Welcome to The Iconic Edge, your weekly guide to thriving in the AI age. Today, you'll learn why having more than one string to your bow is the smartest move you can make right now.
Let me tell you what I've noticed recently.
Everyone, and I mean everyone “in the know”, is talking about portfolio careers.
The concept of portfolio careers isn’t new.
Christina Wallace at Harvard wrote book on it, and is a leader in this conversation
Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis from Squiggly Career fame have been saying "ditch the ladder" for years.
The Portfolio Collective, the community built around exactly this, predict the linear career is on its way out, with more choosing a portfolio of work for the freedom, the autonomy and the income that doesn't lean on a single payslip.
A portfolio career is the foundation of what I call ‘your Iconic Stage’: a platform built from several sources of income and authority, each one growing from the same identity, the one that's unmistakably yours.
What is new is that the people paid to see where work is heading: the career researchers, the AI leaders, the future-of-work crowd, are saying it too.
When they all start pointing the same way, it’s time to act.
You know the backdrop, because I’m always talking about it. The rise of AI.
AI now does in seconds what used to take a whole team, and companies are reshaping fast around that. Gartner reckons one in five will use it to cut half their middle managers this year.
So pinning your whole career to a single employer has never looked so exposed.
Which makes creating a portfolio career now the savvy decision.
The bit most people get wrong
I know what "portfolio career" can sound like. Another thing to squeeze in. A side hustle bolted onto the day job that's already eating your evenings and weekends. If that's the picture in your head, of course it feels exhausting.
But that's not the version I mean.
A side hustle is just a second job. More hours, more grind.
A portfolio career is something you actually design: a few sources of income and value that all grow from one thing, the work you're already known for.
One bow, several strings.
And those extra strings are what keep you playing when everything moves.
When AI swallows part of your role, or your industry changes shape almost overnight, a single string leaves you stuck.
Several, all of them yours, and the change happens around you, not to you.
How to start weaving the strings for your bow
You don't have to overhaul your life to do this. But you do need to begin, and you can begin small. Here's how I'd start.
1. Start with you, not a list of money-making ideas.
What's the one thing you're becoming known for? The part that's yours, that you'd carry with you anywhere. Build from that. It's the bit AI can't copy and no reshuffle can delete. If you are struggling to see it for yourself, ask colleagues or clients for their view. What do they think of when they see you? Prompt Claude to interview you about your work and career to draw out what you want to be known for.
2. Add one string. Just one.
Nobody's blowing up their life here. To start, you're just quietly growing one thing alongside the day job. Just one. Then add more when one is established. Try writing in your field, accepting that invitation to be on a specialist panel, put out feelers for advisory or consultancy work or turn a skill you excel at into something of your own that is sellable.
Start now. So it's already there long before you ever need it.
3. Make your strings play together.
This is the part that changes everything. Your portfolio career becomes part of the Iconic stage that draws opportunities to you. Where each string compounds.
For example, your writing grows the audience, the audience fills the talk, the talk brings the advisory work. The advisory work leads to your dream project.
The same distinctive, memorable you, running through all of it.
The Bottom Line
When everything you've got is riding on a single string, you're at the mercy of whatever happens to it. And right now, the thing it's tied to, your employer, your industry, your role, is being rebuilt fast.
More than one string changes that. Because your value isn’t tied to one place. It travels with you.
This is the part I want for you. The extra income matters, but it's more than that.
It’s the confidence of knowing that whatever this fast, ever shifting working world does next, you'll in control and ready to thrive.
Because you’re ready for it.
That's part of what being iconic means.
Being bold enough to be different, to lean away from the old ladder and create a stand out stage for yourself.
All my best,
Nichola
P.S. If you found this edition of The Iconic Edge valuable, forward it to a woman you know who would appreciate it. We rise together.
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