October 1, 2025 • 15 mins
The Mullet is our small rural business and marketing advice mini-series, brought to you by Richard P and Callum of CountrySlide.
Gareth from Wales (which isn't on another planet as Callum likes to believe) has written in asking whether it is too late to build up a brand for his hobby business and transform it into a real money maker.
Callum and Richard weigh up the pros and cons of turning something you love into a job and discuss what Gareth could do to develop his love of walking sticks and wood carving into something more substantial.
If you have a question, please DM us or send an email on contact@countryslide.co.uk
Gareth from Wales (which isn't on another planet as Callum likes to believe) has written in asking whether it is too late to build up a brand for his hobby business and transform it into a real money maker.
Callum and Richard weigh up the pros and cons of turning something you love into a job and discuss what Gareth could do to develop his love of walking sticks and wood carving into something more substantial.
If you have a question, please DM us or send an email on contact@countryslide.co.uk
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we're back with another episode of the Marlet.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I don't know if people will listen to some back
to back, but I just did a good monkey noise
and it just reminded me of the of an old
joke two monkeys in a bath. One says, the other says,
if you're hot, put some cold in.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
So we're back with the business off shoot off Country Slide,
the less humorous version. It turns out we have another
question from a listener. So I just realized, looking at this,
I think I know who this person actually is, but
they tried to keep themselves vaguely anonymous. Callum, can you
read out the question and we'll do our best to
answer it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I don't know where they're from, so I was going
to say at the end, yeah, I know, I still
don't know where that is.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
That's in Wales.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, I know they named Gareth, so clearly they're Welsh.
So anyway, Gareth Jones from Ding Bing Ding. Then then
bingsher says, is it too late to start from scratch? Hi, folks,
I've had a small business selling handmade walking sticks and
(01:13):
carved wooden items for years now. I started it as
a hobby and to be honest, I never really treated
it like a quote unquote real business, no branding, no
proper name, just the odd post on local groups. I'm
now in a position where I'd like to take it
more seriously, but I'm wondering is it too late to
rebrand and try and build something bigger? Or have I
(01:36):
missed the boat?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So I'm getting this person slightly older?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I yeah, I assume so it's worded that way, but
maybe not. Hm hmm do you what do you think
I've got some really left field advice?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Is this going to be only fans again? No?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
No, not not. Everything you enjoy has to be a business.
You don't have to listen to the capitalist capitalist machine
and turn every one of your passions into a profiteering enterprise.
You can just enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And actually turning your hobby into a business is a
really good way to ruin your hobby. Yes, so.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'll leave that in a box there as a completely
separate piece of advice, because that is option one. I
have ruined many things that I enjoy. In fact, most
things that I enjoy I have ruined in some way,
and mostly I've ruined them by trying to make them profitable. Thankfully,
(02:45):
there is no profit to be made with socializing with
my family and raising children. So at the moment that's
going quite well. But the rest of it, I have
ruined fishing technically became a job. At the young age.
I started tying rigs and selling them on eBay. I
(03:06):
made a clothing business around fishing. I ruined fishing for
myself because I ended up having to. I ended up
getting into a point of like media influencer point, and
you'd end up going fishing and it would be disappointing
not to catch fish. And now I go fishing to
drink beers and grill meat because that's brilliant, really easy
(03:32):
to ruin hobbit, ruining passions by turning them into businesses
and profiting from them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I think that's the most valuable bit of advice we've
ever given out on this show. Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We can also turn it into a business if you
want to. You got that advice for Richard.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Ah Okay, business advice one oh one for this. You
are creating a fake entity really with a business, even
if it's under your own name, and that fake entity
has to be recognizable to people who are drifting pass
so that means some kind of logo that just represents
who are what you do, even if that logo is
(04:21):
just the same photo use across everything else. Has to
be a name. It has to be actual words again,
could be your personal name, could be some other brand
you've come up with. Just has to be unique. It
doesn't have to be the best name in the world.
There's all this psychology about how you should name a brand,
and that it doesn't matter. As long as it's unique
and it's recognizable to your audience, then that's fine. And
(04:45):
then use that name. Use that name consistently across different platforms, website,
social media, emails, written down on a bit of a
paper stapled to a tree. It doesn't matter. One of
the biggest mistakes you can make is coming up with
five different ways to describe yourself across five different platforms
or five different five different avenues. Just be one thing
(05:09):
that's consistent across lots of places, and if you're doing
something different, make that a separate think.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There's nothing wrong with being a personal brand as well.
