Parenity Brand Startup Journal | Entry #7 | Week Ending Aug.09/24

Parenity is a solopreneur brand (read about it here) being built from the ground up by me, Rob Bond. For other entries in this startup journal, check out the startup journal category on this site, or if you want to just check out the previous post, you can find it here.

And if you don’t feel like reading every single thought, here’s the blog post condensed into a short video:

It’s Hard to Make Moves on the Go

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I like working in a coffee shop. Something about it gets and keeps the creative juices flowing. But certain things require a mouse, keyboard and at least one full-sized monitor.

I was trying to keep several balls in the air while travelling with the family last week, but even on a laptop, it’s not the easiest thing. Referencing things is so much easier on multiple larger screens, and there are almost always interruptions when staying with family and travelling with family.

Really had to put the 80/20 rule to work on this trip and maximize that family time!

Content Takes a Temporary Back Seat

With last week being a travel week for me and the fam, and the weekend being unpack and decompress time, and this week being short due to the long weekend, and a few vehicle issues that came up, I had to totally ignore content this week other than this very video.

As we get closer to launch with Parenity I can tell it’s going to be very difficult to create the amount of video that I want to across the social channels going forward. But hey, we’ll prioritize and make everything happen that is possible.

Speaking of social and time constraints, I had a call with Social Snowball on Wednesday. From what I’ve seen so far, great, helpful people, and they put into focus how much decision making, configuration time, and program maintenance something like their influencer program platform is going to take. All time very well spent, but I may have to do some late nights to get every piece in place for launch.

Also got a peek at their AI influencer search plugin called Ice Breaker, and it looks cool. Something I’ll definitely want to try after I’ve added all the influencers I already have in mind!

It’s Hard to Make Moves With Confidence

I’ve described Parenity using the terms Bootstrapped and Solopreneur many times, and that’s because it’s anything but irrelevant!

I’ve been feeling some stress lately, because as I try to plan more and more things for launch, I’m butting closer and closer to maxing out my budget. I knew all along there would be cashflow problems in building Parenity, and I’m now stressing over many spending decisions.

Where is the money I have best spent? I’m sure I’ll eventually have to improve this situation by taking out loans or taking on partners, but to get there, I need to make the initial launch a success without exceeding my cap, which is modest.

It’s fun, but I do worry a lot 😐

And here’s a great quote that just came up for me in twitter from the @philosophors account:
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-William Faulkner

It’s true! But again, scary and difficult! I think this quote came at a good time though; I needed this reminder of things that must be done.

Fees Everywhere

I’m using an agency for sourcing of some of my overseas products, and they need a deposit via wire transfer. While I do have my business bank accounts setup, the ability to wire money is a separate add-on that I’m sure will come with a price. Or, if I want to do just a single wire, I can go in-person to my local bank branch and they’ll charge me $50 for it. Unreal!
We ended up just doing an interac e-transfer, which are quite common here in Canada, and it was received just fine.