You are what we call a serial Re-Imagineer… a career in the British Army, at McKinsey, COO of Google Europe, PE-backed CEO and more. In your late 40s, you decided to pursue the “portfolio life”. Tell our readers how they can step out of being an employee for someone else and create their own portfolio life.
It is forecast that 50% of professionals will have portfolio careers by 2030, so it is important to be prepared. Stepping into a portfolio life means shifting your mindset: you’re now a “Company of One.” You need to define your company strategy – what unique value do you offer? Who are your ideal clients? What problems do you solve for them? How will you price your services? etc.
Only 20% of fractional work comes via traditional routes – job descriptions, job boards and recruiters. Most fractional work opportunities are matched via a combination of 1) online searches for the right person, plus 2) personal networks and referrals.
Therefore, to succeed, you need to build a strong personal brand online, ensuring a clear profile and proposition wherever potential clients might look for people with your skillset (e.g. LinkedIn, your own website, or expert communities such as The Portfolio Collective). In parallel, you need to proactively grow and nurture your network. Focus your time on being helpful to potential clients who face the challenges you can solve. This “helpful networking” is the best driver of referrals and paid opportunities.
Finally, focus on your own development. Continuously learn and adapt your skills to meet evolving market needs. Identify in-demand skills, then acquire them proactively through various means (courses, trying stuff, AI, collaboration), thus enhancing your value proposition to tackle cutting-edge, non-commoditized problems.
Your personal decision led to the creation of The Portfolio Collective (see portfolio-collective.com), a community of portfolio professionals who support each other in their quest to create a different kind of work life, from mid-career onwards. What are some core benefits that you provide to your community?
The Portfolio Collective’s mission is to help our members understand, launch, manage and grow successful portfolio careers. Portfolio careers can be complex and lonely. We make them less so.
The main thing we are building is a supportive community for portfolio career learning, support and collaboration. Our 14,000 members have – between them – worked in every geography, industry and business function, so collectively we can solve any client problem. We can also share tips and tricks to succeed in our diverse portfolio careers. Our members realise that most opportunities start by giving, not taking. So our members are amazing at helping each other succeed.
In addition to the community, we also offer hands-on support via our various courses, articles, tools and events. We also have a client services arm to support companies that ask for support from community members.
Interestingly, we are owned by our community, having raised $2 million so far, from over 200 members. So everything we do is designed to help our members succeed over the long term.
Is joining the portfolio collective free, or is there a fee to become a member? Give us an example for how an individual has benefited from being a part of The Portfolio Collective.
We have a ‘freemium’ membership offering. For free, you can build your personal profile, connect with other members, ask for help in the activity feed etc. For £15 ($20) per month there are more hands-on meetings, more platform features and discounts on courses. We then charge for our two courses. Our Catapult course costs £500 (~ $650) and helps members launch a portfolio career successfully. Our Mentor Programme costs £2,500 (~ $3,300) and helps members become world-class paid mentors, advisors and board members.
A great example of a member who has gotten a lot from membership of The Portfolio Collective is Jason Rance. Jason attended the TPC Mentor Programme in 2023. Since then, he has networked extensively within our community, and thus has landed three paid work opportunities so far, 1) as a marketing consultant for a cleantech investor in Saudi Arabia, 2) as the paid mentor to an autonomous manufacturing company scaling across the US, and 3) as a fractional venture partner in a UK security technology venture builder. Based on this success, he has also invested in The Portfolio Collective, to benefit financially from our collective success.
If you are curious, just sign up and we will be happy to help.
