Personal Finance for PhDs

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Career Transitions

This Former Prof Found True Flexibility and Profitability in Her Academic Editing Business

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Paulina Cossette, a former professor and the owner of Acadia Editing. Paulina followed the prescribed academic path, but found herself profoundly unhappy in her faculty position. After leaving academia, Paulina stumbled into academic editing and eventually started working under her own brand. As a business owner, Paulina earns more, works less, and has true flexibility, which has enabled her to design her lifestyle in a way that was not possible within academia.

Links mentioned in the Episode

This Former Prof Found True Flexibility and Profitability in Her Academic Editing Business

Teaser

Paulina (00:00): The system makes it unsustainable, particularly if you have kids, though, not exclusively. Um, and so I think I just reached a breaking point, you know, and, and it really wasn’t planned.

Introduction

Emily (00:24): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (00:53): This is Season 19, Episode 8, and today my guest is Dr. Paulina Cossette, a former professor and the owner of Acadia Editing. Paulina followed the prescribed academic path, but found herself profoundly unhappy in her faculty position. After leaving academia, Paulina stumbled into academic editing and eventually started working under her own brand. As a business owner, Paulina earns more, works less, and has true flexibility, which has enabled her to design her lifestyle in a way that was not possible within academia. If you’ve been enjoying this podcast and want to see it continue, would you please help spread the word? Take a minute to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, text a recent episode that you enjoyed to a friend, or give it a shout-out on social media. Any of those actions helps me to grow Personal Finance for PhDs and continue finding amazing guests for the interviews. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e8/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Paulina Cossette.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:15): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Paulina Cossette, who is a former professor and currently has a business called Acadia Editing Services. I’m really excited to learn about her business journey, her exit from academia, all that kind of related stuff. And so, Paulina, welcome to the podcast, and will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

Paulina (02:36): Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Emily. Um, so I used to be a political science professor. Um, I was in academia for about 12 years, uh, and in 2019, um, I had a 1-year-old child and I was just sort of, uh, very overwhelmed, um, and getting fed up with the lifestyle of academia, having to work seven days a week, you know, just facing that burnout, especially having just had a baby. Um, and so I decided to quit and we moved aco- across the country to live in Maine near our family. And I sort of fell into copy editing. And, you know, long story short, uh, four or five years later, here I am, I have a successful editing business and I work from home for myself. Um, and life is good.

Emily (03:28): I love this concept. Okay. Are you familiar with Cal Newport?

Paulina (03:32): Yes.

Emily (03:33): Okay, so I’m gonna get his like, name of this wrong, but it’s like lifestyle centered career design, something like that. Have you heard him talk about this lifestyle centric career design? Something like that? Um, so that really sounds like, I mean, you said you fell into it, but it, I mean, it really sounds like that’s kinda what you were doing, right? You had built up career capital in academia and then said, Nope, my lifestyle is more important than this particular job, and so I’m gonna pivot and use this career capital in another area that supports how I want my full life to look like. Okay. So very, very great brief introduction, but let’s kind of dive, you know, more into this and sort of starting back from the beginning of the academic journey, like what led you into the career in academia in the first place?

Dr. Paulina Cossette’s Academic Journey

Paulina (04:17): So I, you know, I was always a good student. Um, I was a first generation college student, so I didn’t really have guidance on any of that other than my grandparents who were always saying, you have to go to college because that’s how you succeed. And I just, I liked school and I liked learning, so I just, I went to college, um, I kept, I just kept going and, you know, I started doing research, uh, as an undergrad and then went on to get a, the PhD program and I didn’t really have a plan, you know, I just sort of enjoyed being in school. And then once you get to graduate school, I think this is true for many people. Um, your advisors direct you towards academia and, you know, I was in political science, so there weren’t, there wasn’t any discussion of alternatives of industry or, you know, working in government or anything else. Uh, and I didn’t really know, uh, I didn’t know any other options. And, you know, they said, you apply to these schools and you get the tenure track job, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t like where you’re living, that’s just part of it, you know, you don’t have to stay there forever. And so I, I think like many people, I sort of fell into this funnel, you know, of like, this is, this is what you do, and I just did what I was told. And, um, it worked for a little while, but that was a recipe ultimately for disaster. So, um, so yeah, I, I loved school and I loved learning, but it was just sort of like, I, I just kept doing what I was supposed to do, uh, and ended up, you know, ended up there and not very happy.

Emily (05:56): Hmm. I wonder if I was on a track similar to this myself, um, up until the point in graduate school, um, when I discovered personal finance, actually. And that’s when I figured out like, oh, people have like all kinds of different jobs and businesses sometimes, and like some people work part-time and some people retire. And like all the, it’s just sort of opened my mind. And not that I was on necessarily an academic track, but certainly to stay in research, that was my intention. Um, so that is so interesting, and I totally, I totally understand how that would happen, but also good on you for being successful, even in something where you were like, I’m just following the prescribed path here. Um, but clearly it, it went well for you for a time at any rate. Right? And then you sort of, you know, briefly said earlier that the timing of you leaving your job was, you know, around when your child was very young. Is there anything else you wanna share about that decision to leave and like maybe what you thought you were jumping into next?

Paulina (06:52): Yeah, I think, um, it was a long time coming and I’m actually, I’m reading Annie Duke’s book Quit right now, where she talks about how we put off this decision to quit far longer than we should. Um, and it, it brings back a lot of memories. ‘Cause that was the exact situation that I was in, that I was so unhappy. And I thought, well, maybe it’s just the school I’m at. So I went on the job market and I changed schools, and I was, it was better, but I was still unhappy. It’s still, you know, and like I said, I I, I had my son. I was working seven days a week, and it was just, the system makes it unsustainable, um, particularly if you have kids, though not exclusively. Um, and so I think I just reached a breaking point, you know, and, and it really wasn’t planned. Um, my husband and I had talked for a long time about moving, um, his mom had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Uh, and so all of these factors were sort of playing on our minds until we finally reached this breaking point and said, you know, I said, I just can’t do this anymore. And it was the summer of 2019 and I resigned and we sold our house and we moved to Maine. And I had no idea what I was gonna do. I, you know, I thought I would go on the non-academic job market, trying to find something around here in Maine, which is not, you know, there aren’t a lot of options, um, trying to find remote positions. And I kept striking out, you know, people kept telling me I was overqualified or I wasn’t the right fit, or they decided not to hire anyone. Or like, it was, it was a really demoralizing experience, you know, feeling like, I have all this training and education, I’m smart, I’m hardworking, but nobody sees that, you know? And I think a lot of people go through that where they just don’t know how to translate the academic lingo into industry lingo, um, on a resume. And so I had just written a book and we had worked with a freelance copy editor in as part of the process of publishing it. And I thought, oh, well I could do that. I’m a really good writer. Everybody always tells me I’m, I’m a good writer, you know, I can edit. And so initially I thought it would be temporary, but I ended up loving it. And, you know, like you were saying about the lifestyle change, uh, this was shortly before Covid and then Covid happened and I thought, oh my God, I’m so glad I’m working from home. I’m so glad I didn’t take a job in an office. Um, ’cause especially with little kids, you know, I didn’t wanna be having to go off to work and then come home and potentially, you know, getting sick or something. So, um, yeah, so I really just fell into it, um, and ended up loving it, and everything has just grown from there.

Building an Academic Editing Business

Emily (09:45): Amazing story. And I, I mean, I think so many people in academia, whether that’s just as grad students or postdocs or whether that’s a career in the professorship type position after that can relate to this. I mean, there’s so many like academic exit stories like floating around in the last 10 years. Um, even on this podcast. It hasn’t been published at the time that we were recording this interview, but an upcoming episode is someone with a very similar story of having gotten that tenure track position and then just, it was not the right fit and ended up quitting, moving across the country, you know, familial reasons in the mix, kids in the mix, all that stuff, not surprisingly another woman. Um, so there’ll be echoes of that same like, motivation, um, between these two interviews as well. Um, and so I’m so glad that you found something that you loved, but it, it, it does sound like you are casting around and applying for different things and trying different things and, um, not sitting stagnant, but really like pursuing some different things until you found something that was an awesome fit. And I, I just love that. So let us know more about your business now, like, um, it’s been a few years since you like started it. So what does it look like now?

Paulina (10:47): Um, so when I first started out, I was very much a freelancer. The idea of being an entrepreneur was like, that’s too much for me. That sounds like a lot of risk. I could never do that. Um, and so I started out freelancing for some different companies that we usually refer to as editing agencies, um, where you have scholars from all over the world upload their documents and then the company hires you as a freelancer to edit them.

Emily (11:16): I worked in such a service as a side hustle for several years, yes.

Paulina (11:19): Oh, fantastic. So, you know that it is not ideal and the pay is not very good, but when you’re just starting out, it’s a great way to learn the business. You know, you are, um, it’s essentially, I tell my students it’s on the job training. You know, it’s if, if you’re faculty, you know how to do academic editing, um, but you’ve just never done it at the level that is required, you know, in professional editing, fixing every mistake using advanced tools and word track changes, all that stuff. And so I think working for these agencies is a great way to get that initial experience. And my mistake was that I just stayed there too long. You know, I didn’t have enough confidence in myself. Um, I saw other editors in these Facebook groups talking about how the way you make real money is to get private clients. And I thought, oh, I’m not good enough for that. You know, like the, the academic imposter syndrome carried over into this new life, unfortunately. Um, but eventually I got more and more experience and I decided probably a year or two ago, you know what, I’m just gonna go for it. And I started, uh, connecting with some private clients. And at first it was just a handful of people, but I, my confidence grew and I, and, and people were happy with my work. And so I realized that I really am good at this. And I think, you know, I wish it hadn’t taken me so long. Um, I did have a second child in that period, so I, I, you know, had other things going on. But, um, but yeah, I think I’ve, I’ve learned so much from building a business, you know, and, uh, a lot of it is just having confidence in myself. But a lot of it also is also that, you know, a lot of PhDs, um, think that they don’t have any skills that they can apply outside academia. I think they’re, they’re terrified to leave graduate school or their academic position because they think that they’re not gonna be able to do anything else. But there’s so much about a PhD or other doctoral program that trains you to be successful. You know, you’re hardworking, you’re persistent, you’re creative, you’ve got thick skin, you know, like all of this stuff. You’re a, a pretty good writer, probably. Um, you know how to do research, you like to learn new things. Um, all of this, no matter whether you wanna go into editing or business or, you know, industry or whatever, you have so many skills that you can apply elsewhere. And I think that the process of building a business has taught me that

Emily (13:55): I agree so much. I actually, right when I was, I guess around the time I started my business, which is also the time that I finished graduate school, I was kind of, yeah, I was trying some different things, sort of like you did for a little while. And, um, I, I remember writing a blog post about like, the similarities between like entrepreneurship and, um, the academic life. And in addition, all those, all those characters, which that you mentioned are totally, I totally agree with them. And I don’t remember if you had this in there, but I really focused a lot on like, sort of being, um, like a self-starter slash really in charge of your own work in an independent way by the time you finish a PhD. Or certainly if you go beyond that, um, very similar to being like a solopreneur or like the top person in like a business. Um, and also for me anyway, working alone. ’cause like I am a solopreneur, so I work with contractors, but I don’t have employees of my own. Um, and so that was also very similar to like, okay in, when I was in graduate school, like I had some collaborators, but I, I worked my own projects. And so like, not being part of a closely working together team was very similar to me between those two like environments. So yeah, I mean, and I actually, I really relate also to your experience of like, I’m gonna try this, um, mode of work first as like a freelancer. So working for somebody else’s business, whether as an employee or as a contractor, either way you would sort of learn what the business is and then eventually gaining the confidence, as you said, to strike out on your own and sort of do it under your own branding. But coming with that, uh, there’s much more responsibility for actually getting clients. So like, that’s the part when I was doing the freelance, like editing work, I loved that I didn’t have to get clients, I just had to do the work. Whereas when you become the business owner, like the sales aspect is something you have responsibility for. So that’s a tough, like, that’s a big role to like add when you’re making that shift. Do you have anything else that you’d like to add to that?

Paulina (15:45): Um, yeah, you know, what you just said about, uh, marketing and things being just a bit more challenging. And that’s exactly what I tell my students is like, it’s not ideal to start out working for these editing agencies that pay less, but it lets you focus on that training, uh, and, and really perfect your editing skills before you then go out and try to attract private clients. ’cause marketing does take a lot of work. It is, you know, I don’t wanna paint the picture that entrepreneurship is easy because it’s not, but um, it certainly does pay off when you get there, you know, and you figure out how to connect with people. And I think, um, I also agree with what you were saying about the similarities between being faculty or being in academia and being a solopreneur is one of the biggest things that I hear from people that they’re terrified to leave academia because they don’t wanna lose their flexibility. And I always push back on that because, um, I don’t think academia is all that flexible. You know, there’s a meme that’s gone around that says, academia lets you work, or you have to work seven days a week, but you can choose any seven days a week that you want. Uh, and it’s so true, you know, but being, being an in entrepreneurship, you, you do, you get to keep that flexibility and you’re not working nine to five.

Emily (17:03): Hmm. I agree. Like it might be a big shift for like an employee to then strike out on their own in a business, an employee in the sense of like, not in an academic setting where like maybe you work your 40 or your 45 or your 50 hours, but you can kind of turn it off and you don’t have a ton of responsibilities like outside of that. But in the way that academia can be all consuming business also can be all consuming. And so whatever skills you’ve learned about, like the boundaries that you can put up can, it can also be translated between those two settings. And like you said, academia is flexible in the sense of like, yeah, exactly. You are just gonna have a ton to do. So like, pick what you’re gonna do, all that ton of work. And, you know, business ownership is a little bit different because you can sort of define the scope a little bit better. Someone else isn’t defining it for you of how much work there is to do.

Commercial

Emily (17:47): Emily here for a brief interlude! I’m hard at work behind the scenes updating my suite of tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2024. These educational workshops explain how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. For the 2024 tax season starting in January 2025, I’m offering live and pre-recorded workshops for US citizen/resident graduate students and postdocs and non-resident graduate students and postdocs. Would you please reach out to your graduate school, graduate student government, postdoc office, international house, fellowship coordinator, etc. to request that they host one or more of these workshops for you and your peers? I’d love to receive a warm introduction to a potential sponsor this fall so we can hit the ground running in January serving those early bird filers. You can find more information about hosting these workshops at P F f o r P h D s dot com slash tax dash workshops. Please pass that page on to the potential sponsor. Now back to our interview.

Personal Finances as a Professor and as a Business Owner

Emily (19:03): Let’s talk about the money part of this. So compare, you know, your job as a professor, what that paid and what it required of you to what you’re doing now. Like how have your, I’ll say, how have your personal finances changed with this transition? And there’s a lot of transitions in there. You mentioned, you know, multiple children moving across the country. Care, you know, caring for elderly parents. Like there’s a lot in there. So like how has your financial situation changed from when you had that previous position to, to now?

Paulina (19:30): So, um, with editing specifically, uh, so much of how much you can earn is based on how quickly you can edit because there are some editors who charge hourly, but I think that’s sort of on the way out. I think both editors and clients like to charge per word. So, you know, for each project you can give a quote, uh, based on your per word rate, you know about how much you’re gonna make based on your editing speed. The client knows what they’re gonna pay. And so, um, obviously the faster you can work while, you know, being accurate still, uh, the more money you can make. And so I think I am fortunate because I can edit pretty quickly, um, certainly as I’ve gotten more experienced. Um, and so I would say that, you know, my, I was making about $60,000 when I was a, an assistant professor on the tenure track in political science when I left, plus the benefits. And, you know, you, when you have a salary job, they’re contributing to your health insurance and retirement and all that, which you obviously lose when you go freelance. Um, my first year out of my first year of freelance editing, I made about 45,000, and that was working maybe 20 to 25 hours a week. Um, and you know, just kind of trying to figure out the landscape. Uh, my second year I made the same amount, but I took three months off because I had my daughter, uh, and wanted to take time for that. Um, and then within the last few years, it’s just climbed steadily, especially when I started working with private clients. And, you know, you’re not having to, you can charge much more. You’re not giving up those costs to some other company that’s employing you. Um, and this year I’m set to hit six figures. So, uh, and that’s only working about 30 hours a week. So, you know, there are a lot of editors out there who struggle with finding clients, but I’ve, I’ve somehow managed to find this formula that lets me, that has let me build up a client base with referrals and repeat clients and just new people finding me through Google or whatever. Um, and I’ve had a lot of success. And so, you know, I’m, I’m happy to share that with other people, uh, you know, to, to try to help them find their way out of academia.

Emily (21:52): Hmm. So it’s while not, and immediately upon that transition, it’s the business that you’ve built over time, I would say does compensate you well, more than, um, the academic position did, even after accounting for the benefits and so forth. And you’re limiting your work to 30 hours a week as you said, whereas it was whatever, 60, 70, whatever it was when you were in academia. Um, awesome. I’m glad to hear that both the up the upside of more money and less time both together. That’s amazing. Um, so when you volunteered for this interview, you said that you had a message for academics who are unsatisfied with their jobs like you were. So what’s that message?

A Message for Academics Who Are Unsatisfied With Their Jobs

Paulina (22:33): Um, I, if, if I could just talk to every unhappy academic, you know, I would say you don’t have to stay you if you are miserable. And you know what, if you are in academia and you’re happy, that’s fantastic. Uh, that that’s wonderful. But there are so many people out there who are unhappy and they’re terrified to leave for all the reasons we’ve been talking about, and they just feel trapped. And, you know, in the so many people that I’ve talked to in the last several months, um, you can see the anguish in their faces, you know, you hear it in their voices and, and I know exactly what that feels like. The anxiety, the stomach churn, the do I leave? Do I stay, do I leave? Do I stay? Uh, it’s horrible and I don’t want that for anyone, you know? And so if I could, if I could tell anyone who is unhappy, that’s, that’s my message is, you know, if you wanna go into editing, great. I’d love to help you get there. But, uh, no matter what you wanna do, um, you just don’t stay right. Life is too short to, um, life is too short to be unhappy and to not do what you wanna do.

Emily (23:40): Incredible. I absolutely agree. Life is too short. I’m, I’m 39 now, and so I am, I’m not having a midlife crisis, but I’m having a midlife like rethink, like, yeah, this, this is my life. Like, am I happy with the choices that I’ve been making? Most of them, yes, I am very happy. Um, what can I do differently? You know, going forward, what can make this an even better experience for me? Because you only get one life. And so to spend your twenties and your thirties and into your forties, maybe like as you just described, like dreading every day at work. Absolutely. Life is too short. Um, so totally agree. Will you please tell us more about like, well, one, where can, where can people find you if they want to, you know, employ your editing services? And I understand there’s another arm to your business actually, which is like helping other people make this kind of transition. So tell us about all that.

Get in Touch With Dr. Paulina Cossette

Paulina (24:31): Yeah, so for editing, um, my homepage is acadiaediting.com. Um, and you can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, uh, LinkedIn. Um, and that’s, that’s pretty straightforward. If you have an editing project, I usually just ask to see a draft and give a quote and happy to help whether it’s, uh, you know, a dissertation or journal article or even I’ve edited tenure packets and job market letters. Um, and then yeah, this summer I launched a digital course and group coaching program called Becoming an Academic Editor. Uh, we’ve just wrapped our first cohort. Uh, it’s a 12 week program and we’ve started our second cohort, um, so far over 20 people have gone through it. Um, and it basically, I teach you what I did, right? How to start freelance editing, how to build a website, how to find clients, um, and it’s really awesome because of that we do these weekly Zoom calls and you’re just surrounded by people who are just like you, who understand how horrible academia can be and who are ready to get started with, you know, like you were saying with that, that midlife change of, uh, really starting to pursue what makes us happy instead of what we feel like we were supposed to be doing.

Emily (25:52): That sounds incredible. And actually not to like whatever, get content out of your course, but when you described your transition, you left the job first and then you started and you found editing after having, after struggling to find another position. And so I would imagine what you’re teaching people now is, okay, you already have an idea that you might wanna edit. Let’s start that on the side before we quit the big job. Is that right?

Paulina (26:16): There’s honestly, there’s a mix of people. Um, some found me and I had one student who said she was in a therapy appointment and decided she had to leave academia and she went home and googled it and she found my website and enrolled in the course right away. Uh, other people have started editing on their own and are not having success. They’re struggling to find work, and so they find me and, and are able to get some help. Um, other people, yeah, they just wanna make some extra money, you know, they don’t wanna leave their academic job and they like that with freelancing. They can work five or 10 hours a week editing and bring in some extra cash or do it in the summer or whatever. Um, so it’s really, it works no matter what your situation is, as long as you’re a strong writer and you understand academic publishing, then you know, it’s, it’s totally doable for whatever your timing and all that.

