This is a guest post from Liz McGowen.
It goes a bit like this: a guru shows you how to start a blog.
This blog is going to lead to untold wealth and soon vacations can become weekly events.
Thank God. At last!
They tell you to go with what you know and like, so by dinnertime on Saturday you’ve decided that your niche will be your passion. Bowling. Watercress. Pole dancing. The perfect brownie
pan.
It doesn’t matter. With enough research and enough hope, anything can become a prospective niche.
You are excited. The future is bright and shiny. Aruba, here we come!
Now, flash forward a week.
You have a blog. You have written no less than 20 articles on said topic, and you have set up every social media account known to mankind.
You are now driving down the street in a car emblazoned with your handle – “Watercress Wizard” — on the side.
But deep in your heart something has changed.
The problem is that now, instead of loving watercress, you can’t stand it. You’ve written a whole cookbook on it (yep, that’s your opt-in, baby!), detailed its history, and know all the intimate details about growing and cooking with it to perfection.
You are starting to hate those little green leaves with a passion.
You secretly think you might go screaming from Whole Foods if you even see watercress again. Wouldn’t that be a sight? I can picture a bright green Watercress Wizard wagon (or perhaps a Nova?) zooming out of the Whole Foods parking lot, wheels squealing around the turn…
Oh, sweetie, somebody forgot to tell you one crucial thing: You don’t start a prospective business based on your interest. That’s what a hobby is for, and having hobbies is important.
Now, if this scenario sounds familiar to you and you are a kindred spirit to our friend the Watercress Wizard, I’d bet that hobbies are seriously missing from your life.
It’s likely that you’ve killed them all.
Every. Single. One.
It’s a little like wanting to date your best friend. Either way it goes, you miss out on something special. If you date them, and it does work out, you’re now short a best friend with whom you can dish about the person you’re dating.
On the other hand, if you date them and it doesn’t work out, there goes both the best friend and any hope of romance, so it’s back to square one on both accounts.
If you base a business on short-term interests — which, my friend, you have to write about and focus on every single day for a long, long time before those tickets to Aruba will be in your hand — you’ll suck all the fun out of it in no time flat.
But let’s say you keep your love of watercress as a hobby. This allows you to develop your interest, letting it wax and wane. You can be first in line when the latest copy of “Watercress Today” hits the newsstands. You can eat, talk about, and generally revel in your life-long love ofwatercress forever and ever. You can be excited, with no expectations or pressures, about the next watercress convention. You can implement the latest watercress-oriented technology as you plan your backyard garden. You can treat your friends and family to new watercress-based foods whenever they are lucky enough to be guests in your home.
You can even blog about it, tweet it, and be all over Facebook about it.
As a hobbyist.
If you wish.
And if you don’t wish, it will be okay. The health of your bank account will have little to do with it (assuming the prices of watercress remain stable, you know, and you don’t over-extend yourself in some crazy watercress MLM scheme).
And if you naturally become the Watercress Wizard through your continued pursuit of this hobby and start connecting with tons of people online to share your passion, and if one day (after your kids are safely out of the house so they have no fear of being seen in your presence) you do decide to drive a watercress-themed car, that is fine. If one day your Watercress Wizard Cookbook hits the Amazon Bestseller List, fabulous.
But, maybe by then, your passion may meld into other herbs. Cilantro. Dill. I hear there are several varieties of parsley.
Or, maybe, you’ll discover that you wish to explore long-distance basket weaving. Or, maybe those earlier fascinations with the perfect brownie pan.
There are millions of hobbies.
You need them.
Having hobbies is a sign you have a life. You need to have the freedom of a four-year-old to explore, change, and grow in those outside interests. These bring you new knowledge, new friends, and take you to places you never thought of. They expand your world.
So, please, expand as much as you can. Explore whatever strikes your fancy and develop a life that is passionate in many areas. It will make the sustained focus required to create a successful business that much more possible.
Just beware of dating your hobby.
Liz McGowen is a life balance coach for entrepreneurs. Just for the record, she is kind of lukewarm about watercress.
Image by HealthAliciousNess
Loved the twists you took in this one. Graciously stepping from one concept to another. From a business to a hobby.
On many aspects I do not agree with you. But I like the way you wrote this, so the reading was a good one.
But after having a business for more than 10 years (yes, that type of business, with employees and paychecks and stress) I think I learned one thing: if you do not like what you do for a living, you’re in big trouble. Because, sooner or later, life itself will start to look (and feel) like a burden. It will feel like you “have” to do stuff, instead of just doing it. Because you like it. Because you know you can do this really good. Because you enjoy it.
Hobbies are nice and they can sure be an indicator that you have a balanced life, as you noted. But I really don’t see any problem in promoting or demoting a hobby to or from a business.
I get your point. But to start a blog on a topic that you don’t love will not get you so far. You know you can research and expand your knowledge, but to be able to learn about it, you gotta love it.
When you do it with passion, and do it the right way (not in a way that you’d expect to be a rich six figure blogger next month), there won’t be a problem.
I know what ya mean, it can spoil the fun of the hobby but what’s that old saying “love what you do for a living and you’ll never work a day in your life”. I’m a perfect example of this, I loved HGTV, watched it as much as possible, then I got a job as the display person in a furniture store, my job was to make sure the store was “pretty” at all times. Well shortly after that I hated watching HGTV. But I still loved my job, couldn’t wait to get to work each day. But watching TV about Design, made it so I was “doing” design 24/7. I think the secret to having a job, or writing a blog about your passion is to make it have enough variety in it so you don’t go crazy. In other words don’t pick Watercress, pick food. Now I have switched to Web Design and finally after 2 years away from it I can watch a tiny bit of HGTV. lol But my love of Design has paid my bills for years and I wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s my hobby, my passion, and my life line……..
