The Real Reason Most Entrepreneurs Succeed

It's not capital or connections or a great idea. Those certainly help, but this matters most.

On a beautiful summer evening, treading water about 500 yards from shore as the sun sank toward the horizon, I realized I was going to drown.

It started innocently enough. I was drafted onto a cornhole team without realizing the losers had agreed to swim out to a red crab pot float and back.

Of all the people who can actually swim, I am probably the worst swimmer in the world. Throw me in the deep end and I can swim to the side. Throw me in the deep end and I can tread water for a few minutes. But that's hardly swimming.

So as I walked toward the waves I thought, "OK, how hard can this be? It's not a race. I can take my time. And it doesn't look that far away."

About 100 yards from shore, the bobbing red float looked really far away.

So I tried to trick myself. "I won't look at the float," I thought. "I'll just swim. I'll swim for a long time. I'll wait as long as I can to look at the float, and then I'll be surprised and happy about how close I've gotten!"

So I swam and resisted the temptation to look for the float. I kept swimming, kept resisting. Then I started to wonder if I had already passed the buoy. How stupid would it be to swim farther than I needed to? So I looked up.

The red float was still a really long way away.

Great.

I had a choice. I could give up, turn around, swim back to shore, and admit I couldn't do it. That was the wise, prudent, sensible choice.

But, of course, I decided to keep going.

An eternity later, I reached the float. I turned and looked back. The shore seemed impossibly far away. And just then a larger wave crested over me just as I was breathing in.

I panicked.

"There's no way I can make it back," I thought. "It's too far. I can't do it. I'm going to drown!" (You know when you get scared and freeze up and it's like you suddenly can't run or move or, in this case, swim at all? That was me.)

Thrashing and coughing, I instinctively began to raise an arm to wave to people on shore for help when an image suddenly hit me. I remembered how I felt eight miles in on the 12-mile climb up the gravel fire road of what local cyclists call the "dark side" of Reddish Knob.

I remembered how badly I hurt: heart racing, lungs burning, legs screaming, vision blurring.

I remembered how I desperately wanted to stop, and I remembered that I didn't stop.

"You're OK," I told myself. "You know you can tread water. So for now, just do that. Just chill."

And I did.

Then I thought, "I can do this. Shoot, I've done worse. It's just a matter of time and effort. Keep your heart rate reasonable, flip over on your back occasionally and just kick so you can rest your arms, and eventually you'll make it. Just go moment to moment. It's going to suck, but you can do it."

I was really tired--and grateful--by the time I finally reached the shore, but I made it. And it wasn't as bad as I had imagined. Shoot, I could have swum farther. (Because we can always, always do more.)

How? I was able to harness the power of early suffering.

Many entrepreneurs that are successful today are the product of bootstrapping and sacrificing and scraping and clawing and fighting and never, ever giving up, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Their early struggles forge resolve. Their early struggles forge perseverance.

And their early struggles continue to inform even the most successful entrepreneurs' professional and personal lives, providing an almost inexhaustible foundation of willpower and confidence and perseverance.

All the successful entrepreneurs I know say they would not trade their early startup days of incredible struggle and effort and suffering for anything. What they learned about themselves not only carries them through the tough times but also gives them the confidence to not just think but know they can do more than they ever imagined possible--no matter what challenges they may face.

Be grateful for the struggle. Be grateful for the suffering.

Someday it will pay off--and in ways you might never expect.

From Inc. Magazine

Great Idea for a Business, But No Experience? These Founders Prove It Can Be Done.

Sometimes when you're starting a new company, your confidence wavers and you need a sign you're heading in the right direction. Hard work and a sign that came in the form of a trip to the barber shop helped propel Ariel Nelson and Lane Gerson toward the launch of Jack Erwin, a year-old men's footwear company that just raised $9 million in new funding.

The lesson that Jack Erwin's founders learned is one that aspiring entrepreneurs should never forget: Don't let your great idea be stalled by your own lack of experience.

Nelson and Gerson's story starts like this: One afternoon in May 2012, the longtime friends found themselves wandering around Manhattan. Nelson, 31, needed a decent pair of shoes for a wedding, but kept coming across choices that were too trendy, overly styled and or just way out of his price range. His frustration got them talking, and spurred an idea: what if they made a classic, simple, and high-quality shoe for $100, and sold it for $200? 

