t help it. And in my industry, this wiring is more evident and more prevalent than anywhere else.

So I decided to zig when others zag, especially since this question is so aligned with my no-hacks approach.

While it’s not a comfortable question, I fell in love with it because:

It doesn’t have a single answer. You can answer once, implement that answer, then keep going until you find the next “hard thing”.
It pushes you to think beyond “I’ll just post more on LinkedIn and maybe do YouTube this year”.

My first answer to this question was The State of Solopreneurship report. IT. WAS. A. BEAST.

No wonder most people prefer to quote other reports rather than build their own. This is what I’m counting on, in fact.

I spent over 100 hours on it, and I don’t regret it. (Let me know if you want me to do a deep dive on how I put it together.)

My first and last (so far) answer to this question is The Council, the community I just launched. More on that below.

What I’ll be selling this year

(Almost) all my products and services can be found here. The one that I’ll be focused on the most, The Council, is not there yet. This is by design — I want to have 1:1 conversations with everyone who considers joining (for now).

I don’t plan to kill any of my products, but I will be focusing on The Council for a lot of reasons.

This is where I’ll be spending most of my time. Inside the community, answering members’ questions async, leading group calls and challenges. I have a very bold vision for this place. Now all I need is the stamina to implement it.
It’s a VERY HARD thing because I designed it that way. Most communities are content and template dumps — that’s easy. The Council is very high-touch, which means I have to show up a lot. I went back and forth a lot on this decision, but I finally took the plunge because:
This is how I can best help my people. I know this for sure now. One-off sessions and lengthier programs like The Growth Intensive are great for setting you on the right course, so I’m not sunsetting them. But ongoing accountability, clarity, and someone you can always run your ideas by — those hit differently. My clients told me this, so I’m listening.

I know I’m on the right path with The Council because of how fast the first 11 seats disappeared. I had given myself until January 6th to sell 10, but I sold 11 by December 31st. This never happened to me before.

By the way, if you’re curious about The Council and think you could use my ongoing advice (and that of a community of smart peers), reply to this email and let me know. I’m happy to share more details about what we do in there.

Other than The Council, I will be selling:

Live workshops/challenges/bootcamps, similar to the workshops I’ve done in the past but a bit more involved/action-oriented. They will all be free for Council members, then live in my portfolio as on-demand assets.
All my courses and templates. I’ll still be selling those, so you’ll still see them here, but less frequently because, again, Council members have access to everything I’ve ever created.

This is not a vetted model. I can’t stress this enough. The model I’ve built may very well fall flat because it’s built on the fact that my best clients don’t ever need to pay for any of my products again, once they’re part of The Council (save for 1:1 work).

I may be shooting myself in the leg here by letting go of these repeat purchases. I’ll let you know.

OK, now let’s talk channels.

My current channels (and what’s changing)

Currently, my channels are:

Newsletter → it will still be where my best content lives and my biggest growth focus.
Social media (LinkedIn, Threads, X/Twitter, Bluesky — ordered by the amount of time I spend on each of them)
Private communities
Medium
Cross-promos and partnerships
Podcasts, interviews, and more.

Social media

I’m currently doing an experiment on LinkedIn. I believe that this platform is in its last stages of decay (from a user perspective), so I plan to change my strategy there.

The announcement post got a fair amount of traction and so did the fact that I mentioned it in every post I did since then.

Whatever I posted about, adding a blurb at the end explaining it was part of an experiment was the most mentioned thing.

I knew that people were kind of over LinkedIn as a social media platform, so everyone’s curious about whether pouring more time into platform-native content is worth it or not.

Here’s what I’ll do with social media this year:

Still show up on LinkedIn BUT spend more time in the DMs. I SUCK at that. I maaaaybe start a conversation once every three months or so. Yeah, that needs to change.
Spend more time on Threads. Whenever I gave it a fair shot, it amazed me. Posts get picked up much faster and, honestly, everyone’s content is better there.
Give Bluesky a proper chance — maybe. I still haven’t decided on this yet. I’m not sure I’ll have the time.
X/Twitter is almost irrelevant for me now. At the rate things are going South in there, I’m not sure it’s even worth it at this point.

Non-social-media

I’ve written before that I’m very bullish on private communities — this is part of the reason why I launched The Council, so I plan to spend more time in the communities I'm part of.

Medium is still a very low lift for me, so even if the results aren’t as good as they used to be, I’ll keep at it.

Cross-promos and partnerships are still a priority for me and I plan to be a bit more systematic about it i.e. make sure that I have at least one of those per month, ideally two.

The same goes for podcasts and interviews. So far, I haven’t done any outreach for podcasts; I just received invitations and honored most of them. This year, I plan to reach out to some hosts.

Conceptualizing my IP

This is probably the hardest thing on my 2026 agenda but it’s finally time to take it seriously. As you may know, I’ve written A LOT in the past three years. 164 editions of Strategic AF, at ~1.5K words each = ±250,000 words. That’s at least three business books!

I don’t plan to stitch together a book from my newsletters (perhaps an eBook, not a book-book), but I do plan to conceptualize and systematize my work and my IP.

Candidly, I’m still in the early stages of this. I know there’s something there, I just don’t know how to surface it and do it justice.

I’ve given myself until June to at least come up with a system or a rough first draft. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m very aware that I may be getting high on my own supply and perhaps there’s no strong core, but, for now, I choose hope and optimism :).

Hope you enjoyed this change of pace. I know this edition was a bit more stream-of-consciousness than what I usually write.

What about you? What are you focusing on this year? Reply and let me know!

That's it from me today!

See you next week in your inbox.

Here to make you think,

Adriana