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Should you turn your hobby into a business?

Develop a solid business plan if you want to turn your hobby into a career

…continued from previous edition

This question isn’t always a straightforward one. Although there’s a lot to be said for doing what you love, turning your hobby into a career means a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Here are some questions to ask yourself while you’re deciding:

Do I have the time to dedicate to starting a business?

Going from a hobby to a profession is often going to take some work. As we explore in our open step on making your hobby your job, it takes time, planning, and a fair slice of luck to get your venture off the ground. You need to determine whether or not you can dedicate enough time to starting a business.

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Do I have the skills and know-how to make a living?

If your plan is to transition from pastime to profession, at least some of your income will need to come from your new business. You’ll need to be honest with yourself when assessing your abilities. Will customers pay for your product or service? And are you good enough to bring in a consistent source of income?

Can I balance a job and transitioning to a new career?

Often, a hobby becomes a side-hustle before it becomes a career. However, trying to balance the two can often be tiring. As well as working full-time, you’ll also need to plan your business, find potential clients, and practise your craft.

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Am I prepared to lose a pastime?

Ultimately, turning your hobby into a business means that you might lose your hobby as a pastime. Instead, you’ll have to spend time doing it to make a profit. Although this can still be enjoyable for many, it can take the shine of it.

If you are going to monetise your hobby, you should make sure that you have other pursuits in your life that you do purely for pleasure and relaxation. Sometimes, by turning everything into a side hustle, you can end up burning out.

Tips for turning your hobby into a career

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So, if you’re committed to making your pastime a professional endeavour and prepared for all that entails, you might be wondering where to get started. Of course, there are various ways you could go about it, and the below is just one such method:

  • Start with a business plan

One of the best places to start if you’re trying to convert your hobby into a career is to come up with a solid business plan for your idea. We’ve got a detailed guide on writing a business plan, so we won’t go into too much detail here.

Your plan should give you the vision, structure, and strategy for how you’re going to make your hobby into a money-making venture. It will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of what you offer, as well as analyse the market you’ll be entering. You can check out our guide on how to start a business for more information.

  • Decide on your structure

One important decision to make fairly early on is what kind of structure your company will take. If you’re planning on being a freelancer and want the flexibility to make choices, you might consider registering as a sole trader. However, if you want to add credibility to your business and minimise your legal liability, a limited company could be a good option.

We’ve written in detail about business structure and registration, so it’s worth familiarising yourself with the various options available when you’re starting a business. And, of course, you can always start as a sole trader and build your way up to a corporate entity as time passes.

  • Start building your brand

If you’re thinking about hobbies that make money, you’ve probably already got an idea of brands that you might aspire to. Thinking about your own branding is, therefore, a crucial step in making the leap to being self-employed.

You can learn more about market analysis and reaching your target customers in our full guide. You can take our course on strategic brand management to find out how to build your brand identity and strategy.

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  • Develop an online presence

Digital marketing will likely play a significant role in helping you shape your new business. Being able to access an online audience means you can advertise and sell your product or service.

Whether it’s through techniques such as SEO and Google Ads or creating a strong brand presence on social media sites such as Instagram, there are many ways you can get your name out there. 

  • Create a marketing strategy

This point really ties together the previous ones. To ensure that you’re making a concerted effort across your branding and marketing activities, creating a marketing strategy is essential.

This article can give you the direction you need when it comes to getting your brand established in your niche. It will outline your approach to advertising and sales, ensuring you spend your money in the right places.

  • Reach new customers

One of the hardest things when transitioning from a hobby to a business is to find people willing to buy into your idea. Of course, branding, marketing and an online presence will all help with this. However, you’ll also need to think about other ways of reaching people.  

Whether it’s networking events, getting involved in local projects, or asking for referrals from your existing customers, there are various ways you can expand your user base and build business relationships. If you’re trying to turn a profitable hobby into a profitable business, you’ll need to reach lots of people.

  • Monitor your progress

When it comes to hobbies that make money and eventually become a business, there’s no defined timeline to work towards. You might start off having your hobby as a side hustle, gradually building towards a fully-fledged business.  Or you might take the plunge all at once. However, keeping tabs on your progress is essential.

As part of your business plan, you’ll set goals for your business. You can then measure your progress towards these aims, analysing what’s working well and what needs improvement. In doing so, you can figure out how you want your business to grow or whether you want it to be just a hobby once again.

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Final thoughts

Profitable hobbies certainly exist, and it’s possible to turn them into something more than a side-project. However, hobbies that make money often require a lot of time and dedication. Turning your hobby into a business involves risk and hard work, but it’s certainly an achievable goal.

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Attempts to kill natural therapy?

