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I have many mini-thoughts that I might never publish as full-fledged issues in Cognition, and I don’t want to restrict this content only to the community and sometimes social media.

So today, I have decided to brain dump my opinions on multiple topics, hopping from one to another. This ranges from freelancing to products to systems to mindsets to content.

Ready for the 🎢 ride?

I disagree with Shreya Pattar!

I love Shreya. She is one of the earliest creators I learned freelancing from and a few of my fundamentals are still based on Shreya’s teachings - like charging in advance.

Irrespective of how much I adore her success as a creator and freelancer, I disagree sometimes. Most of the time, I don’t even talk about it, but I feel I should voice my opinion on this reel as I have a totally different opinion on team building.

I would like to believe Shreya’s processes are working for her, considering she’s running a good agency, but the 30-second reel lacks the nuanced difference between wanting to be an entrepreneur and being entrepreneurial.

Aspiring entrepreneurs are not a dealbreaker for me. In fact, I look for people who are entrepreneurial in nature. They add far bigger value than folks who see their job as a time substitute for money.

Many of my friends work as employees in startups and major corporations but are entrepreneurial in nature.

Why do I want to work with entrepreneurial folks?

• They’re always curious and go out of their way to learn new things. Their learnings are beyond what’s required for the role - and it will reflect in their work

• Employees will eventually leave the company irrespective of whether they want to be entrepreneurs or not if they get a better opportunity—which is why it is necessary to have offboarding systems like you have for onboarding. Something as simple as a notice period works

• It’s almost impossible to find the best talent who is not entrepreneurial. This is because curiosity, ambition, and entrepreneurialism go hand in hand. I don’t see a Venn diagram with an intersection of the first two without having the builder mindset.

But that’s my opinion.

What works for me works for me.
What works for Shreya works for her.

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“Oh brand, My brand, Do you have leverage?”—The most important factor before committing to client targets!

I had to terminate a client’s project (my first termination after working with 40+ brands in 3 years) because of unrealistic expectations.

I was growing their newsletter from scratch. They wanted to hit 5000 subscribers in three months - which is okay, but when I looked at leverage, they had none:

• They are not experts in the field

• They didn’t have a community

• They didn’t have social media distribution

• They had a budget for ads, but not enough to hit the target

My point is: most brands set huge targets without LEVERAGE.

I admire their aspirations, but you must consider what differentiates you from the rest. Assuming only content will take you places will result in disappointment—it’s one of the primary reasons why client-writer relationships fail or writers get fired.

I proposed a target of 1000 subscribers in 3 months and said okay when my client mentioned 5000. I should have said, “No. That’s not possible with your current leverage.”

Lesson here? Consider your leverage and then set a practical target. Little craziness is good, but impracticalness isn’t.

The Fancy Procrastination we both do daily without even realizing it

Mental Masturbation is one of my favourite concepts for educating yourself about why we procrastinate. While all other procrastination is clearly visible, mental masturbation tricks you into believing you’re being productive when you are not.

Mental Masturbation means you consume content about the tasks you want to accomplish instead of actually working on them (even though you have more than enough information to get started.)

This is how it looks:

Task: “I should write community-only content to help members with writing, freelancing, and content creation.”

Mental Masturbation: “Let me watch this podcast on creating community-only content.”

A thesis on Content and Growth we realize too late as Creators (let me save you some time)

Primary content’s job is to retain and convert the audience into a higher-level audience (say, paid ones.)

But we mistake the primary content’s job for getting us more audience—and that’s a huge pitfall.

We need to build funnels and systems to get new subscribers/followers while your premium content retains this new audience and converts them in the future.

If I can give you my example,

Hence the three questions you need to ask yourself:

• What are you doing to build an audience?

• What are you doing to own and retain the audience?

• How are you going to build a business around it?

What am I doing in content?

Every now and then, I like to update you about what’s happening with me as a creator. This is one of those days.

• You might have observed the increased frequency with Cognition. It’s because we have sponsors now (pat on the back), and we can’t afford to sleep on publishing. I am happy things got a little systematic and I get to share value with you often.

• Although sponsors for my personal newsletter are less frequent than Cognition, I still decided to publish Vikra’s Café regularly. If you are not aware of Vikra’s Café, this is where I write my philosophies, travel stories, and opinions on all topics except work. Check this out - You will love this.

• Dopeletters’ second batch starts in a week. I am excited to work with a new set of creators and help them grow their newsletter to their first 500 subscribers. We still have some slots left if you plan to build your newsletter. Fill out the form; we will reach out to you.

• Cognition Insiders has made decent progress. We are hosting an online event tomorrow; excited yay! We had a fun movie night in April, and this month, we planned a productive session. The Discord community is free and open to all. If you want to join, this form will guide you.

• Social Media keeps happening, but we will take a systematic route of reading data and creating batch content. I have created systems for everything I do in content, implementing them one after the other.

• Speaking of implementation, we have shipped Vickypedia yesterday. It’s a Notion database of all the top-notch content I consume - be it books, podcasts, movies, documentaries, shows, etc. It’s a part of Cognition’s referral program, where you need to refer the newsletter to three of your friends to get access to the newsletter. You can find your referral link here:

That’s all I have for today’s issue!

I will see you soon - probably with a brand’s breakdown. If you want me to dissect any brand’s copy, do let me know by replying to this email.

Love,
Vikra.