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Laura Thomas posted a new activity comment
What a brilliant thread and discussion and impressive article Eike Post. All the graphs! I’m with Lucy in that you’ve take a very logicall stance on things, and I would open yourself up to that why and also look at what option would make you grow personally too. You could be a contractor or employee and be bored crazy teaching the same things within 2 years, so the other options give you more creative freedom. I would argue marketing and sales will weave in many places – in a company you’ll just be playing it internally to get to the exec levels. A portfolio option could be the perfect place to explore both the SaaS and agency options a little to test how you like them before you dive in. Assume that you can be successful in it all, so it’s a case of what you might enjoy the most in terms of the journey rather than the outcome.
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Lexi Radcliffe-Hart posted a new activity comment
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Ben Legg
posted a new activity commentA very thoughtful article Eike Post – well laid out. However, one thing you kept stating was that a full time job is safer than a portfolio career. I disagree. If you only have a full-time job with no paying side hustle, then lose it, you are in big trouble – there are six times as many unemployed people as open positions, so your odds are very bad for finding another role. However, as a portfolio professional, if you lose your biggest client it is the equivalent of a 30% pay cut, and you already know how to go and find another client because you have done it many times and there is plenty of portfolio work available.
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Good point! The more clients you have the less you depend on a single one. What I still see is that for a portfolio career you have to incur costs to find clients and this might bring you in the negative, at least you will not be earning anything.
Also, what I have seen from friends how do have a portfolio career is that they are spending 50% of their time in work that is not paid, especially talking to potential clients, and then in the paid time they make LESS per hour than they would in o…
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I have also seen that too Eike – especially for the first few months. However, if you have a distinctive, well told offering and keep your clients happy, much new work will start coming inbound from referrals. This should start happening at the 4-6 month point.
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Successful portfolio professionals also often have the opposite problem – too much paid work. That allows them to put their rates up, reduce the % of unpaid work they do and outsource some tasks to other portfolio professionals (at a lower rate). Several people from the last cohort of our Catapult course are already getting into this situation
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Mitch Bradford posted a new activity comment
Nice catch! I’ll work on all of the above. Thank you Eike Post
I actually think a well-structured portfolio career is the safest option. It just takes a few months to build it thoughtfully and make it resilient