Should your hobby become your side hustle?

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast. I'm your host Sanjay Parekh. In this captivating season, we've delved into the inspiring stories of numerous entrepreneurs who took the leap into the world of business and never looked back. Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to three remarkable individuals who have transformed their passions into flourishing businesses.

Our focus will be on those who have turned their hobbies into successful careers. whether it's a side hustle or a full-time business. First up is John Wist, a former journalist who transitioned into a video producer. John is the founder of Unite Creative Company, a venture born out of his volunteer work at his church, where he discovered his passion for video production.

Following John, we'll meet Sam Mitchell, a dedicated autism advocate and the creative force behind Autism Rocks and Rolls, a podcast and non-profit organization. Sam has not only turned his passion into a business but is also making a meaningful impact in the community. And last, but certainly not least, we'll introduce you to Jonathan Botset, an innovative mind behind Botset Designs.

Jonathan has successfully established his logo design company dedicated to elevating the branding of various organizations. We have a lot to cover today, so let's dive right in with our first guest. John and uncover the inspiring journeys of these entrepreneurs who took their hobbies to the next level.

As I said in the intro, John Wist is a journalist turned video producer. John's entrepreneurial story starts in 2010 when he started volunteering at his church doing video production. I'm fascinated with John's journey, his dedication, and how he ended up where he is now. But I think John tells the story better, so I'll let him do it.

[00:01:54] John Wist: I am from Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. My current job is I own my own video production company. It's just me, but I call it my own video production company. And I currently serve small businesses and non-profits primarily, doing brand videos and actually a lot of training, online courses, that kind of a thing, has become something that I'm really starting to focus on. 

And my background is in journalism. I come from kind of a journalism world. And video started as kind of a creative outlet outside of the journalism world for me and has become my full-time gig. 

[00:02:32] Sanjay Parekh: John went to school to become a journalist but has always been involved in video production in one way or another.

[00:02:38] John Wist: Yeah, my background in videography really stems back to high school. We had a broadcast class that was pretty much a bunch of teenagers running around making silly videos and calling it school news. It was a lot of fun, but that really lit the fire for me to pursue video and specifically journalism as a career. And so, I went to the University of Maryland and got a bachelor's in broadcast journalism and spent a lot of that time trying to figure out whether I wanted to be on camera, off camera, what role I wanted to play in the future, and decided that off camera was definitely where I wanted to be and more of like a producer role is what my goal was.

[00:03:22] Sanjay Parekh: From there, John spent a few internships doing these types of roles, producing, editing, writing, until he got a job at the local NBC station in Washington, D.C. Throughout this all, video editing always seemed to stick out to him as something he was particularly passionate about. 

[00:03:39] John Wist: And so, editing video has always been a part of pretty much every job I've had, but shooting video, being a videographer, learning the craft of being a video person has not always been a part of that. I got like a little taste of it in college, but that's definitely something that I felt like I wanted to learn more, and I needed an outlet for when I didn't have that in journalism.

So, I started looking for opportunities and found a volunteer opportunity to do that with my church. 

[00:04:11] Sanjay Parekh: From there, John's skills flourished. In exploring creative video editing, John felt a sense of individuality and artistry that he wasn't able to find within his journalism career. 

[00:04:22] John Wist: So I spent several years really learning video over again. In journalism school you learn one way of doing it. And so I wanted to learn a different way to do video, which was more based in a different type of storytelling, a more emotional type of storytelling, I guess. Because in journalism, you have to be very matter of fact, you have to be as unbiased as you possibly can.

[00:04:46] Sanjay Parekh: Over the span of six years, from 2010 to 2016, John honed his newfound passion while volunteering at the church. His dedication and expertise caught the church's attention, and in 2016 they extended an official staff position to him. 

John was excited about this opportunity, but at the same time, he wasn't able to fully dive into video production. He found he was wearing a lot of hats at the church. However, things changed a little bit when the pandemic hit. Here's John again.

