I can't add much from a business owners perspective but I can offer an observation:
I know two guys who both have jobs that were born out of their hobbies. One guy owns a wakeboard/ski boat shop, the other owns a pretty busy garage (not a hot rod shop). The guy that works on boats never makes it to the lake anymore. He is always busy getting clients back out on the water. The guy that owns the garage has multiple projects of his own in various states of completion in and around the shop that he never works on because he is busy on cars for paying customers. By the time he gets all of those done, he is beat and wants to go home and see his family. He never makes any progress on his own stuff.
I can't fathom what it takes to get into a niche market that you are very passionate about and try to make a dollar. I can understand the allure of trying to combine a hobby and a job, but you can't serve two masters. You are either going to have to treat it like a job or treat it like a hobby and your success or failure would be dependent on your ability to do so. I would imagine very few people figure out how to do both at the same time and be financially successful (success can be measured other ways, I am sure these guys live for months off of the smiles they get when they hand over the keys on a completed build).
Either way you go, good luck. There have been some great posts on this thread that apply to business owners in general and I think it is cool that you have generated this great banter from some respected builders on the site.
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Stephen
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