Whelp. I quit my Engineering job during a pandemic shutdown to be a full time blacksmith.

And holy crap business is booming.Some may remember my post earlier this year about planning to quit my job to be a full time knifemaker in the spring of 2022 to have perfect positioning and blah blah blah. Well guess what? It doesn't work like that. When it's time to make the jump, it's f**king time.I left my job 2 weeks ago and have been working nonstop since then. It seems like every day I have a new email asking for quotes or someone buying stuff off my website. My biggest fear was having too little work to sustain me which is totally not happening. I'm already making more than I did at my old job with all the freedom in the world to set my own priorities. And since things are accelerating so quickly, I may need to hire employees sooner than I originally thought.A few quick advice bullets for anyone trying to go down a similar path:Validate your businessMake sure people actually want your product and they're willing to pay you enough to sustain you. The key to this is having something Rare and Valuable (Thanks "The E-myth") Lots of jewelry makers do "valuable" work that's not rare or niche artists that make something unusual like Fairy houses that's rare, but not really valuable. Not a knock on them, but I continually see artists getting frustrated when their product just isn't very viable. I totally stumbled on this by mistake. People kept buying stuff so I kept making stuff and the more people bought, the more I charged until suddenly people were paying me several hundreds of dollars for a knife equivelent to a KAbar or heavy gerberUnderstand your customerThis one is simple for me. My clients crave authenticity and individuality. My knives and myself are a conduit for which they can realize their self-perception. And to be clear, I am part of the product myself. By being friendly and kind and *authentic* I close the gap between lifeless steel and human spirit. I think this extends to a lot of things today- most people are starved for kindness and authenticity and folding that into any market can only helpbuild your infrastructure before you take the jumpIf you're like me, I didn't have $25k in savings to live on if my business didn't make a profit. I spent 3 years growing my hobby/side hustle- buying equipment, building websites, going to festivals, and developing the skills. Once I decided to go full time, I spent a ton of time developing my own expense and revenue reports, quote generators, business plan, growth plan etc. You don't want to be dealing with that stuff once you're in it for real.And that's where I'm at now- full time and pulling in tons of revenue despite the COVID shutdown. Ask me anything below; but I may not respond immediately since I have lots to do in the forge today! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy