New Class, New Experience

This past week began the official start of lessons at BYU-Idaho. I am now enrolled in a small business course, Business 283, which has started off super busy and exciting. There are a lot of assignments in this class and big projects, too.

The $100 Challenge will be a semester long project where I will start my own small business and bring in over $100 in profit before the end of four weeks. I like that we will be donating our income to the charity, Kiva. After visiting the Kiva website, I became very excited and motivated.

This week, I did some additional brainstorming on top of my ideas from the week of introductory lessons. I came up with 20 ideas for the challenge that fall back on my current experience working in online writing and publishing. It was hard to think of a business in my field that can be set up quickly and yield $100 in the first four weeks, but I know with prayer and hard work it can happen.

There was also a new experience exploring entrepreneurial blogs. I've been so focused on social media information, I haven't thought about reading business blogs to help me learn and prepare. I found several new exciting blogs to follow like Wisebread and Young Entrepreneurs. I signed up for newsletters on blogs I found interesting and followed all of the recommendations on Twitter.

Last but not least, I am finishing up a book, The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki for my book report. I admire his experience and how he shares tips for marketing on social media. The book isn't as applicable to me as I hoped, but I am still learning a lot and will enjoy putting the report together.