Skills I'm Learning In 2026

Learning is literally my favorite thing in the world, especially these days with the speed of the world progressing at a dizzyingly fast rate. The future belongs to those who do not stop learning. So, in this video, I want to share with you guys some of the most important skills to learn in 2026, in my opinion, which of course I'm also going to be personally learning. A portion of this video is sponsored by HubSpot. Oh, by the way, I think a lot of you guys are new here, so I just wanted to give a quick little introduction of myself. Hello, my name is Tina. I am a YouTuber and entrepreneur, and in my past life, I was a data scientist at Meta. And yeah, like I said previously, I really like learning things. Welcome to this channel. All right, let's go. The first important skill to learn in 2026, in my opinion, is

personal finances and investing. Going to 2026, I think there's a lot of talks about economic changes, things about like potentially layoffs, of course, the impact of AI, and just general market instability, which for me are signals to focus on learning more about personal finances and investing to be able to capture opportunities that are going to be available and also to hedge myself in case things don't go so well. There are four things under this personal finances/investing category that I think is important to learn. Disclaimer, I'm not a financial adviser, not even like a finance expert, really just like an internet person also trying to learn things. So, please take what I say with a grain of salt. Just wanted to share in case it's useful. Okay. The first thing that I think everybody should learn is basic financial literacy. Like, it is crazy to me that the majority of people do not have basic financial literacy cuz it's just not taught in school. Like, nobody taught me about financial literacy in school either. I had to go learn it myself. stuff like budgeting, how to even set financial goals, credit, insurance, taxes, investing. Yeah, if you're also kind of fuzzy on these topics, really recommend that you learn these things. I did make a video which I'll link over here, which summarizes Khan Academyy's 20our plus financial literacy course, which I think gives you the basis. In that course, they also cover the very important concept called an emergency fund, which is the second thing that I think everybody should learn and be aware of. An emergency fund is cash that you set aside just in case something happens and you need to use that money. could be something bad that happens. Knock on wood doesn't, but you could like lose your job and you need that money, right? Or it could be something good that happens like maybe you spontaneously get married and you know you need to spend more money as well. But regardless, it is good to have that money set aside in case you need it. So, I think one of the first things that you should focus on is building up that emergency fund. Common advice is 3 to 6 months worth of money that can cover your current lifestyle. Now, those two that I just covered are kind of like the bare minimum. Moving into the third thing now that is investing. This is more about maintaining stability and building wealth. I also made an entire video where I summarized UDMI's top investing course, which I will link over here if you want to check that out. Now, specifically for 2026, I'm focused on diversifying my investments. I recently read the stat from JP Morgan that says that AI stocks now account for roughly 44% of the S& P 500 market capitalization. So, don't worry about it if you're not familiar with this, but for those of you who know a little bit more about investing, the S& P 500 represents the 500 biggest companies in the US. And a very common advice for investing is that you should invest in the S& P 500 because then you'll be very diversified, right? But in more recent years, big tech and AI stocks have really dominated S& P 500. So, you're not really as diversified anymore when you're just investing in that. So, for me personally, that's kind of what I've been following and I'm looking into diversifying more globally and across different sectors as well. And finally, I think it's pretty smart to learn about how to diversify your income streams and also create additional income streams. reason is pretty similar to before. I think there's more economic instability these days. So, having multiple income streams would hedge you against something potentially happening. Also, these days freelancing or like starting a side gig or starting your own business is a lot more doable than it used to be. So, if you are interested, now is a good time to do that. I will expand a little bit more on this topic later in the video, like how to actually go about doing this, but for now, I just want to put this on your radar. I genuinely believe that having financial literacy, getting your personal finances and your investments in chat gives you the confidence and the freedom to explore other topics and things that you're interested in such as for example AI. All right, how can I be an AI creator without mentioning learning AI, right?

