Turn a Hobby Into a Business: The Knitter's Runway.
To turn a hobby into a business, Ping Rodrigo learned knitting on a coffee break and sold to neighbours first. Those sales taught her the craft, but then she went beyond people who knew her. When her employer closed down, the knitting was already her income.
From a coffee break to a department store.
In the nineteen-eighties, Ping Rodrigo worked for a company in Bacolod City, in the Philippines. She watched bank employees knit on their coffee break and asked to be taught. Then she made socks, blouses, baby clothes and blankets after work. Also, she used nothing that belonged to her employer.
Why neighbours were a runway.
Her first customers were neighbours and friends, the very sales this chapter disqualifies. However, selling to friends and family first is excellent for learning and useless for concluding. It teaches you how to make the thing, what it costs and what to say. But it cannot show whether a stranger would pay.
How she chose to turn a hobby into a business.
Rodrigo went outside the circle of people who knew her. She supplied a wholesaler by the sack and traded with a Japanese buyer for more than a year. Her work also reached the city's largest department store and won her industry's first prize for garments. So her plan to make money knitting was tested beyond kindness.
When her employer closed down, her evening work was already her income. In short, to turn a hobby into a business, start with the smallest version on an ordinary afternoon.
Start to turn a hobby into a business tonight.
List three things your warm network has taught you about making and pricing your offer.
Name one place outside your circle where someone who doesn't know your face could buy.
From the book.
There's a second thing in her story I nearly missed. She learned the craft by watching people do it on their coffee break and asking to be taught, which cost her nothing and required no plan, no capital and no permission from anybody. The distance between watching somebody knit and supplying a department store is enormous, and she covered it by starting with the smallest possible version of the thing on an ordinary afternoon.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 12: One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job
Questions about turn a hobby into a business.
Can I turn a hobby into a business by selling to neighbours?
Neighbours are a place to learn, not to conclude. Rodrigo used them as a runway, then sold beyond her circle.
Did Rodrigo use her employer's resources?
No. She made everything in her own time after work, using nothing that belonged to her employer.
What happened when her employer closed?
By then her evening knitting was already her income rather than her hobby.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 12, “One stranger, one payment, while you still have the job”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Building Credibility as a New Business: Own It.
- 02 First Sale to a Stranger: The Six Conditions.
- 03 Is One Sale Enough Validation: What It Proves.
- 04 Employee Duty of Loyalty: Prepare, Don't Solicit.
- 05 Fired for Side Business: Four Questions to Ask.
- 06 Turn a Hobby Into a Business: The Knitter's Runway.
- 07 How Long to Get First Sale: Six to Eleven Months.
- 08 No Sales for My Business: What Each Result Means.