Perusal of the internet turned up a fair variety of devotee occupations pursued as small businesses—occupations I have placed in one of eleven categories. This typology should be taken as provisional rather than definitive. For at this, the exploratory stage in the study of occupational devotion, we should expect it to be modified in various ways as suggested by future open-ended research.

Devotee Small Businesses

Some skilled crafts (covered as a type of devotee work in Chapter 4) are also capable of generating devotee small businesses. Applying the six defining criteria, the work of the handyman, people who remodel homes (internally or externally), and the stonemason qualify as three examples. The handyman and those who remodel homes encounter with each project they take on some novelty and need to be innovative, as shown in research on the first (Brayham 2015; Hilbert 1994).

Plumbers, electricians and furniture makers, all examined in the preceding chapter can, in some cases, also be analyzed as owners of small devotee businesses. The main difference is that the latter typically employs a small number of other plumbers, electricians and so on who share the enthusiasm of the entrepreneur. Nevertheless, as the number of devotee workers grows, the organization tends to bureaucratize, diluting thereby, the entrepreneur's love for the job. At the beginning, these businesses must learn, usually through some kind of formal training like adult education and self-directed reading, how to run an enterprise and market their service.

Teaching as a small business is distinct from professional teaching in primary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education. It also differs from teaching the occasional adult or continuing education course, something usually done as a sideline. Rather, teaching as a small business centers on instruction of a practical kind, the demand for which is sufficient to constitute a livelihood for an instructor or small set of instructors. Thus, small businesses have been established to teach people how to ride horses, fly small airplanes and descend to earth in a parachute. Many local dance studios fall into this category, as do driver training schools, yoga studios and personal fitness programs. Innovativeness here revolves around adapting lessons to the needs of individual students and their capacities to learn the material of the course