Emily (27:10): I love it. Um, I’ll share that. Like I, when I was doing this kind of work, which I did for, I don’t know, maybe three years or so, four years, um, strictly as a, you know, contractor for another company, um, I did it as a side hustle and I started it after I defended as I was starting personal finance for PhDs and it wasn’t bringing in as much money as I wanted to bring in yet. So it was like another, it was truly like for the money, that’s why I was doing it. I didn’t anticipate having a career in this area or anything. Um, but when I started I was like, wow, I could have been doing this earlier, like I could have been doing this during graduate school as a side hustle. Like, um, and I liked that it was within, it was all within kinda my area of expertise and like that was really like nice that I still got to use those skills. Um, so I think at any stage, if you wanna pick it up and whether it’s gonna be a thing on the side or whether it’s gonna be like you are really doing this like for a lot of time and it’s gonna be one of your main sources of income, uh, maybe transitioning on to being your full-time income, like, that’s awesome. So I’m glad that people can find you if they’re curious about this career path.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (28:09): Um, let’s wrap up with the question that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or something completely new.

Paulina (28:22): So, um, so my biggest piece of advice I think is, you know, we all know we’re supposed to save and have a budget and all that stuff, but at some point, if you’re not earning enough money, enough money, you can’t save, right? I, I grew up with a single mom with not very much money at all. And so I know you, you just can’t save if there’s not enough coming in. And so for anybody who is getting their PhD and thinking about going on the job market, absolutely you need to negotiate. Uh, and I think this is especially important for women in particular who, you know, we don’t apply to jobs because we think we don’t, we’re not qualified. Um, whereas men will apply to any job that you know that they feel like they’re extra qualified for, even if they’re not. Um, so apply to jobs when you get an offer. Negotiate, right? Don’t be a don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth and, uh, let them tell you no, right? Like don’t, don’t assume that you’re not gonna get it and then be afraid to ask. Just go for it ’cause you deserve it.

Emily (29:25): Awesome. I love it. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It was delightful talking with you.

Paulina (29:32): Thanks so much, Emily. It’s been fun.

Outtro

Emily (29:44): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Navigating the Career and Financial Transition Out of Academia

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jill Hoffman, a former assistant professor who left academia to become a stay-at-home parent and part-time business owner supporting academic entrepreneurs (including Emily!). Jill recounts how she decided that academia was no longer the best place for her and how she and her husband planned out how to swap roles as the stay-at-home parent and move cross-country to be closer to family. One of the major themes of this episode is how to prepare financially and in your career for transitions. At the end of the interview, Jill gives not only her best financial advice but also her best advice for someone looking to leave academia and someone starting a side business.

Links mentioned in the Episode

Navigating the Career and Financial Transition Out of Academia

Teaser

Jill (00:00): There are different seasons of life. Um, I think this is a season where like the benefits of, of flexibility, um, with our schedule and our time, um, and having a low stress job, um, they greatly outweigh, um, having that second full-time income right now. Um, and I know that it’s just like this period of time, not forever.

Introduction

Emily (00:31): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.

Emily (01:01): This is Season 19, Episode 4, and today my guest is Dr. Jill Hoffman, a former assistant professor who left academia to become a stay-at-home parent and part-time business owner supporting academic entrepreneurs—including me! Jill recounts how she decided that academia was no longer the best place for her and how she and her husband planned out how to swap roles as the stay-at-home parent and move cross-country to be closer to family. One of the major themes of this episode is how to prepare financially and in your career for transitions. At the end of the interview, Jill gives not only her best financial advice but also her best advice for someone looking to leave academia and someone starting a side business.

Emily (01:45): I’m looking for interviewees for Season 20 of this podcast! This is your official invitation to volunteer to be interviewed. I love that on this podcast I get to feature PhDs and PhDs-to-be who are almost exclusively regular people and learn and share their real-life stories and strategies. If it’s been in the back of your mind to volunteer, please go to PFforPhDs.com/podcastvolunteer/ and fill out the quick form, and I’ll be in touch over email. I look forward to interviewing you in the coming months! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s19e4/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Jill Hoffman.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

Emily (02:43): Today’s episode is a really special one because I have joining me today as a guest, Dr. Jill Hoffman. Jill is actually a returning podcast guest. She was originally on season three, episode four, and we’re going to use the interview today to just kind of like catch up financially and what’s been going on in Jill’s life overall, um, in the years since she gave us that prior episode. Um, to give you a tiny preview, Jill was a tenure track faculty member at the time of our last interview, and now she’s not <laugh> and she’s doing other things in her life, um, including working with me, uh, in personal finance for PhDs. So that’s what we’ve been doing together for the last about year and a half. Um, yes. So how did Jill get to this point? <laugh>. Um, Jill, please give us, um, a slightly longer introduction, um, and catch us up to where you were when we had that last interview.

Jill (03:32): Yeah, sure thing. So, um, I got my PhD in 2016 in social work. Um, and I worked as an assistant professor for six years. I quit my job right before or right when I was supposed to go up for tenure, um, which was two years ago, so 2022. Um, and then we moved back across the country to be closer to family from Oregon to Virginia. Um, and now, um, I am mainly a stay at home parent. Um, I’ve got one kid in preschool and one in elementary school, and my husband, uh, works full-time. And as you mentioned, um, we, we work together. I also have my own, um, small business providing virtual assistant services for online business owners, especially, um, academic entrepreneurs.

Financial and Personal Life Updates

Emily (04:14): So exciting. Let’s go all the way back to when you were on the podcast before. We talked a lot about student loans, we talked about public service loan forgiveness. Like let’s just kind of close that story first of all.

Jill (04:25): Yeah. So we have taken a, like student loans are on the, the back, back, back burner, um, right now since that time when we were really focused on student loan debt and kind of like figuring out what to do with it. Um, we, with all of the changes that have been going on with student loans, with like the save plan and um, with the covid pause and all those things, we just kind of said, all right, we’re, we’re not, nothing’s really happening with them at this moment. Um, we’re not doing anything with ’em. I got to a point in my, because I was doing public service loan forgiveness, um, I got to a point where I think I have like a little over a year left, um, and until I could potentially get them my loans forgiven. Um, but it, the trade off between staying in my job, um, and, and leaving it just for me personally, didn’t, the payoff wasn’t as, um, um, good as I thought it would be.

Emily (05:30): Anything else would you like to tell us about, you know, that maybe the time between our last interview and when you decided to leave your job?

Jill (05:37): A lot of things have happened, um, since that time and since kind of that when I decided to leave, two kind of big things happened. We had two like family emergencies that happened, um, since we last talked. So at the end of 2019, my dad unexpectedly passed away, and then my mom, um, had multiple major hospitalizations from like 2019 through 2021. And so those two things happened. Um, and then I had, in terms of like life events, not emergencies, I had another baby in 2021. Um, and so it was shortly after my dad passed away that we kind of were like, we’re too far from family. Um, we wanna move back to the east coast. We were on the West coast and, um, I don’t know that this is the job for me. Um, and so we kind of like used that time to figure out like, what do we, what do we do? ’cause we didn’t move until 2022 and I didn’t quit until 2022. Um, so we had a couple of years to like figure out what we were doing, um, in terms of next job, um, and, and where we were moving.

Emily (06:46): Yeah. I’m so sorry about your dad passing, especially unexpectedly, and I can certainly understand why that would cause you to rethink, um, what, you know, how you’ve set up your life and what you wanna be, um, doing with it. But obviously obvious to everyone who’s listening, like the decision to leave a tenure track job is huge. So tell us more about what was going on job wise that made you think wasn’t really the right job for you.

Jill (07:11): Yeah. I, there were a lot of different aspects to it. I think what it boiled down to was what, that I always felt like you have like the, the research, the teaching, the service, the three aspects of the job. And it felt like each of those could be a full-time job in and of themselves. And I felt like I could never do, um, like to the, like I was doing like a mediocre job at all of ’em, <laugh>, and it never felt like I felt like I was doing something unattainable, I guess. Um, and I was doing well and like, you know, I, um, was, had positive reviews, um, up until that point. Um, it just wasn’t, it didn’t feel meaningful enough for me to, to keep kind of working in a job that didn’t feel meaningful. I guess <laugh>, um, for, for me and the teaching aspect, there was a lot of teaching involved in my role and it wasn’t, that was never, um, why I got into academia. I really enjoyed the research part of it. And so, um, while I enjoyed like working with students, especially like one-on-one, um, and kind of like talking about career plans and things like that, I did not enjoy the teaching aspect and it just was so draining. Just like, I can’t, I can’t do this, um, for the rest of my career.

Emily (08:36): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I remember, um, you had, or maybe still have a blog, right? Hmm. Toddler on the tenure track, and I remember that you, you’re into like time management and productivity and those kinds of things. And so obviously you put effort into your job and like trying to do your job as best you can, and you were intentional about that and you had tools at your disposal and so forth. And it, it’s, it’s very obvious to me that the job let you down, you know, like, you know that not the other way around. Right? Um, do you wanna say anything more about that?

Jill (09:11): Yeah, you know, I think the, the blog, starting the blog, um, was my way of like, trying to make it something that I wanted to do. Like it brought like some fun and meaning and like interest to it for me. And so, um, it was almost like, all right, I’m gonna figure out how to do this job in a way that like, allows me to really enjoy it. Um, ’cause how I’m doing it now is not, is not cutting it, I guess. Um, and so like by, I think just kind of like taking more time to reflect on like what I was doing, how I was doing it through the blog was a like my way of, of trying to figure out like, can I do this? Or is like, is this something that I wanna step away from?

Financially Preparing to Leave Academia

Emily (10:00): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so how did all this work financially, right? Because I also remember from the time of our last interview that I think you had your job but your husband wasn’t working at that time, right? So yeah. Talk about <laugh>, how, how the finances of leaving your position worked.

Jill (10:17): Yeah. Yeah. So this was like, we, um, so my husband was a stay at home dad for, um, pretty much the entire time we were in Oregon, which was about six years. Um, and we kinda slowly made the switch to him working full time and me being at home. When covid hit there were like whispers at my university that faculty might be furloughed a day a week. And I did the math in terms of like what income we would lose and it did not look great <laugh>. Um, and so my husband and I started kicking around the idea of him getting a part-time job, um, to, to boost our income if we needed that. Um, and uh, he ended up getting a, um, remote part-time, um, customer service job with Squarespace, um, that was like incredibly instrumental in helping us get across the country. Um, and just super helpful for making that actually work. Um, and so he started that job in like the fall of 2020. Um, and I can’t remember how many hours a week he was working. It wasn’t a ton, but we would, um, you know, as like most people that time like no childcare, so we would just kind of like switch off. Um, and I did a lot of evening, um, online classes and so, um, I would work in the evening and on the weekend and um, when he wasn’t working during the week, um, and then we’d like switch, um, child childcare or caregiving roles um, when I was done. Was not an ideal, like not an ideal setup. <laugh> as I’m sure lots of people know, um, but we knew it would, would be kind of temporary. I did not, um, end up getting furloughed. Um, so everything that he made, we threw into savings to save up for this move that, like, we weren’t at that time it was like, do I get a job? Do I get another job? Like do I keep my job and do it across the country? Like, what’s gonna happen? Um, but we knew that we likely wouldn’t have an employer paying for our move, so we were saving up for, it’s expensive to move across the country, <laugh>. Um, so we were kind of thinking towards that goal in terms of finances at that time, um, of saving up for this potential move the more like life happened. Um, with my mom being kind of in and out of the hospital and then having a baby and all these things, I was ju- I got so like burnt out and just like exhausted from life that I was like, I just need a break <laugh>, um, from like a, a higher stress career. Um, and so I made that decision to, to step away, um, just to kind of like let myself breathe a little bit, even though there’s like plenty of <laugh>, plenty of stress and all those things that come with caregiving, um, and taking care of family members. But um, not having the added stress of a job on top of that or like a full-time faculty job, um, felt a lot better to me, um, than than trying to stay or to move into another role.

The Two Income Trap

Emily (13:39): We’re going to continue with your story in just a second, but I wanna make an observation. Um, which is that there was this book that I read, actually my husband was assigned this book in college for some class he was taking, I read it afterwards. Uh, it’s called the Two Income Trap and Elizabeth Warren is the author or co-author or something like that. Um, and so it’s about how middle class families fall into what she calls the two income trap, which is we have two full-time jobs between the couple and our lifestyle consumes all of, you know, most all of that income. And so I see in your story, you and your husband intentionally avoiding the two income trap by if ever there was more than a hundred per- Yeah. Let’s say more than, um, one full-time job between the two of you. Like you said, that was going into savings. It was like an intentional like, um, uh, safety plan or like a backup plan, right? To get, have him get that part-time job when you had income uncertainty. And so at the point that one person has to leave a job or chooses to leave a job or whatever, then the other person, that couple can step up, take a full-time job and still be providing completely for the family because you’ve intentionally set your lifestyle so that only one full-time income is needed or something, you know, close to that. Um, so I just wanna make that observation. That’s very unusual actually, it these days. I mean, even since that book was published, it’s become more the case that people fall into and live in the two income trap because cost of living is so high compared to incomes. Um, so I just wanna make that observation and ask you like maybe how intentional that was from the finances side. I certainly understand why you would do it from like a lifestyle perspective, but how about from that financial perspective? ’cause your husband also has at least a master’s degree, right? He’s also like highly educated.

Jill (15:27): Yeah, yeah. He has a master’s degree. Um, I think the, I think when we first decided that he would be a stay at home parent, that was like a, definitely a financial decision there in terms of like childcare is so expensive. Um, and his, he has a master’s degree, but he’s in, um, his background is in counseling. Um, which not to say you can’t have a really high income with a counseling degree, but they’re not necessarily known for like super, super high incomes. Um, and so we figured that like him getting a job when I was working my faculty job, like most of that would be going to childcare, student loans. We don’t- rather him be able to spend, you know, his time with our kid, um, while I’m working, um, than be at a job and, and have our kid in in daycare. I’ve been budgeting for a long time in terms of like looking at what’s coming in, what’s going out. Um, and so we had a good sense for like what we spent in various areas and what we knew obviously what my salary, um, was. And when we moved to Oregon, he didn’t have a job so we were living on just my income and continuing to make it work. And so it stuck. Um, and we like the flexibility that it allows. I think we’ve just gotten so used to that <laugh>, um, that like, I think to have us both working feels like even though financially it would be really helpful, um, from like a logistical perspective, it just feels like, oh, I don’t, I don’t wanna do that. <laugh>.

Emily (17:14): Yeah. I remember thinking when my husband and I bought and moved into our house three years ago, it was the first time we were homeowners that there was just so much work to go around <laugh>. Like he works full-time, I work part-time and we have children and we have a house to take care of. My goodness, what is this? There’s just a lot of work to do and it’s, it is very, very helpful if there’s not in the mix two full-time jobs as well. Right. Um, so let’s pick up back with your story and about, um, you know, gearing up and for that cross-country move.

Financially Preparing to Move Across the Country

Jill (17:46): Yeah, so that, so we moved in 2022 when I, um, when I made the decision that I was not going to look for another job, my husband started talking to people at his work about like, can I, like how can I get to full-time? ’cause we knew that my benefits would not be around forever. Um, and so he was able to move into a full-time position in the, the same role that he was the same like customer service role, um, that he was in. This was like two months before we moved. It was kind of like last minute, last minute switch. Um, it was not, the pay was not great, but it got us benefits and we had a lot in savings. So we knew like we will be okay for a little bit, um, and we can do like a more, um, focused job search when we get to where we’re going if, if needed. Um, he continued to, um, look at open positions within his company and the month we moved, moved into another role with his company, um, higher paying, um, full-time remote position, which is where he is, um, current-, what he does currently. Um, and all of those things like allowed us to make all of this work without having to do too much like of a like major job search and, and um, like taking time off to interview and all these things like it since it was at his, um, employer already. And it was just really, really helpful. <laugh>,

Emily (19:26): Tell me about the cost of living difference between where you are in Oregon and where you live now.

Jill (19:31): Yeah, so in Oregon, um, we were in Portland, which is a high cost of living area. Um, and now we’re in Richmond, Virginia, which I was looking it up, it looks like it’s about average, maybe like a little below average, um, in terms of cost of living. So that was another really helpful move for us. Um, in terms of the house we bought here in Portland would’ve been like way out of our way out of our price range. Um, and so it’s just made some, some things possible that we probably, if we were moving back to like where I’m from in the DC area, I know you’re from there too. Like we wouldn’t have been able to <laugh>, um, buy a house probably at all the income difference. So when I was working as a professor, my highest salary, um, was just under 75,000 for like the 10 months. Um, so not super high. Um, we made it work. Um, and right now our total income is like a little bit above that, like 77,000. So that includes my husband’s salary, my part-time work, and then some interest income. Um, and so we have like roughly the same salary in a lower cost of living area, however, we’ve added one child, um, to our family. And so like we’re not saving anything right now. Um, and we’re not doing anything with student loans, as I mentioned. And I think it’ll probably stay like that until my daughter, my younger daughter is in kindergarten and I can add on like a client or two. Um, but I think like there are different seasons of life. Um, I think this is a season where like the benefits of, of flexibility, um, with our schedule and our time, um, and having a low stress job, um, they really outweigh, um, having that second full-time income right now. Um, and I know that it’s just like this period of time, not forever.

Emily (21:36): I, I think I’ve mentioned to you before, but I’ll say it for the benefit, um, of the listeners who have children or may want to have children in the future. But parenting wise, everything got so much easier. When our youngest got to kindergarten, like I felt like my whole world opened up <laugh> because they’re just so much more independent by that point and being in school and everything. So I can definitely see like just the lifestyle choices that you need to make, you need to make, to get through that like young child period. And like you just said, it’s not gonna last forever. Like things will be different in just a few years. Um, and so you can always make a different career decision. Either one of you can at that point.

Commercial

Emily (22:14): Emily here for a brief interlude. Would you like to learn directly from me on a personal finance topic, such as taxes, budgeting, investing, and goal-setting, each tailored specifically for graduate students and postdocs? I offer workshops on these topics and more in a variety of formats, and I’m now booking for the 2024-2025 academic year. If you would like to bring my content to your institution, would you please recommend me as a speaker or facilitator to your university, graduate school, graduate student association, or postdoc office? My seminars are usually slated as professional development or personal wellness. Ask the potential host to go to PFforPhDs.com/financial-education/ or simply email me at [email protected] to start the process. I really appreciate these recommendations, which are the best way for me to start a conversation with a potential host. The paid work I do with universities and institutes enables me to keep producing this podcast and all my other free resources. Thank you in advance if you decide to issue a recommendation! Now back to our interview.

Starting a Business While Working in Academia

Emily (23:32): Let’s talk now about your business. Like why did you, um, start it? Was it primarily motivated by money or something to do with your time and your brain? Like, tell us how that got started.

Jill (23:44): The business has had like various iterations over the years. So when I was working as a faculty member, like my role was like community manager, um, for another person in the personal finance space, um, Jamila Souffrant with Journey to Launch. Um, and so I got a taste for like entrepreneurship, um, through working with her. I did that for about a year and a half. Um, and since that time I had like tried out a bunch of different things, just like curious about like, oh, there’s all these people making money online. Like it’s opened up a <laugh> whole new world. Um, to me in terms of like what it just broadened, I guess my perspective on making an income, um, and that it doesn’t have to be the traditional jobs that we, um, think of like doctor, lawyer, professor, all these things. So I kind of was playing around with various things. Um, on my way out of my faculty role, I thought perhaps I’d wanna do some like coaching for, um, faculty who are interested in like leaving their jobs. Um, and I used some of my professional development funds, um, to pay for some training, um, in that area ’cause it was like aligned with what I was doing too with students. So I was able to kinda make a case for using money for that, um, or my professional development money for that. But to like run a business, you also need to fund it. I needed more, um, money to like fund the business, um, that I didn’t want to pull from like our personal income. And so, um, as I was kind of thinking about how to do that, um, I think you emailed your list at one point, um, needing, needing support. Um, and this is after I left my my faculty position. You emailed the list, um, needing some support. ’cause you had somebody who had left and I was like, oh, that fits with, um, like what I, you know, the skills that I have, um, interests that I have, um, I’ll apply. And um, so we started working together and kind of since that time I’ve really enjoyed supporting, um, other like small business owners. Um, and I have moved away from the coaching. Um, I did that for a little bit, but really like I enjoy the, the supporting other entrepreneurs. Um, and so, um, right now I work with you and I have one other client, um, just provide-, like it depends on like the needs of the business. A lot of like backend support once my, I thought about adding another client. Um, and I think once my daughter, um, is in kindergarten, I think I’m, I’m setting my sights on, on that time for expansion. But I think right now, like two is a good <laugh> a good number for the amount of time that I have, um, uh, when my daughter is in preschool ’cause it’s not, not many hours a week <laugh>.

Emily (26:38): Yeah. Well this is, um, just a curiosity on my part because I know that the work that I ask of you is very seasonal. Um, so we have a really busy tax season and then less at the other times of year, but sort of variable from week to week and and month to month based on your interest in like productivity and everything like that. Like do you have any, I don’t know if it’s for me, but strategies for people who go through like busier and less busy, like periods <laugh>?

Jill (27:02): I think what I find at least for myself is like really, I think it can be easy to like try and force yourself to use like, uh, you know, whatever task management tool. Um, because other people are using it or like, it, it could be so easy to get into like, well other people are using this and they say it works. Um, I’m just gonna like force myself to do it. I think using what, um, works best for your brain, um, is helpful. So I just had like, I used to use notion a lot, um, which I still love for like my planning, um, and all those things, but I’ve been finding that like just I needed something a lot more simple. Um, and so now I just have like a notebook where I like keep track of things, um, and write things down and check them off. Um, and so I think really like don’t, if something isn’t working, try something else. Like figure out a system that works for you and your brain and that might change depending on like the time of year it is. Um, and, and what you’re doing. Um, but don’t like, feel like you have to force it to make it work. Um, ’cause that just makes it that much harder. <laugh>.

