Stress Management and Life Balance Tips For Entrepreneurs, Chat With Nenad Bozic

Yasi: Hello, welcome to the Fast Track podcast.

Nenad Bozic: Thanks for having me, Yasi.

Yasi: And to start with the first question, usually I have it for my guests, maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself, your background.

Nenad Bozic: Definitely. So yeah, I don’t know how far I should go, but regarding my professional career, my background is in engineering. I finished the faculty of technical science, and then I started working as a software developer. Throughout my course, my career, which was ten years before SmartCat, I joined the five companies. I worked with whereas software languages and building interesting applications, both mobile and web. And I really enjoyed it, and I really like it. What I didn’t like is the lack of understanding and of what are we doing and why.

So I think the natural next step after realizing that in neither of the companies I will get that is trying to do it on my own. Together with that, I started learning about data, power of data, forecast predictions, and analyzing data, and doing data-driven decisions, and therefore, this company of mine has had the focus of we realized what we wanted to do, to work with data.

So six years ago, I started SmartCat together with my co-founders. And we started enjoying ourselves because we had full control. We decided what we will do, how we will do it. And we decided which problems we will solve.

Yasi: And when you started SmartCat, which is your current company, did you plan it from while you were working as a full-time employee, or how did this transition happen?

Nenad Bozic: Actually, we wanted to build a new vertical in the company that we worked for. Three of us original founders work together in one service-based company here in Novi Sad. And we suggested to the owners that we want to create a data department there, but unfortunately, they didn’t invest enough time to research all the things that we need to research in order to create really a business vertical.

So we wanted to create a department there. We couldn’t, and then we were open and honest about it. We realized we want to do it alone. And if there is a mode where we can do it alone, but still work for existing clients of theirs, because a lot of clients in that previous company where worked closely with them and us like us.

So we didn’t want to create a huge disruption there. We wanted to have a phase-out phase-in approach. But that didn’t work. So we stopped working there. And three of us found intermedia jobs where we were honest that you’re building a company, but at the moment, we don’t have customers.

So we will work on marketing materials, website and sales, while working as a software developer for that company, for two companies that we were hired, I was hired in one company, my friend Matija was hired in other companies. This was like one year transition period. And then we found the first customer from the Netherlands, and we started working for them ever since. We are alone on that journey, and we are working for ourselves.

Yasi: Okay, then I’m glad that everything worked out because since I founded my company at the beginning was so difficult, really. There are so many things to do, and it feels like you don’t know which one, which path is the right path. You have to figure it out yourself along the way.

Nenad Bozic: And you’re leading the company for the first time. So you’re I mean, we found some advisers to help us on that way, two of our partners. So there were five partners, right? The three founders Bojan, Matija, and me, had smart money, like investors who advised us how to lead the company. So that really helped in first when we made our first steps.

Yasi: And did you know that you need investors, or did you know how to become an entrepreneur even before you started this? Or were you exposed to this kind of venture?

Nenad Bozic: I would say looking at it right now from this perspective, not really, but when I dig deeper into my past, there was always some kind of initiative from my side.

When I was a student, I was building websites, and I found those customers somehow, or online or to my limited network back then. Even before that, when I went on vacation with my parents when I was seven, eight years old, I was charging for looking at my masters of the universe collection.

So even back then, I had bits and pieces about the entrepreneurial experience. So, I would say I was not prepared for what it takes to lead the modern company in the IT sector in two thousand. But for sure, there were some bits and pieces of me being an entrepreneur or throughout my life.

Yasi: Right. You mentioned that because you want to find out the why of doing things, not just do the things. If you were, I would say, a senior manager in the department, you would also be able to tap into the why I think, but why did you choose to start your own company instead of heading a department?

Nenad Bozic: I mentioned at the beginning that we wanted to build a department in the company that I was working for, but unfortunately, they didn’t want to invest in building a department.

And I didn’t have an alternative here in Serbia. We opened up the first data company with a narrow focus on data science and data engineering. So this data part made a difference. Probably I can be a senior manager and understand why, but this niche of working with data was not an option, at least here in Serbia.

And I wanted to stay in Serbia for a while.

Yasi: Okay. I see. And then, during your entrepreneurial journey as a business owner, what are they, let’s say, the top biggest learnings that you wish you had known before you made these mistakes?

