First and foremost I just want to say that I am very excited about the opportunity and possibilities for what this blog site can become. When I was a young child I had a painting of a clown that hung on the wall in my room. There was nothing special or fancy about the clown itself, but what always stuck with me was the artists name signed at the bottom of the painting. The artist had my same name but she spelled it with a "y" instead. I remember wishing that somehow I could change the spelling of my name from "Allison" to "Allyson". I thought it was much more creative such as Anne with an "e" from "Anne of Green Gables".


When I grew up and started doing more creative things I decided it would be fun to sign anything done creatively with "Allyson". This blog is a forum for my budding creative side "Allyson" to find her way and make her presence known in the world. And so @presenceofallyson is born.


This week was hard!  I am concurrently taking three different business courses and while no one thing is difficult, they collectively are hard.  With that being said, I am absolutely loving the content that I am learning.  I am growing and lets me honest, growing hurts and is hard.  In a quick nutshell I have learned that there is a whole bunch of information out there, free for the taking that I never even knew existed.  There are ways that I can improve myself and my prospects and I don't even have to get up from my seat.  That is amazing!

I love to search the internet to learn new things and observe new ideas. If I have a question, I always turn to the World Wide Web to see if someone has already done the work for me. Blogs are a great way to gain knowledge on an array of topics, so I was really excited to get to peruse some useful entrepreneur blogs. Workhappy.net really jumped out at me. I like how in one concise location, I can learn various lessons that others have already learned through experiences and/or conferences. I also like blog.penelopetrunk.com because she offered a different perspective. I don’t feel as though I think like she does which intrigues me. Entreprenuer.com is another blog I enjoyed scrolling through. I really appreciated how they noted how long it would take to read each article which is perfect for me when I only have small increments of time. Lastly, wise bread is one I will definitely look at often because it not only had a versatile subject and tips content but it has a collection of writers. This blog appears to be helpful on many fronts. Overall I plan to take some time each week to peruse these four blogs and maybe add to my collection as I go.

I also am finishing an interesting book titled "The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur" by Mike Michalowicz.  Trust me, I wish the title was different also.  I went to my local library with the two-page list they gave us and started searching for a book I could read.  I found two books that were in my library from that list.  This one was thinner than the other so whether I liked the title or not was a mute point.  Despite the title and the crude language I have gained some insights and knowledge and might refer back to it in the future if needed.  He gives some precise ways to run a business and I like that he gives the "whys" in plain English for me to understand.

I have learned this week that I actually have a lot more business ideas than I thought.  Once I started brain storming the ideas kept coming and that really gave me hope that maybe I do have a shot at this.  I have a long way to go to get to the stage of "I will do this and it will be successful" but I definitely feel like I'm on the right road.