The pair, tired of feeling priced out of everything, knew that they would buy them and thought other guys might too -- but first they had to figure out how to make shoes.

Gerson, 32, worked in accounting and finance and Nelson's background was in food and beverage distribution. In other words, when it came to shoes, they knew what they would pay for and what they liked, but not much else.

After a summer of industry research and a few leads, they thought they might be onto something, but were still entrenched in their day jobs. Nelson says his work days had him in the office as early as 5 a.m. and were leaving him exhausted and strapped for time. "I loved the concept and I wanted to push the needle forward, but I was pushing it all onto [Gerson]," he says. 

One day, Nelson went to get a haircut. But instead of going to his regular place, he decided to pop into a two-seat, $10 shop on his block.

That decision would change everything.

"There's a French guy sitting in the chair next to me, talking to his barber like he's his therapist," he recalls. "He was saying how he's been in the shoe industry for 20 some odd years, he's built collections for billion-dollar brands, but he's never felt any ownership of his own. He always passed it on to someone else and it never felt like it was his. And I was like, I'm pretty sure this is the moment where I'm supposed to say something."

Nelson interjected, explaining his business idea and asking if they could meet for dinner or drinks. "He said yes, and he's actually sitting over there now," Nelson says, gesturing to the office space portion of the company's Lower Manhattan headquarters, an airy third floor space that doubles as the showroom and the founders' living space.

Nelson's fellow barbershop patron was Bertrand Guillaume, now the company's VP of product. Guillaume was previously a head buyer for Ralph Lauren's luxury Purple Label and Saks Fifth Avenue's senior director of merchandising.

With a mentor to guide them, Gerson and Nelson continued to learn about their business, exploring everything from how to source factories and tanneries to how to raise money. Most of their learning came through doing.

"All the research in the world will lead you in one direction, but until you start making decisions and seeing the ramifications of those decisions, that's when you start learning," said Gerson.

Jack Erwin today

Jack Erwin – an amalgam of Nelson and Gerson's fathers' names – officially launched as an online-only store with an appointment-only showroom in October of 2013. A year and three collections later, the company has raised $9 million in Series B funding on top of $2.8 million in previous funding. The round was led by Brown Shoe Company, with additional investments from CrossLink Capital, Shasta Ventures, and FundersGuild. Previous investors included Prolific Venture Capital and Menlo Ventures.

Two months after their launch, Gerson and Nelson had sold out the 3,000 pairs of shoes they had made and in the next month and a half they had a waiting list of 4,000 customers. They say they're on track to take in "a few million in sales this year."

Gerson and Nelson say they are able to keep their prices competitive by selling direct to consumers and cutting middleman markups out of the equation. "The same shoe in the traditional wholesale model would be sold at a 2-2.5x markup to the retailer, like a Saks, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, who in turn would add an additional 2.5x markup, which would make that original pair -- one that cost $100 or so to make -- hit retail shelves for more than $500. We sell direct to you at a price that's closer to $195," the pair explained. 

To that end, the shoes in the company's Foster, Wright and most recently released Sullivan collections range from $95 driving loafers to $220 wingtip combat boots. The majority of the products are priced in the $195 range. The pair says its aim is to have each collection and product be distinctive but also versatile and complementary with the others.

The shoes are manufactured in Spain from four different factories. The company now has a staff of six, including Gerson, Nelson and Guillaume, which takes in operations, design and development and customer service. Everyone who joins the Jack Erwin team starts in a customer service role.

Jack Erwin's appeal is in its simplicity, its founders say. Clothes change every season, but Gerson and Nelson think shoes can be a constant, and they want to be a brand that customers can latch onto. "It’s an ode to our parents and the clothes that they wore. Our parents never bought the most expensive clothes in the world, so it's like what our parents would wear at a price they would almost pay," Gerson said with a laugh.  

Over time, the pair would like to explore the men's leather goods and accessories space, but don't foresee going into apparel. They say they are happy taking a slow and methodical approach, because, like the shoes they make, they want to be a brand that lasts.

