The Rise Of The Portfolio Career

Why more women are switching the traditional 9-5 with a multifaceted career designed around their unique brilliance.

Do you feel like you're destined to do something more than sit in a cubicle every day, but also can't fully commit to the idea of working full-time in your own business? If you feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole when it comes to your professional life, a portfolio career may be the elusive 'third path' you've been looking for.

The Portfolio Co, an online network specialising in helping modern Renaissance women and men build these kinds of careers, define it as:

"Monetising your skills in many ways and having multiple income sources, rather than a single job at one company."

Essentially, instead of having one primary job, career portfolio-ists have multiple income streams that make up a full-time salary (sometimes even more). Rather than thinking of professional growth as linear, they have many different strings in their bow... and, there are plenty of benefits to be gained if you're willing to eschew the old-school social expectation of doing 'just one thing.'

By nature, portfolio careers offer unparalleled variety. As you can have as many different projects in the works as you like, it's easy to stop your work life from ever feeling stale or monotonous. This has the unexpected benefit of preventing you from completely uprooting your life whenever you need a change — making it a particularly suitable career model for those with ADHD, who tend to require lots of novelty to stay engaged.

Then, there's the flexibility. Want to take a week off to go on holidays? Work by the pool with mango daiquiri in hand? Beeline to the sofa in the middle of the day to watch old episodes of Gossip Girl? With a portfolio career, you're typically self-employed — which means you call the shots.

Portfolio careers also tend to offer higher earning potential than a traditional 9-5. If you have one full-time job, your income might top out at low six figures, if you're in a high-paying field. Typically, the only way up from there is climbing the corporate ladder and entering senior management, which is not for everyone. Meanwhile, with a suite of scalable products and services the earning potential is in the millions, not the thousands.

It's easy to assume that portfolio careers are only feasible for freelancers, creatives, and content creators. But, this type of model can be applied to almost any industry or role — including the left-brained ones. Perhaps you're a scientist or academic. While completing your PhD, you lecture at your university, tutor students, and start a paid newsletter on your topic of expertise. Or, perhaps you're a lawyer, who would be well-positioned to branch out into consulting and selling legal contract templates.

The options are endless, and you don't have to be a social media-savvy extrovert to do it. Here are some practical tips to get started: