Don't be scared to turn a hobby into a business

My friend Felix, an electronics engineer, is fanatical about action figures. Scale models of soldiers and tanks and movie figures always demand his full attention. However, as he soon discovered, it is a very expensive hobby, and as the crowd of figures in his apartment grew the money he had available to spend on his hobby shrank.

In order to reverse this state of affairs he opened an online shop three years ago selling secondary figures; the business did quite well and had the added advantage that he was able to purchase products from the wholesalers at a lower price. After two years his business network even reached the manufactures.

He transformed a simple hobby into a successful business with good profit. However, the phone calls and e-mails he had to deal with grew vigorously and paper boxes of toys gradually occupied his apartment. It reached a point where he found that his little hobby kept him constantly working. "Never turn your hobby into a profession", he said.