Complete Career Guide - The Portfolio Route
I’ve been in recruitment since 2009 and in that time I’ve helped thousands of people find opportunities and navigate their next steps. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of people make a decision on their next role based on a blend of progression, culture, salary and the roles available at the time without having clarity on what they want their lifestyle to look like in 10+ years time. What will my day to day or week to week look like at that point? What could I be doing now to help me achieve it?
You wouldn’t build a business without a mission or a product without a goal…so why take that approach with your career?
During Covid I qualified as a coach and decided to use the knowledge I’d learnt to create a framework that I could use to help people think about their long term and make more informed decisions on their next steps. The feedback was amazing and I realised the real value this added to the people I was speaking to. I made a decision to go deeper and review countless profiles and interview a number of people that had been very successful down each of these routes.
I used these insights to build this guide. It not only gives people an overview of where their career can go but also outlines the pieces of experience they can gain to give them the best chance of being successful.
My hope is that this guide will help you gain clarity and move more purposefully through your career, make educated moves, pay attention to your achievements and help you achieve the life that you want.
The Portfolio Route
Why I Wrote About the Portfolio Route in the Career Coaching Guide
Over the years, I’ve seen many people who, after climbing into a leadership position as a VP/C-level person, start seeking something more flexible with real control over their schedules and who they work with.
The Portfolio Route provides an answer to that need.
Fractional work has been gaining popularity over the last 18-24 months and it’s something that I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of. This is where you will be working with anywhere from 2-15 different businesses at the same time, from 1 day per quarter to 3 days per week. As a fractional leader/advisor, you’ll be providing insights around strategy, helping with key business decisions, structuring and building teams and raising money to name a few.
So why not call this route ‘Advisory’ or ‘Fractional’? The reason why is that this doesn’t necessarily need to be the only thing that you focus on. I’ve spoken to a number of people who also focus on public speaking, building their own side hustles, running training sessions and much more.
To give you the best chance of being successful with this route, among other things outlined in the guide, you need to have been in at least one role as a VP/C-level in your respective field.
Even though this may be an ambition for you for the next 5-10 years, there are some key things you can do right now.
- Start thinking about what pain point you would want to help solve for your potential clients. Begin to create some content around this space that could help them.
- Build a network of people who are not only your target persona, but with people who are going to be at the table in your target clients. If you’re in product, this could be with CMOs, COOs etc.
- See if there are any meet-ups or conferences you can start attending where your target audience attends. Build your network with face to face interactions and if you want to go one step further, ask if you can do a talk on the pain point.
- Start advising companies closer to the time you’re thinking about making the jump. Maybe do a couple of hours after work, on days off or on weekends. Starting from zero is tricky, so it would be a lot easier to leave your role and have some clients that you can engage with on day 1.
The key pieces of experience outlined in the guide will give you the best chance of success, but the biggest challenge you will face, outside of context switching, is generally business development. Anything you can do to help this through referrals and recommendations will be extremely helpful.
