Nicola Earle is a community builder passionate about bringing people together to make good things happen. She started her career in internal communications and engagement, and throughout her career has consistently been the person putting her hand up to set up groups and bring people together, beginning with a women's network at her first workplace. Now living in the countryside, she helps people connect online so they can help each other, and has been described as a "glue person" who helps teams connect and work well together.

Portfolio careers don't require launching multiple streams simultaneously - start with one extra thing and build slowly over a year or more. When people think about portfolio careers, they assume they need four or five income streams right away, which feels overwhelming and prevents them from starting. Instead, begin with one additional project or interest that you're genuinely curious about. Work on it slowly on the side while maintaining your main role, treating it as a long-term experiment rather than an immediate transformation. The process is ongoing and gradual, requiring acceptance that figuring it out never really ends.

Your effortless skills can transform outcomes for others - volunteer what feels easy to you but impossible to someone else. What takes you minutes with tools like Canva or AI can feel like magic to people outside the tech world. A quick Canva poster that requires minimal effort becomes incredibly valuable to village organisations. Using AI to complete a funding application in one morning resulted in a £20,000 grant for a new community kitchen. The privilege of understanding digital tools creates opportunities to bridge worlds and create disproportionate impact through contributions that feel minimal to you.

The "be a villager" mindset transforms community engagement by focusing on consistent contribution rather than transactional exchanges. Instead of networking with an agenda or keeping score, the villager approach means showing up regularly, offering help freely, and building relationships over time without expecting immediate returns. This creates natural trust and reciprocity, making you someone people think of when opportunities arise because you've established yourself as a reliable, helpful presence in the community.

Being a glue person means seeing the best in people and understanding how they prefer to interact, then connecting those dots within teams. Nicola describes herself as positive by nature, open-minded, and accepting, which allows her to spot who people are and how they like to engage. This ability to see individuals clearly and connect them meaningfully is what makes someone valuable in bringing teams and communities together. If you keep finding yourself in connector roles across different workplaces, that pattern reveals your natural strength worth leaning into.

🙏 Special thanks to our podcast producer James McKinven! (get in touch for all your podcast needs, he’s really great!)