Embracing a Portfolio Career: A Path to Future-Proofing Your Work Life

In Canada’s changing job market, the concept of a portfolio career is gaining momentum. Unlike a traditional career, where individuals typically climb the ladder, a portfolio career involves juggling multiple roles, projects, or part-time jobs simultaneously. This diversified approach to work is not only a viable option, but it is increasingly seen as a strategic way to manage and future-proof your career. As a team of portfolio careerists, with over 20 years of experience, we know the advantages of an income streaming portfolio career.

Here are our top 6 reasons why we believe embracing a portfolio career can be a game-changer.

1. Flexibility and Autonomy

One of the most appealing aspects of a portfolio career is the flexibility it offers. Instead of being tied to a 9-to-5 job, we can design our work schedules to fit our lifestyles or personal needs. This flexibility allows for better work-life balance, which is important for maintaining mental and physical well-being. Additionally, having control over our workload and hours fosters a sense of autonomy and empowerment that is often lacking in traditional employment. We are self-employed portfolio careerist who enjoy the autonomy that an entrepreneurial portfolio career offers.

2. Diverse Skill Development

Working in multiple roles across different industries enables us to develop a broad skill set. This diverse skill development has made us more marketable and adaptable in an ever-changing job landscape. For example, our freelance graphic designer who also manages social media can offer a comprehensive service package that is attractive to potential clients or employers. This blend of skills not only enhances her employability but also opens more opportunities for career growth and innovation.

3. Financial Resilience

A portfolio career can provide greater financial stability compared to relying on a single source of income. By diversifying income streams, we can mitigate risks associated with job loss or economic downturns. If one source of income disappears, other projects or roles can help us bridge the gap. This financial resilience is particularly beneficial in uncertain times, offering a safety net that a traditional single-income career might not provide. If we lose a job or project, we have other income streams we can potentially dial up and rely on.

4. Continuous Learning and Personal Growth

Engaging in a variety of projects keeps us intellectually stimulated and continuously learning. This constant exposure to new challenges and industries leads to personal and professional growth that may not happen in a single job. Additionally, a portfolio career encourages us to stay updated with industry trends and advancements, ensuring we remain relevant and competitive in the job market. We know that employability is the new job security.

5. Enhanced Networking Opportunities

Working in different roles and sectors expands our professional network. These diverse connections can lead to new opportunities, collaborations, and even mentorship. A robust network provides us with support, inspiration, and guidance, helping us navigate our career or entrepreneurial path more effectively. Additionally, being known across multiple industries has established us as a versatile and resourceful workers, further enhancing our reputation and the opportunities that come our way.

6. Aligning Passion with Profession

A portfolio career has allowed us to pursue our passions alongside other professional goals. This alignment can lead to greater job satisfaction and a more enjoyable work life. For instance, our instructional designer and our project manager are also passionate about theatre production and freelance play writing. This integration of their passion for the arts and their professional learning design work leads to a more motivated and engaged professional life as their creativity aligns and soars in all the work they do.

Finally, in a world where job security and industry demands are constantly evolving, a portfolio career offers a compelling alternative to a traditional career path. The flexibility, diverse skill development, financial resilience, continuous learning, enhanced networking opportunities, and the ability to align passion with profession make it an attractive option for many people. As we move towards a more interconnected and multifaceted job market, a portfolio career is not just a trendy concept but a smart, strategic choice for people looking to thrive in a modern workforce.

How to Personally Brand When You Have Multiple Income Streams

Should I throw down multiple business cards like a poker hand in Las Vegas?

That was Peter’s question when it came to managing his personal branding and his multiple income streams. When you're a professional engineer by day, a professional guitarist on the weekend and a landlord, should you have more than one resume, more than one business card and what should you call yourself?

The answer is as unique as each portfolio careerist because no two portfolio careerists are alike. However, there are some basic personal branding questions that you should ask yourself to determine how you choose to connect and communicate with potential employers, clients, or customers.

Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels

Who do you want to help and what tools will you use to connect?

In each stream of income, you are helping someone. If you are searching for employment as one of your income streams, you want to communicate how you can meet your targeted employer's needs with your knowledge, skills and experiences. This is best done through a conversation, your modernized resume and a well-crafted LinkedIn profile highlighting your aligned knowledge, skills and experiences.

Next, if a branch of your income comes from self-employment as an independent contractor, consultant or freelancer, you want to communicate to your clients how you can make a difference in their business. The best way to do this is through conversations, possibly a website, a digital portfolio of your work, a LinkedIn profile or possibly another social media platform. It could be that all of the above is your strategy.

