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What's up everybody, welcome back to the All Things Croatia podcast. I'm your host,
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Stanko Zovak, and I'm bringing you the best of Croatia from around the globe.
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This episode is brought to you by Adriatic Tours, the best place since 1974 to book your
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cruises, tours, flights, and simply All Things Croatia. Use the personalized code,
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All Things Croatia, to get a special discount and book your trip to Croatia today. For more
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information, go to www.adriatictours.com or click the link in the description. Now,
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eat a modalia and let's get started. All right, welcome back to the podcast everyone.
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Today we have special guest Lucia Ajic. Lucia is the creator of Nekanova Prija,
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one of the most popular podcasts in Croatia. A chatting about personal growth, relationships,
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and parenting, Lucia also advocates for women in her community to start and grow their own
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businesses. In this episode, we're going to meet the woman behind it all. Lucia, thanks for coming
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on the podcast. Thank you for having me and thank you for the lovely introduction. Yeah,
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of course. I appreciate you taking the time to come do this. I know you're busy and I know you
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have a podcast of your own, which we're going to get into. But if you can first sort of start us off
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by telling us a little bit about your early life, where you from, where did you grow up?
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Yeah, so I was born and raised in Croatia by Croatian parents. I was born in Zagreb and
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I've spent the majority of my life here. I did travel throughout my teenage years mostly,
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and I did spend some time during my med school education in Canada. But overall, I was born
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and raised here and plan on staying here. So I'm one of five kids, the middle child, I'm the middle
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child. And I've had a wonderful childhood, to be honest, my parents worked a lot, they worked really
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hard to give us everything we needed to kind of set ourselves up for the future, so to say.
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And somewhere along the way, I think when I was like in my early teenage years, I started to think
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about what I wanted my life to look like, like long term. And I kind of made this plan in my head,
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this is what I'm going to do, and this is how it's going to go. And I was very determined,
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I was pretty ambitious early on in terms of driven and motivated, and I was very into learning and
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exploring and just moving forward. I had a rough time sitting at school, I have to be honest,
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like I always thought it was a waste of time, not in terms of like what we were learning, but just
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the aspect of having to sit down for a certain amount of time, that was always problematic for me.
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So I think it was sometimes around when I was 15 that I decided that I'm going to become a doctor,
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and I'm going to study med school, and I started preparing towards the end of high school, I don't
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know if you know how the school system works in Croatia, but I think it's a little bit different
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than it is in the states. So here we have high school, that is like four years, and then you go
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straight to the University of your choice, we don't have college and then how things work, I think,
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in the states, but med school is six years total here in Croatia. And that's what I did, I go to
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that's what I did, I got in, it wasn't really easy, I think there were like over a thousand applicants
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and they were only taking in about 200, but I studied really hard for like the initial exams
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and stuff like that, so I got in, and I loved it to be honest, like it was one of the most incredible
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experiences of my life, it was a lot of hard work. And but I developed an even stronger work ethic
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then and a lot of like self-discipline and just I think it was an excellent time to explore my
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own potential and like how far can I really go when it comes to training my brain and when it comes to
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like absorbing information and knowledge and all of that, so I really loved it and I had this idea
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of what my life was going to look like once I graduate and once I start you know working and
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going towards residency and all of that and I really wanted to see what it was like to to do it
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outside of Croatia. And we didn't really have these options like what some other universities have
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that you can go and do a full year somewhere else, we were pretty like tied up in our own
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curriculum and our own pace and we all we have a really good like the University of Medicine in
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Zagreb is actually really really good one of the best ones in Europe. So I had to find my own way
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and I figured it out, I think I was in it was in my fifth year that I went to Montreal, I found this
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professor who who was Croatian but he spent the majority of his life working there and he offered
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me like an internship in their university hospital and the only issue was that I wasn't like I didn't
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know French and it's a French speaking region. So it took me about a year to learn French in order
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to be able to go there because I had to like actually talk to people in the hospitals, one of the
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disadvantages of our education here in Croatia is that it does not offer a lot of practice,
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it's mostly like cognitive work, mostly just studying and absorbing information and going
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through exams, we don't work a lot as students. So that was a big change for me and just going
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somewhere where I've never been alone for a language and language that was like European
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French is not the same as Canadian French, I did not know that until I came there. So
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and once that was over, I came back to Croatia and on my sixth and my final year of that school,
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I had a baby, my first baby and I started living with my now husband and I thought it was a good
