A note from June

I write my note today from sunny Crete on holiday with my husband and three children.

A lot of people asked me if I was planning to switch off while I was here and just enjoy the sound of the waves and read the books I packed with me (The Psychology of Money and It Could Have Been Her).

When I decided to build again, I made a conscious decision to design my life so that it all worked well together. I didn't want to have to switch off any part of me for the others. As my late grandmother used to say, everything in moderation.

I have enjoyed waking up early here and sitting on the balcony listening to the waves and thinking about all of you. MyPholyo only exists because I care deeply about building a solution for you. That's what drives me.

Over the years, I have heard from so many people who have spoken about the deep fear around how to make a portfolio career work: the financial uncertainty, the worry about spending more time working than when they were in full-time employment, and concerns about how to grow the different streams of income. If I'm being very honest, it's complicated.

There are lots of moving parts and that's what the team and I have been spending our time working on. We have had lots of customer interviews, we have tweaked the product and I have come to terms with the fact that it won't be ready day one. That's because we have so much we want to solve for that it will take time.

Some of you would have had an email from Vicky, our CMO, this week asking you to participate in some user testing. We want all your feedback. You were carefully selected and we value your opinion.

If you're reading this and think, 'I wish MyPholyo would solve this particular pain point for me', we also want to hear from you. At the bottom of this email please let us know your burning problems. We are reading them. My inbox is always open: june@mypholyo.com

We are also curating exciting speakers and partners who are aligned with our vision for MyPholyo and bringing the app to life on The Playground in November.

Until next week from me, where I'll be writing from sunny London.

June

Mark Evans is coming to MyPholyo Playgroud

He doesn't like the word portfolio, which we're taking as a good sign.

​Mark Evans spent twenty-five years in senior marketing at Direct Line, HSBC and Mars, and left four years ago. He now coaches CMOs and advises companies at every size and stage. He is a trustee at Cancer Research UK, and the Sprintathon he founded in 2016 has raised over a million pounds for them. There is a podcast too, now past two hundred conversations.

Ask him what to call all of that:

"I rail against the term portfolio slightly because I feel it is laden with status, power and ego. Whereas fruit salad captures the fact that it's just all better for the mix."

He is with us at Hatfield House on 5 November, along with carefully selected speakers and contributors, and 100 portfolio careerists.

Hear from Mark and others in the Old Palace

On Thursday 5 November we are making the whole of MyPholyo physical. Map your Pholyo at the door and benchmark your rate in a room built for exactly that. Put a real question to Moxie and watch it work, and get your story filmed properly.

There are one hundred seats. The early bird release is £500 before it moves to £600, and every ticket includes three months of MyPholyo membership.

Founding members: there is a limited-time discount reserved for you, with our thanks for being here first. Reply to this email to get yours.

The part nobody could tell him

This week, founding ambassador Anthony Ware sat down with us to talk about what twenty-six years of that actually taught him. Not the jumps, which he stopped apologising for a long time ago, but the money.

He put it plainly: he has undervalued his work for most of his career, and not because he lacked confidence but because he lacked comparison. When you are not a pure play anything, when you understand marketing and operations and culture and technology but are not the specialist in any of them, there is no rate card to check yourself against. So you guess, and you guess low.

What changed was seeing it. In his words:

"What used to be your ceiling is now your floor. Keep pushing."

Then he said something we did not expect, about why he tells this community what he charges at all:

That is the whole idea behind the benchmark. Every rate someone contributes raises the floor for the person coming next.

Clips from the conversation go out next week on Instagram and LinkedIn.

The market is moving your way

The KPMG and REC Report on Jobs landed this week, with permanent placements steadying for the first time in nearly four years and temporary vacancies rising. The bench is growing, and the tool that tells you what your seat on it is worth is live in beta now.

Until next week,

The MyPholyo team

P.S. Anthony's full story is coming in clips next week. If you want to be in a room with people who think like him, the early bird release is open.

Non-linear is the new normal.