It’s the first Friday of the year. Happy New Year! I missed getting this to you on the final Friday of the year, though I had it 90% ready to go.

As I was walking to a matcha cafe on the morning of New Year’s Eve, I was thinking about how much actually happens in a year, that it’s too much to capture in a recap or even series of recap posts (as much as I’d love to reflect, document, and remember the awesome wins and challenges of 2025).

Along with that, this also hit me: I’ll likely never get to “catchup” on all the podcast episodes that auto-downloaded onto my phone in 2025 or the hundreds of newsletters I’ve marked as unread to come back to. Despite best intentions it seems like more of a physical impossibility at this point.

That being said…

Whether you’ve been a subscriber to this newsletter since the beginning (sometime in 2024) or just joined a few weeks ago, I put together this recap of The Intersection for you. It was also a good reflection for me to look back on, which I’d recommend doing with your content.

How do we build things that last (brands, careers, communities, confidence) in a world that keeps speeding up?

That question pretty much describes the topics I’ve been writing about here in The Intersection.

Sometimes that showed up as marketing strategy and brand-building, other times it was personal branding or career-focused. Sometimes it was a gentle “touch grass” reminder disguised as a digital newsletter.

As we dive into 2026, I’ve looked at all the analytics and used some tools to help analyze the data from The Intersection in 2025.

What did you see the most?

Craving both clarity and hope, while quietly questioning the systems we’ve all been told to trust? That’s what the data shows.

These are the 3 top performers based on impressions:

More standouts from 2025

There are a couple of posts that capture the tone of the year based on my writing and became recurring anchors:

6 Recurring Themes of 2025

Based on all of this year’s editions of The Intersection, here are a few key themes that I kept coming back to.

Community isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s the strategy.

I wrote about community as the real moat — not followers, not funnels, not fancy campaign launches. The Hudson’s Bay example (RIP) became a useful mirror: legacy doesn’t save you if people don’t feel connected anymore. That applies to personal brands, too. Read:

• The Future of Marketing is Community (and the Fall of Hudson's Bay)

Storytelling is still the most underrated growth tool.

A lot of last year was me translating a simple idea into different contexts: story isn’t the “soft” side of marketing — it’s the foundation of trust. That showed up through frameworks (Story of Self/Us/Now), through social impact storytelling, and through pushing back on “short-term hacks.” Read:

• The Story Framework & How Sharing Your Story Actually Inspires Action

• Why Story Outlasts Short-Term Hacks

“Content” got demoted. Craft got promoted.

One of my favourite threads last year: the backlash to content-as-churn. I unpacked why the word “content” can flatten the value of real creative work — and why creators (and nonprofit storytellers especially) deserve language that respects the craft. Read:

• Content is a Dirty Word

Brand vs. performance isn’t either/or. It’s a discipline.

I kept returning to the tension so many teams feel: prove ROI now vs build belief over time. With higher ad costs and noisier feeds, the “balance” conversation isn’t academic — it’s survival. Read:

• Striking the Balance: A Fresh Look at Investing in Brand-Building and Performance Marketing

We’re overloaded… and we’re noticing it.

2025 had a strong “modern life” undercurrent: time anxiety, always-on output pressure, the weirdness of being hyperconnected but still lonely, and the identity shift happening in careers right now. (The ladder is broken… so people are building jungle gyms.) Read:

• Time Anxiety

• Resisting the Urge for Output

• Connected Yet Disconnected

• The Career Ladder is Broken

Optimism is not a personality trait. It’s a practice.

I didn’t want to write “everything is fine” content. Things are hard, and your choices still matter. That’s the heart of giving, leadership, and building anything meaningful. Read:

• Can Things Get Better? 

2 Questions for you!

If you read along throughout 2025, I’d love to know:

Which theme hit closest to home for you?
Community, story, time, identity, optimism, or something else?

What do you want more of this year? 
More marketing/brand strategy, observations and reflections, or deep-dive examples?

Tired of reading right now?

Here’s some top video content from the year.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and watch. I appreciate you.

Best wishes for an awesome 2026!