You know, if you want to be Gareth's carvings, that
is a thing. I mean, as long as you're happy
to be tied to it, and also with you don't
scale it then So my business name is Prime Creative
and I set that up with the intention of being
(05:39):
able to scale it. But most of the issue is
most people want me to shoot everything, you know. I
do send videographers to events and do bits and have
a small army of freelancers on occasions, but generally it's
just me. So I probably would have been better of
just putting my own name to the brand because it's
(06:00):
trust and then just charging more money. So if you
can with luxury items, you you know, carved whatever it is,
people might pay two, three, four, five hundred quid for
something that's carved, you know, carved nicely. So I don't
think there's anything Having a personal touch to it and
(06:20):
running it as a personal brand it's not a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And neutral and unique is better than trying to be
hyper specific or particularly weird. Like if he called itself.
If you called himself Gareth's Insurance Services and only sold
walking sticks and carved warden items, that would be weird.
I mean, wouldn't It wouldn't be easy for the customer
to interact with them. So you two layers of this,
(06:47):
like you know, do you actually want to make it
a business.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's not whether it's too late or not. It's actually,
did you answer that is it's never too late. The
average person starting a business in the UK isn't actually
twenty something. The average person starting businesses between forty and
forty six. So it's people think that it's like, oh,
it's a young guns game. It's really not. Startups are
(07:10):
forty year old, and you know, people start businesses all
the time.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It's never too late, and small craft stuff like this
is incredibly difficult to turn large profits on. What you
can do is offset your costs mostly. So okay, I
know somebody who, on the face of it, they do
very well selling carved wooden items, and they do this
(07:35):
they pitch it at the art level, so they do
these huge wooden trugs and things for restaurants and table
piece things for rich people. Eyes strongly suspect actually they
don't do as well as they make out, And actually
they the fact that their wife is a barrister and
(07:57):
brings in all the money into the house means that
they can do that as their side of business. But
there is the illusion of success there, which is a
completely separate thing from the quality of their craftsmanship because
as a craftsman they are they are one of the
best I've ever seen. But that does not necessarily translate
into earning lots of money just because they charge five
(08:21):
hundred pounds for effectively a plank with a bit carved
out of it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I think if you're in this, in this industry, you can.
I mean, we've spoke about the wooden horses, but one
of the wooden horses was thirty eight grand and I
wouldn't put it past that being sold at somewhere like
the game Fair. So I think there is a potential
(08:49):
for an upper limit for a business like this. I
don't know. Maybe if it's just sticks, maybe maybe you'll
end up it be a time versus you know, what
people are willing to pay. The demand metric will probably
be a bit ski with you could art and craftsmanship
(09:14):
is almost limitless.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
What you could do. Maybe because we're coming you know,
there's always a seasonal thing to these these kind of
crafts where you're you're not doing as much in the
winter or the spring, and then you've got the summer
fares and craft fairs, and they've got the build up
to Christmas where people tend to sell more items. And
I know people who do make spoons and things as
a side gig and they end up making a lot
(09:37):
in the summer to sell in the run up to Christmas, yafu,
you have these craft fair slash Christmas Fair, and people.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Looking at ercialization on any of these things is huge.
So if you can get that, and again for like branding,
if you can get it in in craft stuff does
well sold fivisually if you can get it in in
one of these magazines or you know, in people's hands
(10:05):
at game fares or talking about them on shoots or
something like that, you could be quite good.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So if you've got we're halfway through the summer now
coming towards the end of the summer. Even so, yarev
is probably in that cycle of looking at stuff. So
from when this, when you hear this podcast the until Christmas,
carry on as you were before, but look at how
everyone else is doing it. Not to copy them, but
(10:32):
just like do little micro analysis of other people's businesses.
You see someone else on the store and go, okay,
if I saw that person there today, but I wanted
to buy something from them, but I wasn't buying today,
I was for whatever reason you wanted to buy in
a month's time, could I find that person again easily?
