You could make the case that the fear of failure is the number one reason that people don’t choose to turn their hobbies into businesses. The second one is the fear of marketing. However, we’ll get to that later. In this section, we want to stick with the topic of fear of failure.
It’s not uncommon for people who have never started a business to think that they will end up as card twirlers on the side of the road. Many think that successful entrepreneurs were either born that way or got lucky. And you can easily make the case that being born a natural entrepreneur is the same as being lucky.
When it comes to people, who belong to makerspaces that number is even higher. It’s almost a truism that most makers at local makerspaces believe that turning your hobby into a business will cause your business to fail. And if that’s not bad enough, you will end up hating the hobby that you started out loving.
The second reason that people don’t start businesses is the fear of marketing. More specifically, the fear that you will have to do things that are distasteful or become someone who is distasteful to be around. I think this concern holds back more people than anything else that new business owners face.
The majority of people say that they hate marketers and/or salespeople. Most would prefer to spend time with any other group of people. They either fear being manipulated or they dislike the arrogance that marketers and/or salespeople exude.
Now let’s handle those objections in order. First, the starving artist myth is more of a choice rather than a truism as Jeff Goins wrote in his book called, Real Artists don’t Starve. There are things that you can do to ensure that you don’t go broke while you are doing the things that you enjoy. The most important of which is to build subscription services.
Subscription Services are much like community building efforts rather than discreet says. They are not transactional. Instead, subscription services are more relational. You could even think of them as being conversational. The reason being that it takes a lot of conversations to build a community that is willing, to support you in all your creative efforts.
Community building is the answer to the challenges that a lot people have with marketing. If you truly love your hobby, then you should be willing to become an advocate for it. If you want to make your living pursuing a given profession, then you should want to be around people who share your love of that profession.
For the record, simply spending your time marketing will not stop you from going broke. You have also got to be willing to practice your hobby. You got to be willing to develop your skill. The hard truth is that it takes a lot content to develop a community which supports you. In most cases, you’ve got to produce hundreds of individual pieces of work.
The good news is that subscriptions services are a lot like annuities that can generate lifelong earnings. This is also why real subscription makers don’t go broke. They understand that they enhance the recurring value of their subscription service by simply continuing to practice their art and chatting with people who enjoy the work they are doing.
Zachary Alexander