“How do you have time for your own business and a full-time job?”
I get this question constantly—like, if I had a dime for every time someone asked me that, I'd have another income stream by now!
The truth is, I didn’t set out to build a portfolio career when I took the plunge and started my own business. That would be a romantic origin story, wouldn’t it?
The reality is, I … stumbled into it.
Almost two years ago, I was exhausted by corporate and unsure if I ever wanted to go back to it. I’d spent years trying to climb the ladder, saying yes to every big, ambiguous, high-visibility project thrown my way. So when I was laid off , it cracked something open.
I didn’t want to immediately “bounce back” and move onto another gig.
I wanted to build forward—and differently.
So I gave myself an arbitrary timeline of ten months. A self-imposed sabbatical to test what a new kind of work life model could look and feel like. That’s when I discovered the portfolio career model: a mix of projects and income streams, built intentionally over time.
No "burn the boats" required!
This Isn’t an Episode of How I Built This
We’ve all heard the seductive Silicon Valley entrepreneur mythology narrative: that to build a business, you have to go all-in.
Quit your job!
Risk everything.
But, in my experience, that approach can lead to what I call panic building (if your cash reserves are tight or your resiliency is low, bad things tend to happen). And the consequences of you are operating from that place?
You take any client that comes your way
You compete on price vs. value, and
You potentially make business decisions with shortermism bias.
So what you end up building isn't a business—it's just another job!
That’s not what I wanted the outcome of this entire endeavor to be.
I was attracted to this lofty idea of slowly bootstrapping my way into a portfolio.
Over the course of that ten-month sabbatical from full-time work, I experimented like crazy, playing with various service offerings and positioning statements. I gave myself permission to figure out what came naturally to me, who I really loved working with, where the gaps in the markets I wanted to operate in where, and even figured out the problems I was most passionate about solving. That experimentation period was vital to unlocking the clarity I have now wrt my present day business strategy.
So when I returned to full-time work a year later, it wasn’t because my solo business had failed. It was because it was time too and because I was ready to layer in a new income stream!
Now some of you might be wondering, why did you add in a full-time job and not fractional projects? Well, the answer is that I am an extremely pragmatic person, and I wanted a stable income anchor. A source of income that wouldn’t steal all my creativity reserves and that I could have clear boundaries with. Figuring out the nuts and bolts of the fractional model, the ongoing business development, and growing a gigantic coaching client pipeline in order to support myself felt like a giant set of distractions away from my priority at the time:building my Build with Brie product suite that I had envisioned coming to market with over the next 12-24 months. You see, I had found product market fit during that early exploration phase, and I knew that I needed the creative flexibility and consistent funds coming in the door to ensure I could keep investing back into my venture. Worrying about uneven cash flows would just slow me down. I frankly, didn’t want to be more cash strapped than was necessary while launching a podcast, a digital course, and researching writing my first book. Now, if I hadn’t yet found product market fit, my decision may have been different in that particular moment.
My point being, this lived experience has led me to two basic rules for thinking about your long term vision for your portfolio career composition and scale plan.
I share with every one of my new clients. And now I want to share them with you!
Rule #1: Keep the End In Mind
Not every line of your business has to revolve around you, but if you want your ideas, your expertise, and your voice to be the thing that drives your demand engine, you need to admit that early. There’s a difference between building a multi-faceted service business that scales quietly behind the scenes, and building something where you are the product. Both are valid models. But they come with different costs, marketing decisions, trade-offs, and timelines.
If you're not building toward a personal brand or media flywheel, cool—skip the podcast and LinkedIn strategy. But if your long game is becoming known for your POV, don’t wait to own it.
Rule #2: Give Yourself a Window to Build Without Interference
You can’t create clarity when you’re drowning. You need a stretch of time—whatever you can swing—without stressful distractions screaming at you. Don’t try to build a business from scratch while juggling a demanding job or client if you can avoid it.
Instead, protect what I call your “foundation-building window”—even if it’s just a few months that you can spare—to test your services, validate your messaging, and get early market signal.
