Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
Your parents or grandparents probably followed one career path throughout their working lives. These days a portfolio career has become much more popular
What Exactly is a Portfolio Career?
A portfolio career involves having multiple income streams, often in several different fields or professions. This can mean freelancing, consulting, part-time work, a small business – often online – or any combination of these. The aim of a portfolio career is to have a varied set of income streams, which will eventually give you both financial stability and flexibility.
Why are Portfolio Careers Important?
First of all, the job market is not as secure as it used to be, as many people discovered during the pandemic. So having more than one source of income is crucial. If, for example, you lose your part-time job, you’ll have other sources of money to help you keep afloat. And once you’ve built your portfolio to a high level, you’ll have several streams to fall back on if one should fail.
Secondly a portfolio career will give you a lot more flexibility and control over your work. This means you work the hours you choose, which is great if you have other commitments such a kids or elderly or disabled relatives who need help with care.
Finally, portfolio careers allow you to have much more creativity, enabling you to use very different skills, have a varied work life with plenty of intellectual stimulation. By working in different fields, you can learn and develop new skills as well as getting a deeper understanding of the world around you. This is great if you feel stuck in a traditional career and want to open up to new opportunities.
However, it isn’t all plain sailing. Setting up a portfolio career takes time, courage and a lot of work.
It’s a good idea to start while you still have a job – make a list of the different strands your portfolio could have. Think about how you’d ideally like to spend your time. You might come up with 5 or 6 ideas. Which are the most important? And of these, which would be the easiest to start in your spare time? For example, you might want to create courses to sell online on your favourite hobby, write a book on a topic you feel passionate about, do some tutoring in a subject you loved at school or university and have a part-time job similar to the one you are in, or in another area you are qualified in.
Do some research on all of the options and find out which one would be easiest to start. This will depend on your existing skills, how much money you have available to study if you need to and to start the business and how much time you can spend on it.
Continuing with our example, tutoring could be the quickest way to start – you have free time in the evenings and weekends and it’s easy to join an online tutoring website. You might need to familiarize yourself with local exam syllabi if you want to teach school children. And you’ll need a few up to date textbooks if it’s a while since you studied at this level yourself
Start slowly and see how you get on – you’ll have to prepare lessons as well as give them. If you enjoy this and start to make money, you could reach a stage quite quickly where you can cut back on your hours at work or look for a part-time job to replace your full time post
Once you’ve settled into the new routine at your part-time job, you can decide what to do next. You might want to create a more passive source of income, but this will take a while to establish and will usually involve a lot of work before you start to see results.
And of course, not all of your ventures will work out. You might hate tutoring kids and get very bored and bogged down with exam preparation. If this happens, you need to rethink your strategy.
And you won’t have time to try all of your ideas at once. You might do one for a few years and then swap it for something else on your list.
A portfolio career can be very rewarding, but it will take time and patience to create the balance you want and you have to be prepared for a lot of trial and error. But don’t let that put you off.
Ultimately, you stand to have a much better work-life balance and a lot more job satisfaction, as well as more financial security.