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Side hustles are here to remain. In 2024 36% of American adults they have a side business, with an average $891 per 30 days in earnings, which implies an increase of 10% in 2023–2024.
But side hustles are greater than just a solution to make extra money – they’re a step towards an increasingly independent workforce and a freelance profession path. In my last article I shared the latest data from MBO Partners showing that 27.7 million people in the US are full-time independent employees. This number has doubled since 2020. This continued growth highlights a lasting change that continues despite mass layoffs, distant work and an uncertain global economy.
What does this mean for you, an ambitious person? This signifies that at some point you will probably be a freelance employee, either working on the side or full-time freelance.
As someone who has vacillated between corporate leadership, venture-backed founder, and freelancing, trust me when I say your future might be flexible. You can climb the corporate ladder by applying freelance principles to make an impact, or you’ll be able to scale your startup from bootstrap to acquisition by freelancing and hiring freelancers. And if you enjoy managing a portfolio of two to 5 clients, you’ll be able to join the 4.4 million freelancers in the U.S. earning over $100,000 and proceed running your personal business.
I know this will likely sound abstract and a bit academic, but I’ll explain it in this text. I’ll explain why a side hustle is essential, learn how to go from a side hustle to a freelance profession, and why freelancing, full-time work, and every little thing in between just becomes a job.
Side gigs signal a recent future of work
Over the last 75 years, sailing careers have rarely modified.
We prioritize different skill sets. My parents focused on mechanical engineering and accounting. STEM was a priority. We prioritize various industries. My parents prioritized Wall Street. I prioritized Microsoft and technology. However, the way we pursue a profession rarely changes. My parents and I were expected to have paper resumes to draw employers. My parents and I were expected to go through multiple interviews before getting a job. My parents and I were expected to have one job with one employer and at least 2 years in each job, otherwise we risked being branded a “flight risk.”
Today this paradigm has modified. Instead of one job, a Paychex survey found that 47% of Gen Z, 33% of Millennials and 28% of Baby Boomers have at least three jobs. The same study found that 93% of Gen Zers play multiple concert events. Although your gut response could also be fear or disgust that folks have to work multiple jobs to survive, they themselves are happier, healthier, and wealthier than their traditional full-time alternative.
The effect of this shift is that individual loyalty and merit is shifting away from individual employers towards specific skill sets, technologies or industries. Michael Morris, CEO of Torc, recently explained to me that loyalty among software developers has shifted from loyalty to corporations and logos to the ecosystems they rely on. He cited examples equivalent to AWS, ServiceNow, Salesforce and iOS as recent focal points for developer loyalty.
This is not specific to software development. Ryan Bettencourt, CEO of Growth Collective, also told me that the evolution of marketing has led to the emergence of different channels and tools. He said the most successful marketing freelancers typically specialize in specific industries, equivalent to legal services or FinTech, or focus on specific marketing channels, equivalent to paid search or influencer marketing.
What is your area of interest, skill set or industry of focus?
Side gigs are the gateway to a digital profession, and platforms make it easier
While full-time work has a single contractual structure, the future of work seems limitless in terms of how individuals can earn money.
Freelancing is a popular path that I imagine is the simplest way for individuals and corporations to get to know each other and build a profession or workforce. I define freelance as consulting or skilled service-oriented work where the worker is external, involvement may vary depending on client needs, and the individual worker typically has 2-5 clients at a time.
The common difference between freelancing and other future work segments is the importance of freelance talent platforms to search out work, build a strong client base, and quantify your impact through customer rankings and reviews.
I imagine that freelance talent platforms are three things. The place to start out. External sales team because their predominant task is to search out clients who will hire you. And potential protection as they manage invoices and potentially triage customer issues. This comes at a price – typically a fee ranging from 5 to 35%. However, in most cases it is still lower than building your personal sales and operations team. For large enterprises, platforms provide insurance and civil liability insurance that a person is unable to cover.
Freelance talent platforms are here to remain and are increasingly focused on building specialized and cutting-edge talent pools. MBO partners discovered this in 2023, 40% of freelancers used an online talent platform to search out work, and 47% plan to do so. Platforms themselves are good business. Big View Research estimates that freelance talent platforms are a $4.39 billion industry, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.5% from 2023 to 2030.
It is unclear what talent platforms will grow to be. Will they at all times be a place to search out a job? Will they be a place to build your corporation? Will they be a place of community? Will they be a place where you will discover colleagues to whom you’ll be able to recommend work or build your personal team with them? Platforms can have many different potential values for freelancers. It’s clear that talent platforms have their place and will increasingly be personalized to your unique value.
Side gigs can mimic the corporate management track
What if you don’t need to be a trainer, content creator or consultant? What if you favor a management profession path as a substitute? What if you wish to manage teams, have your personal strategies and motion plans, and increase your responsibilities to one day be at the management level? Is there a future for this field because of a digital profession path?
Five years ago I might have said that this kind of profession can be difficult to duplicate on the freelance path, but today the “fractional” profession path is one of the fastest growing features of the freelance economy. Fractional units cover all skill sets. These may include fractional CMOs, sales executives, and COOs. They can do every little thing from creating plans to leading teams, and even changing their role to arrange for a everlasting director who may or is probably not them.
The only consistency is your digital storefront
Today or tomorrow, you’ll be able to profit from a digital profession in your future profession. Regardless of whether it is freelancing, sole proprietorship or combining full-time work with additional activities, the decision about the path is as much as you.
An easy search related to the gig economy, the maker economy, printing work, or others will bring up a wealth of self-help advice. This article is not like that. This article is intended to teach you, place your side hustle in the context of a higher future of work, and begin your search for what is best for your personal situation.
What I can say is consistent across all potential paths is that your contributions are now being quantified, digitized and combined to create opportunities. Conceptually, think about LinkedIn at its most simple level. Now think about a GitHub repository if you are a developer, a Behance profile if you are a designer, or a freelance platform profile, depending on which one most closely fits your area of interest. No matter what, your work and its impact capture relationships across all of these platforms to create a digital storefront. It’s as much as you what you wish this storefront to grow to be.