So, jumping into a new industry and new company, did they ever want to just throw in the towel? Absolutely, but they said that relationships they had cultivated with people who were relying on them compelled them stick with it. "There are lots of times we could’ve stopped, thinking this makes no sense, and we're not shoe guys. But we said screw it, we’re doing this, we'll just keep pushing forward and figure it out," said Nelson. 

From Entrepreneur

4 Marketing Techniques to Help Crush Your Competition

There are four marketing techniques that you can use to approach your market with your products and services. Use these to market your products better than your competition.

The better you market to your customers, the greater your success in business and sales. Use these tricks to get ahead of your competitors.

Marketing Technique #1: Create Utility and Usefulness with your Product

The first marketing technique you can use to beat your competition is to create utility, usefulness, and satisfy the needs of your customers to achieve a specific result.  This requires that you offer them something they need and can use to accomplish their other goals.

Look at your market today.  What will your customers and potential customers want, need, and be willing to pay for in the months and years ahead? What are the trends in customer demands in your market?  If you can answer this accurately, you can often leapfrog over your competition and dominate a new market even before it emerges.

Marketing Technique #2: Change Your Pricing

A second approach to sales and marketing is by changing your pricing.  By bringing your goods and services into the price range of your customers, you can open up entirely new markets that do not today exist. How could you price your products or services so that more customers could afford to buy them?

Many companies have been able to achieve market leadership by focusing on bringing their prices into the affordability range of more customers.  What we have found is that the greater your market share, and the lower your cost of production, the lower is the price that you can charge.

Marketing Technique #3: Emphasize Your Product’s Key Benefit to the Customer

The third strategy in sales and marketing is adapting to the customer’s reality, both social and economic. The ultimate aim of your marketing plan is to make selling unnecessary.  But this is seldom achieved.  The product almost always needs to be sold to the end customer.  As it turns out, each product offers a “key benefit” that is the primary reason why the customer would buy.

Each product or service also triggers a “key fear,” which is what holds the customer back from buying the product or service in the first place. Customers are terrified of risk.  They are afraid of paying too much, getting the wrong product, losing their money, and getting stuck with something that is inappropriate for their purposes.  This is the main reason that qualified prospects hold back from buying any product or service, at any price.

When you can emphasize the key benefit, the unique added value that a customer will receive by buying your product or service, and at the same time, take away his or her major fear, you can open up an enormous market for what you sell. What is the key benefit that motivates your customer to buy?  If you have different types of customers, what is the key benefit that triggers the buying decision in each of these different kinds of customers?

What is the key fear that holds potential customers back from buying your product or service?  What could you do to emphasize the benefit and make it more attractive, while at the same time, minimize or eliminate the fear that causes a customer to hesitate?

Marketing Technique #4: Deliver True Value of Your Product to Your Customer

The fourth approach to marketing plan is for you to deliver what represents “true value” to the customer.  True value is something that can only be identified by working closely with your customers.

What represents true value to your customers?  How could you structure your product or service offerings in such a way that people would be more comfortable purchasing them from you rather than from your competitors?

Conclusion

There will always be competition for products and services. It is your job to make sure that you stay ahead of the game and ahead of your competition. By following these tips and listening to your customer needs, you will learn to always come out on top.

Written by Brian Tracy

5 Surprising Habits of the World's Wealthiest People

You don't have to follow the rules. These billionaires defy convention.

We tend to think of the world's super rich as super successful, disciplined people who work harder and have greater opportunities than the average person.

Though money isn't always a measure of success, you can't deny that those who have amassed billions have experienced great successes in their lives and careers.

They must do certain things to achieve this success, right? They're better at achieving their goals. They live healthier lifestyles and can manage stress better than other people. They're classy and influential and exist in a whole other universe.

Billionaires are just people, and some of their habits may surprise you. It's not all caviar lunches, regimented scheduling, and the lap of luxury.

Here are some of the surprising habits of the wealthiest people on the planet:

1. They swim against the tide.

Becoming supersuccessful means you need to outperform everyone else at whatever you're doing, right?

Nope. It often means you shouldn't even be playing their game. Billionaires aren't better than others; they're doing something different than the others.