Are they? Are they signaling away for me to be
(10:53):
able to keep that going or are they? Or am
I just going to leave people with the idea that yes,
I would like to buy a handcuff spoon, so I'm
just going to buy the first handcuff spoon I come
across on social media next time? Or are they going
to buy that thing from that person? So how much
how well are other people marketing and capturing that audience
(11:15):
and carrying them on with them towards purchase, either then
or in the future. And then look at how people
that you may not come across in your sphere, but
people you see online are people you know of How
do they communicate to people? Do they have a consistent
message across all social media platforms or from their website
(11:36):
to Instagram to Facebook or is it slightly different tone?
Do they only use one platform and does someone else
do better on a different platform. Are they posting directly
to groups or are they just putting content on their
own channel and hoping people see it. What tactics are
they using? Because this is actually quite a good skill
(11:57):
to look at how other people are doing something and
rather than trying to copy it, decide if it's actually working,
because you'll never see the other side of that. You'll
never see how much money is going into their bank account,
but you can look at it from the point of
view of a customer and go is this working? Is
this working for me? Or actually? And you do see
(12:18):
this with quite a lot of businesses. It's almost like
they really hate the idea of people coming to them
and giving them money because they seem to do everything
they can to make it hard for people to do that. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Remember. You can also search people up on company's house,
which is very useful.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yes, it's an company. Accounts tell you a lot about that,
and I mean you won't find much in the first year,
but if they've been trading for a couple of years
and their assets are significantly less than what they owe
people and their liabilities, then that tells you maybe this
(13:00):
business isn't grinding forward in the way you want it to.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, the facade is real.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It happens a lot. Yeah, So how look at how
other people doing things and learn from that, because that
will teach you a lot about it. I speak from experience.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
A short answer, it's not too late. It's never too late.
If you want to do it, you can do it.
Be careful of ruining your hobbies and interest. Also, think
about your purpose. Is your purpose actually to make money?
For your purpose is to make money, then focus on
profitable items that have demand. You might find that actually
(13:41):
carving key rings for ten quid that takes you five
minutes because you can knock a hundred out in so
little time, is your best that's what you want to do,
that's the best option. If your objective is you make
really nice walking sticks and it puts smiles on people's
(14:02):
faces and there's a family ailoom and you see them
on every shoot you go on, then you do that.
So work out your objectives. Think what you want to do.
If you want to make money, if you want to
make smiles, or if you want to do this at all,
it's never too late. Have some nice branding, find a
unique name and make sure that domain isn't taken, and yeah,
(14:26):
have fun with it.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
There we go another week of vague question answering with
fence sitting and maybe this and maybe that's no. I
think we've given people value again this week, just not
It's always a bit. There's a bit of the kink
in the road, isn't there between the question and the answer?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Can you make a noise like a stoake being caught
in a trap? Thanks? Bye,
And we're back with another episode of the Marlet.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I don't know if people will listen to some back
to back, but I just did a good monkey noise
and it just reminded me of the of an old
joke two monkeys in a bath. One says, the other says,
if you're hot, put some cold in.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
So we're back with the business off shoot off Country Slide,
the less humorous version. It turns out we have another
question from a listener. So I just realized, looking at this,
I think I know who this person actually is, but
they tried to keep themselves vaguely anonymous. Callum, can you
read out the question and we'll do our best to
answer it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I don't know where they're from, so I was going
to say at the end, yeah, I know, I still
don't know where that is.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
That's in Wales.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, I know they named Gareth, so clearly they're Welsh.
So anyway, Gareth Jones from Ding Bing Ding. Then then
bingsher says, is it too late to start from scratch? Hi, folks,
I've had a small business selling handmade walking sticks and
(01:13):
carved wooden items for years now. I started it as
a hobby and to be honest, I never really treated
it like a quote unquote real business, no branding, no
proper name, just the odd post on local groups. I'm
now in a position where I'd like to take it
more seriously, but I'm wondering is it too late to
rebrand and try and build something bigger? Or have I
(01:36):
missed the boat?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So I'm getting this person slightly older?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I yeah, I assume so it's worded that way, but
maybe not. Hm hmm do you what do you think
I've got some really left field advice?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Is this going to be only fans again? No?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
No, not not. Everything you enjoy has to be a business.
You don't have to listen to the capitalist capitalist machine
and turn every one of your passions into a profiteering enterprise.