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idea to keep going with the exams and write my thesis and to graduate all in the same year. So I
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did that but it was it caused one of the biggest breakdowns that I've ever had in my life because
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it was just too much like the pressure of everything with a newborn baby and just going and doing all
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the things. So that was kind of my reset period I think in life, you know when you kind of feel
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like everything's out of control, that was that for me. And I started to slowly recover after a
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couple of months and we had our wedding then and I started to look for support in different areas
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because I was a new mom and I was pretty young for my own standards, I was 24 and I didn't have
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any friends or close family members who had babies like all my girlfriends were having the time of
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their lives, they were you know just graduating, traveling, doing all the things and I was like
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here with this new baby and with this career that I should be starting and I had no idea what I was
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doing so that was a really really difficult time and that's how I discovered online support. I was
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never big into any kind of social media before, I didn't even have Instagram at the time, I think
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I downloaded the app in 2015 or 2014 something like that but I quickly realized that it's a really
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good way to learn and to connect with people from all over the world and I started exploring these
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online forums as well and I became a part of a few American ones where I connected with different
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moms and I was like learning about how to be you know mom because no one teaches you those things,
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it's that people think it comes like intuitively and a part of it yes but there's also this huge
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learning curve behind it that isn't as simple as people often think it is so that's kind of how
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I got into social media, I started connecting with people, I started sharing my own journey
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through motherhood and then I started working and then everything changed because I realized that it
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wasn't what I was hoping for. I don't know how much you know about this but physicians and Croatian
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generally are severely underpaid and they typically work a lot and they are incredible
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like when it comes to their education and their skill set and their capabilities they are
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amazing but they're severely underpaid and it's a broken system and when I became a part of it
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I just felt like this is not what I wanted and I feel like the calling like to be a doctor wasn't as
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strong in me to make me want to settle for that because I knew like here's the way here's how it
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goes you once you start residency you don't have a life for five years and you work all the time and
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you don't make any money or you make very little money and then once you become like a resident
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once you become a specialist once you start working like on that level you know there's
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always like this limit on your potential and there's always this like this is how much you have to
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work in order to earn this and that and I wasn't like I felt like I was at this point in my life
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where I had to sign like is this is this something that I want for myself like long term and it wasn't
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easy to even go there when it comes to like listening to my own thoughts of maybe choosing
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something else because like I've spent all these years educating myself and a lot of money and a
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lot of time and a lot of effort to become this you know this doctor and I but I just wasn't
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feeling it like I hated being away from my babies that was the most painful part I was thinking to
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myself like did I really why you know why do I have these kids if I can't see them like I don't
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want that I would I felt I don't even know how to describe that but it was almost like as this
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constant feeling of discomfort every single day just telling me this is not your way this is not
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what you want you should be looking for other things you should be exploring more and later on
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I realized it was one of my core values actually it's freedom like it's one of the strongest ones
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that I have and I wasn't living in alignment with that I wasn't free at all I was very burdened with
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a lot of things I had to be in a certain place at a certain time I had to ask for permission to
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you know have a day off to go on holidays and I mean it's not it's like it's normal but for me it
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just felt like a violation of myself I don't know if that makes sense and it took a while for me to
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acknowledge that and to actually allow myself to go there with my own thoughts and to not be like
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what what's everyone gonna say like how are you gonna tell people that you don't want to do this
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like you went why would anyone want that especially you know my family and my friends and everyone so
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at the time I was also building a community through Instagram which was like my creative outlet that
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was a part of my day besides you know being a mom and being a homemaker that kind of gave me energy
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I felt like it was something that I it was like this window into what's possible that I wasn't able to
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that I wasn't able to see around me like I wasn't able to see women living this way anywhere else
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I wasn't able to see women you know doing what they love and making a lot of money and just being
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free and just you know being present for their children and for their families and just being
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happy in their marriages and it all felt like it felt unavailable for where I was like at that point
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at that time in my life in where I was living like physically but at the same time I had this phone
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like and when I would open the app I would just see it see the possibilities so I started exploring
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and I started dabbing into like being an influencer but I did it never really resonated with me I
