I’ve been writing this blog for almost 6 months now.  It’s been more fun, and more work, than I ever imagined.  But it’s a passion of mine, and for those of you who know me, when I find a passion, I stick with it!  So I fully intend to keep posting here for the distant foreseeable future.

In these last 6 months, along with growing my blog and joining many wonderful communities online, I’ve also been slowly piecing together the framework of my business.  The going has been slow because, well, I have a lot of other things going on, and I’m in no rush.  I want to do things carefully and do them the right way so that when I finally decide to do this full time, I’ll be ready!  Plus, the discovering, theorizing, and postulating aspects of starting a business are fascinating to me!

But, I can’t be “starting a business” forever, so onward and upward I go. This post (well technically my last post,but who’s counting?) marks the begging of the next phase of my business, Trial and Error.

So far I’ve been pretty good with keeping to the original schedule I laid out in my About Page.  On that page, I set the tentative schedule for the phases of my business.  Here’s a recap:

Phase 1, The Implementation (the first 6 months or so) - I will chronicle the steps I take as I begin planning, forming, and running my business part time.

Pase 2, Trial and Error (the next few years) - In this phase I will describe the ins and outs of running a part-time computer repair business.  Will I fail miserably or continue on to take over Microsoft?

Phase 3, The Sustainment (in about 5 years) - This is when I hope to take the business from a part-time project to a full-time business.  If I make it this far then I must have learned a thing or two along the way.  Once that occurs, I will be able to provide content aiming to help others with the latest trends and news relating to computer support and home-based business.  This is what my website is aspiring to become.

As you can see, I’ve completed Phase One right on schedule!

Not all of my posts fall into a “phase” category, I only reserve posts that are specifically about my own business start-up efforts for those categories. 

Before we go any further into Phase 2, I wanted to take a look at some of my most notable posts in the Phase 1: The Implementation category.

• How Much Are You Worth?: The Process Of Setting A Price - This was a fairly popular post in which I lay out my strategies for service pricing, which can be applied to any service business.
• 7 Things To Look For In A Small Business Bank…Plus: What Bank Did I Choose? - This post became popular unexpectedly after being featured by Anita Campbell on her blog Selling to Small Businesses.com. It also must have gotten onto the internal website of TD Bank, because I got a lot of hits from a private website within the TDBank.com domain!
• Business Name Blues Series - I think I finally found my voice by this point in my blogging. Taken together, this series is the single most popular trio of posts here on Y.F.N.C.G. I got a lot of hits and positive feedback on this series. I think this series shows what I can do when I really spend time to apply myself and dig into one subject. I’ll be sure to do more of this in future.
• I’m Officially A Business Owner! - Of course I love this post simply for the fact that it ceremoniously marked the beginning of an exciting entrepreneurial journey!
• Top 5 Reasons Why I Probably Shouldn’t Start a Computer Repair Business - I like to play devils advocate with most decisions I make in life, and this was my attempt to channel the little red guy that sits on my left shoulder. This post continues to get steady regular visitor traffic, I’m not sure why.
• My 5 Year Plan: The Test-Drive Approach To Starting A Business - This post helped me define my goals and set-up a more long-term plan for what I want to do with my business.
• Baby Steps: The First Few Things I’m Doing To Get My Business Underway - Here I lay out the steps I planned on taking during Phase 1. Before this post, I was unsure of exactly what I was going to do. This exemplifies why this blog is so important to me: it helps me solidify and organize the ideas I have bouncing randomly around my head.

I’m excited to embark on the next phase of my journey.  Please join me and help me learn along the way. I want to share my sweet successes and bitter failures with you, so that we can learn from each other and move forward in this tricky business!