You spent years learning and practicing a skill till you mastered it. Then you got all the necessary qualifications and certifications to have your skill officially recognized. Once you had learnt, and gotten the certifications required, you could call yourself a tradesman and work as.

It was a long journey, at times a difficult one. Now someone’s telling you, you need more skills? Might be a bit frustrating. But bear with me and I can promise most of you will agree with what I’ve got to say.

Yes, you’re a qualified plumber/electrician/painter or any other Tradesman. You don’t need anymore skills or certifications to prove you can solve problems relative to your trade. You know that too, that’s why it can be confusing/frustrating when someone tells a tradie to learn more skills.

But let me tell you, these skills are not to get better at your trade. These skills are to improve your professional life. Skills that will help a tradie to stay ahead of the market.

I’m going to list the skills to give you an idea of what to expect from this article, then we’re going to go into details to see why those skills, how to learn those skills, the edge these skills will give you.

  • Certifications
  • Communication
  • Leadership
  • People skills
  • Teamwork
  • Entrepreneurship

 

Certifications

The rest of the skills mentioned in this article follow a different theme than this one. Certifications will allow you to have a great solid foundation that you can rely on before you start thinking about building the next levels of your professional life.

You completed your apprenticeship and passed the required exams and are now a certified trades man of your trade.

Don’t stop there. There are numerous other certifications you can get. Though learning additional skills will be the main focus of these programs but the certifications will allow you to apply for jobs for the new or additional skill you have learnt. For example if you have completed NVQ level 2 standard, don’t stop there, instead go for NVQ level 3. If you’re an electrician, go for master electrician, plumber? Go for master plumber. These additional certifications will give you new skills and opportunities that will take your career as a tradesman to the next level and able you to stay ahead of the market.

To give you an idea of the difference it makes, the difference between a Journeyman electrician and a master electrician:

Trades jobs in Sydney pay an average of $27.73/- to a Journeyman

Whereas Trades jobs in Sydney pay an average of $31.95/- to a Master Electrician

Communication:

This is a skill that every should work on, every day in life.

A lot of people think communication skills are something people are born with. But that’s as far away from the truth as something can be. Everyone learns communication, some of get good at it at early stages of life, some of need to work extra. But that doesn’t make it any less possible for us to learn to communicate more efficiently.

That being said, what’s a tradie going to do with corporate level communication skills?

As I said, anyone and every benefits from polishing this skill. Unless you dream of staying at exactly where you are right now, you’re going to need communication skills. If you go on to start your own company, you’ll have a hard time getting and retaining clients (which we’ll talk about in a couple of paragraphs). Furthermore, you need to communicate with your team efficiently in order to have them perform their best and stay loyal to the business. An easy example of this would be any boss you didn’t like working for and ditched the company. If you’re one of the lucky few of the world and have never experienced this, you’ll still understand in the upcoming section.

Leadership

Another one that’s famous to be a God gifted skill, it’s not. The only God gifted skill a human can have is the skill to learn new skills. And even that’s debatable.

But why do you need to have leadership to ace a trades job? Leadership is a very misunderstood trait. A leader isn’t only someone who has a hundred people marching behind him.

A leader is someone who can take charge of a situation at a time when his peers are need direction but are scared of having to be responsible for the outcome of the situation.

Now how is that useful for a regular tradie doing regular trades jobs?

Well, you want to progress, don’t you?

This skill will enable you to transcend from a regular tradie to a tradie that peers look to in times of uncertainty. You’ll develop a trust of your peers and clients that you do trades jobs for. This will help you immensely when you decide to start your own company. You will already have a name for being a responsible and reliable tradesman. That’s the kind of trust companies work for years to build.

People Skills

This is an extension of leadership. A leader can’t be a leader without great people skills.

As a tradie, having good people skills will allow you to leave an impression on your clients that you perform trades jobs for. And as a tradie that wants to level up with time, people that like you and trust you is going to be a great asset for that levelling up you want.

Teamwork

A team player is loved by everyone except the foul player that wants to take credit but almost always ends up losing it to the team player.

Everyone loves the a team player because they make everyone feel like an essential part of the team and help everyone produce the best results by practically assisting them.

For a tradie, this one is especially important because it applies at every stage of his career. Not only do you need to be able to manage a team while in business, you will also have to work on numerous projects that will have multiple tradesmen working on. To be visible in such an environment you need to be prominent among your peers which will automatically make you visible to those above in the hierarchy as well as clients themselves.

Learning teamwork only requires paying attention to your teammates, their needs and requirements.

The mark of success practicing this skill is reaching your teammates at an emotional level.

A good leader will ensure great teamwork through clear communication and understanding of each member’s strong suits and negative ones.

Entrepreneurship

This is what you need all the above skills for. This is a skill you want to build early on. Not only if you want to start a trades company, rather if you want to live a nice and comfortable life. Starting to work on this skill at an early stage will allow you to stay ahead in the game. If you work to build multiple streams of income no matter how small, you’ll end up way ahead of any of your peers.

And “Side Hustles” prepare you for any “Main Hustle” epiphany that you will get in life.

Case study

A great example would be this regular plumber from Perth. This guy didn’t just rely on his main job for income. He invested in stocks, traded crypto and did any other side hustle he could find time for. Until he came up with an app for tradies to find trades jobs online, but with the best and easiest policies for tradesmen. His years of entrepreneurship helped him fund the entire project himself and now is giving his full time to expanding the app from covering trades jobs in Sydney & Perth, to now Australia wide. The app is called “Fixezi” if you want to hustle for more trades jobs in Sydney or Perth, and as of 2021, anywhere in Australia.