Creatives: The Solution to Too Many Passions Is a Portfolio Career
By Dana P. Rowe, PCC, CPCC, CPQC
- Does the idea of figuring out your life purpose or focusing on a single passion overwhelm you or make you feel agitated?
- Do you love new challenges and get bored quickly once your master a challenge?
- Do you have trouble relating when you hear someone talk about knowing precisely what they’ve wanted to do since childhood?
- Are you passionate about multiple things and feel trapped by the notion that you should choose one area to excel in for the rest of your life?
- Do you ever get asked when you will finally focus on one thing and stay with it?
- Does the old aphorism “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” echo shamefully in your ear whenever you pursue a new fascination, buy a new book, or sign up for a new class?
- Have you ever felt like your multiple passions and interests were holding you back somehow?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this post is for you!
Likely, you are more at home in the world of multipotentiality or the multipotentialite (“Multi-Po” for short), and a portfolio career might be a better fit for you.
A Multi-Po (multipotentialite) can be called many things: polymath, scanner, renaissance soul, or even multi-gifted. And I’ll state the obvious here — by their very definition; creative entrepreneurs fall into this category more often than not!
Table of Contents
Famous Multi-Pos Throughout History
Far from being a new concept, an emphasis on human potential, experimentation, and creative expression came into its own from the early fourteenth to the late sixteenth century during what we commonly call the Renaissance era.
In case your saboteurs have swooped in with their usual flurry of negative self-talk and nay-saying, here’s an inspiring shortlist of Multi-Pos for you:
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
- Isabella d’Este (1474-1439)
- Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
- Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
I’m sure you can come up with a lot more because these adventurous and curious people veritably fill the pages of our history books. They are each known for multiple outstanding accomplishments, from transcendent art and acts of humanity to remarkable world-changing discoveries and inventions.
If you share personality traits with this impressive list, such as becoming easily bored, curiosity, creativity, flexibility, and adaptability, it could be you are a genuine Renaissance person, and your life purpose is actually to pursue your passions and interests in all their glorious forms.
And perhaps the problem you face isn’t that you have too many passions but rather that you have difficulty integrating them, so they work together instead of against each other. A well-thought-out portfolio career gives a Multi-Po room to breathe and flourish.
Let’s take a closer look at portfolio careers and explore how you might design one and make it work for you.
Your Custom Recipe
The fundamental idea behind this type of career is that it allows you to pursue multiple passions, interests, and skills simultaneously because different parts of you demand expression in the outside world. However, the artist, writer, and photographer in you might require balance with your desire to help people or solve problems using logic and analysis. The opportunities for combining and re-combining are endless — it will take patience and experimentation to finally get it “right.”
In Pamela Slim’s book, Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together, she likens the process of getting it right to refining a recipe for a delicious main course dish. “Our ingredients are the skills, strengths, experiences, identity, and knowledge that we have gained throughout our lives. They are what make us uniquely capable and interesting.”
What I particularly appreciate about her approach is that along with the above list, she includes:
- Roles we have fulfilled in our life (i.e., dancer, retail expert, parent, gymnast)
- Values (i.e., honesty, openness, family) and
- Scars (i.e., illness, personal and professional disasters, loss)
…as vital ingredients that contribute to assembling a compelling story.
My Own Portfolio Adventure
My passions include composing music and coaching other creative professionals. I also enjoy performing, photography, writing, giving presentations and workshops on creativity, self-expression, goal setting, and productivity; these require different but related skillsets. I have learned that many parts of my recipe make me more compassionate and give me inner strength. They include being a gay man in my 60s, a husband, a father, a grandfather, as well as my up-close and personal experience with professional setbacks and the loss of loved ones to AIDS, suicide, and addictions.
I’m fortunate that I am happy whether I’m working on a new musical project or learning new coaching modalities to unlock the creative potential of others. My coaching practice allows me to work with creative entrepreneurs around the globe, and my varied musical projects allow me a level of creative expression I very much need in my life.
I used to grapple with it — a topic for another day — but now I realize each of my passions supports the other. I am confident that each area is an excellent fit for my skills, my values, and who I am as a person. Helping others keeps my music flowing and accessible. If I were to only focus on my career as a composer — I would spend entirely too much time up in my head. Coaching and mentoring, which involve actively listening to others, gives me just the right balance — coaching and composing come together to create a portfolio career that allows me the time, money, and freedom to pursue both at once.
The Pros of a Portfolio Career
The professional and personal benefits of a portfolio career are many. There is no need to be locked into one set of expectations or limited by inflexible hours and job descriptions. You can work on your own time, from home (or anywhere), with the people you choose, which can give you excellent work-life flexibility.
Multi-Pos typically deal with uncertainty better because they have various interests and skills to rely on if something doesn’t work out.
On top of this, being exposed to different fields means it’s more likely you’ll find inspiration for new ideas or solutions when inevitable challenges and unplanned hurdles like quarantines and lockdowns arise. You may discover an overlap between two areas leading to valuable insights on how many things could be done better in both places — a win-win situation all around!
Having the advantage of being a Multi-Po significantly increases creative self-expression because it allows for myriad ways to express yourself. A multi-gifted person experiences many different ways of looking at the world, developing excellent creative problem-solving skills.
An added benefit of a portfolio career is that it lets you experience how much value each of your interests brings into your life. It will allow them all to coexist in a way that supports who you are as an individual instead of limiting or forcing someone else’s idea of who “you” should be onto you.
