Marko Totovic's Approach to Excelling in Dynamics 365, Freelancing, and Personal Passions

Mark Smith: 0:06
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Serbia. He works at Kampanel as a partner technology strategist for customer engagement in the Power Platform and he also does some freelancing for many Dynamics 365 partners around the world. He was first awarded as MVP in 2024. You can find links to his bio, social media etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Marko Hi Mark, thank you for having me Pleased to have you on the show. As I was doing some research on you, I realized that our paths have crossed in the last couple of months without us knowing in person. At Dynamics Minds and I was there you were there, right.

Marko Totovic: 1:15
Yeah, yeah, of course it's my second year, so second conference, second time being there.

Mark Smith: 1:20
And it's right in your backyard. Right, it's just over the border, or so so close, two countries away, isn't it?

Marko Totovic: 1:27
Yeah, two countries away.

Mark Smith: 1:28
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, awesome. Before we get started, I always like to ask guests around food, family and fun. What's the best food to eat in Serbia? What's the best thing to do fun-wise, and anything about your family.

Marko Totovic: 1:44
Okay, yeah, with food. Obviously you're looking at me, so it means that I wise and anything about your family. Okay, yeah, With food. Obviously you're looking at me, so it means that I like food. Yeah, we have interesting cuisine in Serbia because we really have influence from different cultures, from Turkey, from Hungary, but my favorite probably is called sarma. It's like cabbage leaves filled with meat and rice and with a lot of other different things. You do not have to use cabbage, you can use many different vegetables which have leaves and then rolled out and boiled for many, many, many, many hours, and then it is really traditional, especially for whole southern Europe. Wow, it sounds nice From the food part. Yeah, probably that the family part. I'm a father of a three-year-old boy, so this is my unhappily married and this is my main occupation from the family side and probably main occupation currently in my life.

Mark Smith: 3:07
And the third one was what do you do for fun?

Marko Totovic: 3:12
Yeah, for fun I do parenting. Yeah, with small boys, generally that. But on the other side, yeah, I played tennis for many, many years. I like to play guitar and generally traditionally in belgrade everybody likes to go partying because probably we are the party capital of of the europe, so it's like 24 7 interesting, interesting.

Mark Smith: 3:43
I've never been to serbia. The closest I've been is to bosnia and montenegro and croatia, so I've wrapped all the countries around you um, but but not been that far um. So I've not done serbia yet um, but, but there's still plenty of time um, hopefully I'll get that in.

Marko Totovic: 4:03
Tell me a bit about the company you work for yeah, so I started working for Companion maybe around six months ago, but I have some history with them, working with them with their part of the company called Platan.

Marko Totovic: 4:23
It's the learning part, where they were mainly focused to business central clients and partners, but now they're really having the learning platform for whole Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. But as Companion, I'm there as part of the technology strategist and exactly the same role at Microsoft, and this is a company which is only partner-oriented. So we have a huge list of the Microsoft partners which we are there to help in many different ways. So if you need help on some active issues during the implementation, or if you need help during pre-sales or if you need any kind of advice, if you need to start onboarding in understanding of the platform for new people, help a partner in their strategic position and to guide them through whole processes of implementation and whatever they need in their day-to-day job to guide them and to help them work better. And also my role there is just to be there for the partners to speak about new things, to help them in any possible and imaginable way and to guide them through their job.

Mark Smith: 5:50
Nice, and is your partners mainly in Europe or where are they located?

Marko Totovic: 5:55
Yes, we have in Europe and USA, but let's say that most of the partners are in Europe. We are currently active on a US market, but our part of the company is open in Canada. So there we have official company and everything. But yeah, officially we are active on the North America and European market.

Mark Smith: 6:23
Yeah, awesome, awesome. And what was? Tell me about how you became an MVP.