You can just enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
And actually turning your hobby into a business is a
really good way to ruin your hobby. Yes, so.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I'll leave that in a box there as a completely
separate piece of advice, because that is option one. I
have ruined many things that I enjoy. In fact, most
things that I enjoy I have ruined in some way,
and mostly I've ruined them by trying to make them profitable. Thankfully,
(02:45):
there is no profit to be made with socializing with
my family and raising children. So at the moment that's
going quite well. But the rest of it, I have
ruined fishing technically became a job. At the young age.
I started tying rigs and selling them on eBay. I
(03:06):
made a clothing business around fishing. I ruined fishing for
myself because I ended up having to. I ended up
getting into a point of like media influencer point, and
you'd end up going fishing and it would be disappointing
not to catch fish. And now I go fishing to
drink beers and grill meat because that's brilliant, really easy
(03:32):
to ruin hobbit, ruining passions by turning them into businesses
and profiting from them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I think that's the most valuable bit of advice we've
ever given out on this show. Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
We can also turn it into a business if you
want to. You got that advice for Richard.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Ah Okay, business advice one oh one for this. You
are creating a fake entity really with a business, even
if it's under your own name, and that fake entity
has to be recognizable to people who are drifting pass
so that means some kind of logo that just represents
who are what you do, even if that logo is
(04:21):
just the same photo use across everything else. Has to
be a name. It has to be actual words again,
could be your personal name, could be some other brand
you've come up with. Just has to be unique. It
doesn't have to be the best name in the world.
There's all this psychology about how you should name a brand,
and that it doesn't matter. As long as it's unique
and it's recognizable to your audience, then that's fine. And
(04:45):
then use that name. Use that name consistently across different platforms, website,
social media, emails, written down on a bit of a
paper stapled to a tree. It doesn't matter. One of
the biggest mistakes you can make is coming up with
five different ways to describe yourself across five different platforms
or five different five different avenues. Just be one thing
(05:09):
that's consistent across lots of places, and if you're doing
something different, make that a separate think.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There's nothing wrong with being a personal brand as well.
You know, if you want to be Gareth's carvings, that
is a thing. I mean, as long as you're happy
to be tied to it, and also with you don't
scale it then So my business name is Prime Creative
and I set that up with the intention of being
(05:39):
able to scale it. But most of the issue is
most people want me to shoot everything, you know. I
do send videographers to events and do bits and have
a small army of freelancers on occasions, but generally it's
just me. So I probably would have been better of
just putting my own name to the brand because it's
(06:00):
trust and then just charging more money. So if you
can with luxury items, you you know, carved whatever it is,
people might pay two, three, four, five hundred quid for
something that's carved, you know, carved nicely. So I don't
think there's anything Having a personal touch to it and
(06:20):
running it as a personal brand it's not a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And neutral and unique is better than trying to be
hyper specific or particularly weird. Like if he called itself.
If you called himself Gareth's Insurance Services and only sold
walking sticks and carved warden items, that would be weird.
I mean, wouldn't It wouldn't be easy for the customer
to interact with them. So you two layers of this,
(06:47):
like you know, do you actually want to make it
a business.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's not whether it's too late or not. It's actually,
did you answer that is it's never too late. The
average person starting a business in the UK isn't actually
twenty something. The average person starting businesses between forty and
forty six. So it's people think that it's like, oh,
it's a young guns game. It's really not. Startups are
(07:10):
forty year old, and you know, people start businesses all
the time.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It's never too late, and small craft stuff like this
is incredibly difficult to turn large profits on. What you
can do is offset your costs mostly. So okay, I
know somebody who, on the face of it, they do
very well selling carved wooden items, and they do this
(07:35):
they pitch it at the art level, so they do
these huge wooden trugs and things for restaurants and table
piece things for rich people. Eyes strongly suspect actually they
don't do as well as they make out, And actually
they the fact that their wife is a barrister and
(07:57):
brings in all the money into the house means that
they can do that as their side of business. But
there is the illusion of success there, which is a
completely separate thing from the quality of their craftsmanship because
as a craftsman they are they are one of the
best I've ever seen. But that does not necessarily translate
into earning lots of money just because they charge five
(08:21):
hundred pounds for effectively a plank with a bit carved
out of it.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I think if you're in this, in this industry, you can.
