Welcome to the The VICI Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who have battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. What is up? Thank you for joining us today as we explore our latest purpose-driven journey, The Business Detox, where we look at stripping away operational complexity through the just smart methodology and AI agents to reclaim time, family, faith, and high-level financial growth. Most entrepreneurs think they need to do more to scale. Today's guest argues that the secret to growth is actually doing less, but doing it with the power of AI and absolute clarity. Andrea Mladin holds a Masters in Science in Investment Management with over 20 years of experience. She's also a mentor at the Founder Institute and the visionary behind the Just Start methodology. She's navigated the travel tech world with Pet Travel Advisor and now helps founders detox their operations. Andrea and I connected through Dan Martell's elite mastermind. She's a powerhouse of strategic clarity and sees exactly where founders fail, in the noise of complexity. Her business detox philosophy and AI-driven workflow strategies are the perfect antidote to the burnout often discussed on the Vici Code. We are exploring minimalist systems. We're diving into how AI isn't just a buzzword, but a tool to reclaim the human element of your business. We'll filter her 20 plus years of innovation experience through the Vici pillars, faith, family, fitness, and finance. Andrea, I'm so happy we can make this happen. It's the Vici way. Absolutely. Well, let's jump right in. I want to get into the breakthrough as we always do in the Vici Code. Let's go from investment to innovation. You have a deep background in investment management and complex project management. What was the specific pivot point where you realized the most startups fail because they lack capital, not because they lack capital, but because they lack a business detox, getting rid of the clutter that stalls execution? Well, this is a complex question. I will start from the finance, which is actually my background. And I was always good with math. So I started, logic was always on my side. So I love the numbers and I have a master in investment management. And that actually helped me a lot. The very beginning, I started with projects, business plans and similar activities. And then I switched just doing personally, doing my accountancy and then business plans for my startups and innovations and everything. And it is very, very important to handle like, you know, Uh, but I must confess that, um, somewhere in the middle, I realized that is not my passion. I do that because you need to do that. And, uh, I love that I have an understanding of it, but, uh, that is not my, my, my main passion. It's more creative side. How do you, if I, if I forgot some parts, so help And I, so, so you, you went through that, that phase of your, of, of your career. Right. But then you, you, you made a pivot, right. You know, when was that moment where you realized most startups don't fail because they lack capital, but because they Well, the business detox is, uh, the assessment, uh, which I do to help entrepreneurs and innovators, startup founders, but also business founders to find that bottleneck. and help them to, especially today with AI, we can build one person businesses and companies much easier, but people resist to not even to ask help from their team or friends. They also hesitate to learn or ask help from or many other tools that we have now to use. And yeah, I'm there to connect, to help that few steps to make and to understand how much that can improve their life and business Absolutely. You know, I, I, I, we use chat GPT, we use Claude, we use Manus, we've got internal, uh, AI, uh, assistants at our, so, so, you know, you're preaching to the choir. I hear you. That's it's, it's, you know, there, there, I think some people get a little scared of AI. Um, There, there, there, there are these instances where it's very helpful. Um, and it's out of our control what happens in the future. Right. But right now, you know, it's, it's a really good, it just makes everyone's life a lot better. Um, can you tell us, uh, how your experience with pet travel advisor taught you about the reality of execution challenges versus theoretical strategy? Well, Pet Travel Advisor, I'm not a typical startup founder. I did not founded the startup to find investment. Of course, that is a good thing to have. But I used the Pet Travel Advisor first to build something that is useful for me. And then it will be useful, of course, for the target market that represents similar people like me who's traveling with usually with small pets because Bigger pets and dogs are mostly for traveling with your car and inside your country. And when it comes to smaller pets, it became a trend. There are over 200 million people traveling with their pet and not knowing the regulations, what you need to prepare from the documents, from medical health records and everything that makes inconvenience, especially on the global level. So as I was traveling a lot and I got Mila, she's nine years old now. She traveled with me in over 25 countries. And I did not want to, I still leave her with my parents sometimes, but I don't want to have a dog and then leave her all the time with other people because they would have their pet if they want to. And on the other side, she's very well socialized and I learned her how to behave when we travel, when we are in some place, hotel or restaurant, so she's not barking and she's not a mess. I love it, and the Pet Travel Advisor is an innovative way to help other pet parents to find locations, like a matchmaker, to