Nenad Bozic: Yeah, probably coping with stress is the one stress when working for others as senior manager or developer, whatever is nothing compared to the stress when you have your own company. So this is something that I wish I knew, but if I knew it back, then I wouldn’t start a company. So I am fortunate that I have learned to work with it and overcome it and become better. I did because I think it’s an improvement, self-improvement journey.

So this is the one. Trusting in people. I made a few choices, choosing partners and hiring people in this market which is not easy, and where I made mistakes. So working with people and choosing people you want to share with this entrepreneurial journey is not easy. I think those are the biggest takeaways. So, working with the people, choosing partners, and coping with stress.

Yasi: Yeah. Let’s talk about a little bit on the people part because when you’re working in the companies, right, naturally you, most of the time unless you hire for your own team, you don’t choose who will be your colleagues.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah.

Yasi: And then your own company, you can choose who will be in your team. What do you think are the challenges when you talk about finding the right people? Is it not easy to find people with the right capability, or it’s just people who don’t share the same vision? Or why do you think it’s difficult?

Nenad Bozic: I think it’s the latter. I am really detail-oriented and a perfectionist.

And in this market, I have a possibility, to choose, as you said, who I will work with, but then it becomes much harder because a lot of times I have problems with a million things regarding people who are coming between careers and who I should hire in this market. The ability to choose people actually made it much harder for our company and for me, but it worked good because we, three of us, at least at the beginning first thing that we did is written down the values and we are leading the company according to those values and pretty much those common values, which are shared, which three of us share among us. And we are communicating them out loud. So I think we managed to gather the team there, which is sharing those values together, together with us. And also, what we wrote at the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey is what we don’t want to become like a thing that SmartCat shouldn’t become over the years.

And I think it’s also good guidance because people who are here also probably left other companies because of similar reasons.

Yasi: Right. I think that’s very interesting because many people would focus on what do we want to become, right. What kind of environment do we want to create. If you also mentioned what we don’t want to become, I think it’s a great way, a new perspective to look at it.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah, I think what you want to become you can spend a couple of years, and this is a vision, but definitely there is some kind of traders you don’t want to do. And I think those are the ones that should be there on your list of what you don’t want to become.

Yasi: During our email exchange, you also wrote, one of the reasons you want to have your own company is to have freedom.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Nenad Bozic: And that was naive, a naive looking at things, but generally, yeah, having my own company gave me freedom, gave me the freedom to when I don’t feel like spending the day in office, I can just go and be in the countryside. I don’t need to send an email for approval or something like that.

I can go home at two o’clock and then work in the evening too if I have something. So I think there is the freedom to be your own boss. There is a responsibility because now you have sixty people who are looking at you to make decisions, steer direction. So freedom and responsibility always go hand in hand.

Yasi: Yeah, that’s a very good sentence.

Freedom and responsibility always go hand in hand. Earlier, you mentioned also stress because you know you have the freedom to decide what to do. But you also have to responsibility too, for other people, you know, to take action. And that all also comes with stress because bigger responsibility means more decisions to be made.

What have you experienced in the past, dealing with stress, and how do you deal with it differently?

Nenad Bozic: Yeah. Especially it’s hard for me because I have anxiety when you have multiple options. I learned over time to prioritize the biggest change when dealing with stress, and a lot of things on your back was for me, at least when I started dividing, at least the business decisions seem too urgent and important, urgent, not important, important, not urgent and four-quadrant quadrants. And then this was a game-changer for me. Without that, you have a pile of decisions you need to meet during the day, and you have limited energy. And when you divide them into these quadrants, you probably need to focus on important things.

Right. And ideally, you should have non-urgent and important things because if you have urgent and important things, you are not doing something right. So this was the biggest game-changer for me. Then I started delegating more and more. This year is, I think, all about delegating. And then now I realize that I have a capable team in this market who can take on some of the decisions from me.

So I’m trying to give them full freedom to do the decision-making and steer them in, or at least explain the vision and then let them decide on some of the important things. And I think this is an interesting transition, especially when you are a control freak, and they have, I think I have some of these skills and trade-offs, so it’s hard for me to delegate, but I know that it’s a must because I want to build a clear work-life balance.

