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š§āš» Portfolio Careers: The Key to your Dream Life
How to build an anti-fragile career while earning more & having greater control over your day.
Hey Insiders,
Iāve been involved in the āfuture of workā conversation in one way or another for the last 5 years.
In that time Iāve started to see a trend with the people whose careers I really admire, the people whoā¦
seem to have the best jobs
have massive momentum
get paid the most
and are modern-day āRenaissance menā
I never had a word for it, so I was never able to properly explain it, until nowā¦
Today in 5min 17sec youāll learn why Portfolio Careers are the future of work & why they could be the KEY to your dream life!
Letās dive inā¦
Portfolio Careers: The Future of Work
What is a Portfolio Career
In the same way that an investor builds a diversified portfolio of investments, a Portfolio Careerist (someone who builds a Portfolio Career) āinvestsā in different income streams de-risking their financial well-being.
Portfolio Careers can take many shapes:
a full-time job coupled with a side hustle
one or two long-term clients with a product on the side
a main job with side freelancing offers in the same industry
There are a hundred different ways to construct a Portfolio Career, but the main idea is that you are not reliant on a single employer.
Instead your ācareerā is actually a portfolio of jobs, services, and/or products.
From Company Man to Portfolio Careerist
In the 1950s the concept of a company man, someone who works at the same company their entire career, ascending the ladder, until retiring with the gift of a golden watch, was common.
However, over the last 50 years, we have seen this slowly disappear.
A 2016 poll found that 40% of Baby Boomers stayed with the same employer for more than 20 years.
This changed dramatically with Gen X and even more so with Millennials who on average changed jobs every 2.75 years.
And Gen Z workers are expected to job hop even more!
Specialization makes sense in a stable economy with relatively slow technological developments.
You know that your job will exist because you know there wonāt be dramatic technological changes in the next 20 years.
But today we live in a world of incredibly fast changes where new positions are popping up every year and others are being rendered unnecessary.
According to Zippia, today in the US alone there are over 27,000 social media managers.
This profession didnāt exist 15 years ago!
Portfolio Careers are a natural continuation of these long-term changes.
20-year jobs turn into 2-year jobs which turn into 6-month contracts.
Enjoying this so far? Consider sharing it with someone you think will also like itš
Benefits of a Portfolio Career
At the beginning of the year, we saw massive layoffs in the tech space.
According to estimates by TechCrunch in the first half of 2023 over 224,000 workers were laid off.
Thatās nearly a quarter of a million people who went to bed one night with a well-paying job and woke up the next day without an income!
However, if they had a Portfolio Career, they wouldnāt have gone to zero.
Here are a few other benefits of a Portfolio Career:
š Reduce risk
As I illustrated in the above scenario, having a single source of income makes you fragile.
Conventional advice would call a 9 to 5 job āsafeā or āstableā, but if you were to ask any of the 200K+ people laid off this year I donāt think they would agree.
Donāt get me wrong, full-time jobs can provide stability in some cases, but you shouldnāt put all your eggs in one basket.
š Expand work options
In her TEDx Talk, Dorie Clark, a Duke adjunct business professor, author, and career coach provides several examples of people who used their career portfolios to land new higher paying jobs.
For example, there is Lenny who was a nurse but became interested in coding and outside of his regular work developed several apps.
When his hospital manager learned of this they promoted Lenny to the social media manager of the hospital, later promoting him again to the overall Head of Communications.
Portfolio Careerists are able to learn new skills on their own time and combine them in unique ways that open them up to job options that may not have existed for them before.
š° Increase financial leverage
The online business world is in love with the idea of passive income.
But Iām in love with Highly Leveraged Income.
Doesnāt sound as sexy, but itās just as powerful and much more attainable for 99% of peopleā¦
Let me ask you this, would you trade $2000 per month in passive income for 5 hours a month of work at a rate of $1000 per hour - a total of $5000?
Most sane people would!
As a Portfolio Careerist, you can take the skills youāve developed at your 9 to 5 and freelance them, doubling your hourly rate.
After a year of freelancing that skill, you can start consulting or coaching doubling your rate again.
Perhaps a year after that, you can launch a cohort course where you take a few clients at a time doubling that rate a 3rd timeā¦ although in this final scenario, you can likely more than double your rate.
Following this simple example, we can see how:
$50 per hour salary becomes $100 per hour freelancing
which then becomes $200 per hour coaching and consulting
before doubling again to $400 per hour in a cohort setting
By doing this you could reduce your actual work hours while making the same income as when you startedā¦
Or stack all of these to maximize your income!
Downsides of a Portfolio Career
Portfolio Careers have a lot of benefits, but they do carry some negatives you need to be aware of before getting started down this pathā¦
š You will need to be more āproductiveā
In most cases, a full-time job can make life simple and easy.
You can clock in and clock out and donāt have to think about much else.
Studies even show that full-time employees really only work 3 hours per day on their actual job and the rest is spent on secondary activities.
A Portfolio Career will require you to be far more focused and productive.
š Self-management
As a Portfolio Careerist, you wonāt have a manager to control your time which you will have to take into your own hands.
This is obviously also a positive since you have complete control of your day, but you will need to have a lot more self-control over how you spend your time.
š„ Taxes and insurance
Portfolio Careerists are technically self-employed so you will also have to take care of your own taxes.
