Why I Teach What I Sell

Every couple of months, somebody asks me why I don't just choose.

The question always comes from someone who has chosen — a full-time academic who thinks I'm hedging my commitment to scholarship, or a full-time operator who thinks I'm hedging my commitment to the business. Both versions of the question reveal more about the person asking than they realize.

I want to explain why I refuse to choose. And why I think the best operators in any field are the ones who refuse to choose between theory and execution.

The dinner conversation that started this post

Six months ago, a CMO I respect asked me the question at dinner. He'd been kind enough to walk me through some of his thinking on a campaign rollout. As we wrapped up, he asked — "Why are you still teaching? You could clearly make a lot more money if you went all-in on the agency."

The answer I gave him in the moment was something polite about loving students. The honest answer was longer, and it's what this post is about.

The false dichotomy

The world treats theory and execution as opposing forces. Either you're an academic — a person who studies how the world works without participating in it — or you're an operator — a person who participates in the world without studying it. The two are framed as mutually exclusive identities.

This framing is wrong, and it has been wrong for a long time.

The best academics I know have skin in the markets they study. Their research is sharper because they have lived inside the systems they describe. They ask better questions because they have stood across the table from the people they are writing about.

The best operators I know have rigorous theoretical frameworks underneath their decisions. Their execution is sharper because they know which patterns are universal and which are specific to their context. They make fewer expensive mistakes because they have studied the categories of error that have taken down companies in their space.

The dichotomy between theory and execution is a false one. The compound effect of doing both at once is enormous.

Theory without execution is a museum tour. Execution without theory is a guess.

What I've learned from teaching that has changed how I run the agency

Three years into running Club Creative, I would have told you I knew marketing pretty well. Two years into teaching it, I'm not sure I knew anything before.

Teaching forced me to articulate the things I had been doing on instinct. Every framework I had been running in my head for client work — pricing strategy, positioning, channel allocation — became a lecture I had to deliver to 20-year-olds who needed it to make sense. The act of explaining clarified my own thinking in ways that running campaigns alone never did.

Teaching also exposed the assumptions I was carrying. In every class, a student would ask the question I had stopped asking myself. "Why do we segment by age?" "Why do we trust this attribution model?" "Why do we still pitch creative this way?" Half the time, my honest answer was — I'm not sure, let me think about it. That answer changed how I ran the agency the next week.

Teaching is the cheapest, most rigorous form of professional development I have ever found. The Socratic pressure of a classroom full of curious 22-year-olds is more useful than any executive coaching program I could have paid for.

What I've learned from running the agency that has changed how I teach

The flow goes both directions.

Every week I teach a framework, I have just used that same framework — or watched it fail to apply — in a live client engagement. Students don't get hypothetical examples from a textbook published in 2014. They get this morning's pricing conversation. This week's positioning argument. Yesterday's creative review.

They get to see the framework working in real time, with real money on the line, in industries they will be entering in 18 months.

That changes the quality of the education they receive. It also changes the quality of the conversations I can have with them. When a student asks how a real CMO actually decides between two creative directions, I'm not making something up. I'm telling them what happened in my conference room last Tuesday.

The compound effect

Here is the part most people miss about doing both simultaneously.

It is not additive. It is multiplicative.

Each role makes the other one substantially better. The teaching sharpens the operating. The operating sharpens the teaching. Over time, the gap between someone who does both and someone who does only one becomes enormous — not because the workload is doubled, but because the learning curve is compounding from both directions at once.

The Pracademic identity is not a brand position. It is a learning strategy. And it works.

An invitation

If you are reading this and you are full-time in one camp, I want to offer you an invitation.

If you are an academic — find a way to participate in the markets you study. Consult, advise, run a side project, take a sabbatical to operate. The depth of your research will improve. Your students will benefit from real examples instead of stale case studies.

If you are an operator — find a way to engage with the rigorous study of your field. Read the academic literature. Audit a graduate-level course. Write something serious. The depth of your decision-making will improve. Your team will benefit from frameworks that actually hold up to scrutiny.

The compound effect of refusing to choose is too significant to ignore.

Stop choosing. Start integrating. The best version of your career is on the other side of that decision.