TR:TR: Q1 2026 + TR.BIZ: 4.14.2026
Launching the Q1 Trend Report: Trend Report™, along with your early-mid-week check-in ✨
Welcome to The Trend Report: Business Edition™, a midweek look at top stories, trends, and more of what’s happening online and off by Kyle of The Trend Report™. Today, we’re talking warehouse burnings, Coachella as recession indicator, a 30 Rock entertainment assessment tool, emojis risking people’s jobs, the Millennial dream state, and more.
📰 NEWS NEWS NEWS: Introducing Trend Report: Trend Report™
Over the years, I’ve gotten notes from people about this newsletter expressing excitement — and confusion — that they now have a “trend report” to read. To this, I would have to hold their hand through the computer and go: Sweetie, this is not a trend report lol This whole project has been a cultural review, one that looks at the world through the prism of me to critique a “trend report” economy so stained by overthinking that business people and brands are arrested by “data” and “numbers,” thus reinforcing a lack of leadership from anyone. The economy of trend reports reinforce corporate spinelessness that rewards an anti-human way of seeing the world instead of living and learning for yourself.
Cut to six years later (and 20K subscribers later) and The Trend Report™ accidentally became the thing it was the Wario of: I have made my very own quarterly “trend report” entitled Trend Report: Trend Report™. But it seeks to be not the thing that I hate, thus maintaining the spirit of this newsletter: it’s 60+ pages of mapping the recent past, organizing happenings by how important they are and how popular they are, revealing that some of the least popular and unimportant things are just as necessary to understand as the most important and most popular things that we all know have value. This methodology (Trendiology? lol) will be familiar to anyone who has attended a Trend Report Live™, which I ‘ve used to comb out themes and patterns to reveal macro-themes. From there, we unpack the themes through essays while sharing considerations for the future: this is a review of the past in the present as we anticipate the future.
So…Why am I doing this? Well, to the point of six years and 20K+ subs, this newsletter needs to literally pay off more as I put a lot of time and work into making this every week whilst juggling other work to pay the bills. Thus, I needed to make a “product” to sell beyond the these dispatches to flex what I can do for clients: researching and writing, in the hopes of helping someone out there further understand — and connect with — the world. Here’s what this Q1 analysis includes —
It is a 63-page review, designed to feel like an editorial product in keeping with each week’s dispatch.
It includes three themed sections with nine total essays as a means to interpret and reinterpret current events.
Each section ends with 14 pages of considerations and questions to future-proof you, and the whole deck concludes with an additional section of talent and media items to watch.
You can download the full report for $20 here. Wait. Why is it $20?? While free previews are available, the paid report includes a free quarter of The Trend Report™’s TR.BIZ. There is a corporate option as well and, if you already have a paid subscription, I have a surprise for you under paywall.
Next Tuesday, April 21, at 5P CEST / 11A EST / 8A PST, I’ll be going on live to do a walkthrough of the methodology. For people who purchase Trend Report: Trend Report™, I’ll be hosting two “office hour” reviews next Friday, April 24, one at 3PM CEST / 9AM EST and one at 6PM CEST / 12PM EST / 9A PST. Note that this report comes via PDF and that each PDF is password locked. Why? Because this was made by little young me, without the help of AI, and I would appreciate compensation as I am not a corporation — and your forwarding this along without payment is stealing. You wouldn’t download a car, would you? If you are inclined to thieve, may I suggest you Robin Hood and rob one of these people?
Special thanks to partner in everything, Bobby Aaron Solomon, who came along with me on this journey and lead the design on this project (And is available for similar work!!), along with Christian for the media help, Cris for an early review of the project, and Clarissa for pushing me to do something like this. Woo wee: this has been a lot. Thank you for coming along on this journey, and please share as you see fit as we level up ~ together ~ Grab the full report here.
Now…back to regular programming!