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never really enjoyed I felt like that also wasn't freedom for me if I have to be like
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constantly in touch with different like brands and different people and just be you know
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having to do things the way someone wants me to I just I just knew that I don't want to do that
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long term which is also one of the reasons why I never monetize my podcast in that way we never
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did sponsorships or anything like that it just wasn't in alignment with with who I am
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and then slowly because I grew that community I came across like different ways to make money online and
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different ways to like partner with people and that's kind of how I slowly started my
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entrepreneurial journey which was I think in 2018 very end of 2017 I think
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and in the meantime I had two babies two more babies a lot of different changes and in
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I think it was March 2020 I started my my podcast which was the reason why was because
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podcasts were something that helped me a lot I started listening to them probably around the
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time that I finished I graduated and have my first baby and it was like this amazing way of learning
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and growing while also not having to sit down and watch a screen which is also one of the reasons why
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my podcast doesn't have a visual component I love the flexibility and the ability to kind of
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you know walk and listen and do dishes and listen and do like mom things and listen and it has been
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incredible and I started thinking to myself you know there aren't a lot of people doing this in Croatia
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and I feel like a lot of women who are like me could benefit from hearing my story and my personal
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development journey and just the ways that I've grown as a human and that's really what I'm
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thinking it could be honestly and yeah it's been it's been a crazy journey
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well which podcast were you listening to before you started your own
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so they were all like not not local because at the time like when I when I first explored the
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podcast app on my own I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like I was like
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I was like when I when I first explored the podcast app on my iPhone I think there was only one
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podcast in Croatian and it was yeah and it was the it was led by a couple of guys and it was
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mostly like they were interviewing entrepreneurs and that wasn't like something I was interested in
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so it wasn't it definitely wasn't something that I could you know connect to and I think there was
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this one small season by one of our one of our well-known she's actually one of the
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she's like a business mentor um yeah her name's down maybe you know her she's also very like
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active on Instagram and she also has a podcast now and she had a like a series of episodes back
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then and I remember reaching out to her and asking her like all the things about how to start a
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podcast and and all that but the ones that I was listening to the most were American podcasts and
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some of them are still like very popular but they were all like mostly self-development
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directed some of them were run by moms and I was also very interested in learning from
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female entrepreneurs because that was something that I look one of the things that I wasn't
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um familiar with and that didn't really sound possible at the time.
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That's crazy so you were one of the first people to put up a podcast in Croatian
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the language. Yeah I mean I don't really know how many of us were there but um it's it's also I
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don't know if there's a platform that shows you like exactly the number of but at the time when
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I was starting I believe and from what I was able to explore there were only like a handful of
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podcasts in our own language. I think that the whole scene is just starting to grow like
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barely we barely scratched the surface I think. Well yeah I wanted to ask if you knew anything
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sort of about the scene but it sounds like it's becoming more popular? Yeah I think it is but
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it's still nowhere near where it could be. I feel like creators are just now starting to see the value
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of putting out content in in a form of a podcast and when you if you were to compare it to like
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other parts of the world it is literally like we are so so far behind because I feel like the
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culture of listening to people is not there yet. Most people are used to like YouTube is something
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that we became used to over the last decade or so you know watching people and watching and maybe
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learning through that like visual aspect but when it comes to just listening I think that's
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the part that people still struggle with and oftentimes I get feedback from you know women
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telling me like I love I love the idea but I just can't it's so weird you know to just listen
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so I think that we have you know plenty of space to grow and I think for anyone thinking about
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starting a podcast in Croatian or in any of the surrounding languages I think now is the time to
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get in because it's just it's just getting started the whole market and it's it's just in the beginning
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stages in my opinion. Well I saw on a couple different sites and I don't know how accurate you
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know they can rank that but on one site I saw that you had like the seventh most popular in
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Croatia and then just the other day I looked and I don't know if it was the same site or a different
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one but it said that the number two most popular podcast in Croatia I guess in the country I think
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that wasn't a language thing yeah because there were some American podcasts on there so I think it
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was in the country of Croatia you had the second most popular second most listened to podcasts.