Warren Buffett amassed his fortune by buying investments and businesses when everyone else wanted out. Bill Gates didn't want to build the types of programs everyone else was focused on; he wanted to build something people hadn't even thought of yet but would realize they needed as soon as they experienced it.

If it seems as if you're stuck in a rat race and constantly trying to outdo the next person, break away from the pack. Your ideas might have little to no support, but big rewards require big risk. If others don't understand your vision, it doesn't mean it's your vision that is wrong.

2. They are frugal.

Mark Zuckerberg drives a Volkswagen GTI. That's right, the founder and CEO of Facebook, who's worth an estimated $33 billion, drives a $30,000 car.

We often think of the superwealthy as indulgent, with opulent and even wasteful lifestyles. In truth, many billionaires are shrewd businesspeople who are incredibly frugal and personally accountable for their expenditures. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, for example, still shops at CostCo.

Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Limited, is worth an estimated $12.2 billion but still drives an inexpensive car. He's said to travel by rickshaw to and from the Bangalore airport for business trips.

It flies in the face of the stereotype to have many billionaires actually be very frugal. In American culture, we tend to crave the flashy cars, the big houses, and all the toys. Billionaires are adept at making money but at keeping it as well, and part of that means living below their means for many.

3. They do for themselves.

The Hollywood stereotype of the über-rich might have left you thinking billionaires don't do anything for themselves. They have dog walkers, maids, assistants, butlers, and drivers to take care of the monotonous chores of everyday life.

Contrary to this image, billionaires often do just fine fending for themselves. Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen, worth an estimated $16.3 billion, still packs his own lunch every day! He told the Financial Times he prefers a sandwich and a Gatorade.

It's true that the supersuccessful often surround themselves with supportive people--they understand they can't do everything on their own. But this doesn't mean they're helpless or lazy when it comes to doing the same things each day that regular people do.

4. They fail on a regular basis.

Show me a billionaire who has succeeded at every single thing he or she has ever tried--go on, name one!

Everyone has failures and successes. Billionaires often fail at epic scale, thanks to the sheer size of the deals and investments they're involved in. The trick is, they understand that failure is just a bump in the road on the path to greater success.

Hotel magnate Kirk Kerkorian, at 97 years old, is worth an estimated $4.4 billion. Over the course of his lengthy career, he's made and lost millions many times over. Best known for helping to shape Las Vegas, Kerkorian also had a tumultuous relationship with the auto industry, including massive losses in his Ford stock during the 2008 economic crisis. Still, he kept taking risks and continues to this day.

Billionaires know that you have to fail sometimes. They just become more adept at it.

5. They take better care of themselves.

If you had an unlimited income, you could eat whatever you wanted! Again, there's a stereotype that the superwealthy can be gluttonous or partake in lavish, rich meals that the rest of us can only dream of and then lay around all day.

Sure, they can afford whatever they want, yet best-selling author Tom Corley points out that 70 percent of the wealthy consume less than 300 junk food calories per day, compared with 3 percent of less-affluent people. They get more exercise, too--Corley puts the percentage of the wealthy who do aerobic exercise at least four days a week at 76 percent, compared with just 23 percent of the poor.

David Murdock, chairman of Dole Foods, recently told Forbes he expects to live to 125 (he's 90 now), thanks to his diet and healthy lifestyle. A vegetarian since his 60s, Murdock is more active than many people half his age. He's an advocate of daily physical exercise and still rides horses, practices yoga, and does weight training.

Billionaires aren't some alien life form or even anomalies as people. Their habits may be much the same as yours and contradict everything you've come to expect about how the 1 percent live!

From Inc. Magazine

6 Ways to Strengthen Your Willpower Muscle

Would you rather be intelligent or disciplined? While most people would probably choose intelligence, discipline -- the ability to forgo immediate gratification in pursuit of a great goal -- is actually a greater predictor of subsequent life success.

“One great thing about self-control is that unlike other characteristics like intelligence, it’s easy to improve,” says Nathan DeWall, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky who studies self-regulation (he’s also an ultra marathon runner).

