I’m reviewing my year and sharing lessons in public.
This week, I will share reviews, reflections, context, and lessons about:
Cognition Reflections
Caffeineletter Reflections
Business lessons 2025
Roach Mafia 5.0 experience
Our regular content about newsletters resumes in the first week of January.
Cognition in 2025
Cognition has potential, but it has always been on the firing line, taking bullets for me.
Despite my cute little social capital recognising me with this newsletter and making over $3000 from a list of less than 1000, I have never given Cognition the importance it deserves.
All my travel plans, new clients, hectic days, and exhaustion after sports easily replaced Cognition without a second thought.
There were weeks, even months without publishing. If I were my consultant, I’d bash myself for this lack of discipline or even worse, lack of action with a truckload of ambition. It’s the same as being purposeless. Takes you nowhere.
If I had to summarise my 2025 with Cognition, I’d say it has been a year of clarity, with a bias toward action.
Ever since I realised the power of ownership and the place it puts you compared to a service business, I have shut down all my “fun” projects and side hustles.
I continued working only with Neatprompts (challenging work, great CEO, favourite team), keeping the time off Neatprompts in my newsletters.
Now I’m a guy with a 12-week streak.
That’s normal for many. For me, it’s an insanely proud streak I wouldn’t want to break. Plus I have executed fast, failed fast, learned fast, all because I said no to perfection and did scrappy work.
That’s the mindset shift. Now we talk about tangibles.
Funnel for Growth in 2026
As a founder, I need a clear picture to understand what happens at different stages of Cognition. I need to know where my readers would come from, what their problems are, what they expect of me, how I turn Cognition into a business, how I automate growth and business, etc.
And yes, that’s a lot for my tiny brain. So I visualised it for myself.
I’ll keep this short:
Segmented the entire business into ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu. Listed what happens at each point.
ToFu: When you don’t have scale, you win with speed and volume. So I decided to be present across multiple platforms and formats. This includes Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Lead Magnets (SEO), Meta Ads, Webinars, YouTube, Reddit, and IG (not in the picture).
I have also clearly determined success metrics and what I track (in green). I have added query parameters (aka utm links) everywhere to track and capture growth data obsessively.
MoFu: It’s the newsletter. This is where I nurture readers and build relationships by solving their newsletter problems. I genuinely find happiness in helping my people build great newsletters. So I optimise my MoFu for the value to the best of my ability. I will share insights, feedback, and BTS of how I grow three newsletters here.
BoFu: This is where I make revenue. Premium community, paid subscriptions, 1-1 consultations, upsells in the community, etc. Since I don’t run a service or product business through my newsletter, it is important to have multiple revenue streams and be super good at them.
Highly recommend writing down the offer to your subscribers at each stage. Gives you clarity about the content you publish.
It all comes down to action
My biggest learning of 2025 is when you don’t have scale, you win at volume and speed. That’s my strategy for 2026.
Also, this mindset:
Think less. Act more. Fuck around and find out.
PS: I launched my YouTube channel yesterday. Now I will share more newsletter insights and BTS vlogs on my channel.
Merry Christmas.
Love,
Vikra.