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Watch: How to turn your skills into a portfolio career that fits - lessons from a cross industry leader

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The portfolio career is no longer a niche concept. Fractional executives, independent coaches, consultant-creators, multi-sector advisors: the model of one employer, one title, one income stream is giving way to something more fluid and, for the right person, significantly more fulfilling. But getting there requires more than leaving a corporate job. It requires clarity about what you are genuinely good at, what the market will pay for and what kind of work actually gives you energy.

In this session, Michelle, a strategic product and transformation leader who has worked across automotive, insurance, healthcare and chief of staff roles before building her own coaching and consulting practice, shares her personal experience of making that transition and walks through the frameworks and practical steps that helped her find her footing.

Watch the full recording here:

What you'll take away from the session:

  • A clear definition of what a portfolio career actually is, including fractional roles, consulting practices, coaching and hybrid combinations, and how to assess whether it is the right structure for where you are now

  • How to identify your superpower by paying attention to what people consistently praise you for, even when you dismiss it as just part of your job

  • Why two to three working identities is the right number to test at any one time, and what happens when you try to pursue more

  • A structured exercise to develop your one-liner value pitch: what you help people do, using what superpower, with what outcome

  • The concept of the personal board of directors, including who you need in your corner as an accountability partner, a devil's advocate and a supportive peer, and why this matters more in a portfolio career than in a corporate one

  • The importance of failing fast and discarding working identities that do not fit, and why the process of elimination is itself a form of progress

  • What the typical stages of building an independent practice look like, from initial uncertainty through niche discovery, confidence crisis, collaboration and eventual refinement  

     

This session is interactive and discussion led. Participants share their own one-liner pitches during the session, and Michelle gives real-time feedback on each one.

Hit play and take the first step toward understanding what your portfolio career could look like.

What is a portfolio career and how do you know if it is right for you?

 A portfolio career is one in which you have multiple revenue streams rather than a single employer. That might mean combining fractional consulting work with coaching or running a workshop programme alongside a retained advisory role. Michelle distinguishes it from simply being a freelancer by pointing to the deliberate construction of different streams that complement rather than compete with each other. The right test is whether the structure gives you more of what you want, including flexibility, variety, ownership and alignment with your actual skills, than a full-time role would. It is not for everyone, and Michelle is direct that the financial uncertainty and isolation are real. But for professionals who have accumulated diverse skills across functions and sectors and feel constrained by single-role definitions, the portfolio structure tends to be a better fit than forcing that range into one job title. 

How do you identify your superpower when you have worked across many different roles and industries?

Michelle's approach starts with what people consistently praise you for, including the things you tend to dismiss as obvious or routine. She noticed that colleagues and clients repeatedly came to her to connect the dots across teams and translate between product, sales and marketing functions. She had been doing it for years without recognising it as a distinct skill. The second lens is your career moments of peak engagement: the projects or roles where you felt you were doing exactly what you were meant to do. The third, drawn from Herminia Ibarra's work on working identity, is the elimination process: trying different paths and using the experience of what does not fit to get progressively clearer about what does. You do not arrive at your superpower through reflection alone. You arrive at it through action and iteration. 

How do you manage the financial uncertainty and isolation of building a portfolio career?

Michelle is honest that these are the two most significant challenges. Her practical advice on financial uncertainty is to identify which of your revenue streams has the highest contribution margin and prioritise that while the others develop, rather than spreading effort equally across everything simultaneously. On isolation, she places significant emphasis on community: the personal board of directors, accountability partners and structured peer groups who understand what you are trying to build. She also references the power of simply attending events, meetings and networks where people are navigating similar transitions, because hearing someone else articulate a problem you are experiencing reduces the feeling that you are uniquely struggling. The learning you get from peers in a portfolio career replaces a significant portion of the institutional learning you receive in a corporate environment. 

How many different service offerings should you pursue at once?

Michelle's answer is two to three, and no more. Beyond that, you cannot explain what you do clearly enough for anyone to remember it, and you dilute the credibility that comes from being consistently associated with a defined area of expertise. Her framing is useful: you want to be remembered. If a client or contact cannot describe in a single sentence what you do, they will not refer you. The goal in the early stages is to test two to three identities, eliminate the ones that do not fit, and progressively sharpen your focus around the ones that do until you arrive at the version of your portfolio that is both commercially sustainable and genuinely yours. 

 
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