As our book is based all around answering this question and I talk about this to groups rather a lot I was intrigued to come across Marianne Cantwell’s advice on this in a stimulating and fun video on her Free Range Humans website. It has also led to an interesting discussion on our portfolio careers linkedin group. Marianne – who by the way also contributed to our book – talks about deciding which of your portfolio career elements to emphasize as talking about them all might be overwhelming. You pick and choose according to your audience. I can see the wisdom of this but it also links to the brand that you are developing. For example, I always disclose my full portfolio including my voluntary roles. But then I am reinforcing my brand as an expert on portfolio careers so this is appropriate. If I was a web designer plus 3 other roles then I would emphasize the former if that was where I was pitching for work.

The linkedin group also gets into whether or not you should have more than one linkedin profile. I’m not even sure that is possible but even if it is probably you will need to disclose your entire portfolio on their site. You may want to reconfigure what pops up first depending on meetings that you are having.

Whatever, it is good to really think hard about this and especially to get you to focus on your audience. Katie likes to use a powerpoint slide which makes the point:

A great infographic courtesy of my friend Steve Clayton says a lot about the new world of work and our place in it. Do you recognise yourself at all?

Oh yes, its here. My talk on portfolio careers recently in High Wycombe. If you couldn’t make it there, click here …..

Readers of this blog and of our book know how much we rate the cartoons of Hugh Macleod and his Gaping Void Gallery. We have 12 of them in our book. This one I think is a  beauty and says it all as far as portfolio careers are concerned.

Who’s got your back? from Marianne Cantwell on Vimeo.

I have already talked about the different words and phrases that people use to talk about people like us who have chosen not to have a ‘proper job’. Marianne commits her life to helping people escape from the traditional work/job cage. I am displaying her recent video from her blog in which she addresses the importance of having someone behind you when you make the leap to free yourself up to do what you want to do and to live how you want to live. Katie and I are often asked just how  we made the leap. In our book we discuss different ways of doing this financially including the scary one of ‘leap and the net will appear’. Neither of us chose this route. We prepared carefully before doing it. What both of us had were friends and family who supported us while we did it. Which brings us back to Marianne’s innovative video. Silent for 60 seconds and then lovely music to listen to. Enjoy and learn.

I am spending  more time with people in ” the digital space” as the groovy cats like to call it. Working with individuals and brands who want to understand and interact with their customers and potential customers. Regardless of the type of media; broadcast, digital, print or outdoor, I believe it all comes down to how you w/rap your message.

I loved the Happiness Rap so much I bought it for my phone to remind me of the important things in life. I may also buy the book and check out Sonja if she speaks in London. Cleverly w/rapping the product – in this case a book and speaker services.

Radisson Hotels in London wanted diners to really understand about the care and passion in their food. They print QR codes on the menus which link to short videos of their chefs preparing the dish you are interested in – an innovative way to help you make that all important decision and a reinforcement of the “we are here to help you” message.

Big companies like Microsoft are also wrapping by encouraging “story tellers”. Steve Clayton is a/THE ( imho) Microsoft story teller. He gets paid to explain to us (in English) what technology is just around the corner and how its going to improve our lives.

Got me thinking about my “theory of the bongs”. Yes that strange drawing above does mean something. In a previous life I was a TV News Journalist. I worked for the BBC and also ITN who produced News at Ten – a flagship news programme that used a Big Ben “BONG” just before each headline. A Bong is a 3 – 5 sec headline written so you need to know more. “Bomb explodes in tube station” for example leaves you wanting more info. This is represented by the top thick line. The lead in is the 3 sentences or 15 secs the news presenter reads to get you to watch the report – for example; ” A bomb exploded at XYZ station today. Emergency services were at the scene within minutes.  25 people have been taken to hospital and there are reports one person may have died. Joe Bloggs reports”. this is represented by the 3 thick lines. If this is written well, it will entice us to watch the 90 sec report, represented by the 5 lines. And finally ( as they say in all good news programmes), if the viewer is really interested in the detail, they will watch Panorama ( a 30 min, one topic in-depth news programme) represented by the mass of long lines at the bottom.

SO what? you say. Well, in my experience, most businesses (and quite a few individuals) are great at Panorama but not so great at the BONGS. With limited attention spans – the customer/audience wants to know very quickly whether its worth spending any more time listening to your message. They are not going to do the Panorama to Bong translation – that’s YOUR job. That’s why this model only works top down and not bottom up.

So there you have it. In one of the longest posts I have done in a while – I have attempted to explain my theory of brevity….

We are delighted to report that our book is now available in ebook format for Kindle on both Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com for the US and elsewhere in the world.

If you have an iPad or Mac you can also download by adding Kindle to your applications. We now feel very digital!

In our book we mentioned that we had come across some doctors embracing portfolio careers and we have met some scepticism about this so have a look at this recent ad which to our eyes certainly looks to be promoting portfolio careers for medics.

Portfolio careers – an opportunity to take a fresh look at how you work from ICAEW Digital Communications on Vimeo.

Katie likes to joke about me being a recovering academic – the kind of person who stands up and talks for 50 minutes without stopping! Well – here is evidence that I can talk for as little as 41 minutes! This is the address that I did recently for the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales for about 200 accountants who were mostly over 50 and many of whom were experiencing employment issues or were simply looking for ‘another way’.  It is never too late to reinvent yourself but you need to do a great deal of preparation first. Our book was written to help you through this process and to pass on skills and tips to help you achieve this.