Unfortunately, our amount of self-control finite; our reserve depletes over the course of the day, replenishing over night. This explains why people are more likely to lie, cheat or lash out as the day progresses and why, DeWall says, most violent crimes are committed after 10 p.m.

“Self-control is a powerful resource that is incredibly fragile,” he continues. “If I try and control my impulses now, it’s going to make a subsequent attempt at controlling my impulses later in the day a little bit harder.” Say you’re trying to eat healthy and you go out to lunch with friends -- you have to expend energy on both resisting the breadbasket as well as forgoing the burger in favor of a salad. “What's going to happen when I'm leaving the parking lot and someone cuts me off? DeWall asks. “I'm going to have less energy to help me override an angry impulse.”

Like a muscle, willpower can be strengthened. With practice and resistance training, our ability to control our impulses in pursuit of later, greater goals can grow, giving us the energy to easily resist that cookie and promptly file those taxes. Here’s how to increase your reserve.

1. Monitor your behavior.

It’s hard to practice self-control if you aren’t cognizant of your current behavior and routines. Want to lose weight? First you need to be aware of what you eat on a daily basis. Want a healthier bank account? You need to understand your current spending habits. DeWall’s friends who have kids often recount mindlessly eating their children’s leftovers – a Chicken McNugget here, a few French fries there. “Do that for two or three meals a week and you’re adding several hundred calories to your diet which will translate into multiple pounds every year,” says DeWall. Write down what you eat. Monitor your finances. Keep track.

2. Form healthy habits.

At first, going to the gym will require self-control. You may to fight the urge to sit on the couch and watch TV. But over time, as going to the gym becomes a habit, it’s going to require much less willpower. It will start to feel automatic.

DeWall, who frequently runs ultra marathons over 100 miles long, recounts multiple conversations he’s had with fellow competitors. “They don’t believe that what they’re doing requires self-control,” he says. To them, it feels natural. As once hard activities begin to feel routine, they require less willpower; you have to fight yourself less and that frees up valuable energy that can be spent elsewhere.

3. Practice every day.

Just like practicing self-control in one aspect of your day (resisting a brownie, say) depletes the entire well, it also strengthens the entire muscle. “If I'm practicing self control in any domain, it should help me in all the others,” says DeWall. Multiple studies have illustrated that when you exercise self-control in one area of your life -- such as brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand -- you can exert more willpower in another area, such as suppressing aggressive behavior. The two behaviors may be very different, but they share a common energy source.

4. Control your environment. 

Grocery stores are designed to play off our depleted willpower. “They don’t put produce by the checkout for a reason,” DeWall says. “They know you’ve just made a bunch of decisions; they know you're exhausted, so that’s where they put the junk food.”

You can’t, of course, change your supermarket’s layout, but you can control the environment at your home and at your work. It requires far less energy to resist a cookie if you know it’s not sitting in your cabinet. No solitaire on your desktop? Resisting starting up another game is instantly less of a struggle.

5. Make contracts to avoid arguing with yourself.

Decision-making can be exhausting. Fighting with yourself to go to the gym lots of work. DeWall suggests making contracts with yourself, thus taking the conflict out of difficult activities. “If I do this, then I’ll do that,” he says. “If I get home from work, then I’ll exercise for 10 minutes. It essentially takes you and your arguments with yourself out of the equation.”

6. Achieve balance.

Because on any given day we have a finite amount of willpower, it’s important that we don’t deplete the well too soon. Instead of simply writing down obligations on your calendar, rank them in terms of the energy or self-control they will require. “Become mindful of how much extra energy you are going to have to exert,” DeWall says. Catching up with a well-liked friend won’t require much exertion. But visiting your less-than-welcoming in-laws for the weekend? That may really sap you. If you know that in advance, you can adjust your week accordingly.

From Entrepreneur

7 Sins of Newbie Entrepreneurs

Most entrepreneurs are familiar with the ridiculously high percentage of small businesses that will fail in the first couple years.  The business owners who survived the odds will tell you that they didn’t achieve success on sheer passion alone.  It took hard work, and in most situations, it didn’t happen over night. 

After spending the last decade running my own business consulting for companies and corporations, I have witnessed it all. Here’s seven of the most common mistakes I’ve seen newbie entrepreneurs make with alarming consistency.

