Sanja Milosavljevic: Good afternoon. My name is Sanja Milosavljević and I am going to be your host for today. What’s interesting is that we are going to speak in Serbian language, as our guest comes from Serbia, and the second special thing is that my today’s guest is Ivan Minic. So, the first man in this podcast and so far we only had women for guests. The reason why I have chosen to invite him is because I think that he has to say a lot regarding entrepreneurship, as he deals with entrepreneurship on several levels. Not just as an entrepreneur running his own companies, successfully, developing several brands, but as a person who works on promotion of entrepreneurship. I cannot say that he is theoretician because there is no book that would make it official, but for example through some projects he dealt with. So, he is working on promoting, understanding and building entrepreneurial mindset. These things make him an ideal guest. This project is supported by the US Embassy in Belgrade. I am truly hoping that you will enjoy our conversation. Ivan, hi, welcome.

Ivan Minić: Hello.

Sanja Milosavljevic:  How are you?

Ivan Minić: You asked me the hardest question. Well, I am fine – it’s a challenging time, and in challenging times people that work several things have slightly more challenges than usual. And to balance it all and stay positive, at least a bit, is not always easy, but I am really glad that you invited me, I follow your work from the beginning and participate in a way in this project. I think it’s great and that is important to empower people. As you mentioned, I was working for years to present that entrepreneurship can be an alternative to a common career path, that is more common in our country and greatly accepted in our community, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Sorry, is that an easier path?

Ivan Minić: I don`t know if that is an easier path, I think-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, you still have to work. When you work in a company or for a big corporation, you still have to work. It`s not…

Ivan Minić: There is a big difference in “working” and “getting things done”. When you are an employee, you have to work and that is usually quantified through time you have to spend in an office. In some cases, of course, there are some results and performances that are tracked and based on that some decisions are made, but in most cases, you just wait for your time to pass. If you are a responsible person, you won’t be wasting your time and you will try to spend it constructively and make something of it, but in essence, in a large system just a small portion will depend on your individual result. When you are an entrepreneur, everything depends, and that is your responsibility, maybe not operatively, but in a managerial sense, on you. Difference between “working” and “getting things done” is huge, and when people encounter that for the first time, they actually start to understand that stress we all talk about. What you have done and made an effort but grow up with the idea that that only matters… It matters to your parents, sometimes to your teacher, but in these later stages, when you realise that everything depends on your results, if there are no results of your work, then your work doesn’t count. That is, it matters and probably through time will gain some value, but in that moment, you won’t be able to pay bills. And that is sort of a pressure that is somehow huge. On the other hand, you cannot say that sky’s the limit, but there is no limit imposed by some rigid structure, which you belong to, where you are just some insignificant part. You actually have greater flexibility and if you believe that you can make something and make greater results and you have that freedom and are ready to take the responsibility, then you have greater possibilities. Everything bad that happens is your problem, everything good that happens is your merit. It’s like being a basketball or football coach, and because I couldn’t become one when I should, when I loved to become one, I have tried this, and so… one can make a mistake. It is interesting, it is important for people to have fun in their lives.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Of all of the projects you have worked on, of all the businesses you started – some are closed, some are sold, which one was the most interesting, where have you learned the most, when have you developed the most?

Ivan Minić: I have definitely developed the most while working on “Burek” project, because I started when I was 15 years old and in that period of time-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Sorry, that was 20 years ago?

