The Business of Hooping

One of the inevitabilities of becoming an avid hooper is learning how to contruct your own hoops. New tricks seem like they would work better with a smaller, bigger, heavier, or lighter hoop - you watched a video and were in awe of the mini's with which someone was rocking out. You must have them. ALL!

At this stage it seems impractical to purchase a hoop from one of the online resources - especially since the majority of online hoops are of the 'beginniners' variety. You learn how to constuct and tape and your collection slowly (or rapidly) builds - then, one day you realize - hey - I could probably sell a few of these!

You are now not just a hooper. But, an entrepreneur. A hooperpreneur. hahaah....

I have been in the throws of this more business mentality for a while now and the changes that it brings are suprising.

The joy of sharing hooping with others doesn't seem to fade - but the impact on my personal time is defitely sizable!

The thing is, now that I've started teaching and selling - I don't know that I can stop! I don't have a back-up sub for my classes, nor a staff to help with hoop orders. When I started I highly doubted the need for these things!

This is my learning period. From this time, I would definitely encourage any hoopers considering selling or teaching to think about back up plans in case of illness or exhaustion for classes, and to create hoop order forms with long enough wait times to allow for a few distruptions in orders to happen.

Invite friends to help you out, and have a reliable person as your 'partner' to help with orders and possibly sub classes. Working out payment, how to split up duties and all the other business jazz that merits discussion is something I haven't figured out - as I am flying solo in my hoop journey! I have great folks with whom to hoop, and friends have offered to help with hoop construction - but having a definite hoop making partner would certainly be a help when classes begin and the order crunch is upon us!

Teaching, sharing and creating has been a great experience overall, and I am so excited to continue - and expand - my hoop ventures. Just need to work out the kinks.

Of course, a life sans day job would certainly free up more hoop time - but business isn't THAT booming. That's the difficulty with hooping - it is fun, and when there is a financial gain as well - that's great! But, turning it INTO a day job is a tough prospect.

For now, I am enjoying the stability of a day job and excitment and bliss of my HoopLife.

But... a sick day off from both now and then wouldn't hurt!