Emily (28:19): Yeah, I’ve been reflecting. So as you know, we use Asana, um, to keep track of tasks and I find that if I get really busy, I need to go outside of Asana and use paper. Um, because in a task management system like that, I mean, I could blame myself too. It’s not necessarily the tool, it’s the way I use the tool. Um, I find that like everything is given so much equal weight <laugh> when they’re all like different check boxes on the screen and I’m like, actually one of these is much, much, much more important than the other ones. And so the paper helps me clarify like, what are my real priorities for the day or the week or whatnot. Um, not just like, what is my task management software telling me to do? Um, and I think I’ve been listening to a lot of Cal Newport recently and reading his books and stuff, and I feel like this is the difference between, I can’t remember what he has, like some kind of name for it, but basically like checklist productivity versus like actual, like getting things that are important done, uh, productivity. So when things get really busy, I have to draw a distinction between those two and focus on, uh, what’s actually important versus what I’m, I’m being told to do by my software <laugh>. Uh, let’s leave with some words of advice then a little bit more advice than I usually ask my guests because the first sort of person I want you to think of is a person who’s considering leaving a tenure track position or maybe even just maybe even before that point, like someone who was going down that route and maybe is deciding to leave graduate school or not pursue a postdoc or just basically step off of the path that they thought they were on. Um, do you have any advice for, for that person considering a major career shift?

Advice for Major Career Shifts

Jill (29:48): I’m thinking about the things that were helpful for me that I did. Um, I think one of the main things was like creating a plan, um, both financially, logistically on what things could look like. Um, when you leave wherever it is you’re at. Um, I had so many spreadsheets, so many like notion databases of just like different iterations of like what me leaving my job could look like and where we would move would look like. Um, and I think obviously this, like, this will change depending on if you’re going into another job. Um, if you’re, you’re taking a break between jobs, if you’re staying at home, if you’re starting a business, um, if you’re moving, um, I think there’s like a lot of different aspects of that that when you create like a, a detailed plan as as detailed as you’re able to get, um, I think those things can become a little bit clearer for you when you have it all out, all out on paper, um, or the screen or wherever. Um, I remember my, when we were in the process of like our move, we would have move meetings like once a week, my husband and I of like, okay, like what are the things, like here’s this big goal, like what are the things we need to do to get it done? Um, that was very helpful. But, um, yeah, so I think those things were like intertwined, um, in, in this process, especially if you’re tenure track faculty, I can’t speak to like being a postdoc, um, and grad school, this might be a little bit difficult. Um, but I think using the resources that are available at your institution to help support you and figuring out what you wanna do next. Um, so I think I mentioned earlier, um, if you have professional development funds to use, is there a skill you wanna build? Um, do you wanna get some career coaching? Um, do some networking at a conference, buy some books. Um, I think using any and all of the resources that are available to you, if you’re able to kind of make a connection to what you’re doing in your job, um, and it’s relevant to what you wanna do next, um, I think it’d be a helpful way to, to find that extra support.

Emily (32:02): Yeah, we’ve heard that advice actually from several other interviewees on the podcast who have made, whether it’s like a grad student, you know, graduating and moving on to something else or a faculty member. I’ve, I’ve heard that numerous times. It’s, it’s kind of amazing that people can make those connections between what they’re doing now and what they think they’re doing next and, and get training that is supportive of both of those roles.

Jill (32:22): Yeah, yeah. Another thing, like another resource, um, I guess that was helpful for me. It was just like I asked so many questions of HR <laugh>, um, and this process just like hypothetical, like if I were to like quit at this point in my contract, like how long will my benefits last? And just kind of getting those logistical pieces that are helpful to know like, okay, my, my husband needs to have his health insurance, um, by this date because mine will no longer be in effect. And if that doesn’t happen, we need to get temporary health insurance and all those things. I think HR can be a really helpful, um, resource, um, if you’re comfortable like talking with them about potentially leaving. So like when my dad died and my mom was hospitalized, um, I was doing all the like estate settlement and then I was considering going back and helping with my mom’s care. Um, and then Covid happened, so didn’t, that didn’t happen, but I talked through with hr, like I think at that point I was kind of considering like, do I wanna quit or do I just need like a, a significant break? And so I talked with HR about like, can I use FMLA to go care for my mom? Like how can I take a break without actually quitting and doing the things I need to do? Um, and I didn’t actually use, um, FMLA for my parents, but did for, um, uh, when my daughter was born. Um, if, um, like family medical stuff is, is, um, any anyone is going through that. Um, I think they’re also a helpful resource to talk through, like what your options are. I think another thing that was so helpful for me is to seek out other people who have done what you’re trying to do, um, and talk to them if possible. I had a lot of Zoom conversations, phone calls, um, just to talk about like how did they, how they made it work, any tips they had. And honestly, just to like, I think when you’re still in the position, it can be, it could feel like impossible. Like, this isn’t ever gonna happen. I’m not gonna be able to find something else, or I’m not gonna be able to make this work. Um, so just seeing o- other people, other examples of, of doing the thing that you wanna do, um, and is so, so helpful. Um, and there are a number of, at least for like leaving academia, um, Facebook groups. Um, if you’re into Facebook, um, Academics say goodbye. The professors out, PhD mamas leaving academia, those were three that I, um, joined and kind of like, um, looked into as I was trying to make that, um, decision. And I think also related to other people like using your network, including family and friends, um, like tell them about what you’re wanting to do. Um, even if they can’t support you directly, they might know somebody who might be able to help you out in some way. Um, whatever it is. And so I think that helped a lot, just kind of like sharing this is what we’re, we’re doing. Um, do you know anyone might that might, um, be able to talk to me about X, y or Z?

Emily (35:36): It’s, it’s not surprising to me that you were able to find so many other examples, um, of people who had left tenure tech positions or those Facebook groups, for example. It’s just a little sad, it’s just a little sad that this profession, people make it their identity so that leaving and they make an academia makes it seem like it’s a one way street, right? You can never get back. It’s a permanent decision. So people put a lot of weight on the decision, right? Um, and yet it’s also such a difficult place to survive <laugh> that a lot of people want to leave <laugh>. Um, it’s not, it’s not everyone’s dream job as it turns out once you’re actually in it. So, um, but that is really, really great. I thank you for mentioning those groups specifically and, and the networking aspect of it. And yeah, there, we’ve had numerous people on the podcast too who have left academia, so I’m pretty sure including Jill, any of those people would be good ones to reach out to. Um, if, uh, you aren’t considering the listeners considering, uh, such a shift. Um, okay. Let’s talk about advice then for another type of person, which is, um, someone who wants to start a business, let’s say on the side, like part-time, the way that you’re doing right now. Um, and they could be at any stage in their career when they wanna do that. Uh, do you have any advice for that person?

Advice for Starting a Part-Time Business

Jill (36:45): Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a lot of the I things that I just shared are, are applicable to, I think also the, the networking and just seeking out other people. There are a lot of people, especially academics who, um, start businesses it seems. Um, and so talking to those people, um, and asking kind of the same, same thing, like how, how did you make this work? Um, or like listening, finding other podcasts that, um, where, where people are talking about kind of these, these types of things. I think too, like if you’re in, especially if you’re in, you’re in a faculty position, like it could be helpful to look at like your university’s policies on having a, um, an outside, outside employment. Um, I know my previous university, because I was in social work, so a lot of people like saw clients outside of, um, outside of our like faculty roles. Um, and so there was definitely language somewhere. I can’t remember exactly what it, what it said, but it essentially like, as long as, if you’re working like during work hours, like no more than eight hours a week or something can go to your, um, like outside business, um, or outside income. Um, and so it’s just making sure that like, honestly no one ever talked to me or asked me about it <laugh>. Um, but I think just so that, you know, um, what the university’s policies are, I think that can be super helpful to, to look into.

Emily (38:19): I noticed something, um, when you were describing the start of your business as well, which was experimentation, um, which I did too. And I think a lot of people who start businesses also do, uh, in terms of like businesses that like make it, maybe they become big or you know, whatever, it’s usually those entrepreneurs like third, fourth, fifth, seventh business, like, it’s usually not the first thing they’ve ever tried and they’ve had either failures in the past or just things they’ve abandoned along the way. And you didn’t necessarily abandon your business, but you just tried different things, different activities, different ways to make a money, different types of clients and figured out what you preferred. And I’ve done that too, even within like personal finance for PhDs, different ways of making money, again, different clients to work with different modalities and like figured out what worked best for me. So don’t, I guess for the listener, like, don’t be surprised <laugh>, if the first thing that you try is not the thing that you end up doing, um, after some time and it’s perfectly natural and, and should be experimented on because you’ll, you’ll find a good fit along the way. Um, it’s not necessarily, even though we were just talking about visioning and planning, like it’s not necessarily that your vision is gonna work out exactly the way that you thought it would from the beginning, but you can get to that point by just taking steps. So just getting started with something is the most, uh, the best thing to do.

Jill (39:30): Absolutely. And you learn so much throughout that journey. Um, I think, yeah, I feel like from where I started, I think I started with doing, um, online, like planning, yearly planning workshops for faculty and, and grad students. Um, and just have learned an incredible amount. <laugh> since those days are just like, oh wow. Like I, this is actually, people are actually paying me to do this. This is, it’s wild. So I think it gives you that confidence and then you learn like what you, like, what you don’t like, and, um, yeah, it’s a journey. <laugh>.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

Emily (40:02): Yes. Um, okay. Well let’s wrap up with my official last advice question, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And that can be something that we’ve touched on in the course of the interview or it can be something completely new.

Jill (40:16): I think knowing exactly what is coming in and what is going out in terms of finances, um, at least for me has been so impactful. Um, knowledge is so powerful, um, especially about your finances. Um, it allows you to make more informed decisions. Um, and I think there’s something about seeing all that data, um, at least for me, it’s really motivating, um, in terms of like, you know, reaching savings goals or like seeing your retirement funds grow or it, I think it’s, it helps you, makes you wanna do it more. Um, at least I, I found that <laugh>, um, and I think like tracking those, like your expenses and income in a way that works for you. I know there’s like a ton of different budgeting apps and tools. I alway- I’ve used a spreadsheet, um, for a long time, um, and have tried out some apps, but just like I can’t, I always come back to the spreadsheet. Um, and so each year I start out with a new spreadsheet. Um, I have a tab for each month that looks at, um, what we spent, what we earned, um, that I’m updating on a weekly basis. And then I also keep track of like, um, savings, retirement, mortgage, student loans, um, on a monthly basis. Um, but that spreadsheet, um, has so much, it’s, it’s interesting to look at over the years and in preparation for this interview, I was looking back from like 2019 to now and it’s wild. Just like all the changes, um, that have gone on financially for us.

Emily (41:53): Yeah. And I think that the tracking, like you said, knowing your numbers, knowing what’s coming, what’s going out, um, enabled you and your husband to make those big financial decisions about jobs and moves and, and where to live and buying and all the things that have happened in the last few years. Um, because I think that people who sometimes people can get so, um, emotionally, um, intimidated by looking at their numbers that they don’t and they, it becomes an avoidant thing and then they become paralyzed and they’re not able to make those like bold decisions to change their lives because they just really don’t know what’s possible. They can’t do the visioning exercises, they can’t do the planning because they’re just not looking at the numbers. And so that’s just the first, the first step is really just to be able to like open that bank account, you know, um, you know, open it, look at the transactions, like look at the balances and everything and it all kind of like flows from there. Um, I was actually just listening to Ramit Sethi’s podcast. Um, I will teach You to Be Rich just earlier today, and the episode I’m listening to as so many of his episodes are the people he was interviewing, the couple, they were telling themselves a story about their money that was absolutely not true once you actually looked at the numbers. And it’s so clarifying to actually look at the numbers and the answers can come from the numbers. You just have to be like, brave enough to face, you know, the data and, uh, yeah. So I’m, I’m really glad to have this story from you, this example of how, um, your finances and your career and everything have all like played together and how you’ve been able to make those big decisions to do what works for you and your family, um, especially during the, the young kids season, the challenging time of life. Um, yes. So thank you so much Jill for volunteering to come on the podcast. It’s been lovely to speak with you, uh, in a different way than we normally meet

Jill (43:31): <laugh>. Yes. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, having me back on the podcast. It was fun.

Emily (43:36): Absolutely.

Outtro

Emily (43:36): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Dr. Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.

This PhD’s Social Mission Pulled Her from Academia into Entrepreneurship

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Rasheda Weaver, the founder of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Rasheda studied and taught social entrepreneurship as a graduate student and faculty member and along the way launched her own social enterprise out of her research and work with social entrepreneurs. As her business grew, she felt pulled toward full-time entrepreneurship and eventually left her faculty position. Rasheda and Emily discuss the financial steps that Rasheda took while still in her full-time job to give herself runway when she went full-time in her business, including opportunities uniquely available inside academia. Rasheda describes her weekly schedule in detail and how much time and money she allows herself to invest in physical and mental health and her growing business. If you are passionate about a social cause, don’t miss this interview—even if you’re not currently pursuing or planning to pursue entrepreneurship!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

S14E6 image: This PhD's Social Mission Pulled Her from Academia into Entrepreneurship

Teaser

00:00 Rasheda: It was just like everything just started to come to a head because I started getting a lot of speaking engagement opportunities that were paying thousands of dollars. And then the Bootcamp was doing well and then, you know, it was just all these different things happening, and I was teaching four classes as an academic. I just felt like I was being pulled in a lot of directions, and I could still do the teaching that I was doing in the classroom for Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. It’s just a different format. Sometimes it’s online, sometimes it’s in person, but it’s the same thing with a lot less stress.

Introduction

00:34 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 14, Episode 6, and today my guest is Dr. Rasheda Weaver, the founder of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Rasheda studied and taught social entrepreneurship as a graduate student and faculty member and along the way launched her own social enterprise out of her research and work with social entrepreneurs. As her business grew, she felt pulled toward full-time entrepreneurship and eventually left her faculty position. Rasheda and I discuss the financial steps that Rasheda took while still in her full-time job to give herself runway when she went full-time in her business, including opportunities uniquely available inside academia. Rasheda describes her weekly schedule in detail and how much time and money she allows herself to invest in physical and mental health and her growing business. If you are passionate about a social cause, don’t miss this interview—even if you’re not currently pursuing or planning to pursue entrepreneurship!

02:00 Emily: We’re within one month of the deadline to file your annual tax return, pay your quarter 1 2023 estimated tax, and finish contributing to your 2022 Roth IRA. If you want some help with two or more of those actions, this is a perfect time to consider joining the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. Within just your first month of membership, you can take my tax return preparation workshop and estimated tax workshop, complete the Open Your First IRA Challenge, and attend our next general discussion and Q&A call to ask your questions directly to me on April 11, 2023. This can be the month that you really get on top of your finances! Again, go to PFforPhDs.community to check out all that you gain access to with the membership… and join us today! You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s14e6/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Rasheda Weaver.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:12 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Rasheda Weaver. She is the founder, creator, owner, CEO of the Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. She’s also a former faculty member. So Rasheda, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. And would you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the audience?

03:30 Rasheda: Yes, it’s my pleasure to join you. Thank you Dr. Roberts for having me! And so my name once again, Dr. Rasheda L. Weaver. And I’m currently the founder and CEO of Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory that I also call WSED. And I’ve been a faculty member for over five years and have taught over 1,000 students globally. I started my career at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont as an assistant professor of community entrepreneurship. And most recently I worked for Iona College for the last four years. And I was their first assistant professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at their Hynes Institute. And that was started with the 15 million grant in 2017. And so I came on and literally I was the only faculty member, so I helped build the teaching, the research, and the whole service programming.

04:15 Emily: Fantastic! And so, our kind of topic today is your journey from academia into entrepreneurship, but it’s so interesting because it’s like your academic topic of social entrepreneurship is also like you’re living it, right? So it’s like a meta thing going on here.

04:29 Rasheda: Absolutely.

Defining Social Entrepreneurship

04:29 Emily: So, can you tell us a little bit more about like what is social entrepreneurship and why do you think that grad students and PhDs should understand this and explore it?

04:38 Rasheda: Yes. So, social entrepreneurship is a process of using business to combat social problems, societal issues like hunger, poverty, inequality, disease. Any kind of major social issue. And it’s really organizations that, a social enterprise is an organization and it can be a nonprofit organization or for-profit, but we’re often seeing a combination of both. So, somebody has a for-profit business that they use to make all this money, and then a nonprofit that they use to funnel the money into different charities or social causes and things like that. And so, I’ve been studying this. It’s a new field, so it’s been around for 40 to 50 years. And my book, Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction, actually comes out December 15th, 2022. And it’s called a Practical Introduction because the majority of the world does not know this term. And it’s really important for graduate students and PhDs, in particular, to know this term because many of us already, if not all of us, have a social issue that we’re very passionate about.

05:39 Rasheda: That’s why many of us become social scientists like the both of us. And when you understand how, you know, entrepreneurship can be utilized to fulfill the same goals that you’re trying to fulfill in as a PhD, but you could actually sustain yourself with it, I think that’s just very, very important for PhDs to understand and graduate students. It also provides an alternative career path for academics that maybe want to pursue entrepreneurship or have a different kind of vision for what they envision their career to be like, or what they envision life to be like. And I’ll talk about that a lot today. And you know, social entrepreneurship just paves the way for us to do that.

06:21 Emily: I’m actually struggling to think of an example of a PhD who maybe would want to start a business where it wasn’t socially motivated, almost like can almost anything fall under this umbrella?

06:33 Rasheda: Yes. But it would have to be positive social change. Because I always say that social change, you know a riot can be social change <laugh>, but it has to be positive, something that uplifts community advances, human and community development. So I would say the majority, if not all PhDs are already working towards some kind of societal change anyway.

Do Solopreneurs Count?

06:53 Emily: Yeah. I’m thinking of myself now. And certainly there’s a, I want to better the lives of graduate students and postdocs and PhDs as like part of the mission for like my business. So, I’m actually wondering a little bit more about the entrepreneurship term within social entrepreneurship. Do I count as like a solopreneur single-person business? Or is it only like enterprises?

07:14 Rasheda: You do! You most definitely count and especially because your mission is to, you know, improve the financial well-being, essentially, of PhDs. And that is very important I think as a PhD, I understand the importance of that, but I think maybe the majority of people might not understand it. But what you’re doing is you’re helping people that are literally contributing to society in a positive manner. Literally building generations upon generations of, you know, future professionals and leaders for our world. And you’re saying let’s take care of yourself financially because finances affect our holistic well-being. It just does.

Starting Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory

07:52 Emily: Absolutely. That’s how I think about the mission of like I and what I do on the financial side of things. It’s like supporting and bolstering and helping all these individual PhDs with all of their dreams and their missions for how to better our world because, and they’re so talented and I just want them to be able to do their work and contribute and like, and of course, the finances being part of that is something that can enable them to, you know, live those dreams out and yeah. So, that’s <laugh> my motivation for being here. Let’s talk a little bit more about your business and how and when did you start that?

08:25 Rasheda: Yeah, so I started Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory in 2018, 1 year after finishing my dissertation. So, my dissertation was the first large-scale study in the United States of social enterprise business models. So, their social mission, how they make money, and what legal structure they incorporate under, so the perfect way to help you design a social enterprise. And I found all this data, and I had literally mapped 1,200 social enterprises across the United States. And so I said, well, this information should be public. And I first just started it as a public database. And so, it’s sort of like an accident that happened that turned out to be now my full-time career because I made the database public. But then I realized in order to have this website and to have the URL and to own the domain and all that, I have to finance that and I was doing it out of my pocket.

09:12 Rasheda: So, I started selling the database in order to cover those expenses. And then once I started seeing what was happening with the people that were using the database, like they’re starting companies that are helping them make six-figure salaries. And I was like, “Wow, okay. Like, I didn’t know that could happen.” And then, so I started doing more, but then other people, entrepreneurs started reaching out to me and saying, “Well, we’re social entrepreneurs. We really need to learn how to make money. Like the database is wonderful.” And that was great for academics and people that know how to use like email databases for business. But the average entrepreneur wanted to know how can I help them with their finances? How can I help them design a social impact model that enables them to maximize the impact they’re having on their local communities? And so, I developed the Ready, Set, Launch Social Enterprise Bootcamp during the pandemic actually because people started reaching out to me. And that’s a five-day online bootcamp. It’ll be in person in 2023. We’re doing it in Italy, but it’s a five-day bootcamp that literally trains entrepreneurs how to design organizations with a strong financial mission as well as a strong social mission.

10:19 Emily: I love to see that progression over those years of like, you turned your dissertation into something useful for the broader community outside of academia. And then you listened to the people who were using it and understood what their needs were and understood how you could take one more step to fulfill those, and then you did it again, and so forth. And I’m sure you’ll keep iterating that way.

10:39 Rasheda: I’m doing it again now with the coaching <Laugh>.