You will need to track your income and make sure that youāre setting aside enough for taxes.
Eventually hiring a fractional bookkeeper can help here.
Perhaps the biggest pain for Portfolio Careerists is health insurance.
This is mostly reserved for US citizens where health insurance isnāt nationalized but connected to an employer.
Self-employed health insurance is pretty straightforward to figure out but it will cost you.
No Career Portfolio, No Han Solo
In his fantastic book The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, physicist and network scientist Albert-LĆ”szlĆ³ BarabĆ”si shares that according to their research, a personās chances of success in a given field are directly correlated with their output.
Meaning the longer you try, the higher the chance you succeed.
For the baseball fans reading, the more swings at bat you take, the higher the chances that you will eventually hit a home run.
This brings up a great story I once heard about actor Harrison Ford.
Ford moved out to LA in the hopes of becoming an actor in the mid-60s and found it incredibly difficult to break through.
He didnāt want to quit but he had to find a way to earn money.
At the time he was already married and had 2 young kidsā¦
So he taught himself carpentry!
While many actors came and went, Ford was able to stay in the game longer because he had an income from his carpentry work.
A few years in he ended up doing some carpentry work for several writers and directors, one of whom then introduced him to George Lucas.
Lucas took a liking to Ford and brought him in to read lines with actors auditioning for roles in Star Wars, but fell in love with his portrayal of Han Solo and gave him the part.
It was Harrison Fordās first main role and led to future franchises like Indiana Jones and solidified him as one of Hollywoodās leading actors.
None of this would have been possible if Harrison Ford hadnāt adopted a Portfolio Career approach.
By using carpentry to pay the bills and support his family, Ford was able to use the rest of his free time to continue going to auditions, mastering his craft, and building relationships in Hollywood.
He didnāt succeed because he was a standout actor but because he was able to outlast everyone else.
A Portfolio Career can provide you with the same opportunity!
The first or second income streams you build as part of your portfolio may not be the home runs youāre dreaming of, but they can keep you in the game until you eventually hit it out of the park.
Are you interested in learning more about Portfolio Careers?Let me know if this is a topic you're curious about and what your questions are and I will use it to inform future content. |
š MITKOāS JOURNAL
In this section, I share things Iām working on at the moment, interesting things that I have stumbled across, or anything else thatās on my mind that I think you will find value in.
š¢ Kowloon City. The most densely populated place in history was Kowloon City on the outskirts of Hong Kong. Before being torn down in the 90s it housed over 33,000 people in just 6.5 acres. For comparison, NYCās East Village, the most densely populated area in the US, is home to 44,000 people on 250 acres. This is how Kowloon City came to be.
š§ Ro. I recently listened to Lana Blakely on Ali Abdaalās podcast where she discussed the concept of Ro. Itās a word shared among all 3 Scandinavian countries and despite not having an exact translation in English it describes a sense of tranquility, calm, and peacefulness. Lana talks about how in Sweden people try to āfind Roā in everyday life.
š Personal Branding. While researching several topics for this newsletter, from Portfolio Careers and the future of work to the creator economy, I continue to find just how powerful personal brands can be. You donāt have to be a famous person to have a personal brand, in fact, you already have one. Itās what people say about you when youāre not there! But when harnessed it can help you land a dream job, increase your rates, or get recognized as a thought leader.
šø $10,000 Tasks. A few years ago Khe Hy gained notoriety for his concept of $10K per hour work - the process of identifying your highest priority tasks, those that really move the needle, and committing small amounts of time towards them every day. The idea isnāt that you should get paid $10K per hour while doing those tasks, but that when done, they will continue to pay dividends. As we inch closer to the end of the year, what are the $10K tasks you need to work on to make 2023 the most successful year to date?
Which of these are you most interested in and why?Pick the option you found the most interesting or you're curious to learn more about and I may create more content on the topic. |
š UPCOMING EVENTS:
Aug 28-31: NomadEire [šTralee, Kerry County, Ireland] - Wide-ranging discussion on all things related to nomadic life along with skill sharing, business coaching, and celebration of what Ireland can offer digital nomads.
Sept 28 - Oct 1: Nomadness Fest [šLouisville, Kentucky, US] - A festival for travelers of color and their allies. 30+ speakers covering topics such as branding, business, domestic travel, effects of over-tourism, and much more.
Sept 30: DNCH [šBern, Switzerland + Virtual] - Learn about location-independent life and meet like-minded people interested in the digital nomad lifestyle.
Oct 9-15: The Nomad World [šAlbufeira, Portugal] - Transformative experience for digital nomads and remote workers from across the globe. A mix of expert talks, hands-on workshops, and beach-side fun, aimed at celebrating freedom, connection, and personal growth.
Dec 7-13: Nomad Island Fest [š Madeira, Portugal] - Learn from world-class industry experts on topics like mindset, marketing, tech, wealth & health.
Thatās it for today!
Thanks for spending a few minutes with me! Iād love to hear what you think about this edition of the newsletterā¦
What do you think of today's edition?Let us know what you thought of today's email so we can make our content as awesome as possible |
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Thaās it for today, hope you have a fantastic day, and see you on Friday for our weekly news wrap-up!
Cheers š»
Todayās email was written by Mitko Karshovski