find locations that fit their pet, meaning the weight limits, the expectations that comes to, also you have equipment provided sometimes, and there are some fees, which you maybe don't want to pay or any other limits like you go on the beach resort and then you can't take your dog to the beach which is not really nice because you did not bring your dog to the beach resort to leave it in the room. So these things became very obvious when I was traveling so I decided to build an app that will clearly communicate the PEC policy rules. And my ambition, my general ambition is to level up that standard on the global level. But currently, we created rules with UNDP, United Nations Development Program. So that is where I went with the business side. And we onboarded around 1000 B2B like businesses which are pet friendly and We have groups, community, but still B2C is all free base. So now I just opened my last month, my LLC company in, it's, oh my God, I forgot this moment, the name of, come No, no, no. The name of the, the, um, you will cut this, but the name of the, the state. Oh, New York, Delaware, not Delaware, but the Yeah. Okay. Sorry. No, I wanted to, to fastly say, and I forgot. No worries. Uh, So that's it regarding the innovative part of my career. It started actually with connections in science and technology park through my projects and everything that I did in the first 10 years of my career, which was. like somewhere in the middle. I met a lot of people and like Dan loves to say your network is your network and that is really really something that that I feel on a daily base and I really care about people and and I really try to make that network valuable both sides. And I connected with Science and Technology Park here in Serbia and I started the podcast for in the studio for mentors and investors also from the other side for startups that are like from this region and started promoting innovations and helping people with some advices and and again networking three years ago. And through all that, what I did is learning and implementing knowledge and everything that I learned on my startup. So this is why I told you my startup is not a typical one. I want to bootstrap. I want to succeed because that is needed. not just because I got money and I think it's much easier when you build something that is good than everybody wants to invest in it and yeah I actually I'm challenging myself because a lot of innovations today are connected with health and ecological things and nice to have things are not easy to to fundraise for it's this is a nice to have but again connected with very very popular like emotional and also it's trendy. It's, uh, the, the travel after pandemic, the, the travel industry and the personalized travel industry grow a lot. And this is part of So you, so you work with a lot of companies. What's the most common bottleneck Well, the biggest bottlenecks are communication, administration, and content. While content is mostly, I believe, still connected with some creativity, and you can't just give it to AI and systems. You can combine it. But communication is something that people struggle with. I can say from my, I have really, really hard time to answer on the phone, have long conversations. We lost patient in a lot of things and communication is one of it. And yeah, administration also. I would say those two things are where Yeah. Communication comes up all the time on this show. Um, and here it comes up again. Um, it's just so important because a lot of people are talented out there. They can do the things right. But when you start growing your business, communication just becomes so much more important as things become a faster pace and more complex. Um, so let's start, let's, uh, let's start about the just start methodology. You developed the just start and go pro frameworks in a world obsessed with five-year plans. Why is minimal systems the I created, uh, those two methodologies. Just start is, um, based on the five models to, to grow your startup, actually to build your startup. and it's a scan so start so scan and research it talks about the importance of researching is the solution needed and do you really have a market so from there you really start Then you have a think and plan. You need to build plans, business plans that we mentioned. It's very important that you structure your business idea and start thinking about fundraising also. Then assemble and organize is all about, and this is applicable on every business, but I'm just telling you it started from the start methodology. So assemble and organize means it's very important to organize your team, to build up your team. How you actually, your leadership skills are very important. at some point and a lot of startups for example they don't really think on about that they find a co-founder and at the end it comes like a co-founder is like your partner your life partner you feel like like your wife or husband so it's very very important who you choose to work with and that module is all about that. The system is the fourth one and it's very important to create systems like you know and now AI is helping in that and the last module is about promoting, tell, promote, so the marketing part of every product and when it comes to the other uh that you mentioned gopro it's uh more about frameworks that helps and i must confess that i learned a lot on elite and i really built that program uh with a lot of confidence now because i do team buildings and i really help people to to actually What is important when you want to coach somebody, I really believe that mentor somebody, you need to have your mentor. So all my life, I'm always in some programs, but it's