[00:05:15] John Wist: I was just very open with them that I was considering making this transition from just doing this on the side to wanting to do it full time. And they were really supportive of that transition and actually allowed me to slowly make it. So still at one point being full-time but having a little extra time on the side to go do these projects and then transitioning to a part-time role at the church so I could then become part-time with freelancing basically, until I ultimately transitioned completely to my own business, to my own LLC. 

So, it's just been a, it was a slow process over probably about six to eight months, but it actually worked out really well. and I think set me up well to launch with just more confidence, more financial stability, that kind of a thing. 

[00:06:08] Sanjay Parekh: Now at this point, John has done it. He turned his hobby into a full time small business by founding Unite Creative Company. But with that, like any entrepreneur, John faced uncertainty when leaving his job in journalism to then launching his company. He noted two different aspects that left him feeling unsure about it, all at both stages of his career transition.

[00:06:32] John Wist: The first one from moving from local news into the church, nonprofit realm, was nerve wracking because I was moving from a job where I was paid very well. and I had a very consistent schedule to a job where I knew my schedule was going to be a lot different. 

I was going to be working weekends. I was going to have a lot more flexibility in my schedule, but at the same time that breeds a lot of anxiety in a way because you mix up your whole family routine. And so that was nerve wracking, and I was taking a pretty significant pay cut to do it. And so, there's the financial stress of, can we actually do this?

[00:07:13] Sanjay Parekh: And then John faced uncertainty when launching his own company. 

[00:07:17] John Wist: With the second transition that I've made from the church to now having my own company, I would say there are a lot of similar stresses. Financial is by far the highest one because it's all on me. I have to provide for myself solely.

[00:07:37] Sanjay Parekh: A lot of John's stress was based on finance. Luckily for John, his wife also works and was able to provide some stability when John was making this transition.

[00:07:47] John Wist: We were a two-income household, and so having a two income household, we have an understanding now that if my wife, she's a nurse, if she needs to pick up more shifts to help kind of supplement, maybe a slow time or a slow season in the business, then we can do that.

And I think we always felt comfortable making the transitions because we knew that there was some way to supplement, there was some way to back it up. But it doesn't always help when the tough times come, or when you're making the transition and you realize, for example, like I'm losing my health care, I'm losing my retirement.

I still have a retirement, right? I can still bring that money with me, but no one's going to help me do that anymore. We're going to have to switch our insurance from my previous job to my wife's job so that we can still have insurance, but it's going to be more expensive. And so, all of these different factors start to come into play that, if you let them, can be roadblocks to actually making the transition.

And I just think with both of those transitions, I just knew deep down in my gut, which I like to question a lot, but I knew deep down in my gut they were the right choices to make and they were the right transitions to make. It was just, I think, approaching it with some reality in mind that it's not going to be easy, things are going to change and you're going to have to try new things.

But it's going to be worth it because you know it's right. 

[00:09:26] Sanjay Parekh: John recognized it was the right choice as he poured immense passion into his work. The meaningful nature of his tasks kept fatigue at bay, and a profound realization dawned upon him. This was his true calling.

We are so inspired by John's story about transitioning his hobby into a side hustle, and then into a full-time business. We have heard countless times on this show, similar stories of discovering your passion and going after it. And while you may be inspired to make the jump today, after hearing this story, John left us with some realistic advice.

[00:10:08] John Wist: I think I would say, listen to your gut number one, but number two, also just do a realistic, basically, evaluation of where you are. Do a realistic evaluation of what you're doing now and what value it brings to your life now, and what you want to do, or what you feel like that side hustle could be, or what you feel like that business could be, and what value does it bring to your life if that comes to reality.

Because I think, a lot of times, we feel like the grass is a lot greener on that other side, and we just have to be realistic that there's hard days on the other side, there's tough choices to be made on the other side. It's not always sunshine and roses, even if it's the thing that you're passionate about, even if it's the thing that you really have a desire to do, it's going to be difficult.

And you just gotta hang in there and make sure, just make sure that you're being realistic about it.

[00:11:22] Sanjay Parekh: Our next guest is Sam Mitchell. And I have to admit, I think Sam is a really cool guy. Sam is a 21-year-old student with autism. who has decided to make it his life's work to advocate and educate folks about autism. He does this through his podcast, Autism Rocks and Rolls, which is a branch of his nonprofit of the same name.

On his podcast, Sam discusses various aspects of autism that aren't necessarily talked about a lot in everyday society, such as how the grieving process affects those with autism or the challenge of making decisions when you have autism. Sam has released over 250 episodes of Autism Rocks and Rolls.

Let's meet him now. 

[00:12:09] Sam Mitchell: So I'm Sam Mitchell from Owensburg, Indiana, and I run a podcast called Autism Rocks and Rolls. It's about autism and how we cope with daily struggles. Through the podcast, it's grown so much into a non-profit. My podcast started when I joined my high school's media club, and I fell in love with it so much that I started my own.

I started because I want to change the stigma of autism because we get ridiculed for the most ridiculous reasons. But also, I started the podcast because it was a hobby and I wanted to further my media skills and the way I figured to further them was to continue my media skills through doing my own podcast.

[00:12:40] Sanjay Parekh: Sam is currently a college student studying broadcasting. As he mentioned, he started his podcast as a hobby and as a way to further his media skills while also educating the public about the daily struggles of folks with autism. When I asked him why he decided to turn the podcast into his non-profit Autism Rocks and Rolls, Sam says, That he didn't make that decision.

[00:13:04] Sam Mitchell: Others made the choice for me. I started growing and it was very unexpected. I was expecting a few hits here and there. The numbers then started growing to a hundred. It started being 45 each time. So then we had to have a family meeting to decide we're going to go through with this and add more services.

We planned out events in Indiana, we are about ready to start our gala and we also done a summer fest with concerts and music, and we also do speaking engagements. I've spoken in Oklahoma, which was my first one, that was in 2022. And I've also done some in Orlando, Canada, Stewart, Florida, Washington D.C. 

[00:13:41] Sanjay Parekh: Sam was starting to reach a wider audience through his podcast and he and his family saw an opportunity to expand his services.

And his services are vast, from speaking engagements to fundraising efforts, to even selling hotdogs for charity. Sam showcases the entrepreneurial spirit that we love to hear about on this show. 

[00:14:03] Sam Mitchell: Yeah, the services we mainly make the money through is speaking engagements and events. That's why we kind of, that's how the transition from the side gig to the small business occurred. But then we've also done fundraising.

We've done a winter concert for a fundraiser. We've stood outside in a gas station and sell chili cheese dogs. 

[00:14:23] Sanjay Parekh: And while Sam is passionate about his work, he still faces challenges occasionally, like any entrepreneur. Sam says his biggest challenge is burnout. 

[00:14:32] Sam Mitchell: I definitely have some days with the podcast where it's like, Oh my gosh, here we go. Autism. Do I really have to do it today? It doesn't mean that I'm not going to quit it though. That just means I get exhausted, but it's not like I'm going to go quit. 

[00:14:45] Sanjay Parekh: But what keeps Sam going is the vastness of topics which he can cover. 

[00:14:51] Sam Mitchell: There are definitely a lot of topics you can do with autism. Which is, my point right here I'm trying to get across. Make sure it's a topic you can do a lot of episodes on. I know you can do a lot of episodes with politics. it's not just, you can talk about politics one time. There's more to the story. Make sure you keep writing the book, not quit writing a chapter.

[00:15:12] Sanjay Parekh: When I asked him if there's anything he would go back and do differently when launching the podcast and the non profit, Sam says he wouldn't change a thing. 

[00:15:23] Sam Mitchell: I've enjoyed it. I'm definitely glad that it came into my life. And I just hope that I can keep going because when I started, it was a good start because, Hey, as they say in business, you’ve got to start somewhere.

[00:15:37] Sanjay Parekh: He's right. You’ve got to start somewhere. And Sam's advice to those looking to start as a hobby. 

[00:15:45] Sam Mitchell: I think go for it, but I would make it a hobby first.

