Portfolio Career

The Portfolio Careerist Blog archive

2013-01-15T16:27:00.001-08:00

I began working for myself in 2010 and started a blog called 'The Portfolio Careerist' about creating and sustaining a portfolio career. Since then I've been invited to give a TEDx talk on portfolio careers, met countless fellow and aspiring portfolio careerists and succeeded in making a living with a portfolio career incorporating design, communications and education. These days I'm too busy teaching or managing blogs, websites and communications projects for my clients to maintain that blog so I've archived it here for posterity.

Careering

2012-11-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

A blog post from a valued colleague new to portfolio careers...

In Helen’s definition of a Portfolio Career she uses the phrase “far from conventional”: which for me embodies the idea of both multi-faceted employment and my personality. Much to the frustration of my family, I have always defied convention, taken the alternative or more demanding options, or broken out of the box to embark upon an adventure!

On reflection my crystal ball could have told me I would become a Portfolio Careerist. With areas of study including Art and Design, Cultural History, and Communications and PR, with personal interests in travel and hospitality, what I do today unintentionally incorporates all of those elements. After all, a leopard never changes its spots.

I moved to Cambridge on 1 June this year with few expectations and no plans, hoping to find somewhere to settle. Despite my ad-hoc approach to life I quickly found myself adjusting to the city, finding its rhythm and becoming part of a close community. This whimsical approach of mine does not usually transpire into secure, established employment. Therefore a Portfolio Career suits me greatly, and after numerous job applications, and a few unusual agency posts, I decided to take the leap of faith and go it alone. Now, I am no longer “careering”; I am a Portfolio Careerist.

This winter I find myself in an incredibly exciting place. I continue to work at Urban Larder in Cambridge, a vibrant local produce store and coffee shop. This hub provides me with connections to local community groups and business owners who use the space to hold informal meetings, it gives me a great amount of joy as I have worked in cafés and restaurants for over ten years whilst studying and travelling and it meets all my foodie/caffeine needs!

In addition, I recently got in touch with Helen, the Portfolio Careerist, an old friend who kindly offered me work with her Comms Agency and the opportunity to expand my copywriting portfolio. Seeing how she juggles roles, interests, passions and expertise is inspirational and demonstrates to all those who are trying to carve out their own portfolio career - how it can be done successfully. Working for Helen is varied and engaging, and encourages me to write regularly. Writing is a skill I am very grateful for and keen to improve upon. Words are a powerful tool. They instigate people to think, do, smile and talk; building a career around words is so rewarding for those reasons.

I have taken up a volunteer role at Cambridge Art Salon, a community interest company who provide studios and a gallery space to creatives. CAS is the only arts enterprise incubator in Cambridge, serving artists and cultural entrepreneurs who need a nurturing, affordable environment to springboard their creative idea. Using my skills and interests I am becoming involved in the PR and marketing, and am being given the opportunity to expand my portfolio, to network and to become involved in fundraising. My role encourages me to reignite my interest in art and design and I have already established a collaboration between another local business and Cambridge Art Salon.

As we hurtle ever closer to Christmas, I can all but hope for more of the same. My network is growing by the day, and the response from those I have met in the early stages of my Portfolio Career has been nothing but supportive. Living in such an active community will be to my benefit and I hope to find more work from within the local area.

My blossoming Portfolio Career offers me such freedom that I still find myself with time, energy and motivation to explore my own personal interests. 2013 will see me embarking on a pottery course, exploring the possibility of establishing an Arts and Culture blog, and continuing in the hunt for business premises in which I can establish my very own food haven and coffee shop. Holding down a nine to five would, for me, mean that these desires would forever remain elusive.

Above all, I support inclusion and local business, creativity and freedom of expression, I believe in learning from others and sharing knowledge. My work supports people to fulfil their ideals, and the people I meet enable me to fulfil mine. For anyone thinking about embarking upon their own Portfolio Career, I highly recommend it.

Does “sticking to my guns” mean “shooting myself in the foot”?

2012-10-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Very pleased to be hosting a new post from Nikki Wilson following up her last guest post...

I’ve previously written about my experiences as an aspiring and fledgling portfolio careerist. Having confirmed in my own mind that it was a path I felt would suit me at the end of last year, two opportunities came up in January that allowed me to take my first steps along it. One was the Vodafone World of Difference Programme that finished in early July, and I was then lucky enough to secure some temping work at a local alternative to custody programme. While an administrative role, I have still valued it as a chance to learn how a different type of project operates and to work with a new beneficiary group. It also suited well as I could work there simultaneously with a role as an Interim FD in a Brixton charity, travel to which made me reluctant to take on any further London commitments until it ended in August. So, a case of “so far so good” – everything seemed to have fallen in to place quite nicely.

However, it’s now September and I’m left with only the temping work for 19.5 hours a week, which will end fairly shortly when a permanent appointment is made. It’s certainly not for want of trying. Almost every spare hour since July has been taken up searching and applying for jobs and it’s proving very tough. A significant part of the challenge is that I’m obstinately continuing with my vision of a Portfolio Career, though the part-time, short-term roles, with a good degree of interest or development potential that I want to find in order to achieve this are not easy to track down or secure. In this respect I’m actually lucky that my main focus is in the not for profit sector where this type of role is undoubtedly more common than in the private sector. Much of my searching so far has been personal and direct, using a variety of websites, but I have also now been contacting agencies, including a full day in London last week meeting recruiters. While they are more receptive to the idea than I had expected, I can’t quite shake the feeling that my reluctance to take on full time roles for anything more than a very short period, or to narrow my search to one type of work, is seen as more than a little perverse in the current job climate. The impression that I am causing my search to be far more stressful than it needs to be is clear, and that I may be “shooting myself in the foot” in terms of my own career development and certainly earning potential, by being so set in my views of what I want.