10:41 Emily: Yes, exactly.

10:43 Rasheda: Because after people have taken the Bootcamp, they’re like, well, well some of them just missed me because they missed the Bootcamp. It’s a really good environment, and someone to do coaching. But now they’re asking for a longer program, which is like a monthly training program where entrepreneurs can meet with me and I’ll help them throughout the month and we figure out one task that they’re working on and we’ll work on this throughout the month. Month two, we do another task. And so, they’re coming to me with these issues that they’re having as entrepreneurs, and I’m just delivering solutions, essentially. Which is what social entrepreneurs do. We deliver solutions to social problems,

Transitioning from Faculty to Full-Time Entrepreneur

11:15 Emily: This sounds like so seamless to me <laugh>. But you had another job when you started this. Like, I can feel that like this business was pulling you, “Oh, you can see how your work is being applied and helping all these people and this is wonderful,” but you still had this other job. So like, how did you make this transition, especially financially, from being a faculty member and having this side business to doing the business full-time?

11:37 Rasheda: Yeah, I love that you used the word pulling, because it really was. Because I would be in the classroom and I can see the impact that I’m having on students in the classroom and I love that as well. But at the same time, I remember in spring 2022, it was just like everything just started to come to a head because I started getting a lot of speaking engagement opportunities that were paying thousands of dollars. And then the Bootcamp was doing well and then, you know, it was just all these different things happening. And I was teaching four classes as an academic and then the grading and you know, I love teaching classes, but there’s so much more to academia and the service and being the only faculty member for my institute. I just felt like I was being pulled in a lot of directions, and I could still do the teaching that I was doing in the classroom for Social Enterprise Directory, which is, I’m doing the same thing, it’s just a different format.

12:27 Rasheda: Sometimes it’s online, sometimes it’s in person, but it’s the same thing with a lot less stress. And so, it really was sort of pulling me and then I think, you know the pandemic inspired me to also just like think about life a lot differently. Like, what do I genuinely want? I want peace, I want relaxation, I want financial prosperity. When the pandemic hit, I started saving money like a crazy person. Like I’m like, I don’t know if this is going to be like the next Great Depression. And so, I went from saving like $600 from my paycheck to $800 to sometimes a thousand dollars per paycheck. Just in case something were to happen to my job and I needed to do entrepreneurship full-time. And I started just dreaming a bit more. But then when I realized that, you know, what the pandemic allowed me to do and the pulling that was happening to me at the same time, it just allowed me to sort of push me into maybe what’s really my destiny. Because I always actually wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I went into academia hoping to do more research. And like I said, I was teaching four classes, so there’s not a lot of research happening there. I was still able to maintain it, but I was losing myself as an individual in the process.

13:36 Emily: Yeah. Wow. Okay. I actually want to back up a tiny bit and like, before you left your full-time position, you know, we’re in the midst of the pandemic, so it’s a strange time already. You mentioned you upped your savings because you were concerned about financial security as so many people were at that time and still are <laugh>. So, were there any other steps that you feel like are worth mentioning in terms of how you really got the business off the ground in scaling up and so forth that you did financially while you still had your full-time job?

14:04 Rasheda: Oh yes. A lot of this happened during my first year on the tenure track when I was at the University of Vermont. So, they had a really great startup package and well, I was able to negotiate that, so you have to negotiate your startup package. I think you should be very, very strategic about how you do that. And I negotiated one that was very you know, it just directly aligned with me taking steps to further my dissertation research. And I planned a whole social enterprise day party where I invited scholars and social entrepreneurs from all around the country to come help celebrate the introduction of Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory. Not at that time realizing that it would’ve been a business idea, just an output of my research and a resource to my field. And I think that’s so, so important because we’re not just academics.

14:49 Rasheda: We are a part of a whole entire field as academics and that we can contribute in so many more ways than we realize. And so, I never just thought of myself as, you know, I’m going to use this startup package and it’s just going to fund what I do at the University of Vermont. I thought about it in terms of the bigger field overall. Because this is a journey, a life journey, and I’m committed to the field for life essentially. Also, one thing I took advantage of different funding opportunities. So, a lot of campuses now will actually have entrepreneurship funding for faculty. And I’m seeing this more and more. And University of Vermont had developed a program like that. And so, I was able to literally use some of that funding to commercialize Weaver’s Social Enterprise Directory.

15:34 Emily: That’s fantastic! And definitely, I mean it’s so great to think about academia as like an incubator. I mean, sometimes it’s literally they have like incubators for small businesses, but you were able to use your position as a faculty member and your access to these resources to sort of incubate your own business. And I love what you’re saying about like the continuity here between yourself, your business. Like you weren’t thinking of yourself as just a faculty member, you’re thinking about yourself as a contributor to this field and you’re still doing that. It’s just, you have a slightly different title in the way that you’re doing it. And so, it does make sense to me that investing in you and your business is still in alignment with that phase of what you were doing inside academia. Does that make sense?

16:17 Rasheda: Absolutely. Yeah.

16:18 Emily: Yeah. So, I still see alignment there. Is there anything else that you want to share with us? You know, we’re talking about these steps that you took prior to leaving your full-time job. Anything else you want to share with us about this transition from full-time academia with the side business to that full-time business owner?

Understanding Root Causes of Issues

16:34 Rasheda: Absolutely. I think one of the things that all PhDs have in common is that we are really adept at studying the root causes of why issues occur, right? We’re studying, in order to do our dissertation, we have to look at the history of the problem that we’re trying to address in our dissertation or the question that we’re trying to answer. That is the same thing all entrepreneurs do, social or not. Because they have to find a problem, and they have to develop a solution. But what PhDs do differently is, we find the deep root cause and the history of that problem. And because we’ve done that, once you’re trained in entrepreneurship, you can see the holes that exist in the market and you can fill them. All you need is entrepreneurial training to fill them. Because you already have the understanding of the problem, you have a better understanding than the majority of the planet has. And so, I just want to empower you to really understand that.

17:24 Emily: Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And can you talk a little bit more about how that applied to your business and your journey?

17:29 Rasheda: Yes, because I could see those problems so clearly, and I always saw, you know, entrepreneurship, it’s not like the field of psychology, for example, where psychology is the mind. It’s something that you can’t really touch. I’m working with entrepreneurs, or nonprofit organizations, or any organization. And so, my work directly has an impact on someone else. And so, I can work with them and I can learn from them and talk to them and apply my work to them. And because I can do that, what it’s taught me was how do I communicate with those people? Not just communicate with journals, not just communicate with the research audience, but how do I communicate? Like I started doing policy briefs through the Scholar Strategy Network, an organization that any PhD can join. And so, they talk to civic groups, they teach, they train you in how to talk to policymakers. So, I literally started doing that and getting my work out into the community. So, that’s how, actually, social entrepreneurs found me <laugh> because they saw my work in newspapers and in policy briefs and in magazines and on YouTube. And they found me and said, “Well, we like that you’re doing this, but this is what we need.” And so, I was able to then develop the solutions for them.

Scheduling Paid and Unpaid Business Work

18:36 Emily: This is reminding me of a need that I’ve sort of started sensing in my own business and for myself which is that I want to do more advocacy work. And I am now trying to see how I can set up my business so that I have time in my schedule to do advocacy work that is not necessarily going to be paid. I’m anticipating that being unpaid, but I still think it’s an important part of like my mission. So how, and I think as like sometimes I feel a little, I don’t know if you ever do as well, jealous of people who have like a salary <laugh>, like a full-time position where like maybe they can take some time to do things that are definitely unpaid on their own because they have this holistic sort of safety net for themselves within their salary.

19:20 Emily: And I’m sort of thinking to myself, how do I do that for me within my business? How do I cover, you know, 20% of my time that’s going to be unpaid by the 80% that I have for paid work? Or whatever the case. And so yeah, I’m just, I think that you are demonstrating how you did this as well, right? Starting as a faculty member. And you’re probably still doing it now as an entrepreneur, right? So like, preserve time within your schedule for things that are going to be unpaid because they further the overall mission of the business slash your own life mission as it relates to work.

19:50 Rasheda: I’m so happy you asked me this question, it actually skips to another question that you had when you gave me the outline. But I dedicate now two days a week just to learning how to make money. So, learning about how to make money and how to grow money. How do I advance multiple, so if you see my vision board from January, 2022, it has all the different streams of income that I have coming in. And so, what I’m doing now that I don’t have a full-time position is I’m using those two days to just figure out how do I multiply the streams of income that I already have. Because if I didn’t, if I hadn’t done that, it would’ve been very hard to leave my job. And so, when things started, you know, getting chaotic and I decided this is not the route that I want to take, and actually if I do go back to academia, it has to be a position that I love and I’m going to thrive in.

20:39 Rasheda: It’s not going to just be any position. I’m not going to just take any job. And so, I wanted to set myself up for success in order to make that a reality. And the reality of doing that is having a solid financial base. And so, literally, taking Mondays and Wednesdays, the same days I had off in academia, because I worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I kept those same days. Those are when I do my business stuff, create products, promote things. But Mondays and Wednesdays I’m reading books on estate planning, on investing profit first. You know, I’m reading Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach and The Latte Factor, all those different things, just learning how to make money because, here’s the truth. And I love this book, The Psychology of Money, that I just finished reading the other day.

21:24 Rasheda: You cannot always, when you’re working for somebody else, there’s a cap on how much you can make. In entrepreneurship, there is no cap. You can make a limitless amount of money. So, what your job as an entrepreneur to do, and this is what I teach in my Bootcamp, you have to figure out how you can get to limitless <laugh>. You know what I mean? And so, there’s a lot of investment that happens. And like, with me putting aside an emergency fund for these couple of years, what I was doing with that was saying, “I’m buying myself time just to learn.” And that is something I talk about a lot in my book. I talk about patient capital. My emergency fund gave me patient capital as opposed to waiting for somebody else to give it to me. I decided to take this time, I gave myself a whole year. We’re just going to learn, and we’re going to implement things. We’re going to test them over time, and we’re going to make certain investments. Like I invested in a book marketing company because if I want to sell books, that’s, you know, being strategic about those investments. And so, yeah.

22:23 Emily: This is something that I did not understand very well when I started my business. I was so focused on making money immediately, that I didn’t give myself the runway that you did and all these wonderful steps you’ve been taking. And I hope the listeners are taking notes about this. I didn’t do the investment in myself and growing in all these like entrepreneurial sort of related ways that you’ve just been discussing. It took me years into this journey before I started making those investments. And then obviously seeing like the returns from it. But it’s just something that now when I talk with other sort of budding like solopreneurs or people who are interested in my journey, I tell them like, be taught either like in a community or buy a coach, or read books. Like you have to make the investment in yourself, like you said, to be able to grow to that level. Because if you stay stuck in the cycle of like, I have to, you know, have 35 billable hours per week to like make my, you know, the nut that I need to survive on, that’s not any way to grow into the future. You may be able to survive on that, but it’s not a path to growth within your business. So, I’m so glad that you said that. It’s such an important message.

Commercial

23:37 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my tax resources, many of which I have updated for tax year 2022. On that page you will find free podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. The absolute most comprehensive and highest quality resources, however, are my asynchronous tax workshops. I’m offering four tax return preparation workshops for tax year 2022, one each for grad students who are U.S. citizens or residents, postdocs who are U.S. citizens or residents, postbacs who are U.S. citizens or residents, and grad students and postdocs who are nonresidents. Those tax return preparation workshops are in addition to my estimated tax workshop for grad student, postdoc, and postbac fellows who are U.S. citizens or residents.

24:52 Emily: My preferred method for enrolling you in one of these workshops is to find a sponsor at your university or institute. Typically, that sponsor is a graduate school, graduate student association, postdoc office, postdoc association, or an individual school or department. I would very much appreciate you recommending one or more of these workshops to a potential sponsor. If that doesn’t work out, I do sell these workshops to individuals, but I think it’s always worth trying to get it into your hands for free or a subsidized cost. Again, you can find all of these free and paid resources, including a page you can send to a potential workshop sponsor, linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.

Investing in Yourself and in Your Business

25:37 Emily: Can you give any other examples of how you’ve been doing this investing in yourself slash in your business for present and future growth?

25:47 Rasheda: Absolutely. So, I always say you need time and space for creativity. And so, I have the days, the two days where I’m working on just learning and learning how to invest and then implementing that and then the two days where I’m working and then Fridays are my self-care day. So, I invested in a health coach because I need to be healthy to make great decisions. Like, I’m so serious about this, like I literally eat blueberries because it’s good for your memory and as an academic you need to have a good memory <laugh>. So, that’s how serious I am. You need to have carrots, I hate carrots, but you have to eat carrots because they give you good eyesight and we need things like that in order to read. So, that’s like how serious I am. And I hired a health coach, not because, because I also have a ton of health books, not because I need someone to you know, I can’t do this myself, but you do need accountability.

26:30 Rasheda: You do need guidance. And so, one of my friends, for example, she runs a company called, an eight-figure company, called The Product Boss, where she trains females that have a product to turn their businesses into six- and seven-figure businesses. And so, I started investing in, I appeared on her podcast and then I invested in her social media kit because you can always learn something from someone else. So, I’m investing in myself in a variety of different ways, and I set aside two years. Year one, we’re going to learn a lot and we’re going to implement, we’re going to test and see what works and we’re going to track it, because we’re academics and we’re good at tracking things. And then in year two, I should start to see the flourishing. I’m already seeing the revenue coming in, but I’m reinvesting that into growing the organization.

27:16 Rasheda: And so, when I make a sale, I’m not thinking, “Oh, let me get excited and just sell this.” I do treat myself, but I also you know, I call it being scrappy. Like I started shopping less at Whole Foods and started shopping more at Trader Joe’s and having a budget around those things so I can invest more in my business because one day I’ll be able to make a lot of money and it won’t even matter if I spent, you know, do you know what I mean? Like it’s short-term sacrifices for long-term gain, deferred gratification. And that is what we’ve all done in our PhD programs, but now we have to apply it to entrepreneurship.

27:50 Emily: That’s such a great point of, I sometimes think about the sort of, I guess personality or characteristics that you develop in the course of doing a PhD that are going to very well apply to, it could be your career that’s more conventional afterwards or if it’s entrepreneurship. It’s such a proving ground and you’re going to learn a lot and you’re going to be different when you come out from the PhD. And those skills, those soft skills as well as hard skills can be applied in so many different ways. Now, just because you are on the topic of like your weekly schedule and so forth and I love hearing that rhythm. Can you share with us anything more about how your life looks today and how it’s similar or different from your life as a faculty member?

28:30 Rasheda: I think the most important thing that I noticed, like I feel so good, and like I’m healthier. I’m just not stressed. <Laugh> I don’t have that stress on me and being in academia can be very toxic, and we all know that. Anyone that has a PhD knows that, because we went through a toxic experience getting it. And it was a beautiful experience because it allowed us to become who we are today, but it has severe psychological and physical and medical effects on you. And I think the most important thing that I’m seeing now. And also I think the most important thing I did was be honest about that. Because that’s another reason why I had to get a health coach, right? So, going through this and it’s a holistic health coach as well, so I can talk to her about these things.

29:12 Rasheda: Like yes, I was under a ton of stress last year. How do I heal my body from that stress? You know? So just taking walks in nature, drinking bone broth, like little things like that. And I just, I dedicate less time to work. I don’t work more, I work smarter. I work not harder. I work smarter. It’s like I said, learning how to make more money. Scheduling. I’m having two days for a week where I’m doing deep work in my business and allowing that to just sit so I don’t stress myself out, because understanding that stress isn’t going to help me. And then spending more time with my kids and doing things that I love, like doing art and I want to get back into dancing again. That’s one of the things that, but I have to find somebody that does dancing classes of the day. That’s the hardest thing <laugh>. But things like that. And just making sure I just take care of myself and do things that I love. I think that’s very important.

Time Management and Slow FI Movement

30:02 Emily: I’m a little curious about your time management right now, because I can already see you’ve blocked off what I’ve learned are called theme days, like you said. You know, you have your days of investment in yourself and your business and you have your days of producing you know, saleable work, and you have your day for health and so forth. I wonder, are you tracking your hours and almost like do you see actually even a distinction between the hours you spend working and the hours in your personal life? Or are they all, like the investment in yourself could go either way, right? I don’t know. What do you think about this?

30:33 Rasheda: I do think, I do track my hours now. I had to learn to say no. Like if I can’t, so when my kids get home around 2:30, I just, I can’t work with them home. It becomes stressful. That makes me stressed out and so I have to do everything before two. And so, yeah, in a way it’s like a limit to my hours and I do everything between 10 and two because making time for yoga in the morning <laugh> and making time to take a walk around the blocks, I can get fresh air. That’s just become really, really important. And that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship is that I can choose to do that. And so, once again, I might be making a little less money now. Because here’s the truth, with the kind of organization that I’m running, I literally could make [inaudible] in a year.

31:18 Rasheda: Like, I’ve literally done the math, I’ve started working with government officials and all these things, but I don’t need to do that right now. I need to get my health on track and my family and have a great familial and health foundation so that I can grow later. So, I’m making the sacrifice now, but I know that that’s coming because, one, I’m an entrepreneurship professor, so I know how to do this <laugh>. I’ve literally trained people and I’ve studied it, and it’s like, it’s working. It’s literally working. People are buying the products, people are buying the books. And so, it’s just a matter of scaling that and through investing in myself and learning how to do that in a way that doesn’t deplete me, but in a way that nourishes me. So I can do what I love, but I’m also you know, I’m not sacrificing my health and wellness in the process. Because when I was an academic, I was, I had to, there were sometimes you just, you have deadlines, you have to get, you have to get your slides ready for class, you have to grade by a certain time.

32:09 Rasheda: There’s just all that adrenaline. And like I said, I was the only faculty member teaching four classes. So that was hard. Because if you’re teaching even one class, you know that after you’ve done that you’re just exhausted. It takes a lot of mental and physical energy to do that. And you have to be very alert and you’re just exhausted after one. So, imagine doing four in two days. And it works if you have to do it five days a week or four days a week because what I’ve found is that you need a day off. You need that break day to just help you recuperate from the physical, physical demand of that. But because my programs are online, it just, it takes care of itself, you know? So like when you mentioned a certain amount of billable hours, I don’t have that.

32:49 Rasheda: So, most of my meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays are meeting with people to do things like this, podcasting because I’ve already either developed my programs or I can just dedicate those days to developing online programs that are then there. And then I can create the schedule of the live programs or live talks that I want to do. And I can say “yes” and I can say “no” to whichever opportunity. It’s just all about priorities. So for someone, so for example, if somebody’s single and they have no kids, they can do a lot more than me at this time. And I would say use that as a great opportunity because that’s the benefit of being, you know, a solo, completely solo, like genuinely solo entrepreneur. But if you have kids and you know, I feel like they help me keep my balance, my family. And fortunately I did, I actually had my son while I was an academic while I was in my PhD program. So, I’ve always had to take weekends off and had to sort of navigate around that because I still have to be a mom, you know.

33:43 Emily: Your entire description through this episode of like the synergy between your academic life and your business and what you feel is your life’s mission and then how you arrange your schedule and the investments in yourself and your health and all these things. I don’t know how much you’ve explored, you obviously mentioned earlier you’ve read numerous personal finance books, but the whole like FIRE movement, right? Financial independence and retirement early, there’s a component of that. There’s like a subset which is called Slow FI and maybe you’ve encountered this concept, so like you are going to get to financial independence eventually, like you talked about, okay, well eventually I can build my business. Right now I have a different goal, which is, you know, in this other area. The Slow FI movement is like, make your life awesome right now.

34:25 Emily: And yes, eventually you’ll get to financial independence early retirement, but it almost doesn’t even matter because you’re living such a fabulous life. There’s almost no like end point to like this goal, right? And that set to me just sounds like the life you’re setting up right now of working, you know, part-time doing also investment in yourself and your health and having this wonderful time with your family. There are a lot of parallels of that in my own life. I also only work like four to five hours per weekday because that’s the schedule that allows me to spend a lot of time with my kids when they get home from school. And it’s just, it’s more balanced. I feel like working eight hours a day, yeah, maybe I had the energy of that in my twenties. I don’t anymore. Anyway, so I just.

35:03 Rasheda: And it’s also the stage, the stage of life that we’re in. Like my daughter is three and my son is seven and she’ll be four. And like I just made up my mind and said I have to do Slow FI because I’m very, I love the FIRE movement, but I have to do it slowly right now to still do what I love because that’s nourishing in a different kind of way. And also making money to support the family. But at the same time, I don’t want to miss these moments. So, because money isn’t everything, right? So like I said, I could make, I projected I could make [inaudible] a year like easily. But I want to be here for my daughter. I want to be here for my kids. I want to cook for them. I want to you know, have a thriving romantic life, you know what I mean? Like go on dates and all those things. I love that, and that matters to me. And go on vacations and all that stuff. And so, you know sacrifice in some areas. Well, here’s what I say. I always say, “What I can’t do now, I can do later.” <Laugh>, you know? I won’t do what I can’t do, but what I can do, I will do.

Where Can Listeners Find You?