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Yeah I honestly I'm not big when it comes to statistics I don't really you know do a lot of
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research but I one of the things that I've learned is that it's not as easy to actually have like a
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valid how do I say that I think it's it's not easy to really rank podcasts because there are so many
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different metrics you could use and sometimes you know when these sites they will just take this one
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episode and see like let's let's check like this week or this day who who got the most clicks
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for a certain episode or download and then they'll put you up like on the on the on the top and then
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the next week you're going to be like number seven so it kind of fluctuates but but I don't really
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know like the only the only recent study so to say that I got was one performed by
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by one of one of the like business mentors and her team and they kind of they did like a survey
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and they had I feel like maybe a couple of thousand participants which also is in that large of a
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you know group of people and there I could see that we were doing really well when it comes to
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like home and obviously I have my number of downloads but I also don't know how relevant
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that is I never was really into kind of the numbers it was more about the message and for you
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what's the like how do you know that people are getting the message what is it for you like do you
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get messages from people saying you know thank you so much you know what sort of feedback do you get
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and is that what really you know makes you feel happy that you know I'm actually I'm doing something
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with my podcast I'm reaching people yeah absolutely it's like the you know it's been years for me
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just recording every single week and it's a real challenge sometimes with four little kids I mean
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I still have a baby like this year so for me like the driving force has always been the impact and
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it was never like I'm going to do this because I want something you know for myself it was more
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like this creative outlet when I was a little girl I was constantly playing around like being on a
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mic and playing like being on the radio so this was kind of a full circle moment for me to get into
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a point in my adult life when I allow myself to just have a mic at home and sit down and share my
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thoughts and my you know my personal growth and all of that and the the feedback that I get is mostly
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just people messaging me or emailing me or leaving comments and it's been a constant especially in the
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past year and it always blows me away like the fact that people are able to listen and implement
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and change their own lives just like that it's incredible like it's the impact that I feel has
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been the most the biggest reason why we have the number of downloads that we have and why the
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podcast is as well known as it is I think it's the impact of my stories and the stories of the
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people that I interview and just how it moves other people it activates them those who are ready to
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absorb that kind of content it's not light or easy and you know it's it's it's a specific type of
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content but it activates something in people and they start moving and they start making changes
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and it's it's incredible. I know another thing that you talk about and I'm not sure if on the
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podcast but I saw on the website is minimalism yeah and can you talk a little bit a bit about how
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you you know how that started and you know how you preach about that yeah I wouldn't call myself
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like the like a minimalist in terms of you know how many things I own and stuff like that but
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I think it's something that is not often related to family life and motherhood but I found myself
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I think it was like five years ago in our home feeling so overwhelmed with everything we had
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so much stuff so many toys so much clothes so like it was overwhelming I felt like I could not
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keep up with my own life and I could not stay on top of things and it was just too much and that was
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kind of a breaking point when I started to implement massive changes into my home when I I got rid of
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like 80% of things I I'm not even joking my husband thought I was crazy I was on this on this like
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decluttering spree it lasted for a week there were just like dozens of boxes and like these big
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black bags of stuff I just threw everything away I donated what I could but I just it was like
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all of a sudden I could breathe within my own home and then I realized like my kids actually
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started playing with the toys that they have left and they couldn't even see them because there were
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so many and that's kind of when I started to see how lighter and more beautiful life is when it's
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simple and that's when I started to change the way that I was thinking about my home and the way
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that I was thinking about the things that took up space and time in my home because let's be real
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everything that you have requires your time and time is the most valuable of all of our currencies
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and I realized like if I have all these things that I don't know what to do with and I just keep
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rearranging them and keep you know maintaining them it's just taking up a lot of my time and I don't
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have as much like I don't have the time to spend like cleaning and decluttering and just
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doing all the things so I started being very intentional when it comes to what I'm bringing
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into my home we started having these rules for like if a toy comes in a toy goes out if a book
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comes in a book goes out and I started sharing about that as well because I felt that mothers were
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so overwhelmed because you know you're bombarded with all these things that everyone tells you
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you need this and you need that and your kid needs all these toys and then they need all of these
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you know things and you need all of that baby gear and the reality is you don't need anything like
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you get to choose a few intentional items and you get to keep them in your home and you get to
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enjoy the time that you have to connect with your family and that's way more important so that's
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kind of how it became a part of of who I was and it wasn't like that before. Well yeah I was going
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to ask if you had any advice for say someone who wants to start getting into minimalism
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and but it sounds like you gave a pretty good piece of advice where if something comes in
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something else goes out is that sort of your rule then? Yeah and I also think there's a lot of like
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back-end work when it comes to mindset and just letting go of things because a lot of us were
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brought up with you know this mindset of scarcity and just if you paid for something it you know
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you can get rid of it you can't donate it you know it's just a lot of people hauled on to things
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because they think that they're not allowed to let go like if I paid for something if I bought this
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how can I let it go and then I keep piling up piling up and hoarding and I think like as a nation
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we're pretty much hoarders and we haul hold on to like a lot of things just because we don't have
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we haven't been trained to think abundantly and to think like in a way you know why would I keep
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something if it's not serving me if it's not bringing me any joy if it's not helping me live a more
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fulfilled life so I think you know for me that was also a big part of just letting go of the things
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that I spend money on even though I'm not using them it's fine someone else can use them it's still
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a blessing. Yeah it sounds like you might get nightmares if you watch I don't know if you've
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heard of the show and it's an American show hoarders. Yeah yeah I did yeah that's that's like next level
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I haven't seen that in real life yet. Yeah I haven't seen I haven't heard about that in Croatia but
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yeah to me that's just to get to that point that like I don't know how that would happen but
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yeah that's crazy to me. Yeah absolutely. Lucia do you have any well I wanted to ask first of all
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do you have any guests on your podcast you ever bring in a guest or do you have any plans for that?