As I continue to trawl websites and cheekily ask all and sundry for work, I mostly remain hopeful that whatever I take on will not be sufficiently restrictive as to prevent me from at least continuing to build up a further network of contacts and experience that may lead to opportunities in the future, or tie me down so that another exciting change and challenge is not far around the corner. I could opt for an easier life and start considering permanent, full-time roles, and I won’t rule this out if an interesting enough option arises but what is certain is that being faced with this choice has made me surer than ever that, having made the first tentative steps towards a Portfolio Career, I’m not ready to give up on the idea just yet!

That’s not to say that my head doesn’t drop from time to time, which is exactly when I’ve discovered the value of talking to people that make me feel positive about it. I’ve been immensely lucky to find I am building a great network of people who are really supportive – some of whom, including Helen, are relatively new portfolio careerist friends who I’m heartened to find, I have met through online forums – they really do work! Pursuing a portfolio career may well be viewed by some as a counter-intuitive choice but it’s ever more clear to me that for some people, it’s one worth making, whilst remaining open to the possibility that there is always an option to change direction again in future.

Dogged determination

2012-09-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

I've come to believe that dogged determination is a useful attribute for the portfolio careerist. With multiple roles, tasks, projects and responsibilities to juggle - you really have to want to get stuff done! This will appeal to some personality types more than others I'm sure.

A new addition to my office is a large whiteboard to help me keep track of projects and make sure they don't drift. Part of what I'm paid to do, with my various portfolio career hats on, is keep projects moving along. I get positive feedback from clients who say they are grateful for a bit of gentle goading! The 'completer-finisher' in me gives me the drive to keep an eye on projects and make sure they stay on track.

A civil service friend first introduced me to the term 'completer-finisher' several years ago after he had been dabbling with understanding Belbin's Team Roles. With this sort of thing, I always point-blank refuse to be pigeon-holed into one type or another (probably another reason why I have a portfolio career!) but I do recognise myself in some types more than others.

Which type are you?

Picture credit: David Horder

Social Media for portfolio careers

2012-09-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Social media - potentially a tricky one for portfolio careerists as we have multiple career identities. How do you present a coherent social media presence when you have fingers in lots of pies?

This is a challenge that I've attacked from several angles. I have my personal Twitter account which I use to follow and interact with friends and tweeters that cover a broad range of my personal and professional interests. I have two further shared accounts associated with my comms agency and my community interest company on both Twitter and Facebook. I also have a personal Facebook account linked to my personal Twitter account (which is just lazy social media) and is the account I reserve mainly for sharing pointless pictures of me and our dog or arranging meet ups with actual, real live friends.

So does this approach work? Well, the answer is, it works well enough for me for now. I get leads through the specific business-focused accounts and I make and maintain connections with lots of interesting people through the others. I know there is untapped potential in accounts that don't have professional social media communications staff helping me look after. I have interacted with and built working relationships with clients I would never have met if it weren't for having a social media presence.

My comms agency helps clients set up and in some cases manage social media profiles. Some sectors are more suited to it than others. Business to business profiles can be hugely successful and it has massive potential when appropriately resourced. On a personal level I loathed the whole idea of social media when it was new but I have seen it in action for both political and commercial purposes with impressive results. It is at the same time self-promoting, narcissistic, empowering, liberating, philanthropic, capitalistic, inane and profound. It can and should be whatever individuals and organisations choose it to be - and for portfolio careerists, that may well be several things at once!

Photo attribution: With thanks to Thos Ballantyne

Is part-time bad?

2012-08-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

I read an article this week scaremongering that the recession was leading to an increase in part-time workers and that this was somehow a bad thing. Sure, employers creating new full-time jobs would be good for the economy but is it really so terrible that in being cautious about committing to full-time posts they end up helping people create portfolio careers instead?

The days when part-time work only meant low-paid, low-skilled jobs for students, immigrants and bored housewives are over. We're now in the era of the professional part-timer and professional portfolio careerist. Projects I'm working on currently, for clients I'm proud to be working for, employ highly skilled professionals on fractional contracts - and why not?

My portfolio career happens to currently include some elements of part-time employed lecturing work. I do this alongside consultancy work and running my own business. I don't do the teaching for the money, I do it because it's important to me. I wouldn't actually want to do it full time so it's ideal and I get to use a wide variety of skills across my portfolio that it would be challenging to combine in a single role.

It's time to forget the stigma associated with part-time work and make the most of our capacity to develop lots of skills in lots of areas and use them well.

Juggling and portfolio careers

2012-07-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to reading Ian Sanders' book 'Juggle: rethink work, reclaim your life' - a simply structured book about the journey to and practicalities of his 'juggle' philosophy along with some case studies of other jugglers.

Sanders says 'Live by your passions...go beyond the job title...have lots of strings to your bow...celebrate being multi-dimensional.' Of course this resonates well with portfolio careers. He draws on his own experiences of work, carving out multi-dimensional ways to earn a living, refusing to be pigeon-holed, which, having done much the same myself, I found it gratifyingly easy to identify with.

I sometimes worry that this blog might at times be a frustrating read for the aspiring juggler/portfolio careerist because it's easy to say "go for it, take the plunge!" when you're already doing it yourself. Similarly, I worry that Sanders' success stories and case studies might have the same effect. Sanders does make it look attainable and fun but there's no getting away from the fact that taking the steps to get there when you're not sure where to start is hard. The book's success no doubt means that many have found it inspiring though and rightly so. I loved that reading it made me feel that there are others of my own generation who are daring to be different and redefine what work means. Thanks Ian for sharing the value of the juggle lifestyle - us portfolio careerists know what you mean!

A portfolio career in photography and landscape gardening

2012-07-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

Phew, it's been a busy portfolio careers week - getting a project off the ground with my colleagues over at Active Citizens FE, checking and sending out SEO reports to my Zine clients and, as a volunteer, liaising with our local college over a year of fundraising they've got planned for Guide Dogs.
Busy weeks mean less time for blogging so I'm particularly grateful to be hosting a guest blog this week from my surrogate big bro and valued client, David Horder, who combines photography and landscape gardening in his portfolio career...

