ï»żE93 Do You Have a Portfolio Career?
Last week we did a little demolition work. We took a hard look at the math behind making a living from handmade sales alone and the numbers were, well not great. Not great at all, in fact. The fantasy that if you just had that one last piece of the puzzle, it would all fall into place took a bit of a hit. If you missed it, you can go back and listen to episode 92 anytime. But you donât have to have heard it to get value here today. This week is the follow-through on that demolition project.
Last week was all about the âwhyâ it doesn't work. This week is all about what does work, AND how the joy of handmade work fits into this whole thing. Letâs get into it.
Today weâre going to start with a phrase I used at the end of last week's episode.
This is where weâll pick back up on what I called a portfolio career.
Make no mistake, this is not a side hustle. Not a backup plan. Not a consolation prize for anyone who couldn't make it on handmade sales alone. This is a deliberate, intentional way of building income that the most successful working makers I know - and some of the most recognizable names in this space - have been doing all along whether they called it that or not.
But first, weâre going to talk about what it actually is before getting into how to build and use it. Because I think the word portfolio makes some people picture a corporate boardroom or a some sort of financial management and that is not at all what I mean. The basic definition of a portfolio is âa curated collection of â dot â dot -dot.â
So, a portfolio career is simply this. A few related income streams, each doing a different job, none of them carrying the whole weight alone. Not one thing responsible for everything. Several things, connected by the same core skill set, each contributing something.
That's it. That's the whole concept.
Now, I didnât invent the portfolio career. Itâs not a new concept. Itâs been around for ages. Nor am I the only one who does it; almost every successful creative does.
In fact, I want to tell you about someone you may already know. Because I think her story illustrates this brilliantly.
You may have heard of Bonnie Christine - a surface pattern designer, educator, and creative entrepreneur whose work I have admired for years. She knows what it's like in the trenches. She built something remarkable not through shortcuts but by doing the actual work and being open and honest about what the work required. I have a ton of respect for her.
Early in her career Bonnie was doing what most of us have done. She was sewing and selling her work. And she was good at it. Selling out consistently and by most measures doing very well.
But at some point, like most of us, she had to sit down and look at her math.
Even selling out consistently, the ceiling on what she could earn from selling alone was around $40,000 a year. And if she took a week off - nothing. No sales, no income. The whole thing depended on her showing up and producing every single week without stopping.
That math is the same math we did last week with the cocktail napkins. The time is finite. The production is finite. In most cases. And no matter how good the work is, one income stream has a ceiling and that ceiling arrives quickly.
So, Bonnie pivoted. She moved into licensing - letting companies use her designs rather than making and selling physical goods herself. And from there she built an education business. And from there she built more. Today she runs a business that includes licensing, education, a community, and a print magazine. All of it draws from the same core skill - she is exceptional at surface pattern design and she built multiple ways for that skill to generate income.
That is a portfolio career. Built by someone who started exactly where most of you are starting. Who did the math. Who decided the ceiling wasn't acceptable. And who found a way through that didn't require her to sew or paint or print for ten hours a day seven days a week with no days off.
She's not the only one. Kristin Omdahl in the knit and crochet world built the same kind of portfolio - pattern licensing, teaching, publishing, YouTube - all from one core skill set and one deep love of fiber. Different craft, same principle.
These two ladies are not unicorns. They didnât just catch a lucky break or suddenly discover the one secret hack that changed everything. These are makers who understood something important about how income actually works in a creative practice and built accordingly.
By really looking at what those two ladies did, we can establish that the portfolio career concept is real and practiced by people you recognize. Me included.
Within my own practice, I have observed 4 types of income that make up this framework. Now to be clear, I named them to describe something I was already seeing in how working makers actually function. You won't find these particular names in any business textbook. But what they describe is real functions within the work and once you have the language for it, youâll start seeing it everywhere. So, here's how I've mapped what I observe with other artists and in my own practice.
