My 2022 - So much new and our restart

I promised myself to find time this year to share updates from it at its end. Why? I try to be active on my social media but app. only 1/5 of what we do is actually shared. The rest stays with me. I will try not to bother you with celebratory self-satisfactory words but rather share the context. Not only for you to understand my vision but also to think about where I can potentially help you :) Please pardon me in advance for writing it rather long but I really tried to be to the point, engaging, and give you a "real" perspective of where we are. I will not write anything similar until the end of 2023. So, if you want to know what has been happening around me, now is the time to focus!

WHAT HAPPENED

• We completed 5 open-enrollment programs in Prague/Europe (Business, Law, Architecture&Design, Information Technology, Sustainability), and one in Dubai (Business Law). What does it mean practically? We had around 150 students and we are slowly approaching that magical number of our alumni being from 100+ nationalities (Now, we stand at 97 :)
• and we also completed three tailor-made programs with:

1. The 美国加州大学洛杉矶分校 (UCLA) Macroeconomy
2. 上海政法学院 (SHUPL) Law, fully online
3. League of Architects Pakistan (LEAP) Architecture (CSR oriented)

• We have completed and decided to end our cooperation with Climate KIC (EIT Pioneers and Journey). After two years, I must admit that it was a big learning of how European structures operate but also an extremely painful experience because by far the biggest amount of time we invested was related to reporting and basically bureaucracy. After KIC's internal restructuring, we have decided not to continue (for now) in any way but this experience was still extremely valuable. We have worked with the most bureaucratic structure known to me. This helps us now with our work with American universities or global corporations where it is also demanding but not as much as the EU reporting :-) Plus, I have also learned a lot about sustainability and became one of its big supporters after Soňa Klepek Joná?ová talked me into this activity! Thank you! I enjoyed this and had also a wonderful team on the other side.

• SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMS Together with the French unicorn company Dataiku , we have launched a scholarship scheme helping exclusively women from Ukraine passionate about IT to learn about its practical side via our programs and then find a job either with Dataiku or other major companies. Everything sounds very simple but it required a lot of coordination with various Dataiku departments and then to also approach Ukrainian universities to find students worthy of these scholarships. And we had more than 60 amazing candidates and selected ultimately 10 students worthy of it. They came, completed our programs, and now either proceed with their careers in Ukraine or work on their reallocation to Paris! What I have learned is that we can deliver programs like these much cheaper and more efficiently than any company due to its internal processes and create a very concrete and tangible impact! I have often a high opinion about corporations but projects similar to these ones are for them often almost impossible to execute within a short time (btw: Adela Deanova , thank you for managing everything on the Dataiku side ;-)

• LEADERS VOICE I love to connect credible companies and people. Together with Etnetera Core ( Martin Pali?ka ) and also Creative Dock Group ( Petr Janousek ), we have organized 5 founders & C-level "fireside" gatherings and friendly chats about topics we care about. We will certainly continue in 2023 and keep these meetings invitation-only plus extremely selective. In this way, I can guarantee the quality rather than just doing the activity for the sake of doing it!

• OTHER ACTIVITIES AND POSITIONING We have ended our formal cooperation with Education.cz ( Tomá? Jízdny , Lucia Klimkova , and their team). Not because I would not believe in them. I still love their team, their plans, their vision, etc., we just realized that our focus is different. The very big thing for me is to also say goodbye to Xflow.cz but I handed it over to this group because their focus is more local and it just much better fits their portfolio of activities. So, in short, I would be always extremely happy to support this wonderful group of people. I learned quite a lot from them but we became independent after our try to work strategically together and will remain so. Lastly, it also meant that we have moved to Impact Hub Network (Prague) and are extremely happy there! And I am also hoping that we will come up with more synergies with this wonderful community of people (I just wish to have more time for Petr Vitek and Magdaléna Prunerová to come up with 1-2 concrete projects we can work on. We have so far worked together on 3 but it was always rather a small "help" :-). Plus, we have this year launched, relaunched, relaunched, and again relaunched our new website (#jokingly).... This is our constant biggest pain but I am just happy that I moved it from my shoulders to my team to manage it!