My Career Portfolio
I’ve never thought of myself as a portfolio careerist, more of a chap that finds many things interesting and fun to do, so am I a portfolio careerist or a Jack-of-all-trades? In this day and age many people have more than one job, my attitude is, if I enjoy it and I can earn money from it, then why not do it?

Currently I work as a Hertfordshire-based photographer, mainly covering events such as weddings as well as on-location portraiture and family photos.

My other company is called Lensflair Digital, here the photography is aimed at corporate event coverage and on-location catalogue work for graphic designers, estate agents and a variety of clients that require product shots. The second part of the business is video production, making short promotional features for businesses, mainly for distribution via the web.

The final side of the business is 3d animation, not something that I’m expert in, but something that I truly enjoy and spend a great deal of time learning and adds a high quality gloss to all of my productions.

So straight off the bat that’s three professions that are generally specialised, but arguably photography, video production and animation are similar and linked in genre, so it makes perfect sense that I would work within these vocation, so why do I also work as a Landscape Gardener?

Benefits
So how is gardening and photography linked and what are the advantages doing both? The simple fact it, I enjoy doing both. My childhood was spent living in Dorset and it was there that I gained my love of nature and being outside. Photography does give you chance to be outside I grant you, but it also requires equal time processing the shots in the office afterwards. In the good old days of using film, this would be spent in a dark room, now it’s in front of a computer, the realisation is that both processes required being inside.

The problem is the same with animation and video production. A great deal of time is spent in post-production, which is generally inside darkened, windowless edit suites. Such working conditions for me drive me to despair, so working outside as much as I could was always the way forward for me. So that’s the background into my reasoning, but to go back to my earlier question, what are the benefits?

As a photographer I meet a lot of clients at their home or place of work. Given that I am drawn towards nature, I often find myself making remarks about how nice their garden is and given we are a nation of gardeners, everyone loves to talk about their plot of special land.

A good friend of mine runs his own landscaping company and I would often refer him to my clients that needed landscaping work. He soon found that due to the increase in work, he needed extra hands to help out. Given that most of my photography work is during weekends, I rather liked the idea of getting stuck in myself and doing some honest labour.

As editing photos and video often requires me to sit on my backside for days on end, I found the landscaping a good excuse to be outside and to do some physical work, but it wasn’t long before I realised photography and gardening are linked in many ways, which is why I’m drawn to both.

First off both are creative vocations, where you end up with a final product that will be loved by the client for a long time afterwards. Both require a keen eye for detail, where you have to take a step back, look at what you have creatived and say to yourself, have I missed anything, does that look good and would I be happy with that?

For example, with photos, it’s far too easy to snap away and not be mindful of your surroundings. So you have a group of people posing for a group shot, or even a single person portrait, which is your foreground interest, it’s easy to miss what’s going on behind them.

So this is when I have to take that step back and look twice, once at the subject in the foreground and again at the background, before taking the shot. The people may look great, but the background may look better if I moved them to the right, or turned them 90 degrees. This maybe the difference to having a scruffy road offering a busy looking background, compared to say a nice grouping of green trees, which is a more pleasing backdrop, which has better colours and is less busy. A muted background leads to the foreground interest becoming more prominent in the shot. This also avoids any post-production clean-ups to make the shot look more appealing.

The same approach I lend to gardening, it only takes a moment to take that step back and look at what you’ve done to avoid simple mistakes. One good example was on a garden I was working on recently. This was a major tidy up, so the hedges were cut back, the large lawn was mowed, leaves swept up and the beds were weeded, it was a good afternoon’s work. By the end of it I stood on the patio to admire the much improved garden area and noticed the large stone statue in the centre of the lawn I hadn’t strimmed around it’s base! A simple detail, but one I had forgotten about. Thirty seconds later it was tidied up, but the fact remained, if it wasn’t for having a sharp eye, the customer wouldn’t have been impressed about the improvements made, but instead dismayed about the small bit that I had missed. Not good.

So talking to photography clients about their gardens leads to gardening work, the same works in reverse. Through the landscaping work, I often bring my camera along to take before and after photos for the company portfolio. I am often asked about my expensive looking camera by gardening clients, who have then booked me for photos, once they have found out that I do that as well.

The advantage here is that they already know me through the work already undertaken. Also I’ve gained their trust as I’ve proven I can do what I claim I can do. People generally like to use people that we know like and trust. By proving myself one way, often leads to work from the same client in one of my other occupations.

It’s not often that you can ask the same person to photograph your wedding and afterwards lay a new patio in the garden. How many people that have a single occupation have such a varied working lifestyle?

There is nothing better than to be the ‘go to guy’ for such a wide range of services and not to be tied down to one thing. Your competitors really are at a disadvantage.

Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson I have learnt is not to worry about what people think. Given that I am fairly new to running a business my thoughts regarding the landscaping were that if I was seen to be doing something that wasn’t my main vocation, it would lessen the expertise of my photography work.

Put another way, I was worried that if I was out landscaping, people would think I was only doing that because I wasn’t any good at taking photos and this preconception could damage the other businesses. I had to change my own mindset and embrace the idea that in this day and age, many people have more than one job. If anything it proved to clients that I had an open mind to work and had the talent to undertake different types of work and to do them well.

I feel that the job market has forced this impression that we should pick one career and work hard to be the best at it. This thought doesn’t ring true with most people as we are still linked with wartime efforts when we did what it took to get the job done.

Everyone was happy with the factories being run by women, manufacturing ammunition for the soldiers, during a period when a women’s place was firmly in the home. Most clients I have worked with are very comfortable with the fact that I can do more than one thing, if anything it’s a weight off their mind as they then don’t have to look anywhere else, as they have a contact that they can trust.

So the lesson learnt was, most people aren’t snobs and you are not looked at in a lesser light for trying new things. If anything people are impressed that you can diversify and are prepared to take on a challenge in order to make ends meet. Pretty much we are a nation of entrepreneurs at heart and everyone loves a tryer.

Advice
My advice is to have a go, what do you have to lose? If you enjoy it, people will pick up on this and put their trust in you out of respect for your enthusiasm.

