“I spend 20% of my time making my products and the other 80% marketing them.”
That’s not an exaggeration. That’s just what a normal week looks like for me, over 20 years into running a creative business. If you’re trying to work out how to turn a hobby into a business, that stat alone should tell you something.
I didn’t always know this. I found it out the hard way, and I want to save you from finding it out the same way I did.
I started my wedding stationery business, Paper and Ink Studio, back in 2003. Back then, all wedding invitations were made by hand. Couples getting married would come into the shop, pick out their papers, and we’d cut and glue everything together, piece by piece. I made a lot of greeting cards by hand too. It was proper hands-on, creative work, and I loved it.
In my second year of business, I hit a moment I still remember clearly. I realised I wasn’t going to be able to just sit and play with paper and craft the things I wanted to make, not if I wanted this to actually be a profitable business.
I had a lot of orders coming in. A lot of hand manufacturing to get through. And I needed to employ someone. That’s the point where I really had to sit down and look at what my business actually was.
I brought in a mentor to teach us how to sell properly. That meant qualifying steps, so we weren’t chasing every enquiry that came through the door. A proper quoting process. A pricing sheet. Understanding our markup, so we could actually pay wages, cover overheads, and pay myself a wage and superannuation, not just cover my material costs. And just as importantly: how do we follow up and close the quotes we’d already sent, instead of letting them go cold?
Nobody warns you about this one. Suddenly I needed a proper system for tracking every order: whose invitations were at what stage, when they were due, who’d paid a deposit and who hadn’t, what stock needed reordering. When it was just me, I could hold it all in my head. The moment I had a team and dozens of orders running at once, “in my head” wasn’t a system anymore. It was a liability.
I did not get into making wedding invitations to become a full-time marketer. But that is, almost exactly, what I now spend 80% of my time doing. My team handles the production, the crafting, the customer service. My job, my actual full-time job now, is marketing the business. Social media, email marketing, paid advertising, all of it. If you’d told me at the start that this is where most of my week would go, I don’t think I’d have believed you. But it’s the part that keeps everything else running.
One of the biggest lessons in marketing was understanding my ideal client, and realising that ideal client doesn’t stay the same as your business grows. Who I was selling to in year two was not who I was selling to in year ten. When I didn’t notice that shift, or was too slow to react to it, I kept marketing to the wrong people. That’s an expensive mistake. You can spend a lot of time and money appealing to customers who were never going to buy from you at the stage your business is actually at.
The more team you take on, the more time you spend managing people, not doing craft. Rosters, training, feedback, keeping everyone aligned on quality and pace. It’s a completely different skill set to hand-cutting paper, and it took me a long time to get comfortable with it.
But there’s a deeper stress that comes with it too, one that nobody warns you about. The moment you have staff, you become responsible for other people’s livelihoods. That is a weight. It kept me awake at night more than almost anything else in the business. Knowing that people relied on me to pay their wages, whether we’d had a good month or not, was probably the single biggest financial stress I carried.
On top of that, you’re managing people, not just tasks. Making sure everyone feels appreciated. Making sure there’s enough work to go around for the whole team. Holding quality control, because every piece that goes out with your name on it is protecting your brand. All of that sits on your shoulders, and none of it involves cutting a single piece of paper.
We started buying in stock and making products that aligned with what customers actually wanted, not just what we wanted to make. That was a massive turning point. There’s a reason people say 20% of your products create 80% of your sales; in my experience, that’s almost exactly right. Even now, we hit boredom, making the same product over and over because it sells. But if I want to pay my bills, pay my team, and pay myself, that’s the trade-off. It’s probably the clearest line there is between having a hobby and running a business.
I’ll be honest about the early years, because I think you deserve that.
I’d take orders during the day, then stay up into the early hours of the morning actually making them. That was the only way I could get it all out the door. Needless to say, my relationship at the time didn’t survive it. A fair few friendships didn’t either. I don’t think I properly fed myself some weeks; my ability to survive on toast and sheer desperation was frankly Olympic-level.
Then there was the money side of things, which cost me in a way I genuinely wasn’t prepared for. I had no idea how to structure myself financially. I was too embarrassed to ask for help, so I just didn’t. And when I finally did go and get professional advice, I didn’t understand half of what I was being told, so I buried my head in the sand instead of asking someone to explain it again. That silence caught up with me in the form of a tax bill that knocked me sideways. It taught me a very harsh, very expensive lesson about asking questions early, even the ones that make you feel out of your depth.
Looking back, every one of those five lessons had its own cost attached, not just the sales and the marketing. Getting the admin wrong meant missed deadlines and orders that fell through the cracks, which cost me trust with couples who’d put their wedding day in my hands. Getting staffing wrong, before I learned how to manage people properly, cost me good team members who didn’t feel supported enough to stay. Getting product development wrong meant money tied up in stock nobody wanted, sitting in boxes instead of turning into sales. None of these costs show up on a “how to start a creative business” checklist. They show up in real time, when it’s already happening to you.
I’m not telling you this to scare you off. I’m telling you because nobody told me, and I think you deserve to go in with your eyes open in a way I didn’t.
I’ve spent the last six years as a full-time business mentor, running one-to-one Hour of Power sessions with makers and creatives. My biggest value to them isn’t a marketing tip or a pricing formula. It’s being honest, really honest, about what it takes: the time, the emotional load, the mental load, and the financial investment of turning a hobby into a full-time business.
I’ve had people tell me that conversation saved them. Not because I talked them out of anything, but because they heard it from someone who has actually lived it, and is still living it, before they crossed the line themselves. It saved them unnecessary work and unnecessary financial stress.
That’s exactly why I wanted to write this properly, instead of skimming the surface. So many creatives sit in this exact spot: “I love doing this, I should turn it into a business,” and go down that path without understanding what it actually costs. By the time they realise, they’re disappointed, and worse, they’ve lost their love for the thing that brought them joy in the first place.
Here’s something I remind myself of often: being good at something, or loving doing it, doesn’t mean you have to turn it into a business. You’re allowed to keep it as a hobby, something that brings you joy, full stop. Not everything needs to become a money-making venture. Sometimes turning it into a business genuinely does cross a line into something else entirely.
I still have a craft room full of paper products I long to sit down and play with. I rarely get the time anymore. My creativity now lives in entrepreneurship, mentoring, and the digital side of the business, not hands-on, playing with paper, the way it used to be. I miss it. And I want you to make this decision with your eyes fully open.
Work through the checklist below honestly. There’s no right answer. Both are valid. But you deserve to know which one you’re choosing, before the business chooses for you.
Rate yourself 1 to 10 on each question (1 = not at all, 10 = completely true for me).
Add up your total score (out of 150):
Wherever you land, you don’t have to figure the next step out alone. If you’d like to download what’s in your head and talk it through with someone who’s actually lived it, [book a quick chat with me here] and let’s have an honest conversation about where you’re at.
