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 to Juggle Multiple Income Streams with a Portfolio Career

Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash

Crystal Willms is in mid-transition with her portfolio career. She has recently changed her website name and logo. Her new brand is The Crystal Factor rebranded from Headway Coaching. “I’m in mid-transition with my portfolio career,” she offers. “Headway Coaching has been around since 2008, but because I have expanded so much it no longer matches all of what I do. I changed the name, logo and website to thecrystalfactor.com.”

Crystal’s brand tag line is “Facilitating Positive Change” and coaching is at the root of what she does. Since she started coaching brain injured clients, she has added public speaking, career transition consulting, outplacement, and writing. She became a virtual franchisee with Juice Plus, a Reiki Master Practitioner and has recently returned to modeling. Whew...that's a long list of things to do. I call her the portfolio careerist extraordinary because she makes her juggling act look easy, and she approaches her work life with an adventurous, open spirit.

For 8 years, Crystal worked as an employment specialist exclusively for brain injured clientele supporting them in their return to work. She transitioned to a new team and now works on retainer working up to 32 hours a week. Her role is to coach clients for personal or professional goals. Her hours vary from part-time to full-time weekly. She also privately coaches non-injured and injured clients who come to her through word of mouth, networking, speaking engagements and referrals.

Coaching and Juice Plus support health and nutrition and are the root of her portfolio career. Although the two services attract different clientele, they are the financial foundation that brings her stability. Crystal believes you need one or two streams of income that have consistency. However, she clarifies, “We (portfolio careerists) understand that stability is not necessarily consistent so we become adaptable.”

Adaptability is the name of the game with portfolio careerists. They derive their stability from their ability to adapt to change. Although Crystal has a foundation for her portfolio career, she has learned to change things up and move forward quickly. She describes herself as being less attached to outcomes. “If something doesn’t work, I believe I can create something new that will work.” She envisions her portfolio career to be like the ocean. “It ebbs and flows so change feels more natural. I am able to adapt, move on and find something else.” 

“Adaptability is the name of the game with portfolio careerists. They derive their stability from their ability to adapt to change.”

I asked Crystal what she believes is the recipe for success in a portfolio career. She sees having a higher degree of multi-tasking ability as a helpful skill set. She also thinks being accustomed to receiving less direction and being comfortable making decisions would be important skills. She has noticed that portfolio careerists spend time planning where to spend their energy. Crystal adds, “There are sometimes multiple decisions to make in an instant. We have to quickly decide which direction we are going to choose and we evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each direction. In some cases, these decisions are going to be made based on current financial need, or other factors driving our portfolio career.”

Portfolio careerists make rough value based decisions on a regular basis. Crystal and I discussed the reality of paying our bills and she pointed out that she often makes decisions based on helping vs. making money. As Crystal says, “Depending on what we are doing, well paid work and work that pays less don’t play together and there is no crossover.” This creates an interesting juggling act for portfolio careerists. She adds, “In some cases, work may pay well, but we may not love it as much. Then, there is work that pays less, but we love it more.”

Just like any job, there will be projects and tasks that we prefer. With portfolio careerists who have entrepreneurial ventures or do more contract work, they design their work life, accepting and turning down work based on various factors. In some cases, they choose work based on personal values, interest or passion. Other times, they choose projects or jobs because they have to pay the bills. Work isn’t always glamorous or a perfect fit, but portfolio careerist value the variety they create in their work lives and the freedom that comes from choosing the work they do.

In some cases, work adds value in other ways. Crystal’s modelling jobs are a great example. She finds modelling to be beneficial on a personal level because, she says, "It fills my cup. I love it and I'm learning about myself." The networking opportunities are also amazing since she is interacting with people she wouldn’t normally meet, and is extremely fulfilled from those experiences. She also feels modelling improves her coaching practice because it makes her a happier person and being a happier person isn't a bad thing!

“Crystal believes you need one or two stable income streams.”

She also believes her modelling builds character, challenging and pushing her outside of her comfort zone. In turn, she feels she can better understand, lead and support her clients who are forced to face significant transition and challenging change. She also adds, “When we are forced to face our fears, then we also become better entrepreneurs and better leaders.”

Crystal approaches her portfolio career like an adventure, and we had fun unpacking the concept, discussing the challenges and benefits and what this style of work means to us. We had so much fun, in fact, that I have enough material for a Part II. My next featured Portfolio Careerist post will be a continuation of Crystal’s story.