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Yeah actually I do over the past year like in 2022 I think I had my record number of interviews
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I bring in people like when I when I choose people for the podcast I bring in people whose
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stories I want other people to hear and I also one of my missions through the podcast is to help
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entrepreneurs in our region especially people who do like business in the personal development
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industry so to say and I bring them on the podcast and they share their stories and they
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share about their businesses and then people can find them and connect with them and I have found
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that the storytelling aspect like looking from a marketing standpoint is incredibly powerful
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just allowing people to hear other people's stories and get to know them better it creates
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this connection that does not require you know repetitive exposure in terms of they don't have
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to be following you for months in order to want to work with you so I interview a lot of like young
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entrepreneurs a lot of like therapists coaches a lot of people who sell different kind of programs
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that are again something that I would personally invest in and I I've just been really focused on
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normalizing the part of investing in yourself which I think is still pretty foreign like a concept
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that is pretty foreign over here like women they're not really you know when you tell them like you
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should be investing in yourself like it's okay to pay you know for coaching and to pay for therapy
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it's like the best thing that you can invest in you are your own best investment so that's kind of
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what we've been working on I do have interviews pretty much regularly but one of the things
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that I've noticed is that people prefer solo episodes which is interesting to me so they
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really love listening to me speak to myself so I'm kind of trying to balance that out and just
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bringing in people intentionally like someone I really really feel is a valuable has something
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valuable to share and then I do my solo episodes and sort of last part to this as we're winding down
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here what sort of other future plans do you have either for the podcast or for yourself you plan on
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you know maybe doing a couple episodes in English you know more going international what's next
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yeah that's an interesting question because I had an international platform on Instagram
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which was pretty big I think I had close to like 30k followers there and I used to just speak English
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and when I started the podcast I wanted to be in Croatia because I feel it felt like that was needed
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like in in English there were so many podcasts in the same or similar topic and I was like I want to
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I want to stay local there so I don't really have plans on bringing in people to speak in other
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languages I might like if I if I found someone who I really wanted people to hear because they had
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something nobody else here in our language has I would but I don't really have that as a plan so
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the plan for the podcast is just keep producing as high quality content as possible to bringing
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people more value and I personally plan on doing more of that work with the people through
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future programs and stuff that I plan on I just finished my certification and I'm
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studying to become a therapist as well so we'll see where things go but right now I'm pretty
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pretty good where I am and just enjoying every step of the way it's been it's been a beautiful journey
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so far good yeah that's the most important part well Lucia I want to thank you so much for coming
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on the podcast you know where can people find your information what's your website your Instagram
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so I can send you the links so you can maybe put them in the show notes but yeah I have
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a couple of Instagram accounts I also have a website that I mostly just use for people to
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listen to a podcast if they don't have any of the podcast platforms so yeah that's mostly where I am
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now Instagram is probably the best place to find me okay and I'll put yeah I'll put everything in
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the show notes so everyone listening you know can go and click on those and find out some more
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information about you but Lucia thank you again for taking the time to do this and it was a pleasure
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to have you on the podcast you're welcome thank you so much for having me have a good day