It has helped me that the services I offer are linked by a love of being outdoors and I feel this is important too. If you want more business, then try to network your portfolio in some way, so that your clients can continue to give you work and not go elsewhere.

Above everything make it known that you love what you do and show that you are not worried about what people think. I’d rather go with someone that loves what they do with a passion but isn’t the ‘top man’ in their field, over the ‘top man’ in the field but has been doing the same thing for thirty years and has become jaded and bored.

People with interest and enthusiasm generally come up with fresher ideas and more interesting and different ways of tackling projects. Have you ever asked someone, do you know of the best plumber in the county, or would you ask, do you know a good plumber? Clients don’t want the best job done, they want a good job done and if that work can be done with bags of enthusiasm, passion and fun, then you can’t fail.

Oh the plumbing reference is down to that was my first job out of school on the advice that I needed a trade. I don’t do it any longer because I didn’t enjoy it, I knew it wasn’t for me, but still handy to have the qualification under my belt as I made sure I finished what I started before learning something new.

So don’t be frightened to try something new and different, but make sure it is something that you have a genuine passion for. You are allowed to love your job, so why not have a go?

Portfolio careers: a masterclass in change management

2012-06-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

Change management is one of those phrases that gets CEOs agitated, employees groaning and consultants rubbing their hands together. It's become part of the language of work and business and is something that, done well, is great for innovation and productivity.

Portfolio careerists have to become their own change management consultants because the very nature of portfolio careers equates to the need for some heavy duty adaptability skills.

On one level this can mean simply switching between the various roles that make up your portfolio. In my own I might switch between teacher and educationalist to branding consultant and editor in the space of 24 hours. But it can go deeper than this. With a regular job the shape of the year may ebb and flow, projects may start and finish but the role itself remains constant. In a portfolio career those fluctuations occur across multiple roles and so create or eat up time that has a direct impact on each role and potential new roles you might choose to add to the mix, perhaps by subtracting something else. The complexity of this adds up to a definite requirement for excellent change management skills on the list of essential rather than desirable skills you might put in the job description of a portfolio careerist. It can be scary because we're conditioned to seek out security, stability and predictability. Fast and effective decision making takes on a whole new meaning when you're making decisions that affect your own livelihood rather than someone else's bottom line.

Today I have been in touch with three fellow portfolio careerists, all of whom I know via this blog and coincidentally all of whom are currently faced with portfolio career related decisions. I guess this post is the upshot of talking with these three brilliant women today and to remind them and others that it's OK to trust your gut instincts even if they seem to go against the grain, that it's OK to be daring sometimes and cautious at others, to have a portfolio career that changes shape over time and looks more like a conventional career at some times than others. Nothing is forever and the beauty of a portfolio career is that you can bend and shape it to suit you. Opportunities will come and go, some you'll take, others you won't. Some will be interesting enough for you to reshape your portfolio career to accommodate, others may not. Financial constraints might make you do one element more than you'd like for a while but you'll have your eyes open for moving on when the chance arises. That's what makes a portfolio career exciting and exhilarating!

Lots of love and luck to you three - you know who you are. Hx

Mobile Technology and Managing Your Portfolio Career

2012-06-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve posted before about how I’ve used mobile technology to help me keep track of a hectic portfolio career. I asked Heather Gibson, a writer and mobile technology enthusiast to share her views on the subject…

The concept of a portfolio career is something that a lot of people don’t even understand until they actually look into starting one. Throw in the fact that the concept is continually evolving and expanding, and if you’re not careful it can become difficult to keep up with. These days, more and more highly skilled and professional people are consciously choosing to create a portfolio career in which they perform multiple roles concurrently - a feat of organization that mobile technology makes so much easier.Naturally, there are thousands of different combinations of work that can technically fall under the heading of a “portfolio career.” Talented, professional portfolio careerists are masters of handling several different roles at once. Getting this to work means its important to avoid getting overwhelmed. A portfolio career can mean managing multiple jobs and responsibilities at once. Because portfolio careers are constantly evolving, the expansion of mobile phone technology has been an ideal aid to helping portfolio careerists keep pace and adapt with their chosen portfolio elements.

Pick any smart phone from any provider, like this example from O2 and it will boast all the smart technologies that can help keep a portfolio career organized. There are ingenious ways to use a smart phone’s capabilities from apps for automatically inputting information from business cards, to office suites on to go and new ways to get online and share collaborative projects with colleagues and clients.
Smart phones have helped speed up the way we communicate which is great if you’re juggling different aspects of a portfolio career. You can easily separate different groups of contacts, manage multiple email account and calendars. You can also have powerful notepads and collaboration tools on your phone relating to your different areas of work. Calendars, task management and reminders on Smart phones help you keep track of a busy diary on the go, helping you to get more done and stay effective and efficient in all areas of your portfolio career.

Portfolio careers can really flex our mental muscles with a lot to remember and keep on top of; switching between roles at a moment’s notice and keeping on top of your game in each aspect of your portfolio takes practise. Smart phones let you keep the multiple ‘offices’ of each aspect of your portfolio career in your pocket and maintain your productivity. So often branded with a bad name for making us 'always available' - like any productivity tool, smart phones can in fact reduce the amount of time spent on organising and managing your portfolio career, leaving you with more time free to leave the portfolio behind when you want to.

Portfolio Careers Aren't New

2012-06-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

Fourteen very different jobs all at the same time - now that's what I call a portfolio career. Seamus McSporran worked as ambulance, bus and taxi driver, hotel keeper, fire chief, insurance agent, petrol pump attendant, pier master, police officer, postmaster, registrar of births deaths and marriages, rent collector, shopkeeper and undertaker on the Scottish Island of Gigha for 31 years before taking his well-earned retirement in 2000.

Seamus got a mention on the Channel Four news yesterday and my ears pricked up. He was awarded a British Empire Medal in 1989 for his service to the island's population, which started in 1965 as postmaster and shopkeeper. Gradually he took on more and more responsibilities - what a guy! I had to pay homage to him here for being a true portfolio careerist using an incredibly diverse range of skills and doing so really well. An inspiration to us all and proof that portfolio careers are not a new concept.

