Your 2026 rebrand blueprint: THE IT GIRL AGENDA

one intention that I'm bringing with me into the new year. And that is this way brand is not about burning everything down and starting from scratch, but it's about refining and building what already works. Taking the high highs, taking the low lows, taking the, what I wanna call, become pounded growth of day one of your journey to now and mastering this version of yourself. I'm Alyssa and welcome to the Inspired Media Podcast, a space for creators, creatives and entrepreneurs who know they're meant to do more than just stop the school. So we're putting the spotlight on the unspoken streets and unconventional takes on how to truly build a standout brand online. Now, let the show begin. Hello, hello, and welcome to the first episode of the Inspired Media Podcast, 2026. Podcast Editor, can we please have some celebratory music, some applause, something? (audience cheering) To celebrate the fact that we have made it through yet another year, and we're starting the new year together. And since it's the new year, we have to start off with the tradition we've officially started, which is creating the It Girl agenda. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, and you let me know if 2025 was like this for YouTube, but 2025, oh, she was crazy. Okay, she was crazy. She was the most chaotic, the busiest, most fun, but also hardest year for me on the business side and the personal side, like I wish we could just sit down and have a boba date together, and I could just tell you everything, but with all the chaos that had ensued in 2025, that means I have a lot of lessons, a lot of patterns, a lot of things that I now know I need to fix and optimize and do differently. And that's why I want to present to you this next version of the It Girl agenda that I am refining for myself. So of course, I had to share it with you. Now, if you haven't already set your intentions for 2026, I wanna offer up one intention that I'm bringing with me into the new year, and that is this rebrand is not about burning everything down and starting from scratch, but it's about refining and building what already works, taking the high highs, taking the low lows, taking what I wanna call the compounded growth of day one of your journey to now and mastering this version of yourself. So let's create your It Girl agenda, shall we? Now, something I want you to keep in mind as we plan your It Girl agenda is we plan for the year, but we hyper focus on the quarter. Starting the new year and that hype and that dopamine spike of I have this entire plan is great, but if we're gonna be so for real, most New Year's resolutions fail in February because people get lost in the 365 days in the year and I don't want that to be you. So again, we plan for the year, we have that bird's eye view, but then we also have this hyper focused point of view on Q1 specifically. Okay, now let's get into the steps. Step one, this is the audit. This is where I want you to pull out the camera roll, the calendar, scroll your own feed, your notes app, your bank statements, your profit and loss sheet. Pause if you need to. I really want you to take some time to look at everything. We need to look at what happened in 2025 so we can know what we need to do in 2026. This is where you're gonna get confidence through clarity and how we're gonna move with such intention and power into 2026. Again, take a pause if you need to, go look at everything. This is a part that I'm adding that I did not do in previous years. Now after you look to everything, I want you to ask yourself this one question. Being at the place that you are right now, knowing what you know, feeling what you feel, where do you feel satisfied and where do you feel disappointed? Now the satisfied part is usually the part that is the easiest because it's positive feelings, right? You got the car, you got the bag, you got to go on this trip, you got to go meet this person, you booked that brand deal, that client, all the things and I want you to write that down and I want you to take note of that and I want you to feel so proud of yourself there. But it's the other part that usually people don't do or at least they do it in a way that's not actually productive. Where do you feel disappointed? When things don't go our way, especially if you're a super ambitious person and you set big goals for yourself and you hit this low and this didn't go your way and then this person and then that person, I was trying to do that and you have the list of failures, it doesn't feel good, but as somebody that's also working on this with herself, I want you to note those failures and don't let them overpower you. You're gonna use those failures and use them as fuel for 2026. The integral version of yourself doesn't let failure stop her so we are not going to be participating in that today, thank you. Now after you make that list, I want you to ask yourself a second question. What do I need to do and to not do to feel satisfied and lessen the feelings of disappointment? And I'll give you an example. One thing that I'm really gonna work on for 2026 is tighten up my financial planning specifically for taxes in quarter four. So what I'm gonna do is in the beginning of quarter four, I'm going to put a reminder, like literally in my Google calendar, I'm gonna put a reminder October 1st, 2026, email CPA, CFP and bookkeeper to make sure we all have a bird's eye view of what I can spend, where we need to put things if there's