As well, if you're test driving a side hustle business, you want to connect with your customers. You might choose to do this through an in person marketplace, a digital marketplace or through social media platforms. You may need to do some research to find out which strategy connects best to your customers.

Next, what should you call yourself?

What you call yourself matters, but maybe not in the way you think. Many professionals think that their job title is their most marketable asset, but in reality, employers, clients and customers want to know if you align to their needs and can make a difference. They are more concerned with the transformation you are going to make for their business or in their lives.

For example, employers want to know how you plan to meet their needs and add value to their business as an employee. Clients want to know if you can solve their pain points as a contractor, consultant or freelancer. Customers want to know how your product solves their problems or adds value to their lives. Yes, your shiny business cards need to look professional, your brand colors are important, and your social media platforms should look pulled together. However, it's more about your message.

So...work on your message. This means taking time to drill down to how you make a difference, solve problems, increase, decrease, reduce or gain something of value for employers, clients and customers. What makes you unique and how do you stand out from your competition? How are you going to take the problems and issues that you see and make them better?

Finally, how can you be contacted?

Make it simple. Your contact tools should simply contain your well crafted message, a call to action and where to get a hold of you. Remember a deck of business cards doesn't replace a conversation or a more robust connecting strategy, so think through your connecting strategy carefully because business cards can fall into the black hole of someone's purse or end up on the floor of your client's car. You want to think through long-term connecting strategies that allow you to "stick" in the minds and hearts of the employers, clients and customers that you meet.

The reality is that portfolio careerist with multiple income streams may have multiple messages and multiple tools that they have curated for each income stream. The engineer above who is looking for a job, a gig and is managing a rental property will have to have a three pronged connecting approach. He will customize his resume for every job opportunity plus strategize how he can network and connect to employers in his industry to have conversations about how he can help them. At the same time, he may use YouTube to create a video portfolio strategy to connect to bands in his local music industry. Finally, he might use a well crafted Rent Faster profile for his rental property and also share his rental with his social media following to attract the type of renter he wants.

Personally branding across multiple income streams can be a challenge, but by identifying who you are helping, building relationships and creating a messaging and contacting strategy, you will create a cohesive and successful personal brand.

How the Messy Road to Entrepreneurship is Often Paved with a Portfolio Career

Steve with the Duck Foot Part Inc. at trade shows.

The road to entrepreneurship is often not a clear and linear ascent to success. Instead, it’s often paved with a messy income streaming, portfolio career. This was the case for Steve and Chrisa Kastning, the owners of Duck Foot Parts Inc., a startup company that was launched in 2017. In just 5 years, their company has expanded sales into Australia and the United States. However, prior to working full-time in their business, they had a portfolio career that included income streaming from part-time work, a seasonal job and a contract job in order to bridge the gap between quitting farming and launching their business.

Steve has always had an entrepreneurial, income streaming mindset.  From 2005-2016, he had numerous forms of employment including owning a grain elevator that cleaned and shipped organic grain, he managed a farm, rented and farmed his own land, custom farmed for a land investment company, plus worked with his dad in his dad’s plumbing business in the winter. “It’s just what I did,” he said. “When you’re a farmer you learn how to juggle and make money from diversifying your income. That’s just how we think.”

In 2014, Steve had two entrepreneurial ideas on the go. He and his friend, Kirby, had everything pulled together to start a semi-truck wash business outside of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Steve says, “I had the idea with Kirby to start a semi-truck wash. He and I travelled to the US to look at a state-of-the-art wash system.  Chrisa and I traveled to Norway and Sweden to meet with the company that builds the system to work on the building plans. We had a piece of land outside of Regina and we had investors lined up that were going to invest.”

He also had another idea brewing in the background that he shared with his wife, Chrisa. “We were fortunate to be in the farming business, so the idea happened organically,” Chrisa says. “I remember riding in the combine with Steve and he started to talk about how he had the vision to create a product that would feed crops better. He then started to play with the idea to get it to work better. At the time, we were both working full-time for the farm.”  

During this time, Steve and Chrisa had the mold made for the Duck Foot and started to work on patents. In 2016, they started selling to local farmers and continued with testing, but they were having problems with the product falling off. They stopped production and went to work on making the necessary changes to improve their product before taking it back to market.   

