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Lost? Burnt out? Not sure what you even want from your career anymore?
Read my laugh-out-loud work mainfesto that’ll show you how to start taking back control of your career, your time, and your earning potential again.
Film Adaptations
Created in partnership with my friends from Dinner for One sketch comedy collective!
What the f#$k is a
POLYWORKER?
pol-ee-wur-ker · noun
1. An individual, fueled by a mix of ambition and caffeine, who is juggling multiple jobs simultaneously in the pursuit of financial and creative freedom.
2. Someone who, upon careful consideration, has decided to parachute off the corporate ladder,usually following what experts call "a significant life event" (in my case, a clusterf#$k of a layoff).
Because Nothing says Read my book like a wall of love from OTHER happy readers!
“I usually find business books to be a total drag, but this one grabbed me immediately and took me for a Ride. Brie is an extraordinary writer.”
- Leslie Zaikis
"If you’re feeling burnt out by your tech job AND/or are considering building a portfolio career, this book is an ABSOLUTE must read!"
- Katrina Watson
"The Millennial Bible!"
- Ally Condrath
"This book made me want to Marie Kondo the dumpster fire that is my work life.”
- My best friend
"A laugh-out-loud interrogation of our relationship with work and an invitation to change it.”
- Erica Kim
“The only book I’ve finished reading this year. (Don’t tell my book club!)
- My work husband
An excerpt from Chapter 1MY SO-CALLED
MILLENNIAL CAREER CRISIS
I’d been living a lie. Cosplaying as a functioning adult in Corporate America for the last 7yrs of my career… give or take a handful of performance reviews.
And it wasn’t even the sexy double-life kind of lie where you have a secret pair of children in Vermont and a burner phone in your gym bag. No, this was the slow, insidious type—the kind where you whisper the same story to yourself so often that it becomes gospel.
Until one day, you blink.
And then you find yourself in a conference room full of conformists just like you, nodding along with the CEO like a sea of bobbleheads, while thinking, “Surely, this isn’t my life. This is a stock photo of my life. And worse—I think someone else picked the filter!”
The success narrative I was sold when I was 18 went a little something like: Play the game. Play the Corporate game. Smile in meetings. Keep your eyebrows symmetrical! And the gods of Corporate Olympus will reward your loyalty with promotions, a raise, and maybe—just maybe—a complimentary salad four times a year at Company All Hands events.
I chugged the Kool-Aid and asked for seconds. I marinated in that myth. I practically licked the ladle. Hook, line, and sucker!
During those years of corporate discontent, I kept thinking that I was the problem.
That if I just found the right company, with the right boss, in the right role, with a communal fridge that actually stocked the right LaCroix, everything would click. (Tangerine, obvi. Fuck lime, it goes flat too fast!) So I bounced around like some kind of professional Goldilocks, repeatedly convincing myself that the next job would be different. But all I was really doing was collecting blazers I hated for jobs that gave me Sunday Scaries so intense that they started on Friday afternoons.
Some people (maybe you, dear reader) will call this a midlife crisis. But here’s what I think is happening to us American knowledge workers with fancy email signatures and a mild caffeine dependency: we are part of a workforce cohort that got sold this particular shiny, well-packaged, guidance counselor-approved dream.
Since Graduation, We’ve lived through a laundry list of “once-in-a-lifetime” events... multiple times. The Dot-com bubble, 9/11, the 2008 financial meltdown, the COVID pandemic, climate doom, the slow death of democracy, collapsing public institutions, and the enshitification of too many social media platforms to count.
And in that time we’ve come to realize that our fantasies of success take place in a world that no longer exists, if it ever did.
So why did I stay in that shitty job?
I believe I stayed because it was comfortable-ish… And I thought if I left, if I walked away from the title… and the Tuesday morning meetings that broke my spirit, it meant I had somehow failed in my career.
But at a certain point, your intuition gets so loud that it overpowers the Corporate elevator muzak that’s been playing in your head.
Check it out!
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Check it out! 👀
WANT THE Book’s BACKSTORY?
Binge the BTS interviews about the making of the making of the book.
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What's the difference between a polyworker and a portfolio careerist? And why does it matter?
In this episode, I break down why I titled the book Polyworker and what it takes to build a career around your values while still operating inside capitalism. If you've ever felt like you were "doing the thing" but still had bad weeks because your business development pipeline was nonexistent or your cash got tight, this is a great episode to give you a little perspective.
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In this episode of the pod I chat with , founder of about the feast-or-famine cycles that are a hallmark of running a small business, and how to build a financial system and money mindset that bolsters you when your business cash flows inevitably get lumpy.
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In this week's episode of the pod I have MJ Halberstadt back on again to talk about a comparison I make in the book between portfolio careers and polyamory. We also dig into this idea of automatic thinking and a key concept from the later chapters of the book: the professional polycule!
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This particular episode gives you a closer look at the two companion films for the book. I sit down for a chat with SAG actress and the leading lady in both shorts Ally Condrath. Together, Ally and I field questions from fans about how the whole project came together: from first finding each other to building and then executing on the creative vision for each short.