What Is a Portfolio Career? A Definition and 6 Questions to Help You Build Yours

For those of us who have never quite slotted into a single box, the traditional career path can feel like a compromise. You are a strategist who also makes music. A teacher who also designs cakes. A designer who also runs a consultancy. While you may have started your career in one lane, the options are now opening up and it's very possible for you to build a different structure. One which involves multiple sources of income all building, with the potential to compound over time. 

While previous generations might have spent 60 years climbing a corporate ladder, a new term is emerging to describe a different way of building wealth, with more room for creativity and lifestyle diversity. It is called a portfolio career — and it may be the most useful description of how ambitious, multi-skilled people want to work.

So what exactly defines a portfolio career? Who is already living this? Can you truly be good at lots of things? And how do you start building yours? We answer all of these questions and more below. Click the links to jump to any section, or take a few minutes to read through the whole thing - it might just change your life!

What Is a Portfolio Career?

A portfolio career is a professional life built around multiple income streams, each monetising a different skill, interest, or identity, which are all held simultaneously, rather than in sequence.

Think of it the way an investor thinks of a portfolio. No single asset carries all the risk. And in the same token, no single asset carries all the reward. The power comes from the combination: the way the pieces balance, complement, and support one another to create a unique mixture.

In a portfolio career, you might be a consultant three days a week, a creative director on retainer for two clients, and a course creator building a passive income stream in the background. Or you might hold down a board role in a corporation while running a record label and hosting a podcast. None of these strands can be singled out as the "real" career - they are all the career. Defined by their equal potential to be a primary revenue source, while they may exist at different strengths at different moments in your life. 

How Is a Portfolio Career Different from a Side Hustle?

This is a question worth pausing on, because in order to really pull off a portfolio career you need to understand its unique qualities (this is coming from someone who started as a side-hustler, and moved into a portfolio career). 

If you have a side hustle, there is a clear hierarchy between the worlds you exist in. There is a main thing, most likely a full-time job or business, and there is something else running alongside it, which may contain a hope that it will one day become the main thing - or at least supplementary. The structure is fairly linear: one lane with a support vehicle beside it.

In the most typical setup, a “side-hustle” is the activity with the most passion behind it, but often the least predictable income. But it can work the other way: something started purely to generate extra money alongside a main priority, whether that is parenting, a period of retraining, or simply riding out a difficult season. 

What distinguishes the side hustle from the portfolio career is the absence of a fixed hierarchy. In a portfolio career, nothing is ranked, nothing is temporary, and nothing is treated as a supporting act. Every strand is a route to growth, whether in income, in identity, or in the long-term value of what you are building. What is generating the most income this quarter might be different from what is generating the most creative energy, contributing to your profile, or long-term equity. The portfolio career treats that fluidity not as a problem to solve but as a design principle.

There is also a difference in ambition. The side hustle is often seen as a bit hedged-bet, or an escape route from a job that does not fully satisfy. The portfolio career is more of an architecture. It is built deliberately, with an eye on how the pieces reinforce each other, how the brand built in one lane opens doors in another, and how the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Is a Portfolio Career a Modern Invention?

While it’s gathered momentum recently as a title, being a multi-faceted professional has been around for centuries. 

Two compelling examples come from well-known historical figures, who have rarely been thought of in these terms.

Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist, and writer. Not in sequence. Simultaneously, often on the same day. His notebooks reveal a mind moving from anatomical drawings to plans for flying machines to sketches for the staging of theatrical productions. 

Benjamin Franklin was a printer, writer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, statesman, and postmaster. His experiments with electricity did not disrupt his political career, and his political career did not side bar his publishing business. Each strand contributed to his credibility, income, and influence that the others could draw on. 

The portfolio career also has a quietly powerful history, built in the lives of ordinary working women. In 18th-century rural England, farmers' wives were the architects of their household's economic resilience. While their husbands managed the land, these women ran the dairy — producing butter and cheese that they sold at town markets, managing beehives, preserving food for winter, and taking on income-generating work that sat entirely outside the main farm business. Their labour built parallel income streams that diversified the portfolios of their land, as a practical response to the need to navigate shifting climates.

Who Is Doing It Now?

The modern version of the portfolio career has its own cast of well-known figures. Jessica Alba co-founded The Honest Company while maintaining an acting career. Gwyneth Paltrow built Goop into a media and wellness business with multiple strands. Stephen Bartlett hosts one of the world's most listened-to podcasts, runs a marketing agency, sits on the board of Snickers, and is a TV host, appearing on BBC's Dragons' Den.

Another instructive example is Adam Grant. He is a tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven consecutive years. He is also a five-time New York Times bestselling author, a TED speaker, a podcast host, a consultant to Google, the NBA, and the Gates Foundation, and a co-founder of a software company. No single one of these is his "job", with all of them together making up his portfolio. What makes Grant's portfolio particularly instructive is that each strand feeds the others. His research makes his books credible, his books make him a sought-after speaker, his speaking exposes his consulting, his consulting gives him new research material; and so the flywheel turns.