“I’ve thought about creating this product for years as I was working in the farming industry,” Steve adds. “There were products out there that I had used as a farmer, but they weren’t designed in an efficient way. I was growing lentils, which is a short crop and hard to clear the cutter bar, creating losses. I’ve always been someone who adapted, changed things and tried to make processes more efficient. I really felt I could improve on what was in the market.”

In the meantime, the semi-truck wash came to a sudden stop. Steve adds, “The GTH couldn’t get our land prepped so we decided to put it on the shelf until the land development was ready.” At this point, they realized they had to pivot. They were waiting for the truck wash, they had a product they were launching and they had another idea brewing.

They decided to quit farming. They were renting 90% of the land they farmed and buying the family farm wasn’t an option, so they transitioned away from farming, and decided to franchise Kirby’s ‘Suds Car Wash’ and open a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan location. Time ticked away and securing investors for the franchise was a lengthy process. Like most entrepreneurs who are waiting for investors or are launching a product line, Steve and Chrisa needed to make some money. They decided to tap into previous skills and experience to look for work.

Prior to meeting Steve, “Startup Entrepreneur” was not a job title on Chrisa’s resume. She began her career as a Family Worker at Onion Lake Family Services and, before marrying Steve, for 12 years she was an Adoption and Permanency Planning Worker for Alberta Children’s Services. However, following their engagement, she worked towards her resignation and moved, joining Steve to work on the farm. Wanting to keep her foot in the door of her 1st career, Chrisa took on a contract role as a SAFE Home Study Supervisor.  “I provide consultation and to the SAFE Home Study Writer through each step of the process including reviewing the final report”, she says.  Chrisa began her first portfolio career streaming income from working various jobs on the farm including driving a grain cart and reviewing home studies, a job she could do remotely. “After we quit farming, I kept that contract and then after we sold our house and moved to Saskatoon, I also got a job at the Saskatoon Public Library.”

The move to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to franchise the car wash meant Chrisa was living in Saskatoon while Steve spent weekdays in Regina working at Sud’s Car Wash, learning the ropes of running a cash wash business while they waited for the car wash franchise investors. “We were car washing and duck footing. It was a crazy time for us,” they add.

Chrisa and the Duck Foot Part Inc. at trade shows

“We were streaming income from all over the place,” Steve continues. “I took a contract in the oil field for a few months just to get some money in the bank, then I saw a job posting for a full-time Farm Supervisor for Winny Farms, I applied and got the job.”

Shortly after, in 2017, they had their big break on Twitter with their Duck Foot product.

“We didn’t have any social media platforms for Duck Foot yet and no twitter account,” Steve says. “But, my buddy, Jeromy Smith, from Nokomis, Saskatchewan had a Twitter account. He works for a farmer and they grow lentils. He tweeted about using our new and improved product. A farmer from Australia tweeted Jeromy and asked where he could get them. Peter from Australia then contacted us and we made our first sale internationally. It all grew from that point on.”

They worked on their sales funnels after that and started a Facebook account. They officially launched Duck Foot Parts Inc. as part of the Innovation Showcase at Canada’s Farm Progress Show in June 2018.  “We won a Sterling Innovation Award,” Chrisa adds, “and after that the product started to take off in Canada and internationally.”

Many portfolio careerists who are highly entrepreneurial and are using a portfolio career to leverage their expenses while building their business will tell you that there comes a time when you may have to pull the plug on some of your income streams to dedicate your time and energy into nurturing or scaling your business.

Chrisa was the first to shift to working full-time for Duck Foot Parts Inc. She quit her library job, but continued with her contract role reviewing home studies.  Steve continued to work for Winny Farms.  But, by the winter of 2019/20, Steve realized he had to take time away from his farm job to focus on the business.  That winter they exhibited at 7 trade shows, 6 in the USA and 1 in Canada.  Steve completed seeding for Winny Farms in 2020. He then also shifted to working full-time for Duck Foot Parts Inc.  It became evident he needed to be in the field doing demos, getting videos and testimonials in order to build the businesses growth capacity. 

While the Duck Foot Parts Inc. took off, Steve and Chrisa let go of the truck wash and car wash franchise focusing 100% on growing their business. In the beginning phase of launching a business, entrepreneurs work tirelessly. Steve says, “You have to have the work ethic. I’ve always wanted to work for myself and be in charge of my schedule. But, it’s hard work.”

