It is very clear from a brief review of the research literature available on small businesses that relatively little is known about nonemployer firms — which is to say, we know but we lack the research to prove it.

So, for example, even as there is currently a multi-year, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research project to establish that sometimes nonemployers transition to employers and vice versa, the rest of us shake our heads, chuckle and get on with our work.

There is also a great deal of interest in research circles about what the academics are calling nascent entrepreneurs — individuals who are in the process of starting new businesses, most of which are nonemployers at their inception.

Presumably ‘nascent entrepreneur’ sounds much more intellectually intriguing than the more common, non-scientific term, ‘newbie.’

Collecting survey responses and Census Bureau data sets can shed a great deal of light on the big picture but I sometimes think those researchers would find a simple conversation to be a lot more enlightening.

I had that sort of conversation recently with Caanan Tully, who owns and operates Charleston PC Help, LLC along with her husband Steven. The firm offers a range of computer and web services from their headquarters in the metropolitan Charleston, SC area.

The business got its start in life as a result of the hobbies of Mr. and Mrs. Tully, as many microbusinesses do. As he was described to me by his wife, Steven Tully is a geek to his fingertips, who maintains his employment as a network administrator, and does computer troubleshooting for friends and neighbors in his spare time. He even worked for one and a half years with the Geek Squad.

“For the longest time, Steven has been the kind of person who loves fixing stuff and figuring out how it works,” Caanan explained. “And so, he would always be available to help people with their computer issues. And I always enjoyed web designed. So we wanted to have this one business that we could put it all under, so Steven could find more people to help with their computers and get paid for it instead of just maybe get a dinner out of it.”

This is truly an infant business; it has only been up and running with all administrative ducks in a row since December 2007. Caanan works the young firm full time, while her husband keeps his “day job” and helps her on a part time basis.

Her specialty is web design, and her husband is training her in computer diagnostics and repair as well. The Tullys don’t envision Steven ever giving up his job to work in the business on a full time basis — although Caanan says she will keep him on in an advisory capacity — because of the potential career opportunities and the employee benefits that he would lose if he did.

Asked about her biggest business headache, Caanan gives an answer that is also common among microbusinesses (especially new ones): marketing. The computer repairs side of the business is currently doing well, with word-of-mouth referrals sending a continuing stream of new customers their way. But Caanan also wants to develop the web design part of the business and that has been causing her problems.

There are several questions that she has not made decisions about yet, questions all neophyte microbusiness owners must answer. Will she continue to focus her efforts on her local market or expand to a wider national or international market? With web design being such a crowded field, on which niche will she focus her marketing efforts? And when will she find the time to prepare proposals for that list of local firms she found in need of a site update?

Then, too, she has been focusing a lot of her networking efforts online and has found that does not work if her ideal client is a business owner who isn’t too web savvy but wants an up-to-date online presence. But if she can’t find her ideal customer online, will she be able to take advantage of the Internet’s various low- and no-cost marketing channels effectively?

In short, Caanan Tully’s biggest business challenge, less than a year into the life of her business, is simply to begin the process of building it into a self-sustaining enterprise.

It was about a year ago that a former boss approached her about re-designing his web site. Ed Camp of Camp Creative & Company was dissatisfied with his old site and told Caanan of several simple design elements (such as mouse-over effects, for example) that he wanted and that his former web designer said “couldn’t be done.”

“So Ed came to me and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not sure if I know how to do it now but I’ll figure it out’,” Caanan recalled.

I suspect that Caanan will apply the same strategy to her new microbusiness. Like so many other microbusiness owners who started with practically nothing and managed to build a business, Caanan Tully will do her best to figure it out.