I almost agree
with your post! You hobby is your hobby because you like doing it. But making a
blog out of it is something else then doing your hobby. So when you do that
your will start hating your hobby because your hobby is becoming something else.
Making the blog is not your hobby, so you don’t really like making a blog that
much as your hobby. So you will start associating
the feeling of making the blog with your hobby…
But I don’t
think this counts for everyone. Some people like their hobby and like to talk
or write about it too. So it really depends on the person rather he or she is
going to hate the hobby.
The rules for making a business never change. You don’t have to love it. You just have to provide something that other people are prepared to pay for. A business doesn’t care if you are ‘passionate’ about it (excuse me while I throw up). It has no feelings. A business works, i.e. makes profits, if you do the right things at the right time. Research, market, price, deliver, repeat.
Maybe you can turn your hobby into a business, maybe not. Nobody cares. If you want to make money there are rules. One of them is that it doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Your choice.
Valid points, Ann. But I wouldn’t call that a rule. And the point isn’t that
anybody else cares. It’s that you care enough about what you’re doing, out
of all the other things you could be doing. If I wanted to be unhappy with
my work I could just get a shit job working for someone else and not do this
at all.
It’s not just semantic hair-splitting to say there’s a difference between
doing something you enjoy and turning your hobby into a business. Blog
consulting was never a hobby of mine, but I enjoy it. My hobby is I play
WoW. Don’t see that as becoming a job any time soon.
As amatter of interest – what is your business?
I was kinda curious about that myself.
I agree about 95% with the sentiments in this post because I have seen clients go through exactly what you talk about and get really bummed out about it.
OTOH, I feel like my hobby is my job and I read self development books for fun, not because I feel I need to. I’ve been coaching full time for 6 years so I guess it may wear off, but I doubt it.
In other words, we’re all different
Liz, great post~!!! My only complaint is there are no watercress recipes included, I have a sudden craving…
But really, you offer some great advice here. I destroyed my fair share of hobbies by trying to turn them into a niche business. So now I just write about how to market niche businesses and keep my hobbies to myself…wait…I forgot to haz hobbies…dammit…
Business/hobby the label dosent matter. Would I rather try to build a business doing something that I love. Absolutely. Does the love determine if the business will make money. Not necessarily.
The biggest problem I see in people that I work with is that they niche themselves within an inch of their lives. This “inch wide, mile deep” theory has knobs on it, and doesn’t work for everybody.
Wow! Fantastic post, I can’t agree more. And I have first hand experience at this as I turned my first hobby into a blog and it really did suck the life out of it for me!
I Really enjoyed the style in which you covered this subject and I do somewhat agree that it is unusual to be able to turn a hobby into a business, but there are instances where it has been successfully achieved.
For my part, although I am passionate about my business – and it does keep me in watercress – it was never a hobby. I would advise anyone with a passion for something to only try to develop it into a business if they already feel constantly compelled to tell everyone about it for free.
Nice! This is why I encourage my peep to start “umbrella blogs” that allow you to discuss multiple interests. I firmly believe that you don’t need 1 specific niche to build a sustainable online business. A more general ‘lifestyle’ blog can work if you have a cohesive theme that links everything together.
The umbrella blog is also a great “research tool” to figure out which topics you should be creating products around. Some posts will naturally go more viral than others. That’s how I’ve done it anyway.
Great stuff, Liz.
Great points here – and interesting to read the comments!
I want to wake up in the morning and be excited about my day so a number of things have to work for me. I HAVE to like/love what I do – it has to be meaningful work or I will read a book, answer blog posts, tweet all day instead of during my coffee breaks etc….
Most people never look at other options – they have to pay bills and eat so they don’t have the ‘luxury’ of exploring their ‘creative’ side – and we are not brought up to believe that work should be fulfilling and useful. You have to live with yourself for the rest of your life – you should be picky about how you are going to spend every day of it!
Not everyone is a creative genius – if you turn your hobby into a business it needs to be more of an obsession than a hobby and business rules still apply. Be sure about what that passion really is – crocheting might be your hobby but actually you love being part of the group, sharing new designs, teaching… not the same thing at all! Look at why you do something.
I do ‘art’ - it might have started as a hobby 30 years ago but it is how I think and what I breathe and it gets in the way of everything so I had better just make it my business and make it work!
“Most people never look at other options – they have to pay bills and eat so
they don’t have the ‘luxury’ of exploring their ‘creative’ side – and we are
not brought up to believe that work should be fulfilling and useful.”
I think what we’re starting to see is an economy in which adaptability,
synthesis and creativity are some of the qualities which give people the
greatest chance of not only living a more meaningful life but also being
financially rewarding. You could argue that we don’t have the luxury to
ignore our creative side any longer.
I really like your post ,really heplful and looking forward to your next post….. Again thanks for this post
You’re a good writer indeed, you had me smile!
Although some points are right, like turning every hobby into profit might not work, doing what we love for a living is possible. A awful lot of experts recommend it, like the late Steve Jobs. And researches on happiness at work show that when you love what you do there, you’re a better worker (Book Happiness at Work).
Some of the keys to make an income from it is to do it smart and respond to others’ needs.
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