Ivan Minić: That was 20, well 19 years ago. And that was especially interesting because, at that point you’re like a sponge and you can learn a lot. You understand some things better, you are maybe not old enough to understand some things. Especially, you may not be able to understand some social interactions and the general situation in society in the way you can understand it later, that is, you have not yet managed to get disappointed in people. But that was the project where I learnt the most and that capacitate me for various things in IT, that I have worked on for 20 years now. It was a project where a few of my closest friends and I learned a lot, because it was necessary for it to work and there was no way to fund it, to bring in someone external for it. So, the alternative was either it won’t work or we have to learn it, so we started to learn. But the question is how much of it can be called a professional work, as in those first five, six, seven years I learned the most. Certainly, there was a bit of that, as beside the “Burek” project I have worked some other stuff. In one point the project needed to be funded additionally as it grew and brought some expenses. But if I were to look at it as a part of my professional career, which primarily revolves between technology, marketing and entrepreneurship, without further ado, my favorite project is “Moja Firma”. Not because it was the most commercially successful project I’ve done – it wasn’t even close to that, but it was a project I wanted to do for 10 years, and for 10 years I was trying to reach the people that would have the understanding to support it in the best way, and at some point, I succeeded. We overcame some of the obstacles that stood at the beginning of that project because it is not easy to explain to people in the Marketing department of a large corporation, especially not here, that they need to do something in a way that is completely different from everything they are used to do, and that is selling directly new contracts or some additional services or anything like that, but something that will actually leave big and positive effects both on their brand and on the relationship with that particular target group that was in our focus, and those were small and home office customers who were very important to Telenor at the time, and with whom they never actually had a well-planned communication strategy because simply put, their communication was always based on offering some new services or some new products first on the market, being pioneers, offering you something new and interesting. It worked great – later through the digital services they brought the first – it worked great with individuals. But business users, although they are the core of their business, are not nearly as “cool” when it comes to offer. There is nothing that new, no one will change the cell phone every year. I mena, some percentage of them will change, but that is a small percentage. And then, a bunch of some extra things that you can offer people through digital services as individuals, because it’s a fantastic thing for them to use in their free time, it has nothing to do with the professional offer. We were given a task that corresponded quite nicely with the idea that had existed for some time, to make that kind of primarily educational portal, and then a motivational one. We met some great people and got great understanding and that project lasted for some two and a half, almost three years and I can say that it is my favorite project because I think not even before that, and the big question is whether it will happen in the future- if we will work on a project that will have such a great social impact, such a great positive social impact and which will have such far-reaching consequences. Portal, and maybe people don’t know that, is inactive for some time now. It is present online, and the content is online, but it is not updated for two and a half years now, but the reality is that we have done a great job, as the visit hasn’t dropped not for a second. There are no campaigns, no new content, no updated blog posts. Topics are still relevant, there were some changes but still, there is no better place to get informed about them. And those 100-200 thousand people a month from that target group are still getting informed there and what, for me personally, was the biggest thing – of course, on the one hand, we helped some people who deserved it, maybe we helped them. We have changed the lives of some for the better, we have educated many people, but what I think is most important is that I think we have proven that this approach of providing constant value is something that can work in the long run and I remember – I will never forget something that happened a few months after the project started. Not a couple of months, maybe a year. Telenor did some internal analysis of various projects they implemented, and at some point they invited external agency to do market analysis. It was expected from us to do that from time to time, by doing a short survey, some basic stuff. It gives you a pulse, some information, but that is not market research. Market research is done in a different way. I remember the words of the girl who presented the results, who said “You know, our impression is that you have gathered the essence of the target group on your site”, which was roughly the point. Could we have a website with 30 thousands visits per day? Definitely. But the question is, why? There was no point in having an extremely large amount of content, there was a point in the fact that every content has a reason why it is there, there is a reason why it is written that way and there is a reason why when someone asks you – and there have always been such questions – how come a person X doesn’t write about it, she knows the topic very well? I agree with that, it is fine, but that person X doesn’t know how to explain it in a manner that other people can understand it correctly, which is a common situation with accounting and law, not to talk about…

Sanja Milosavljevic: Major problem, for many… For me, portal Moja firma meant a lot, like a place to go for advice or, whatever, some templates I have downloaded when I needed them. And for my business development it had a great influence. We actually met at that time. I am very sorry that this project no longer exists because I think it was the right place to develop entrepreneurial awareness. I am not saying that it stopped developing when the portal stopped functioning, but there is definitely some damage.

Ivan Minić: Well, we don’t have centralised place.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yes, everything was in one place. Ypo could find motivational stories, some practical advice plus posts about accounting, which is a huge problem for many.

Ivan Minić: Well, our logic was to try to gather everything in one place. Can you listen and watch and read some various interesting business related content_ Yes, you can. Most of it is internationally available, translated, localised… that is cute, but the value in use is often very small. What we did was primarily focused on local stuff, and there was, in that magazine part of the portal some interesting stories, excerpts from interesting biographies Because, although- if there was one Henry Ford, there probably can’t be another one because time, space, continuum and so on have shifted. Still, there are many things that you can use for learning in that content. When we launched Pojačalo – Pojačalo was sort of… (Pojačalo is a project, followed by podcast. Word Pojačalo means Amplifier).

Sanja Milosavljevic: Continuation.

