Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast, Episode Eight: Can My Hobby Become A Business? This is another episode in the Life Of An Outsider series. You can find the link for that series in the footer of the website, BipolarExcellence.com.

All right. Hobbies into businesses.

Generally, no. You could make your hobby a business. Of course it’s possible. The question is, should you? Now keeping the focus on high functioning, bipolar people this could blow up in your face even more so than the regular Joe.

We’re more devoted, more attached to the things we’re passionate about. And the danger here is, I feel, a hobby for anybody really, but for us? Those of us tinged with bipolar? The hobby, it can be a life saving thing all by itself, and we wouldn’t want to mess with that. So please consider that right off the top.

You might need that hobby as a form of therapy, a form of meditation. It’s almost like self-medication depending on what, like lifting is like self-medication for a lot of people.

But if you really need that hobby just to keep your shit together, just to stay on an even keel and just to be a good person out in the world, with the tendencies, bipolar people like us tend to have, you don’t want to mess with your hobby and make it a business.

But you definitely could. Sometimes the hobby is your inner self finding something that it wants to expand upon and you just need to get more serious about it. You need to up your game, your approach with the hobby.

If the world around you is giving you feedback that there’s a career in this, maybe you should just proceed, carefully. Because that brings up point two: no matter who you are, when you have a hobby, unless… let’s even extend it out to a career or a job, a set of skills, something you’re really awesome at.

Turning it into a business? That’s a separate beast, entirely. Doing a thing well, and running a business in which that well done thing takes place, are two entirely different animals. To run a business, takes a different set of skillsets and it’s totally unrelated to how well you do the job or how much you love it. Doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Running a business is a different set of goals from doing the thing, well. When you take your hobby and become a business, depending on how big you go with it, you’re going to need a website. You’re going to possibly need a business bank account. You’re going to have to set up an online shopping cart.

If you have a real world business, brick and mortar, you got a location, a physical location. People have to come to, to do business with you. You’re going to need a point of sale system. You’re going to start needing to keep tax records. You’re going to need something other than a, what do you call it? Who are the tax people?

I’m completely blanking, of course, now that I’m recording… H and R block type stuff is not going to cut it. They can, but if you’re serious about building a business, you want a CPA. Now you got to bring that into the mix.

You’re going to need, depending on what it is you do, some kind of insurance to protect your business. Liability insurance at the bare minimal.

So somebody tries to sue you, they can only sue the business, not you. Cause there’s another key point. You are not your business, unless you improperly set it up and leave yourself exposed in such a way that someone, if they sue you, they will take your house and car and the clothes off your back and the food out of your mouth.

When you’re incorporated, they can only come after what is business and they leave your personal life alone. That’s the law. Liability insurance. You’re going to be able to afford to get sued. You don’t want them to take your business simply because it’s not your home life. You would like to keep the business.

The liability insurance is the money that would cover that, that earlier mess, I just discussed. There’s all kinds of other… there’s marketing. There’s business networking. You might need to get into various directories, get into various community groups or national groups where you become a member to help market your business.

You got to do stuff online in a way, you know, to sell yourself that you didn’t have to do when you’re just screwing around with Facebook and Twitter and what have you, and just enjoying yourself. Now you represent a business.

That’s another thing. Now you’re a brand. You don’t want to do stuff like be an asshole in traffic with your car that has a wrap on it that explains the business, your furniture making business or something, and you’re cutting people off and throwing them the bird.

Should you do such a thing in your regular life, you can’t do that when you represent your business. You’ve got to consider all these things when you’re wondering if your hobby can become a business.

What I feel for most people, for most bipolar people is the hobby provides a clue to what you’re good at. Something in it is one part of whatever the business is you could one day become. If that’s even a goal of yours.

I’d say generally speaking, protect the hobby, keep it at hobby level. Cause that’s your precious little thing. That’s your gem. Keep it to yourself and let it continue to provide you whatever good it does. And don’t turn it into something else.

If you really do think that your hobby is something you can turn into a career, then you got someone like me, you can hire to kick it around with and we can make better sense of, is this a smart move to make or not?

And there are other business people you’d want to confer with to make sure you do it in a proper way. Proper fashion. Keep yourself legal. Keep yourself safe. Other than that I would say, leave your hobby alone and just enjoy it. I’m tapped. Next episode!