Earlier today I hopped on a Substack Live with Philip Hofmacher to talk about fractional work, systems, building an audience and whatever else we wandered into.
Naturally, we wandered into A LOT.
Including the fact that my first few fractional clients came from Substack. One of my favorites literally found my writing, messaged me because she liked my voice, and asked if we could work together. Which remains a pretty strong argument for showing people what it would actually be like to work with you.
We also talked about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: portfolio careers.
For years, the conventional wisdom was that the “safe” option was one full-time job.
I’m not entirely convinced that’s true anymore.
Having a few clients, your own audience, maybe a product or two, and multiple places your income can come from feels like a different KIND of security. The danger, of course, is deciding you need 17 revenue streams by Thursday. (Oh hi. It me.)
My current lesson is much less exciting:
Pick one thing. Actually work it long enough to know whether it works. (Thanks to my friend and fantastic growth advisor, Sibi!)
We also got into:
why a good operator sometimes has to be the professional killer of shiny objects
how I’m using AI to keep multiple client worlds straight without outsourcing my brain to it
why Substack DMs still feel surprisingly human compared to the LinkedIn garbage heap
what I’d tell someone thinking about going fractional
the systems I rely on to keep my own business moving
my extremely sophisticated Substack growth strategy of “post Notes and talk to actual humans” 😂
And Philip made me give one piece of advice for fractional work, one for Substack, and one for LIFE at the end. No pressure…
If you missed it live, you can watch the whole conversation below.