limits, maxes on anything, we're gonna know in the beginning of Q4 because Q4 is really where it does get the busiest. We're usually pretty good month to month, Q1, 2, 3, but Q4 was a really big struggle era for me when it came to taxes and money and all of that. So I'm gonna do that in October, November 2nd, which is the first Monday of 2026. I'm gonna do it again. And then December 1st, 2026, I'm going to do it again. And I'm gonna have a very specific list of questions that I'm going to ask my finance team. Now, I don't have that part yet, which is something I'm going to continue to work on, but at least I know now in Q4, I'm gonna set it in my calendar. This is a priority. These are the conversations I need to have. This is what I need to plan, so that I'm not ending the year scrambling, trying to figure out where to put this money transfers, moving things around all of that, which was literally a reality in 2025. Kind of scrambling to get these kind of last things done. I want to avoid that as much as possible. That we don't do this to say that you're not gonna go through anything hard or that you're gonna meet every single goal and do it 100% perfectly, of course not. That doesn't exist, but if you can do things to avoid, if you can take the low moments of 2025 and put action behind them, learn from them, and make them better in 2026, you know that you did your job. And you can have so much comfort and confidence there. In this part of creating your ecological agenda, I want you to have self-awareness, honesty, and trust as you reflect on 2025. Because again, that is gonna give us the foundation, the clarity and confidence to actually now make our plan. Don't skip over this part. A lot of people skip over this part. They just wanna do the pretty vision boards and listen, I get it, that is so much fun. But we're not doing things just to look cute. We actually wanna make things happen. So that's the audit. Step number two, you're gonna write down these four categories, business, socials, finances, and personal. Step number three, and this is actually something I'm adding after last year, but under each one of those categories, I want you to write down I'm the type of person who. And the reason why I'm adding this on is most New Year's resolutions fail in February. Most people fail on their goals before Q1 is even over, but we are not most people. Goals and habits and to-do lists, they're not reliable. It feels good doing it right now because we have this big spike of dopamine and motivation, all that, which is great, but we want something that sticks in the long term. So if we make these things a part of our identity, it's gonna stick. And of course, I'm gonna give you an example, business. I'm the type of CEO who honors her CEO days, socials. I'm the type of creator that posts on her podcast consistently. Do it for finance, do it for personal. I'm the type of person who. Think about conversations you're having with other people when you're talking about other people. I'm sure you've said something along the lines of, oh, she's just the type of person that wakes up early in the morning. She's just the type of person that is always late, but we love her. She's just the type of person that insert whatever whatever here. But sometimes when doing it for ourselves, especially when goal setting and planning, we end up just looking at who we are as a culmination of tasks, accomplishments and goals, which number one is not true. You are so much more than your accomplishments and what you check off. And number two, that's a very unreliable way to look at yourself. James Clears said on the podcast that goals are for people who wanna win. Habits are for people who want to win all the time. So in the era of becoming the it girl version of ourselves, we have to write down, this is the type of person I'm becoming. This is the type of person I am so that you can take on and really feel so much pride in this is who I am, this is my identity. It's not just something I do, it's who I am. So by nature, of course, I'm gonna do it. Step number three, in each category, I want you to write down one goal and then attach two small action items you can do in the month of January. We are gonna get so specific, so detailed, so down to the nitty gritty, because a goal that's not specific isn't gonna happen. So for example, for the category of socials, I have, I'm the type of creator who posts on my podcast consistently. The goal, post a podcast episode four times every month. Two action items I'm gonna do in January is I'm gonna sit with pod editor and I'm gonna map out my exact episodes for January. I'm gonna pick my filming days 'cause I have to now read that into my workflow and I haven't really been consistent doing that in 2025. I started off really, really strong, things got busy. My workflow got all messed up, so I need to refine that workflow and I need to book the in-person interview that I'm gonna do and you are gonna get go when you find out who's coming to the inspired media podcast in January. So I want you to do that for every single category. I'm the type of person who, this is my goal, these are the small action items I'm gonna do. And as you are doing this, whether you're doing it right now or whether you're listening to this and you're gonna do it later, please share it with your community. Get them hyped, get them excited, give them a little sneak peek of what they are gonna expect from you. A lot of people just think, "Oh, I'll share it when I'm