Yasi: I find it also difficult to give people, especially employees in your team, the freedom to decide at the beginning, we need to guide them because some people, if you give them the freedom to like a blank piece of paper, just draw something, they might get confused because they don’t know what do you want. In the beginning, need a lot of handholding. So how did you manage to transition from handholding your employees to enable them to make decisions themselves but still deliver the right results on the right path?

Nenad Bozic: You need to talk a lot. I think generally sharing and explaining the vision is the most important thing.

I have this leadership team, and this leadership team is growing year by year. And I think it’s really important to have them on a month to month or week by week basis, like explain where we are going. And then, when everybody has a clear vision, what we are trying to achieve, I think having a spread of decision-making is not the problem.

I recently read no rules from Netflix, and they had a great analogy or a sentence there that you need to bend all the boundaries. But have a perfectly in the sync leadership team, perfectly in sync is probably to synchronize the vision, what we are trying to achieve, abandon all the boundaries means that everybody can, within their department and do the decision making, but we need to know where we’re heading.

Yasi: And let’s talk about also future. Now you have already learned so much from your entrepreneur journey. You have your leadership, and you get your work-life balance in place. What’s your plan for the future for yourself?

Nenad Bozic: I like building a team around me because that gives me more freedom to do something else. Whether it is spending time with my family or doing R and D, or leading some other department, but I realized it would be beneficial for me is when we are improving one vertical in the company. For example, if we are not good at marketing and we want to be better in marketing, I think I should put my focus there and be there together with some operational team and share the vision, how we want to do it.

And this operational team will start doing it until they’re good to do it alone. So in the company, I want to join various departments, which I want to build in the sort of like invent them and share the vision, what we should do within that department which will strengthen the company because we will be more widespread.

And we will have much more to offer to our customers. And I think in the end, that will give me the freedom to spend time with my family back home, which is my goal. You mentioned in our email exchange early retirement. I think I’m not built that way yet because I always need a purpose to do something outside of my family life.

But what I would like to do is to have the ability to do it when I want and enjoy life when I want. Again, have freedom in your personal life to organize time. However, you want.

Yasi: Yeah. And the way we also say early retirement is not about like literally the retirement is do nothing, it is the freedom of you decided what to do.

So instead of work, go to the office, and then you do it, retirement as art, as recreational entertainment, maybe.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah.

You asked what would be in the future. I think I learned a lot over the six years, and they had like three to five people, important people who guided me through the process and that I would like to return back to the community. This sounds so cliche, but I would like to be an advisor to someone who is starting this entrepreneurial journey, have someone who will have this energy to operationally build the company, and be there day-to-day and work and the hassle and everything. I would like to be in this position to be an advisor and share the knowledge and the experience with that person or multiple persons and maybe help them build something great.

Yasi: That’s very meaningful work. And again, you don’t need to say I retire. Right. But now you do something meaningful. You don’t even need to do it for the money. It’s, I think that’s the ultimate freedom. Yeah.

Nenad Bozic: As long. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you treat money as something that is giving you freedom, I think you’re good.

And I like to think about it both in SmartCat and outside SmartCat is a means of giving us freedom. For example, in SmartCat, we are investing a lot in learning programs knowledge, budget, technical vacations, like we are giving employees ten days to research the technology they want.

And for all of them, You need money, you need to earn money to be able to cope with the expenses while you are giving this time to employees. I think it’s similar in your private life. So definitely, you need the money in order to have freedom.

Yasi: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, so we have this Fast Track Money course, and the sense of this is to use money as a tool to pursue your dream life. So money is not the end. Money is actually a tool to have freedom, have, you know, to explore the opportunities and experiences in life. Definitely.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah. And the one more thing, I think money should be the consequence. If you’re doing what you envisioned, you will do great. Money will come.

Yasi: Yeah. And you mentioned now you have 60 employees, 60. Well, that’s quite a growth in six years. . And what are some of the milestone pinnacles in the last six years?

Nenad Bozic: Yeah. At first, we started off as a consultancy company, and then we wanted to have this small milestone, not to connect SmartCat with Matija, Nikola, and me, who were like faces of the company at the beginning, but more employees in SmartCat. And this was the first milestone, and I think we managed it. It was a hard milestone because you need to train these new hires to do an excellent job as you are doing it. Then you are motivated because it’s your company and et cetera, et cetera. Then we wanted to build the first data science team in Serbia, Europe, and do machine learning projects.

