Leadership

From an early age, the world tells us to change it by chasing our dreams. Not one dream, all of them. At the same time, we’re told our work must be focused. The most classic example lies in a loaded question we ask children. What do you want to be when you grow up? This simple question assumes a singular path. In school, the pressure mounts as students are forced to select classes and eventually declare a major if they choose to attend college. In adulthood, side hustles are often discouraged and replaced with the promise of security in exchange for corporate compliance. As a founder, the focus of today can shift, yet remain relevant.

If financial stability relies on a single income or employees depend on you, true focus will support lasting stability. Even with such discipline, many people have lost that safe job, closed a business, had a new idea, or need extra income.

Things rarely go as planned and the promise of security is just one decision away, from being taken away. To avoid the pitfalls of a singular path, activate a collection of initiatives that come together in a diversified career portfolio.

In a digital age, we are more efficient and can unite technology with community to balance more than one quest at a time. When leaders push progress on multiple fronts, each activity injects various flavors of value. For example, you may have a traditional job that provides financial capital in the form of a paid salary. At the same time, a side hustle can generate intellectual capital and innovative energy that translates into more creative work in that traditional job. You may also volunteer within a tribe you trust, which fuels human, network, and cultural capital as well. Such ambition should be celebrated, but it’s more often feared by those who don’t understand how it feels to hammer on one thing, ship progress; pop to the next thing, ship more progress; and then pop one or three more times to fuel even more momentum! This type of work requires tenacity, but over time, a multi-modal focus is refined into an indescribable stamina and lasting stability.

All seven capitals (financial, intellectual, human, physical, institutional, network, and cultural) can be hard to find in one place. When leaders mobilize a diversified career portfolio, we celebrate what we have to attract more of what we want. For example, the common complaint of not having enough money fades when leaders build momentum through a sense of abundance. What you want is replaced by what you have, which attracts what’s needed to fill gaps.

As you make moves to expand a diversified career portfolio, it is important to avoid diluting yourself to mediocrity. We know the entrepreneurial lifestyle requires extra gears, but the exhilaration of building into things you’re obsessed with supports more persistence. The wild card of persistence creates elasticity in how we spend time. When this form of agility is applied on multiple fronts, smaller time windows are still enough to make a big impact on various fronts.

Along with flexibility, a diversified career portfolio delivers unmatched dependability. Even with different activities, the common thread is you. Nobody else is you, which makes a diversified career portfolio hard to compete with.

As an added bonus, no matter the reason, when one creative season receives less attention, other activities still remain. This allows attention to be shared between an evolving collection of activities and adds to the flexibility and dependability of a diversified career portfolio.

For anyone with more to build, there is no permission required to add creative slivers to the pie chart of how you spend time. Does it take extra gears? Yes. Might this require practice to keep your personal bandwidth balanced? Yes. Will your co-founder in life play a tremendous role in how much risk you can apply? Yes. Might you have to play 80 hours in order to avoid working 40? Yes. Is such splendor absolutely accessible for anyone in our connected era? Yes!