A Portfolio Career: The Best of all Possible Worlds?

2012-05-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

It's easy to think the world is a bit of a hostile place at times and start to wonder 'is this really as good as it gets?' (even if materially we are actually very fortunate). So how can a portfolio career help with this?

Simples (not quite yet in the OED but easily recognised as a neologism by my English Lit undergrads!): A portfolio career builds resilience and the variety of a portfolio career can let you experience many lives all in one and the best bits of those lives too if you take the time to notice. Take this week for example, on the London Underground on my way to meet a client, I get to travel out of rush hour but still feel like a city slicker amid the hubbub of walking through the city when I reach my destination. In comparison to the time in my life when I slogged in every day on the tube, I am more present and take in things around me more - I'm particularly eagle-eyed about making sure the heavily pregnant lady everyone else seems to be ignoring bags a seat as soon as possible.

Having volunteered and taught at a homeless education centre as part of my portfolio, I take the time to acknowledge and make eye contact with the homeless person asking for change. I notice how genuine and polite he is in expressing gratitude that I bothered to interact with him even though it was only to say 'sorry none on me'. This makes me remember a lovely girl from my school days who would buy bananas for the homeless people she encountered and sit and chat.

Also this week, the sun is shining and I make sure there's time for doing some editing while sitting in the shade in Epping Forest. Glad that it's not all freelance style solitude though I also feel better for a morning spent networking with other local business owners. It's also a welcome change of pace switching from finalising web designs to copywriting when one of my clients calls for an emergency bit of writing he needs me to do.

The day I do ask 'is this really as good as it gets?' is the day I do my monthly accounts. Maths was never my strong point and I call my patient accountant for yet another reminder of how to log something he's already explained twice! Once done though, there's a sense of achievement (and relief that it's now the weekend).

A particular high this week is being invited to give a TED talk on portfolio careers at TEDxUWestminster...the idea really must be catching on!

China and Portfolio Careers

2012-04-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

Today I'm writing this in Beijing. There are 20million people in this vast, long-roaded, dusty city. I wonder how many of them have portfolio careers. There is a strong, smartly uniformed police presence in the city and some 7million of the city's inhabitants are migrant workers in the service industries.

Blocks of apartments, most of them now owned (on 70 year state leases) line the wide roads. The streets don't seem nearly as busy/grubby as they might for a city with well over double the population of London. Speaking to the smiling, helpful and friendly locals we find that there is a feeling, particularly among older generations that the pace of growth and change in the city has been hard for people to keep up with. I can't help but wonder if the versatility and range of skills associated with portfolio careers might just become a necessity here.

Multiple Careers

2012-04-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

At the end of a day working through a to do list that felt like the length of a significant tributary to the Thames, I had a moment to idly google some possible alternative terms for ‘portfolio career’. Not very imaginatively I started with ‘multiple careers’ and found an article on the Financial Times website that proudly announced ‘Multiple careers are better than one’. Obviously, as a committed portfolio careerist, I had to agree.

In this article Luke Johnson says that people who have multiple careers are impressive business people due to the career changes which lead to an accumulation of multiple skills and achievements across a range of disciplines. He gives examples such as Benjamin Franklin and Ronald Reagan who switched focus more than once in their lives. He says that its laziness that prevents us from breaking the mould and sticking to a cautious career route. Luke cites our increasing longevity as a catalyst to encourage us to do more than one thing with our working lives.

The difference with a portfolio career is that you might also do more than one thing at the same time. I wholeheartedly agree that we have capacity to master a range of disciplines, change tack, find new directions and push ourselves to explore more than one career in our lifetime. Indeed, I think it's increasingly becoming a necessity. My concern with Luke’s article is that he doesn’t take into account that earning a living in a range of fields doesn’t have to be linear, with only one is focus at any one time. Despite advance in healthcare, life’s still pretty short in the grand scheme of things, there’s lots to pack in and with a bit of imagination, hard work and creativity – you can!

An Arts-focused Portfolio Career in the Making

2012-03-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Another guest post from a reader of this blog...

Helen invited me to write a few thoughts on my journey as a Portfolio Careerist. I was craving a change in direction and a friend suggested that as I was looking at doing at least two different part time jobs, then I was a Portfolio careerist. ‘A what?’ I asked. She suggested that I have a little look at Helen’s site. Which I did and contacted Helen as I found the content useful.

I’m currently exploring the idea of doing something more creative. I graduated with a Fine Art Sculpture Degree six years ago. I have worked for a Fine Art Auctioneer’s and currently I am working for a Housing Association as an Employment and Training Officer. I am looking at Art’s Education, within a gallery or museum, but I am also open to other placements within the Art’s. To gain more experience I am applying for roles that are volunteer positions. At first I was reluctant to apply for unpaid
roles as I have 6 years’ work experience and felt I should not have to work for free. But I warmed to the idea of gaining more experience in my new field of interest. I also value giving my free time to give something back to the community and undertaking work that I find creative and fun should be no chore. To give myself a creative spark I have recently started a Millinery (hat-making) course.

What I will find a challenge is the balancing act required to work at a paid job and fit volunteering around the working week. Many friends keep telling me the Arts sector is highly competitive and not always that well paid, so it is highly important to gain as much experience as possible.

So, watch this space to see how my journey continues. If you know of any Art organisations that are looking for volunteers then please do let me know via the comments link below.

...a big thank you for all the lovely people who have been in contact lately, it's brilliant to know this blog is spreading the word on portfolio careers.

Portfolio Careers by Email

2012-02-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

From time to time I get emails from people who have stumbled across this blog. More often than not they are from people thinking of starting their own portfolio career. I've decided to start sharing some of these email exchanges as blog posts. Here's one I received last week from someone thinking of making the leap...

Dear Helen

I came across your details on the internet following a suggestion my friend made to me about my next steps. I was explaining to her I love doing so many things and would find it restricting to do one job and didn't think my next post would encompass all that I enjoy doing. My friend mentioned portfolio careers, something I had not heard of. I googled this phrase and came across your site. I liked what you had written on your website and wanted to find out more about this way of working as this
sounds like something I should seriously consider as part of my next step.