Ivan Minić: Extension – not continuation, as it was supposed to be an integral part of the Moja Firma portal. And then, the whole story stopped. It stood for a while and at one point I felt the need to do something about it and continue to communicate but not from time to time, through some columns. At that moment, podcasts didn’t exist as a mainstream format. We decided to do this believing that a very small number of people will actually listen to us, but if someone is persistent like a mule, it is not a particular problem because in time, quite enough people will gather and now, we have, say 4-5 thousands of listeners per episode. Which is roughly a visit that Moja firma had on a daily basis, with the difference that it was searchable, so people would come from Google to get what they need. And these people purposefully choose to listen to us – watch and listen. There is a motivation behind it. But yes, there were some plans to expand that story. But the point was that it should not be some basic content about entrepreneurship, because such content already exists. It was supposed to be something where you have – when you have a real problem, you can come and solve that problem for yourself there. I remember, because we had that section – it still exists – with documents where there were various templates of contracts with explanations of how people can adapt them to their needs. At one point, we realized that even though it is spreading, besides that someone comes to the site to download it or send it to someone else. And I sent to at least 300 addresses, the templates we use to colleagues who needed it. We realized at one point that our Employment Agreement was downloaded by some 40 thousand people, which means that probably at least half of it got the job thanks to us, but with some minimal help. That for the Аgreement on Бusiness and Тechnical Cooperation, which is the most basic agreement for cooperation between the two companies and is most often used, also had a huge number of 30-40 thousand downloads. Which means that we actively participated in lives of some small companies. It even happened to me a couple of times, to sign contracts with a small logo of Moja Firma in the corner, and of course I was very glad. And we were known for that. It happened very often that months, sometimes years after an interview was done, people met me and called me, to tell me about how they were doing. We met some amazing people, we heard some amazing stories, we experienced all sorts of beautiful things, and we did all that with one, I believe sublime goal, to which I think we managed to answer in the right way. My role was to gather, to manage it, but all the people who were involved in the process and all the authors who were active on the site loved the project more than any other and when it was paused and when the processes to take it over, reactivate and so on, we heard with each other regularly and they all just repeated “money is not important”, we are not interested in anything, we are only interested in being able to continue, we won’t be doing anything else, we will not work for somebody else, we want to keep doing it, and it kind of tells me knowing those people for a long time and knowing how difficult some of them are, but infinitely good, and it is a characteristic that is very common in my circle of friends, It kind of told me that it really was the right thing to do and I’m very sorry it ended the way it ended, but I think I would have been more sorry if it hadn’t happened at all.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I agree. Tell me, what is the state of entrepreneurship in Serbia? Are we on a low level of development? What is our mindset, what is our way of thinking, how do we perceive entrepreneurship? Are these some romantic ideas that we read in some magazines or watched in some movies and series, or is it really a process that lasts, can be successful, can be unsuccessful – where are we? Do we suffer from these wrong ideas what entrepreneurship is all about or are we realistic, on the right course?

Ivan Minić: I don’t think we are… I think that we are in an unhappy place. Now-

Sanja Milosavljevic: In what sense is wrong – geographically or mentaly?

Ivan Minić: No, geographically this is the perfect place.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Perfect.

Ivan Minić: What is interesting, for example, is that we are actually in a very good position in terms of infrastructure. Although we have the idea that things do not work, that the administration is very inefficient, that  it is a huge problem to register a company and all that. Mainly, it is a consequence of the fact that people know nothing. This is our main feature.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Lazy?

Ivan Minić: The fact that they don’t have the knowledge is not terrible, the fact that they think they have knowledge is a big problem and the fact that they won’t check if they are right or not is the biggest problem. So, that part of the story works flawlessly, even – I mean of course, there are places where it works even better, but in fact today you can register a company completely electronically in just two days. That works perfectly. Yes there are some small challenges you will have the first time you do this, but when an accountant who has done it at least once in your life helps you with it, it’s not a problem. But then we come to the problem that is most frequent and that’s always- you know, when I communicate, when I do projects with people I don’t like and who aren’t my favorite people in the world, then I always try to do my part of the job as efficiently as possible and throw the ball into their yard, sohow are they going do their part of the job is no longer my problem. I believe that the state transferred the ball to our yard pretty well here, so there are a number of problems there. Of course, there are some problems that the state could solve and some shifts have happened. These problems are very familiar to you, and that is that companies that have a solid market position and they can dictate the conditions, are very often the most incorrect for cooperation, they are late with payments and so on. And the conclusion is that they are in the position to act like that. But that affects people and that is the problem, but I think that not many people communicate that as their major problem. The main problem is that people don’t have adequate knowledge, first, because they don’t gain it during their formal education. My attitude is that entrepreneurship should be taught in primary, secondary school and in college. But it doesn’t have to be entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs would never be a dominant part of the society. We don’t know how to manage the cash flow, we don`t understand how basic social concepts work. I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine who is a journalist from that field – struggled for independent media and so on, she advocated for introducing media literacy. They had some initiatives, programs. And that is not a bad thing. But there is the fact that you have to go one step back, and that is the consequence. What precedes that consequence? The preceding problem is that we do not have a developed ability to think critically about anything. Our people are sharing pictures related to 5g, chemtrails and other things. And then, some seemingly educated people, give the wind in the back to some of these things. And then you realize – I realized that for the first time when I was managing Burek – what is the real society you are surrounded by and who these people are. You can analyze that after every massive event, but also what happens on social networks and what happens in the media and how one comments on a topic is usually a pretty good indicator and then you actually realize that people essentially don’t understand anything at all. It happens to me regularly, when talking to people who run business – I mean, not those who are thinking of opening a company, but have been doing business for several years – I have to explain how entrepreneurship works. If that’s something they need to think about, like, when you’re already in the VAT system and you had a much higher turnover this month, maybe you should take that into account. We had that situation regularly, well it’s not that regular, let’s say a specific set of circumstances that happened and it’s not that common, but I have that conversation like five times a year. With people that run their businesses for 20 years now, and they don`t understand those things.

Sanja Milosavljevic: How can we change that_ Like, I am not paying VAT, but I know how it functions, as I cooperate with companies that have to pay VAT.