NEW CERTAINLY (=100 PERCENT ;-) HAPPENING 2023 ACTIVITIES

• 5x OR HIGHER REVENUE GROWTH (ECCEDU) - The absolute minimum year-to-year growth will be 5 multiple (already confirmed by now). It might (realistically) happen that we will increase revenues even by 15 times but I honestly hope that this won't happen because it will mean also too quick growth and team training might be very challenging. I would rather focus on the quality and stability (Especially considering that we never received any VC funding or banking loans and can decide freely about this). We will grow from tiny post-pandemic numbers but this is really a promising trajectory. We will certainly not replicate it in 2024 but I believe that we can at least double results even by then if we do not mess up :) btw: Even though 2022 was a decent year, we still doubled the year 2021.

• EXPO 2025 (OSAKA/JAPAN) PREPARATIONS At the end of 2022, I signed a cooperation agreement with Ondrej Soska via which I promised to take care of all activities related to education & sustainability at EXPO 2025 and also take care of companies engaged for EXPO 2025 and being from Prague/Central Bohemia. The entire EXPO team is being formed these weeks and it is therefore very preliminary to discuss concrete engagements but my key motivation is to make it better than the one in Dubai. The one which did not represent us properly and professionally at all. Whether we will make it or I am just arrogantly exaggerating "my dreams", we will see in 3 years. For now, let me just reassure you of my best intentions to do so! :)

• NEW STARTUP I have started to cook something I am extremely passionate about. I do not want to reveal yet what it is and it will remain for several months at least like this. And it might never be revealed because we might fail in the meantime. But if we do not, it will be a big one and you will see it all across the local media (and then globally). And if not, we will have at least a lot of fun :) Whatever I do, my aspirations now are always global which is why I do not speak that often to the local media. I just feel that often one post on Linkedin can do the work better than an interview with the local leading magazine or TV channel. And I do not need to pay for being covered :)

5 DIRECTIONS:

• We have been in touch with many GLOBALLY leading universities, EdTech providers, and student recruitment agencies. We had already students from 97 countries, I expect to get to 110 nationalities by the end of 2023. By the way: The recent trip to the U.S. was amazing (17 universities officially visited) and we are now having ongoing cooperation discussions with schools such as Harvard University, the University of Miami, and the University of Connecticut. Whether and if something will happen, again who knows? I will share it with you in the 2024 summary! :)

• CORPORATE PARTNERSHIP - We were invited by Velux and Red Hat to apply for their philanthropy programs to launch something aligned with our vision of authentic experience sharing by companies and impactful. Whether we will be granted the funding, nobody knows. But it is a direction I would like to take more in the future to help also students who cannot afford our programs otherwise.
• ONLINE DELIVERY Every year, we have at least 10x more applicants than students who actually join our programs. Sometimes, it is because some applicants are not good enough or weird (or just cannot make it). But by far more just cannot afford our programs. And we are still rather on the cheap side. What I want to focus more and more on will be a free-of-charge delivery that can give access to those who just cannot afford to travel halfway across the globe. To create an alternative to short meaningless motivational "TikTok" videos. How and when? Let's see. We have slowly started by making some of our lectures available free of charge online.

• HIGH SCHOOL & YOUNG PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS We have already run our first program for young professionals together with LEAP (people who are for 3-10 years in a real-life environment) and will run our first high school program in 3 months. The needs of both groups are completely different from the needs of university students. But our community of companies supporting authentic experience and know-how sharing can be also extremely helpful here. I don't want to dig into details, let me just reassure you that this is another direction I am passionate about and we already became active in it!

• NEW YORK After Dubai which is fully operational and having there around 50 companies supporting us (and having by now signed partners in every single EU country plus a few more outside of the EU), I came back to our pre-pandemic plans to open New York programs. We have already pre-confirmed the infrastructure and will now begin with confirmation of the program itself. We have already 98 registered students and we have not even started the main New York communication campaign. Whether it will be happening this year, I hope it will (finally :-)! But in principle, it does not matter. My vision is to cover over time all key career locations around the world to allow students to learn not only whatever they need and is not being provided to them by universities. But also geographically by people from the location, students are the most passionate about! It is not a short-term vision. I hope I will make it before I die.