[00:15:53] Sanjay Parekh: Our final guest of this episode is Jonathan Botset of Ringgold, Georgia, just outside of Chattanooga. Jonathan owns Botset Designs, a logo design company that elevates businesses through improved branding. Jonathan has a unique background as he started a career as a classically trained musician, but soon decided that wasn't what he wanted to dedicate his life to.

[00:16:18] Jonathan Botset: I had a kind of a quarter life crisis, realized that's not what I wanted to do full time. And so, wandered around through retail, customer service, and I ended up at a family owned home decor wholesaler and work my way up and to be their office manager. 

[00:16:35] Sanjay Parekh: As the office manager of this company called Rhyne and Sons, Jonathan dipped his toes into graphic design and found that not only was he pretty good at it, but that he really enjoyed the process. For him, he was excited to have found a creative outlet outside of music, one that combines his artistic ability with his analytical skills. 

[00:16:58] Jonathan Botset: There wasn't really a digital presence, and so this, it was an avenue for me to help them grow and reach more people. So I created their social media presence, helped improve their website, and through that realized that I have a real passion for, one, helping small businesses, and two, blending the creative and analytical sides of myself. So, it was really interesting to be able to merge the passion I have for numbers and finding the most efficient use of time and money, while also expressing myself creatively. And graphic design is a perfect, for me, a perfect merger between those two, especially with logo design, which is what I focus on, where you have all of these ideas that a business wants to communicate and you want to distill it down into a single image, for the most part, as a logo.

And so it's a finding a way to efficiently and cleanly distill those ideas down to a single image a lot of times, but still allowing the business to be expressive and find their voice and, and it's unique to each business. So it's not the same type of project from one business to the next, which for me was just very enjoyable being able to find new creative solutions, even if it's the same situation. If it's a new demographic, a new type of business, it's a completely different kind of skill set that you have to apply to it, which is a very unique but fulfilling challenge for me. 

[00:18:40] Sanjay Parekh: Soon, Jonathan found he wanted to expand his skills outside of his full-time job. Luckily, Jonathan connected with a member of his old college fraternity network who was looking for some help. 

[00:18:53] Jonathan Botset: He basically gave me free reign with his small business consulting firm to say, Hey, I need help. You're looking for opportunities to do this. So, if you want to jump on these projects we have, see where you can fit in.

And it was the best opportunity I could have asked for. And so, I was able to learn Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and, WordPress. 

[00:19:16] Sanjay Parekh: Working for this company helped Jonathan hone his skills and become confident in the work he was doing. And then, the pandemic. Jonathan found himself working from home like many folks at the time.

This gave Jonathan a lot more time to learn different software and processes that go into graphic design. 

[00:19:38] Jonathan Botset: I felt like there was more of an opportunity to really hone in on more digital opportunities, more online opportunities. And so, I took all the opportunity that I could, woke up at 4am every morning to teach myself design, but stay up late most nights.

I have a very supportive wife who was just able to let me go all in on this, and taught myself graphic design while she was pregnant with our son. 

[00:20:04] Sanjay Parekh: Jonathan even enlisted some outside help and looked into other external resources. 

[00:20:09] Jonathan Botset: And through a family friend, I got connected with a professor at a community college here who teaches graphic design.

And so we would meet once a week and just for an hour, every single week he would just give me critiques of my work. He would explain the industry to me. He would help give me a bespoke education for what I was looking for specifically, which was invaluable to me at the time. 

And other than that, just finding the right podcasts, finding the right YouTube channels. Podcasts like this are incredible uses for your time to hear from people that are in similar situations, so you don't have to make the same mistakes they do. I mean, just, everybody has a commute somewhere. So, if it's 10, 20 minutes a day, you can just get through little chunks of podcasts and over the course of a month or a year, you can grow so much, but you have to be willing to put in the time and really do it the right way.

You can always find some time to improve one percent every single day. 

[00:21:15] Sanjay Parekh: This is the thing that makes Jonathan unique from our other guests. He took a small part of his preexisting job and turned it into a hobby rather than it starting out as a hobby. As you likely know by now, as a listener of this show, there is no roadmap to entrepreneurship, and it comes in all shapes and sizes.