Sikaman Palava

Anyone who has the devil’s bene­diction of getting sick of diabetes and jaundice at the same time would surely blame an experienced witch for his or her palaver. Fact is, the combination is a dreaded one with the form and visage of an obituary.

The bio-chemical analysis of the unholy combination is, however, within arm’s reach. Diabetes doesn’t tolerate sugar and jaundice can’t get cured with­out glucose (sugar). The two diseases are therefore irreconcilable under any medical condition. They are just not of the same womb!

So the terrified patient has to choose between two styles of dying: either curing the diabetes or dying of jaundice or curing the jaundice and falling into a diabetic coma en route to a cold room transit. The next available plane is destined for the cemetery, meaning the world no longer has any business to do with you.

Now, forgetting about pathological combinations and narrowing the focus on diabetes, one can still crumble in fear. The reason is that diabetes as a disease is not a benevolent ailment. We can understand this because it has nev­er been philanthropic in any sense of the word. It demands its pound of flesh, and that is often worth a human life.

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglyce­mia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

TREACHERY

I am writing this piece because of the sundry sinister attempts of treach­ery, overt and covert, being subtly perpetrated to kill Natural Therapy which claims a cure for diabetes. The claim is completely at variance with the assertion of orthodox practitioners who believe that diabetes can only be man­aged, but can never be cured.

Basically, diabetes occurs when the pancreas is not producing enough insulin to cope with blood sugar, or is not producing insulin at all. The result is a debilitating disease with several compli­cations that can lead to death.

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To combat the disease, one has to be put on diaonil or daily insulin injections supposedly to manage the disease, not to cure it because according to medical gurus, it cannot be cured.

Natural therapists have a different and more progresso-radical view. They say diabetes can be cured and they are proving it every day of the week. Happi­ly, medical doctors who develop diabe­tes are now coming for natural therapy, albeit under the cover of darkness. Today, there are many living testimonies of a natural therapy cure for the deadly ailment.

I was really sad about a silly attempt to frustrate the efforts of a well-known Texas-trained naturopathic physician who has toned down the orthodox medi­cal chorus that diabetes is not cur-able. Many of his patients who had been on insulin for years before seeing him are off it.

The medical crusade is a veritable one, and the good news is being propa­gated by those who have seen the light. Dr Kwesi Ofei-Agyemang’s success story is one that needs to be told from the roof-tops. But ask me, how is he being frustrated?

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On October 28, 1996, a diabetic patient of Dr Ofei-Agyemang had her sugar level checked. It was 6.1 mmo1/1. After treatment using naturopathic methods, she became well and was asked to check her sugar level again at a laboratory (name withheld) on 6-11- 96. Surprisingly, the lab recorded 13.3 mmol/l; meaning that her situation had worsened by far.

When she brought the report, Dr Ofei-Agyemang was sceptical about it. The patient was supposed to have recovered, or at least was recovering. The level could, therefore, not be 13.3. He rushed to the laboratory to demand an explanation.

When Dr Ofei-Agymang queried the report, the technician said he was sorry and added that he’d investigate the error.

Meanwhile at another laboratory where he sent the patient for another test to cross-check the earlier result, the patient’s sugar level recorded a low 2.9 mmo1/1, a correct reflection of her improved state of health.

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The doctor was furious for a very good reason. If he had taken the earlier lab report seriously and continued treat­ment to further reduce the patient’s sugar level, the patient would have sunk into coma and possibly died.

“This is not the first time this is happening,” Dr Ofei-Agyemang told me in an interview last week Friday. When I send my patients for tests, some lab technicians deliberately don’t return the correct results just because they know the patient is attending a natural therapy clinic.

“I see it as a subtle attempt to kill naturopathy in this country aside other hidden strategies that are being adopted to sabotage it. They are all out to create a wrong impression in the minds of pa­tients that they are going to the wrong place for treatment when in fact they are at the right place.”

Other attempts include doctors warning their patients never to submit themselves to natural therapy whenever the patients suggest they want to try it, knowing well that orthodox medicine isn’t helping them.

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Look at something else like this one. After Dr Ofei-Agyemang had cured one patient of a disease and placed him on a diet of fruits and vegetables, the patient’s brother (a doctor) advised him to quit the natural diet regimen and to eat plenty of meat and all that has to do with balanced diet.

So the patient quit the natural diet and ate meat to his fill. Before long boils broke out all over his body. Apparently, the body was rejecting the unnatural diet which had become toxic to the body following the spell of natural dieting.

FAILURE

I have been thinking about this diabetic cure controversy for some time now. I was compelled to ask the natural therapist to explain how naturopathy could possibly tread where orthodox medicine has woefully failed as far as a cure to diabetes was concerned.