Ivan Minić: You are a geek. There are people who are geeks, people who are engineers and that kind of people, whatever you give them they will be very good at it after a while, because they will approach it as if they are solving a problem. Like – it’s also very strange, but since I like to do it from time to time – I don’t know any engineer who doesn’t know how to cook. He listens and tries to do it in a way that somebody has already described it and defined it. Of course, he can fail, but he will choose a safe option so it doesn’t turn out to be so bad.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I have – sorry to interrupt you, I have a theory that engineers stick to the recipe. I can, if the recipe says 20g of salt, I can put 10g or 15g. But when you give an engineer a recipe, he will see, it has to be cooked for 15 minutes, so he wouldn’t cook for a minute less or minute more. They stick to recipes. They accept the recipe like, that’s it, that’s the way to succeed.

Ivan Minić: That’s right, those are the people that read the user manual on how to plug TV set. Are they going to make anything extraordinary? Well, maybe not. But, if you are making pancakes, they don`t need to be extraordinary ones, but just don’t make them to be awful. Let not make them to be awful, and we will see what will happen next. How to change that? When more people express the will to learn some things. I don`t think it should be imposed, but I think that every person should know kow their salary is generated. He/she knows what the dependent costs are, related to his/her salary, what are the challenges that the company he/she works for, faces. Most of the people are not interested in that. Whether they are going to be entrepreneurs or not, it is important to prevent things that are currently happening to almost everyone that went that way. And that is to come, gather their families and say: “I want to start something on my own! and then for the next few days listen to their parents saying: “Don’t do that.” Maybe it all go to hell, but that is also okey. First, the iron is forged while it is hot. If you have an idea that sounds so important, you should try that even if the cost is to everything goes to hell. Second, most of the people do not have the luxury to play with the money, so they will try to do it as smart as possible. Maybe they will misjudge. Maybe, that will cost them more – for me is usually more, however I judge. But you know, when you try to make a plan, the first time you do it, you make a plan, you try to make it happen, you miss a certain percentage, but you learn a lot the second time you make a plan – whether for the same or for the next business or any other attempt, you will make less mistakes. But even in that first attempt, you can miss relatively little, if you really try to take everything into account. To be able to understand and take things into consideration, you have to learn a lot, to think about many things and talk to as many people as you can. In our community-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yes, sorry to interrupt, but we don’t communicate, generally, we keep everything for ourselves. We are all afraid that someone will steal our idea…

Ivan Minić: Yes, that is terrible.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Or, other thing is that we are afraid to admit to others that we are not familiar with certain things. Like, I don’t know anything regarding accounting. I am not familiar with that.

Ivan Minić: That is why, one of my favourite sentences is “I am a stupid man.” I am a stupid but stubborn.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I thought it was another one, but okay.

Ivan Minić: Yes, there is something in there. It’s not a problem if you don’t know something. Much bigger problem is when you think you know. First, someone has to wean you off what you think you know, and only then they can teach you something. There is that situation where people highly appreciate each of their ideas. I spent ten years before I started with Moja Firma project, let’s say, somewhere before Moja Firma project … let’s say from 2008 until today, it’s 13 years, at least once a week I take an hour to talk to someone who starts a company, a small business. At first, those were the people that knew me through some mutual friends adn read my blog posts, so they turned to me. Let’s say it wasn’t every week, but it was a number of 40 people during the year, in the period of 13 years equals 500 very traumatic conversations for an introvert like me. And all sorts of things have happened. At some point people thought that I was an ideal person to turn to with an idea, and I would motivate them and everything would be great. But in most cases they will turn to me, and I would extinguish them. And for some period of time they would be sad, but at the end they would save the money they planned to spend on the idea. And it happened several times – people would come to me, we would have a coffee… Free of charge. No strings attached. There were some businesses that hired me later as a consultant, so there would be some retainers. But that first coffee was free. And they would come with NDA. So, why should I sign an NDA? Because, they would present me their idea. In that case, I would send an invoice, you can send me an NDA, and then we can talk. “What if you steal my idea? Everyday, I come up with ten ideas. It happens, very often, that people realise an idea I had seven years ago, but didn’t have time to go further with them. Some of them fail, so I feel at ease. Punchline is that, in 2020 the idea means almost nothing.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Meaning?

Ivan Minić: Realisation of that idea. It’s uniqueness is in how you realise your idea. You run a business that is by concept extremely simple. But you don’t have a lot of competition for the same reason as my friend Milos Mijic from Domaće kiflice company and that is – it is too much fuss. You know, no one wants to try that hard. I thought it is, you find some machine, press some buttons, put something and things just happen. Well, it doesn’t. The magic is in that, that nothing happens. It can happen, but it’s not the same business. So, it is similar with most of the things. If you produce a machine, a process, software that will complete some extraordinary advanced thing, it doesn’t repose in your idea. It’s lying down in your solution to that something. Everyone had an idea. The idea is to come and say, we have to make entrepreneurs` lives easier. Great. Let’s see how we can do that. You know, that’s it – an exponential equation with too many unknowns, and I’ve never been able to perfect that segment of math.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I thought you, as a robotician, had to perfect it.

