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How To Turn Your Hobby into a Career

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“Pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you” — Maya Angelou.

How To Turn Your Hobby into a Career

Ever thought of turning your hobby into a career?Dear reader, what is it you really enjoy doing? Is it singing, dancing, storytelling, writing, talking, farming, painting, artistic designing or even cooking just like I do? The list goes on and on.

If really you are searching for a life-fulfilling career, then you have to love and enjoy what you do. Once you have been out in the real working world for a few years, you will realize that doing what you love and making a living at it is more complicated than just following your dreams.

While lucky people love their jobs, many of us make our current career decisions based on profit convenience or opportunity. This is not a justifiable reason to remain in a position you just feel okay because it might not guarantee you a fulfilled life compared to doing a job you love.

Recognizing your apt profession is as simple as asking yourself what you love doing. If your answer and conclusion revolves around one or some of your hobbies and not your daily routine 9-to-5 job, then, of course, it’s probably time you begin to think about turning your hobby into a full-time or part-time business.

Mind you, if you consider swapping your recent job for a hobby you intend turning into a business of your own, then you’ll be needing a plan to monetize your passion. And how do you achieve this plan?

  • Research
  • Think critically about your bank account
  • Set realistic short and long-term goals.

There are many contentions when it comes to converting a hobby into a money-making business. But come on! It’s not new! A lot of people have excelled through this! So, be it whatever hobby you enjoy doing, it can become profitable and fulfilling.

So, with all of that been said, if you’re willing to go through the journey then here are ways to the path of turning your hobby into a career:

1.  Choose a Hobby You’re Hooked on To

How to turn your hobby into a career

If you’ve got quite more than one hobby, you’ll have a choice of which one you switch into a career. Believe which hobby really animates and excites you. Pursue a path to professionalism with the hobby.

For example, suppose you’ve got several hobbies like philately, carving wooden figurines, and building model rockets. Identify your favourite hobby by making a group of sentences, sort of “I like [one of your hobbies], but I prefer [another hobby you favour over the primary hobby] more.” undergo your entire set of hobbies using this “hobby playoff” system, pitting each against the others until you’ve identified the hobby which most excites you.

Popular hobbies that would become careers include musician, writer, actor, and artist. Technical hobbies that would become careers include ham operator, TV repair technician, and computer repair specialist.

2.  Be Passionate about your Hobby

Treat your passion like a business, and it’ll become one.

Jessica Childress is an attorney turned children’s book author. Writing has always been her passion and she penned her first book while attending the school of law. Although writing was a pleasant hobby, Jessica had hopes of doing more; she wanted to cause social change through her characters.

3.  Find a Necessity

Jonathan Heine, the owner of you’re Loved Foods in L.A, was a Wall Street banker for 25 years before turning a passion for health foods into a replacement business. Affected by diabetes and fibromyalgia, Heine’s journey began with an easy look for ways to measure a healthier life. He created a variety of sugar-free, gluten/grain/starch-free, strictly certified paleo foods and snacks. They were an enormous hit with friends and family, which eventually led to the inception of “Your Loved Foods”. Choices he made that affected real people’s lives, and therefore the consequences. Your Loved Foods changed that. So, where there’s a necessity, there’s a need to be met.

4.  Create a Business Plan

How to turn your hobby into a career

This is the least pattern of beginning a new venture, but shouldn’t be neglected as it can be vital, especially if you’re considering getting funds from external sources. Whether you plan to run your business on your own savings, a business plan is a way to help you organize your thoughts about your new adventure and uncover unforeseen future disasters. As part of your business plans, you’ll need to plan your finances; calculate your monthly expenses, projected income and the overall startup costs plus any new equipment you may need.

5.  Start Small and Be Persistent

Rome they say wasn’t built in one day. To grow a hobby into a profitable career requires a vigorous process of trial and error. In this phase, you’ll have to begin small, be persistent until you have a solid foundation and also begin to earn money with your hobby before you turn it into a career. Above all, you’ll need to save up money for expenses, independent of your business startup cost in order to make sure that you will have something to live on as you get things into shape.

“The best way to learn persistence is by sticking to a schedule. Be sure to work at some part of the business or hobby at least 15 minutes every day” — The Compettis.

So, if you truly want to turn your hobby into a profitable career then be sure to work at least 15 minutes daily.

6.  Be Creative and Innovative

Being creative and innovative is a function of knowledge, imagination, curiosity and evaluation. The higher your knowledge on how to use your hobby to gain profitability, the more the ideas, combinations and patterns you can achieve which then go in accordance to discovering and creating new innovative services through your hobby.

To help you be the best at your craft, you must understand these three things:

  • Discovery: This is the lower level of
  • Invention: This is a higher level of
  • Creation: The highest level of

So, you’ll need to discover how to turn your hobby into a profitable career, invent it and then create it. Roger that?

Let’s talk about Dana Tucker and her husband Brook for a moment. For every single step of professionalising their hobby, it requires an additional touch of creativity and innovation. When people began to compliment the Tuckers on their home’s decorative paint finishes and asked how they could get a similar look, the Tuckers then decided to create Bella Tucker Decorative Finishes. (Discovery stage).

The Tuckers then decided to figure out how to expand their customer base, how to invent and manage an adaptable product. (Invention Stage).

“When we started out down this road, faux finishes were very on-trend, but about six years ago ‘faux finishing” became a dirty word”. Then the Tuckers created a way of breaking the trend mould by recreating their product in order to keep it relevant. (Creation stage).

7.  Let People know of Your Services

How to turn your hobby into a career

The world is a global village now, isn’t it? The internet makes it easier than ever to let you inform people of what you can do and the kind of services you can render. Gone are those days where you would have to allocate a vital part of your budget to advertising and generating leads for your business but hey! Thank goodness! Technology has saved the day. You can begin to post your goods/services on your favourite networks such as Facebook, IG, Pinterest, Twitter, Google-My-Business and the rest of them.

You can also help do yourself some good in advertising yourself by word-of-mouth. Probably in a gathering; get together, party, family meeting and stuff. This also helps project your brand and let people around you know you likely offer what they might just need as you may never know, your first customer might just be 2 blocks away.

8.  Connect and Maintain Your Brand

You can make connections with people of like minds which could be an incredible benefit to a small business owner. Making connections can be possible through social media platforms such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and the likes.

Always remember to connect with caution as some people may never be willing to share business ideas with you, thinking you may extract their knowledge and use it in creating an empire for yourself. The truth is there will always be competition in business but does this stop you from connecting, gaining knowledge and growing? No! It’s okay to feel competitive with other businesses and to compare your success but remaining true and maintaining your brand and vision is the surest way to success.

BOTTOM LINE

If all of these processes are carried out properly, you will finally have a career you enjoy. You will actually love going to work, feel the workday go by smoothly instead of dragging on, and you won’t feel as much need for a weekend as you will love your job. You will finally have your ideal lifestyle.

So, you see, you definitely can achieve what you set your mind to do, especially when it’s something you love. All you need is a clear goal and staying true to it.

Your dreams are valid!

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