Working in retail is the best way to start your skills as a budding entrepreneur,
According to one Banking Bank Survey April 2023, 39% of US adults has a side hustle, and about 28% say they expect to always need one to get by. Before I started my six-figure business as a financial coach, I worked part-time for $15/hour at two local clothing boutiques. I also started my own retail business which taught me critical skills that most new entrepreneurs miss out on trying to learn in their own businesses.
Here are three critical business skills I learned on the job that have paid off years later by accelerating my business learning curve while getting paid to improve my business skills along the way.
Practice sales positions to build your confidence later
According to a study of 600 entrepreneurs by Kajabi — a tech platform for entrepreneurs and creators — 84% said they experience impostor syndrome. I’ve seen many new business owners fear sales because they often haven’t had to sell products or services themselves before. This can slow the growth of your side hustle if it creates fear of sales and prevents you from getting feedback to iterate faster.
Before starting my full-time business, I retailed jewelry and clothing from:
- focus on increasing the total lifetime value of a customer versus a single transaction;
- upselling products or services based on what the customer has already selected; and
- be more direct in asking for the sale instead of letting people pass passively.
Retail experience can help you muster the courage to raise your prices. I started by asking clients to pay a low $29 for my first coaching program and gradually increased the cost as I received positive feedback about the value of what I was producing.
I eventually raised my price to $250 per session. Practicing how to sell in a retail environment helped me overcome my fear of rejection.
Learn time management on boring but critical business tasks
The Covid-19 pandemic has inspired many people to seek more flexible working hours. The Commerce Institute — a small business research organization — finds that on average, 4.4 million businesses are started each year in the United States. But dictating your own schedule includes the responsibility of delegating business tasks to yourself if you’re starting a side hustle as a solopreneur.
In coaching people how to quit their corporate jobs, I have seen young entrepreneurs frustrated by their inability to manage their time effectively. They don’t realize how dependent they were on their previous corporate culture to dictate their workload, even highly paid executives who considered themselves autonomous and self-motivated.
When I worked in retail, I messed up even the most basic tasks like locking the door or counting cash correctly because I did it differently every time and didn’t spend enough time on the tasks until I learned the optimal order.
From these retail experiences, I learned to print an actual checklist on a whiteboard that reminded me of critical business tasks and in what order to do them. I now use the same practice in managing my online business.
I also watched my retail employers manage everything from bookkeeping to vendor management to physical product and space maintenance. When I was ready to start my own business, I knew what tasks to schedule management time for and how to maintain a structured daily schedule to stay on top of my business needs.
Master Faces Challenging Customers Without Losing Your Cool
KPMG found that 75% of female executives across all industries have experience impostor syndrome in their career. I have personally found myself in this position when challenged by financial coaching clients who complained about their experiences or were unwilling to do the work we agreed upon to achieve the results they were hoping for.
While dealing with retail clients at my local fashion boutique, I learned how to manage a wider range of challenges when there wasn’t a precise protocol to follow. Most importantly, I was able to shadow business owners to see how they handled difficult interactions and learned that actively listening and being patient, even when a customer was angry, were skills where I still had room for improvement.
If you are starting or scaling a side hustle, I highly recommend working in retail in your local community as a crash course in entrepreneurship. My friends thought I was crazy when I quit my six figure job to work a $15/hour retail job. But that retail work experience taught me the skills I needed to scale my business so that I now have more revenue than I ever had in a corporate job.