1. Not setting aside enough cash reserves to support yourself. I  believe that one of the reasons why so many small businesses fail within the first few years is NOT because the business model isn’t viable or the entrepreneur isn’t “good enough” to make the business work, but it’s the fact the financial ramp up time is a firm reality. Most entrepreneurs simply run out of money to support the business and/or themselves before the business is profitable enough to sustain itself. 

Tip: Proactively set up a special fund intended to support yourself during the business startup phase.  Be conscious of what you put into this fund as you may want to strive for an amount that can fully support you for a year or two to relieve pressure as you ramp up.

2. Using assumptions that are overly optimistic during planning. I see so many newbie entrepreneurs fall into this trap. They have a great idea and convinced their friends and family that it’s a no brainer. They jump into the fray only to realize there were a few not-so-little details that they failed to consider or a few areas where their assumptions were overly optimistic and before they know it, that “no-brainer” business is hanging by a thread.

Be honest with yourself. Are you underestimating the time required to get the first client? Are you overestimating the demand for the product? Are you assuming zero risk by not allowing for what could go wrong?  

Tip: Find three to five completely objective people (not friends or family) and specifically ask them to play devil’s advocate to you to help identify vulnerabilities and then take steps to mitigate those.  

3.  Not properly evaluating your business model. Not everyone incorporates a business model into their planning.  It’s so easy to get really lathered up around the concept of your business, but it’s quite another thing to put pen to paper to help you objectively evaluate your overall business model and its profit potential.  The simple truth is that having a great idea is just a start – it doesn’t necessarily translate into a profitable model.

Tip: Consider SCORE or a small-business development center to evaluate the business model and offer expert advice. Their perspective could identify a more viable structure that makes better business sense than what you’ve already established.   

4. Trying to do everything yourself to save money. If you try to do EVERYTHING yourself, you’ll not only run yourself into the ground, your business will suffer, because you don’t bring sufficient expertise in every area.  Your time is money. Think about where you must personally invest your energies. Should you be developing and refining your content, products and services, cultivating relationships with key clients and stakeholders, developing credibility within your industry?  No one can do this for you. 

That said, others can develop your website, handle your public relations, develop templates for your newsletters, make trips to printers and copiers and perform random administrative functions. Utilize them.

Tip: The key is identifying what to outsource and what to keep.  A good rule of thumb is if it’s not part of the core competency of your specific business, you have little expertise in the area, it’s time consuming and there are many suppliers who can provide the service at a reasonable cost, consider outsourcing. 

5. Not being willing to work like a dog during the early days. I’m amazed how often I run into people who’ve recently launched their businesses, but they seem shocked that they’re not making six figures while working a 25-hour work week.  They seem to have this glamorous view of entrepreneurship where they get to start at the top and skip all the hard work.  The simple truth is if you want to make it, most startup businesses have to hustle early on.  This might mean working another job while you’re starting your business, volunteering or doing some work for free to gain experience and exposure. It also may mean working nights and weekends. 

Tip: Before jumping into the startup world, really evaluate your current lifestyle and realize you will most likely being given up a huge chunk, if not all, your free time.

6. Pricing your product or services too low or high.  In my business I often respond to request for proposals.  Years ago, I’d been submitting proposal responses annually to a large governmental agency.  After about four years of consistent rejections, I got a tip from a colleague that my pricing was too low to be considered seriously. That year I doubled my pricing on the same classes and was selected for the first time. 

On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to charge $20,000 a day and expect to get the job. 

Tip: Do your research to see what others are charging. It’s much smarter to offer value pricing initially, prove your value and then raise prices over time.  In many cases asking clients for their budget will not only give you an idea of what to charge, but it could minimize the risk of severely underpricing or over pricing your product or services.  You may also consider providing different pricing options to increase the likelihood that you’re offering something within your client’s price range. 

7. Not having a growth strategy. We all know of a restaurant that was great when it first opened but after expanding the food or service went downhill. They then developed a bad reputation and eventually closed.  Don’t be that business.  