so important that I always have people that are better from, so I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I'm always searching for communities, for mentors that will like push me to be better, to learn, give give me some some new perspective. So yeah, GoPro is a great program because I just detect what to work on and we create programs. So it's not like you have a program and that's it. You can take it as a team, you can take it as a group. I do that with Science and Technology Park. So they have their startups and then they create workshops and we do, we upgrade parts of their system, their team or their startup. the Can we go back to the just start piece? I thought it was really important you mentioned research and market research has got to be the most overlooked part and probably I think most people find it boring and I think that's why or they just don't know any better but this kind of ties back to pet travel advisor too, right? Like out of, out of necessity, you created something out of a personal pain, you created something and you did the market research. And I just think it's so important that, you know, and maybe some of our listeners now who are, who are thinking about starting that business or who have started a business and didn't really do the market research, they may be starting to realize the pain of that, but that's gotta be, Step one, you got to do the research, do the boring stuff, do the reading, look into it. Cause you could save yourself a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of pain. Um, if you do the research, cause it may, the research may come back and say, not a good plan. The margins aren't there. Um, or there's just not as much of a need as far as volume for that idea. So I think that's really important. How can a leader know if they are adding complexity instead Well, a lot of founders make that mistake. And I must confess, I did also partly because when you are a startup founder, you and not so much experience, you start building everything at once. So it's very hard to stop And do that minimum, like the MVP. There is a reason why we call MVP minimum valuable product. From one side, because that is a way you don't spend too much money and time to build something, to test it. and the other reason is we don't ask good questions because the mom test is very famous book and it is all about how you talk to your markets so how you research your market you don't ask would you use this you ask When you have that problem, which you want to solve, how do you approach it? How do you solve it? So you see the answers from that, and then you build a solution that will fit for the most of them. You don't just, and especially to your friends, when you use this app, they will say, of course, yeah, why not? but they won't pay probably and that is not the feedback you need at the start. So that is, I must say, as a startup mentor and somebody that really, really go on a lot of startup events. I speak, I am also opening some pitching sessions and I do have a chance to see startups also while pitching because you can feel after sometimes you can especially feel where did they really take time to to work on and what is something that they think oh okay I will just make a nice presentation two slides and explain it but you feel there is no background so the research is mostly the problem because uh the the you want to do that as soon as possible. You want to launch your product. And at the end, you, uh, days, two years in launching something that you, that the market doesn't really need or they can use it, but they won't pay. So if they don't pay, you don't have a business, you have a hobby and nobody wants a hobby. So it's, it's a very expensive hobby to So I agree. Um, and I think it's important you pointed out, and this is for our listeners again, you know, and this is tough cause like, There's conflicting, um, ideas on this whole area, which is like early on, like, you know, people want to support you. They'll say nice things. They don't want to tell you the truth, or they may not know enough about the truth, but then, you know, there's people that, you know, will say not nice things. They'll, they'll doubt you. Um, so with that, that, doing the market research is really the equalizer there, right? Like it doesn't matter if people are saying good things or bad things. Um, it's, it's nice to have encouragement. It's nice to prove the people wrong that you can do it, but ultimately it really comes down to the nitty gritty business, you know, market research to see is, is your product or service actually something, uh, Um, that's wanted and have you found the right markets, uh, to, to advertise or promote it to. Um, so I thought that was a really interesting moment, uh, that you mentioned. Um, but I want to shift over to, um, Another question here, as an investment manager, you see the finance pillar through a very analytical lens. How does automating the busy work with AI directly impact the bottom line and the valuation of You are making so complex questions. I wanted to... just uh reflect on the the previous uh question and conversation uh yes it is not easy to hear uh like doubting and like the feedback which is not so positive but i never learned from people telling me, wow, this is very good. I usually learn from those, when they doubt me, when they challenge me, they say I won't, or maybe they say something that will help me to understand something that I maybe don't see. And it is very valuable. And when it comes to Investing, there are different approaches. So every startup, or the most of it, one of the goals is to go pitch and gain some funds. So there are VC funds, there are angel