2025 Year In Review: Y2 of The Uncommon Executive

Learnings and interesting tidbits from year 2 of growing my portfolio career.

This week’s post is my Annual Review and Look Forward. This is my performance review and 2026 annual planning now that I am no longer subject to the actual progresses and (maybe) miss them a little. Aside from all the frustrations and irritation they cause, at the core they are valuable exercises in reflection and planning. Let’s recap our year together.

Highlights of 2025

• Started my year-long certification program on Integral Coaching with New Ventures West in Feb. Easily the best personal growth decision I’ve made.

• Got on stage to speak for some of my favorite organizations in Q1’25: ProductTank Barcelona, Chief, Sidebar, Women in Product, and SASE

• May: Joined Asian Leadership Center, a collective of executive coaches who combine Western and Eastern philosophy. Proud to collaborate with Mike Takagawa, Mo, Peter (a high school classmate!), and Wes Kao. Started with a first corporate client in November.

• Converted to an official (part-time) employee at Perk as a leadership coach, supporting C-level and VP-level executives at the $2.7B B2B SaaS startup. Really enjoying coaching in person and leading leadership off-sites!

• In June, I met Bonnie Marcus, who invited me to speak on her podcast, Badass Women. It turns out she is the author of one of my favorite books, The Politics of Promotion.

• In September, I did a repeat collaboration with Ethan Evans on How To Manage A Peer-To-Manager Transition. Ethan has graciously been a supporter of my writing and coaching since the beginning!

• My Master Executive Presence & Communication with AI course had a viral moment in December, becoming a best seller on Maven and bringing in a highly engaged group of students that I’ve loved teaching.

• Also in December, finally shipped a guest post with Deb Liu for Perspectives on Failure Is A Feature, Not A Bug. Ironically, I failed to write this post well at least three times.

Goals Review

From my 2024 Year In Review, my goals for 2025 were to lean into what is working well, experiment with new offerings, and improve running the business. Here’s how it went.

Lean into what is working well

• 🟢 Expand 1:1 executive coaching clients: This is by far what I am most proud of this year. My 1:1 coaching roster grew by so much that I started to maintain a waitlist in October. I was able to get more selective about the topics I coach (e.g. no interview-only coaching), seniority (got my first L10 client from FAANG!), and style (ambitious, vulnerable, curious). A large portion of my previous clients also renewed their 6 or 12-month engagements.

• 🟢 Write consistently for this newsletter: I published weekly posts throughout 2025, taking only 1 week off so far. The newsletter has grown substantially as well, tripling from ~7k to 21k followers.

• 🔴 More corporate workshops and team coaching: Delivered corporate workshops for Thumbtack, Instacart Women’s Month, and Kahilla. While I put effort into this in Q1, as my 1:1 coaching, course, and accelerator program took off, I did not invest much time into new leads, and it was deprioritized.

Iterate on new offerings

• 🟡 The Uncommon Executive Leadership Accelerator: I ran 3 cohorts of The Uncommon Executive Leadership Accelerator program this year. The next cohort starting January 2026 is fully booked. I love group coaching, and the sessions are always impactful. However, it’s always a stressful run-up to the application deadline on whether the spots will fill, and I don’t enjoy that.

• 🔴 Yue’s Coaching Corner: While people continued to join the Slack community in 2025, I lost steam here. It felt like just another advertising channel rather than a true community. I tried a few times to revive it, and even considered bringing someone on to run it, but nothing worked out so far.

• 🟢 (new!) Master Executive Presence & Communication with AI: I did not have this as a goal in 2024, but it ended up taking a large portion of my time in 2025. I ran 4 cohorts, updated the curriculum regularly, did 4 popular free lighting lessons (5000+ attendees!), and hired help with marketing for two cohorts.

Running the business

• 🟡 Repeatable Marketing & Sales: I signed on two different people to help on the marketing front (LinkedIn and Maven). While neither is ongoing, they both helped me set strong foundations. I would say that the process is still very manual and one-off.

• 🟡 Add AI for efficiency: I moved my website to Gamma App (AI-native website builder), and absolutely love it. I also created Claude projects for repurposing my content to LinkedIn and Substac Notes, as well as a writing partner for my Newsletter.

I exceeded expectations in 1:1 executive coaching from all aspects in 2025. My funnel of LinkedIn → Newsletter & website → Free Intro Call → Client worked well. To date, I’ve coached 40+ clients in 6-month+ engagements this year. That’s more than 300+ hours in 1:1 executive coaching conversations!

My Maven course and accelerator program both met expectations. I do not love these offerings as much as 1:1 executive coaching, but it offers a more accessible option for those who are financially constrained or earlier in their career. So, while I have honestly considered quitting after each cohort, there was always a good reason to do the next cohort.

Finally, I did not invest in corporate workshops, podcasts, or newsletter guest posts as much as last year. Perhaps it’s because I now have a significant corporate client that takes up 15+ hours a month of my time, I did not want to do the business development that was needed to keep up these channels.

What Brought Me Energy and What Drained Me

What Brought Me Energy

• Each and every 1:1 coaching conversation, particularly those with people who are open, vulnerable, and thoughtful. I also enjoyed many of the intro calls!!

• Researching and writing my newsletters

• Editing my LinkedIn posts after my AI helps with a first draft. Big change from last year, when I really didn’t find energy in this part of marketing

• Group coaching conversations, podcasts, and fireside chats

What Drained Me

• Hiring and letting go of people in my business. It was a lot of work to ramp up someone and then to take over when they leave. And somehow, in many cases, I did not end up saving time or seeing a significant increase in impact

• Scheduling, calendaring, following up. I have known that logistics is not my strength, and it shows in how much I dislike playing calendar Tetris and following up on reschedules

• Following up with people for reviews for my offerings

• Trying to figure out if I’d have a well-rounded cohort for group coaching as a part of the accelerator

• Cold outreach for corporate workshops

2026 Goals

Looking forward to 2026, my vision is to keep following my energy and do more of the work I find fulfilling. Everything else will come. Here are some directions that speak to my heart:

1:1 executive coaching

• Continue to have this as the core service and focus. Maintain a list of high caliber clients and create career-changing breakthroughs with them

• Automate and professionalize more the operations: scheduling, payments, summaries, outreach

• Create a system for getting reviews and testimonials

• Bring more integral coaching philosophy and practice into regular coaching

Maven Course & Accelerator program

• Incorporate new learnings and update the course each quarter. Put more operations pieces on automation where possible (e.g. reviews, lightening lessons, etc). Aim to run 4 cohorts in 2026.

• Consider stopping the accelerator program after Jan given time limitations with my corporate client commitments.

Corporate Clients

• Continue corporate engagement with a few select companies (less than 5). These take up a significant chunk of time, so be conscious of spreading too thin.

• Continue to work with and support Asian Leadership Center

Business Development

• Do lightweight outreach for corporate workshops, particularly with past and current clients.

• Try for an ongoing cadence of podcasts and guest posts.

• Stretch goal: update my book: The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-suite as a Minority

If you have the chance, do sit down and write your own personal look back and look forward this holiday season. Do steak this framework to reflect and then set your intentions for the new year.

That’s all folks! See you in 2026!

Yue

P.S. If you’re curious, read my full 2024 Year In Review here.