At this point, Jonathan is feeling good about his work and wanted to offer his services professionally. But because he didn't go to school for graphic design, he didn't really have a network to reach out to. So, he did one of the most challenging things an entrepreneur can do. He started cold emailing. 

[00:21:52] Jonathan Botset: And I got connected with the Chattanooga Zoo here and basically took a picture of a sale sign that they had in their gift shop and gave myself 30 minutes to recreate it.

I did that and sent it to them in an email and just said, Hey, look, I'm looking for opportunities. I would love to help you guys out. I don't know what your situation is like. But I took it upon myself to create opportunities instead of waiting for them to come to me. They reached out to me almost immediately.

They said we would love the help. thank you so much and started sending me projects. I volunteered at first, because I felt like I needed to show what I could do without them having to put in so much risk and liability into taking a chance on me. 

And then after three or four logos that I did for them, they said, you know what? We really appreciate you. We want to compensate you for your time and make sure you stick with us. 

[00:22:42] Sanjay Parekh: From there, Botset Designs was born. Right now, it's still a side hustle for Jonathan, and he's okay with that. 

[00:22:50] Jonathan Botset: I was very fortunate to have a full-time job. My wife and I are financially stable. And so, I took baby steps into this.

I wouldn't take on more than I could handle, but being able to have the freedom to just do this when I could and learn, but really dive deep into it whenever I had the opportunity, and make the most efficient use of my time, that was very valuable to me. And even though I couldn't quit my job and do this full time to be able to do it three or four hours a day some days, now I can do it maybe one or two hours a day. 

[00:23:28] Sanjay Parekh: Although up until this point, it seemed like smooth sailing for Jonathan, he still faced challenges along the way. For example, he worried about pursuing a career in a field where he had no connections and no background. 

[00:23:41] Jonathan Botset: Everything was an unknown to me. I, again, had always defined myself as a musician. And so to suddenly start making a pivot into this visual kind of career in a field that I had no connections in, that I wasn't, I never had a full time job doing this. I was basically making my own opportunities. So, I was learning from a lot of mistakes as I went.

[00:24:06] Sanjay Parekh: Fortunately, by building a connection with his college professor and committing hours daily to mastering logo design, Jonathan not only conquered these concerns, but now thrives as a freelance logo designer for esteemed clients, including the Chattanooga Zoo. So, finally, we wonder what is next for Jonathan.

[00:24:25] Jonathan Botset: So I've put a lot of thought into this. I've got a one-year, a five-year and a ten-year goal. So, a year from now, I would like to have more full-time clients that I'm working for, and just continuing to get exposure, to find people that I can enjoy working with, and building out my portfolio. Just one client at a time, a project at a time. I just want to make substantial progress in that goal. 

Five years, I want to be doing this full time. So, knowing that it's not tomorrow, it's not 2025, but eventually I have set that goal for myself. By that point, I'll have done this for seven years. I feel like I'll be able to have put in my thousand hours at that or ten thousand hours at that point. So, I want to be able to take that leap confidently into the industry at that point. 

And then ten years from now, I would love to be able to build an agency and employ people. I want to create an environment that people can thrive in, where, ideally, I would love to work four days a week, and give people the freedom to have more time with their families because family-work-life balance is so important to me. And if I want to create something and employ people that I want to also reflect those values in what I do.

And again, that's a goal. I don't know it at this point if that's realistic or not, but I would love a decade from now to be able to provide opportunities for other people like they were able to do for me. 

[00:26:06] Sanjay Parekh: Thank you to John, Sam, and Jonathan for appearing on today's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast. We appreciate their insight and loved hearing their stories about turning their hobbies into side hustles or even full time businesses. We hope that you leave this episode feeling inspired after hearing their stories.

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligence insurance solutions, visit www.hiscox.com. And to hear more side huste to small business stories or to share your own story, visit hiscox.com/sidehustletosmallbusiness. I’m your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find more about me at my website, sanjayparekh.com.