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He explained that a defective pan­creas only needs to be revived through selective manipulation, diet and urine therapy to make it function again. If de­fects in other organs of the body can be corrected, there should be no medical reason why the pancreas should be an exception, he said.

“What other doctors must know is that once our methods are different, our results will naturally be different,” he said. “What they are supposed to be saying in fact is that ‘according to orthodox medicine, there is no cure for diabetes.’ They should stop saying there is no cure for diabetes because we are curing it. If they doubt it they should come here and see things for them­selves.

“Our methods are natural and include colon irrigation, deep tissue massage which is more effective than physiotherapy, diet, some fast and manipulation, and urine therapy. There is no way any disease can survive a combination of these methods.

Cancerous sores and all kinds of chronic ailments have been cured, dia­betes inclusive.

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“We just rejuvenate the dormant pancreas and it starts producing insulin. Unless the pancreas is cut out through surgery as a result of cancer, we have ways of making it work.”

I spoke to one of his patients, Jamison Ocansey. He was sick of diabe­tes and has been on herbs of all kinds, insulin and dioanil for more than a year. His sugar level fluctuated between 9 to 17 mmo1/c. After treatment, his sugar level is between 5.0 and 5.9 mmol/c.

“People don’t like this method because of the urine that is included in the method of cure,” he said.”I used to feel the same way but as I’m now cured, I’ve an entirely different opinion. Let me also thank your paper Weekly Spectator. It was an article in it that made me come here, so keep spreading the message.

“I used to be very weak and couldn’t walk. Look, now I am as strong as a bull. I eat well and I’m happy.”

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The doctor has cured various types of diseases at his clinic which is 100 metres north of Holy Gardens or Lido, Circle, Accra. What I believe would help us all is that the medical authorities should investigate these cures and come out openly to claim or disclaim them.

Those who are off insulin would also give testimony. That way, natural therapy can become more acceptable and there would be no point in anybody trying to frustrate efforts at entrench­ing it as the better substitute that has no side effects. It should in fact be the ideal complement to orthodox medicine and not an adversary as people want to portray it.

This article was first publish on Satur­day, November 16, 1996

Merari Alomele’s

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

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 It is great to be young

 If I had the power, I believe I may be tempted to remain a child forever. We used to hear statements it is great to be young when growing up.

I did not really comprehend one anybody would wish to be like me, a small boy and not wish to be an adult like my Dad. Those were the days that the family did not sit around a dining table and your Dad’s meal was set up on a small table at a particular spot in the hall.

When I observed the amount of meat that were given to my Dad and what was given to me, l definitely wanted to grow up quickly to also become an adult. Therefore to hear some adults occasionally declare that it is great to be young, was some­thing I could not understand.

My reasoning was that, adults were enjoying a lot of benefits and so for any adult to even consider the possi­bility

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When I grew up however, I have come to appreciate that saying that indeed, it is great to be young. Growing up as a child, all l looked up to was the next day to come as I go to bed. When I woke up, l had no worries about what I would eat before going to school.

Where the next meal was going to come from was not my concern. All l had to do was to make sure that I go to school, study hard and pass my ex­ams and ensure that I am within the first three, in my class. There was no worrying about school fees, chang­ing of school uniforms or clothes in general, something I cannot run from now as an adult.

I now have to provide for some people now and I can now fully un­derstand my Dad’s comment that it is great to be young.

Christmas time was a very inter­esting and exciting time as a child because new clothes were provided for me and my siblings. I recall one Christmas period when I was provid­ed with a suit. It was a memorable occasion in my life as it was the first time I wore a suit.

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I felt very proud wearing the suit and with my new shoes to match, I felt great walking with my friends as we moved from place to place. When a new academic term begins I always looked forward to having a new school uniform. How much it was going to cost or how it was going to be provided was not my concern at all. It was taken for granted that I will get a new uniform at all cost.

I always had a good night’s sleep with the exception of those days that I was suffering from malaria and I had quite a number of such malaria attacks.

Recently my last born jokingly said “Daddy, do not think that I am not going to take money from you when I grow up oh. Even when I get mar­ried and have children, do not think you will be free. I will still collect money from you because you are my father”.

I burst into laughter and said “It is great to be young”. At the moment, her needs are provided by me and until she completes school and starts working, I will continue to provide for her needs. There have been mo­ments that I wish I were a child once again.

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I recall an incident involving my little girlie as I affectionately call my last born, when she pushed a piece of chalk into her nostril and we had to take her to the hospital, and wondering how it was going to come out. While her mother and I were worried at the hospital, she did not seem bothered and in that moment I wished I was a child. When the nurses finally got it out, I was so relieved and she was just smiling, obviously not worried as I was. Indeed, it is great to be young.

NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNA­TIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’

By Laud Kissi-Mensah

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