Now, Iâm also going to use a running example to make this concrete. Say you are a weaving artist. You've been weaving for years. You're good at it. You love it. And right now you're trying to figure out how to make a real income from it.
Here are the four types of income inside a portfolio career and what they might look like for you.
Foundation income is the reliable base. It may not be the most exciting part of what you do but it's the part that keeps the lights on regardless of how the other streams are performing. For the weaving artist, for example, this might be a contract with a company that orders custom woven pieces on a regular schedule. Or a recurring commission relationship with an interior designer who calls you every time a client needs something specific. It doesn't have to be glamorous. It has to be reliable. The foundation is what lets you take creative risks in the other three streams without panicking about rent.
Steady income is work you're good at and don't mind doing even on a day when you're not particularly inspired. It also may not be your favorite thing but it's solid and it shows up consistently. For the weaving artist this might be teaching. A regular class at a local arts center, a guild workshop series, an online course that brings in consistent enrollment. You know how to do it. You're good at explaining it. And even on a Tuesday when you'd rather be in the studio, you can show up and deliver real value. Teaching is one of the most reliable forms of steady income for makers because it scales beyond trading time for money in a way that the actual production doesnât.
Bright spot income is the work that reminds you why you do any of this. It's not always the biggest income stream and it doesn't have to be. Its job is to keep the creative fire alive. For the weaving artist this might be the original art pieces. The large scale wall installations. The work that gets shown in galleries, sold at fine art events, featured in publications. The pieces that are genuinely yours and nobody else's. This is the income that matters most to your creative identity even if it's not the one doing the heaviest financial lifting.
And then there is fill-in income. The smaller, more flexible pieces that grow over time and cover the gaps. For the weaving artist this might be a line of smaller woven goods - table runners, bookmarks, small framed pieces at accessible price points that sell steadily online and at shows. Or digital downloads - patterns, tutorials, technique guides. Things that don't require you to be present every time a sale happens. This category often starts small and grows over time.
Four types. Foundation, Steady, Bright Spot, Fill-In. None of them carry the full load. All of them contribute something. And yes, some things we do may be sitting in two slots.
Now here is the thing I really want you to hear. Really hang onto this for a second before we move on.
Most of you who have been making things for more than a year or two already have the beginnings of a portfolio career. You just haven't had a name for it.
The maker who sells at shows and has an Etsy shop and occasionally takes a commission - that's a portfolio. It may be an underdeveloped one. It may not be intentionally structured yet. But the bones are there.
And here is what I think is happening for a lot of you. You're looking at what you've built and asking the wrong questions. What am I doing wrong? Why is this not working? Why can't I seem to get traction? Why does everyone else seem to have figured something out that I haven't?
Those questions feel like a âselfâ problem. They're not. They're the result of measuring a portfolio against the wrong standard. You've been holding up your handmade sales - one stream, the most time-constrained and margin-compressed stream you have - and asking it to account for everything. And when it can't, which it almost never can, the conclusion you draw is that something is wrong with you or your work or your effort.
Nothing is wrong with you. You've been trying to solve the wrong thing.
The inadequacy you've been feeling isn't information about your skill or your work ethic or your creative worth. It's information about the measuring stick. You've been using the wrong one.
The maker who teaches two Saturdays a month and sells at three shows a year and has forty Etsy listings and takes the occasional custom commission is not failing at building a handmade business. They are succeeding at building a portfolio career without knowing that's what it's called. The teaching is doing its job. The shows are doing their job. The Etsy shop is doing its job. None of them are failing. They're just not being seen as a system.
What changes when you start seeing it as a portfolio isn't the income itself. At least not immediately. What changes is how you evaluate it. You stop asking why aren't my handmade sales covering everything and you start asking what is each stream supposed to do and is it doing that job.