But in all seriousness, I see more and more opportunities in AI. It is pretty amazing. At the beginning of 2025, I made a few predictions including the development of better base models, better multimodality like images, video, audio, increasing interest in business integrations, like how to actually integrate AI into people's businesses and also AI agents. All of these things have developed far beyond what I had expected. And in turn, they've created even more opportunities in this field. So, in this video, I'm not going to spend so much time talking about the trends going into 2026 because that is probably the topic for an entire other video. Also, I did already make a video about essential AI skills for 2026, so you can check it out over here if you're interested. But basically, there's two major takeaways that I want you to have. Number one, anybody that wants to build a software products can do so now. Like, there is no excuse anymore. You can do it without knowing how to code really fast and at lower and lower cost. And number two, more and more companies are focused on integrating AI into their daily workflows. There was a study done by McKenzie that showed that AI is only at around 1% maturity right now because there's a lot of work that goes into integrating AI solutions into existing businesses. By the way, I can personally attest to this because part of our company does B2B consulting and AI solutions and a lot of what we do is helping companies figure out how to integrate AI into their existing workflows. So yeah, I'm going to be focusing a lot in particular on these two specific areas. Whether you want to do AI freelancing, start an agency, or buy code your own software product, you can do this so easily now with so little startup cost. I'll link in the description some of the videos I've made um surrounding these different topics if you're interested in getting started and any other resources that I come across as well. A big theme of this video is about how anybody that wants to build can and should build. Now, so if you have an idea of a product that you want to build, but you're just not really sure how to start, then I really recommend you check out this free guide called Seven AI tools every founder needs in 2026 from HubSpot that lays it out step by step. This resource covers how to use AI to launch a product in just 30 days, hiring and onboarding your first employees, creating lead generation system, validating an MVP, and guidance on preparing to raise seed or series A funding. It makes the whole process feel way more doable instead of overwhelming. In addition to being really detailed and practical, I love how they also focus on real founder scenarios. My favorite one is the MVP validation example, which is a mobile app that matches users with inspiring figures to embody each day. There's a six-step process and starter prompts that you can just copy and paste to get started. Literally plugandplay. So, if you've been thinking about building but have just been putting it off, this is your sign to grab the free seven AI tools every founder needs in 2026 guide. You can get it at the link over here, also linked in description. Thank you so much HubSpot for providing free resources and for sponsoring this portion of the video. Now back to the video. Now if financial literacy and personal finances gives you the freedom to explore different options and AI empowers you to be able to do freelancing or to build the things that you want to build at very low cost and minimal resources. Then the third part of the equation is business. — You obviously didn't go to business school. Look, Templeton, the numbers just don't add up.

Learning about business is what changes the things that you're interested in from a hobby into something that makes money for you and is sustainable. Now, I'm not saying that everybody should be a business owner. I do not think that's the case at all. I'm just saying that if you do want to be a business owner, now is a great time for you to do so. And just for context, what I have is a lifestyle business, which means that it's a business that maximizes freedom doing the things I want to do and working with the people that I really enjoy working with. It is not a ventureback startup. I'm not like focused on hyper growth and like generating massive amounts of revenue or profit. So I just want to say if you're interested in not lifestyle businesses then what I'm saying here is probably not applicable for you. So don't listen to me. But if you are interested in maybe starting your own lifestyle business, I want to share with you the two biggest learnings that I've had since having my business for 5 years. The first one is that owning a business effectively cuts your taxes down by so much. Like I was so shocked to realize that when I was working at Meta, I was making a lot more money, but my take-home was actually less than when I started my own business, even though I was making way less money. Having your own business is kind of like the open secret as to how people pay much less taxes legally. — Yeah, that's uh that's my legal opinion. — The second thing is that the way that you want to approach a business and see a business is so different compared to having a full-time job. Like the way that I see a full-time job is that it's a very linear type of progression. as you increase your time and expertise in something um the amount of money and then just like the satisfaction all those things are all like pretty linear growth. You put in the effort, time and you also get the expected reward out of it. On the other hand, a business has an exponential curve. In the first few years, like in the beginning, it literally feels like you're just grinding and just running on a hamster wheel making no progress. Like that was me for really the first four years of starting this business. I struggled so much. It really wasn't until like the later half of this year where it felt like, oh my god, like I feel like I'm actually running a real business now. Like we have full-time employees. Like we have a real office. What? And we're generating enough revenue that it doesn't feel like I'm just constantly stressed all the time, which was literally what it was like for the first 4 years. So, if you are someone who's also looking to start your own business, I really hope that these two pieces of information uh will be very helpful for you. I also do have a lot of different resources that I would recommend you check out which I'll link in the description. I learned like completely self-learning cuz I come from like a STEM engineering background, right? Like I don't know anything about business. So everything I learned about business I learned by reading books, taking courses and through experience. So happy to share those resources. Now going to 2026, I am personally also going to be focusing a lot on learning more about business. For me at this point, it's more about how to operationalize better, how to scale better, how do I hire better, which I will also link a few resources below if you also are at this stage of your business. And yes, that is what I have for you guys today. These are the skills that I think are the most worth learning in 2026. Please let me know in the comments if you're learning any of these skills and also additional skills that you're learning as well. I'm really curious to see. And thank you so much for watching until the end of this video. Happy learning everybody in 2026 and I will see you guys in next video or live stream.