Building a Parachute

At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey I read a lot of inspirational and motivational quotes on the internet.  (Sidenote: Perhaps I should have read more books on how to be an entrepreneur – but I suppose that’s another post).  One of my favorites was this one:

Build the parachute on the way down.  Yeah, that’s a good one.  This quote is designed to make you feel a certain way … like you can do anything if you just take the first step.  Go ahead, take the first step and figure it out along the way.  Nice sentiment.  I may have taken it a bit too literally.

What if you have no idea how to build a parachute?  There are only two possibilities here: (1) figure it out and land safely (2) die.

I refuse to die so I’m figuring it out.  Sometimes I wish I would have begun the “figuring out” process before I started to see the ground close up.  Once you start to actually see the ground, the possibility of death becomes very real very fast.  But I have no regrets.  I didn’t know what I didn’t know but once you know better you do better, right?

There are way too many clichés and metaphors in that last paragraph and probably not enough punctuation.  But you get what I’m saying.

In my attempt to figure this out, I told you that I hired a coach.  She’s a branding and marketing specialist, actually.  In time, I’ll find out if they are the same thing but for now she has introduced me to so many things that make my life easier and more complicated all at the same time.  Here‘s a list of the programs/systems/sites that I now utilize on an almost daily basis: 

 Starred items were being utilized prior to hiring my coach – although not as much or as effectively as they are now

*Facebook

Facebook Advertising

*Twitter

*Instagram

*LinkedIn

*YouTube

Pinterest

*Mailchimp

*Hootsuite

Evernote

Skype

Leadpages

Ontrapages

Canva

Typeform
Periscope
Blab

Plus, I purchased a new laptop and webcam

So these are the tools that I’m using to build my parachute.  Not to mention, re-branding, revising my service offerings and developing various streams of income. 

Who knew building a parachute would be so involved?  I guess I should have.