While most small businesses think the goal is to win as much business as they can, this isn't necessarily true.  Sometimes, you can attract too much business and then have a completely different challenge that could threaten the longer term viability of the business completely. 

Tip: Think about how you want to grow and develop a high-level growth strategy fairly early on (even if it changes as time progresses).  

From Entrepreneur

How to Turn a Hobby Into a Career -- Without Regrets

Not every entrepreneur wants to build a multimillion-dollar company. Some just want to live the dream of transforming a hobby into a career.

It's an idea that sounds great in theory: Take something you love to do in your spare time and make it your sole business focus. And for some it works out swimmingly—it may even finally convince a spouse that there was a method to the madness behind all those bills piling up over the years for what seemed like a frivolous basement activity. For others, making the move from hobby to Hobby Inc. can prove to be a hasty decision and major life regret.

So think twice before betting that your hobby will be your dream job. You might lose both the hobby and your livelihood if it's a transition not thoroughly thought through.

Arthur Lucas, owner of Charleston, South Carolina-based Freehouse Brewery, said he has no regrets about making the jump from home brewer to professional. 

"It's more a vocation," said the former management consultant, who also has a law degree. "I don't really feel like it's a job. It's an overexpanded, all-encompassing hobby now. Everything has challenges—and I prefer these challenges. I'm allowed to do my own thing, even if it's hard, as opposed to being what someone else is looking for. That takes a huge weight off my shoulders."

Passion projects

Turning a passion project into a career is not without its hurdles. Many people find that the day-to-day realities of running a business are a little more difficult than they imagined.

Jay Adan, co-owner of Greenfield Games, experienced that after his business had been open for a short while. 

Adan left a career in public relations to open Greenfield, which is now the largest game store in Western Massachusetts, with two partners—Seth Lustig and Dave Fifield—who had previously run a smaller game store. (All three had met and worked together at the video game company Cyberlore.) When Fifield left to focus on a career in the video game space, it proved challenging.

"It was a critical time," said Adan. "None of us had ever run a retail store before. There really wasn't a full-time business person."

Adan and his partner brought on Joe Minton, a former business associate of theirs from Cyberlore who had experience running a company. He successfully identified where things were going wrong with Greenfield Games—and the team was able to correct them.

"There's always stuff to learn," Adan said. "Passion can only take you so far. I know a lot about games and how they work, but that doesn't translate into how you run a successful business."

"When someone [would] hand me a widget and say, 'I need you to write a release about this now,' I had to force myself to become enthusiastic. ... And that was sucking my soul. Now, even on the worst day at the store, I'm still working at a place that's surrounded by cool games. So how bad can it possibly be?"" -Jay Adan, co-owner of Greenfield Games

The dangers of making the jump from hobbyist to someone who makes a career of that hobby aren't just on the economic side.

"When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams," said Hugh MacLeod, author of "Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity."

"When its a hobby, you're doing it for yourself, on your own time. But when you're doing it for a job, it doesn't feel like that," MacLeod said. "What happens is, your hobby, all of a sudden, is a source of major anxiety because you still have bills to pay."

The activities that used to be a source of stress relief can become anxiety-inducers themselves. That can force people to find other hobbies, which might cause their interest in the original field to wander, MacLeod said.

Adan acknowledges that his game-playing time has been limited lately, but he's making an effort to correct that.

Lucas said he is yet to experience a downturn in his own private brewing. "I still like to do small batches and throw out a 5-gallon batch now and then to remember how simple beer really is," he said. (The benefit of those small batches? They can also give him ideas to try on a larger scale at Freehouse.)

Adan and Lucas said their decision came after weighing their satisfaction with existing jobs against the potential problems of one based on their hobby.

"I was going in a very different direction," Lucas said, "achieving the things I was setting out to do. But at the end of the day, I always thought I wanted to run my own business—and with the field I was in, it felt like there wasn't any way to do so."

Adan said PR was something he did to promote something he loved, but PR itself wasn't interesting to him. "When someone [would] hand me a widget and say, 'I need you to write a release about this now,' I had to force myself to become enthusiastic. ... And that was sucking my soul. Now, even on the worst day at the store, I'm still working at a place that's surrounded by cool games. So how bad can it possibly be?"

From CNBC