📣 Career Strategy #8: Building A Platform

Why we over-invest in impressing our current bosses - instead of building a platform to control our future.

Oct 04, 2024

Welcome back to Fuzzy’s Career Strategy Series, where we share research-backed strategies to help you realise your best career.

Part 1: 👋 Introducing the Career Strategy Series
Part 2: 🪜 Ladder Climbing as a Strategy
Part 3: 👩‍🎓 Controlled Supply as a Strategy
Part 4: 🥇 Excellence in a Power Law Field as a Strategy
Part 5: 🔍 Niche-ing as a Strategy
Part 6: 🧱 Skill-stacking as a Strategy
Part 7: 👷 Be A Generalist as a Strategy
Part 8: 📊 The Portfolio Career as a Strategy
Part 9: 📣 Building a Platform as a Strategy
Part 10: 🌊 Wave-surfing as a Strategy
Part 11: 🏗️ Adding Leverage as a Strategy
Part 12: 🌏 Proximity as a Strategy
Part 13: ⏱️ Sequencing as a Strategy

There are thousands of possible pathways for your career, but our research found there are ~10-15 dominant career strategies, which can be layered together if needed - and we’ll be breaking those down for you in this series.

"Some people think branding is about tricking people into buying things they don’t need, but the reality is, it’s about showcasing the value and impact you offer." – Seth Godin

📣 Introducing Strategy #8: Building A Platform

The world of work has changed.

OK, sure Seth!

💼 Once upon a time, we built our career capital vertically.

We earned credentials from institutions (education), joined an institution (employer) and climbed the ladder, usually for life. Our reputation with the people above us would determine the flow of opportunities - pay, promotions and references. Our ‘career capital’ was tied to that institution.

👨🏾‍💻 But technology has changed the playing field.

Everyone can network, learn, share insights and build followings horizontally - outside their current job - using digital tools. They can create a flow of opportunities based on this ‘platform’. And we can build career capital independent of our employers, which follows us beyond any single job.

So this week, we’re going to explore platform-building as a strategy - and why most people are over-investing in building vertical career capital at the expense of their future selves.

💰 Defining career capital.

Remind me: what is career capital?

Think of it as the skills, experiences, and connections you build over time, much like financial capital, which you invest to unlock greater opportunities and ‘returns’ in your career.

We break this down into two types: vertical and horizontal.

🆙 How vertical career capital works.

Most of us are familiar with vertical career capital building - it’s effort directed upwards through your office hierarchy to put ‘credits in the bank’.

It looks like 👀

Working harder to get a better performance review from your manager
Getting involved in a visible way in company & team initiatives
Networking with other departments & senior colleagues

Your employer benefits - but you can benefit too 🤝

Vertical career capital isn’t just a one-way transfer of our efforts to our employer - in addition to progressing within their company, many people get reciprocal benefits from their employer’s brand.

If you’ve ever walked into a meeting and been taken seriously purely because you work somewhere prestigious (like grads in top consulting, banking, accounting & law firms), you’ve effectively rented your employer’s brand for excellence, as a shortcut to having to demonstrate that excellence yourself.

And you may see a halo effect of that brand after you leave… as shown by everyone with ex-McKinsey, ex-Goldman or ex-Google on their LinkedIn 👼

But ultimately, it’s rented career capital - not something that you own.

And you also experience downside risks from your employer 😰

Your career ‘eggs’ are concentrated in one basket of workplace relationships - and a bad manager, a bad business cycle, or even a shift in strategy can suddenly erase all of the ‘credit’ that you’ve built up with those people.

↔️ What about horizontal career capital?

Horizontal career capital is portable and controlled by you, independent of your employer - and in the same way that financial capital can be invested to create cash flow, your career capital creates a flow of opportunities.

It looks like 👀

Networking with people in your industry
Building a portfolio to showcase your work
Sharing unique insights & knowledge (a.k.a. intellectual property or IP)
Building an audience and/or distribution channels for your ideas

And this personal ‘brand’ or ‘platform’ can bring opportunities like:

Introductions
Advice
Freelance work
Job offers
Speaking
Coaching
Books, podcasts, TV shows and more!

Platform-building is already extremely common in some industries - for example, creative industries like design, acting & photography, where your portfolio and referrals from your network are how you get hired 🎨

It’s no coincidence that this strategy is most prevalent in industries which revolve around short-term projects - but given the general trend towards less ‘monogamous’, more short-term employer relationships, we can all learn something from the early adopters.

🤔 Why do we overinvest in vertical career capital?