investors, there are several ways you can get grants, which is the best at the very beginning. So But it's very, very complex and it became even more because there are a lot of startups. A few years ago, it was much easier to get money, like to invest, to get investments. So to try. Now you really need to prove some, some, uh, you need to have some traction and those things are very important. And me as an investment manager, I totally understand that. And my, one of my, um, like challenges when I pitch. It's very hard for me to talk about maybe things and just imaginative stuff. I just always stick to the true and to something that I really, really can promise or stand behind. So that is not a typical startup because typical startups go on and they tell stories about dreams and they are not really realistic sometimes and a lot of times. And that is the reason why they say every nine intense startups, nine will fail, one will succeed. And investors knows that. So when they invest, they always look that way. So they always count that they won't succeed on every investment, but they need to have a balance. So it's, it's a whole big topic. I hope I will become an investor soon. And then I will have that other side also. But also you have in VC funds, you have representatives sometimes, which if they don't understand or don't resonate with your startup, it doesn't matter. Are you very good? Are you convincing? uh it they won't invest so in my close environment and startups which I mentored it's usually angel investors are like was better uh better way to to upgrade their business but we have a lot of VC funds here in So, yeah. And I travel a lot. I also. I'm an ambassador, a startup ecosystem builder, so I actually connect a lot with other investors, VC funds, and then I have a chance also through my programs to connect them. So I made a few really good connections and I think it is also important because pitching became like a show and not really big number of deals are happening on the typical pitching session, So what's the smartest, what is the smartest tech investment a founder can make right Well, I will probably say something with AI. Right. Anything specific come to mind? Well, nothing specific, but I'm going to visit next week the, they call it the Olympics of technology, the NBC in Barcelona. And I hope I will get some bigger insight on this question you have. I would not love to say, I don't have specific thoughts around that, but I believe it is very important to build your company with people who use AI, who know to use AI, and all around it so not necessarily that you produce products with AI but you need to know how to use them and of course products that are in service for everybody are probably the most important ones and those that that solves probably the bottlenecks we mentioned the communication, the administration that is always on the highest level of demand because that is something that there is a mess of people that want to use it and again there are a lot of competitors then so it depends how do you what is your approach to the the market do you want to find some market niche some small part and be unique or you want to do something that is neat because there is no bad or good choice. There are both sides. Here, it's not proven that your solution is needed in the niche. So maybe you open and if you open something that is really, really needed and you find it out first, you will have money. But in case of searching it it can take time and then until you find the niche probably you are not the only one so a lot of them decide to choose the market which is proven and go fight with other competitors but the world is Yeah, a lot of opportunity out there. So I want to shift over to like some more personal things, family, fitness. Um, and you know, you spend a lot of time mentoring at places like see up and founder Institute. When you look at the family and fitness pillars, how has your own business detox allowed Well, the personal life for me was something that is struggling because of me traveling a lot. It's not easy to balance, I must say. I do buy back my time a lot in the last five months. I think I did more than last five years. I invested lot in myself because I think this is the first big investment you need to do and then create a team and then create systems that's the ladder but yeah the family is some something that it's very very important For me, not necessarily to see every day. I don't have my kids, so still not on that level. I'm talking about my parents and the family. So I think the strength to be brave and to decide, because I do risk a lot and I do challenge myself a lot, it helps me for that. So for me, it's much more important than seeing each other a lot of times to have connection and to have honest and great like relationship between understanding and A hundred percent. