Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026

Every holiday season, I reflect on the year that has passed. Accomplishments, failures, learnings, feelings, and more.

In the spirit of building in public, I want to bring you into that process this year.

Today, I’ll share:

I hope this helps you reflect on your own year, celebrate your own wins, and plan for an incredible 2026. And if you don’t currently have a practice like this, I hope this inspires you to try it.

Let’s dive in.

2025 was a big year. In the past 12 months, I:

And much more.

I did all this while:

And yet despite everything that has happened in the past 12 months, I’m left feeling like it’s not enough.

This is something I’m still wrestling with, and I will share my thoughts on it as best I can below.

In short, burning the boats of my tech career and jumping into full-time content creation has been a lot harder than I expected.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to long-time subscribers that 2025 shifted my priorities in a big way.

After all, I spent last Christmas Eve in a hospital bed, recovering from surgery.

Thanks to God, my doctors and nurses, and the Korean healthcare system, I am cancer free today and am able to enjoy this beautiful experience we call life.

I touch on this in my cancer video, but I got extremely lucky. I didn’t have to go through chemotherapy or even radiotherapy. My surgery was a “full resection” — meaning the surgeon removed all of the cancer — and based on the cancer’s Type and Stage, the doctors did not recommend any further treatment.

But as with all cancers, there is always a risk of recurrence.

So in 2025, I promoted ‘health’ to a top spot on my priority list:

But surprisingly, health still wasn’t my #1 priority in 2025.

My #1 priority was my faith.

In late 2024, after 30+ years of living as an agnostic, I became a Christian.*

I know this topic isn’t for everyone (and might even alienate some readers), but in the spirit of transparency, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share this huge life moment with you all.

*I also plan to do a longer writeup and video to share more of my testimony another time.

And the reason I mention it here in my 2025 reflections is quite simple: Finding my faith completely shook up my life priorities.

Ever since I started Wealth Potion, I had been thinking a lot about what “wealth” means to me.

Most of us already recognize that although money is a key ingredient for wealth, it is far from an exhaustive definition. Money is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. And most of us desire financial security, not money for money’s sake.

As I began building Wealth Potion, I kept coming back to these questions question:

This question led me down a rabbit hole of studying finance and economics of course, but also morality, philosophy, epistemology, and eventually, Christianity.

To make a long story short, I gained an entirely new appreciation of so many facets of life that I had taken for granted: love, freedom, peace, charity, justice, purpose, vocation, legacy, and so much more.

Looking back on 2025, it’s hard to overstate how transformative a year it was for me. And a big part of that was finding my faith.

It’s likely the one change that led to every other change.

Will I completely abandon finance and economics content on Wealth Potion? Of course not.

Understanding how to build monetary wealth is still a highly important life skill, and I plan to continue teaching that through my newsletter and YouTube channel.

But I hope that those of you who subscribed saw Wealth Potion as something more than just “how do I get rich”…

My hope is that Wealth Potion also helps you live a more fulfilled, purposeful life. That you achieve true wealth, whatever that means to you.

2025 also challenged me to shift how I think about work and productivity,

Unlike the work I’d done in the past (sales and product marketing at tech startups) content creation thrives on… creativity! No surprise there.

But creativity thrives with time and space.

I remember back at the first startup I worked at as a young salesperson, I would be so confused (frustrated, even) by the marketing team lounging in beanbag chairs. They looked so… “unproductive”.

Over the years, I’ve learned that creativity can’t be forced. This is what hustle culture misses. Sure, you can bang out more sales emails or write more copy… but will it be inspiring? Will it move your audience?

To be honest, it’s been very uncomfortable for me to sit in that negative space. To retreat from the business (busy-ness) of modern life to let my creativity blossom. I’m very much still learning.

I always feel like I should be doing more.

And of course, there is always a grain of truth to that.

But as a creator, sometimes the best thing you can do… is to do nothing.

I’m still refining my goals for 2026. If you want to learn more about the techniques I use to set and achieve goals, check out this video I posted recently:

I hope everyone has a restful holiday, a Merry Christmas, and is excited for an incredible 2026. Let’s make it a great one.

To your prosperity,
Brandon @ Wealth Potion

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