In his address to graduates of Stanford University,  Steve Jobs said you can’t connect the dots of your life in the future. You can only know their meaning once they’ve played out.

There is no fast forward to see how things turn out. The only way to know if you’re going to fulfill your destiny is to go there.  The only way to go there is to trust yourself.

So much of the entrepreneur journey is intuitive,  decisions made on the spot, opportunity snapped from a conversation and strategic alliances formed on feelings.

I think back to the moments leading up to the Big Ooga trademark.  I did the market research, asked everyone I knew, got feedback that was strongly negative, searched the net to find out no one in the universe wanted the name Big Ooga and had two friends tell me they loved it, one named Planet Pat.

But the thing was I knew…  once the words strung together in my consciousness, it was the name of a company that needed to be born and even then it took two more years to act..because it didn’t make any sense.  Except for a lone quiet voice within that kept saying, this is music.. this is insane but this is right.  So I jumped.  And no amount of planning and research foretold the future of that decision.

Bravery means letting it rip, letting it be or letting it go.

It means doing what you’ve got to do .. and only you know what that is.  Like Steve Jobs, who knew he needed to drop out to become.   Enjoy his commencement speech to the Standford Class of ’05.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc