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Side hustles are here to stay. In the year 2024, 36% of American adults have a side hustle, with an average of $891 per month in earnings, a 10% increase from 2023 to 2024.
But side hustles are more than just a way to do it pocket some extra money – they are a step forward for the increasingly independent workforce and independent career path. IN my last articleI have broken down the latest data from MBO Partners showing that 27.7 million individuals in the US are full-time self-employed. A number that has doubled since 2020. This steady growth highlights a steady shift that continues despite mass layoffs, a reckoning with remote work and an uncertain global economy.
What does this mean to you, an ambitious individual? This means that at some point, you'll be freelancing, moving laterally, or freelancing full-time.
As an individual who has bounced back and forth between corporate executive tracks, venture-backed founders, and freelancers, trust me when I say that the future can be flexible. You can climb the corporate ladder by applying freelance principles to drive impact, or you can scale a startup from scrap to acquisition while working and hiring freelancers. And if you enjoy managing a portfolio of two to five clients, you can join the 4.4 million US freelancers making over $100,000 and continue to run your own sole proprietorship.
I know this may seem abstract and a bit academic, but I will make it clear in this article. I'll explain why having a side hustle is essential, how you can transition from a side hustle to a freelance career, and why freelancing, full-time roles, and everything in between are converging into just work.
Related: Side hustles that only last an hour
Side gigs signal a new career future
The sailing career has rarely changed in the past 75 years.
We have priority different skill sets. My parents gave preference to mechanical engineering and accounting. I prioritized STEM. We prioritize different industries. My parents prioritized Wall Street. I prioritized Microsoft and technology. But the way we approach careers has rarely changed. My parents and I were expected to have a paper resume to attract employers. My parents and I were expected to go through multiple interviews before getting the job. My parents and I were expected to have one job with one employer and at least 2+ years with each job or else risk being labeled a “flight risk.”
Today, this paradigm has changed. Instead of a job, a survey by Paychex found that 47% of Gen Zers, 33% of Millennials and 28% of Baby Boomers have three or more jobs. The same study reveals that 93% of Gen Zers hold multiple gigs. While your gut reaction may be fear or revulsion that individuals are working too much to survive, the individuals themselves are happier, healthier, and wealthier than their traditional full-time counterparts.
The impact of this change is that individual loyalty and credit is shifting away from individual employers and 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 companies and logos to the ecosystems they rely on. He cited examples like AWS, ServiceNow, Salesforce and iOS as the new focal points of loyalty for developers.
This is not unique 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 tend to specialize in specific industries, such as legal services or FinTech, or focus on specific marketing channels, such as paid search or influencer marketing.
What is your niche focus, skill set or industry?
Related: How much money do most side hustle people make in 1 month
Side gigs are a stepping stone to a digital career with platforms as an opportunity
While full-time jobs have a contractual structure, the future of work seems limitless in how individuals can earn money.
Freelancing is a popular avenue that I believe is the easiest way for individuals and companies to meet and build their career or workforce. I define freelancing as consulting or professional service-oriented work where the worker is outsourced, the engagement can fluctuate up and down depending on the client's need, and the individual worker typically has 2-5 clients at a time.
A common difference between independent work and other work-related segments in the future is the prominence of independent talent platforms for finding work, building a strong client base and quantifying your impact through client ratings and reviews.
I think of freelance talent platforms as three things. A place to start. An outsourced sales team, as their core business is finding clients to hire you. And potential protection as they manage invoices and can control customer issues. This comes at a price – usually a 5 to 35% fee. But in most cases, this still comes down to building your sales and operations team. For large enterprises, platforms provide insurance coverage and indemnity that an individual cannot cover.
Independent talent platforms are here to stay and increasingly getting into building specialized and advanced talent pools. MBO Partners found this in 2023, 40% of freelancers used an online talent platform to find work and 47% plan to do so. The platforms themselves are a good business. Studying the big picture 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 the talent platforms will become. Will they always be a place to find work? Will they be a place to build your business? Will they be a place for the community? Will they be a place to find collaborators to whom you can refer work or build your own teams? There are many different potential values that platforms can have for freelancers. What is clear is that talent platforms have a place and will increasingly be customized to your unique value.
Side gigs can replicate the corporate executive path
What if you don't want to be a coach, content creator or consultant? What if, instead, you want the executive career path? What if you want to manage teams, master strategy and roadmaps, and build more and more responsibility to sit in the C-suite one day? Is there a future for this track with a digital career path?
Five years ago I would have said that this type of career would be difficult to replicate through a freelance path, but today a “partial” career path is one of the fastest growing aspects of the freelance economy. Partial individuals include all skill sets. They can be part marketing officers, sales officers and operations managers. They can do everything from creating plans to leading teams and even transitioning their role to be ready for a permanent executive who may or may not be them.
The only consistency is your digital storefront
Whether it's today or tomorrow, you'll benefit from a digital career in the future of work. Whether that's freelancing, a solopreneur business, or combining full-time work with side gigs, the path is yours to decide.
A simple search related to the gig economy, the creative economy, policing, or others will result in tons of self-help advice. This article is not that. This article is meant to make you aware, contextualize your side gig into the larger future of work, and begin your search for what's best for your personal situation.
What I can tell you is that what is consistent across all possible paths is that your merit is now quantified, digitized and interwoven to create opportunities. Think conceptually about LinkedIn at the most basic level. Now think about a GitHub repository if you're a developer, a Behance profile if you're a designer, or a platform-independent profile, depending on what suits your field best. No matter what, your work and the impact you capture compounds across all these platforms to create your digital storefront. It's up to you what you want that showcase to be.