Ivan Minić: Well, I was great in math up to the end of high school. I had the misfortune then, that I might not get along very well with the professor, but that was not the only thing. The thing was, until high school, it was something understandable and tangible that I could put together in my head, turn around, and reconnect. And then some terms began to be introduced that were abstract and that no one explained to us in the right way. So, that was the challenge. Of course it all went well, I finished school, but then I realized, perhaps one of the most important findings in my life and personal development is that there are people – because I thought and competed in mathematics, I even won some competitions when I was younger . Ever since, I have built some friendships, both through Archimedes and through other things that have developed throughout my life. Then I realized that there are people who intuitively understand things that I don’t understand when they are explained to me. I can force myself to learn them to the level of the fourth year of high school, even if the school was hard, like mine was. I can. That’s not a problem. But I can’t deal with it in the long run because it will require too much effort and I don’t have a problem with that – I’m a persistent guy, but I can never be that good at it. But I realized that I could be good at translating that language into the language of ordinary people. Basically, my whole career comes down to dealing with extremely complicated and difficult people who don’t understand each other and then I help them understand each other. That hurts. It is a process that – being that buffer zone between such people is extremely difficult, but it pays very well, and from time to time, creates the possibility for magic to happen.

Sanja Milosavljevic: That is nice. Well, if we can go back a bit – where do our entrepreneurs make the most mistakes? What is it, is that the lack of understanding that things have to be seen as through some processes or as a project that lasts for some time, that there must be a strategy or where do they go wrong? Where do they make mistakes? I have met many wonderful people with very high quality ideas who even, somewhere, have the capacity and potential to implement the idea nicely, but dissipate. For example, money disappears, they don’t know how to spend it, they don’t know what sucks money out of the company and then they fail, and they could really have – I don’t know … they could have successful companies.

Ivan Minić: There are many examples.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Of course, we cannot generalise that.

Ivan Minić: It cannot be generalized, but the most common symptoms can be recognized. I often like to say that working with small businesses, and working with both medium and very large companies – because primarily, part of my career connected to marketing, was basically turned towards the biggest companies and towards multinationals – there is no luck with them. You can never do anything normal and smart with them as they are very logy and big. I’m kidding, of course, it’s an exaggeration, but it’s much more rigid in every sense. It is much harder to do something, to do something that it will really have, to make some big difference because there are eight more people in the cycle who need to approve something and then someone will not like it and it won’t happen. But working with the small companies … you know I’m a hater, basically people who know me know I’m a hater, I generally say horrible things when the cameras go off. There is a very good reason why small companies stay small. When you meet them and when you meet their product and when you meet them on a superficial level you met somewhere and you tried the product, you have no idea what it is. After an hour of talking, it is perfectly clear to you the reason that is behind that. There are several reasons. There are a number of people who are just currently in that phase of development, and as time goes by, they will get where they need to be. They have a limited amount of capital and their business is growing in a healthy and organic way and everything will be okay. There are some people that doesn’t want anything bigger. It suits them to be at that level, they don’t want greater workload, they don’t want more stress, they don’t think they can manage it in the right way, they don’t believe they will get anything in all of that, they don’t want to significantly complicate their lives, they just don’t want that. And maybe, I don’t know, 15% of the people in those two groups who have that one trait, are small, and that’s ok. They are satisfied with that. Not as a long-term goal in the first case, but right now, they are okay with where they are. Then there is the much larger part of them that, when you meet them, very soon one can understand why they are at the place where they are. And most frequently that is a matter of a gap between desire, possibility and knowledge. We have some various issues that are a matter of upbringing. Where we are first taught that we must never do anything wrong, never. Which is so wrong because I did wrong everything that could do wrong in life, and look where I am today. One can make mistakes, and that is fine. Beside that, they teach us to value ourselves so much. And as a consequence – it’s not bad in itself, but it has the consequence that we always think that we are the smartest about everything and when that is true, that is great. I really love people that are the smartest and are aware of that. But they make less than 1% of the population. The rest of the population have a problem because of that. That attitude prevents them from seeing the problems that are in front of them and prevents them from solving those problems. We are not taught how to manage, to delegate, to set something up in the right way and in Serbia, it is a very common thing even with successful businesses, even with great stories and great products that the moment the mastermind who created everything – the father or the mother who have raised the business to the level when, simply for biological reasons, they have leave the company and leave it to someone else, that company completely disintegrates because the children do not want to continue, they are not ready, there is no internal organizational structure, since the company is micromanaged at the level of toilet paper procurement. . And basically no one is responsible for a single task. A person, who was a decision maker for everyone and whose genius is the reason why this product is so great, that person is no longer there and does not exist anymore and when you look at that company as an investor who would eventually buy it, it is not a company, it is a shell. You are buying a car shell. What was really valuable inside – although shells can be beautiful, I’m not saying – what was really valuable went or disappeared with that person. It is very hard to make that shift. And yet, that transition is most often the consequence of something that in our heads all the time and it says “no one can do it as well as I do”. And when you tell people: “For sure, but it doesn’t have to be done as you would do it.” The answer is: “No, it has to.” The truth is, it hasn’t. Let them finish 70% with a tendency to come to 90% in 6 months with practice, that’s totally okay. The answer is: “It is not okey.” But it is okay. Just set it up to be okay. There are certain things with which you can go a little lower with quality, then, there are things that are a matter of standard so you can’t but if you do that then you avoid the problem of a coach and that is to have a bottleneck, to have a single point of failure and have the opportunity to grow and to develop. Because, no matter how fantastic, ingenious, no matter how dedicated you are, no matter how ready you are not to sleep, you are still the ultimate resource. And if you can transfer that to 5 more people, even if they work at 50% of the capacity, that’s five out of 50, that’s 250% compared to what you can do.

