This isn’t another “2025 in review” post. You won’t find charts, big announcements, and revenue numbers in this post. It’s no victory lap.
Instead, this post is about the things that actually changed for me and changed me this year. The way I think about the business, the way I make decisions, and the habits I had to unlearn while running Melapress and managing my life.
1. A mentor beats a business coach (if you find the right one)
I was never a fan of business coaches. Most of the popular ones I came across had studied business, talked a lot about business, but never actually ran one. To me, that’ always’s like getting parenting advice from someone without children.
That said, this year I had the opportunity to sit down with a number of people who have built successful businesses, and discuss problems and decisions with them. This has helped me and the business immensly, more than I expected.
So if you ever get such an opportunity, and find the right person, I’d recommend you to go ahead and make the most out of that opportunity.
2. Be less impulsive and plan more, build around campaigns
I’m an impulsive person. That impulsiveness helped me a lot, especially in the early years. I don’t overthink everything, and I act quickly. That level of execution got Melapress off the ground in the first place.
But Melapress is no longer a “two people in a garage” type of project. We’re now a team of seven, fully remote, with multiple products, and a growing user base, most of which are businesses and enterprises. At this stage, impulsiveness is not exactly the best quality one can have.
In 2025, with the help of my colleages and their feedback, especially Bram, our marketing guru, I’ve learn that everything needs to be built around a goal, target, or campaign, and not gut feeling.
Attending or sponsoring a conference is no longer about “getting exposure.” Now we ask:
- Why are we going?
- What message are we going to push?
- Who do we want to meet?
- What do we want to come back with?
The same applies to product development. A feature is no longer “because I like this idea.” The decision whether a feature should be included or not in an update is based on support tickets, feature requests, usage data, and marketing input, plus some experience and intuition, but not only that.
3. Start sharing what you know (even if you hate public speaking)
I was never a fan of public speaking. Honestly, who is? However, this year, thanks to a nudge from Maciek Palmowski, I submitted my first talk and spoke at WordCamp Gdynia. The talk went well, much better than I expected. That gave me the push I needed to do more. In just a few months I’ve given a presenation at the WordPress meetup in Nijmegen, and I am giving another one in a few weeks at the Amsterdam meetup.
As much as I still feel uncomfortable, speaking in front a room full of people, I decided to keep doing this for a few reasons:
- I like challenging myself, even though public speaking was nowhere in my list of challenges
- WordCamps and meetups helped me a lot over the years, so it’s time to give something back
- It helps Melapress: people connect better with people than with logos, emails, and websites
- I met new people and made new friends
- It’s a good excuse to get out of the home office and travel a bit. A 2-3 day trip is always very welcome.
If you’re building something and you’ve been around long enough, you do have something worth sharing. You don’t need to be the world’s best speaker to be useful. If I’ve done it, you can do it too!
4. Work on the business, not just for it
This is a classic founder problem, and I’m no exception. It is also one of those things that are way easier said than done.
I am a very hands-on person, and I need to see and do things to understand how they work. So for me, it is very easy to spend all my time solving problems, answering questions and support emails, and do all firefighting that happens in a business, rather than stepping back and thinking about where the business is going.
This year, I started letting go of some things. I did not suddenly become great at delegating, but I realized I had to. So this is another “work in progress” change. I’m learning to trust people more, delegate more, and the hardest of them all, accept that others will do things differently.
This freed up some of my time and mental space, which allowed me to look at the bigger picture and think more longer-term. This is still very much work in progress and most probably always will be. But even small improvements make a big difference over time.
5. The podcast changed me more than it changed the business
The Melapress Live Q&A podcast, which you can find and listen to on Spotify and YouTube, was an idea my colleague Bram Vergouwen pushed for. I didn’t want to do it; cameras, microphones, hearing my own voice – none of that appealed to me.
But it turned out to be a very impactful thing; what started as a marketing experiment became a personal development tool.
Through the podcast, I’m learning how to listen better, how to research better topics and ask better questions, how to articulate thoughts more clearly, and how to speak better. There’s still a long way to go, but the improvement is obvious; when I compare the first episodes to the recent ones, the difference is huge.
The podcast also allowed me to meet and connect with people in the WordPress community in a much deeper way. Those conversations are valuable far beyond the content itself.
6. Managing expectations changed everything
Even though this is the last point, it was, and still is the hardest change to work on. Without it, none of the changes above would have been possible.
I grew up with the idea that what I did was never enough. Good things weren’t praised, and bad things were taken out of proportion. The focus was always on what went wrong. Being self-critical is important. Without it, you don’t grow. I’m a sucker for self-development, improvement, and pushing my limits.
The problem wasn’t self-criticism. The problem was never acknowledging progress, and it took me 44 years to realise that.
The wrong approach
After secondary school in Malta, where I grew up, we had to sit for O-level exams. You could choose how many subjects to take, and your results determined your next step in education.
I sat for 10 exams. I got top results in the three subjects I cared about and needed to continue my studies. I passed six others with decent grades. I failed one subject, which was irrelevant at that stage.
I had everything I needed. Everything I wanted. None of that was acknowledged. Instead, the focus was entirely on the one failed subject.
The right approach
I still review my podcast episodes and interviews. I rewatch the recordings and look for things I can improve; how I ask questions, how I listen, how I should talk and explain things.
But I also acknowledge how far we’ve come. When I compare the early episodes to the recent ones, the improvement is obvious. There’s still a long way to go, but the trajectory is positive.
Tecognising that makes a big difference; the mindset is no longer “this isn’t good enough,” but “this is better than before, and I know how to make it better again.”
The end results
When you constantly feel like you’ve never done enough, you overwork yourself. Contrary to what many believe, that’s counterproductive.
Acknowledging progress creates a more positive mindset. That mindset makes it easier to focus, to improve, and to enjoy the work.
I didn’t lower my standards. I aligned expectations with reality. Since I started setting more realistic daily, weekly, and monthly goals, I’ve been more productive and happier than I’ve been in years. I’ve always loved my work and my business, but now I’m operating from a much healthier place.
Looking back at 2025, and into 2026
2025 was a big year, for both Melapress and me. Not because of one big visible achievement, but because of changes in habits, mindset, and perspective. For a while, I think I was stuck in a kind of status quo: working hard, moving forward, but without really lifting my head to see where I was going.
Many of these changes won’t show up in metrics or announcements. But they matter. If there’s one thing I’m certain of going into 2026, it’s this: the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.
And that’s a good place to be. As my Scottish mountain biking friend Pete used to say: onwards and upwards.
Pssst! Read our Melapress 2025 year review for more information about the business and our plugins, and less about me.