Chrisa adds, “If you want to be an entrepreneur you think about it all day. I had a full-time job, and I had a pension and I certainly valued that, but I love the flexibility of this business. It drives us. You have to be prepared for that. You have to be ready to work 12-14 hours daily. You also talk about it all the time. Vacations aren’t going to happen. You are giving up a lot of your personal life for your business to start it up. You don’t have evenings and weekends like you do with a 9-5 job. If we are talking to Australia, it has to be in the evening.  Planning in the evenings, you’re doing the work during the day. You have to love it. You have to be passionate and love it. If you don’t, it won’t work.”

Steve adds, “The other thing is you have to realize is that you are financially tied to it. You have to be financially invested or you won’t do the work. All investors say you have to have skin in the game, and that’s why we worked a portfolio career. We had income streams so we could keep going.”

Duck Foot Parts Inc. now sells all over North America, Australia and is expanding into Germany with plans to reach other countries. They are continuing the learning curve, recently completing courses to help them create a strategic export plan. They also recently hired a consultant from an ag advisory company to take their sales to the next level getting into dealerships rather than doing direct sales. When asked what advice they would give during the growth spurts of a new business, Chrisa suggests, ““If we were to give people advice on growth, know your strengths.”

Steve continues, “I have knowledge of the product. I know farming, how the industry works and I know the product because I’ve been the consumer. Now I’m the innovator and I know the problem it solves and the benefits it offers, so we believe in the value it has for farmers. I can also talk farmer language.” He laughs.

Chrisa adds, “Know when to hire people to help you scale in the area of sales and business. Direct to farmer, we could manage, but scaling to the next level and shifting from B2C to B2B we needed support.  We have figured out how to do the farm shows and Steve is figuring out how to manufacture new versions of the Duck Foot.”

 When asked how she made the incredible leap from her full-time stable job, to a portfolio career, to full-time entrepreneurship Chrisa says, “I have no background in business or sales. I was a social worker, but I accessed free webinars all the time, and read to try to train myself and advance my knowledge and skill sets. We’ve met a lot of business owners through the farm trade shows and talking with one another and supporting each other has been really valuable. We text and call each other with questions. We are active in each other’s social media.”

“It has cost us a lot of unnecessary money because of what we didn’t know. Get mentors, connect to people in the industry who are slightly ahead of you as a business owner so you can connect to advice and also connect to entrepreneurial groups. Also, remember,” Steve adds, “It’s not going to happen over night. You’re going to have to work hard. It’s an absolute grind, so make sure you’re going to love it.”

Website:  www.duckfootparts.ca  

Facebook & Instagram: @duckfootpartsinc 

Twitter:  @duckfootparts

 Remember: Our first big sale came from social media!

Climbing Trees Instead of Ladders

I grew up as the daughter of Portfolio Careerists Farmers/entrepreneurs/salaried employees who streamed income from various sources, so I have had the added advantage of having role models who indirectly taught me to diversify. Even though they suggested I get a nice, secure, steady job with a reliable income, they never worked like that and I don't think they would change their work history. I watched them as they streamed income from various sources and it has made sense to have more than one income stream to sustain me.

For years, we were taught to climb the ladder, but in all honesty it never fit for how I organized my work life. Working my way up wrung by wrung just didn't work for how I choose to work and it wasn't until a few years ago that I came up with the idea of a tree. It sways in a storm, I can climb it and if a branch breaks, I have other branches in tact to sustain me. When I  apply this model to my portfolio career, it makes sense.  The root system contains my network, skills, education and experience, creating stability and rootedness. Through the trunk of my tree, I draw upon my root system, generating and transporting ideas for potential branches of income turning the leaves on my tree into - yes, you guessed it! Income. Money can grow on trees.

A portfolio career approach and climbing trees instead of ladders  isn't without it's disadvantages and isn't the answer for all situations. The work world is far too complicated and people are too complex to think that one approach to work will fit everyone, their occupation and work in all economies. However, I believe the tree model vs. the ladder model resonates with me because over the years it has simply worked, it made more sense and I have weathered some pretty big storms because I work like this.  I have used this approach to put myself through school, to transition from school to a full-time job, to work in another country and as a model for my entrepreneurial ventures.

This doesn't mean that some days I don't want to pack it all in  and find that reliable, steady, full-time job (that my parents obviously fantasized about at times) and start climbing the ladder. Juggling more than one income stream can be challenging. However, the tree model has provided structure to how I approach my portfolio career and as I interview other portfolio careerists, they approach their work life with a similar structure in mind. The concept of growing branches and having multiple sources of income gives a model to visually hang our hats on.