This can happen during:
A layoff or job transition
A planned sabbatical
Low-intensity seasons of your full-time job
Once you know what has legs from a product or services perspective, then change jobs, layer back in a full-time role, or add new income streams.
You want to limit the ambiguity or stress to the context of your business itself, not outside sources, if you can help it.
That’s why I always tell people: get that early momentum. Then add in the constraints.
Rule #3: Align Your Anchor Income Stream with Your Values
This one’s the most unsexy but the most essential to think through.
You need income coming in the door to make this model sustainable for the long haul. But where that income comes from should match your current values and life context!
If you value predictability: Finding the right full-time job can offer you that baseline of a consistent income, insurance, and even the mental space to be selective about what type of clients you choose to work with as you aren’t in feast or famine mode. This can help you remove that mental barrier of just getting going if you are worried about where your next paycheck will come from!
If you value flexibility: Going the full-time freelance or fractional route can offer you time freedom and potentially generate higher hourly rates. If you have childcare or elder care considerations, this is a great option. Or if you just like having full ownership of your schedule and aren’t as worried about going in the red in the beginning, this might be the better option too. But be mindful that this path will likely require you to have strong boundaries with your clients and requires strong business development skills to keep your pipeline full.
If you're in between gigs: I always recommend in this market that you hedge.. for your bank account AND your sanity’s sake. Use this (potentially unplanned) time off from full-time to build an MVP while you are job searching. My clients who have parallel pathed both have built a service offering while job searching and are generally more grounded through this bridge period between roles (and they have all negotiated better offers and contracts, too, given that confidence boost!)
Just remember: Whatever your situation, make sure your anchor income won’t deplete your energy reserves. You need to protect that bandwidth for your own product suite if that is an important medium to long term goal for your business!
How I Actually Structure My Portfolio Career
So, what CAN a portfolio career with a 9-5 look like?
Here’s what an average week of mine looks like:
6:45–8:30 AM (Weekdays)
Deep work—a client call, responding to emails or Slack, possibly a podcast recording.
I like to start my day with these activities as it starts the day off from a positive place, plus .. no one’s pinging me yet.
~6 hours/week
Two lunch breaks/week:
Content creation and social engagement
I batch social media management work over two days.
~2 hours/week
Tuesday/Thursday evenings or Sunday afternoons:
Deep strategic work and writing
Scheduling is dependent on the intensity of my 9-to-5 that week. If I have a busy work week, I reserve strat planning and writing time for Sundays. If I have a lighter 9-5 work week, I try and knock out my writing time during the weeks so that I can have a full weekend to luxuriate and recharge my batteries
~7 hours/week
Total hours per week for Build with Brie? Works out to ~15-17 on average.
A few times a year, particularly during key product launches, I’ll ramp this up to 20–25 hours, but I only allow this a few times a year.
Burnout is not part of my business model!
As such, every hour, including my family and down time is protected. I don’t “find time” for my business or my writing. I plan for the hours that I DO have and make those precious hours I have count!
Because what I’m building isn’t a side hustle. It’s a body of work. And every project, offer, and post is building toward the future life I am building for myself.
If reading this series feels like part of a much bigger career conversation….
👇 Here are a few ways that I can help you out! 👇
If you want the full playbook for building a portfolio career, Polyworker is the long-form version of everything you just read. Inside all 172 pages you’ll find: the structural argument for building a portfolio career, loads of frameworks and reflection exercises to design your own, and a handful of personal stories about what the first year actually feels like. Get your copy on Amazon or Bookshop →
If you’ve got a specific blocker hampering your portfolio career progress (like pricing, positioning yourself, finding your first set of clients, balancing responsibilities and income streams, etc), let’s talk shop. My office hours are 50-minute active 1:1 working sessions where we troubleshoot whatever’s actually getting in the way of scaling your portfolio career. Book a session →
Great advice! I've found a Portfolio Career to be very empowering!