This year, I decided to publish my year review publicly for the very first time. I was inspired by František Szabó, who has been publishing his annual reviews since 2011.
2020 was a wildly turbulent year, and the paths that led to achieving my goals were ones I couldn’t have imagined back in December 2019.
Year Review: 2020 Goals
Buy a plot of land
It turned out that changing the zoning plan near our target area wasn’t straightforward, so we had to come up with an alternative solution. Instead of the plot we’re still fighting for, we bought a flat in Písek (a charming town in South Bohemia). In a few months, we’ll be moving in and finally achieving our long-term goal of leaving Prague behind. We were already spending about 4 days a week in Písek anyway.
Growing the investment portfolio
About a year and a half earlier, I started slowly preparing to secure our future family’s finances and our retirement. The first half of 2020 turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to increase some positions and pick up new stocks. I won’t tell you how much I invested, but I will share what I bought:
- On Patria: Erste, Moneta
- On Revolut: AbbVie, Apple, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Virgin Galactic, Activision Blizzard
- On Degiro: AbbVie, Apple
Although I reduced my P2P lending exposure, I still found room for new investments on Mintos — particularly in Kazakhstan, where I’ve been consistently achieving returns of around 17% per year.
I also invested in real estate through Upvest and tried out the Czech platform Bondster. On top of that, I set up an investment strategy on Portu, where I send a fixed amount every month. So overall, growing the investment portfolio — mission accomplished.
Implement financial planning and family expense analysis
Inspired by Czech entrepreneurs Víťa Války, Daniel Gamrot, and Robert Vlach, I created detailed spreadsheets to track our family spending, investments, and cash flow management. I borrowed ideas from each of them and built an ultimate spreadsheet that I update once a month using bank statements.
Here’s what it looks like (if you’re interested, I can send you the template via email):
Make the family business nanoSPACE profitable
I set this goal because I wanted to use nanoSPACE as a reference for our small marketing agency LK MEDIA. What I didn’t anticipate was that the pandemic would overnight turn nanoSPACE into a company with annual revenue well over €4 million — and that I’d have to put my SEO specialisation on hold (or rather, stop taking on new clients).
The demand for nano face masks and nano respirators caught us completely off guard at the start of the year, and we had to dive headfirst into scaling the business. You can read here about how we automated the entire e-shop, and from there it was a proper rollercoaster ride (here’s some of our media coverage).
Today, both Lucka and I work full-time at nanoSPACE, and thanks to the capital we’ve gained, we can finally push the promotion of our anti-allergy nano bedding — a product that truly deserves the spotlight.
Growing our own projects
Loudavymkrokem.cz fell behind due to the pandemic, and hitting our target of 45,000 monthly visits with travel content alone seemed unrealistic. So I made a bold move: I migrated all the marketing, finance, and personal development content from our other site, powerofdoing.blog (which is now focused exclusively on cryptocurrency).
Alongside travel, I added these content verticals:
Affiliate income from these topics fully replaced the travel revenue, and once travel bounces back, I’ll be grateful we diversified. Loudavým krokem is no longer just a travel blog — it’s evolved into a broader platform about online business and personal finance.
Establish myself publicly as an SEO specialist
Although I’ve been developing SEO strategies for several clients over the years, very few people knew about it. Before the pandemic, my plan was to go all-in on SEO — investing all my energy into further learning and growing both my own sites and clients’ sites to build a visible track record. Unfortunately, nanoSPACE’s explosive growth forced me to put that on hold. I only got as far as registering on navolnenoze.cz (a Czech freelancer platform), because I already had more work than I could handle.
Plans for 2021
Investments
In 2021, I plan to do a deep dive into the emerging field of longevity (the fight against ageing) and, if possible, make my first investments — ideally at the pre-seed stage. I’ll most likely go through one of the dedicated longevity funds.
Strategic growth of nanoSPACE
Towards the end of 2020, we started exploring international trade at nanoSPACE, and it’s showing real potential. That’s where we’ll be channelling our energy, and I’ve set a specific revenue target for 2021.
We’re still working on finalising our cash flow management processes and professional investment and cost planning. It’s a big topic that takes up a lot of my time.
We’re also planning a return to our bedding range, which took a back seat during the pandemic while we focused on protective equipment sales.
We’ve also set an annual revenue target for the company.
One personal wish of mine: to get Lucka on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She managed nanoSPACE phenomenally during a turbulent year. She still has a year and 9 months to qualify. 😉
Growing our own projects
- Loudavymkrokem.cz – get back to publishing 2 articles per month, regardless of the topic
- Powerofdoing.blog – a major update of the cryptocurrency course (complete rewrite + a new module on DeFi tokens)
- Secret online project – Lucka and I are planning to launch an online project with serious passive income potential. Since it’s still under wraps, I can’t say more — you’ll just have to wait until we go live. 😊
Personal goals
- Finish the flat and become proper South Bohemians. 😊 We’ll complete the move from Prague to our new flat in Písek and leave the big city behind. We’re planning to start a family, so having our own place is key. But first, we need to sort out:
- Bathroom, floors, walls, doors, kitchen, and bedroom.
- Do more of what I love. That means: morning yoga with incense burning, morning meditation, drinking quality teas, deep-focus computer work with headphones on, walks with the dog, and gaming together (shouldn’t be a problem — we bought WoW and an Oculus Quest 😂).
- Get a thorough health check-up and adjust my habits so we’re still around at 120. This includes: genome sequencing, microbiome analysis, and regular monitoring of key biomarkers.
- Read the books on my list. I typically read about 30 books a year, but there are a few must-reads for 2021:
- Getting to Yes
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Pre-Suasion
- To Sell Is Human
- The Intelligent Investor
- Money Thinks Small
- Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
- Man’s Search for Meaning
I’ve also made a resolution to live to 120. You can find the full list of tactics I’m using to get there in a separate article.
Year reviews from friends, colleagues, and people I follow:
- Vít Michálek
- Michal Majgot
- Petr Krauz
- Ondřej Martínek
- Mário Roženský
- Zbyněk Buřival
- Jarda Pajskr
- David Nogol
- Tomáš Zdražil
- Tým Freelo
Tips and Tricks for Your Vacation
Don’t Overpay for Flights
Search for flights on Kayak. It’s our favorite search engine because it scans the websites of all airlines and always finds the cheapest connection.
Book Your Accommodation Smartly
The best experiences we’ve had when looking for accommodation (from Alaska to Morocco) are with Booking.com, where hotels, apartments, and entire houses are usually the cheapest and most widely available.
Don’t Forget Travel Insurance
Good travel insurance will protect you against illness, accidents, theft, or flight cancellations. We’ve had a few hospital visits abroad, so we know how important it is to have proper insurance arranged.
Where we insure ourselves: SafetyWing (best for everyone) and TrueTraveller (for extra-long trips).
Why don’t we recommend any Czech insurance company? Because they have too many restrictions. They set limits on the number of days abroad, travel insurance via a credit card often requires you to pay medical expenses only with that card, and they frequently limit the number of returns to the Czech Republic.
Find the Best Experiences
Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can book guided walks, trips, skip-the-line tickets, tours, and much more. We always find some extra fun there!
