Why I Made My Hobbies Into A Business
It’s one of the only truths I’ve come to acknowledge as fact that everything you love in life is connected to what you should be doing. Since I can remember I’ve loved books, paper, notebooks, art supplies, leather tools, inks, calligraphy nibs, pens, illustrations… you get the picture. I spent most of my childhood with my nose either in the pages of a book or a notebook, scribbling away at some sort of idea I had for a story or art piece. My favourite shops were, (and still probably are, Hobbycraft and Waterstones).
Years later, and a few months into working for myself full-time, I’m finding all of the things I loved or was interested in as a child have come back and begun manifesting in my own practice. There are no accidents when it comes to what interests you - everything is linked and if you listen to it you will find an entire unexhausted pool of passions from your childhood waiting to be brought into your adult world.
Unfortunately unless we actively sit with ourselves and tap into that, (probably dormant) aspect of ourselves, we’ll never find those interests. We live in a society that prioritises all of the material success of capitalism which means that we begin devaluing the things which actually matter to us. How do you get back to that state of doing what you enjoy day in, day out while making money from it? It’s really very simple: you simply monetise what you enjoy doing and being surrounded by in your spare time.
And if you can do that, then you can build the life you dreamed of having and escape the 9-5.
For example, I love notebooks. I adore them, I love the different styles, the way that you can have one for each element of life from recipes to scrapbooking to journaling. However I realised, probably around six months ago, that I had never found a notebook that actually suited me. That suited my life, my style, my aesthetic. So I made my own. And then I realised that there might be others out there who loved notebooks and wanted something a bit more special than they could find in the shops, but not so special that they never used it. So I made a part of my business out of my love of and passion for notebooks that are beautiful, useful and not intimidating.
When I made my business, I started off with things that I thought would make me money. Bear in mind I was in full-time University education and then working a full-time job when I started building SOLEMNIKO. The goal was to make myself as attractive as possible, with the skillset I already had, to a market that would be able to use that skillset and pay for it. The Consultancy element of SOLEMNIKO was where I earned the most money in the first three years, it was also the part of SOLEMNIKO that required the least marketing, salesmanship and effort because I was going to companies with skills rather than products. I didn’t have to make more examples, buy in materials or work out packaging.
However as I went full-time with SOLEMNIKO, I realised that consulting and offering freelance services to companies wasn’t where my passions sat. I didn’t feel excited when I got a new brief through, I didn’t feel fulfilled when the work I’d been doing was finished… I was incredibly grateful for the business and experience, but it wasn’t what I envisioned myself doing day in and day out for the rest of my life.
So I sat with the things I loved, and as I did that I suddenly remembered all of the things I had loved and been interested in as a child. Bookbinding, shops full of rolls of fabric, tools, inks, notebooks, stacks of beautifully patterned paper, words that no one uses anymore, illustration. And slowly, as I began exploring these passions, business emerged and clients found me.
There is no secret to building a business that you love, it’s merely about doing what you love. Which sounds cliche but it’s the only thing in business that I have found to be true. If you want to be successful, (and success looks different for everyone) you should pursue everything you were interested in as a child, and everything you still enjoy as an adult. View the world as a sweetie shop and each jar is an opportunity to try something you’ve forgotten about until now.
Below is a list of how I would suggest going about finding out what your best business idea will be. And your best business idea may not be the most lucrative, but it will be the one that you look forward to showing up to every single day year in and year out.
List out all of the things you enjoyed doing as a child.
List all of the things you enjoy doing as an adult.
Are there any similarities? Even if they seem vague (for example did you love baking as a child and now you love going out for coffee to your local bakery for fresh croissant?).
Write down your aesthetic, when you think of you what are you made up of? (for example I’m made up of morning sunlight through the trees, pancakes on the stove, fresh sheets, rolls of material, antiquarian bookstores, the smell of rain. etc).
Are there words, feelings or phrases in the list of your aesthetic that match what you enjoyed doing as a child and what you enjoy doing now?
Are there jobs or crafts or professions where you feel jealous of the people who do them? Make a list. (Often jealousy is the best indicator of where we feel we are lacking in our own life, if you feel jealous of someone, work through it until you find what they have that you don’t.)
Do some research on any of the words or things that have kept cropping up. Is there a job out there that offers you that experience, or is there a market that requires what that would offer them?
Start small, one step every day just work on building up an idea of what your business would be about and how you’d bring it into being.