Sanja Milosavljevic: And if you work a lot, then it is not even those 10% – if you do several things at the same time… 250% is better than nothing.

Ivan Minić: If growing is the goal, that is something that should be taken into consideration. People usually, in those situations think that their idea is something new, their business, that what they do is a unique snowflake, never seen before. Well, no, as 90% of all businesses function as all the other businesses in the world. There is a knowledge that should be adopted, then implemented and it’s just working. Whether you produce chocolate or furniture or whatever, it really doesn’t matter. There is a process to how it works. Yes, there are extremely complicated sophisticated products, but again we are talking about something that is a very, very small portion of products and very often, we treat our products as if they are. But they are not. Be aware of the reality. Be aware that-

Sanja Milosavljevic: What your product or service is.

Ivan Minić: You know, it’s the same with – because in our country, as a person who has various obsessive compulsive disorders and everything else, I like to strive to express myself precisely. Primarily, when I write. When I speak, I speak silly things, like today. But when I write then I can very nicely control what comes out and then I try very hard to take care of what I said exactly, because it can always be interpreted in many ways but, something is written, and this is your interpretation. I haven’t written this, this is what you have read, due to yourself. And that is the difference between easy and simple. The job of a miner is not easy but it is simple. People say: “It is not.” For sure, it is. Like a bunch of manual jobs that are necessary to do a complex thing, they are very simple. If you define them precisely, if you turn them into procedures, you can relatively easily train a person to do that part of the job. You won’t be able to train a man to make a Ferrari engine because there is 50 years of experience behind that. You can basically train a hamster in three months to make some part that needs to be processed on a CNC machine. I love hamsters and all that furry animals.

Sanja Milosavljevic: So, we don’t have much time left and I want to ask you a question that I find very important. There is a buzz regarding digitalisation in Serbia, and for me, and as you mentioned in the beginning, you go to the Company Registers web site and register a company quite easily.

Ivan Minić: Da.

Sanja Milosavljevic: No, really, like, from m-banking, e-banking, graduation, finishing some tasks, getting some documents, through E-taxes we can download, we have a Tax box, we can get some information, but where are we, when digitalization is in question, where are we as entrepreneurs? What do we need to be digitalised? Or it depends on the company? Maybe I need some software to help me issue invoices more easily? What is that? Why do we speak about digitalisation so much but we don’t explain to the people what it really means, how it can help them in everyday work.

Ivan Minić: It depends on every single company, but the core of digitalisation-

Sanja Milosavljevic: Sorry to interrupt.. Everyone is talking about digitalisation, but no one explains what it’s going to bring us, what does it really mean.

