Career Fuel: Portfolio planning for the full stack freelancer
I loved Tiago Forte’s post on the rise of the Full Stack Freelancer.
I’d been skirting around this idea for a while but he brought it all together in a really succinct and and coherent way.
Tiago says:
Full-Stack Freelancers borrow freely — from tech startups, digital nomads, lifestyle designers, independent contractors, the sharing and peer-to-peer economies — but placing them squarely inside any of these categories is not quite right.
That’s because Full-Stack Freelancers manage a portfolio of income streams, not a job based on one set of skills.
These potentially include both products and services, online and offline businesses, digital and physical products, active and passive income sources, in-person and remote interaction, individual contribution and group collaboration, and offerings that are low margin and high margin, mass-produced and customizable, high risk and low risk, monetized directly or indirectly, short-term and long-term, or any combination of the above.
So what are these products and services, and how we can plan, organise and deploy them?
Tiago continues:
Social media shares and free blog posts are your lead capture, bringing people into your audience. They also keep you exposed to the wider world beyond your niche.
Your introductory offerings are your qualification and filtering system, helping you identify not only the people who are most committed to your message, but also the best ideas and formats to help carry that message.
Premium offerings are the cash cows, allowing you to provide the most value with your time, and be compensated accordingly.
Taking inspiration from a few people’s portfolios I put together a quick Google Sheet to map out how my own portfolio was shaping up. It was a very interesting exercise and I could easily see a couple of gaps to look at filling.
Then I thought: perhaps other people would benefit from a tool like this?
I’ve been using Airtable more and more over the last few months and whilst it’s not quite ‘sticky’ enough to be a go-to app for me just yet, it’s undoubtedly very powerful and also has some great social features built in for sharing and collaborating
So here’s a simple Airtable ‘base’ for modern freelancers looking to follow Tiago’s suggestion and go full-stack.
Hopefully it’s a useful resource to you. Any feedback, ideas or suggestions just drop me a line — I’d love to hear from you.
Check it out here:
Originally published at howardgray.net on March 7, 2018.
