Are You Ready for a Portfolio Career

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October 10, 2012 by 4 Comments

Portfolio CareerPortfolio Career

What the heck is a portfolio career?

I was reading a blog post from a career colleague Hannah Morgan aka Career Sherpa about Portfolio Careers. I immediately went wow that is what I am doing.

QuintCareers defines it in this article.  The article states:

“…a portfolio career, in which instead of working a traditional full-time job, you work multiple part-time jobs (including part-time employment, temporary jobs, freelancing, and self-employment) with different employers that when combined are the equivalent of a full-time position. Portfolio careers offer more flexibility, variety, and freedom, but also require organizational skills as well as risk tolerance.”

I have stated before, that I made the decision that I will not go back to work for a corporate entity as an employee. I have a portfolio career now. This has been a conscious decision.

I have multiple income streams:

  • One-on-one career design consulting – This brings in the bulk of my revenue now
  • Cure for Career Insanity – I will be relaunching this series in February to be offered quarterly. I am still working on how to market this webinar series.
  • The Art and Science of Using LinkedIn – I offered these workshops throughout the middle of 2012 but getting small business people to give up 3 hours was difficult. I will be converting these into 1 hour Meetups in the 1Q2013.
  • Repurpose Your Career Book - My plan is publish the book in January and offer a presentation called “The Baby Boomer Retirement Paradox”. I will start out presenting for free with the capability of selling the book in the back of the room.  I am looking for venues in Austin Texas to present. I am currently shopping the presentation around to various civic groups like the Rotary clubs. If you know of any groups that would be interested in this type of talk please contact me.
  • LinkedIn Consulting – I have provided LinkedIn consulting for multiple small businesses in the last year.
  • Training development and delivery – I currently deliver soft skills training for a multi-national construction company once a month. I am looking for more training opportunities. 

Future plans:

  • Online delivery of The Art and Science of Using LinkedIn – After the material is fine tuned I will offer this material on a site like Udemy.
  • Weekend workshops based on the Repurpose Your Career Book.
  • Cure for Career Insanity Book
  • Book around the topic of Baby Boomers, Careers and Passion.

All of these will produce some income. My coach Sherry Lowry, who is in her 70′s, changes her business 15-30% a year just to keep it fresh and interesting. The idea is to have many different streams of income.

Does a portfolio career interest you? This is not for everyone but…. this is the direction the employment world is moving.

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, Employment, Portfolio Career Tagged With: ,

Comments

  1. Tammy says:
    October 10, 2012 at 6:57 pm

    I’d be willing to consider a portfolio career right now. I’m looking to make a career change, so finding a part time job in that field while I build the skills I’ll need would be a great way to make the transition.

    Reply
  2. Barrie Hopson says:
    October 16, 2012 at 9:19 am

    I am somewhat biased as I have written a book on portfolio careers, “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career”, Bloomsbury 2009. What my co-author, Katie Ledger and I have found from interviewing a large selection of portfolio workers is that hardly any would even consider returning to what I call a single track career. They actually report feeling more secure in a recession as they are not reliant on only one job. Attitudes towards this growing phenomenon amongst employers are proving fascinating. Even the CBI in a recent report say that our concepts of work and employment are going to have to change with organisations relying more on a small core workforce supplemented by an army of temporary or project workers. Portfolio workers typically are self motivated, self starters and reliable. They have to be as they will not survive unless they are excellent time managers and organisers. They will be increasingly attractive as employees. We are just beginning a programme of interviewing a wide range of employers to check out their attitudes to this growing group of workers. We reckon that there are already over a million of us in the UK alone. Yes – we are portfolio workers too! Follow our project on http://www.portfoliocareers.net You could also join the ongoing discussions in our LinkedIn portfolio careers group.

    Reply
    • Marc Miller says:
      October 16, 2012 at 12:36 pm

      Barrie,
      You book was referenced in Hannah Morgan’s post. It is on my list to read. I will check out the site and LI group.

      For those who want to order the book you will find it here –>http://www.amazon.com/What-Do-You-creating-portfolio/dp/1408116308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274089698&sr=8-1
      (This is not an affiliate link!!)

      Reply
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