Rachel Brushfield

There are 3 key stages to launching your own successful portfolio career:

Stage 1: Re-evaluating your career

Stage 2: Marketing your portfolio career

Stage 3: Managing your portfolio career

Stage 1: Re-evaluating your career

Deep self-reflection is common and very useful, if not essential, before starting your portfolio career, in order to ensure efficiency, maximum success, minimum stress, and a bespoke work-life blend to fit you exactly.

Many life and work events create a career or life crossroads – a catalyst for a need to re-evaluate and a desire to make a positive change. These include; not achieving a promotion or pay rise, having a baby, divorce, returning to work after having children, a stress tipping point, moving locations/countries for a partner’s job, redundancy or a bereavement.

Stage 2: Marketing your portfolio career

Research by Executive Appointments shows that the most important elements for success are networking and self-marketing. Yet in their study, 32% of professionals worry about finding suitable roles and 21% worry about the constant need to network.

We help many of our clients to market themselves. Women naturally feel uncomfortable marketing themselves, which is partly why a low proportion of women achieve partnership or enjoy the same rewards as their male peers, with the result that many women opt out of the law. We help our clients to find self-marketing strategies that work and are time and cost-efficient. We have run many events and written articles in this area and, as seasoned networkers, we can support you in many ways.

Stage 3: Managing your portfolio career

Multiple work strands means more things to juggle, so it is essential to be organised and have good systems and processes in order to be efficient and look professional.

We have perfected our own self-management over the last 17 years so can share shortcuts and tips to help, including time-saving technology, templates and tools, and using a virtual PA.

Contact us to find out how we can help you: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/

We explored the pros and cons of a portfolio career in an earlier blog.

For professionals working in traditional cultures in the corporate world, the pros of freedom, autonomy and flexibility are very motivating and create energy to tackle any cons.

Many people are typically naturally modest, worry, tend to focus on other people’s needs and dislike self marketing. They find it hard to see what makes them great and marketable, and it can be hard to be creative in identifying how else they can use their skills.

In order to create and have a successful portfolio career over time, you need to be good at finding clients, identifying your niche, defining your brand, establishing and maintaining your reputation, identifying new insights for your competitive advantage, managing your time and yourself, finding and being active in suitable networks, understanding social media, and translating trends into opportunities.

Many people, especially working mothers, have busy work and home lives and it can be hard to get started. We have listed typical perceived blocks to progress below.  The good news is that we can help you to tackle all of these potential blocks and overcome any additional obstacles as they arise.

Common perceived blocks:

• lack of time to think, research and plan;
• lack of clarity or confidence to make the right decision;
• risk aversion – you are a lawyer, so it is not surprising;
• large financial commitments;
• overwhelm about what needs to be done;
• no strategy or process to evaluate options and make a decision;
• perfectionism – wanting to get everything right before making a change;
• over thinking/‘analysis paralysis’ – focusing on what might go wrong instead of taking action, learning and evaluating as you go;
• feeling unclear about your transferable skills and what else you could do;
• dislike of self-marketing;
• listening to other people’s fears instead of following your instinct;
• putting other people’s needs before your own, such as concern about disappointing others, eg your parents who paid for your education.

Research by Executive Appointments with portfolio careerists showed that two-thirds of them were quite or very satisfied with their success in establishing a portfolio career. The most motivating factors from the research about having a portfolio career are shown below.

Creating a clear goal and plan and identifying fears and actual/perceived blocks is essential for success, as well as creating a strategy to market and manage yourself. Our Energise career e course helps you to evaluate your career to date in depth, to identify your blocks and fears and to create strategies to overcome each. It also helps you to create a career goal and plan to achieve it

• World food prices are increasing due to food shortages, the cost of living is rising but wages are not increasing at the same rate: the ‘squeezed middle’ are feeling the pinch financially and their prospects of keeping up with higher costs through employment alone are diminishing.
• Childcare costs have grown by 4 times the rate of inflation: families question the sense of the mother, the primary child carer in the majority of cases, working full-time.

What economic factors would you add?

• People are not one-dimensional and don’t fit into a neat ‘box’: they have different skills and interests.
• People are more used to choice and change: the Internet, social media and internationalism are exposing people to new ideas and new outlooks. People like the idea that they can design and change their career as they wish.
• Employees are seeking meaning and purpose and to make a difference: a portfolio career enables you to work and to give back.
• Individuals value the freedom, meaning and control that comes with self-employment: 85% of micro-business owners report they are “more creative, autonomous and satisfied in their work”.
• Women are more likely to have caring responsibilities alongside working: the ageing population means that increasing numbers of working adults have/will need to work around responsibilities, e.g. for parents with Alzheimer’s. A portfolio career enables them to do this more easily than when in full-time employment.
• People have shifted from materialist to post-materialist values: in the early 1970s there were four times as many materialists as post-materialists but by 2006 the dominant view was post-materialist.

