Adding skills & certs is a great way to build your stacked income stream. Plus it’s fun!
This past month I started training to be a Certified End-of-Life Doula. We support patients and their families by providing information, emotional support, and nonmedical interventions.
And, I’m currently adding to my decluttering/organizing skills by taking a week-long webinar on Professional Organizing.
I’ll post links once I have completed my certs.
All of the above fit under my “green umbrella” of sustainability/permaculture educational services. (The other items under the umbrella include writing, teaching, speaking, consulting, art, and eco landscaping.)
Conceiving of an occupational stack is a great way to stay focused on one’s mission and be of maximum service. The mix of offerings in the stack can and does change over time.
Having an over-arching “umbrella” has made all the difference in my self-respect. I mean, I have always HAD the umbrella, but only in recent years began consciously articulating it to myself.
Not consciously having an umbrella made me vulnerable to snide comments and skepticism from naysayers who didn’t think I was doing anything serious or worthwhile because I seemed to be such a ragtag mix of occupations.
When I looked deeper I realized that my biggest naysayer and snide-commenter was myself. As passive-aggressively stealth-mean (or obvious-mean) as some people can be, I was even worse toward myself than they were. Good news: The better we address it in ourselves, the more we boost our immunity against other people’s demoralizing and debilitating attacks on our non-standard life-choices.
Having a stack makes us more resilient as in less economically vulnerable to ups and downs in our occupational sectors. (Also many of us not only like the occupational variety, but actually need it.)
Having an umbrella helps with self-respect and keeping everything organized.
What’s your occupational stack? And what’s your umbrella? (If you don’t have either or both yet, no worries! What are some work categories and umbrellas you might like to explore?)
One of my FREE colleagues, Eric, has an occupational stack that includes a photo booth and a costume rental business! Pretty cool combination huh!