even for a fleeting second used to feel like the kiss of death for upper management. It had been bred into them that you hang onto your corporate career for life, work your way up the ranks, and then keep progressing until you reach board status, where you then you remain on multiple boards until you retire or die.
I noticed the trend towards what I call a portfolio career a few years ago when I was helping a CEO exit a high-profile corporate role. I was often called on to help C-suite executives seamlessly transition from one power role into another, with their pride and profile intact (and little pause for thought in between).
This gentleman, however, didn’t fit the mould. He remained ambitious and hard-working, but he was fed up with the demands of CEO life — a role which required his mind, body, and soul be poured into a business suit, while receiving little gratitude or loyalty with little left for anything else. In a disrupted workforce, he knew these demands would only intensify.
He told me: “I want to exit my current role gracefully and improve my personal brand.”
That request threw me. Personal brands were traditionally tethered to company brands and titles — the bigger the company, the more you can cash in on your title. How would he improve his brand unless he took another, bigger CEO role?
What he did next surprised many people — including him. He didn’t take the first round of offers that turned up with seven-figure sums attached, and that provided him with guaranteed corporate relevance.
Instead, he sat with the question of what he really wanted to do. And then he started, slowly, testing out some ideas one at a time. Eventually, rather than settling for one thing, he found he had assembled a portfolio of interests wonderfully tailored to his skills and passions.
A few years on, he can’t imagine returning to a full-time corporate role. And his profile remains strong — only now it is diversified across a number of his interests. His personal brand remains stronger than ever, but now he is viewed in a much more authentic way, thus truly bringing more of his “whole self” to his work.
Today, I know countless former executives in this same position of having a portfolio career—and few of them would ever contemplate going back into full-time management roles.
In this book, I am going to argue that this shift away from doing only “one thing” is good for us, as we will be happier and more liberated in the long-term.
And that brings me to millennials, or Gen Y, or Gen Z (whichever you prefer):
It will surprise no one if I say that millennials are pushing hard at the edges of our professional boundaries, helping us redefine what work life looks like.
This is a generation that refuses to check their identity at the door — and employers have to let them run their side projects or risk losing them.
We are more ambitious, and we should be
Not so long ago, parents and career counsellors were the main means for a young person to determine their career path. They passed the baton to employers - who provided little opportunity for their employees to check in with their feelings while climbing the career ladder. They merely needed to follow the directions.
This made it so that generations of young people were uncomfortably shoved into professions such as accounting, only to feel trapped by the choices others had made for them. It is fair to say that young people today not only want more freedom of choice than their parents around their career, they also want the freedom to experience as much as possible — often all at the same time. The quest towards start-ups and entrepreneurship is a natural flow-on of this shift in ambitions.
One of the most exciting and positively progressive trends I’ve observed is the gradual emergence of freedom of identity. We started with freedom of speech, shifted to diversity policy in the workplace, and this new shift is now more fully expressed by the phrase, “bring your whole self to work.” However, “which whole self?” is now the question because everyone is multi-dimensional, or at least they should be.
All of these trends are pushing us towards a great opportunity to take our identity back from our employers – and truly own it. This takes confidence. And I talk about that next.
Confidence is currency
Life’s too short to blend in. Paris Hilton
When the opportunity came up to work with Paris Hilton some years ago, our fledgling PR agency had to think twice. We had founded our company image on looking after serious, corporate brands. Paris Hilton’s brand was neither corporate nor serious. But there was no doubting her X factor.
We took the gig, mostly out of curiosity. Paris was, and remains, iconic when it comes to personal branding. She mastered the art of building a brand profile almost from thin air. Granted, she started out with a prestigious surname, some good looks, and a good bit of cash. However, plenty of other contenders blessed with similar good fortune have nothing on her in terms of profile-building.
When she swept into Australia, the recipient of a last-minute invitation to launch a new label for a local business identity, we had no doubt the media coverage would follow. Sure enough, the paparazzi that arrived to greet her at her secret exit door at Sydney airport were "the largest ever seen," as one cameraman told me breathlessly. I had the task of meeting Paris behind the scenes to inform her that the media had discovered her arrival time and her whereabouts, despite our sincere efforts to meet her request for anonymity on arrival, and to reassure her that she need not pander to their demands.
She was surprisingly low-key in the flesh, very softly spoken and almost shy. When I broke the news about the media frenzy, her face gave little away: “How many?” she asked, quietly. Nervous of appearing to renege on our agreement about a private arrival, I played it down. Maybe thirty? However, it was more likely at least sixty photographers and reporters that had gathered outside by now. While small by global standards, it was impressive for Australia.
It was then that I witnessed Paris Hilton, the media brand, move into action. “Let’s go,” she said to her two male minders, a smile on her freshly-frosted lips: the Paris Hilton parade was in play.
She flipped down her sunglasses, tossed back her hair, squared up her shoulders and began pushing her luggage trolley (yes, she pushed her own) towards the entrance.
From there, my recall works in slow motion. Paris Hilton, one of the world's biggest walking brands, strode elegantly forward into the foyer of Sydney Airport with the grace of a runway model and the radiance of a summer’s day.
Every move, every tilt of her head was perfect for the camera; however, she appeared natural, authentic, just a girl, going about her business at a busy airport.
The media pack that was grumpy, aggressive, and scornful before her arrival seemed as enthralled as I was. A gracious calm had descended on the media group. There was little jostling for position, no rude questions, or heckling. Paris gave each cameraman what they needed. Then she left.
The show was over in minutes. Paris had given us a photo opportunity, nothing more. No one complained. To my amazement, the camera crews and journalists simply just packed up their equipment, and headed back to the office in an orderly manner.
They say those who have mastered a craft pull off spectacular acts without appearing to exude much effort. For a PR specialist who had built a career working with corporate executives, observing Paris in motion with the media was like viewing high art.
And why wouldn’t it be? It was the media that allowed her to build her brand in the first place and that kept her employed. It was her job to keep them happy, with a subtle game of cat and mouse, and not being too available, or too inaccessible.
Paris Hilton may have come from a wealthy family, but she set out with great intention to carve a name and a space for herself in the public mind—and she has generated significant independent income from that opportunity. Long before