For some people, building a portable platform (reputation, "personal brand", IP, network, credentials, skills) comes naturally.

You no longer need a specific employer or job title on your resume - or even a good reference! - to unlock the next stage of your career.

You can build your credibility directly by showing your work.

But for most people, a few factors hold them back 👇

♻️ Habit: Vertical building is a habit we learn at school and home from a young age, seeking validation from the authority figures most proximate to us, like parents, carers & teachers.
🔨 Lack of a playbook: We’re not taught soft skills like networking or sharing our insights publicly in a structured way.
🧠 Psychological blockers: From LinkedIn humblebrag posts giving you ‘the ick’, to a sense of anxiety about ‘putting yourself out there’, / looking arrogant / looking silly, or feeling stumped by the ‘blank page’ and unsure where to start… we often need to overcome mental barriers to start investing in horizontal career capital.

⚙️ What’s right for YOU.

So… do I need to become a LinkedInfluencer? 🤢

Absolutely not.

Unless you’re looking to be a professional ‘platformer’ (see the Tim Ferriss case study below if you are!) it’s usually not a binary situation of choosing between building vertically or horizontally.

It’s about finding the right allocation of time and energy for your career, and given the risk-reward ratio, most people under-allocate.

Allocating 100% of your time to vertical career capital leaves you highly reliant on and exposed to the risks of your current employer - but allocating a small percentage of your time, like 10-20%, to hedging against those risks and building a flow of opportunities might be a better mix.

📈 Tips on getting started.

🌱 Start small: there’s a wide spectrum of activities in platform-building, and you don’t need to leap from zero to a hundred overnight.

🤝 Focus on how you can create value for others: If you feel a sense of imposter syndrome about centring yourself, can you suggest resources instead? Make an introduction? Be a sounding board? Can you start synthesising or resharing or collating ideas instead of doing original writing? Can you join existing organisation instead of having to start one?
🧱 Platform building ≠ sharing everything: Total authenticity & vulnerability can be an extreme and unnecessary bar to set for yourself. It’s OK (and in fact, vital) to have boundaries between your professional and private self. Focus on being intentional and clear on which side/s of yourself you want to bring forward when you share.
💪 Like building a sustainable exercise habit, make it enjoyable for you: Think about what opportunities you actually care about creating a flow of, and what activities you enjoy doing. If you love connecting with others, focus on networking. If you love coaching people 1:1, do that. If you love thinking and writing, do those.

📣 Case Study: Building a World-Class Platform like Tim Ferriss.

Most of us only ever want to be ‘amateur’ platform-builders.

But for those who do want to make the leap and build a large personal brand which becomes the heart of their career, the hugely popular author-podcaster-investor Tim Ferriss is a common inspiration.

Over two decades, Ferriss built perhaps the biggest personal platform in the world around topics like productivity, lifestyle design and personal growth - creating a flow of future opportunities that have compounded over time to bring him influence, financial rewards and significant social impact.

For those who haven’t followed his work, we’ve created this quick visual overview of Tim Ferriss’ career:

What can we learn about platform-building from someone like Tim?

He scaled his platform step-by-step, with each stage unlocking new opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible before 🪜

Beginning with direct experience (in his business BrainQUICKEN)…

Which he synthesised into insights on productivity and lifestyle design…

And shared those via his first books…

Which built him a cult following among an audience of techies and ambitious professionals…

Which gave him the ability to launch other more profitable revenue streams than book publishing (podcasts, newsletters & speaking)…

And a flow of investing opportunities from top tech investors…

Which gave him even more resources & influence to direct into causes he cares about, like mental health advocacy & psychedelics research.
He scaled his audience by focussing on genuine learning & creating value for others. To quote Tim directly:

“I always thought of my podcast as a learning tool for myself first”

“I gave away as much free value as possible. That’s how I earned people’s trust.”

“I started my podcast with zero expectations, just an experiment. And that’s why it worked — because it was a genuine curiosity.”

“By showcasing the best minds in the world, I could serve my audience and also learn from my guests. It was a win-win.”

“If I had one piece of advice for creators, it’s this: focus on depth, not breadth. A thousand true fans are worth more than a million passive followers.”

“The podcast exploded when I stopped caring about downloads and started focusing on meaningful conversations. When you follow your genuine curiosity, the audience will follow.”

If you’re curious to learn more about his work, go here.

If you’re interested in professional platform-building, we also highly recommend checking out an earlier post from this series - because becoming a professional creator IS a power law game! 👇