Michelle Rodger: Hobbies can pay if you learn how to mix business and leisure

Published on Thursday 16 September 2010 17:02

IT'S the dream of hobbyists everywhere, the opportunity to turn a favourite pastime into a successful moneymaking venture.

By it's very nature, a hobby is something you do in your spare time. It's easy to be passionate about something you do for fun. But is it possible to turn that into a successful, profitable, scaleable, full-time business?

Inventor Trevor Bayliss did it. From tinkering in his garden shed to creating a real business, the inventor of the wind-up radio joined a rare group of enthusiasts who converted a hobby into a profitable venture.

And SuperJam founder Fraser Doherty did it too. Aged just 14, he started making jam to his grandmother's secret recipe and selling it to neighbours and farmers market. By the time he left school he was making a thousand jars a week.

Now just 21, Doherty has launched his SuperJam in Waitrose, as well as Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, and it been entered into the national museum of Scotland as an example of an iconic Scottish brand.

Doherty says he can't imagine anything he would find as much fun or exciting as running his own business doing something that he loves: making jam.

"I remember how special it was the first time I saw my products on the shelves of Waitrose," says Doherty. "It really has been a wonderful adventure and it has changed my life."

The hardest part about turning a hobby into business is actually recognising whether or not it's a viable venture. Just because you are passionate about something doesn't mean there are enough equally passionate people out there who will be prepared to pay for it.

In many cases, the simple fact it's a hobby means it's a lifestyle choice, that you may be able to create a small business, but not necessarily scale it to global brand status.

There are obvious advantages: hobbyists tend to know an awful lot about their hobby, and about other people who share their passion. Product and market knowledge is key.

But there are disadvantages too: you can be too close to product/service to be able to view it dispassionately, and make the necessary, and often difficult, financial and business decisions.

And passion on its own is not enough. Passion for business is very different to passion for a hobby.

Amanda Porrelli started her internet marketing business after spending 10 years immersed in social media. The founder of lessthan3 loves her work, finds it rewarding and says she's more willing to go the extra mile because her passion means it doesn't feel like work the way her old 9-5 job did.

For Pauline Randall, the focus on the customer rather than the focus on hobby was difficult to come to terms with. As a developer who creates "virtual worlds" online, she used to use her skill to design and landscape gardens. But the lure of commercialisation was strong and she found herself creating e-learning tools for educational institutions, such as Imperial College London.

Handing over the fun bit, the creation and development, to others in order to grow the business was tough. And she also found her business was changing direction.

"While it is a hobby you can immerse yourself in the bits you really enjoy even if no one wants to buy it," explains Randall. "When it is a business you have to create what the client wants and how they want it - it might not always be how you'd like to do it, given the choice, but you need to be flexible if you are going to have clients - they are not going to pay you to have your own way all the time."

For Alex Waterstone and his two friends, gaming was their hobby until the end of last year when they chucked in their day jobs to launch Haiku Interactive.

They now make their own games and sell them, but in order to make ends meet they also provide contract programming and design skills to larger companies and game publishers.

Being too close to their hobby has also had an impact. Waterstone says the trio is actually finding that marketing their own products is extremely important, but it takes up a lot of time.

"It's easy to think that our games should sell based on their own merit, rather than us having to actively sell them, so we've really had to open our eyes to this side of business ownership in the past couple of months."

Hobbies are fun. Running a business can be fun too. But make sure you don't ruin the enjoyment of either by combining them to their detriment.