Marko Totovic: 6:29
Yeah, so I'm happily renewed this year and I like I had the influence of a lot of MVPs around me. I know them for many, many years and I always liked to share some knowledge, and a couple of years ago I started thinking in that perspective maybe I have some knowledge which I'd like to share. So, as usual, I started writing, I started submitting for a session to start speaking in a first local conference, then, like in worldwide events, and in some moment nomination came. I was nominated by Renato Faidiga. He's my really good friend now from Croatia and I know that he's renewed MVP, so we are now really really close. And then, like three months later, I just got confirmation congratulations, you are now officially an mvp. So nice, probably the happiest moment in career yeah, yeah, so good, so good now.

Mark Smith: 7:44
Yeah yeah, so good, so good. Now I noticed you do a bit of freelancing as well. Is that right? Yeah, tell me about it. Tell me about it Because I tell you why this is so interesting to folks listening to the show is a lot of people I have noticed in the last 12 months are expressing interest in doing freelance work. They might work for a partner or work for somebody, but there's maybe not even enough money coming in from that work that they want to take on additional work, and I'm seeing more and more freelancers in the community. You're one, so I'd be interested to know how you started freelancing and what's involved in it.

Marko Totovic: 8:20
Yeah, how you started freelancing and what's involved in it. Yeah, so I started. My first freelancing job was now for the company where I'm working. So, yeah, that was like my first engagement outside of, let's say, official company where I'm working, but currently I'm working mostly like freelance in the US. So this is probably the market where I'm mostly focused to work and or to help other partners to do some implementation.

Marko Totovic: 8:55
And currently, why I'm doing it is because my position is focused. I'm speaking all day. I'm talking to partners. I'm trying to help them resolve the problems or to understand the platform better. I'm a little bit more outside of that implementation process. I'm really not working on implementations. If I'm taking that day-to-day to in account and I still like it and the opportunity of having still that job and me getting in contact with one partner and helping them implement only one solution for resolving their issues really I like that job still and I'm enjoying doing that and so basically, I started because I was young, it was the beginning of my career, it was nice to have some money on the side and now I'm just whenever somebody contacts me, I'm really trying to measure if I have time, if it will take a lot of my personal side of playing around with my son, I will not take it. But yeah, generally now if somebody contacts me, I say, okay, let me check then I'm taking it or not.

Mark Smith: 10:12
Awesome. Is it all right if I ask you some questions around the practicalities of freelancing?

Marko Totovic: 10:16
Of course.

Mark Smith: 10:19
Yeah, so, first of all, how do people find you to do freelance work? Is it like LinkedIn? Is it Upwork? You know what's the main channels that they find you.

Marko Totovic: 10:30
Mostly LinkedIn. People are mostly contacting me through LinkedIn, so it's the easiest way how somebody could find me.

Mark Smith: 10:37
Yes, and then are you specializing in your freelance work? I'm talking about specifically in a certain area, because you know, if you search on linkedin, there's thousands of people that work in the power platform and dynamics 365. How do they find you specifically, that you're available to freelance work for them?

Marko Totovic: 10:57
Yeah, when I take into account everybody who contacts me, there is probably more than 90% of the people who have contacted me for some job I'm not able or I'm not the right guy to do it. It's hard to do filtration based on that. I'm trying to be honest always it's not the idea to take maybe some money on the side and that I know that I'm not the right person to do that job. So I'm always a hundred percent open and a hundred percent clear with saying what I can really deliver and what I cannot deliver. And basically on that I talk, I see the requirements, I check what I can do or maybe if I know something which can deliver something, and then we proceed or not.

Mark Smith: 11:46
Nice, interesting, interesting. And just back to your specialization, are you more on the? What do you consider your role from a freelancer perspective? Are you hardcore? Are you into dev or are you into more functional type role or more to an architect role? What type of role do you often take in your freelance work?

Marko Totovic: 12:11
Mostly it's like functional or let's call it low-code, no-code development. I can write some basic. So Power Platform, power Platform and, yeah, power Apps, dynamics 365, customer Engagement, whole group. It is really naturally connected. Then I started it was still called Microsoft CRM.

Marko Totovic: 12:33
So that's my general expertise and I have some basic knowledge about Business Central because I like to connect to BC to take data outside general expertise and I have some basic knowledge about Business Central because I like to connect to BC to take data outside of BC and with that possibility of being on a stage a lot of conferences, I saw that the BC community is one of the strongest, if it is not the strongest, for conferences and I tried to take that opportunity and to just reach to that point of the people where I can maybe give something interesting in Power Platform but I have to deliver something connected to BC.

Marko Totovic: 13:17
So I was talking about how to connect with BC with Power Platform, with Copilot Studio previously Power Virtual Agent how to create application based on BC data. So I know the full data synchronization processes. So I know some out-of-the-box BC things. But I will not be able to implement it on my own, so it's clear. But I know some of the stuff and especially in a project where we have collaboration in both of two systems. I know how to set it up and how really projects should work.

Mark Smith: 13:52
Yeah, awesome. And so typically at Dynamics Minds, and I think you're at the European Power Platform Conference, right?

Marko Totovic: 14:01
No, I was not there. No, last year it was in some moment where I was on some other conferences already pre-approved, and this year I submitted a session and I didn't get approved, but where I am generally Dynamics, minds, directions. I was accepted at all three of them but I was sadly not able to go to Asia Days of Knowledge Community Summit in North America. So yeah, I'm trying to remember where else.

Mark Smith: 14:39
Wow, you go to a few. What did you talk about at Dynamics Minds?

Marko Totovic: 14:43
I talked about connecting Copilot Studio with external platforms, so like BC, how to extend it with M365 or how to work inside of the sales with Copilot Studio. That was one session and another session was about business events in Business Central with Power Automate.

Mark Smith: 15:09
Very good, very good. Another practical question around freelancing, and that is when it comes to payment, you know, with US-based customers, et cetera. One of the things I often get asked from freelancers is how do you sort out payment Like I don't necessarily have a US dollar bank account, or I don't have a euros bank account, or I don't have a British pounds bank account. How can you transact in those currencies? How do you do your your financial transactions as in so that your customers on the freelance work can pay you?

Marko Totovic: 15:38
Yeah, so there there is two approaches I have. I'm co-founder of one US company, so I have a company with account. But yeah, and it is a startup. It's called Tunka. It's a startup for gathering all professionals in business application roles, so it is not focused on Microsoft To gather them and to have the platform where some company can come and organize the virtual team and do implementation process based on virtual teams, so without any necessity of having a partner. But on the other side I'm still. This is only for the company part.

Marko Totovic: 16:23
When I need money, when I need to be paid personally, I'm generally using pioneer. It is probably the best approach because you have multi-currency account. I'm not. I'm from serbia, we are not part of european union, so we have our own. The laws are generally almost the same, like EU, but we have some slight difference and especially we have different currency. So the best approach for me is Pioneer and then you can easily just go and take money out of the Pioneer account and put it in your personal account.

Marko Totovic: 17:01
Of course, there are some taxes, regulations. You have to think about that. It was taxes in your country. But for me, pioneer is probably the easiest way and the good thing is that you can have. The virtual card or printed card is going to be delivered to your address. So, yeah, you can use that money with that card. You do not have to transfer it to your account. Yeah, you can. You can use that money with that card, you do not have to transfer it to your account yeah, brilliant, brilliant just always check because of the taxes in in your country.

Marko Totovic: 17:29
Do not go with that and any tax regulations yeah, so, so, so true, um of use I.

Mark Smith: 17:37
I set up my pioneer account when I was living in the united kingdom Kingdom because it seemed a good option then. But since then I actually use Wise for all my multi-currency transactions and it's worked well, particularly because I get paid a lot out of the US. Okay, that's interesting. Tell me, becoming an MVP was it worth it?

Marko Totovic: 18:01
Yeah, really, when I become, I really then understood how much it worth from the perspective of some information and having that possibility to be really connected with product groups and to talk to them about the future of the products which you like and you love them in some sort of way, and having that opportunity really to to help in development of them and really to know some things in advance and then again to talk with product group and really sharing that knowledge.

Mark Smith: 18:36
it is really, really worth it yeah, yeah, yeah, so, so true, so true. Well, marco, thanks for getting up so early and coming on the show.

Marko Totovic: 18:45
Thank you, Mark, for having me.

Mark Smith: 18:51
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, known as the NZ365 guy, if you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you you.