Are you a stay-at-home mom or working full time, looking to turn your hobby or passion into a profitable side hustle?

Whether you love to bake, write your thoughts, or craft, there are countless opportunities to monetize your skills and interests.

In this post, I’ll share seven practical steps to help you get started, even if you have little to no money to invest based on my own experience when I started my baby sleep consulting business with a full time job and two young kids.

Before we get into the steps, I want to address the possible mental blocks and limitations you might have about turning your hobby or passion project into a business.

Limited Time

Busy moms have to juggle many responsibilities, so finding the time to work on a hobby and turning it into a business can be a challenge.

I can also relate to the invisible mental load from juggling those responsibilities and sometimes we just don’t have the mental capacity or the energy to spend time on our hobby let alone, build a business from it.

Financial Constraints

Starting a business often requires a financial investment, which can be difficult for moms who may not have much disposable income.

Don’t Know Where To Start

Starting a business involves a learning curve, which can be overwhelming for moms who may not have experience in entrepreneurship or marketing.

Lack of Marketing Skills

Moms may not have the resources or knowledge to effectively promote their business.

Managing Stress

Moms who are experiencing high anxiety may not want to get into another situation that might add on to their stress levels.

I get it. I was exactly in that position myself before I began my entrepreneurship journey.

Most of these concerns and fears are valid, but if you really want to earn extra income, these are stumbling blocks that can be overcome, with the right approach and support.

Don’t let these stop you from chasing your big vision and dreams.

In the beginning, I didn’t know anyone in my family to look up to or turn to for some advice or wisdom on entrepreneurship. As the eldest of my siblings, I had to lead myself into it, made a lot of mistakes and bootstrapped my way up.

Here are the 7 practical steps to turn your hobby or passion into a business:

1. Start with what you have

You don’t need to invest a lot of money upfront to start a business. Use what you have, whether it’s supplies, equipment, or skills.

I can’t stress this enough. At the start, be as lean as possible. Take advantage of free packages for online business softwares, free YouTube videos to learn a technical skill, and do things manually because you can afford to.

Go simple first and once you start bringing in more revenue, you can upgrade and be fancy with automations and all that.

2. Focus on delivering quality service

Quality is key to building a successful business. Ensure that your products or services are of high quality and that you’re delivering value to your customers.
Customer service and relationship building are important at this stage.
It sets the tone for your clients to do word of mouth marketing and referrals for your offerings.

3. Be consistent and patient

There is no secret sauce to success. It all comes down to effort, consistency, strong mindset and time.

Have fun exploring and learning from mistakes. Yes, mistakes can teach you many invaluable lessons.

Embrace them without shaming or blaming yourself as a failure.

That thing you were so excited to try but didn’t work out? Let yourself be disappointed, forgive and empathize with yourself for being human making mistakes while trying to learn something new and get back up again.

4. Manage your time (and energy) wisely

This will be very challenging at first especially if you’re a hyper-achiever. I know because I’m a recovering hyper-achiever.

I placed external success and achievements to validate my self worth. I used to discount my achievements and I quickly wanted more. So I became obsessed with being productive. I even tied the level of productivity to my self-worth. I crammed as much doing as I could and ended up burning out.

Everyone has the same 24 hours. Manage it wisely by creating boundaries, a schedule and setting realistic goals.

5. Be open to feedback

Starting out as a solopreneur can be a lonely journey. You think to yourself a lot and you have so many ideas. That’s why feedback is essential for improving your business.

You need to have a third-party to look at your business from a different perspective. Be open to constructive criticism and use it to make positive changes.

I would also add that you want to get constructive criticism from people who have done it before and gotten successful at it.

Getting feedback from your parents or spouse who are not entrepreneurs may not be the best people to give you the right kind of feedback. Thank them when they want to give feedback because the wanna help and say “thanks I’ll think about it.”

6. Keep track of your finances

Even if you’re starting small, it’s so important to open a separate banking account for your business.
This was a mistake I made in the beginning and I used my personal bank account for all my business transactions.

Needless to say, tracking the income, expenses and profit became a nightmare when I had to prepare the financial statements.

What you track and pay attention to will expand. By knowing your numbers, you can plan and make better business decisions. You won’t be influenced by shiny object syndrome believing that there is always something new worth pursuing. In the end, you end up spending more than what’s necessary.

7. Stay motivated

Because you’re going through a huge learning curve in the first 2 years of your business, it’s easy to get demotivated and feeling like giving up when things get hard.

If you have the tendency of avoiding conflict or negative circumstances that will naturally be part of growing your business, then you’re very likely to procrastinate the tasks that are supposed to make money.

Also, if you’re a mom who works from home, you may have to pause work to attend to your children's needs or household chores, which can disrupt your work schedule and productivity.

The distraction can also push your motivation to commit to your business and marketing activities.

Don’t forget to celebrate your successes - even the tiniest ones, because if you get in the habit of being in gratitude for the small things, you will be in a high vibration match for bigger things.

Conclusion

Turning your hobby or passion into a business is a great way to earn extra income while doing what you most love to do.

With these practical tips and a little determination, you can start a profitable side hustle and turn your dreams into reality.