done." You don't have to share everything, but give your community something to hold onto. Give us little updates here, so we feel like we truly are doing this together. And the last step I'll leave you with is pray on it. There is honor in planning, in being ambitious, in being detailed and working hard and facing the things that we face and doing the things that we do, but ambition kills if that's all you think that you are. And after you do this entire plan, and I know you're gonna be so detailed and maybe it's color coded and maybe you have little doodles or maybe it looks really aesthetic and you share it on your Instagram story. I love all that. Then I want you to pray on it and give it up to God. And my prayer to him is gonna be something along the lines of God, show me how good it can be. Show me what we can do together and help me take the pressure off and give this to you. I think a lot of us are hardwired to work really hard. And again, that's honorable and it's noble to work really hard because that's what it takes. Business is hard, but something I'm taking with me in 2026 and something I want you to take with you is it doesn't always have to be hard and just because it's not hard doesn't mean it's wrong. My business mentor actually called me out on this a few times and she was like, you're so comfortable with working hard that when something is easy you think it's wrong. And I said, oh, an intervention, okay? But she was so right. She was so right, I was comfortable in stress and it's something that I got better at in 2025 but something I want to continue to get better at in 2026 not in the way of I need to work harder at not being so hard, but learning to release. I can do the work, I can give it all I got but I released it to God and I can take comfort and confidence in that. So that is the last step of the ICCRA agenda. Pray on it. And you know I can just sit here and just yap about but the last last thing I actually want to leave you with is whatever happened in 2025, the things that you're kicking yourself for. Maybe you had a big goal that you set for yourself and it didn't happen for you or maybe there's something happened in your personal life. Maybe there was a big mistake that you made or I'm sure there's so many moments that are unseen and unheard and maybe we'll never know, but you and God know all the struggles that you barely survived. And I'm also saying this to myself because I'm struggling with this right now 'cause I set a really big goal for myself in 2025 and I put a time limit on it to make it by December 31 and I didn't hit it. I almost did, I was so close but I didn't hit it. But at the end of the day, who cares? Like those things don't find you. And when you're mapping out everything that you wanna accomplish, I wanna remind you because this is actually how I used to think every single accomplishment that you hit or don't hit, it is not a reset button. Every single accomplishment, every single time you choose the bigger picture, every single time you choose the long-term vision, every single time you choose that big thing that you know is fulfilling your purpose, that compounds, it adds on. So okay, you didn't hit that one goal or that one thing happened or that low moment happened, it's not you starting over. You are building off of everything that you have done and created and been through and I'm so incredibly proud of you for doing that. And I know it's hard to hear and I know when people told me this, I didn't like to hear it because I'm stubborn and I was disappointed and I just wanted to push even harder but maybe I didn't make this goal on the exact date that I wanted to because there's a lesson there. And maybe this is your reminder to you again with all these goals and ambitions and all these things which are amazing, they do not define you. So take the pressure off, give it to God and at this point I'm yapping and rambling and I know I'm not speaking very eloquently 'cause now I'm going completely off script but I hope in 2026 as you're mapping this out that we do the big thing but we don't kill ourselves for it and we have so much fun doing it. Oh, also last thing here and my content brain is now turning on, film yourself doing this, film yourself doing this if you're doing it right now, if you're doing it later, seriously film yourself because at the end of the year you're going to want to do your end of the year recaps and then everyone's scrambling, scrolling through everything, have a folder and maybe you title it 2026 and film yourself doing what you're doing now because then when you do the end of the year recaps you can just pull it out, edit the video, post, it'll be really smooth and really nice and really clean. It's almost like doing a note to your future self. Actually, another action item, record yourself right now on your phone, say a note to your future self and then 2026 con to an idea, you play that, maybe there's some like soft music in the background and it's like this is where I told myself January 1st, 2026 and then you do like a montage of everything you accomplished. Hello, what, that would eat. I love that. Okay, so you have to do that. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for going through 2025 with me. I am so excited to see what 2026 has in store as you're creating your it grill agenda. Please, please, please tag me, email me, DM me @inspiredmediaco. So I can hype you up. I have a ton more episodes coming. Happy new year and as always, break a leg.