The common thread across all of these examples is the clear intention from the individual at the heart of the, to create this architecture, and maintain all strands, no matter how each one grows. 

Obstacles to Establishing Your Portfolio Career

The portfolio career is harder to build successfully, than it might look from the outside. The advantage most of the well-known examples had, is that they started from a position of financial stability. This allowed them to pursue new paths, without the pressures of monthly living expenses. They also had some cash to invest upfront, on training, or on a team - helping to absorb the uncertainty that comes with this path.

The pressure of immediate financial need can force you back onto a single-strand path before the portfolio has had time to compound. If you’re under pressure, it can be really hard to give the necessary time and energy to the strand that might generate the most long-term value.

This absolutely does not mean portfolio careers are only for the privileged. Instead, understanding the challenges allows you to build with them in mind. It means for most people, the sequencing matters enormously. The smartest approach is usually to stabilize one strand first, building enough of a financial foundation so that you have real latitude to develop the others. This does not mean compromising your vision, but it is part of the architecture which needs to be factored in. 

How to Build Your Portfolio Career: 6 Questions to Get You Started

1. What skills do you have that can be monetised — and in more than one way?

Most people underestimate the range of their own expertise. The skills that feel ordinary to you, because you use them every day, are often exactly what someone else will pay for. Start by writing down everything you are genuinely good at, not just job titles, but real capabilities. Then ask, for each one: who would pay for this, and in what form? A skill might generate income as a service (consulting, freelancing), as a product (a course, a book, a tool), as a platform (a podcast, a newsletter, a community), or as a credential (a speaking slot, a board seat, an advisory role). The objective of this exercise is to help you understand the possibilities of your current skill base.

2. What would your ideal working life actually look like?

For this question, the more specific you can be, the better. How many hours a week do you want to work? How much structure really works well for you? What time do you want to wake up, who do you want to spend your days with, what kind of problems do you want to be solving? What is essential for you, in order to feel happy and fulfilled? The portfolio career is not a shortcut to “freedom” in a loose sense - it is a deliberate construction that will need you to be specific and consistent in certain areas. You need to know what you are building toward before you can make good decisions about which strands to prioritise and which to let go. 

3. How much income do you need - now, and in three years?

A critical word in the term “portfolio career” is the second word: “career”. This isn’t just a job that ticks over and pays you a bit of money. This is a journey that should grow as you do - each strand of your portfolio should have the possibility to increase in revenue generation, as well as seniority and expertise. An author expects their third book to sell more copies than their first for example. The portfolio career requires you to hold two financial realities at the same time: what you need right now to live well and feel secure, and what you are building toward over a longer horizon. Getting to grips with this is a key part of the financial acumen you will need to develop to succeed at having multiple different income streams. 

For your current income figure, it’s fine-and valuable-to work from the minimum you actually need to keep things ticking over. While it would be great to jump to a 4x income, it’s not  necessary for long term wealth building. At first you just need to get on top of the numbers, and get started. For long term evolution, you should know what your target number is. This forms your roadmap, and can tell you which strands need to be income-generating first, and which ones you are building for equity, profile, or long-term return.

4. Can you identify someone already living a version of this career?

In any path or field, if you can identify someone who has already succeeded at what you’re trying to do, then you can remove a lot of the guess work for yourself by stealing some of their patents. How did they sequence things? Which strand came first? How do they speak publicly about the different threads, and manage their profile. Who is on their team? Where did they fail and how did they recover? Case studies and mentors can be really helpful in this space — not for inspiration, but for intelligence. If you cannot find a direct equivalent, look for people who have built successfully in each of your individual lanes, and reverse-engineer the logic from there.

(psst. Lex Hearth runs a group coaching and mentorship programme for people serious about building a portfolio career. Places are limited and the waitlist fills fast! Sign up here to be notified when new spaces open up)

5. Which strand is the most accessible entry point right now?

The portfolio career does not have to be built all at once. Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg famously said “You can't have it all, all at once… Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time”. This is a good framing for how to consider your portfolio career - you can have it all but different things will require different levels of attention at different moments in time. 

Therefore to establish yourself it's good to think about which strand you can earn the most money from, without it needing 100% of your time. Is there one arm which, if it became your focus for 6months, could create a momentum for everything else? Sometimes the most financially reliable strand needs to be prioritized, even if it isn’t the one you’re most passionate about - because it can buy you the time to build the others. Alternatively it might be the strand with the highest profile potential, because visibility can open doors across your whole portfolio. Be really strategic here - what, if secured, will set you up with the strongest foundation?

6. Do you need to team up, upskill, or simply begin?

The most common reason people delay building a portfolio career is the belief that they are not yet ready. They need one more qualification, one more year of experience, one more connection. This is almost always a form of resistance rather than a genuine obstacle. What is more often true is that the gap is not in knowledge but in action or definition. Most portfolio careers begin not with a grand plan but with the clear decision to get going!

