Mrs. Ryan's Interior Decorating venture - Small Business or hobby?

"On Wednesday, Paul Ryan capped off an evening littered with small business references by sharing an emotional story about his mother, Betty Douglas. He explained that, following his father’s death, his mother returned to school and eventually launched her own interior decorating company in Wisconsin.

“She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business,” Ryan said during his address accepting the vice presidential nomination. “It wasn’t just a new livelihood. It was a new life, and it transformed my mom from a widow in grief to a small business woman whose happiness wasn’t just in the past. Her work gave her hope, it made our family proud.”"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/small-business-a-common-theme-at-republican-convention/2012/08/30/62997f8e-f275-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html

"He also said that after her husband’s death, his mother, who later remarried, went back to college and started an interior decorating business with three or four employees."

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/18/news/la-pn-paul-ryan-mom-medicare-20120818

So the Ryans were proud of her, but Paul isn't sure whether she had 3 or 4 employees.


I'm not running down interior decorators here; I'm just wondering if Mrs. Ryan, who I suspect owned a share of this:

http://www.ryancentral.com/history.html

was really dependent on her small business for her bread and butter.