Starting a Business Around Your Hobby? Read This!
The old saying “Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life” can be a great inspiration for those with passions to pursue a dream career with a job they truly love. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to find standard employment that meets their dream criteria. The good news is that through the power of the internet, almost any business can be created around the hobbies and interests that you hold near and dear to your heart. Even though it’s possible, it’s not always the most practical idea to start a business around your hobby. So today, I’m going to share some things I think you should consider BEFORE starting a business around your hobby.
The Underlying Motivations for Hobbies and Businesses are Different
Businesses exist primarily to make money. Hobbies exist primarily to bring you enjoyment. In most circumstances, the way you conduct yourself when trying to make money is fundamentally different from the way you conduct yourself when you're trying to enjoy your hobby. Trying to meet certain sales goals or social media metrics can turn your once beloved passion into a nightmare of stress. Before you consider turning your passion into a business, I strongly recommend that you map out how your business will be monetized and how that monetization will change the way you interact with your hobby.
Customers Can Ruin Everything
The great thing about hobbies and interests is that you can generally choose who you spend your time with, and those people don’t significantly impact your ability to enjoy whatever it is you’re doing. But in the early stages of your business, you have to make your customers happy, even sometimes when they are wrong, irritable, or just difficult to work with. Not everyone will enjoy your hobby in the same way that you do and more importantly, you might not enjoy your hobby as much when you need to change to adapt to your customers.
Hobbies are Usually an Escape from Work, Not the Work Itself
For most people, hobbies are a way to escape work and are usually enjoyed as a spare time getaway rather than a full-time commitment. Changing from a part-time commitment to a full-time commitment can impact the way you enjoy your hobby. This is especially true for those with physical hobbies that they want to turn into a business because their bodies might not be prepared for the longer sessions. The same is also true of inactive hobbies such as playing video games, where trying to start a streaming career and putting in the extended broadcast hours can be detrimental to one's health when it involves staring at a screen the entire time.
On Top of All that…Running an Actual Business
Up until this point, I've mentioned aspects of business that have the potential to ruin your enjoyment of your hobbies and passions, and they are not to be taken lightly. In addition to those, you should consider the challenges surrounding the operation of the business that just create extra stress to your life. These include:
Administrative tasks
Accounting
Marketing
Being responsible for employees
And anything else that you need to do to keep your business running smoothly
It’s important to remember that even if you do something you love as a business, there will always be some part of the business that you will consider work or draining at the very least. When you are just starting out, you probably do not have the capital or network to properly delegate these tasks, which means you need to take them on yourself. The burden of these extra tasks can be manageable or overwhelming depending on the business, and if you find yourself unable to deal with these extra responsibilities, the business will eventually fail.
If you're thinking about starting a business related to your hobby and are prepared to deal with all of the above factors, congratulations! You are probably on your way to having a stable business doing something that interests you in a sustainable way. If you haven't considered all these factors, I recommend that you take some time to reflect on how you can proactively avoid these common pitfalls. Good luck!