7 Side hustle skills for a better career
An unlikely source of helpful learnings and experience
Here’s a counterintuitive thought - one of the best ways to get better at working for someone else is to get better at working for yourself.
The concept of a side hustle, or work done outside of your full-time job, is a hotly debated topic and there are all sorts of opinions about how, when, and even if someone should have a side hustle and what it should look like.
As someone who is still fairly new to their side hustle, it’s been an interesting learning experience. I want to highlight some ways I’ve noticed the projects I’m working on have been helping me in my career.
If you already have some work you’re doing on the side, maybe you’ve noticed some of these benefits as well. If not, these are some potential learning opportunities you can look forward to if you decide to take the plunge.
1. Learning Empathy
A side hustle teaches you empathy. While your day job is typically focused and routine, running your one-person hustle brings new challenges and requirements frequently. You’ll be running the entire process, start to finish.
You don’t necessarily have a lot of time to prepare and you’ll be educating yourself for the most part, so you’ll have to learn the hard way (but the best way), by just jumping in and doing.
So when you write, you start to understand the work behind the creative process. When you sell, you start to understand the sting of repeated rejection. When you design, you start to understand the challenges of managing ambiguous requests.
It’s hard to know how difficult something is until you’ve done it. Even if you’re supporting demand gen marketers or SDRs daily, you won’t know what it’s like until you’ve been in their shoes.
Gaining this experience will make it easier for you to empathize with those you work with. You'll be more collaborative working with these teams, and it’ll be easier for you to understand their current needs and anticipate future ones because you have a small taste of what it’s like to do their job.
2. Learning Prioritization
If you struggle with prioritization, a side hustle is a great teacher. All of a sudden you're not just prioritizing different projects or requests from various teams, you're graduating to another level of demands on your time. Many side hustles live in the “5-9” hours when you’re not working, and there are all sorts of things that also need to take place during that time: family/social commitments, sleeping, taking care of house/car/finance/etc., projects.
These things are already time-restricted because of the hours committed to your day job, and now you have a new project, demanding attention.
I know you probably are already making some of these types of tradeoffs right now, but it's a bit different when it's trying to fit new work into life, instead of life sneaking into work. Working a side hustle will teach you quickly how to evaluate your options when spending your time, and how to balance each aspect of your life.
A side hustle should add to your life, not take away from it. If you find you’ve got to spend 40 hours a week on your side hustle, in addition to 40 hours a week at work, you probably need to try something else.
3. Skill Development and Improvement
Your side hustle is a great opportunity to add new skills to your toolbelt and further develop abilities you already have. If you want to learn something that doesn’t fall into the responsibilities of your day job, look for a way to gain experience in that area so you can start doing it for other people.
Learning may be the “easy” part. So many tools offer free versions of their software now. You can combine that with some YouTube videos and ChatGPT prompts and you'll have all of the resources you need to build a foundational level of knowledge. After that, look to find small side projects where you can use your experience and gain insight into more use cases.
Side hustles are also a great way to improve skills you already have. Maybe you learned some skills in a previous role that don’t apply to your current job. You can continue to use those skills on your projects and improve them over time.
4. Learn how to ask
In our professional lives, there are certain times when we need to make a big ask. Perhaps you’re looking for additional budget for a much-needed tool, or you’re trying to make a case to build out the Ops team with more headcount. These questions have significant implications, and you must be prepared with additional supporting data, insights, and recommendations.
When you're doing something on your own, sooner or later you'll have to "shoot your shot", and ask a big, impactful question. Perhaps you're hoping to do some work for a former boss, or you'd like to interview a luminary in your space on a podcast, or you want to collaborate on a project with some other side-hustling friends.
Thinking through the logistics of the request is a great exercise. You learn to approach from someone else's perspective, figure out what's in it for them, and pitch the opportunity. You gain essential experience in making a case for the thing that you want. These are skills that directly transfer over to your work life.
Maybe you're hoping your boss will give you that new project, or you'd like to ask someone to serve as a mentor. Getting in the habit of making high-value requests is an important skill.
5. Reduce risk in your career
These days, our careers have taken on an additional layer of complexity. One second you're on the fast track to a promotion, and the next you're kicked to the curb with your entire team. You can be a high-performer, a people manager, a big-time contributor - no one is immune. Unfortunately, the chances are good that at some point you may experience a layoff.
If you only have one income stream, one “workstream” where all of your effort is focused, you can be in a pretty precarious position.
So what do you do to de-risk your career? One easy thing to do is to add an additional income stream. Add two, or even more. Even if they don't come close to replacing what you're earning in your full-time career, you'll at least have some change in your pocket while you land your next role.
The goal isn’t to instantly replace everything you were making employed by someone else. At the early stages, money coming in the door is more a sign that you’re providing value, rather than an indicator that you could quit your job and live on it.
Best of all, if something unfortunate does happen, you'll also have some projects you could focus on and grow into something you do to support yourself.
6. Build a stronger network
It’s amazing how your network can accelerate things for you.
Need a job? You can get connected to the hiring manager of a role you’re interested in.
Need some advice on a technical problem or a tool recommendation? Instantly pick the brains of 20 other people in a situation similar to yours.
Starting a business? Get the word out to people who know you and know what you can do.
The oft-repeated quote "Your network is your net worth" rings even more true today than in the past. Having a group of people you know and trust is an incredible resource. Regardless of the situation, others around you can help, and getting in touch is typically only a click or a text away.
So what are the best ways to build your network? Here are two things that have worked for me:
Be curious about other people and what they’re good at. Connect with them to listen and to learn.
Find ways to add value to your existing network. Introduce one friend to another, comment on LinkedIn posts, and provide a recommendation when they’re purchasing a new Marketing tool.
7. Build your writing muscle
I’ve said it before, writing is one of the most underrated skills for Marketing Operations pros, especially those interested in growing into leadership roles.
No matter what you do on your own, writing will be a part of it. You'll write emails, web copy, proposals, video scripts, interview questions, social posts -- the list goes on and on.
Writing repeatedly will force you to practice and become a better writer (or your side hustle will wither away).
Communicating is one of the key skills that need to be leveraged as you grow into leadership roles, and so much of that communication takes place in written form. Writing well will help you distill your thoughts, prioritize and decide what needs to be shared, and help you get your point across.
Writing well is something that takes time and practice. However, when a well-written project brief spurs a team to action, or an internal memo brings about a positive change in strategy, the payoff will be significant.
Wrapping Up
You might be putting off a side hustle because you’re not sure what to do, or you don’t think that you’ll have enough time to get anything done. While I can’t help you specifically with those questions, I would encourage you to consider starting small and testing specific ideas.
As you try different things, you’ll learn what interests you, and what the time commitment might be like to do it well.
One approach is to take what you’re already doing and find other companies that need that service. You can begin to build a reputation as a valuable service provider and gain experience in multiple situations - an experience that you can bring back to improve what you’re doing in your day job.
Take things one day at a time - it doesn’t have to be super formal or official. As you figure out what works, see how you can leverage the things you’re doing and learning to help you in your 9-5 job as well. Maybe one day, you’ll grow your side hustle into your main hustle and get to be your boss. If not, you’ll still have gained valuable experience.