Turning passion into business

The idea of starting your own business can be daunting, and many choose to take the plunge only after amassing some capital, and experience. For some, the leap comes at a relatively young age. 

Four young people who took the risk early on in their lives turned their passion into a successful business. But what does it take to run a business at such a young age.

Tommy Diacono, owner of the much loved home of delicious fast food, New York Best, started his business back in late 2011 at just 26 years of age. The company has enjoyed a burgeoning reputation and presence since its inception. It now has two outlets: one just outside the university campus and another on the Sliema seafront, and plans for a third outlet in St Julian’s are in the offing.

Born and raised in an entrepreneurial environment, Diacono says his family has “always been big on food”.

“I saw a gap between the trend in ‘gourmet’ burgers and established fast food franchises, a perfect balance between fast/convenient yet good quality fast food, made from scratch.

“The reason so few young people venture into business is that they are used to taking the easy way out of everything. You need to really want something, or to want to make something of yourself to take the jump. It’s going to be tough, yet rewarding in the end,” he said.

But one of the biggest questions revolves around the capital such a move into business would require. But Diacono stressed that his working capital was “dismal at best”, having to rely on bank financing.

For 23-year-old Sarah Mifsud – better known as Saz Mifsud – her lifetime of creativity and studies at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK ultimately led her to launch her own brand of printed silk accessories. 

Striking images of her beautiful creations have been peppering social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and featured on national publications and fashion blogs, at Camilleri Paris Mode and The Beauty Lounge, both in Sliema.

“I was learning a lot at university and wanted to find a way of channelling my love for fashion, and the skills I was learning in the field, into a career,” Mifsud says of her degree in fashion print design, which taught her about screen-printing and digital and dyeing techniques, as well as garment construction; ultimately it allowed her to create garments using fabrics she had created completely from scratch. 

“My idea was that if these printed fabrics looked so complete and beautiful before cutting them up into garments, then why don’t I sell them in this way? Scarves are a great way of showing off a print. They are so versatile in how they can be worn and they really can uplift an outfit.”

A year after she began making scarves in 2013, Mifsud also added ties to her production as a result of a perceived gap in the market when it came to menswear accessories. 

“From a tender age, I was constantly drawing and painting and playing around with as many different crafts as I could – knitting, pottery, painting on ceramics, attempting to learn bizzilla making… I knew that I would not be satisfied unless I did something creative as a career. I dreamed of eventually having my own brand and I am so excited that today this is actually happening!”

Mifsud was granted a scholarship by the Malta Arts Scholarship Scheme, upon being accepted into the prestigious UK University, ultimately meaning she wouldn’t finish her degree “with a certificate in one hand and a pile of debt in the other”.

Her parents’ encouragement gave her the final push towards opening her own business. “The key was not having a mountain of capital at the start, but having a goal and a plan how to achieve it. If your ideas and goals are clear it is more likely that you will create a company that lasts. I’m not making this up,” she stressed.

“Steve Jobs started working on Apple in his garage, Reid Hoffman launched LinkedIn in his living room and Mel and Patricia Ziegler started Banana Republic (today a multi-million dollar fashion brand) with a mere $1,500 between them in their early thirties!”

Mifsud says the important thing is getting out of your comfort zone. “Leap as far away from it as possible if you have to. Then get working… You have to expect that you will make mistakes along the way and that it will take time to reach that final destination.”

Time and patience are exactly what 26-year-old Sarah Micallef has, who although yet to start her own business, is attracting attention with her creations under the The Secret Rose brand. Micallef offers custom embroidery on various items like notebooks, diaries, bookmarks, upcycled frames and cushion covers among others. 

“I’ve always needed a creative outlet and knew art and crafts would form a big part of my life,” she said. “I started experimenting with sewing quite young, as my mother is excellent at it. I took up embroidery – which makes up the majority of my business now – almost five years ago.”

2010 saw her set up a stall with a few items at the Patches artisan market. “It’s really grown from there, with more and more people discovering my work and ordering custom pieces via The Secret Rose Facebook page,” she enthused.

Micallef added that the idea of modernizing the craft of embroidery is at the heart of her work.  “I work to really bring it into the modern day, using it in unexpected ways and pushing it beyond people’s expectations.”

After the Patches market, she reached a stage where a constant stream of orders was awaiting her, throughout the year. “That’s when I really had to get organised and set up a spreadsheet to keep track of all the details – writing them in my little notebook just didn’t suffice any more!” she laughed. 

“There have been times when I needed to sacrifice time with friends or simply relaxing after a long day to work on orders with tight deadlines, but I always did it willingly,” she said. 

Micallef said that she felt what was needed for people to take the plunge into business was in fact enough passion to make sacrificing one’s time worth it. 

“Drive, determination and an absolute love for what you’re doing are essential if you’d like to turn your craft into a business,” she said. “It can be hard, and if I weren’t so passionate about what I do, I would have probably given up a long time ago.”

Passion is also what drives digital design company Sebazzo. Michael Azzopardi, 27, is one half of the company based in London and Austria, with a focus on mobile applications and websites. 

“At the end of day, it boils down to passion. I love what I do so much that the sheer fear of losing it fills me with enough motivation to last me a long time,” Azzopardi said.

He credits his supportive upbringing and watching his father physically building and selling houses, as sowing the first seeds of entrepreneurship in him. “Business now comes naturally to me, I am motivated very easily by the prospect of starting something from nothing.”

And he says it is the absence of a supportive environment that leads to many young people giving up on their ambitions. “There are no reasons why a young person with an entrepreneurial spirit shouldn’t embrace his or her own ideas and choose the slightly unconventional lifestyle of an entrepreneur,” he said.

“Young people should not be held back when this ambition is expressed, instead they should be encouraged to take the necessary risks,” he said.

Meeting his Austrian business partner, Sebastian Hefel, during his first month in London in 2010 provided him with a crucial bit of inspiration. “Up to that point, I was always full of promise and ambition but could never really pull those two together for long enough… our partnership is the perfect combination of two personalities that complement each other – Sebazzo represents that.”

With an intriguing brief to build a training app for Ibis Hotels’s food and beverage staff, Sebazzo redeveloped the brief to fit other aspects of the enterprise training market. After launching Ibis Campus in 2013, they began prototyping what is now a marketable product.

“That commitment got us some great opportunities with big international brands along the way who showed interest in our work and decided to apply these enterprise-wide employee training solutions to their own workforce. The response to our product made it clear that we had a good enough product to turn into a business,” he said.

Starting off with £4,000, Sebazzo continues to be completely self-funded. But one of the biggest setbacks is the social pressure to conform, and the expectation for people to know exactly what they will be doing by the age of 22. 

“I genuinely believe that behind a good business is a slightly erratic, mildly inconsistent person who’s often self-contradicting. This isn’t very in keeping with modern expectations, but that’s what most innovators are like… they experiment and give things a go,” he said.

“Society should stop expecting young entrepreneurs to follow a system. Instead, they should be allowed to slip into that headspace and be left to their own devices.”

Azzopardi’s advice is that it is important that those interested in business surround themselves with positive people, find a mentor, and keep their eyes open for a business partner. “Don’t waste time trying to change your personality to fit the archetypal ‘business-person’ ideal. Build on your strengths. If you can, start young, there has never been a better time to start a business than this very moment.”