What reasons would you add?

More blogs next about why portfolio careers are growing.

What is portfolio working and why is it growing?

Portfolio working is when an individual has multi strands rather than just one to their career. This trend has been growing for a while, fuelled by desire and also necessity post credit crunch.

With more competition in many professions, a portfolio career could be a sound choice.

Why is portfolio working growing?

• People aren’t ‘one-dimensional’ and fit in a box, they have different skills and interests
• The job for life is dead as a concept – a portfolio career helps you create your career as you want it
• A current shortage of full time jobs has led to more part time jobs, creating a financial shortfall that needs to be filled
• The younger generation actively seek more variety than the older generations
• People are now more used to choice and like the idea that they can design their career as they wish
• More people are seeking meaning and purpose, and a portfolio career enables people to earn money and give back
• Mixing employment and self-employment reduces the perceived risk of going it alone 100%
• More companies are seeing contracts and projects as a wise solution without increasing headcount, giving you the scope to have a portfolio career

5 Tips to explore portfolio working

1. Know your financial break even and how much money you need to feel secure and have peace of mind
2. Create efficient systems as multi career strands can take more time to manage
3. Plan time for marketing to line up the next contract/retainer and create a financial buffer in case things change unexpectedly
4. Get advice from people doing portfolio working so you understand the pros and cons
5. Know your values and needs/wants so that you can ensure that a portfolio career is the right choice to give you fulfilment not stress

Personal branding is becoming not just more important, but essential. Increasingly employees and consultants for projects will be resourced online via ‘Trip Advisor style’ sites. Just as videos and infographics have grown in importance to provide communication cut-through online, so defining your personal brand is a modern way to stand out.

Picture a sea of faces on a resourcing or recruitment web site for lawyers. An avatar (head-shot of you), and a couple of sentences maximum to get the message across, plus ratings about you from previous clients, employers and peers.

A busy executive looks at the site to find someone for an exciting career enhancing project or contract. How will you stand out and be chosen from the hundreds of choices? What will make the browser notice you in a good way so you are on their initial resourcing or recruitment list? Or will you be invisible – your online profile showcasing your high-quality experience not even read, because you didn’t get past the first hurdle.

So what is a personal brand and why is it so important for the future of work?

A personal brand is the territory you occupy in the minds and hearts of your target audience. It gets you noticed in a good way and positions you as the ‘go-to person’ for your specialism or niche.

The wording of your personal brand is crucial. The best personal brands are memorable, relevant and emotive. Articulating your personal brand in just three words follows in-depth analysis of yourself and the needs of your target audience, plus emerging trends, takes time and thought.

Articulate your brand in just three words.

Many people find it hard to create their own personal brand because they are so close to themselves that they can’t see their own unique talents. Synthesising, distilling and articulating the essence of you and the gift you bring to others in just a few words is a skill in itself.

Here are some pertinent quotes about personal branding.

“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” Tom Peters in Fast Company.

“Building a profitable personal brand online is not a sprint, and something that happens overnight. Don’t aim for perfection early on. Instead allow your brand to evolve naturally over time and focus on providing massive value and over deliver to your target audience. Then you will get more clear over your message and brand as well.“ Navid Moazzez.

“Personal branding is about managing your name — even if you don’t own a business — in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. Going on a date? Chances are that your ‘blind’ date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview?” Tim Ferriss.

“If you don’t give the market the story to talk about, they’ll define your brand’s story for you.” David Brier.

“Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.” Sir Richard Branson.

My personal brand is ‘Talent Liberator’. I do what it says on the tin. Originally at the beginning of my business 20 years ago, my personal brand was ‘Energising Connector’ which was an accurate summary of what I do, but it lacks the emotive quality which makes a better personal brand.

Here are some examples of personal brands:

‘Network Navigator’ – a networking specialist

‘The Body Coach’ – a personal trainer

‘The Clean Food Coach’ – an expert in natural food to stay healthy

‘Mr Loophole’ – a lawyer who specialises in getting celebrities out of driving bans.

‘The Book Midwife’ – a writing coach who helps her clients to self-publish a book

‘Insight Integrator’ – A strategist specialising in insight to inform an integrated strategy

‘Career Sherpa’ – a job search coach for the digital age

‘Miss Masala’ – an Indian cook and food writer

Make time to think about and create your personal brand. It takes time, but is one of the best investments you will ever make to attract the work you really want.

If you would like to receive information about Energise Personal Branding individual mentoring service, please e mail me. Thanks! https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/