Entrepreneurship Lesson: Separating Business From Pleasure

I read about this article on Mywifequitherjob.com, and found that it is interesting and true to an extent. He shared the reason why he thought that selling what you like to do may end up you hating what you previously liked to do.

He gave a very valid example about his wife who likes to do embroidery as a hobby, but eventually became a stressful kind of activity when they started to sell the embroidery products. This is because when it is put up on sales, and there is a customer demand, you will tend to do what the customer is requesting because they are paying for it. This will in turn create a conflict where you are thinking whether it work because of passion or because of sales.

Excerpts from his blog:

> Once we started offering personalization and custom embroidery, customers wanted designs that were all over the place. Some customers had really tacky taste and wanted my wife to create some truly heinous designs and some customers were extremely anal and picky.

> Most orders required several iterations of back and forth correspondence and all of this customer interaction took a toll on my wife’s psyche. What was once fun for her became a chore. She wasn’t creating designs for herself anymore. Instead, she was catering to customers for a couple of extra bucks. 

>  What was worse was that nobody could help her out in this department because she had all of the expertise. Her skill set was not easily transferable in a short period of time. And because her time was so valuable, the money wasn’t worth it and there was no way the business could grow in this way.

Yes, I believe now in what he said, and I see the point in not mixing what's like to do and what's do to make money. However, it seems more possible to like what you sell.