2025 was a year of reckoning for me both personally and professionally. I got to experience the joy that is perimenopause, continue navigating my ADHD, and I got to witness women standing up to weaponized incompetence at home and systemic bias at work.
My Top 5 from 2025 are the themes I couldn’t stop thinking about, writing about, and living through this year. While 2025 was a dumpster fire of epic proportions, it was also the year I saw women recognize the power they’ve held all along and because of that, I wouldn’t change anything about it.
Here’s my recap and what I think it all means for 2026.
The Gray Wave: Why Women Are Leaving
I wrote this after yet another conversation with a brilliant woman whose success had become her partner’s insecurity problem. The Gray Wave isn’t just about who does the dishes, it’s about being held responsible for a grown man’s happiness, his ego, his inability to step up when you outperform him. We’ve spent decades managing their fragility while carrying everything else, and we’re done. Women are leaving because we finally realized we were never getting back what we were putting in, and life is easier without someone else’s emotional baggage to manage.
2026 Prediction
The exodus accelerates as more women build wealth, businesses, and communities without traditional partnerships. Entire industries will scramble to respond when they realize the fastest-growing demographic isn’t “families,” it’s single women done apologizing for wanting more. We are 51% of the population; we are the economy.
I’ll be exploring what happens when women stop propping up men who refuse to own their own shit and start investing in each other instead.
I Beg Your F*cking Pardon
The New York Times asked if women ruined the workplace, and we did. The workplace was a dumpster fire built on competition over collaboration, hierarchy over humanity, and protecting the comfort of the incompetent. Women were like, nah…ain’t gonna work for us and we called it like we saw it. I’ve spent 19 years building a business in rooms full of men who questioned my competence while promoting mediocrity in their own ranks; which was fine by me, underestimating me is your mistake.
2026 Prediction
The backlash against women in the workplace will get louder as DEI programs continue to disappear and “merit-based” becomes code for “back to the way things were.” What the gatekeepers aren’t counting on is we’re done playing nice and we’re not going backwards even if the rest of the world has declared war on our gender. Myself and 8THIRTYFOUR will continue to create spaces, host conversations and advocate and I’ll get even louder about women owning their power to drown out the mediocre white men.
The Price of Your Cowardice
I wrote this in July when the cuts were just projections – $1.1 trillion slashed from healthcare, federal contracting set-asides gutted, 37,000 Michigan jobs on the chopping block. Since then, the federal government shut down, federal workers went without paychecks, and ACA rollbacks became a reality. Business owners are shouldering the weight of broken promises from cowards in Lansing and D.C. who chose political survival over their constituents, and every week the news gets worse. Our system is broken when the very people who swore to represent us sell us out.
2026 Prediction
We have three more years of this administration, and the burden on small businesses will compound every single month while healthcare costs skyrocket and young workers flee states stripping their rights. The owners who survive will do it despite their government, not because of it. It’ll be even more critical for us to lean on our communities, share strategies, and remember exactly who did this to us when it’s time to vote.
The Sisterhood: Show Up, Speak Up, and Lift Up
I spent years thinking my gender was a liability, laughing at the jokes, enduring the old boy’s club, telling myself I wasn’t “like other girls.” What a load of horseshit, the strongest professional relationships I have now are with women who’ve been in the same trenches, who share their failures so I don’t drive off the same cliff, who answer when I call, and who show up when it matters. We are 51% of the population, and we need to stop being afraid of our own voice.
2026 Prediction
Women’s networks become the most powerful force in business, because we’ve stopped tearing each other down and started building each other up. The ERA still hasn’t passed, reproductive rights continue to be under siege, and the systems aren’t going to save us, so we’re building our own. We’ll build the capital funds to invest in female founders, launch female-focused business programs, and use our collective power to fix what men continue to f*ck up.
You Are the Face of Your Business—Start Acting Like It
I’ve been preaching personal branding for over twenty years, and I’m still watching business owners hide behind their logos because someone told them once that their business needs to be bigger than them. People don’t buy from logos, they buy from people. I’ve built my entire business by being outspoken, opinionated, and refusing to sand down the edges everyone told me were “too much.” Your quirks aren’t liabilities; they’re the reason people will choose you over the polished, forgettable competition.
2026 Prediction
AI is about to make everyone sound exactly the same – boring and robotic. Your weird, messy, and actual human voice will become your greatest competitive advantage. The businesses thriving in 2026 won’t have the slickest marketing; they’ll be run by people who show up authentically and consistently. I’ve made it my mission to show business owners how (and why) to stop hiding and start owning why they’re the ones in charge.
I pray 2026 is not the dumpster fire we just endured in 2025. If anything is going to change, it’s going to require all of us to be courageous and fight.
I’m ready, you with me?