Ivan Minić: It’s like when someone offers you a product and at the same time gives you a bunch of complicated words that you don’t understand to make you look stupid and to trust him and then buy it. Digital transformation is communicated at the same level with everyone. And not so often there are the examples we get, that should give us the opportunity to associate with them, but the examples are such that we cannot associate with them. Because if someone says, “But here is Musk in Tesla’s factory, they are applying something…” So what? What does it have to do with chair production in Svrljig? (small town in Serbia) There is none. The point is that digitalization or digital transformation may make it easier for some businesses in some domains. What does it mean? It means that through digital channels and through digital communication, by digitizing some processes, some things are made easier, automated, and in any case, simplified for the business itself. How can it function? The most banal example that I think makes a drastic difference to everyone – let’s say, even though I’ve lost a lot of weight, and a lot of people who follow me know me from previous, and ask if I’m okay. I am fine, everything is fine, but I had some goals in life, so… But while I was still a man, I really loved ordering food, as I really loved to eat. And then that ordering food meant that I had to do something over the Internet – because I don’t like calling people and talking on the phone and stuff – and now for a while now I can click, and follow a little car on the map as it goes. I know where he is and when he will bring me something of mine. It’s great when you order food through delivery, but imagine how cool it can be in any other business when you can follow and plan everything related to your logistics and distribution at any time. Imagine how great it is – I mention Miloš and rolls again because they are a brilliant example for me in an industry where by all criteria there is no place for an engineer to make a big difference, and that is that they have solved all communication problems in production process where everything is made on demand, to be fresh the moment you ordered and to be delivered to you right away. Communication is the biggest problem there. How did we solve that problem earlier? Someone would write on the paper the order and then put it on a nail. The very fact that someone put the paper on a nail terrifies me, because I know myself. I know myself. I would have a mark very soon. All this can be solved today with a piece of software that you can buy or make for a few hundred euros and with two monitors or TV sets that cost 100-200 euros, and again you have flawless, instant communication between parts of production that otherwise have difficulties in communication in real time. And okay, yeah, people will keep shouting at each other. What kind of production facility is where people understand each other. But when he needs to check something, he won’t have to think about someone’s handwriting, whether they’ll hurt themselves on a nail, whether the wind will blow away a piece of paper or it won’t stick properly, whether people communicated the tasks to be done, and everything will just work. So, it is the same for every other domain. Also, let’s say, digital transformation allows some production and technological processes to be solved through some kind of automation. My educational background is in robotics, I have never done it, which, on the one hand I am sorry for, but on the other, I am not l because what I do now, I think is great. But the idea of why I wanted to do robotics is it means you don’t have to communicate with people. Because, you can’t explain yourself to people, and computers, robots in general, those things that are based on technology, do not leave that possibility of free personal  interpretation. Like, the computer did something it shouldn’t. Computer cannot do something that it shouldn’t. Computer can interpret what you said to it. If you didn`t send the right message, then it can male mistake. But if you make a procedure to always tell him what is needed, the output will always be predictable and the same. Computer cannot have a bad day. Robots cannot have a bad day. And that is something that is wonderful and it is something that can certainly help to a significant extent in various complicated, difficult, demanding, especially demanding human health production processes where now there is simply no need for a person to do it. A person can monitor the process from a room with a huge number of TV sets, but he does not have to be physically exposed to chemicals, difficult conditions or risky situations, and this also applies to the biggest processes, but also to a bunch of others. Here is one appropriate – I wouldn’t go on much about it, but an ingenious example. A few months ago, I was talking to a dear friend, Sloba Markovic, who was my guest on the Pojacalo podcast around that time, and we talked about those hundred years of the Serbian Internet that Sloba provided. And he said that, among other things, one of the projects he is working on with some kids from college as part of his engagement at UNDP is to map landfills, with the help of the European Space Agency and their satellites, their satellite cameras, equipped thermal cameras, located in the river flows. 20 years ago, someone had to go through all that physically during daylight and be maximally concentrated and spend 10 years mapping it all. In ten years, new landfills would appear. Now, someone presses a button, the thermal camera records it and you know that at the places where it is warmer than it should be, within 30 seconds you know where all the landfills are, and which of them can endanger people because they are close to the river. They can end up in the rivers with all associated consequences. It is a banal thing that technology brings today, and you can use it for various things. There are thousands of other applications where you can, based on- since it is very nice when you make decisions based on the gut feeling, but that is just very unreliable and depends a lot on your stomach. And a lot-

Sanja Milosavljevic: You mean whether you are hungry or thirsty…

Ivan Minić: When you are hungry, you are not at your best, for sure. Generally speaking, we, engineers, prefer to make decisions based on data. And these data are not always ideally accurate, but even non-ideal data are better than a plain feeling. And these days, you can test a lot of things around you very quickly and very easily. You can get some feedback, and I always tell people who want to start a business: “Let`s first see, before you build a factory, before you sell everything to build a factory, let’s see if somebody wants to buy your product, at a price you set for it.” If they will, great – go for it. All fine. But, check before you build a factory that is going to be empty, just because you like having a company. I would like to own a factory, I just have to figure out what am I going to produce, and I will build it. You know. There is one banal thing – you do something that is intended for people who speak German and live in Serbia. You need 15 seconds to see how many of them are on Facebook. Is that an ideal sample? No, it isn`t. But, if there are 50 of them, then you probably shouldn’t be doing that. If Facebook says that out of 3.5 million Facebook users in Serbia, there are 300 thousand or 20 thousand or 50 thousand, then, that may be a reason good enough to get into something like that. There is still a challenge how to reach them, how to communicate with them, whether your idea makes sense. But you can simplify and speed up some of the things, especially at the level of experimental phase, just because there is a lot of data around us, that is available to us, very often free of charge, which can help us make much better decisions, and with a much smaller error rate than was once the case.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Thank you mentioning that. Maybe a year ago, I held a lecture and paid attention to the fact that people don’t differentiate information and data. We don’t make a difference at all and we don’t know how to use that abundance of data and information that we are surrounded by. Not just that, like going on Facebook, Instagram and looking for analytics or Google analytics. But also going out in everyday life and using what you have seen and heard. How to change that? What needs to be done to explain to people what it is, primarily what the difference is, what is raw, what is processed and then what to do with it…

Ivan Minić: Now you ask me a very difficult question and that is how to make people behave less like idiots.