The Cons of a Portfolio Career
One of the most significant drawbacks to a portfolio career is that it may challenge your work-life balance. You’ll have to be self-motivated and disciplined, and since there are no boundaries, working way past your bedtime or on weekends when inspiration strikes to get everything done in time could quickly become a pattern.
Gig workers, freelancers, part-time workers—none can expect health benefits from their employers unless an individual client offers them.
As for advancement? There’s a slight possibility of it happening with only one employer at any given time unless you decide to take more traditional jobs within your industry or switch industries altogether.
Types of Portfolio Careers
In her book The Renaissance Soul: How to Make Your Passions Your Life, Margaret Lobenstein puts portfolio careers into five different buckets:
- The branching path: different career paths pursued sequentially
- The umbrella approach: one job title that embraces many interests
- The “Two-for-one”: pursue two jobs simultaneously that complement one another
- The J-O-B: paid work that supports and serves one’s varied interests
- The singular path: a single focus that has been tweaked and adjusted to accommodate many interests
From what I’ve already shared about my approach to a portfolio career, you can see that my dual passion for composing and working with others fits nicely into the “Two-for-one” bucket. I like to use the term bucket because, by their very nature, buckets are big and splashy, and there will undoubtedly be some splashing from one bucket to the next.
For instance, there are times my musical projects are my J-O-B — that is, they pay the bills — and there are times my coaching income swoops in and saves the day. Also, since I tend to work with other creative professionals and I’m able to source my experiences and challenges to mentor them, there’s a little of the umbrella approach built in my Multi-Po life.
These buckets have a common goal: fulfillment, gratification, balance, and the satisfaction of having mastered challenges rather than getting ahead and climbing a career ladder.
How to Launch Your Portfolio Career
“Whether we work for ourselves or for others, we all need to find ways to diversify our revenue streams. That allows us to hedge against uncertainty, increase our impact, and earn more.” — Dorie Clark, Entrepreneurial You
Planning to ensure a smooth launch and ongoing success in a portfolio career is essential to making sure that you enjoy your work. Some things to consider before leaping into your portfolio business include:
- Be sure you are certain what success means for you. Are there milestones or benchmarks along the way that, when achieved, will signify you’ve reached success?
- Is financial stability something important enough for you where, if not met, it would mean failure (and potentially reconsidering the portfolio career path in general)?
- How much money will you need to live on? Evaluate how much it costs for your essential expenses (rent/mortgage, food, medical care) and determine if that can be covered by freelancing alone. If not, are there other jobs available via freelancing contractors who pay into benefits like health insurance?
- Take an inventory of the unique and diverse skills that only you have. How can these benefit an employer?
- Which of your experiences will be valuable to clients, and how much time do you need to market yourself to land the first client or two?
- What are some practical steps you can take to make sure your name represents quality and consistency?
- How much management do you want/need from others versus being able to manage everything alone?
Dorie Clarke, who wrote the book Entrepreneurial You, states, “My current business model—fueled by seven distinct income streams—didn’t just happen. It was a series of conscious and deliberate choices.” She grew her income to more than $200,000 in the first year she implemented multiple income streams as outlined in her book.
So there you have it; the more you plan and the more intentional you can be, the smoother the transition and the better your result.
Common Myths About Multi-Pos
“For Renaissance Souls, the surest means to expertise is honoring our passions instead of stifling them. Any other approach will backfire. If we’re not motivated, we will eventually stop paying close attention and slide into bitterness. Under these conditions, we’re far more likely to burn out than to boast the “expert” label.” — Margaret Lobenstine, The Renaissance Soul: How to Make Your Passions Your Life—A Creative and Practical Guide
The first assumption most make about a person who pursues varied interests is that they have a disorder like ADHD. ADHD is a psychological condition characterized by chronic inattention, impulsive behavior, and an inability to focus or sit still. It’s a different issue entirely from the desire to pursue diverse hobbies.
Another assumption is that the term portfolio career is a way to describe someone who is constantly avoiding taking on challenges or sticking with a project.
We’ve all encountered individuals who avoid their problems by being constantly occupied. As a result, they put themselves on a 24-hour schedule, ensuring that they never sit down, stop, or have time to address life’s difficulties.
Others don’t want to make decisions because they are afraid of making a mistake. Difficulty deciding is not a symptom of Multi-Pos; if they have difficulties deciding, it’s because so many activities sparkle with the promise of a good challenge.
For the record, while many Multi-Pos have above-average intellect, this isn’t always the case. They’re both organized and disorganized, famous and infamous, healthy and unhealthy, extraordinary and ordinary – just like you and me.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this article will get the ball rolling and give you an idea of what’s involved in a portfolio career, but it doesn’t begin to cover everything – so don’t stop here!
If you’re interested in learning more about how different people pursue this type of lifestyle, do some research online or check out any of the books I mention below. They have great insight into finding fulfillment without having to sacrifice financial stability with multiple sources of income. Once again, there are no rules for success out there other than being intentional every step along the way, whatever path we choose for ourselves.
If this sounds good, but you’d like help sorting out how a portfolio career might work for you, contact me today, and we’ll get started planning your journey towards a unique and fulfilling portfolio career success story.
Reading List
Here’s a list of books that you might find helpful:
Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together by Pamela Slim
Thank you for reading this post! If you’re looking for more like this one, be sure to check out the rest of my blog posts for Creative Artists and Entrepreneurs here.