Gig Workers to Consultants to Entrepreneurs

I work in higher education, focused on working adults and other nontraditional students. Most of my students have returned to school because they want to advance their careers: either move up in their organizations, or change careers, or start their own businesses. At least, that has been our traditional understanding of these “comebackers.” But in the San Francisco Bay Area, where my university is located, and increasingly around the country, more and more of our students are looking to follow a different career trajectory: to get off the gig economy treadmill.

Really, though, it’s more complicated than just getting a job. Even before the pandemic, businesses in the Bay Area were moving to a business model increasingly dependent on casual and temporary workers—contractors. Nationwide, estimates of how many workers are in the gig economy in the US range from 1% to 34% of workers, depending on how it’s measured, but the numbers generally converge around 25% of workers earning some money (primary or secondary) from gig work. 10% of Americans use the gig economy as their main source of income. According to CNBC and Bloomberg, more than half of the people working at large tech firms like Google are contractors. This means that for many gig workers (sometimes referred to as contingent labor), there are not as many full-time, permanent jobs available.

What we need to do for them, then, is to get them to think about themselves and their labor differently, and to act accordingly. What our students are looking for is more control over their work and better, more stable work conditions—even if they remain independent contractors. There is a fine line between a gig worker and a freelancer, after all. And a fine line between a freelancer and a consultant, and another between any of those and an entrepreneur. All are classified as independent contractors by the US government, unless you have incorporated yourself as a business.

I am not suggesting we just start labeling these jobs differently as a way to boost people’s self-esteem. But each of these terms—gig worker, freelancer, consultant, entrepreneur—suggests a different level of control and intentionality. And higher education can provide people with the skills and mindset to change their relationships to work and the economy as a whole. This is of much greater value for education than content-based learning, especially in a region where the economy is constantly changing—in fact, is based on the idea of constant change. 

So what would it take for a gig worker to become a consultant? For starters, a plan of action. Is the work you are doing helping you acquire skills and experience that you can leverage toward some higher goals? Do you have expertise in any area, or can you learn how to become competent in that area? Do you know how to articulate your goals and expertise to others? We can help people with all of that. We need to teach learners how to make a plan, how to follow it, and how to adjust course when necessary.

From there, if the goal is working for yourself, a consultant can become an entrepreneur. I don’t want to be reductionist or make it seem like it’s easy to make a living as an entrepreneur (I am decidedly not an entrepreneur, at least not in terms of promoting myself), but it’s a worthwhile pursuit if it means getting off the gig economy treadmill. And the skills an entrepreneur needs can be acquired. Catherine Cote of Harvard Business School Online (of course I looked there) lists six:

• Basic Finance Skills
• Networking
• Speaking confidently
• Accepting and Acting on Feedback
• Recognizing Patterns
• Maintaining a Growth Mindset

That last one, I think, is the key to all the others—if you have a growth mindset, you are open to being a lifelong learner. All of these can be taught.

Sujan Patel writing in Entrepreneur (of course I looked there too) identifies even more skills an entrepreneur should have—17 in all. The key ones he adds to the list above involve hiring, training, and managing staff; focusing on your customers; and a desire to improve your world. All of these are important, but this last one has particular relevance for me, working as I do with adult working learners. I do this work because of my desire to improve the world (in some small way), expanding access and opportunity to people who might not have seen a path forward otherwise, so it is easy to incorporate this into the curriculum and convey this to the students in my school.

This is not to say that subject-specific knowledge shouldn’t be taught. But if education is to be transformational, it has to focus on mindset, on resilience, and on adaptability. It has to help students see themselves and their relationship to the world differently. And it has to meet them in the world in which they actually live, not the static world of most textbook learning.