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How To Make Your Hobby A Paying Homebased Business
By Loring Windblad, Thu Dec 8th
Copyright 2004 by http://www.organicgreens.us and LoringWindblad. This article may be freely copied and used on otherweb sites only if it is copied complete with all links and textintact and unchanged except for minor improvements such asmisspellings and typos. It's great to have a challenging and interesting hobby such asorigami, papier-mâché sculpting, fine art – painting and/orsketching, rockhounding, photography, or jewelry making. It'seven more exciting to have a specialty in one of these fieldsthat no one else has, and then to turn your special talents intoa successful home-based business. It’s gratifying indeed to beable to take two or more of these and combine them into a payingproposition. That's exactly what Loring Windblad of Sierra Vista, AZ, did. But these aren't isolated stories. Men and women across thecountry are joining the ranks of entrepreneurs convertinghobbies into moneymaking propositions. It's important to notethat none of these women originally planned to start a business.On the contrary, interest by others in their hobbies convincedthem to sell their work. LORING WINDBLAD’S CUSTOM-BUILT COMPUTER BUSINESS Loring Windblad spent 20 years in the US Army in Electronics,and retired from that position on January 1st, 1976. But in thecourse of those 20 years additional skills were picked upincluding teaching (electronics), typing (over 100 wpm), generalwriting and technical writing (electronics and communications,lesson plans, etc), photography and even SCUBA diving. Years and miles later (read on below, also) found Loring inCanada playing in a major bridge tournament but also renewingacquaintance with his first love, whom he met in 1952. Strangethings happened and they got married in June of 1990 and begantheir own business in July of 1990. The business took on a formof its own, evolving from humble beginnings into a DesktopPublishing and Graphic Design endeavor by September, when theypurchased their own computer – and landed their first big jobstarting October 1st. That same Friday night, September 30th, was portentous inseveral ways. Loring played his baseball games for his computerbaseball league and then shut the computer down at midnight andwent to bed. When the computer was turned on at 8 am to startthe new job, nothing happened. Dead. No computer working.Obviously a dead power supply? No? Actually yes. The computerwas two weeks old, under total warranty, but nothing could bedone warranty wise over the weekend. So Loring called around toevery computer business in the area and found one open on aSaturday morning, drove there, found a power supply that lookedexactly like the one in the computer at home, made a deal to“rent it” for a week until a replacement could be gotten onwarranty, took it home and put it in the computer. It worked! The job began, a few hours late but on the day it wassupposed to begin. And a new career was launched, even though wedidn’t know it at the time. Calling upon his 20 years of experience plus lots of long talkswith the Custom Computer Builder who had sold them their firstcomputer, Loring slowly learned about computers and how to buildthem. Then, in 1992, a friend of a friend wanted a new computer.Loring “custom built” a computer for him, a brand new 486 CPU“screamer” type. The client was well satisfied. Time passed.Friends later in the year wanted computers, so Loring built themnew computers. By 1994 Loring was building 5-6 custom computersa month, most months, in the “high profit” days of computerswhen they paid $400 or more profit per computer. One of the biggest things was finding wholesale suppliers for anew computer builder to purchase quality components from. With alittle help from their original computer salesman, i.e., makingcareful notes on everything he told them, June and Loringdeveloped a list of possible suppliers, then applied forre-seller status. And sure, there were periods when no computerswere sold as well as months when 6-8 were sold. It was obviouslya struggle, but a good one. Networking became a way of life. June joined all the women’snetworking groups and Loring joined all the missed networkinggroups. Both made presentations and work came in, both desktoppublishing and new computers. From 1995 to 1998 Loring sold anaverage of 25-30 computers a year. However, by 1998 the profitmargin was falling out of computers, the days of $400 were gone.By 1999 the margin was down to $100 a computer and when you areservicing a computer for 3 years warranty service on a total of$100 it starts getting pretty old pretty quick. The sales kept up for a while, but by 2001 new technology, lowprofits and pending retirement for June and Loring caused are-think of priorities. By the end of 2002 building customcomputers was a thing of the past and a new era of life –retirement – was upon us. But the trip to and through buildingcomputers has been a fascinating one. LORING WINDBLAD’S PHOTOGRAPHY VENTURE Way back when Loring first met June he learned that June knewhow to not only take pictures but to develop and print thosepictures in her basement darkroom. Never one to take a back seatwhen he could be learning something new, when Loring a few yearslater went to Vietnam in the Army he took up photography,including learning how to develop and print his photographs.This was 1965 to 1967. And in 1966 Loring
