Your ‘Main Character Energy’ Brand: 2026 is the year

Image: Hannah Rose Cluley speaking at Overflow Live, diving into the powerful identity work that is non-negotiable in your journey towards becoming a star in your industry / niche. (Very powerful conversation!)

Just about every spiritual person or heart-led business owner, will have either posted about this or read a post about it: 2026 is the year of the Firehorse in the zodiac and a year 1 in numerology. Without diving too deep into all of the different nuances of what that means (after all, you’d probably want to look to somebody in the spiritual / numerology game for that), it’s a year of new beginnings, of visibility, and becoming a champion in your industry.

I’m currently on a very late train home from London after attending Overflow Live (side note: it was incredible!) and I’ve been thinking about how 2026 feels like a new wave for founders and creators alike.

And hear me out on this one because trust me, I know that every single year we all say “this year will be my year!” and the spark has fizzled out by mid-January.

This isn’t that.

Now do not get me wrong, I am massively spiritual and it’s pretty safe to say that 2026 has the potential to be an absolutely catalytic year for us all, and there’s absolutely something to be said for the numerological and spiritual codings of this year.

But one thing that stood out to me so much today, is the activities and habits hidden in the routines of those who are going to catapult in visibility, impact and influence this year. But it’s so much bigger than just accountability and skin in the game…It’s authenticity.

Let’s be honest, with the rise of AI in recent years, we’ve all gotten increasingly excited about how we can utilise it to become more productive in business and get more done in our day-to-day world (myself included, I’m a research queen & full disclosure, I talk to ChatGPT almost daily). However, I think 2025 felt like quite a flat year in areas of the creative industry, and AI has a lot to answer for here.

The fact that people are now able to craft an entire body double that looks like them, walks like them, even talks like them, using AI is pretty incredible…but I have to be honest, it bothers me. (⚠️ consider this your controversial opinion alert)

The late 2010’s seemed to be such a progressive time for body positivity, calling out heavy airbrushing and filtering in the media…and the overuse of AI to copy and paste ourselves in the name of creating more content, louder content, faster content. Well, I’d say that regardless of it being in the name of productivity and growth, it’s still one step forward and 3 steps back.

Not only this, people are much more AI-savvy than they were even a year ago, and as soon as audiences are picking up on it’s (over)use, it’s becoming front and centre of their minds over your message…

And frankly, it’s destroying brand trust.

Amongst Hannah and the rest of the incredible speakers I heard from today, the overarching message was clear. The brands that are going to explode to new levels of visibility, impact, and yes income (nobody starts a business to not earn a living, right?) are more than authentic.

They’re disruptive, their content is curated to activate their target audience, to stop your thumb from scrolling even a millimetre further until you’ve heard what they have to say.

Content that disrupts the steady flow of trends and iced matcha lattes on your feed, doesn’t happen in a text chain with a bot.

It happens in collaborative spaces.

It happens when you’re in a state of flow.

It happens when you’re so tuned into your brand, that its not actually about you - you’re always thinking ahead to what your audience wants you to talk about, teach or create.

And every event I attend is a solid reminder of this…it happens when you’re in the room.