36:02 Emily: Rasheda, this has been such an invigorating conversation. It’s been so lovely to meet you. I have two more questions for you. The first one is, if anyone else is as excited as I am about this conversation and wants to follow up more with you, where can they find you?

36:14 Rasheda: So, my website is rashedaweaver.com and also my Instagram is @rashedaweaver_PhD. And I’m also on LinkedIn. And that’s been fun. If you sign up for my newsletter, I’m starting a newsletter called Weaver’s Review starting January, so you’ll be able to have updates on me but also updates on social entrepreneurship in general, the field, funding opportunities, employment opportunities, and information about my boot camps and training programs. That’ll all be, you know, we’re going to really be doing that in the next year.

36:46 Emily: Yeah. And mention one more time, I think you said you have a book that’s just about to come out. We’re recording this in December, 2022. So, it’s about to come out, right?

36:53 Rasheda: It comes out exactly one week from today. It’s called Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction. And the main question that I ask in the book is, if I teach good people how to make money, will they do more good with it? And so you definitely want to get that book because it’s all about entrepreneurship and exactly what we’re talking about. How do you create an organization that allows you to do good for yourself as well as good for your community?

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

37:15 Emily: Fantastic! Okay, Rasheda, the last question that I ask all of my guests is, what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on already in the interview or it could be something completely new.

37:29 Rasheda: My best financial advice is that there’s no greater investment in life that you can make than the investment in yourself. So just like I had that emergency fund, I also called it a dream fund. And so, putting money aside, even if you don’t know exactly what you are you going to use it for, emergencies always happen. So, it’s better to have an emergency be annoying than for it to be catastrophic. And so for me, you know, when I became unhappy with my career in academia working there, I just, I was able to just easily transition into entrepreneurship because I had that fund already set up because I was investing in myself even when I didn’t know what the investment really was, <laugh>. And so, I think you should really do that and that’s a holistic investment as well because your health, your wellness, your family, your romance, all that matters into making you the best individual that you’re going to be in. But that all takes investment.

38:23 Emily: Well, Rasheda, thank you so much for volunteering to come on the podcast. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you!

38:29 Rasheda: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to be on the podcast, and I’m so happy to get to know you now. I hope to be back and share more!

38:35 Emily: Sounds great!

Outtro

38:41 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

This Prof Is Taking Deliberate Steps Toward Self-Employment

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Leslie Wang, an associate professor of Sociology at UMass Boston. Over the last several years, Leslie has become a certified life coach and secured her niche as a coach for academic women publishing their first book. They discuss how Leslie manages what are essentially two full-time jobs on top of becoming a new parent during the pandemic and how she is using the revenue her business generates. Leslie speaks openly about her plans to take a leave of absence later in 2022 to try out coaching full-time so that she can finally decide whether to stay in academia or pursue her business.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Leslie: I wanted to leave when I knew that what I was leaving for was much more compelling to me than trying to escape where I was at. I haven’t had that chance yet to a hundred percent devote myself to this. So that’ll start in May when my classes are over, and then I can really test it out, like fly the coop and just see what kind of happens, and still give myself some time to make a decision.

Introduction

00:29 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 10, and today my guest is Dr. Leslie Wang, an associate professor of Sociology at UMass Boston. Over the last several years, Leslie has become a certified life coach and secured her niche as a coach for academic women publishing their first book. We discuss how Leslie manages what are essentially two full-time jobs on top of becoming a new parent during the pandemic and how she is using the revenue her business generates. Leslie speaks openly about her plans to take a leave of absence later in 2022 to try out coaching full-time so that she can finally decide whether to stay in academia or pursue her business. I am requesting your help with something. I’ve developed a new program for prospective graduate students titled Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School. It’s a year-long interactive workshop that gives prospective graduate students the tools they need to understand their funding offers, select a financially supportive PhD program, and navigate the financial transition into graduate school. If you’re a regular podcast listener, you’ve probably heard me mention some free live webinars under this title that I piloted this spring.

01:57 Emily: I believe that many of the financial pain points of graduate school could be alleviated or eliminated by helping prospective graduate students develop a realistic financial picture of what their life in graduate school will be like if they choose a specific program. I also believe that PhD programs will take notice when prospective PhD students negotiate their stipends and benefits or decline their offers of admission citing insufficient financial support. If the programs receive the message that the financial support of graduate students is vital to their academic and personal success from yet another source, that can only benefit current graduate students. If you like this idea and wish that you had been given access to such a workshop when you were applying to and interviewing for graduate school, would you please recommend the workshop to an appropriate host? I primarily have McNair programs in mind as sponsors for the workshop, but I’m sure there are other appropriate programs at the undergraduate or postbaccalaureate levels. If you were part of a McNair program or other similar professional development or fellowship program, I would really appreciate you recommending that the director of that program check out this workshop at PFforPhDs.com/prospectiveworkshop/. Please cc me if you do email them so that I can pick up the conversation. Thank you very much! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Leslie Wang.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:38 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Leslie Wang. She is an associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston, and on the side, she is a certified life coach working with academics. So, I’m really excited to hear about this, you know, balancing the full-time job with the side hustle and how the finances work out with that. So, Leslie, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. Will you please introduce yourself a little bit further to the listeners?

04:01 Leslie: Of course! First of all, Emily, thank you so much for having me on. Again, my name’s Leslie and I am an associate professor of sociology at UMass Boston. I received my PhD in sociology from University of California Berkeley in 2010. After that, I moved to Vancouver for two years to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia. After that, I moved to Michigan for a year where I did one year of a tenure-track position at Grand Valley State University. And then since 2013, I’ve been at UMass Boston. And then, so in terms of my research, I am a feminist qualitative researcher who studies issues related to families and work and migration between China and the United States. And so, I’ve published two books with university presses. The first one is called Outsourced Children: Orphanage Care and Adoption in Globalizing China. That was based on my dissertation, and it was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. And then last year in 2021, I published my second book, which is called Chasing the American Dream in China: Chinese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland, and that was published by Rutgers University Press. And then I’ve also been a certified professional life coach since 2019.

Becoming a Life Coach

05:19 Emily: Alright. So, you have the academic chops for sure. Congratulations on your promotion to associate professor! And I want to hear more about the life coaching, because that’s what sets you a little bit apart. So, why did you start down that route of becoming a life coach?

05:36 Leslie: So, I decided to pursue a nine-month intensive life coach training and certification program in 2018. And so at the time, I was going up for tenure, you know, as I mentioned, I had moved three times in four years for this job. And by then I was feeling really burnt out. I felt really overworked. I felt like I didn’t have any boundaries with my job. And I also was tired of working in a fairly dysfunctional, emotionally unsupportive environment. And so, I was initially going to wait until after I got tenure to start my training. And that was always in my head, like, let me just put everything on hold until after tenure.

06:18 Emily: That’s familiar.

06:18 Leslie: Right, right. I attended a weekend-long coaching training program, and this was in Los Angeles. And I just felt so drawn to the work. I felt like there was an immediate impact that I had in making the world better that I hadn’t felt from the kinds of academic work that I had done before.

06:39 Leslie: And I realized I was looking for that feeling all the time through my research and my teaching, but I got it through coaching instead. And so, I changed all of my plans and I signed up for this program. And, you know, it took place in LA, and I was living in Boston. So, I flew back every six weeks for almost a year, and this was pre-pandemic, so all the trainings were in person. And so, you know, my goal as a coach was actually really trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my own career. It was totally like self-focused to start with. I was really unclear whether the problems I was facing and the unhappiness that I was feeling could be solved by moving to another faculty position, or whether I would be happier potentially outside of academia, which is not something I had ever considered before. And I just really needed to figure that out. And I can say now that I’m confident that I will be happier outside of academia. I’m moving towards making that happen in the next year or so, as we can talk about. But you know, that’s essentially why I started down that path, and then I’ve stayed with it because it’s really, really fulfilling. It’s been extremely satisfying and a really interesting new challenge.

Finding a Niche as a Writing Coach

07:54 Emily: Life coaching is quite general, but I understand you have a focus within that broader category. So, what kind of coaching do you do?

08:02 Leslie: So, now I am a writing coach and I work specifically with women scholars who are publishing their first book. And so it’s become very narrow. But it took me a while to get to this point. So I’ve been coaching now for three or four years, and I started out by coaching, like, I think everyone does this, but coaching anyone who would be coached by me. So this could be my friends, my colleagues, their partners. I coached women. I coached men. I coached you know, grad students, postdocs, faculty members, just to get a sense of like just the coaching itself and how does this feel and let me develop my own own style as a coach in the way that you do when you become a teacher. It’s like, you don’t exactly know the first time you walk into a classroom, what your style is going to be, how you’re going to react to things.

08:50 Leslie: So, I just had to build up that skillset. And then over time, I came to realize that if I really wanted to make this a go, so move it from a side hustle into being like an actual career, I really did need to focus on something. Because general life coaching at this point is so common. You know, everyone’s a coach, and you don’t actually need to be certified to be a coach. And I think it’s great that there are so many folks out there that want to help other people. And there are a lot of people looking for help. But in order to have like a message that lands with people, it needed to be more about an issue that I could help them solve that was more tangible than like live a happier life. Because that is really the goal, I think, of all life coaching, but having the goal of like let’s work together to help you create a sustainable writing habit and create an empowered mindset and be able to take the reins of your career and become comfortable being visible and getting your ideas out into the world and changing the world with your ideas.

09:57 Leslie: All of that ended up being easier to package into something when it was around book writing, which I had done already myself. And therefore, I can say like, Hey, this is my experience. I suffered a lot during that because I was so alone. And let me help you not have to go through those things, make it faster and easier. And then in the process you can live a happier life.

10:23 Emily: I think that niche makes, well, first of all, nicheing down, I’m obviously a fan because I have the nicheiest niche ever <laugh> of, you know, grad students and postdocs and early-career PhDs talking about finances, in particular. So, I’m all in favor of nicheing down. And this is an obvious one that has a connection to your current career. So, if you do end up leaving your current position, or whatever, for this side hustle becoming the full-time thing, it’s a little side-step. It’s not like this massive upheaval in your entire career.

Balance and Boundaries

10:51 Emily: So, you mentioned that you, you know, started down the certification route in 2018 and you were experimenting at first, and then you found your niche. Currently, how are you balancing the demands of your full-time position with this side hustle that’s growing into maybe its own full-time thing?

11:07 Leslie: I have to say, it’s not easy. I am essentially working two jobs at the same time. And so, it was fine for a while when, well, so if I back up a little bit, I had to stop coaching for all of 2020, because I had a baby early in the year, and then COVID hit. And so, that time happened to coincide with my sabbatical, but basically, the whole year was eaten up by childcare. That’s what I did. And so I was not working on the business. It was kind of like, I was just thinking and processing. I was listening to podcasts like yours, and I was thinking, you know, what are the next viable steps after I returned to my job, which I did last September. And so, juggling them, you know, teaching and doing faculty work in the time of COVID is hard.

11:59 Leslie: It’s much harder, I would say, coming back in the middle of the pandemic than before. And my life changed completely in the middle of that too. And so, for now I am juggling two jobs, and it is really about you know, can I practice what I preach in terms of what I work with my clients on: setting really strong boundaries, figuring out the things that, you know, inspire me versus drain me, and trying to say no to everything that drains me, if possible. That still doesn’t compromise the quality of my students’ learning, or I still want to fulfill all of the obligations of my job in terms of being a good colleague. But there’s a lot of gray area in there that, if you’re not really strong with your boundaries, you end up taking on more and more and more to the point where you are completely burnt out.

12:56 Leslie: And so, if I did that and I had the coaching, then I would be burning out twice sort of <laugh>. So, I’ve just been like, you know, with my job, like these are the hours I’m working my job. These are the committees I’m on. I know exactly how much time all of those things are going to need. And then there are certain things that I’ve stopped doing because I realized that I didn’t enjoy them all along. So, things that I felt like I had to do, like for example, present at conferences. I attended every conference. I never even questioned it. Except for the fact that when I got there, I didn’t enjoy them that much, especially when there were like 4,000 people milling around. And so, things like that, I’m like, I don’t have to do those things if I don’t want to. So, it’s more about asking myself, like, what do I want to do? And then I can take on more coaching because that’s what I want to do. But it’s definitely not easy, especially when you’re juggling parenthood.

13:55 Emily: I think this is a theme that often comes up when people start a side hustle and/or become a parent, or just have some other thing going on in their life that’s very demanding of their time and energy that they want to be demanding of it, right? They want to devote their time and energy over to that side. It does force you to create better boundaries in your full-time job instead of just saying, “Oh, my entire self is being given over to this job and take, take, take take, take everything you possibly can.” So, it sounds really healthy, although it’s a lot of work, obviously for you, he parenthood and the essentially two full-time jobs. I can definitely see how, and this applies for people in positions other than yours as well, that being forced to create those boundaries is ultimately a really healthy thing to do in all of these different spheres of your life. Is that how you feel about it?

14:42 Leslie: I completely agree. And one thing I was going to add is that I have stopped getting involved in any politics. So, any of the departmental and institutional drama that I used to get really sucked into, out of choice, really, because I was curious and it’s like, what’s going on? And how do I help fix this? And I realize like some of these issues, they are so systemic. I’m not going to be able to change them, especially in the time that I have left. And so, that’s part of it too, is when it comes to, I think more about energy than about time. And my energy, I’m not spending on the things that I used to worry about as much. So, that’s really helpful when you do have actually less time to work with.

Setting Boundaries and Saying No

15:28 Emily: I think that’s probably a lesson we’ve all learned during the pandemic where, suddenly, your time is very, very differently allocated. Maybe you’re not commuting or other things like this, but the energy becomes the key thing of how much can I really devote to this, that, or the other? And I have to, you know, allocate my resources carefully. Do you mind giving an example or two of some like specific boundaries you have with your full-time job? Whether it’s time or energy or, I mean, you already listed I’ve dropped certain kinds of non-required commitments, but do you have any other examples of boundaries?

15:57 Leslie: Sure. I mean, at this point, my schedule books out pretty far in advance. And so, there’s only so much I’m going to take on in a day. So for example, when there are some committee assignments and they want to throw on a meeting in like the next day or like a few days from that, I just say, no. I already have commitments. Even if there’s nothing actually over that time, it was time that I was going to use to decompress or to commute or, right? So, instead of like being like, “Okay, well I’m commuting, let me throw on this call.” I realize, unless it’s like something that I’m in charge of and they really need my input, it’s okay for me to say no. Especially when there’s like five or six people on this committee. And so, these things happen all the time. And normally I would say yes, but I also feel like, you know, people have to respect that folks have a lot of things filling up their schedules, and sometimes you just can’t make it.

16:59 Emily: I think this is another common like pandemic lesson, right? Like you literally cannot schedule me in Zoom calls all day long every day because I will not get any work done, period. So just, you can’t have it happen. You have to block out. I don’t know if you’re actually using time blocking, but you have to block out time in your schedule for these other things that have to fit into your life. So, I love that example.

Commercial

17:20 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to PFforPhDs.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

Financial Side of Having a Coaching Business

18:25 Emily: Let’s turn to the financial side of having this business. How are you using, if you are, the income that you’re generating from it?

18:34 Leslie: Yeah. So, let’s see. I think last year I was coaching only from about May to December because that’s when we got childcare. In that time, I earned about $40,000 from coaching, and all of that went right back into the business. All of it. So, the big things were paying for a business coach who I worked with for half a year to develop an entire huge plan for how I was going to turn this into a full-time sustainable career. Let’s see, I hired a website designer to go along with it. Professional photoshoot. I was also part of a 12-month-long, let’s see, business kind of development program that was sort of like a coaching program. So, that took a chunk. And then all the costs that go along with starting and maintaining a podcast. So, I’ve been like starting my own podcast that hasn’t launched yet.

19:35 Leslie: So, there was a whole financial side of that as well as like the time that it takes to learn all of those skills. So, pretty much everything is back into the business. And you know, somewhere, I heard that advice of, you know, the first $75K of your coaching business should go back into the business. And I’m pretty much kind of following that. But I do think that that investment, when I was ready to make it, because it wasn’t at the very beginning, it was once I felt like, “Okay, I do know what I want to do with this, but I need help doing that,” that was a really good time for me to invest.

20:11 Emily: And I think this points out one of the real advantages of launching a business while maintaining your full-time position. Because your personal budget does not, if you want to take some of that money home into your personal budget, you have the option to, but if you don’t and like you, you want to reinvest essentially 100% of it, you have that flexibility in your personal finances to be able to, you know, the business is funding itself at the beginning and you don’t need to draw a salary from it right away. I have to say, I took completely the opposite approach when I started my business of like, this is my income and I am very reticent to spend any money like on the business. And that’s something I’ve had to unlearn over these years. It’s something I’ve had to like pry out of my brain, this like frugal nature. It is very different when you’re running a business versus running your own household how you choose to manage the finances. So, I’m really interested, you know, to hear about your journey initially. Now you mentioned that was for 2021. What is 2022 shaping up to look like for the financials? Like are you going to start taking any of that income home?

21:13 Leslie: I would say I pretty much have started. Yeah, I’m probably projecting that I would make around 65 to 80 this year. I am going to take a leave of absence this fall. So I won’t have, you know, I’ll have half of my faculty income. And so, basically, I have been slowly easing my way out. I wanted to get to a point where I felt like the risk did not feel like such a huge risk anymore. Like, I had proven to myself that I had a sustainable, profitable business. And also that I wouldn’t have regrets in leaving tenure and leaving, really a job that a lot of people would die to have. And I fully, fully recognize the privilege that I have, you know, come into through my entire career. And that said, I feel still very drawn to having even more flexibility and having even more autonomy and freedom and all of the things that I value so much about academia, I can have even more of once I’m running my own business. But I had to get to a point where I felt confident enough that I could do this. It’s not going to affect my family’s, you know, wellbeing in any way. And so, that’s why it’s taken me a few years.

Making a Final Decision Whether to Leave Academia

22:41 Emily: I really think that, given the particular job that you have, the risk is mostly not financial. It’s mostly the I’m going to leave this position and it’s, I don’t know what you put your personal likelihood on it, but the ethos is you can never get another job like this again, right? Once you’ve gotten the job, you can’t leave the job. And you can tell me if you think that’s actually going to be true for you, if you ever decide to change your mind again. But I’m curious about how you see this plan like playing out, if you’re comfortable discussing it. You’re planning on going on a leave of absence. You mentioned that’ll be at half-salary, so still a little more runway being provided to you. That’s great. At what point will you decide, okay, I am going to go back to this academic job full-time, or Nope, I’m officially out and I’m done and I’m a coach now?

23:29 Leslie: I need to decide by the end of this year.

23:33 Emily: Okay. So you have basically, like the fall semester, essentially, is your leave of absence.

23:36 Leslie: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> I think that would be the fairest to my department as well. I don’t want leave them in the lurch. And it’s also not even about my position anymore. It’s more, I wanted to leave when I knew that what I was leaving for was much more compelling to me than trying to escape where I was at. It took me a while to get to that place, but now I’m definitely feeling that, but I’m still in the job. So, I haven’t had that chance yet to a hundred percent devote myself to this. So that’ll start in May when my classes are over. And then I can really like test it out, like, you know, fly the coop and just see what kind of happens, and still give myself some time to make a decision.

24:24 Emily: That is so fantastic. I mean, I’m sure it’s based on, you know, your particular position in academia, but I would say that academia generally, once you get to your level does provide these opportunities for flexibility in a way that other kinds of jobs wouldn’t, right? You just have to quit the job. Like that’s it, there’s no leave of absence. There’s no negotiating, you’re done with the job. And I love what you said about, you know, wanting to make sure that what you’re going to is more compelling than just merely the feeling of, I need to escape where I am right now. Because that’s something that comes up in the FIRE movement, the Financial Independence and Early Retirement movement. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it in the personal finance space.

25:01 Leslie: Mm-Hmm <Affirmative> Yeah, a little bit.

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE Movement)

25:03 Emily: So, for the listener, the idea is, you know, especially for the retire early aspect of FIRE, this would be retiring very early, like when you’re 30 or 40 or 50, much, much sooner than the typical retirement age. And a lot of people who join this movement feel very fueled by getting out of their current job. And they think that the way out is to retire early. To just, I’m going to generate this big enough nest egg to give me financial freedom, and then I never have to work this job again. But now that there’s been, I don’t know, 10 or 20 years of early retirees, the wisdom coming back from them is don’t make it about the current job, find a job that you love and it’s maybe worth it to stay a few years longer. Maybe if you took a pay cut or something, but find work that’s compelling to you. You can still pursue the early retirement, but don’t make it about escaping from your current reality. Find a job along the meantime that’s a little bit more fulfilling than the one that, you know, you’re trying to escape from. So, I really love that you pointed that out and that you’re just taking such slow, gradual like deliberate steps toward this, because it is a big deal to leave this kind of a job.

26:03 Leslie: It’s a big deal emotionally, I think, for academics to leave academia, and to still, I’m fortunate to be in a position where it’s a choice, where I don’t feel forced out. And that’s extremely empowering. But also that’s work that I had to do in my own mind around feeling that it was a choice and feeling like I had other options and creating other options, too. So, I think that there’s a lot of grieving that goes along with giving up something that you have invested decades of your life into, your identity is fully intertwined, with your social networks are probably very much dependent on, and especially, you know, we, in our PhD programs, we’re socialized into thinking that the tenure-track position is the way. Like, that’s your way to happiness. And so, that’s why I feel like I did all of the things that I wanted to do.

