2026 Outlook
Once again, my turn-of-the-year post for 2025 comes in two parts:
- My 2025 recap (previous post)
- My 2026 outlook (this post)
I’m finishing 2025 feeling pretty good overall. That’s new.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’ve got a winner on my hands. Builder Methods is only 5 months in, so I’m still in startup mode heading into 2026. That makes me cautiously optimistic—but that’s still optimism, which I haven’t felt in a while.
Here are my current priorities for 2026:
Reclaiming Fridays
At the start of 2025, I set a goal to work a 4-day week. What I was really after was carving out space for my other craft, songwriting.
For the first 4 or 5 months, it worked. Most Fridays I took off to write and record music. But once Builder Methods started clicking, I convinced myself the 4-day week no longer mattered. I stopped doing it.
Now I’m feeling some regret. I have songs from the last few years that I’m genuinely proud of, but I haven’t had the time or space to record and produce finished versions. I have no expectations or goals beyond that. I just want to produce and release artifacts from my craft before too much time passes.
The friction
The obvious question: how will I feel comfortable working only 4 days a week while Builder Methods is still growing?
I think it comes down to two things:
Predictable income. I need a revenue stream I can count on, even when I’m not actively pushing. That box has been checked for the past 4 months. As this streak continues, I'll feel increasingly secure in taking more time off (in theory).
Abundant value in Builder Methods Pro. The content members get today today is a good start, but I want to deliver much more value in the coming year. More member-only content, more community, more reasons to stay engaged and recommend Builder Methods Pro to teammates and industry friends.
Before I can truly take Fridays off, I have more to build. That’s the tension I’m navigating in 2026.
Video operations
Creating videos on my YouTube channel is the most important activity I do—it drives the entire funnel. Two challenges remain:
Frequency without sacrificing quality. I want to publish at least two videos a week but I’m not willing to lower quality to get there.
In 2025 I experimented with hiring a video editor, which sorta helped but also created new time-consuming tasks for me to direct his work. The technical subject matter makes hiring a video editor particularly challenging.
I expect I'll continue experimenting with outsourcing parts of the production process, and continuing to streamline my workflow. New AI tools for video editing and script writing have already helped me speed up my flow, to an extent.
Agent OS, Design OS, and beyond
Agent OS and Design OS will continue to be important free, open source projects throughout 2026. I’ll keep maintaining them and adding educational content around them for both YouTube and Pro members.
What I want to explore: paid cloud services as optional add-ons. Not premium versions—the core products stay free and open source. But cloud components that solve adjacent problems for users of Agent OS and Design OS. This could be an additional revenue stream, separate from Pro membership.
Keep building tools
Now that I’m faster at building my own tools, I want to keep shipping new ones.
In 2025 I built a few:
- NewsletterLab — For curating content and drafting my weekly newsletter.
- FilterHawk — Replaces Gmail filters to manage my noisy inbox.
- InboxSummaries — Summarizes and flags gems from high-volume survey responses.
I've got several more tool ideas planned and more popping up in shower thoughts all the time.
My goals with every tool I build are:
- Be something I actually use. Every tool must improve my own operations. InboxSummaries is a good example—without it, I can’t effectively gain insights from all the customer research survey responses I receive.
- Generate teaching material. Building tools serves as content material for the Pro library and YouTube channel.
- Improve my frameworks. Each build helps me refine workflows and bring those learnings to my audience and into Design OS and Agent OS.
Some of my tools might be sellable as standalone SaaS products, but that’s the lowest priority. Each tool should take about a week, so I’m aiming for at least one new tool per month.
Revenue outlook
The funnel is working. Growth should continue from the top-of-funnel momentum alone—more audience, more subscribers, more customers.
Of course, there will be churn. That’s normal for memberships, and it’s another reason I need to prioritize delivering long-term value to members.
Beyond organic growth, I see potential new revenue streams in 2026:
- Sponsorships — It's time to bring this into the mix, with the right partners.
- Cloud services — Paid add-ons for Agent OS and Design OS.
- Team engagements — Already started selling private team workshops in 2025 and expect to grow this in 2026.
- Membership renewals — These begin in September 2026.
Freedom vs. the creator model
Loving the work has been my #1 goal throughout my career. I didn't always achieve this but I am with Builder Methods, which is even more exciting to me than the revenue growth.
That said--this is a "Creator" business model, which means it will always require me to create and be the face. I knew that going in, and accepted that reality.
The main challenge I face in 2026 is being willing to take time off to grow in other parts of my life--even if it means taking time away from work I actually enjoy doing.
That’s the outlook for 2026.