Sanja Milosavljevic: (laughter) No, don`t say that…

Ivan Minić: For sure, to certain extent, people will behave as idiots. No, I am joking a bit now.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Maybe, no one ever explains the difference and you don`t know certain things. You live in your ignorance and don`t understand as no one ever explained it to you. As you said, to translate what is complicated to some more simple language.

Ivan Minić: But these are things that people have translated many times to more simple language in previous years, which basically, no one reads because many people do not want to learn, they just want to be right. It is the matter of – do you want to be right or to be happy? I want to be both right and happy, and that is not possible all the time. So, how to make people do something? I still believe and that is what we have done, the best way is to show them. People should understand that a successful entrepreneur is not only those people who are successful on the basis of merit for the people, but people who are successful based on some other parameters and that an entrepreneur with three or fifty or five thousand employees, can also be successful . And through the stories that we covered in Moja Firma, and especially in Pojačalo podcast, where we do it much more intensively, and for a longer time we talk about the whole process that one should go through. I strongly believe that sharing our own mistakes and the way we overcome them, is very important. We do that, and we are not the only ones, but I think it is very important because you can see the whole thought process. Whatever you do, if it is at least complicated, you will come to some problems. What you do, once you encounter a problem is what makes the difference. I like to say – and that is one mine hater`s attitude – but there are maybe few people that will find it interesting. I think talent is a curse for most of the people with talents. Because, the consequence of talent is usually that it is very easy for you to pass the entrance barrier and the first five steps, and then when you come to something that is difficult, you stop. One without the talent, but worked very hard on something, when he is facing that step, he is like, this is nothing, we will just get on. And he will go further, as he has the right attitude. And that’s it. We think in short terms.  We don`t think in long terms, strategically, substantially. We are looking for short-term instant gratification and short-term goals and that is a consequence of growing up in a poor society. There is that Mishel`s marshmallow test that is great, nice and everything else. It is about people who are willing to make a compromise and instead of taking one marshmallow today accept the option to take two marshmallows, tomorrow. The story sounds great when told by a strange Asian with a strange haircut that holds interesting lectures. But as my colleague Galeb would say in one of the podcasts – it all falls apart when you’re hungry. That is, it all falls apart when you have 20 years of experience that tell you, you can believe that tomorrow there will be two marshmallows, but it is most likely that there won’t be none, so take it today, just in case. Such theses are interesting for thinking but not grounded in reality. What is grounded in reality is that there is no knowledge we can acquire that will be superfluous. And you don’t have to be a hoarder like me and listen to documentaries every week and learn all sorts of nonsense stuff. Sometimes it all comes in something that has sense.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I wouldn’t agree with you, but never mind.

Ivan Minić: Well fine, we like to talk and run podcasts and it is funny. You don’t have to do it in a certain way, but it doesn’t mean that you have to stop learning. No matter what topic it is. I mean, you know how much I love you.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Vice versa.

Ivan Minić: What I find to be the most ingenious about what you do – you do something that’s very old-school and you’ve spent more time perfecting yourself over the past few years and you’ve made all sorts of pretty bold steps forward and traveled, met people, gone to other cultures to improve some skills, and I don’t know many people who are 19, 20 years old who are ready to do something similar. When you are 21, you think you know everything, but in reality you know nothing. And I think we are both old-school. We are aware we know so many but we want to learn more, to be even better. That can bring only good. If you expect that thing behind every comment, at the end of every day, behind everything, that everything you have learned will bring you results starting from tomorrow- it won`t. But if you learn today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, in a year, inevitably you will know much more and be much better, even if your entrepreneurial endeavor fails, you will be incredibly interesting in the labor market, so if nothing else, it will bring you some improvement. But, knowledge collected and then tested in practice is something that has a huge value and there is a lot we can lose and we have all seen it in the last 20 years, very alive and active, but no one has yet managed to lose knowledge and it will always have value and that is the only thing that will always have value and that you just have to always work on it. Every day. The moment you stop learning, is the moment you start losing your position.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I totally agree with that. For five minutes a day, a person can spend or scroll the phone screen, following something on social networks, and in those five minutes you can really, if nothing else, catch three good sentences from a good podcast, book, blog or whatever. It is just a matter of how we are going to use those five minutes. As everyone is always complaining that they are always so busy.

Ivan Minić: There is no such thing like I don’t have time. There is just, I don`t care. And that is fine, I don’t have a problem with that. You don’t want to? So, do I need to force you, should anyone force you? But let’s use the correct words. So, both of us know that we don’t need to make an effort.

Sanja Milosavljevic: So, with this optimistic conclusion you shared with us, we will finish our conversation. I hope you have enjoyed it. I certainly have, and that is every time I speak to Ivan. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Find us by typing Mondopreneur or using #mondopreneur. Stay good, stay in good health and see you in a week.