27:02 Leslie: You know, publishing and getting a job and then getting tenure. I did all of these things so that I could know for myself, like, are these the things that will actually make me happy? And realizing, not so much. It didn’t feel that different. Like once these things happened, like I’m glad I did them. Glad for the experience. And then I also realized that if I really ground myself in my core values, like those weren’t really the things in the first place that I was really inspired by. So, you know, now I’m in a position where I can make a new choice. And that feels really scary. And I think getting used to that fear and still moving forward anyway, is a big part of the work.

27:47 Emily: I think this is such an important message for the listeners to hear if they are still somewhere on this academic track. Grad school, postdoc, first position, you know, as an assistant professor, et cetera, et cetera. It’s okay to reevaluate. You don’t have to accept the messages that academia tells you that this is the perfect position that everybody wants and everybody’s going for. It’s okay to evaluate your own self and figure out anywhere along the way, if something else will be more fulfilling for you. And like you, they can do this slowly and gradually and make sure that it’s the right decision. That’s okay. Or if it’s not your personality, you can do it abruptly, too. Nothing wrong with that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

28:26 Emily: This has been such a wonderful conversation, Leslie. I’m sure there are going to be some people who want to follow up with you. Can you tell us where the listeners can find you?

28:33 Leslie: Yes. So my business is called Your Words Unleashed, and that is my website. So YourWordsUnleashed.com, and my podcast has the same name.

28:43 Emily: Perfect. And we’ll end with the last question that I ask of all my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And this can be something that we touched on during the interview, or it could be something completely new.

28:57 Leslie: So, great. I have a couple of suggestions. So, the first thing, people probably hear this all the time, but in terms of tangible things that I’m really glad I did was I hired a financial advisor right when I got my job. And so, it has been this major mental relief to have someone else on my team who just knows a lot more than I do <laugh> about finances and can give me advice or even, you know, sometimes just tell me what to do. It took this huge mental load off of me. So, when I first hired my advisor, her name is Inga Timmerman and she is actually an academic herself. And she specializes in working with academics. So that was important for me. But when I hired her, you know, I was 35, I was single, I had just moved to Boston.

29:47 Leslie: I had almost no savings. I was really afraid to confront my financial future. I had just been sort of ignoring it until I got a job. And so, you know, we looked at my finances together. So, it made it less scary. Rearranged some investments, increased my retirement contributions, and once we did that, like I knew that my financial future was safe. And so, that in itself is like worth every penny. And she’s also helped me figure out all the next steps. So, in the time that I’ve worked with her, I got married, I had a child, she’s helped me plan out next steps with my business. And so, it’s like having, she’s like a friend who just knows a huge amount about what I should do with my finances. And she understands academia. And so, that has been one really great thing. So, hiring a financial advisor.

30:40 Leslie: The other thing I would say is a bit more abstract, and it comes out of my coaching work. And so, I really encourage people to sit down, reflect, and identify your top five core values. And so, these are qualities that make you feel inspired and motivated, and if they’re not present in your life or you’re not sort of living into them, then something feels off to you. And so, you know, my advice is, you know, make sure your career decisions are always in line with these values. And this is the first exercise I do with all of my clients. And people are always surprised at what comes up as their core values. I think oftentimes we think we know what they are, and then you ask people really what they are. And they have like 40 things. It’s not really like the corest of the core values.

31:32 Leslie: And so, I would consider this to be financial advice because our career decisions are ultimately financial decisions. And having core values as your guide means that you have an internal compass and a way to make decisions that is separate from externally imposed criteria of success that is given to us by academic culture, or by our advisors or, you know, people we see like succeeding in all these ways that are prescribed, right? And we feel like we need to be that way in order to be successful. And so, you know, I think when you’re really grounded in your values, you can feel like you’re choosing your own path rather than feeling like you’re limited to doing only one type of work in one type of setting. And so, really, I just feel like for me, like always being acquainted with my values has let me see other possible avenues.

32:33 Leslie: You know, where I have been able to use my skillset, do work that I care about very deeply while also making a better living <laugh> and being happier, you know, than if I was to stay where I was. And so, I say all of this because I’ve gone through a huge mental and emotional transition to get to this point, and I’ve come through it knowing that I can actually become more fulfilled and more successful running my own business. And that is not something I ever would’ve thought, you know, even five years ago, let alone when I started this journey when I was 24. So, that’s basically financial advice as well as some coaching advice.

33:19 Emily: It’s excellent. And it’s the foundation of financial planning, financial considerations, should be, as you just mentioned, identification of your core values. And it’s something that gets overlooked. I overlook it quite a bit as well because it’s not very like tactical. It’s not like use this app or, you know, something really that you can put your hands around like that, but it’s something that has to be done. It’s the baseline work that you really need to work through to, as you said, have a fulfilled life. And career and finances are very closely tied together in this respect. But you can have, and once you identify those core values, you can see how they play out in your career. You can adjust your career if necessary. You can see how they play out in your finances. And of course, just your adjust your finances to better, you know, be in alignment with those. Because then you’ll really feel like you’re using your money optimally and not, you know, wasting it here or there and not getting value from those dollars.

34:14 Leslie: Yeah. And I think what’s really interesting is that, for so many of my clients, their core values are things like fun and peace <laugh>, calm, self-care. And they’re like, how does that work into work? And it’s like, actually, we can find ways to pull those qualities into your work life so that you can feel, if you’re prioritizing those things, then you’re going to eliminate some things, you’re going to increase other things. And then hopefully be happier and more financially successful along the way, right? It’s always just about like, because you’re attuned to yourself.

34:51 Emily: I have a feeling that the values that you just mentioned, you have at least one of those based on the boundaries that you have mentioned earlier, setting with your work. Because I can see how those boundaries have created that in your own work life. Well, Leslie it has been such a pleasure to speak with you. I really hope the listeners got a ton out of this episode, because I know that I have. It was great to meet you and thank you so much for coming on the podcast!

35:12 Leslie: Thank you so much for having me! It’s been a lot of fun.

Outtro

35:20 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance…but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

Financial Advice for Prospective PhD Students

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In this episode, Emily shared the financial advice for prospective and rising graduate students that she collected from current graduate students and PhDs. This financial advice can be applied all the way from when you are reading a grad school offer letter to when you’re matriculating into your PhD program. The topics covered include evaluating cost of living, side hustling prior to or during grad school, saving up cash, purchasing a home, and investing.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

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Teaser

00:00 Courtney: I really highly recommend using Emily’s savings bucket strategy throughout grad school to cover irregular expenses. About halfway through grad school, I started using the savings bucket strategy, which helped me feel a lot less stressed about money and my finances because when large expenses came up, I had a plan in place.

Introduction

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 5, and today I’m sharing with you the financial advice for prospective and rising graduate students that I have collected from current graduate students and PhDs. This financial advice can be applied all the way from when you are reading a grad school offer letter to when you’re matriculating into your PhD program. The topics covered include evaluating cost of living, side hustling prior to or during grad school, saving up cash, purchasing a home, and investing. This episode is kind of a sequel to Season 5 Episode 2, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Choose a PhD Program That Will Support Your Personal and Professional Development. That episode was also designed for prospective graduate students and included advice from invited contributors on finances, grad student unions, professional development, mental health, and work-life balance.

01:28 Emily: If you’re already in or beyond grad school, would you please share this episode and/or the previous one so that it can reach its target audience? I’m sure once you listen through it, you will agree with me that the advice is invaluable. If you planning to start a PhD program in 2022 and would like to learn even more about the financial side of this process, I invite you to attend a couple of upcoming free webinars, part of my series Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School. The March webinar is for prospective graduate students, and you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/. The April webinar is for rising graduate students, and you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/rising/. If you’re not sure what I mean by prospective vs. rising, listen through the remainder of this episode. I hope that you will join me for these webinars. I will show you how to start graduate school on the right financial foot.

Do You Even Need to Go to Grad School?

02:33 Emily: The advice in this section is for prospective PhD students, by which I mean people who have already applied to programs and perhaps received some acceptances and/or started interviewing, but who have not yet committed to a program. We’ll start with the advice collected from your fellow graduate students and PhDs.

02:53 Emily: Our first topic is do you even need to go to grad school? And this is the advice from Elyse K: “Figure out if a PhD is absolutely necessary to do what you want to do, and only go if it is absolutely necessary. It is worth delaying school to be absolutely sure–don’t get a PhD to figure out what you want to do! This is financial advice because there is a substantial opportunity cost to going to school full time for 4-6 years–even if you have a full stipend and tuition waiver you would probably make more working full time. If a PhD it isn’t going to serve you after you graduate, you’ll be financially better off without it.”

03:37 Emily: This advice from Elyse K is spot on, and it is something that you must listen to as a prospective PhD student, even if it’s unpleasant, because you’ve already committed a lot to this process of getting into a PhD program, I’m sure. Not just the application cycle, but the years leading up to that. But don’t be trapped by the sunk cost fallacy. It’s only going to get worse and worse if you enroll in graduate school and it’s not the right path for you. So as Elyse says, and I agree, be absolutely sure that the PhD is the right thing for your career, the right thing for your personal life and that this is the right time for it. Much better to bail now than halfway through a program or even all the way through your program if you realize that it wasn’t the right choice for you. If you want to hear more discussion of the financial opportunity cost of getting a PhD, please listen to my interview with Dr. Jen Polk from season seven, episode 14.

Reading Your Offer Letter

04:37 Emily: Our next topic is on reading your offer letter, your funding offer letter, from a graduate program, and Elyse K again says: “Don’t go into debt for a PhD. Find a program that will pay you or save up and cash flow school.” Again, I totally agree with Elyse. I am very hard pressed to think of a field in which you would get a PhD, but not be paid to it. Very difficult to come up with that. So of course, almost certainly you’re going to be receiving offers of funding along with your offers of admission. But to put a little bit more nuance on Elyse’s point, just because someone is offering you full funding, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t incur debt by going into that PhD program, because the offer of funding might not be high enough or consistent enough to keep you out of student loan debt, or alternatively having to side hustle. So I want you to really keep your eyes wide open when it comes to evaluating whether this program will actually keep you out of debt. Next up, we have a clip submitted from Shana.

05:42 Shana: Hello, Personal Finance for PhDs community. My name is Shana Slebioda, and I’m a staff member at a research university who works with graduate students. My advice for rising PhD students is to ask about summer financial support. Summer support packages may be different from during the academic year, especially if your support comes mainly from being a teaching assistant, also known as a TA. If your funding letter does not contain specifics about the summer months, be sure to ask. Talk to a faculty or staff member in your prospective program to get additional information. You can also talk to current students in the program to find out how they spend their summers. Do this early. Your first summer session will be there before you know it. And good luck.

06:36 Emily: This is absolutely vital advice from Shana. And again, I completely agree. Your offer letter, ideally, should tell you how you’ll be funded for the entire first 12 months of your program. So, if it doesn’t include details about your summer, as Shana said, you need to inquire about it. Both from, you know, the DGS [Director of Graduate Studies] or whoever’s offering you the funding package, and also with current graduate students to find out how funding typically works in the summer, or if it’s funded at all. But I want to extend this advice to say that it’s also very important to get an idea of your entire funding path through the PhD. Not just through the first summer, but your second year, your third year, fourth year, and all of the summers as well. Your program might or may not be able to give you super specifics about your situation. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t, but that’s where current graduate students come in very handy because they will tell you what from their experience and what they’ve observed among their peers about how people are funded or not throughout their time in the PhD program.

Evaluating Cost of Living

07:37 Emily: Our next topic is on evaluating cost of living for, I would say all of the programs that you are seriously considering attending. Julia’s advice is: “Ask current students about living expenses and estimate your budget. In some cities, to rent an apartment you might need to pay three to four months worth of rent upfront (first and last month of rent, broker fees, security deposit). You might need to consider having a roommate.” Again, the advice to talk to current graduate students is the best. They are going to be the people best positioned to give you the picture of how finances are working on the ground in this PhD program.

08:14 Emily: And I love the specificity of how much you might be asked to put up to rent an apartment. This is very, very city-dependent. I’m guessing Julia may live in Boston or New York. Certainly there may be other cities that operate the same way, but yes, it can be very expensive to get into your first apartment. In some cases, up to four months of expenses, in some cases less, it’s just going to be really city dependent. So it’s something you need to investigate possibly before you commit to a program, but definitely at the point that you do commit to a program.

08:44 Emily: We also have some advice from Ben: “You can pretty much have a successful research career anywhere you end up. So don’t let thoughts about potential research advisors overshadow comparisons of cost of living and stipend when considering programs.” I wish that I had heard this advice from Ben when I was in this phase of being a prospective PhD student, because I absolutely number one was picking my program based off of the potential research that I could do there. The advisor that I would have, the resources that the program had at its disposal, these kinds of things. So I was really not giving any thought to finances or other personal considerations that I now know are very, very important to have you know, in the mix in your decision-making.

09:29 Emily: And so I now definitely agree with Ben that yes, the research considerations are very important, but so is understanding what your lifestyle is going to be financially during your time in graduate school. And so are a lot of other things you might call personal factors. So they all should have a place. And don’t forget that your finances and these other personal factors will affect how successful you are in your program. So these are not, you know, disconnected from one another. If you are super stressed about money, or if you have to go into debt or side hustle, it’s going to affect how well you perform in your research career and potentially how long it takes you to graduate. So, as I said, all the factors should go into the mix.

Working Before or During Grad School

10:13 Emily: Our next topic is on working, either in this period of time between now and when you matriculate or after you matriculate. Our first piece of advice is from Gillian Hayes: “Work as much as you can in paid positions before returning to graduate school to save money to bridge the difficult times during the PhD. You may also make connections that will allow you to do side hustles or internships during your program.” Coming into graduate school with cash savings sets you up as best as possible to have a strong financial position. When I think about people who start graduate school without cash savings, or maybe even with, you know, incurring some credit card debt because of those moving expenses, you’re sort of thrown onto your back foot financially, like you’re off balance.

11:03 Emily: It’s not a strong position to start in. And of course it’s necessary in many cases, but I like Gillian’s advice. I agree with it. If at all possible, work before getting into that PhD program to generate cash savings so that you have money for moving, so that you have money for start up expenses. And so that you don’t have financial stress at the same time you’re trying to get started in your program. I also totally agree with her that working certain kinds of jobs will help you in your career that you’re trying to pursue during your PhD, and things like internships and side hustles can be part of that. If you’d like to hear more from Gillian, and I know you would, you can listen to her full interview in season six, episode six.

11:45 Emily: And here’s some advice from Nell: “Consider having another job. When I went to grad school, I went part-time with my previous full-time job. I’ve done it during school for 4 years now. I’ve noticed among my friends and colleagues that it’s the grad students who have second jobs who seem happier and mentally healthier, and have less trouble meeting their deadlines and keeping grad school anxiety in perspective. Obviously, you should keep monitoring yourself to see if it’s sustainable or the right choice for you. I have moments where I feel overwhelmed. But I have a lot less anxiety about grad school since it’s not my entire professional identity and I’m not taking a huge pay cut to be here. I see people who have never held another job applying for academic jobs and facing the possibility that they will not get anything permanent or well-compensated, even though they are excellent at what they do. They don’t know how to pivot and are doubting all their choices. It’s not their fault; it’s the market. But I see having a second job as a hedge against the kind of personal and financial crisis that comes in those circumstances.”

12:46 Emily: I think it’s really going to depend on your program and your field, whether holding a concurrent second part-time job is feasible, and also of course your personal responsibilities as well. So it seems to be working for Nell. And of course, she has great advice by saying keep monitoring yourself to see if it’s sustainable. So I don’t know if like a full like part-time job, like 20 hours a week or something is going to be right for everyone. But I do agree with her that it does lessen anxiety related to graduate school when it’s not, as she said, her whole professional identity or even identity generally. And so I do think it’s really healthy to have a side hustle or some kinds of side pursuits during your time in graduate school, because it does give you a break from all of your focus on your PhD.

13:33 Emily: It may give you another source of income, which can help with financial stability. So there are lots of positives to it. The drawbacks being of course, the time management aspects, the energy management aspects. So, you have to know yourself in this respect, but I do think it’s well worth considering. So if you have currently a full-time job that it’s possible to keep working for that employer part-time, either on still an employee basis or maybe a contractor basis, I think that’s worth having a conversation, it’s worth a tryout, of course, given that it would be allowed by your graduate program. Now, some graduate programs do bar outside work or outside work of a certain type or above a certain hourly commitment. So you have to be careful about that, but I do like the suggestion. And alternatively, if you’re not in a full-time job that you would, you know, consider taking with you in some capacity into graduate school, the next suggestion is to develop some kind of side hustle during these months between now and when you matriculate that you’ll be able to take with you into graduate school.

Emily’s Best Advice for Prospective PhD Students

14:28 Emily: My best advice for prospective PhD students is to 1) interrogate your offer letter, and 2) compare your actual salary to the local cost of living. What I mean by interrogate is that there’s a set of about a half-dozen financial questions that you need to have answers to regarding your funding package to fully understand what your finances will look like during your PhD program. One example is how much of what is listed as your stipend in your offer letter will you pay in tuition, fees, and/or your health insurance premium. You need to subtract those mandatory fees from your stipend to see what you’ll actually be paid before taxes. If your offer letter doesn’t provide all the answers, you’ll need to ask the questions of the program’s administrative staff.

15:12 Emily: However, the absolute stipend numbers are not the whole picture. Obviously, $30,000 is going to go a lot further in West Lafayette, Indiana than Seattle, Washington. You need a way to normalize the stipend to the local cost of living. The first-pass way that I suggest you do this is to use the numbers in the Living Wage Database from MIT at livingwage.mit.edu. You can divide each stipend by the local living wage to get an idea of how much purchasing power the stipend will actually provide.

15:48 Emily: I suggest making a spreadsheet to keep track of all these factors, and in fact I will provide such a spreadsheet in my upcoming Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School webinar for prospective graduate students. In this webinar, I’ll expand on what I stated above and cover additional timely topics, including one that is almost taboo in academia. The webinar is free and you can find more information and how to sign up at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/.

Commercial

16:19 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients. It would be my pleasure to help you save you time and potentially money this tax season, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Cash Savings for Rising PhD Students

17:35 Emily: The advice in this section is for rising PhD students, by which I mean, people who have committed to attending a particular PhD program, but have not yet matriculated. We’ll start with the advice collected from your fellow graduate students and PhDs. Our first topic is the necessity of cash savings. Our first piece of advice is from Elyse K: “Adjust your budget now to your stipend income and save up to make sure you have a substantial emergency fund (more on the 6 months of expenses side than 3 months). Many universities only offer students crappy or expensive healthcare plans. Hopefully, you are healthy over the next four-to-six years, but knowing you can cover a high insurance out-of-pocket maximum without additional debt is comforting.” This is definitely great advice, especially if you’re currently working and living on a salary that’s higher after adjusting for cost of living than the stipend that you will be on in just a few months. So, it’s great advice. Live on that future stipend and save everything you can in between now and then. I also love that she points out the importance of having an emergency fund and yeah, knowing your insurance benefits. So knowing what your deductible is, what your co-insurance responsibilities are. You can find out this information now to start preparing. Next, we have a clip from Courtney.

18:57 Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney, and last year I graduated with my PhD in microbiology. My biggest piece of financial advice for grad school is to set up an automatic transfer after you get your stipend payment to a separate savings account for paying taxes if you do not get income taxes withheld from your paycheck, which I know many graduate fellowships do not. This way, the money is already allocated when it comes time to pay quarterly estimated taxes, or when you file taxes in the spring. And jumping off of that, I really highly recommend using Emily’s savings bucket strategy throughout grad school to cover irregular expenses, such as large purchases, maybe medical deductible payments, or friends’ weddings. Also, it’s important to save for an emergency fund, maybe a pet fund if you have a pet, and planning for fun thing as well, such as vacations. About halfway through grad school, I started using this savings bucket strategy, which helped me feel a lot less stressed about money and my finances because when large expenses came up, I had a plan in place. I used this strategy to save for a month’s worth of living expenses to cover a month gap in between when I finished my PhD and when I started my new position, and I also was able to save up for a vacation to celebrate my graduation and really treat myself after completing my PhD.”

20:34 Emily: I love that Courtney gave us these specific examples of how targeted savings buckets can be used. For her, it was paying her taxes and also saving up to cover an income lapse and saving up for a vacation. I love that she said it made her less stressed. If you’d like to learn more about this savings bucket strategy, I devoted a whole podcast episode to it. It’s season seven, episode 15: How to Solve the Problem of Irregular Expenses. It goes beyond just having an emergency fund to preparing through saving for other large irregular expenses like taxes, like having to buy flights, like having to replace your computer or buy furniture or any other large purchases you might have to make. Specifically on the topic of taxes, it’s very important for you to know sometime before you matriculate that it’s pretty likely that at some during graduate school, you are going to be funded through a source of what I call awarded income. It might be called a fellowship or a training grant or a scholarship or some other kind of award that pays your stipend.