5 FUCKUPS/FAILURES

• The most memorable one for me is from my meeting with the Dean of 美国佛罗里达国际大学 I spent 2 hours studying his profile before the meeting, including his Greek family roots. And then when small talk started, I confidently opened it by saying that I know with certainty three things about Greece. The first being that its national food "Kebab" is a great one and very popular in Prague.... Dammit!
• Never, ever.....ever again hire under time pressure and because you must. This year, I did my worst-ever hiring. And it just did not work. Of course, not necessarily only because of the other side. I might have approached onboarding better, more focused, and invested more time. But this basically did not work and we did this because we were pressured with my team by other projects and we just needed someone to the project to remove this burden from our shoulders. NEVER AGAIN! (I hope :-)
• Being an extremely quick learner and then an implementation manager is not always good. When I did the initial introductory session with our students this summer, I might have said 10 percent of things in the wrong way and missed a lot of essential ones. My team decided to do it by themselves in the next year :)
• Learn to listen! I prepare for every meeting. Quite diligently in advance. I want to know whom I am talking with, the career path, and background and want to bring every meeting to a personal level because I really care about forming meaningful relationships within the relatively short time I have for every meeting. Being prepared is great but it might blind you into pushing too quickly deeper and deeper. Especially when you are someone like me being so passionate about everything I do. When my partnership team was preparing me for my journey to the U.S. by saying, PLEASE LISTEN rather than talk. I heard them. I remembered them. I wanted to do that. Just the overall setup often stole all of my curiosity and I was again just being me and passionately pushing and pushing my vision. And it brought results somehow by really having many extremely pleasant meetings. I just feel that if Americans would not be the other side (also very passionate and open individuals) and people who cared similarly, I would probably completely mess up this visit (especially if those people would be from large U.S. corporations rather than universities).

• Make sure that the other person understands what you mean! My key problem over the years which I still don't know how to resolve. Again, coming from the fact that I do things quickly, think quickly, communicate quickly, and often also by not moving from one topic to another systematically. And the funniest reflection of this was when I spoke with Kofi (Jan, our marketing guy) and told him for our UCLA video to record students from this school and that they are waiting for him "over there". And of course, he has recorded interviews (mostly) with students coming from completely different universities and regions (At least still being our students). And we realized this when our programs were done and students who were already home in California :) What a major fuckup from me!

I am slowly getting to the very end. But I still missed the most important thing! The reason pushing me forward aside from our vision and happy students staying in touch with us and helping us as our ambassadors (thank you - btw - guys! :). That reason is my team which is SO FUN. I need to have around me people with a similar energy level and I found them in not only our team leaders - Milada Soliman Mack? , Jana Vodickova , and Jan Koflák but also in our other team members - Monika Zizkova Vodickova , Binnur Yaman , Vít Masare , Zhor Adjmi , Nikola Pa?utová , Emma ?im?isková , Beata Zapletalová (Plus many others helping us externally!). After a long time, one of them is leaving us in a few days - Zdenka Jarosova - and this has been making me sad already for a few weeks. It is almost like losing a family member (Plus an AMAZING ONE). But I understand and respect that the job offer from Sarajevo is too tempting :-P

The big learning I got from the last year is also that the mixture 1:1:1 works really well. I was in the past too much focused on the young and driven people and I learned that a combination of

1 experienced : 1 junior (2-3y of experience) : 1 PT intern

works extremely well! Before I adopted this approach, I was swamped with microtasks and I have been feeling that I am being capable of finally getting rid of at least some of them :) Especially because of those three mentioned earlier (Milada, Jana, and Kofi), who do not hesitate to send me to hell whenever I ask them for the tenth time on the same thing or overstep my responsibilities ..... :)

What more to ask for? FUN.

I can hardly explain how much FUN I am having with them these days. They are just amazing and I have been enjoying every single day! And I would like to wish this to all of you who got to the end of this article! Have FUN in 2023 and enjoy your life! That's what business should be about.

Making an impact - Delivering on your promises - Having fun - And making enough to sustain all of this!!

Also, in other words, the world is in disbalance because the basics of many businesses are still driven by greed and constant growth! I believe that if we strip ESGs of all bureaucracy, it is a GREAT concept that can actually save the world! It is now up to us how we will run the show. I have found my balance in 2022! :)