Don’t Quit Your Job. Make Your Passion Pay for Itself.
You don’t need to become an entrepreneur overnight. Sometimes the first goal is simply to stop something you enjoy becoming another household expense.
This article started with a comment from my cousin Anoop after reading one of my earlier pieces. He wrote about returning to his art after leaving it behind for years.
That stayed with me because I think a lot of people have something similar sitting quietly in the background of their lives. Painting, photography, baking, music, gardening, writing, craft, cooking. They didn’t stop because they suddenly hated it. Life simply got louder.
For many people I know who moved from Kerala to the UK, the first years are about getting established. Study, work, visas, rent, a mortgage, children, career progression. Ten or fifteen years can disappear while you are busy building the stable life you originally came looking for.
And stability is a good thing.
But sometimes, once everything becomes reasonably settled, another question appears.
You can spend years building the safe life you wanted, then realise you have stopped making space for the things that once excited you.
I’m not writing this as a business expert
I don’t consider myself a highly accomplished businessman.
I’m a chef who has been curious enough to try a few things. Some worked. Some stopped. Some made money. Others mainly gave me knowledge I later used somewhere else.
When my children were young, I started baking with them at weekends. I had never worked in pastry, so I learned from YouTube, bought a few tools and eventually became interested in eggless cakes.
People began asking me to make cakes for them, and that became Eggless Cake by Sid.
During Covid, my friend Rajesh and I became curious about e-commerce. We learned Shopify, suppliers, advertising and fulfilment because we needed to.
Later, catering became CoChilli. Looking back, I can see a pattern I certainly couldn’t see at the time.
Curiosity came first. Learning came next. Sometimes a business appeared afterwards.
The money was useful. The knowledge was better.
Some ventures begin with a business plan. Others begin because you stay curious long enough to learn something new.
My first question is usually much smaller
When somebody has a hobby they genuinely enjoy, I don’t immediately think, “Can you turn this into your career?”
I think: Can it pay for itself?
If painting costs you £100 a month, could you occasionally sell a piece and cover the materials? If photography is your thing, could one small paid shoot fund the next course or lens? If you enjoy baking, could a few orders pay for ingredients and equipment?
That is a very different ambition from replacing your salary.
For many people with mortgages and families, it is also a much more sensible place to start.
The activity doesn’t need to make you rich. It just needs enough oxygen to stay alive.
Keep the job
This is where I probably disagree with quite a lot of entrepreneurship content online.
For most people with family responsibilities, I would not say, “Quit your job and follow your dream.”
I would probably say the opposite.
Keep the salary. Protect the mortgage. Protect the family. Use the stability you worked hard to create.
A regular income gives you room to test something without turning every mistake into a crisis. You can take one order, sell five things, teach one class or try one paid job.
If it goes badly, you have learned something.
If it works, try again.
Start small enough that failure is annoying, not frightening.
That is still entrepreneurship. Just without the dramatic soundtrack.
You don’t need a large company to learn what happens when an idea meets its first real customer.
Not everything needs to become a business
There is another side to this. Some hobbies should remain hobbies.
Money changes things. Customers bring deadlines, expectations and responsibility. Something that once helped you relax can become the thing giving you stress on Sunday evening.
So I’m not suggesting we monetise everything we enjoy.
But if the main reason you stopped painting, photographing, baking or making something is that you can no longer justify the expense, then allowing it to support itself may be enough to keep it going.
That is the distinction I’m interested in and not extracting money from every passion.
Just making some of them sustainable.
One day the job title disappears
There is another reason this matters to me as I get older.
Some people I know have reached very senior positions in their careers. Good salaries, important responsibilities and titles they have spent decades earning.
But employment eventually ends and one day somebody else gets the title. The organisation carries on.
I’m not saying everyone needs to build a legacy business for their children. In fact, there are plenty of small owner-run businesses where the founder eventually wants to retire and the family has no interest in taking over.
That does not make the business a failure.
It may have provided years of additional income, purpose, friendships and independence. If it develops enough value to sell later, even better.
But even if it remains small, there is something to be said for having a project that still matters to you when the meetings, deadlines and professional titles have disappeared.
Not everything we build needs to become a legacy for our children. Some things are worth building simply because they give us something of our own.
I quite like the idea of reaching that slower stage of life and having something to look back on that existed because I was curious enough to try.
Not an empire.
Just something I built.
Not everything we build needs to become a family legacy. Sometimes having something that remains ours is enough.
Maybe the goal is simply to keep something alive
Entrepreneurship is often sold as freedom. Quit the job. Become your own boss. Work from anywhere.
Reality is usually less glamorous.
Running a business can bring more responsibility, more uncertainty and plenty of work nobody puts in the Instagram post.
So perhaps the first goal can be much smaller. Keep doing the thing you enjoy. Let it pay for itself. Learn from it. See where it goes.
If it grows, good.
If it remains a small side business for twenty years and gives you something to look forward to when work slows down, that can still be a success.
Keep the salary. Protect the family. Start small.
Then see what happens.
And if something does begin to grow, the next question changes completely.
The challenge is no longer whether you can do everything yourself. It is deciding which work genuinely needs your skill, and which work should become a system.
That is where I want to go next.
About the author
Chef Sinoj Sadanandan is a Kerala-born chef with 25+ years of experience across UK hotel, school and event kitchens. He founded CoChilli Events & Caterers and is now developing CoChilli Pro to help chefs deliver consistent South Indian dishes at scale, using solutions shaped by real kitchen experience.
Learn more about CoChilli and CoChilli Pro