Your AI Roadmap

CHAPTER 8Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Degrees, Portfolios, and Getting Credit

At the age of 22, Dorie Clark had the really rotten luck of being laid off on September 10, 2001. After her personal loss, the day she began her new job search was a day of US national tragedy, September 11, 2001. After graduate school, she worked in newspaper journalism, a dying industry. Media was shifting into a digital era. Clark didn't know it yet, but she would build wealth and a big career in the coming digital era.

In 2001, Clark could not find another full-time job in journalism. Clark found freelancing jobs, hustling to find work that paid $400–$800 per week. She then landed a job as a spokesperson in politics, but the candidate she worked for lost in the primary. “No job, I realized, is secure,”¹ she writes in her book Entrepreneurial You. Across time, she realized entrepreneurship with multiple revenue streams was a viable path, even if it wasn't her first choice. “I unwillingly became part of the Vanguard of entrepreneurs developing a portfolio career—piecing together freelance work and ultimately starting my own business with various revenue streams.”²

Clark launched her business. She worked in marketing strategy consulting. She began by building a portfolio of “social proof.” Social proof is external validation that recognizes the “well-established fact that others judge you by your affiliations.”³ She published her work in the Huffington Post and the Harvard Business Review. And ...