What Kind of Income Can a Portfolio Career Generate?

The ceiling, in theory, does not exist. A successful portfolio career either contains strands that all independently grow over time, or strands which each multiply the value of the others. A speaker who is also an author commands higher fees. An author who is also a consultant has richer material and broader access to a client base. The upper limits of each strand are often higher than you might initially think - established e-course founders such as Leonie Dawson, earn million-dollar salaries, working an estimated 10 hours a week. 

Knowing that this is possible is important because it means that by diversifying your income streams, you aren’t limiting yourself. However it is worth being honest about the early stage. In the beginning, being spread across multiple strands can slow the growth of each individual one. A person who is "all in" on a single business or skill can outrun you in the short term. The portfolio career's advantage is not speed. It is resilience, range, flexibility and long-term compounding. The early years require patience — and a clear-eyed view of which strands are growing, which are stalling, and whether the overall portfolio is moving in the right direction.

The honest answer to "how much can I make?" is: it depends entirely on the quality of the portfolio's design and the discipline of its execution. But the upper boundary is considerably higher than most single-career paths; precisely because the value compounds in ways that a single income source cannot.

The Best Books and Resources to Support a Portfolio Career

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield — The essential guide to understanding and overcoming resistance: the internal force that stops creative and entrepreneurial people from doing the work they know they need to do. If you are building something independently and on the side of everything else, you will encounter resistance in every form Pressfield describes.

1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly — The essay that changed how an entire generation thinks about building an audience and an income. The argument is simple and still radical: you do not need millions of followers to build a sustainable creative or portfolio business. You need a thousand people who genuinely care. 1,000 people prepared to pay $100 a year, gives you an $100,000 salary. 

Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss — Short, sharp pieces of advice from some of the most interesting people in the world. Its value is not in any single piece of wisdom but in the cumulative picture it paints of how people with extraordinary, non-linear careers actually think. Every reader will leave with a different highlight. 

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson — Arguably the most compelling biography of a portfolio thinker available. Franklin had many career paths and reached the top of each. He had a life, fully and deliberately lived across multiple domains, and Isaacson lays out his story with detail and curiosity. 

The Goop Podcast — Hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow, this show moves across wellness, business, creativity, science, and culture, offering a range of perspectives which might support your portfolio growth, and how to be confident in displaying range.

The Side Quest Podcast - Hosted by Lex Hearth, a multi-hyphenate professional from London, this podcast looks specifically at how founders and creatives are building intersecting strands in their careers and lives, with a transparency and sense of humour. 

What Do You Need To Be Good at To Succeed?

In order to build a successful portfolio career, there are certain skillsets which are essential. They don’t need to be things which come naturally to you, but you do need to be prepared to lean into them and learn how to do them your way. These are: 

Branding. In a portfolio career, you are the connective tissue between multiple strands. The thing that makes them feel coherent, whether that's to clients, to collaborators, or to a broader audience. You need to project a clear sense of who you are and what you stand for. Without that, a portfolio risks looking like a collection of random activities. With it, each strand reinforces the others and the whole becomes a recognisable identity.

Building relationships. Portfolio careers run on trust and reputation more than almost any other career model. You are not behind a corporate brand, with a step by step “I spent 5 years in this role, and then was promoted to this role”. You need people to have a clear sense of who you are. The people who know you, believe in you, and want to open doors for you are the infrastructure of everything you build. Invest in them consistently, and be someone everyone wants to work with.

Financial clarity. You do not need to be an accountant, but you do need to know your numbers well enough to make good decisions. Which strands are generating income, which are generating equity, which are an investment, and whether the overall portfolio is tracking toward where you want it to go. How much are you spending monthly on subscriptions? How much can you save and invest? If you do not learn to love and own your bottom line, the portfolio career will remain a nice idea. 

Comfort with pitching yourself. In a traditional job, someone else sells your value to the market. In a portfolio career, that job belongs to you. This is not about being loud or relentless. It is about being clear. It also means embracing a sales mindset and letting go of any limiting or negative thoughts you have around what it means to be sales-driven. Selling well, is your path to living well!

The Case for Beginning

The portfolio career might have recently come on your radar, but let go of any ideas that it is a trend. It is instead an embracing of something older and an honest approach to how capable people can work — and for centuries have. Da Vinci knew it. Franklin lived it. The farmers' wives of 18th-century England practised it out of necessity and turned it into a form of power.

What is different in today’s landscape is that the tools to build one have never been more accessible, the potential audience size is much larger, and the cultural permission to work this way has never been more widely granted. The question is not whether the portfolio career is possible. It is whether you are happy and ready to be enough of a self-starter to build yours. .

If this way of working resonates — if you are sitting with your own version of multiple strands and wondering how to make them cohere, Lex Hearth offers life changing, practical, and incredible-value courses and resources to get you ready and keep you accountable.  built specifically for people building creative careers on their own terms.

The portfolio career is not the easy path. But for those of us who were never going to be content with just one thing, it may be the only one that makes any real sense.