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helped to establishand run the unit photo hobby shop in Vietnam. When Loring returned to the US he became an electronicsinstructor at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he quickly madecontact with the Post Photo Hobby Shop and got a part time job,thus learning more about photography for himself but alsohelping to teach others the fine art of photography. Loring’s next posting was to Panama where he continued with thelocal Post Photo Hobby Shop as a Photo and Color PrintingInstructor for 2 ˝ years, and also picking up work as afree-lance photographer. Loring soon began photographing suchthings as kids visiting with Santa, then developing and printingand delivering the photos, Then action work such as youth Karatematches, Pop Warner football games, Little League baseballgames, and both team and individual photos. And, of course,weddings. All these photo endeavors paid surprisingly well, andLoring was soon not only very busy but making enough money tomore than support his photography needs. And teaching helpedkeep Loring up with everything in the photography field so sooneveryone with a question about cameras and photography wascoming to him. Being around military bases there was always opportunity foryouth sporting event photography. And wedding photography. From1970 thru about 1977 Loring did a pretty brisk business inphotography, made a lot of friends and took a lot of pictures.And made a pretty good “extra income” that not only paid for allhis cameras and supplies but provided a lot of extra moneysupplementing his income. But it was hard work and long hours and Loring’s son, silversmithing and rockhounding were getting in the way. Thetransition was made leaving photography behind and embracing anew business – jewelry making and silver smithing. LORING WINDBLAD’S SILVER-SMITHING BONANZA Loring was always arock collector. This gave him an eye for rocks that weredifferent everywhere he went. As a soldier in the US Army hemanaged to live in France for four years, Panama for five years,and Southeast Asia (Vietnam) for 2 years, as well as extensiveperiods from coast to coast across the United States includingCalifornia, Georgia, New Jersey, Kansas and Arizona. Loring was divorced while he was in Vietnam when his son wasthree. Eight years later, in August of 1975, his ex- called andsaid, “I can’t handle your son any more. You’ve got to takehim!” Without getting into gory details….”Well, ok”, and his soncame to Arizona to live with him. Loring, Jr., was an excellent artist and got straight A’s in artin school. He was now in a new environment and Windy, as a wayof keeping his son’s interest up in the arts and new things,began taking Jr. and his friends out on camping and sightseeingtrips in the Arizona desert. Loring also was taking Geologycourses with the local Junior College, and began imparting thatknowledge to his son and his son’s friends while on theiroutings in the desert and mountain country of SE Arizona, theBasin and Range country. Rockhounding gave the desert jaunts with his son extra meaning.Identification of various kinds of rocks and geologicalformations soon were followed with explorations of the oldturquoise mines and an education in the copper-related gemstonesof turquoise, malachite, azurite and chrisocolla. Use of theArmy’s lapidary hobby shop led to cutting slabs of the stones,revealing hidden patterns, then cutting the stone slabs intocabochons enhancing the pattern intricacies. What are cabochons without jewelry? Silver smithing classesfollowed and then Junior turned his cabochons into some jewelrypieces for his mother and sister. Then came wax carving and lostwax casting, running the full gamut of classes and skillsavailable. In order to keep expenses down Windy locatedwholesale outlets which supplied him with components to assemblejewelry such as chains, pendants, findings, etc. After two years, Junior decided it was time to move back withhis mother and Windy was left with all sorts time, of jewelryskills and pieces of original jewelry building up, some piecesrather unique. He turned to the local flea market and soonestablished himself as a regular jewelry maker, attending almostevery weekend. Sales increased, and soon Windy began his jewelrybusiness, The Stonewerkes, Southwest Originals in Wood andStone. He was attending weekend flea markets and Art in the Parkand Craft shows all over Arizona to sell his products. And hebuilt up a chain of 8 businesses in two states which alsohandled his jewelry on consignment. Loring actually took his “rockhounding” hobby turned jewelrybusiness a large step further. He subscribed to all thecommercial and trade magazines as well, and then combined histalents as a photographer and as a writer, photographed hissilver smithing and lapidary work, wrote photo-journalismarticles on “how to” silver smithing projects and then sold themto the magazines. Loring says “You never know when what you do as a hobby can endup being a very profitable business. Over the past 40 years Ihave had the rare pleasure of turning three hobbies intoprofessions: photography, electronics and now rockhounding. Andusing other skills such as technical writing and typing in thoseendeavors. From humble beginnings….” About the author:Loring Windblad has operated his own HBBs for nearly 40 years,is a published author and freelance writer. Loring has writtengrants, business plans and resumes that got the job done right.His latest HBB endeavor is http://www.organicgreens.us
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