Just a little about me, I am currently on a career break having worked for my previous employer for over a decade (in a number of roles a few years after I graduated) and felt it was time to move on and get a change of scene to see what else was out there and how I could use my skills in a new post. The idea of the break was to give me the space to re-assess my priorities in life. So the idea of portfolio careers has come at the right time. Prior to this break I was working I was working in the training and skills sector, developing and making use of a wide range of skills. I don't think I would have remained with my employer as long if I didn't have this variety and opportunity to develop and grow. Alongside this experience, I also have a strong interest in the arts and alternative health. I'd love to combine my interests in a portfolio career. I would really welcome any advice and suggestions you may have to provide me with some guidance on how I may begin to work in this way. My questions are as follows:

1. How many years have you been engaged in this way of working and how do you feel it benefits you?

2. How many hours a week do you work is it around 35-37 or more depending on what you are working on?

3. How many opportunities would you engage in at any one time?

4. Where does one begin to carve out their next steps working in this way?

5. How do you find opportunities, is it based on recommendations, word of mouth or usual job sourcing methods?

6. How do I express my self on my CV if looking for multiple roles in different fields?

7. How do employers react to you having multiple roles?

8. Do you have any other advice and suggestions about working in this way based on your experiences?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my email and I really look forward to hearing from you.

Here is my response (both are reproduced with the permission of the person who made the enquiry)...

Many thanks for your email. It always fascinates me to hear about others' portfolio career plans. There is also overlap in our respective stories - I held journalism roles writing about health, love the arts and I also spent about 10 years in the education/training sector.

In answer to your questions:
1) I have been a portfolio careerist on and off since about 2003 when I left journalism to concentrate on doctoral level studies which I funded through a combination of freelancing, rental income and part time administrative and later, education policy related roles. The biggest benefit of my portfolio career as it stands today is that I am now in a position where I can subsidise poorly paid but rewarding work (university lecturing) with more lucrative consultancy and communications work. I'm not saying that subsidising jobs that should be better renumerated to attract the best candidates is right. However, this is the current reality and by doing it and making others aware that's how it is, I feel in some small way I can contribute to change and encourage others to do the same.

2) My working week is realistically about 45 hours a week (often more) with weekends kept clear for time with my family.

3) How many opportunities I engage in at a time depends on size and scope. I also make sure I have a pool of fellow portfolio careerists and freelancers I can call on when things get busy.

4) To carve out next steps I'd say evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and be really honest with yourself about what you enjoy, not just what you're good at or qualified for.

5) Most of my work is based on networking, reputation and referrals. In the early days I also (very selectively) used freelancing sites.

6) There's no way around it - multiple roles may require multiple CVs - it's vital you present yourself coherently for each area but also don't be afraid to use the term portfolio career with pride.

7) Employers recognise the broad skills set I have to offer. It's seen as a strength teaching at a university that I am a fully qualified teacher who has also got commercial experience - it's a realistic role model for students.

8) My biggest tip is be as open minded as you can possibly be and put yourself out there in order to get the opportunities coming to you.

Flipboard for Portfolio Careers

2012-02-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

The trouble with a portfolio career can be the overwhelming amount of information to keep up to date with. If, like mine, your portfolio career spans multiple sectors, it can add up to a lot of reading. Enter Flipboard.

Flipboard is a great app (available for ipad and iphone). It brings together news, blog and social media feeds from the areas you are interested in and presents them in a beautiful magazine-inspired format.

I've often said it's important for portfolio careerists to take continuing professional development (CDP) seriously. Keeping up to speed with the latest developments in whatever combination of fields you work in is an important part of this.

This fantastic tool lets you do this in a streamlined way. It makes all the information you want to keep up to date with easily accessible in a single, attractive interface. No more multiple signing in or opening dozens of webpages. From the app you can interact with the content, commenting and sharing as you wish.

It's an inspired way to personalise content and sort the wheat from the chaff. It's like reading a magazine that was written especially for you.

A year in the life of an aspiring portfolio careerist - the role of volunteering

2012-01-18T01:02:00.000-08:00

I met Nikki Wilson at a portfolio careers networking event and she's guest blogged here for me before. In this post she describes her year as a 'portfolio volunteer' and how its helping her plan her portfolio career which she hopes to launch in 2012...

Nikki Wilson

For me, and I’m sure in fact most other people, volunteering is not an altruistic act. It makes me feel alive, purposeful and motivated – ultimately feelings that I would like to experience more frequently in my working life and which, at least to a degree I feel a portfolio career may help me achieve both by allowing me to undertake a variety of roles that tap into some of my currently under-utilised skills and interests, but also providing more control over my working pattern so that I can continue my voluntary work.

Reflecting on 2011, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to undertake a range of different voluntary roles. Initially I assisted at a number of fundraising events for a pre-school as ultimately I'd like to include work with children in my portfolio career. I was struck by how good it felt to be involved in a community activity and this helped to confirm in my mind a feeling I’d had for a long time that I want to move back to that environment and away from town.

The second, and most personally challenging experience was volunteering for a week at an orphanage in Moldova. This was far removed from any previous experiences but again reflects my growing commitment to child welfare. The orphanage itself was clean, bright and well maintained and the children neatly dressed – in other words it didn’t reflect the shocking images of orphanages that have been shown on the television in the past. However, it was difficult not to think too much about the children’s prospects – a life in institutions with little hope of ever becoming part of a family as there is barely any provision for fostering and adoption in Moldova. A key concern was operating in an environment where little English is spoken, meaning that I had to employ a high degree of self reliance. This was timely as one of my concerns about launching a portfolio career is the potential feeling of isolation, more than likely working from home and needing to be self assured in my own abilities and judgements.

