If you’ve ever been to University you’ll know the feeling of excitement when a guest lecturer walks into the class to deliver the day’s session.
No longer will it be a death-by-PowerPoint of theory.
Instead, there’s a person in-front of you who is actually out there in the real world executing on the exact role you’re interested in.
You can finally ask the questions you’ve been dying to know…
“Do you actually enjoy it?”
“How much do you get paid?"
“How did you start out in your career?”
Because for once the person giving you advice is not some lifetime academic obsessed with how things “should work”, but a full-time practitioner sharing their war stories from how things “do work”.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if every day as a student was like this?
Well for some, reality isn’t actually too far away.
Enter: The Academic-Practitioner
In the last 6 months at The Portfolio Collective I’ve seen hundreds of different types of portfolio careers from our 8,500+ community members.
Some are on-the-side hustlers, most are straight up freelancers, and a few are multiple business owners. There’s definitely no one-size fits all.
But even with all the variation there are similarities.
And one of the most common types of career models that I see is designed for the individual who is seeking both a well-paid hands-on application of their skills AND a meaningful impact on the next generation.
Which in practice can look something like this:
Leading a university course AND building a start-up.
Writing a paid newsletter AND working as a product manager.
Teaching kids how to play AND facilitating amazing workshops.
With each path requiring a uniquely different set of skills, knowledge and understanding for you to be successful at them you’d think they’re all completely different approaches to portfolio work.
But if you dive a little deeper in each you’ll find that…
The individual is learning what works in practice and then using it to improve the theories, models and explanations they give to their students.
Instead of relying on surveys or interviews as their gateway into creating statistically relevant results, they leverage their own first-hand experience in the workplace where they practice what they preach every single day.
Meaning that no longer are they an academic trapped in an ivory tower.
Or a practitioner just working hard to survive each day.
But, an Academic-Practitioner applying, learning and theorising new approaches to their industry while creating massive impact along the way.
Multiplying a Legacy
Assuming this portfolio career model works for you, then to become an Academic-Practitioner you should start with the obvious… Support on engineering courses as an engineer, politics courses as a politician and entrepreneurship courses as an entrepreneur.
But in time, once you’ve found your feet, you might come to the same conclusion that I have: that the potential for impact is even higher when you cross-pollinate your theory and practice into adjacent academic or political circles where your fresh ideas can spark new ways of thinking.
Which is not only exciting for the individual who will now be innovating their field of expertise, but has huge potential to unlock a multiplier effect of magnitude that could bring new solutions to age-old problems while equipping the next generation with the skills to turn them into reality.
And that is pretty damn exciting indeed.