2025 – a year of transformation

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2025 played a pivotal role in my life. It has truly been a year of transformation that saw changes take place in my work, also health (to the better) and in general – life focus.

The big obvious change in March was of course my transition from a CEO role at UpCloud to a board member role and in general a new opportunity go after my entrepreneurial ambitions. I was both aware and supportive of the CEO change, after having led the company for 12 years or so. After the change took place, it was quite a mental challenge to acclimatise to my new life; suddenly all the calls stopped, you only represent yourself and no meetings to be taken or talks to be had. I did not crave any of the work for my own good or ego, but it was a big change to me that had been the greater focus of my life for the past 12 years.

Such a change can take many forms, but for me it was only positive. I was able to go back to putting in more effort on myself and the family. This in turn has helped me be more present, enjoy more time with my boys and wife. We’ve played many hours of Minecraft online together, building great structures and enjoying epic adventures down caves in search of diamonds and other rare artifacts. I don’t think there is a year that I’ve had so many lunches together with my wife – only positives.

One big dread I’ve had for several years now is the neglect on my personal health and wellbeing as I’ve always prioritised work if it needed to be done. This meant a steady, yet somewhat controlled, increase in weight and deterioration of general fitness. Since spring, I’ve spent more time doing functional workouts, long bike rides and casual walks. For several years now, I’ve put a lot of focus on my sleep and I think it has been a key element that has kept me going this long. With the increased levels of activity, I’ve noticed my HRV (heart rate variability) increase steadily and I feel more healthy, even though I haven’t been able to lose that much weight yet. Consistency in changing habits is the key though and I don’t therefore stress about it too much.

While I’ve had about 9 months to focus on my health more progressively, I can honestly say that it has taken almost the full 9 months to arrive in a place where I feel like I have the energy to begin truly enjoying sports and other activities, without the guilt of having to do it – as a chore. Being active has become something to enjoy and rejoice. In hindsight, it is easy to say how far I had pushed myself out of the sensible healthy boundaries – a definite learning opportunity for the better.

The best part of summer this year was the ability to enjoy it in an unhurried manner. No need to maximise the summer holidays as I was able to have them without limitations. This felt incredibly energizing and properly helped recover my energy levels. Taking our camping van to northern Norway with the family for 2 weeks was incredible. We’re already planning a new trip to southern Norway this summer for another visit. We also spent two weeks flying in the Baltics and Nordics with our DA40NG. Having the ability to leverage my Instrument Rating also played a key role in being able to fly to places like Sylt, where we would have been stuck due to low clouds had I not had my rating.

On the work front, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on trading and studying charts, so to say. As I wrote in September of this year, I’ve began taking more professional steps to trading and it has truly become a source of enjoyment, but also income. While the year isn’t fully closed yet (as I trade the US markets, they are still open today), my performance stands at around 93% for this year. Since August, my profit factor is 2.2 and 67% of the trades I took were profitable. I intend to improve these metrics going into 2026, even though I’m very happy with the performance thus far.

In 2026, I plan to continue trading and investing into attractive startups. Additionally, I plan to spend more time working out and getting fitter. Finally, I feel like there is still more ambition left outside the work and fitness games in life to pursue some general benefit to the society. One of these is working with Savonlinna City and other entrepreneurs there to help build a more pro-entreprenurial culture into the city. I want upcoming entrepreneurs to have examples to look up to, something that I didn’t really have when I ventured into my business studies in university.

I will leave you with a few books I enjoyed reading this year:

I wish you a great 2026 – make the most of it!