My next experience was rather closer to home. As part of a wider programme, I was searching for a project I could undertake in 2012 with a small local charity and became involved with my local “Women’s Aid” organisation. I received a warm welcome and was immediately impressed by the way the charity was being run and so was enthusiastic to get started immediately, helping out in any way that was needed. Initially this involved Christmas gift wrapping but I've since also been able to help with funding research in the evenings and weekends at home. This is significant in that I’ve often found it extremely difficult to find ways to support charities of my choice that fit with my working life and other commitments. I’m really hoping that I can go ahead with a larger project with this charity in 2012 and it’s definitely sharpened my thinking about the shape I’d like my work to take in the coming months.

Finally, over Christmas I fulfilled an aim that I’ve had for a number of years of volunteering with Crisis at Christmas (CC) and am very glad I did. CC was a totally different volunteering experience to anything I’ve done before and is perhaps fairly unique in the immense number of volunteers that are brought together at any one time, all focused on one key aim of making the lives of the homeless visitors at least a little better over what must often be a very difficult period. The centres are more or less completely run by volunteer leaders. It really challenges the old stereotype of volunteers as good hearted but ultimately unskilled individuals, proving that people from all walks of life and all professional backgrounds can find pleasure and fulfilment in undertaking voluntary activity and reinforced my own feeling, evidenced by many of the portfolio careerists I’ve met that complementing any mix of paid roles with some voluntary work is likely to create a mutual benefit for the charity, in providing access to the often considerable and broad range of skills that such a worker has, and for the individual in providing a platform to use those skills in a new and extremely interactive way.

So, in summary my 2011 “volunteer year” has allowed me to build my skills and contacts, develop my confidence and start to further refine my thinking about how ultimately I would like to begin to structure my portfolio career. The challenge now is to be able to build at least some elements in to my paid work, and to build more flexibility into my overall working pattern so that I can take advantage of the plethora of voluntary activities that I’m interested in undertaking. My volunteering activities have incentivised me to develop the portfolio career that I’ve been thinking about for almost a year now and I really hope that in 2012 I find a way to make this a reality.

Christmas and portfolio careers

2011-12-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

Winding up for Christmas poses particular challenges for the portfolio careerist. It's a great time of year as most of the rest of the population take at least a couple of days off so there's less of the holiday guilt associated with preparing to be away when everyone else is stuck at work. However, for those of us with a portfolio career there are multiple sets of loose ends to tie up.

For me it was the end of the semester at my university job so making sure all my admin, marking and prep were in order there. Wearing another of my portfolio hats, I was also finishing up batch of editing of a set of A level distance learning materials. I also had several website and copywriting projects to either finish up or prepare for the new year. Last on my list was to put on my out of office, only to find that my gmail account is a bit hit and miss at sending it to all the various email accounts I manage through gmail - ah well, it can't all work like clockwork.

All in all though, preparing for the Christmas break really isn't any worse than tying up multiple loose ends in a more traditional single full-time job. There is only so much time available to spend on each aspect of a portfolio career. It's impossible for each element of a portfolio career to be a full time job (even though it feels like it is sometimes!) so it's all relative and evens itself out nicely. I certainly feel ready for some festive fun though and look forward to picking up the reins of my portfolio career again in January.

New year's resolutions for my portfolio career:

1. Make sure home life not neglected in pursuit of a balanced and interesting portfolio
2. Sort out my invoicing and book-keeping systems
3. Keep advocating for portfolio careers as a viable, professional choice
4. Stay focused on work I really want to pursue

Happy Christmas all!

Multiple email addresses and portfolio careers

2011-12-08T16:50:00.000-08:00

I've just had a look at the ludicrous number of email accounts I manage from my Gmail account. I have no fewer that eight email addresses which seems ridiculous but is a necessary evil when you've got a portfolio career.

I have an 'ac.uk' email address for my university teaching, three 'co.uk' ones relating to my digital media agency, my blog and one that I used to use for freelancing. I also have an 'org.uk' one for a network I co-founded, one for a distance learning provider I am a course author and tutor at, one for my voluntary role as a branch organiser for Guide Dogs and one plain old personal Gmail account.

Thank goodness for Gmail's 'send mail as' function. I think I might go mad trying to manage all of these accounts if I couldn't access them all from anywhere, all in one inbox. It does slightly make me wish we were all born with barcodes and unique domain names and email addresses that we use for our whole lives in all circumstances. I remember being a single-track employee with just a work email and a personal email - ahh, what a simpler time it was! However, having multiple email addresses can be surprisingly manageable and useful. I've had several clients who have set me up with an email address using their domain name. It enabled me to act as an ambassador for them and be more than a freelancer so multiple email accounts undoubtedly serve a purpose.

If Gmail's 'send mail as' function sounds like it might be useful for you, follow these steps:

1) Sign in to your Gmail account

2) Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner

3) Click Gmail settings

4) Click the Accounts and Import tab

5) Under Send mail as, select 'Add another email address' and enter details of alternate email address

6) Choose how your mail will be sent (via Gmail's servers is easier to set up)

Portfolio careers and teaching

2011-12-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the place of teaching in a portfolio career. It's not uncommon, particularly in further and higher education for staff to work part time, combining teaching with other commitment. If you had a choice who would you rather be taught by:

1) A full time teacher with many years' experience and subject expertise
2) A yet-to-qualify teacher who is passionate and enthusiastic about their subject
3) A part time teacher with experience outside of education who is well qualified in their subject
4) A full time newly qualified teacher fresh out of university

The reality is that on many courses of study, particularly in further and higher education, it's somewhat luck of the draw which you might get. Any of these could turn out to be the best or the worse teacher you ever had.

At first glance, option one might seem like the safest bet - they ought to know the syllabus like the back of their hand and have been in the classroom long enough to have worked out how best to help people learn. That said though, there is always the risk that they are tired and jaded, worn down with cynicism about the education system or unwittingly inclined to intimidate their students with the depth of their subject knowledge.

Option two has the potential to be a disaster or a triumph for teaching and learning too. Someone hungry to share their subject can be inspiring and motivating but a lack of knowledge about teaching may limit their effectiveness.