And after two or three years, we managed to grab the first data science project. We created a recommender engine for one e-commerce platform. So this was great for us because our background in engineering and building a data science team was completely different beasts. So this was a really nice milestone.

We added Mihailo, my college buddy, who went to the US, and now he’s working for Airbnb to be data science lead. And he helped us build a team. And he’s one of the shareholders, and his sole goal was to build this data science team. And now our goal with 60 people why we grew to that number, even though we started off as a consultancy shop is to have enough roles in one team to build something from zero to one, we have business analysis, then delivery management then front-end and back-end. We want to listen to the problem of a customer and then build the full solution, and we need multiple roles to do that. It’s not as we are renting two or three guys to some, and then they are doing the work. We really want to take ownership of the organization, of the work delivery, of the quality of the work. And for that, you need multiple roles within the team.

This is the milestone we are chasing right now.

Yasi: Yeah. Awesome. It’s now you’re providing a full fletched services so that you control the quality, and then you make sure that the delivery to your customers is the best quality possible.

Nenad Bozic: Yes. Yes. I believe with the tie-dye industry, the service industry is a bit broken because everybody is writing specifications of the job of people they could not hire, and they are calling IT agencies to provide this personnel. But this is like a head haunting. It should not be the job of an IT service or software engineering company. Software engineering company should create a software as a solution to the problem that customer has, and we are trying to do something differently when they ask for skillset, we ask for the problem, and then we organize the workshop to understand the problem.

And we think that we should suggest who should and how to build after because this is what we do. And we should have a better understanding and knowledge of how to do it. And business companies should have a better understanding of what business problem they want to solve.

Yasi: Correct. Adding a solution to their problem, but maybe when they approach you, they didn’t think about the delivery, the solution they think about, they already think about how they should do it.

Then they need the resources to feel in the how. But because they are business companies, they literally don’t have the full picture of the best version of the how. Right. So you have to educate them.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah. We believe that we can do it. And this means that we are losing some of the business because a lot of… I mean IT services industry is functioning this way, and everybody’s playing the game.

Those who understand what we are saying are the perfect customers of ours. And When I meet some of the founder or owner or budget holder of the company who wants to engage with us on the workshop and really solves the problem with us, especially data problems that we are good at.

Yasi: Yeah. I absolutely understand. Also, in my other business, I also face customers who don’t want to explore the why. They don’t want to find out the solutions with us. They just want, I need one video, I need one article, I need this. It’s very difficult to educate them, but some customers understand.

Do the strategy first, then the how follows naturally.

Nenad Bozic: Yeah. Yeah. Corona made it even worse, I think, because companies opened up hiring abroad, hiring remotely, and now you’re treating IT agencies as headhunting shops, which shouldn’t be the way to do it. I think we are more than that, especially because we came from consultancy backgrounds.

If you have a brain, we have hands. I usually say we are not the hands, we are also the brains.

Yasi: Yeah.

Nenad Bozic: So we come with you can learn something from us.

Yasi: I totally agree. All right. I don’t have other questions. Would you like to leave a key message to the audience?

Nenad Bozic: Maybe regarding an entrepreneur journey.

I think I never looked back, and I think I would follow this journey throughout my career, especially because I mentioned that I would like to advise some of the young people how to do it. So freedom to tailor your company as you think it should be done is great, and the freedom to mix your private and professional career is much easier, even though it doesn’t sound like that when you are an entrepreneur, especially if you have boundaries, it’s so easy to burn out, as you said, and work on weekends, work late nights, but the great thing about being an entrepreneur is the realization that you can organize yourself. You can hire help when you need to, that you can take two projects, not four. Those are all decisions that you can make. So I think this makes it interesting. And I hope I inspire someone some of your listeners to take this journey.

Yasi: Yeah. You definitely inspired me. I can relate to a lot of what you’re talking about. And if someone wants to reach out to you, would you mind share with us how people can get in touch with you?

Nenad Bozic: Definitely. I’m always available on the SmartCat email. It’s nenad.bozic@SmartCat.io. And I respond a lot on LinkedIn when it’s not the promo reach out, but meaningful reach out. So you can direct message me on LinkedIn.

Yasi: All right. Make sure all the links are in the show notes, and thank you so much for being here, Nenad.

Nenad Bozic: Thank you for having me.