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, in that we talk about our core purpose, how does, how does your faith in core purpose influence the way you Wow. This is a good question. Uh, I think more important than which startup is which founder for me, because if I have the same values and can understand better the founder then I can help with startup also because then it is we will resonate so for me the people side like the human part of of the relationship is very important when we talk about one-on-one when we talk about the group then it's a different approach so I can help always with group sessions but yes I also never worked for so I'm an entrepreneur since I actually my first company I founded when I was in the second grade of my faculty so I was never working some for somebody else but I was like cooperating with a lot of companies big companies because I was creating events and one of the reasons why I decided and never had a vision to work for somebody is that for me it's very important to to have some values and to stand for it and finance was never my first motivation to to and it was never my my first engine lot of more things need to be agreed before I will decide to work and give my time and then the earning will come but I really think it's very important who you work with And this was, I hope, the answer also about the startups. I love that if that is solving something that I need in the startup, that is cool, but it's not the Yeah. Yeah. I mean, time is our, is the most limited resource. So you want to help as many people as you can. So you gotta be very selective with, um, who you're helping you. Do Yeah, I hosted a podcast live in the studio of Science and Technology Park, and recently I started an online podcast because, like I said, I travel a lot. like every month now i'm going to heading tomorrow to barcelona also and i met a lot of people international investors partners and and startups and i want to be able to to also communicate with them and make making it like online and on English because this was on on Serbian language so that was like something that we needed and I was waiting like over one year to to continue with my podcast and I just started so yeah we recorded a few episodes but I still did not launched it and yeah the goal is connected with business detox but also with my methodologies, my initials are AM and what I'm trying to do with my gas is to to where I am, so I'm trying to play with the world, so I'm trying to find the position of the current moment and then we see how you came here, what's your experiences, what's your background and what is your vision that uh you so what tools and experiences uh you can share with people that will help them to come where you are if they like it so yeah we all have some uh some unique position that we sometimes and yeah a lot of times we don't see it but when you give a chance to somebody that to talk and they see it from the side it's like wow really One of the things that is interesting I can share with you is, because I'm going to talk about that in my keynote speech in Barcelona, that I survived a major car accident. two weeks in coma, and the doctor said, they gave me 1% chance to survive, and I did, like you see, and it was like one in a million. They told me later that one in a million survived that type of, that big brain injury. So yeah, I was in the wheelchair two months, I lost everything, like my car exploded. A guy who was driving behind me, he took me out from the car seconds before that, so we both could have died. And yeah, he's my guardian angel for life. He got the order for bravery and well-deserved. And yeah, and so I survived it. And what I learned is the. The world did not stop, but my life and my business stopped. And what I learned from that is that if you have a business. Uh, that stops when you are not here, then you don't really really have a leadership than you. And this is where I really, really, find important to work on and I think I am on a good path. So with all the tools and learnings that I do around it, I scaled a lot in a way that means for me. So I'm not comparing what is success for you or for somebody else, but somehow I sit down and explain to myself what means happiness, what means fulfillment, what means success in a business way for me and I'm running to to achieve that it's very important for me and now I'm I'm working more on my personal brand like we a lot of us is actually aware of the importance to to build your brand because then you can change I have can have a startup tomorrow I can run some other project or company but the most important is to to work on yourself so I'm sharing that in in also in Barcelona and it's it is I think the most important part that we don't understand is that we need to make some clarity in our head that is the first step and you know the I love that methodology of Dan Martell, when you write down 10 to 12 goals, and then pick one, which if you achieve will have the biggest influence on the rest of it. And 12 months you commit that you will do. but you break it on daily and weekly actions and you commit that you will do that 12 months. And there's no chance that you will not succeed. So those things are forgotten because we are always in the rush. And we all know that somewhere in our head, but we forget that. We write it down after new year and then we forget it. And I'm one of those who has, not 12, I have like 50 goals and everything Andrew, thank you so much for sharing that story. I didn't know that. Wow, 1%. I guess you are a 1%-er and you're destined to do Thank you so much. Sorry, they were joking with me that probably I have something more left to do on the planet, so that was why. Unfinished business. Yeah, you got more to do. Well, thank you so much for sharing that and bringing your detox mindset to the VICI Code. For our listeners, if you're ready to strip away the noise and scale with speed, visit andreamuladin.com. her her instagram her linkedin her websites everything's in the show notes you can go ahead and check that out and then is it start up generator dot biz is that where they can listen Well, yeah, if you know Serbian or listen to it with captions, watch it with captions, maybe. Well, thank you so much for your time, Andrea. To our guests, to our audience, stay clear, stay automated and keep leading with purpose. We'll see you on the next episode of the Vici Code. Thanks for tuning in to the Vici Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. And remember, faith fuels