And then - and this is the part that actually changes things - you stop trying to fix the wrong thing. You stop pouring energy into making the handmade sales do something they structurally cannot do alone. And you start making deliberate decisions about which streams to develop, which to protect, which to grow, and which to add. Or which to get rid of or change.
That's a completely different conversation. And it leads to completely different outcomes.
Let me talk about my own version of this for a second. Now my template is not yours. Do not âcopyâ what I do. But look at it as an example from someone actually living it and talking to you about it right now.
My foundation income comes from contract design and pattern work. Reliable. Not always the most creatively exciting part of my week. But it's there and it covers the base.
My steady income actually has two streams sitting in it right now. Yes, you can have more than one thing in each, and one thing can cover two pieces. The beauty is that this type of system is flexible. Teaching at the guild is steady - consistent, I'm good at it, shows up reliably. And my online education business is steady too. Six years in. Multiple courses. A growing email list. My in person students are beginning to join online and what I do online informs what I do in person.
And that growth potential is the interesting part. The online education piece has real trajectory. A filled Studio cohort at the current investment is not small income. That stream could climb from steady into foundation over time. Bonnie Christine's online education started much smaller than where it is today. Now it's her foundation. The biggest most reliable stream in her entire portfolio. That kind of shift is exactly what the portfolio model makes possible.
My bright spot is the fiber art. The shows. The original pieces. The work that is genuinely mine and reminds me every time why I chose this life. It doesn't have to carry the financial weight to earn its place. Its job is to keep the fire alive. And it does.
And my fill-in right now is the sewn goods. Smaller pieces, accessible price points, flexible inventory that sells at shows and online and covers the gaps.
None of those alone would support me. Together they do. And here is what I love most about this model - it moves with me. Streams shift categories as life changes. What's fill-in today could be steady in two years. What's steady now could become foundation. I decide how I develop each one and when. That flexibility - that ability to adjust the whole system as my market and my interests evolve - is something the one-thing-does-everything model could never offer.
So let me ask you this -
What does this look like for you right now? Not the romanticized, some-day version. The actual current one. Have you ever thought about looking at what you do this way?
Maybe youâre relieved and can finally say Okay, Iâm NOT doing anything wrong. Or maybe you are saying â Nice. I finally have a word for this thing I thought was so weird.
Do you have something that functions like foundation income even if you've never called it that? Something reliable that shows up whether or not you're having a great creative week?
What about steady? Is there work you do consistently that you're good at even when you're not inspired?
Are those two one and the same for you right now?
Where's your bright spot? What's the thing that reminds you why you chose this?
And what's filling in the gaps - or what could?
Take a minute with that. Seriously. Before you move on to the next thing on your list today - just sit with those questions and see what comes up. You might be surprised how much is already there.
Because here's what I found when I started mapping my own version of this. Most of it already existed. It just needed to be seen and given the credit it deserves, and then developed deliberately.
Now to make that easier for you - I built something. A free PDF called The Income Math. It walks you through exactly this mapping process - what each type is, what yours might look like right now, and where the gaps are. It takes about ten minutes. Iâll put the link in the show notes, or you can go to virginialeighstudio.com/incomemath. Grab your copy and simply fill in whatâs happening now, so you donât stress about it anymore.
So, there you have it. A Portfolio career. Multiple streams of income all working with and on a common thread. Four types of income inside. Foundation, Steady, Bright Spot, Fill-In.
None of them carry too much weight. All of them contribute something. And together they add up to something that one stream alone almost never can. Thereâs flexibility, freedom, variety, and a system that you can control and build upon.
Itâs the thing that makes those hugely successful people so successful. The fantasy quick fix was never the answer. What you've already built might be closer to the real thing than you realize. You already have half the work done. You already have a lot of the ingredients in place. You just didnât know it.
Go get the PDF and find out. Virginialieghstudio.comâincomemath or
The link is in the show notes. Free. Ten minutes max.
I'll see you right here next week as we explore more about the Portfolio and how to make it work for you.