Option three might offer insights into to the working world outside academia drawn from first hand experience that someone who has always taught might not. When entering the profession though, like any new teacher, they will still have to find their feet.

Option four ought to be bang up to date with the latest pedagogy and have recent experience in a range of education settings. They might also be very overwhelmed by their first teaching post and still have much to learn themselves.

Teachers often suffer from self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy. Let's face it - we could all always do better. Whether part time, full time or part of a portfolio career, not all teachers are equal. A teacher's role is to facilitate learning, to make it possible for their students to make new connections, share ideas and equip them with the skills to go out in the world and create new knowledge for themselves. As a teacher myself, I firmly believe that we must educate both our teachers and learners to accept a joint responsibility for getting the best out of each other and the educational settings they find themselves in.

Wearing different hats in a portfolio career

2011-11-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

Portfolio careers inevitably involve a variety of roles that necessitate the wearing of multiple hats in the space of the average week. Sometimes this 'hat changing' may even take place on the same day depending on the nature of your portfolio.

It's not unusual for me to be playing the role of creative consultant one moment, professional editor the next and later that same day teaching a class of undergraduates. In fact that's exactly what my day looked like today.

Having spent over a decade in my earlier career in traditional office-based employed roles, I know that in today's fast paced world jobs will often require a broad spectrum of skills and therefore require a similar level of regular hat switching albeit within a much more singular framework. It's therefore really not such a leap to transfer multiple skills used in one job to a variety of jobs that make up a portfolio career. The key difference is only that the elements of your portfolio career may be more disparate as they may not relate to a single area, industry or practice. The layer of complexity this adds is offset by the fact that you may not necessarily need the volume or variety of skills in each separate area of your portfolio as you might in a single full time role.

A designer, for example, working as a freelancer for part of their portfolio career rather than as an employee as part of a production team, still needs core design skills of course. They may not though, need to participate in contributing to the team's wider strategies and objectives which may require a broader skillset thereby freeing up skills and time to be deployed elsewhere in the portfolio career.

The flexibility, adaptability and multiple skills required to survive in today's fast moving, 'no more jobs for life' environment are highly relevant to portfolio careers. It's just a case of joining up the dots and applying skills to the new ways of working the portfolio career represents.

Portfolio careers and comfort zones

2011-11-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

I've heard it said that change only occurs when you step outside your comfort zone. A portfolio career may well comprise a variety of comfort zones; those places where we feel we know what we're doing.

There are inevitably times when you have to challenge and push yourself to do things that perhaps don't come naturally. With more than one area of expertise in a portfolio career, this could at times become too much so it's important to be careful not to overload yourself with too many new challenges in too many areas all in one go. Pacing yourself is key.

If you can manage it, keep all other areas of your portfolio career comfortably ticking over while developing and pushing boundaries in another. Portfolio careers can be exciting and exhilarating but don't be tempted to do too much at once, keep in mind that taking on new challenges must be about quality not quantity.

Education for portfolio careers

2011-10-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to speak at a conference for A level students who are starting to think about their university choices. The organisers have asked me to speak about how my degrees relate to my portfolio career. What will I tell them?

My BA, MA and MPhil were all done under the auspices of English Literature. In fact my MA and MPhil were actually quite multi-disciplinary in nature, touching on English Literature, Cultural Studies, Science, History and Citizenship. Without a doubt they have helped me to build a portfolio career. English was a great subject to get me started off in my first job in publishing, which in turn funded my MA. My MPhil led me quite indirectly to eight years working in citizenship education. This was purely because I decided to take a job that started as a part-time role which would give me some time to do my research. It's also been my passport to a Visiting Lecturer post teaching English Literature to undergraduates which forms part of my portfolio career today. I now run my own business and feel that my education has played a big role in developing the aptitude and confidence necessary to make a go of it.

In reality the subject of my degrees, although very related to the communications side of my work, could almost be considered irrelevant in some ways. What any degree should do is promote independent, critical thinking, adaptability and high standards. The undergraduates I currently teach will have to make their way in the world in tough economic times. They will need to compete with high numbers of university-educated peers and find ways to make a living in a fast-moving, information-overloaded world. The face and value of knowledge is changing. The rate at which knowledge is acquired and applied has quickened as the human race has evolved. As such, learning about how to keep pace is just as important as learning facts and figures, which change and are contested quicker than ever before.

Marketing and managing my business requires a set of skills which encompass some that are entirely different from the skills needed for the actual services my business offers. Throughout my life I've had teachers, family and colleagues describe me as 'a good all-rounder'. Without a doubt having a broad skills set has given me choices and enabled me to create a portfolio career. I'm not sure how well I'll communicate this to the poor A level students who'll have to sit and listen to me at this conference. However, I'll certainly be extolling the virtues of an open-minded approach to subject-specific learning and working out how to apply it as widely as possible to create opportunities and options.

The balancing act

2011-10-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Portfolio careers require a lot of balancing. An average week in my portfolio career could look something like this:

Monday
Finalise session plan and teaching resources for University teaching on Friday
Emails and task list relating to teaching and education projects
Appointment with an education-related client

Tuesday
Attend weekly breakfast meeting with other local business owners
One-to-one with a colleague after breakfast meeting
Appointment with a website/branding/SEO-related client
Emails and task list relating to communications and marketing projects

Wednesday
Appointments with editorial-related client
Writing/editing work
Emails and task list relating to website and branding projects

Thursday
Follow up appointments with clients
Working on branding and website creative briefs
Website content and navigation work
Emails and task list relating to editorial projects

Friday
University teaching
Invoicing
Book-keeping
Administration

Of course, it rarely divides up quite this neatly and tasks and admin relating to each of the three main areas of my portfolio (editorial - website design - education) crop up every day. The skills and processes required, such as project management and versatility in different forms of writing, complement each other across the different facets of my portfolio. How I divide up my time is dependent on a variety of factors such as the time of year, which affects how busy each area of my portfolio is. Balancing my time is also influenced by areas I may choose to focus on at different times out of preference and of course, good old fashioned client demand.

Portfolio careerists take note - only skilled time managers need apply!