I mean, we've spoke about the wooden horses, but one
of the wooden horses was thirty eight grand and I
wouldn't put it past that being sold at somewhere like
the game Fair. So I think there is a potential
(08:49):
for an upper limit for a business like this. I
don't know. Maybe if it's just sticks, maybe maybe you'll
end up it be a time versus you know, what
people are willing to pay. The demand metric will probably
be a bit ski with you could art and craftsmanship
(09:14):
is almost limitless.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
What you could do. Maybe because we're coming you know,
there's always a seasonal thing to these these kind of
crafts where you're you're not doing as much in the
winter or the spring, and then you've got the summer
fares and craft fairs, and they've got the build up
to Christmas where people tend to sell more items. And
I know people who do make spoons and things as
a side gig and they end up making a lot
(09:37):
in the summer to sell in the run up to Christmas, yafu,
you have these craft fair slash Christmas Fair, and people.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Looking at ercialization on any of these things is huge.
So if you can get that, and again for like branding,
if you can get it in in craft stuff does
well sold fivisually if you can get it in in
one of these magazines or you know, in people's hands
(10:05):
at game fares or talking about them on shoots or
something like that, you could be quite good.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So if you've got we're halfway through the summer now
coming towards the end of the summer. Even so, yarev
is probably in that cycle of looking at stuff. So
from when this, when you hear this podcast the until Christmas,
carry on as you were before, but look at how
everyone else is doing it. Not to copy them, but
(10:32):
just like do little micro analysis of other people's businesses.
You see someone else on the store and go, okay,
if I saw that person there today, but I wanted
to buy something from them, but I wasn't buying today,
I was for whatever reason you wanted to buy in
a month's time, could I find that person again easily?
Are they? Are they signaling away for me to be
(10:53):
able to keep that going or are they? Or am
I just going to leave people with the idea that yes,
I would like to buy a handcuff spoon, so I'm
just going to buy the first handcuff spoon I come
across on social media next time? Or are they going
to buy that thing from that person? So how much
how well are other people marketing and capturing that audience
(11:15):
and carrying them on with them towards purchase, either then
or in the future. And then look at how people
that you may not come across in your sphere, but
people you see online are people you know of How
do they communicate to people? Do they have a consistent
message across all social media platforms or from their website
(11:36):
to Instagram to Facebook or is it slightly different tone?
Do they only use one platform and does someone else
do better on a different platform. Are they posting directly
to groups or are they just putting content on their
own channel and hoping people see it. What tactics are
they using? Because this is actually quite a good skill
(11:57):
to look at how other people are doing something and
rather than trying to copy it, decide if it's actually working,
because you'll never see the other side of that. You'll
never see how much money is going into their bank account,
but you can look at it from the point of
view of a customer and go is this working? Is
this working for me? Or actually? And you do see
(12:18):
this with quite a lot of businesses. It's almost like
they really hate the idea of people coming to them
and giving them money because they seem to do everything
they can to make it hard for people to do that. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Remember. You can also search people up on company's house,
which is very useful.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yes, it's an company. Accounts tell you a lot about that,
and I mean you won't find much in the first year,
but if they've been trading for a couple of years
and their assets are significantly less than what they owe
people and their liabilities, then that tells you maybe this
(13:00):
business isn't grinding forward in the way you want it to.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, the facade is real.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It happens a lot. Yeah, So how look at how
other people doing things and learn from that, because that
will teach you a lot about it. I speak from experience.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
A short answer, it's not too late. It's never too late.
If you want to do it, you can do it.
Be careful of ruining your hobbies and interest. Also, think
about your purpose. Is your purpose actually to make money?
For your purpose is to make money, then focus on
profitable items that have demand. You might find that actually
(13:41):
carving key rings for ten quid that takes you five
minutes because you can knock a hundred out in so
little time, is your best that's what you want to do,
that's the best option. If your objective is you make
really nice walking sticks and it puts smiles on people's
(14:02):
faces and there's a family ailoom and you see them
on every shoot you go on, then you do that.
So work out your objectives. Think what you want to do.
If you want to make money, if you want to
make smiles, or if you want to do this at all,
it's never too late. Have some nice branding, find a
unique name and make sure that domain isn't taken, and yeah,
(14:26):
have fun with it.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
There we go another week of vague question answering with
fence sitting and maybe this and maybe that's no. I
think we've given people value again this week, just not
It's always a bit. There's a bit of the kink
in the road, isn't there between the question and the answer?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Can you make a noise like a stoake being caught
in a trap? Thanks? Bye,
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!