Domain knowledge will be a waste of time if your soft skills are not also developed
Mastering soft skills, or power skills as they are more recently termed, can make all the difference between a disappointingly ineffective side hustle and a thriving, high-income venture, that has the potential to eventually turn into your main job.
You can have exceptional domain knowledge within your area of expertise, and know how to deliver an outstanding service to customers; but all this “know-how” will be fruitless and ineffective if you do not master five critical skills, which lie at the foundation of all successful career and business endeavors.
These five core skills are:
1. Communication
Research tells us that communication skills are already the number one skill of the workforce. Poor communication has been one of the underlying factors behind the failure of U.S. workforces, according to Grammarly who noted that this state of affairs is costing businesses $1.2 trillion annually.
But becoming a freelancer or running your side hustle doesn’t mean that you escape the need to develop this skill because you’re not working within a team. As a matter of fact, developing your communication skills becomes an even higher priority because you will be working with people at different levels all the time.
As a freelancer, you are also a project manager, planning, managing, and carrying out a range of projects for your clients while collaborating with some of their team members as well (particularly if it’s a business client). Repetitive communication is essential, not only for liaison with clients when doing business with them, but for ensuring word of mouth referrals, repeat business, and generating visibility for your side hustle.
Communication skills also come handy for the creation of content to promote your freelancing endeavors. The effects of your communication style can be instrumental in causing customers to not want to work with you ever again, or in making them love you so much that they sing your praises highly, causing your side hustle to flourish.
2. Time Management
Coming out of the constraints of a 9 to 5 might sound like fun initially, but it’s actually more stressful for your time management than you think. You will need to deal with irregular hours if you are a sole freelancer.
And if you are juggling your side hustle alongside your main job, time management is especially important as you will need to establish what’s most important to accomplish within the limited time that you have available.
Managing your full-time work alongside personal and family commitments, and getting a side hustle off the ground is a balancing act that requires a systematic approach to how you structure and spend your time.
Start by realistically calculating how many hours you can dedicate each week to your side hustle and how you will structure each of those hours to yield the most results. This is often termed the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of results come from 20% of effort. So instead of focusing on doing everything, focus on what counts, and maximize your time this way.
To be most productive when juggling your side hustle with other demands, concentrate your energy and … [+]
3. Problem-Solving
One of the key aspects of your work when managing your side hustle or working as a freelancer, is that you will daily be required to solve problems, which can appear at any time and can range from being extremely complicated, to being fairly easy to manage and solve.
To begin with, providing a service or product to your clients means that you are solving a problem and answering to their needs and pain points. This requires extensive research of your target market and the industry you operate in so your side hustle can be most effective.
But beyond this level of problem-solving, it takes on an entire new meaning when you need to think for yourself, without the support of your boss or colleagues, on how to resolve issues that may appear within your work and business admin tasks. It could be tax preparation problems, or you might be facing a complaint from a customer, and be at a loss on how to respond in a way that keeps them happy while minimizing loss to your business. This requires you to think outside the box, brainstorm, get creative, and not be afraid to take calculated risks.
4. Organization
To manage a successful side hustle requires not only time management, as noted above, but also strong organizational skills to make effective use of that time.
This entails setting goals and objectives. You need to think long-term and short-term, and have a solid vision, passion, and clear goals beyond just making extra money. If you have a real passion for your work and the impact you wish to make from your side hustle, it will be contagious and your customers will notice it.
Organizing your goals will keep you motivated when your side hustle journey gets tough, and it will also help with improving customer loyalty.
So, set clear goals, be definite in your approach, understand what you want to achieve and ensure that all of your actions are intentional and not aimless. Without organization, potential customers might be able to spot loopholes due to your lack of planning and foresight.
5. Learning Mindset
The final soft skill, or power skill, that you need as a freelancer or when venturing out to launch a side hustle, is that of a learning mindset, also known as the growth mindset and emotional intelligence.
In your day job, your boss gives you performance reviews, and you receive feedback from your colleagues and the stakeholders you work with. But when running a side hustle, often the only feedback you obtain is from your customers. And if you have no customers to begin with, then there’s no feedback at all.
This requires you to be hyper-aware. Hyper-awareness is a skill that simply means you are listening to subtle clues and indicators in the market around you and are constantly looking for ways to improve your style of work and your processes. When you are hyper-aware, you undertake deep introspection and self-reflection.
Keen self-awareness and a learning mindset can help you avoid many costly mistakes in your freelance career. You can even take it a step further and act on your reflective feedback to improve your practice. Listening to the feedback of your customers—especially if they give you negative reviews—can be a helpful boost to your business because you can learn and grow from their criticism to improve your operations. This is what it means to be emotionally intelligent.
Additionally, a learning mindset is essential when you’re starting out because although you may have the required domain expertise, you still need to sharpen your knowledge to be relevant and keep pace with your potential customers.
Build the habit of self-reflection and giving yourself critical, constructive feedback to improve … [+]
All five of these skills combined—communication skills, time management, problem-solving, organization, and a learning or growth mindset—will help you succeed in your career and enable you to win more gigs, more projects, and more happy customers. There’s no magical quick fix to a high-income side hustle. Having the demand and researching your market will prove to be of no avail, without first mastering your soft skills.
Source: The 5 Soft Skills You Need To Launch A High-Income Side Hustle In 2024