21:38 Emily: And if that is the case, most universities will not withhold income tax on your behalf the way they do for employees. You may be an employee at other points in your graduate career, like having an assistantship. But if you’re ever not an employee, then that income tax withholding may not be offered to you. And if that is the case, you will be responsible for making your own tax payments manually, whether that’s up to four times per year through the estimated tax system, or in one lump sum when you file your tax return each spring. So as Courtney said, it’s really important to save up for those tax bills. I like to call it, setting up a system of self-withholding. So you’re sort of simulating the withholding that would be done by an employer if you had one by doing, as she said, these auto-transfers. Every time you receive a paycheck, set up an automatic transfer to go into your designated tax savings account for an appropriate amount of money. If you’d like more detail about how to do these calculations around taxes or the system of self-withholding, I have a whole workshop devoted to it, which you can find at PFforPhDs.com/QETax, that’s for quarterly estimated tax. And this is something that I wish every matriculating graduate student was told during orientation that estimated tax is your responsibility, potentially, if you are on one of these non-W-2, non-employee sources of income.

23:03 Emily: And our final piece of advice regarding cash savings is from Julia: “Try to save even a little bit and put the money away for savings and/or retirement investments. Learning about investing can be overwhelming, but you can start with passive investing in a couple of general ETFs (e.g., tracking S&P 500 and international stocks for diversification) and learn more as you go. To avoid overwhelm, allocate fixed time slots to learn about finance, e.g., 1 hour per week. Eventually, you’ll become more comfortable.” I mean, of course, I totally agree with this advice from Julia. It’s kind of everything I do in my business teaching about personal finance, and I especially love talking about investing with graduate students and postdocs. It’s very easy to get started with passive investing. It’s very easy to manage investments passively. So it’s something that can be completely compatible with your journey as a graduate student, as long as your finances are ready for it. I would say it’s more important to build up some of the emergency and buckets we’ve been talking about and pay off high priority debt, like credit cards, before getting involved with investing. But once your finances are ready for it, it does not have to be a big time suck for you. So that’s great advice from Julia.

Homeownership

24:17 Emily: Our next topic is homeownership. This is one of my favorite new topics to be talking about with graduate students and early-career PhDs. Here’s the advice from Nell: “Seriously consider home ownership EARLY in your program. Emily and her brother have covered this on the podcast, but you ideally need 3 years of funding remaining. I bought a place at the beginning of my second year. The second job and the 5 years of continuance made it easier to get a mortgage. Meanwhile, I have a friend in his 5th year, now in the process of buying a place, and he found out about the 3-year continuance rule very late, causing an extremely stressful family situation and problems with his department, who he had to beg for a letter promising him more funding. While there have certainly been stresses with my place (roof, plumbing) which I am privileged to be able to deal with, the fact that I can go away for research and rent it out rather than have to pay two rents or put all my stuff in storage means that I am able to be much more mobile and flexible as I design how I will spend my time researching and writing the dissertation. Again, this is about peace of mind and mental health as much as financial security.”

25:23 Emily: This advice from Nell is so valuable. Now, I have to say, first off, many graduate students are not in a position to buy. The vast majority of graduate students are not in a position to buy a home, because several factors have to come together kind of perfectly. You have to live in a housing market where the home prices are not very, very high. You have to have a stipend that is high enough to manage to, you know, qualify for a mortgage in that market. And you have to have some savings place for the down payment and the closing costs, moving costs, these kinds of things. And you have to have good credit. So these things all have to come together. But for some graduate students, it is possible.

25:58 Emily: And if you think you may be in that situation, you should definitely investigate it early on. I have done several podcast episodes with my brother, Sam Hogan. He is a mortgage originator with Prime Lending (Note: Sam now works at Movement Mortgage) who specializes in graduate students and PhDs. And he knows all the ins and outs of qualifying for a mortgage, even when you have non-employee income fellowship income, which for some lenders is unfamiliar. The podcast interviews that I’ve done with Sam in the past are season five, episode 17, How to Qualify for a Mortgage as a Graduate Student or PhD, Even with Non-W-2 Fellowship Income, and season eight, episode four, Turn Your Largest Liability into Your Largest Asset with House Hacking. Those are really exciting episodes to listen to, but I do want to tell you there have been some updates, especially to the content that Nell just talked about. So, we used to think there was this necessity to have three years of guaranteed funding when you had a non-W2 type position as a graduate student or postdoc, but Sam has actually found a way kind of around that in some cases.

27:00 Emily: So, I would say it’s very helpful to have three years of continuance, but not strictly necessary for everyone. So the best thing to do is to talk to a mortgage lender like Sam, or like someone else who’s familiar with PhDs and graduate students, and get their perspective on your income type and your whole like picture to see whether or not you would be able to qualify for a mortgage. Check out the Personal Finance for PhDs’ YouTube channel for some of those like short updates. I’ve been publishing clips from the live Q&A calls that I’ve been hosting with Sam for first-time home buyers. If you’d like to learn more about that, go to PFforPhds.com/mortgage to find out when the next live Q&A call will be. By the way, if you want to reach out to Sam directly, the best way is probably to text or call his phone number, which is (540) 478-5803. Or you can email him at [email protected].

27:59 Emily: I really love Nell’s perspective in this advice of having it be an ease on her mind and her finances to own a home versus renting when she has to be away for research purposes. Like I never thought about that before. So I’m really glad to get Nell’s perspective on this. I’m really glad that it’s worked out for her. Elyse K also added this advice: “If you’ve been working full time and it is the right time for you, consider buying a home you can afford on your stipend before your full-time income is gone because it will be easier to get financing.” Again, you can hear a lot of concern about qualifying for a mortgage as a graduate student. It is an area of concern, but Sam can help you with this specifically if you want him to. But Elyce’s advice is really good. If you are going from a full-time job into graduate school, and especially if you’re not moving cities, getting that mortgage and the home purchase done before starting graduate school is a good idea. But as she said, make sure you can afford it on your stipend, not just your current salary.

Working During Your PhD

28:54 Emily: Our next topic is working while you’re pursuing your PhD. So, Gillian has this advice: “Intern. No matter what your field, there are internship opportunities. This will provide insight into non-academic career paths as well as extra money during your studies.” I could not agree with Gillian anymore about this. Internships are becoming much more widely available and acceptable to do during a PhD, which is wonderful. And they often pay more than the, you know, stipend that would be getting during that time anyway. Again, listen to that previous episode that I did with Gillian and also check out season seven, episode seven, where I interviewed a current PhD student who did a very well-paid summer internship with a tech company, and that worked out very nicely for her finances.

29:42 Emily: But really, Gillian’s point about gaining insight into non-academic career paths is the invaluable part of this. Like, yes, the money is nice, but while in graduate school, you are setting yourself up for your future career, and doing internships and other kinds of work opportunities do serve that goal just as much as your PhD studies do. And this advice is from Elyse K: “Consider finding or starting a side hustle within your university’s boundaries (many allow <20-hour per week part-time positions). Part-time income can make or break PhD students; I’ve seen some have to drop out because they need money.” Again, really solid advice. It should not be the case that graduate students need side hustles or need student loan debt to financially get them through graduate school. Yet this is the reality for a lot of people, or if not strictly necessary, sometimes side hustles can just enhance your lifestyle and make things a little bit better for you during graduate school. Whatever the reason, I think side hustling is a great idea, but of course you have to make sure that it’s not interfering with your progress towards your degree. That is primarily what you are in graduate school to do.

Financial Assistance as a Grad Student Parent

30:54 Emily: Next, I have some great comments from an anonymous contributor who is a graduate student parent. “Even if you think you do not qualify, consider applying for income assistance programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and other DHS programs for needy families. Generally, students enrolled over half-time do not qualify for SNAP, but if you have any of these exemptions, there’s a chance you’ll qualify. Some exemptions include: Are under age 18 or are age 50 or older. Have a physical or mental disability. Work at least 20 hours a week in a paid, on-the-job training program. Work at least 20 hours a week in paid employment. Participate in a state or federally-financed work study program. Participate in an on-the-job training program. Care for a child under the age of 6. Care for a child age 6 to 11 and lack the necessary child care enabling you to attend school and work 20 hours a week or participate in work study. Are a single parent enrolled full-time in college and taking care of a child under 12.”

31:50 Emily: “With children you may also qualify for state funded childcare, children’s health insurance, and possibly even income supplementation. These are often wrapped into the same application at your state’s Department of Health and Human Services website, making it much simpler to apply for all at once. You never know until you apply, and you just might be surprised. Every dollar helps! Every so often you will need to reapply or get re-certified so you’ll be asked to update your information periodically, so always look for these very important mailings once you’re involved in any assistance programs or you could risk losing coverage for not responding in time.”

32:22 Emily: Super appreciative to anonymous for submitting these comments. This is not something I had personal experience with during graduate school, so I really appreciate, you know, the community member stepping up to speak to this situation. In season two, episode one, I published an episode with Lauri Reinhold [Lutes] who was a single parent during graduate school. And what came through in that interview was how intentional Lauri was in choosing her graduate program, choosing one that would be supportive of her needs as a graduate student parent, and then also applying for every single benefit she possibly could on behalf of herself and her daughter once in graduate school. So that’s another great interview to follow up with to learn more about this topic if you are a parent or are planning on becoming a parent.

Final Pieces of Advice

33:05 Emily: And for our last topic, we have a really quick piece of advice from Ben, which is: “Read The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins!” So this advice is on investing again and how relatively accessible it is. I read The Simple Path to Wealth myself about a year ago, really enjoyed it. J. L. Collins is a really easy person to read and understand all about index fund investing, passive investing. So, highly, highly recommend that book as well. And thank you, Ben, for that advice.

33:34 Emily: My best advice for prospective PhD students echoes some of what you just heard, and it’s to work between now and when you matriculate to save up cash for your move, startup expenses, emergency fund, et cetera. If you’re already working a well-paid full-time job or have existing cash savings, that’s awesome, and you’re on a great track. If you are currently a college student or have a not-so-well-paid job, like I did before grad school, it’s time to think about how you can increase your income over the coming months so you can save. Can you do a paid internship? Can you get a full-time temporary position with a good pay rate? Can you start a side hustle, ideally one that you can take with you to graduate school? I love flexible self-employment side hustles for graduate students, such as consulting, freelancing or teaching, but it can take time to build up a client base, so start laying that groundwork now, or at least over the summer.

34:31 Emily: We’ll expand on this topic in my next Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School webinar for rising graduate students. We’ll also go deep on the financial decisions you’ll have to make this spring and summer that can literally make or break your finances during grad school. And I’ll give you some guidance on those. The webinar is free and you can find more information and how to sign up at PFforPhDs.com/rising. Thank you for listening through this episode, and a special thanks to those who contributed their best financial advice. Before you go, don’t forget to share this episode with a prospective PhD student, and if you want to join me for the upcoming webinars in my Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School series, you can find more information at PFforPhDs.com/prospective/ and PFforPhDs.com/rising.

Outtro

35:28 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How This PhD Conducted a Job Search and Evaluated Multiple Offers in the Private Sector

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Sean Bittner, a newly minted PhD in biomedical engineering, on how Sean navigated finding and landing his first post-PhD job in medtech innovation. Sean timed his start date for immediately after his grad student position finished so as to not miss any paychecks, and they discuss how early Sean started networking and applying for positions to enable that smooth transition. They also talk through the strategies and tools that were most helpful to Sean in the job search process. Finally, Sean lists the elements of a job offer and what questions you need to ask to fully understand the salary and benefits. This conversation will benefit current graduate students and PhDs who are planning to pursue private sector jobs in the near or far future. You won’t want to miss Sean’s powerful concluding advice!

Links Mentioned in the Episode

How This PhD Conducted a Job Search and Evaluated Multiple Offers in the Private Sector

Teaser

00:00 Sean: Graduate school doesn’t always, I think, do a great job of reminding students of their worth. Of not just financial worth, but also their work worth and just like worth as an individual. But that was huge in my job search, was understanding like, no, no, I deserve to be here. You know, I deserve to be having conversations with working professionals that I admire that I think are, you know, extremely brilliant and hardworking. Like, I deserve to be here because I’m those things too. I did a PhD. I did these other things that qualify me to be here. This is myspace and I get to take it.

Introduction

00:42 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 14, and today my guest is Dr. Sean Bittner, a newly-minted PhD in biomedical engineering, on how Sean navigated finding and landing his first post-PhD job in medtech innovation. Sean timed his start date for immediately after his grad student position finished so as to not miss any paychecks, and we discuss how early Sean started networking and applying for positions to enable that smooth transition. We also talk through the strategies and tools that were most helpful to Sean in the job search process. Finally, Sean lists the elements of a job offer and what questions you need to ask to fully understand the salary and benefits. Don’t miss Sean’s powerful concluding advice! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Sean Bittner.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:48 Emily: I am delighted to have Dr. Sean Bittner back on the podcast. He was actually a guest on season six, episode 12. This was while he was in graduate school. We talked a lot about budgeting, how he and his wife were budgeting accrding to their values. Fascinating episode, recommend listening to it. But Sean is back because he very recently finished his PhD. We’re recording this in mid-September. He finished last month, and also started his post-PhD job last month. And so we’re going to be talking about that process of like, how do you do the job search, like while you’re finishing up your PhD? And how do you evaluate job offers? So really excited to talk to you, Sean. Will you please introduce yourself further for the audience?

02:26 Sean: Sure. Yeah. Thanks again, Emily. My name is Sean Bittner. I’m a recent PhD grad in bioengineering from Rice University. Recent as in four weeks ago. So very exciting, still kind of in the thrill of being done. And then, yeah, I also started my post-PhD job the day after, and I’m excited to just chat about the job search, and all the things to think about.

Timing Between Finishing PhD and Starting New Job

02:53 Emily: I know, because this is something that I’m sure is on the minds of many, many graduate students. Definitely in like the year when they’re finishing up, but maybe even the multiple years before then. This can be a great conversation for postdocs as well. Even people who have already navigated one job search might, you know, pick up some tips or at least some different perspective on how you did things. Of course, this always ends up being very individual, but so happy to hear your story. So the first thing I want to ask about is timing, because you just mentioned that you didn’t miss a paycheck between finishing up with your however you were being paid, assistantship or fellowship or whatever, and going into your job. So like, wow. Like if that was your goal, how did you manage to work out the timing that way?

03:32 Sean: Yeah, yeah, so this is a good thought. I would say it was a long time planning. There are a couple of elements there. One is scheduling the thesis defense, I think is always a little bit hairy just based on having to get four or five, six people in the same room at the same time. It’s hard. But I actually defended my thesis two months ago, so it was July 13th and had about a month’s worth of just wrap up and carry over after that. But I also had two weeks of vacation to use still. So right after defending, my wife and I took a much=needed, I think well-deserved vacation. And I came back, I had two weeks of work left, and then I was trying to set it up so that, okay, I’m done.

04:12 Sean: I already took my vacation. So I don’t need to take a bunch of time off between grad school and work and trying to get a start at my new job. Some of the companies that I was looking at were starting immediately, or starting a week later. But it wasn’t, you know, start in two or three months. I think I tried to make sure that it was just a consistent transition. I also wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with myself for three or four weeks off. I just, I like, I don’t know, having a purpose and going and doing some cool stuff.

04:41 Emily: Another thing you mentioned in there is that you defended two months ago, and then you had this bit of extra time, which I think is really good idea. You’re going to have to do edits on your thesis. Maybe you’re trying to get a last paper, you know, submitted or there’s always kind of wrapping up stuff. So I definitely think it’s good to time that defense a little bit before your pay would end.

04:59 Sean: Right.

04:59 Emily: It sounds like you, like were you paid through the end of a normal like semester term, like the summer term, or was your end date like somehow, otherwise negotiated?

05:08 Sean: Yeah. So, this is another good question. It depends on the department, the advisor, the school. The academic year is also your pay year at Rice, for grad students. And that ended on August 15th. After you defend your thesis, you can have a conversation with your department and with your advisor about, okay, how long do you actually need to finish everything up? And the discussion that we had was, I’m going to take two weeks vacation. I haven’t taken that yet. When I get back, I have about two weeks worth of work left to wrap everything up, finish any final changes and edits to my thesis. I didn’t have the last paper to try to complete on the tail end. So I didn’t have that time crunch. But then also there are students still working in the lab. So, you know, making sure that they kind of have a good turnover plan, I don’t want to just leave them high and dry and say like, oh, bye I’m out. You know, I wanted to make sure that everybody that I could assist in bringing up to speed, I did that before I left.

Transparency About Job Start Date Flexibility

06:08 Emily: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like you sort of knew that this date, this, you know, academic year turnover was a reasonable date. And so did you time your job search process then around knowing that was the ideal date to start, like mid-August?

06:22 Sean: Yeah. I had more of a guesstimate than a true date. Like, I didn’t know for sure, “Oh, it’s definitely August 16th.” Right? But I had an inkling of when my thesis defense would be, I knew it would be late summer, ended up being the middle of July. And when I was job searching, I was very transparent about that. Some people were looking for, “Oh, we need you to start on Monday.” Obviously that didn’t work out. And then some people that I was talking to later, I was open from the beginning. I’m interested in this opportunity, but it’s going to be sometime in August. And all of those companies had hired PhD students before. So they’re familiar with the idea that I don’t necessarily know the exact day I can start. But I got out of the way pretty quickly any really serious mismatch, like as I said before, I was talking to somebody briefly and they were like, yeah, we are excited about you, but we don’t have a job open until January. And I said, Hmm, I don’t think I can wait that long. And I’m glad that I didn’t because, you know, we’ll talk about this later, but I love the job that I’m in. So, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait for a maybe of a job that might open. But I think I was as clear as I could have been, I guess that’s the way to put it.

07:35 Emily: And let’s talk, I’m going into so much detail about these timing questions, because for me it was a source of stress and I think it’s a source of stress for other people as well. So for the types of jobs that you were looking for, it sounded like the company’s timelines were quite wide-ranging from, I want you to start next Monday, you know, if they were to hire you to, we have many, many months lead time on this. And it’s a little bit different from the academic search process, which is a little bit more well-known. It’s, you know, these fixed portions of the year that are dedicated, determined from parts of the process. So how did you like figure out what these timelines were and then therefore be able to backtrack and know how early you needed to start these conversations and start applying?

08:16 Sean: Yeah, I would say it was unique to every company, honestly. Similar to how you mentioned with the academic traditional academic pipeline, there are fixed dates in a normal schedule. And even with coming from undergrad, thinking about getting a job straight out of undergrad, there’s kind of a fixed schedule. You apply in the fall. You might hear something December, January. They expect you to start in May. Like that’s a standard thing. And so when I was looking at this in February and March of this year, I was kind of thinking the same thing, like, okay, I’m going to start talking to people. But I’ve learned, I work in the med tech space now, and I learned that it’s really dependent on what each company’s needs are at that time. Some companies I talked to, they had to fill somebody that day, like they needed somebody immediately.

09:00 Sean: And some of them, it was, you know, our fiscal year doesn’t roll over until August and we can’t add a new position until then, right? So I knew it was going to be, like I said, I knew it was going be sometime over the summer. And so I was trying to narrow down to some people. And again, just trying to get them to work with me a little bit flexibility-wise on, I won’t be available until August, but on the other hand, I will be available in August, right? And so like, how can we work this out?

Starting the Job Search

09:30 Emily: And so, maybe you said this and I missed it. So how early did you start your job search?

09:37 Sean: It’s a little hard to narrow it down just because like I would say, you know, I was talking to people for quite a while. I would say I was talking loosely to people as early as the fall, maybe winter of 2020. And then I started to have more serious conversations about job stuff in maybe March of this year.

09:58 Emily: So it went maybe more from like networking, feeling each other out to like, okay, we’re going to like put pen to paper and like get your name in front of somebody.

10:06 Sean: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, I can’t remember the exact date, but the call that ultimately got me in front of the people to get me in front of to get the job that I have now I think was in June, maybe. So a relatively quick turnaround in terms of, or compared to what I was expecting. You know, I was thinking like, okay, I’m gonna apply in March and they’re going to have me start five months later. And it was pretty quick.

10:34 Emily: Yeah. I guess I’ll chime in a little bit more on this timing. And of course I have not had a “job” job post-PhD, but my husband has. He has also a PhD, and so he works for a startup and it was quite small at the time he was hired. I think he was maybe employee number 12 or something like that. And they hired him and another one of his colleagues right around the same time. And for him, it was a very quick interview process because he was already in a postdoc that was very casual. It could end at any time. And so he was like, yeah, like we want to get started in a month or two or whatever. Like totally we can do that. That’s how quickly he was hired. His colleague who was hired at the same time, had a start date of about six months later.

11:12 Emily: So that same company was very flexible with these two different candidates. And probably that’s because they’re a startup that they could be that flexible. But I just thought it was interesting that like both of them were like, you know, coming out of PhD, coming out of postdoc and had different timing needs and the company was able to accommodate both of them.

Network or Nothing

11:29 Emily: So when you embarked on the networking that ultimately led to applying, what, you know, had you picked up in terms of strategies, maybe from your professional development during graduate school, maybe from outside sources, that were really useful to you during that period?

