Welcome to The Cost of Doing Business

I've always been afraid of that feeling of 'what if I took that risk?'. With many changes on the horizon for my life in general I always have a feeling not of 'what if i took the risk', rather I think 'what if I fail?' I never remember the successes of my life during times like this, I sometimes think that since things are so good, they're bound to get bad eventually right? The reality is plain and simple: 90 percent of the unforgettably good times in my life trailed some of the most miserable and difficult periods I've known. I wouldn't be so grateful to be shown some kind of light without the dark days.

With that in mind, this is the exact reason I have decided to write this blog. I am a 25 year old marketing consultant. I've satisfied and happy at my current job and the experience I have gained in consulting and management of both projects and people will help me in the future regardless of my career path. However, I know there is more for me out there. Like many young professionals my age, with my work experience has come a realization of what I really want to do with my life and that's to work in the music industry. You will real abut my trials and tribulations in these posts surrounding taking the GRE's, working for an independent record label, applying for my masters and general career and business tips I find along the way. I'll share the good and bad in these post, because in the end, it's all about the cost of doing business.

To kick things off, the philosophy of this blog is really summed up in a speech from Steve Jobs which helped me put it all into perspective. Steve Jobs spoke at Stanford's commencement last year and had some great advice to anyone living in this stage of flux. Everyone knows the story of Job's and how even though he dropped out of college he followed his dreams, and his gut, to found Apple Computers.

In the speech (broadcast on YouTube) he tells three different stories to highlight the theme of following your heart. Here is a snapshot of all three stories:

Connect the dots: Jobs was given up for adoption by his biological mother at birth, she wanted him to go to a college educated home. However, after the first prospective parents decided they wanted a girl, Jobs mother had no choice but to allow her child to be adopted by a non-college educated family. The only promise made was that baby Steve would one day attend school. Steve goes on to talk about his decision to drop out of college because he had no interest in the 'required' courses, rather opting to attend a few courses of his own choice. He goes on to note that some of the things he learned in these courses truly benefited him in the future. He ends this story saying that 'you cannot connect the dots when looking forward, only when looking back'. This insinuates that as humans we learn in hindsight, that we have to trust that it's all going to be ok if we just take the risk.

Loss and Redemption: In this section of Jobs' speech is about personal failures being your strongest point in life for growth. Jobs' previous firing from Apple was a big media blitz, so was his return to the company years later. From his own experience Job's had great advice for the audience: 'failure is fine as long as you love what you do', he goes on to expand on the fact that sometimes you need to know what you don't like before you find out what you do enjoy. In fact, if he hadn't been fired from Apple he notes he wouldn't have founded Pixar, NEXT and he probably wouldn't have met his wife.

Death: Surprisingly Jobs even found a way to incorporate our own inevitable deaths to illustrate his point in this speech. He notes that he asks himself everyday 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I have to do'? if days go by and his answer is 'no' Jobs knows something in his life needs to change. He notes that after surviving a cancer scare, he learned that the best invention of life is death. For this invention makes people clean out the old and bring in the new, it reminds us not to live someone else's life. Finally, knowing we are all going to die kills the illusion that we have something to loose, instead, Jobs notes that we should all 'stay hungry and stay foolish'.