In the podcast short below, Romanian entrepreneur Vlad Cazan talks about the learning process that has continued, and still continues, throughout his entrepreneurial journey. The guy, and his business partner, have between them decades of experience in IT, sales, business development, product development, and more, and they’re still learning as they go.

I remember about 8 years ago, when Alper and I were living in the same neighborhood (now we don’t even live in the same country, and I think we actually live on separate continents), we would meet for breakfast on a regular basis and brainstorm ideas, like “let’s try A, let’s try B, let’s try C, etc.” And the thing is, we didn’t really know which one of them would work. That’s why we had to try so many.

Even now, when I do five things, I know, based on history, that 4 of them are going to come to absolutely nothing. If I’m lucky, one will kind of work, and then I’ll tweak that one for a couple years and get something out of it.

And it’s not like I am a naive waif wandering in the woods. I’ve been around the block a few times, and I read and research a ton. So that 80% that goes nowhere, it’s not like they were bad ideas, they just worked for someone else in their circumstances, but not me in mine.

So before I turn you loose on this week’s podcast short, I just want to reiterate that for so many of us, the rational world wants us to be successful all the time, but reality just isn’t like that.

Be sure to cut yourself some slack, and recognize that if 20% of the stuff you do works, and if you stay alive to play again the next day, you’re doing pretty damn good.