11:44 Sean: Yeah. So I think I’ll start with the easiest one. Everybody says it, it’s almost a cliché, but it’s really true. It’s network or nothing for the most part. It’s you got to know somebody. And I don’t mean like, oh, your, your dad’s on the board or like you have a family friend. But all of the jobs that I applied for, I knew someone that put me in front of someone else that put me in front of somebody else. Zero of them were I had the most compelling application on LinkedIn. And I think, like I can’t understate that enough, I guess. Like LinkedIn is super useful for finding information, getting connected to people, learning about the different types of jobs that are available. But ultimately, it’s a stack of resumes in terms of applying. And in fact, I didn’t actually formally apply, in the traditional sense, until well after I had had an inkling that the company was interested in me. And that’s true for all of the companies I applied with. So I think the number one is work on your network, reach out to people, just try to get in front of, you know, get some face time, and tell people who you are and why you’re excited about them.

12:52 Emily: You’re right. Everybody says networking and it’s really intimidating for a lot of people to hear. So please, can you be more specific about like, who was in your network? Like who were those first, the first layer of people that you like reached out to, and then maybe there was another layer, but who was that initial network?

Network Composition

13:09 Sean: Sure. So, of the opportunities that I was considering at the time, each of the companies I got connected to by one person, or in one case, two people. One of them was a former manager of mine. They had moved on but was connected to one of the companies, introduced me. The second one was another student in one of the master’s programs at Rice, went and took a job at this company. And I kind of knew them and I was familiar with the company. And I just said, “Hey, I’m interested in your job. Can you tell me about it? Not that I want to take your job, but I’d like to maybe work for your company.” And that’s actually the job that I ended up taking, is they ultimately connected me with their boss, and that person’s boss is the CEO. And we sat down and had a chat.

13:57 Sean: And they just said, “Yeah, we’re looking for somebody. You seem like you fit the bill. Let’s let’s talk.” The other one was somebody I had worked with in the past. I had done a little bit of, of just like, I guess, diligence work is the best way to describe it. But I had done some work for them in the past when they were at a different company. And then when they moved, they said, “Hey, I have a job open. Do you want to talk about it?” And I said, “Sure. You know, I’d love to chat.” So all of the people that I networked with, it wasn’t just, again, I reached out to them once on LinkedIn. It was people that I’ve worked with explicitly in the past that can speak of my skills, that can speak of, ideally, my personality. People that knew me more than just a face that’s that’s on LinkedIn.

14:44 Emily: Absolutely. I totally agree, that first layer does not have to be like reaching out to strangers. Like no, it should be people who, as you said, have some personal connection with you, hopefully through work, but not necessarily, who can then, you know, forward your name onto the other right people. And I think that, you know, current graduate students like need to know that their peers around them, and potentially their advisors and other professors around them as well, can very well serve as that first layer. So I know one of my, like sort of regrets in graduate school, was not being better connected with the other people in my program, especially the people ahead of me. Let us just say, leaving Duke before me, whether that was PhDs graduating before me, whether that was masters students or undergrads coming in after me, make those connections, too. Because they all are going to be out there potentially, you know, in a place that you’d be interested in working. So those connections are so, so important. And that networking, the “networking” quote unquote, is just your normal connections with other people who you work with and are around during your graduate degree. It’s much more casual at the beginning, but you have those loose connections and then you can pull on them later as you did. And just let them know, I’m looking for work. I’m going to be graduating at approximately X date. Your company sounds cool. Can we talk about that more?

15:59 Sean: Yeah, I think I had, I don’t want to say an easier time, but I have a fairly gregarious personality. It maybe becomes a little bit more natural to me to just kind of get out and talk to people. But it’s really true that, maybe not the reason I got my job, but like the connection that got me the job that I have is a masters student that I knew left Rice before I left Rice, was working at the company for a few years and I said, ‘Hey, can we talk?” Done. And that was it.

LinkedIn and Beyond

16:26 Emily: So we mentioned networking, you mentioned LinkedIn. Did LinkedIn come into play, particularly in your search, given that networking in real life was actually what led you to, you know, the right place?

16:40 Sean: Yeah, so again, I think it’s a good informational tool. It certainly came into my search in terms of figuring out what other people in my field were doing. And then also, in a lot of cases, LinkedIn was the first touch point. For example, this masters student that I’ve talked about a couple of times, that was my first message on LinkedIn, was, “Hey, can we, you know, have a phone call and set it up?” Everything after that was phone calls, emails, et cetera. But the first message was LinkedIn. And same thing, you mentioned other students in your department, other students in your program and at the university, some of my other connection points were prior students in my lab that graduated years before me with their PhD. But you kind of have this like familial relationship because you came from the same lab, you know. They want to see other students from that lab succeed. So same thing, you know, either LinkedIn or just having access to their email and just cold emailing and say, “Hey, I’m from so-and-so lab. I’d love to chat about your own experience in job searching. Can we set up a call?” But yeah, LinkedIn is hugely useful. I think it’s just not the beginning and the end, it’s the beginning.

17:51 Emily: Yeah. Any other strategies that you want to share with us that you found useful during this process?

17:54 Sean: I think one thing to keep in mind that we maybe haven’t touched on so far is, the network that you have is bigger than you think it is. And that’s not like a empty hollow way of saying, like, you don’t know who other people know until you ask them. Example: I have a friend of a friend who, when I said, I’m interested in this company that I’m looking at, they said, oh yeah, I know so-and-so manager at that company, let me put in a call. And I didn’t ask for that. You know, I didn’t ask for, can you recommend me? I just, they asked me about how my job search was going, and I was honest about it. And the next day I got an email and said, oh yeah, I heard from your manager, friend. I’d love to chat. Let’s talk about it. So there is the element of like, you have to network, but there’s also asking, just being explicit and asking your friends and your colleagues, like who do you know that might be able to help? Because that’s ultimately what we’re all here to do. I would love if somebody from my lab, my department reaches out to me that knows me and said, “Hey, I’m looking for a job. Can you help me?” Love to, I’d be happy to help if I can.

19:02 Emily: Yeah. I think that’s a really common human thing. Like if we can make someone else’s experience go easier, it’s something that we’ve already done in the past. And you’re also, you know, if you actually get a hire, like you’re also helping your company and so forth. So it’s kind of like a win-win, win-win all the way around for networking.

Commercial

19:20 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the Community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Our next live discussion and Q&A call is on Wednesday, November 17th, 2021. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to PFforPhds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success. Now, back to the interview.

The Anatomy of a Job Offer

20:33 Emily: Okay. So, you’ve networked, you’ve gotten your name in front of the right people, you’ve interviewed, and you’re finally getting, you’ve mentioned a few different job offers. And so what actually did the job offers look like, and what were the components that you were sort of considering?

20:48 Sean: Yeah. Yeah. So, this is, I think the meat of the conversation today. The standard job offer, I feel like, baseline, has two components. You have base salary, and you have ancillary benefits, whether that’s vacation time or sick time, like just time off basically. But, there are other things to consider there. And so, it’s interesting. I kind of had the gambit of a variety of different things that were part of the quote unquote package. Here are some things in no particular order that it could be: straight salary and, you know, vacation or sick time or whatever. One of them might be salary. And if you’re at a startup, it’s salary plus stock in the company, it could be. Some other things that other companies do is you have a salary, but also we have a retirement plan, whether it’s 401(k) or 403(b). You’ve talked about that a couple of times with other students, or I guess other professionals now on the podcast. Those things are things to keep in mind. Whether the company offers health insurance or not is hugely important.

21:54 Sean: But all of these things together are a much larger conversation than just the salary number that you see on maybe your job offer. Something else to keep in mind is you may not see those other things on your offer letter, if that makes sense. So not that they’re, you know, trying to be hidden or anything like that, it just may not be part of the standard form email that you get of like, “Oh, we’d like to offer you this job. Your compensation is this, you have this many weeks off.” I asked I think all of those questions to all of the companies, and they were very forthcoming with the information once I asked. But it wasn’t part of their standard letter. There’s also some differences in time. Sorry, I’m kind of all over the place.

Variable Employee Benefits

22:36 Sean: As an example, the company I work at now, the time off policy is really generous. I think it’s everything, sick vacation, et cetera, is all PTO, or paid time off, but it’s unlimited PTO, right? So, I don’t have this weird situation where like, “Oh, I’m out of sick days, but I’m sick. Or my kid is sick, or I have to take my animal to the vet or something.” And on the other side, like I don’t have to feel like I can’t use any of my vacation days, right? Like there’s a very open policy about that. Some of the other companies, it was very explicit. You have 40 hours or 40 hours of sick leave and, you know, two weeks of vacation or whatever. I would say that’s more of a standard notice. It’s two or three weeks vacation and then a fixed amount of sick time also.

23:23 Sean: On the stock side, I think there’s pros and cons to stocks. I’m not a huge single stock guy, for retirement. So, you know, when I look at single stocks, it’s kind of a gamble. You know, they could be worth a huge amount of money if that company skyrockets. They could also not be worth very much if something happens and, you know, especially in biotech. That comes and goes, right? And so like, you kind of got to weigh, okay, is this a gamble I’m comfortable taking? And then the last piece, I talked about retirement before. One of the companies I was looking at offered a retirement package. It was, I forget if it was a 401(k) for 403(b). But it was required participation up to a certain amount. So, it wasn’t a match, it’s just they set it up so that, you know, X percent of your salary has to go in no matter what. That can be valuable because it prevents you the legwork of having to go set it up yourself.

24:15 Sean: But, as you’ve talked about previously, if you’re interested in having a little bit more control over your own retirement package, you can set up an IRA. You can just set up external mutual funds. If they have a plan at work, they will send you information about the funds that they have available. And you can kind of make a decision on how was the track record for these funds? Can I get, you know, better returns elsewhere, whether it’s an IRA or just a mutual fund in a non-retirement account. I think all of that nuance like doesn’t immediately come to mind when you’re first looking at a job, but it is important. And I also want to just put a small asterisk here. Money is only part of the conversation. Ultimately I took the job that I took because I love the work, and I’m really passionate about the type of work that I’m going to get to do. But it is part of the conversation.

25:08 Emily: Love everything you said, like, exactly right. The salary is going to be upfront. Maybe the time off policy will be upfront. Maybe they’ll mention something about healthcare or retirement or insurance or something, but you’re probably going to have to do another layer of questions and say, “Hey, send me your booklet on your, you know, retirement policy, and I’ll take a look at it.” Or like, let me know, like, you know, I mean, insurance is such a massive, massive issue. Especially, like I’m thinking, you know, I’m married, we have two children, we’re all on my husband’s workplace insurance. So like how much of a premium his employer pays versus how much he pays. The deductibles, all that stuff matters a lot because we have a lot of people riding on that one, you know, policy.

25:49 Emily: And maybe, you know, you have to evaluate how much that matters to you, but if you are supporting a family on one insurance policy, you could be looking at a premium of a thousand dollars a month easily for an employer that doesn’t help out that much, or even more, versus an employer who pays a hundred percent of the premium or 90%. It’s a massive, massive difference. But that’s very individual, you know, you have to really decide what’s more important to you. Is it the vacation policy? Is it the healthcare? Is it that the retirement plan has a match? And that’s super, super good to you or whatever. And maybe that’s why they’re not that upfront with this because like salary matters to everyone, but like maybe there’s different levels of caring about these other elements.

26:26 Sean: Yeah. And it could also be you know, no fault to the company. It may just not be prudent to kind of give all that information out upfront. So for example, some of the companies that I looked at, I knew that there was a retirement plan. Or I knew that there was health insurance provided. But in the case of health insurance, which you just talked about, I didn’t actually know what coverage was available to me until after accepting the job, or in the case of one of the ones I didn’t take, until after I would have accepted the job. So, that’s also a little bit of a gray area where, okay. I know that there is some type of insurance provided, but I wouldn’t get to decide whether, like you said, it would be better for my wife and I to stay on my wife’s insurance versus change over to this new one until actually taking the job.

Comparing Job Offers

27:12 Emily: Exactly. So you were in the fortunate position, the well-timed position of having multiple offers, it sounds like simultaneously, or at least like overlapping or something on the table. Yeah. And so you could actually look and say, not it’s a yes or no on this job, but like, what do I like about this job offer versus this one? And of course the work’s important. You mentioned that the work matters, I would say most. But the salary and so forth benefits are part of that. So how did you do this like comparison? And also, did you do any negotiation knowing that you had, you know, competing offers?

27:43 Sean: Yeah. So this is a good question. I think I did it in tiers. The first tier was, like you talked about just now, the nature of the work. The job that I have now, it wasn’t until realizing that that job was available to me, that I realized how excited I was about that type of work, right. And so, I think there’s something to be said for like, if it’s financially feasible, of course this is a personal finance podcast. If it’s financially feasible, pick the job that you enjoy, because there are going to be some days that you don’t enjoy. And I think those days go down better at a company that you enjoy doing work that you like, as opposed to at a company that you’re not super thrilled about, but you’re getting paid a lot to do it. So that’s, you know, obviously tier one.

28:27 Sean: Tier two, this is a personal finance podcast. I looked at kind of the, just as much as I could, apples to apples of each of them. Again, I talked about, I knew that there were benefits for all of them. I didn’t have insight into the specific coverages and all of that until actually taking the job. So in terms of like evaluating them, I picked the one that was what I consider an optimum. It was the best combination of salary and benefits and I’m passionate about the job. And then in terms of negotiation, I didn’t really negotiate, in part because I knew that the offers that I was getting work were competitive with what I would expect for the types of roles I was getting. So I didn’t ever really push back on, oh, you know, I think I’m worth this much or, you know, this other, I didn’t really do any of that.

The Tactic of Honesty

29:19 Sean: What I did do was be transparent about wanting the job. For example, I did have a favorite and obviously I took that one. But when we were having that conversation, I was transparent with them and I said, this is my top choice. I’d love to do it. Like, how do we make that happen? And it wasn’t until I think like sometimes employee applicants and employers are playing this game of chicken of like, I want to be vulnerable and tell you that I want you, but I don’t want you to say no, right? And so like, there’s this weird tension. And I just, I tried to cut through that and say like, if you guys are not interested in me, cool. You know, like I get that. I’m going to go pursue another opportunity. But if you are, like, I’m really interested in this, let’s make it happen. And I think that ultimately sealed the deal because they also were probably thinking a little bit of like, we like him. We’ve said we like him, but we’re not really sure where he’s going. He said he has a couple of offers. So I know it can be a little nerve-wracking, but like, there’s something to be said for transparency and honesty, if that’s part of the conversation.

30:27 Emily: I think that, it sounds like, you know, that conversation was prior to the formal offer being made, right? Like that could have been what tipped you over into getting an offer versus maybe we’ll go with another candidate, you know, that sort of thing. So like, I think at that stage, you use that tactic really well. Honesty, the tactic of honesty.

30:45 Sean: Right. Yeah. And I think, so another, I guess small detail that’s important here is, I knew the terms of what an offer would be for each of the companies before actually receiving the offer. So that’s, I think part of it too, is like the formal paperwork wasn’t filed, but I knew what it would be talking about. There wasn’t a part where I came in and something, you know, surprised me totally out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting that. So that might be part of it too, is I think that there was a little bit less formal, like I’m applying, I wait for my offer letter, I consider the offer letter and more of a fluid, like, I know what we’re talking about. Everybody’s kind of on the same page in terms of information, and now we just need to make some decisions.

Tell Us More About Your Job

31:28 Emily: Yeah. That’s really good insight. I think for anybody who has not had a job in the private sector, and they’re not really sure, especially, let’s say particular to your space, and of course this is going to vary across other companies, but like, it’s good to just hear someone’s experience and how you navigated that. So tell us a little bit more about the job that you actually took. What is the nature of the work that you’re doing?

31:47 Sean: Yeah. So, I’m going to be working in we’ll call it, I guess, med tech innovation or med tech support. So basically what I’ll be doing is helping support startup companies in the medical device space, getting them prepped and moving through the different stages of development, helping, you know, maybe teach them some core concepts about regulatory and clinical trials and all of these things that they have to do to get their product to market. I’m, I think excited about that aspect in particular, you know but now I’ve really fallen in love with this coaching and teaching space over the last couple of years. So like I’m going to get to do that as part of my job, which is super cool. And then I also get to stay in the science realm without actually, you know, holding a pipette myself, which was, I think ultimately my goal coming out. That’s something I didn’t think to talk about earlier, but that was part of, I knew kind of the nature of the work that I would want coming out of grad school, which was, I want to be involved in science, but I don’t necessarily want to do the science myself. I think I see myself more as a coach, a mentor, a supporter of other individual contributors than I see myself as one.

Role of Side Work in Career Path

33:05 Emily: Given the skill set that you’ll now be using that you developed partially through the coaching and teaching side work that you were doing during graduate school. How much of, you know, how important was it that you pursued those side endeavors in ultimately, you know, formulating and landing this particular job and career path?

33:24 Sean: So, I think it’s a good question. I think the answer is a little nuanced. Over the course of my PhD, I did a couple of different things. I did the traditional research route. Of course, that’s what I got my PhD in. I also did some short-term consulting at a nonprofit in town. And then I did, as you said, coaching and training, more leadership and career coaching style. All of those things were relevant in the job search, in getting the job that I ultimately have. In fact, the fact that I have a PhD in bioengineering, I think qualified me to be even at the table having the conversation. But the things that sold me, that you know, put me over the edge were these other ancillary things that I was doing. And going back to the networking piece, an ancillary skill that you have is conversation, right? I work in now, medtech innovation. There’s a lot of handshaking and smiling and waving and chatting and, you know drinks over dinner. Like there’s all of this kind of stuff in this field. And so having gotten experience in learning how to evaluate startup companies, in learning how to decide whether a team or a founder or somebody is coachable, is willing to do the work and learn. Those are things that I didn’t get through five years of bench work, but are incredibly relevant to my job.

It’s Okay to Just Be You

35:00 Emily: I think what I’m taking away from your explanation there is, during graduate school or during these earlier phases of training, you be you. You just do the things that you want to do, learn the things that you want to learn, explore different opportunities, figure out what you like. And it’s okay. In fact, it may be very helpful if some of those things are not strictly grad student role kinds of things, strictly at the bench, strictly just publishing papers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, and if you are you during graduate school and you’re pursuing all these other things that you like, it will help you find and craft a job and career that you actually like later on, don’t try to fit yourself into this like I’m just a researcher or I’m just a teacher mold if that’s not you. If it’s you, perfect. Grad school is great for you. If that’s not exactly you, you need to explore these other areas because you don’t want to be stuck into a mold that you don’t fit in for the whole rest of your career.

35:57 Sean: Yeah. I think that’s true. I do want to, you know, obviously present the caveat of like, it’s true, you’re getting a PhD in the stuff that you’re doing at the bench or in the case of, you know, non-wet lab stuff, in the stuff that you’re doing for your degree. So you do have to obviously do that and do it well. I think there’s value in, you know, crafting a really strong body of work. That being said, there are a lot of people that they do their research, and that’s what they do. That I think qualifies you to be at the table to get jobs that people are looking for PhD hires for. And in the case of a more traditional academic route, like kick butt at publications and grant writing, all of that. Hugely important, and those are the things that are relevant to your job.

36:44 Sean: But that’s not necessarily the case for everyone. And in fact, again, personal example, of the offers that I was considering, only one of them was even really closely related at all to the specific work I was doing. So I think I talked about this last time, but, my PhD was in the 3D printing space. I was looking at bone and cartilage printing. That bioengineering experience was more relevant to one offer. For all of the other job opportunities, they were interested in my coaching background. They were interested in my knowledge, not only of science, but of like the startup environment. Those are things that I wouldn’t have learned just in my lab work because the lab work’s not designed for that, right? The lab work is designed for the really detailed, basic science level type work that is used to eventually create some of these opportunities.

Best Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

37:40 Emily: I think that was very, very well put. I ask my guests as you know, a last question, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? I think we just got some fantastic advice, but do you have any others? It could be something we’ve touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely different.

37:57 Sean: Yeah. So, I guess two, because I’m not great at following directions. The same thing that we just talked about, which is, I think there’s real value in pursuing and carving out whatever path makes the most sense for your career, whether that’s a traditional academic route, whether that’s something else. Finding and doing and pursuing opportunities that are relevant to that. I think the other thing is, we’ve talked about this before, and you’ve talked about this with several students on the podcast previously. Graduate school doesn’t always, I think, do a great job of reminding students of their worth, of not just financial worth, but also their work worth and just like worth as an individual. But that was huge in my job search was understanding like, no, no, I deserve to be here. You know, I deserve to be having conversations with working professionals that I admire that I think are, you know, extremely brilliant and hardworking. Like, I deserve to be here because I’m those things too. I did a PhD, now that might be because I’m stubborn, but like I did a PhD. I did these other things that qualify me to be here. And I’m not a poser. I’m not taking somebody else’s place by being here. Like this is my space and I get to take it.

39:16 Emily: Wonderful. I think this interview is going to be so useful to graduate students and postdocs who are, you know, looking forward to this post-PhD career transition, especially into the private sector. So thank you so much, Sean, for joining me on giving this interview.

39:29 Sean: Sure, sure. Thanks for having me again.

Outtro

39:37 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.