As a journalist, I juggle with more than one job. I am a distributor and marketer for a brand and an influencer too because I want more sources of income.
The portfolio career gives me more than what I earn. To me, it’s a working style where you combine multiple streams of income from my perfumery business and as an influencer to a brand. What I enjoy more as a portfolio entrepreneur is that it gives me room for self – management whereby I decide where I want to work, choose who to work with and how much am worth.
Again, with the rate of inflation, where much money chases few goods, salary earners like me are all ‘Oliver Twist.’ This is so because commodities are so expensive and with peanuts paid, they can’t get enough of what they desire and the high exchange rate is not helping matters. Irrespective of that, all hands must be on desk as there’s no free lunch. One needs a side job apart from the regular job or business you do to sustain the hard times too.
This brings us closer to the meaning of Portfolio career.
What is Portfolio Career?
It has to do with a variety of roles instead of one job as a single firm. It also deals with multiple paid and voluntary roles.
Portfolio entrepreneur is a sub-type of the habitual entrepreneur. They are involved in a number of businesses simultaneously. These entrepreneurs are actually skilled and more experienced than their novice counterparts, and studying them should enhance understanding of entrepreneurship.
Why do some people become portfolio entrepreneurs?
That portfolio career – also known as “Side hustles,” involves monetizing your skills, having multiple income sources and thus smiling to your bank or bringing home multiple income.
Do you know that in the past, these types of jobs were dominated by senior executives who do more than the job they do? Some are skilled and astute writers who as well write books for their clients. Some are involved in contractual jobs other than their 9am to 5pm jobs. For example, among Bank executives these days, some have taken to being fashion designers and in other lucrative businesses too. Their salary alone cannot meet to their wants. Some teachers and lectures also take to jobs of making speeches and they are being paid for that too.
How are portfolio careers assessed?
First of all, your portfolio should contain written and or visual overview of projects and pieces of work you have done or managed before. It should also have insight into the skills you have along with relevant lessons learnt from it. For example, banker without skills or knowledge in fashion designing cannot take up such portfolio career. You must be a skilled person to go into it. In this era of social media, content creators, graphic artists and digital marketing are all trendy portfolio entrepreneurs.
7 tips to consider before you start portfolio career
1. Examine your work history
Like I said earlier, if you have had a variety of jobs in the past, try to find what connotes them together. If most of your jobs were linked to one profession, for example, my job as a journalist gave me opportunity to network thereby giving me a clientele database suitable enough to market the product I market more accessible, making my job easy for me because I chose it.
One good thing is that portfolio career helps you ascertain where your talents and interest lie. This will help dictate where your talents and interests lie, where to work and who to work with.
2. It helps you evaluate your education
Portfolio career helps you remember your favorite courses way back in your school days and it makes your choice of a job easier. This is why an English graduate, because of reading Semantics, will make a successful writer as a portfolio entrepreneur.
3. Interests and hobbies
Hobbies and interests can be considered while choosing a Portfolio career path. For example, if you are very good as a dancer, singer, a chef, etc, you can give lessons from those interests or hobbies and make it a portfolio career. Tale TS or hobbies bring home income. Same is applicable to a fine artist, make-up artist, stylist and so on. Give lessons on them and earn money from them.
4. Try a side gig
Like I said earlier, portfolio career is like a side job or a side hustle, so do have it at the back of your mind that juggling multiple jobs may not be for every dick and Harry and be sure you can do it before quitting your 9am to 5pm job. It’s a world of the unknown whereby you don’t know your fate. Yes, it might sound juicy and all that, like self – management and you being your own boss who has all the ideas all figured out. You have to consider possible eventuality too. It’s a world of fairy tales but be careful before you leap.
5.Have a game plan and be strategic
It’s not easy though if you are going to start a portfolio career. I suggest you still keep a regular job so as to assist in money matters. Portfolio career is like a one-man business where by you are the accountant, marketer, customer relationship officer. You are virtually everything a business organogram should be. You should be a risk taker here. To avoid every risk, have a few people as mentors, and use your home as work place so as to reduce expense. In fact, plan everything. according to suit or adjust to your budget.
6. Build your network of connections
Recall I said that as a journalist, I have a network of quality contacts and people who gradually turn to my clients or customers and eventually advocates. At some point, they might be your support system. As a portfolio entrepreneur, do not be ashamed to seek for an assistance from friends and family. It’s even thrilling that they are the ones that tell you about new jobs. Keep good and responsible contacts – beginning from your former colleagues. Spread your tentacles, network with people, attend events related to your kinds of jobs. Moreover, be well-informed and that will expand your contacts and connections you make. This way, you will be well informed about the trends in other companies and job opportunities.
More importantly, do not underrate the power of social media. It’s a huge platform for networking and marketing.
7. It needs a good support team
With portfolio career, you need all the support team. Remember, doing it alone is tasking and draining. Like I said earlier, don’t be afraid or shy to ask people for support. It can be financial or for mentorship. This calls for you being friends to focused, positive-minded and good people. You definitely need people as a support team.
The only disadvantage of portfolio entrepreneurs is that they have fewer time for advancement. They find it very difficult to advance their careers or expand their businesses. Portfolio career job will never give you one job you can stay with to learn, unlearn and re-learn new skills or innovations on the job.
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