In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Ilana Horwitz, a professor at Tulane University and the author of the newly released book, The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. Ilana explains how a grad student or academic can be an entrepreneurial scholar and why it is so beneficial in an environment of uncertainty and limited resources. Ilana and Emily discuss the necessity for grad students to become the CEOs of their own educations and careers. Finally, they explore in more detail ideas from the chapter on how to leverage resources, both human and monetary.
Links mentioned in the Episode
- Dr. Ilana Horwitz’s Website
- The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond (use discount code: IMH20)
- PF for PhDs S16E4: How This Grad Student-Parent Managed Her Money and Time in the Bay Area
- PF for PhDs Tax Workshops
- PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training
- PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
- PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Purchase Dr. Ilana Horwitz’s book, The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond, use the code IMH20 to receive a discount!
Teaser
Ilana (00:00): It helps you sort of to have an identity outside of academia to have sort of self-worth in yourself, right? To understand that you are a person that isn’t just bound up with your academic identity. Because if, again, the academic job market doesn’t work out, the crisis that one has about their sense of self-worth is like maybe a little bit less, knowing that you have value in some other capacity.
Introduction
Emily (00:34): 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 (01:03): This is Season 20, Episode 5, and today my guest is Dr. Ilana Horwitz, a professor at Tulane University and the author of the newly released book, The Entrepreneurial Scholar: A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. Ilana explains how a grad student or academic can be an entrepreneurial scholar and why it is so beneficial in an environment of uncertainty and limited resources. Ilana and I discuss the necessity for grad students to become the CEOs of their own educations and careers. Finally, we explore in more detail ideas from the chapter on how to leverage resources, both human and monetary.
Emily (01:44): The tax year 2024 version of my tax return preparation workshop, How to Complete Your PhD Trainee Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is now available! This pre-recorded educational workshop explains how to identify, calculate, and report your higher education-related income and expenses on your federal tax return. Whether you are a graduate student, postdoc, or postbac, domestic or international, there is a version of this workshop designed just for you. I do license these workshops to universities, but in the case that yours declines your request for sponsorship, you can purchase the appropriate version as an individual. Go to PFforPhDs.com/taxreturnworkshop/ to read more details and purchase the workshop. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e5/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Ilana Horwitz.
Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?
Emily (02:56): I am delighted to have a return guest on the podcast today, Dr. Ilana Horwitz, who’s a professor at Tulane University, and the author of the new newly released book titled The Entrepreneurial Scholar and Ilana’s previous episode on the podcast was season 16, episode four, and we get a lot more of like her personal story about being a parent in graduate school and like all the resources she marshaled to, you know, financially get through that period. But it’s interesting, she and I were just looking back at our email exchanges. We first got connected back, you know, over a year about two years ago, um, because she was starting to write this book and wanted to, you know, give for, wanted me to give a short interview for it. And I ended up interviewing her and that came out quite a while ago. But now the book that she’s been working on for so long is finally out. And so that’s our subject for today, the Entrepreneurial scholar. So Ilana, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Will you please give a brief introduction for the audience?
Ilana (03:50): Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Emily. It’s great to be back. Um, as you mentioned, yes, I am trained as a sociologist of religion and education. I am in the Jewish studies and sociology department at Tulane University. I’ve been here, um, for four years, and before that I spent a decade at Stanford as a grad student and as a postdoc.
What Is An Entrepreneurial Scholar?
Emily (04:10): Excellent. I wanna jump right in to like, what, what is this book about? Because it’s not about, as I, you know, maybe thought just by reading the title, it’s not about academics or PhDs who want to become entrepreneurs. We have a slightly different spin on that. So can you tell us the working definitions you have for like an entrepreneur and also an entrepreneurial scholar from the book?
Ilana (04:31): Absolutely, yes. So this is a little bit of a different definition of what entrepreneurship means. When I say entrepreneurship and when I talk about entrepreneurial scholarship, I’m specifically talking about the ability to generate ideas with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty. What I don’t mean by entrepreneurship is, uh, I’m not talking about trying to take a neoliberal approach to academia, uh, that advocates for the corporatization of the academy. I am not talking about applying market models to universities, and I’m also not talking about the kinds of sort of, um, business oriented research firms. And as you mentioned, I’m also not talking about necessarily starting some sort of, um, venture on the side, which is like what most people of think of when I say entrepreneurial, uh, thinking. And so again, being an entrepreneurial scholar means being a- able to generate ideas, right? That is the product that is like the currency with which we work. Being able to generate ideas with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty. That is what entrepreneurs do. And it’s actually also what scholars do when we are at, um, when we are sort of working within the constraints of what academia is.
Emily (05:51): And one of the things that I found really interesting about your book is that, and this is actually what how you ended up quoting me, like within the subject matter, um, is that going, we’re not just talking about like academics like you, like who have, you know, career professors and that kind of thing. We’re going all the way back to basically the grad student stage and how this mindset can be helpful in, in fact is necessary even from that point of making that transition from undergrad to graduate student. And you just mentioned, um, you know, ideas are the product that we work with within academia. And so I just wanted you to expound on this a little bit more. Like what is this transition that a person has to go through from being a, an excellent undergraduate <laugh> to being a successful graduate student? And why do so many people kind of get stuck or mired along the way and don’t make that transition successfully?
Ilana (06:40): Yeah, absolutely. The main mindset shift that I think people need to make is being able to shift from being a consumer of information to a producer of knowledge. And I really didn’t understand this. I think when I started my PhD program and it was at my orientation that, um, a professor said, right to all the incoming students, like, your job is no longer to consume information, it is to produce knowledge. And what that meant for me as this like realization that my entire life I have been evaluated on the basis of like my ability to consume information and regurgitate it back to the teacher, right? That’s what we generally do in K 12. That’s mostly what we do in college, right? And I was actually never very good at this. Um, which is, I ultimately, I think what ended helped me love graduate school. Um, but when I realized that graduate school is about being able to, um, is, is really about this production of knowledge, meaning that you are now like playing detective and it is up to you what is the problem in the world that you wanna pursue.
Ilana (07:45): And it is up to you how you wanna pursue it and when you wanna pursue it and what resources you wanna pursue it. Like you have so much agency in the process and your grades no longer matter. And for me, that was really liberating. But for a lot of people that’s really debilitating. And the reason it is debilitating is because people who often end up in PhD programs are people who are so good at school and meaning that they were so good at navigating the, what I call the or sociologists of education called the hidden curriculum of school. Like the rules and the routines and regulations, right? They’re like pros at this and they’re like, oh, I’m so good at school that I should go pro. And going pro means going to a PhD program, right? You are a career sort of, uh, student career students, um, aren’t necessarily great at having the mindset to sort of think outside the confines of what is expected of you.
Ilana (08:35): And so when grad school starts and you have a bunch of, you know, requirements, it’s okay, but then the script falls away. And then that is when I think panic, uh, sets in for a lot of people. ’cause it’s like, wait, now there are no rules and there are no routines and there are no regulations, like, what am I supposed to do? And then they, there’s this resentment of like, why isn’t my advisor telling me what, what to do? And like, why isn’t it super clear? And so the ability to like, instead of feeling that moment as debilitating, but instead of, uh, embracing it and embracing that autonomy, I think is like the big mindset shift that needs to happen.
Becoming the CEO of Your Own Education
Emily (09:08): I totally agree. And I, I see, you know, in retrospect how I kind of f- faltered in that myself during graduate school. And it was, it was difficult and you just used the term like script. I think that’s a really, really good way of putting this, like, as you said, you can master how it is to be good at school, you know, all the way up through the end of undergrad and be successful in that. And then once you reach graduate school, you have to really forge your own path. And it’s not totally cl- it’s not just, you know, x, y, z and then you get a degree. It’s a completely like unique experience. And the term that you use in the book, which I really loved is, um, becoming the CEO of your own education. And one of the reasons why I liked this is because it made me think about your education is not just what you do in graduate school, it’s a holistic picture of everything that goes into who you are professionally. And that could be experiences that you have through your classes and through your research and with your advisor and with your colleagues, but it could include a whole lot more than that. And you had a lot of examples in the book of people, um, seeking out experiences that, um, you know, using this mindset of being an entrepreneurial scholar that ultimately led them to the creation that they, you know, were in, were in graduate school or in their careers and to do so. I just really liked that like, framing of it. Did you wanna say anything more about that, that phrasing or how you view it?
Ilana (10:30): Yeah, that’s such a great question because right, my PhD is from a school of education, so I also, uh, think of education as a much more holistic endeavor. And when I think about your P- one’s PhD journey, and if I reflect on my own right, it’s so much more than what I learned in my classes. Um, and so for example, in the book I talk about this experience that I created for myself where I realized at one moment, maybe around my fourth year that I really needed teaching experience, um, as a Stanford, a PhD student in my program. Like I didn’t have to teach, I only had to be a research assistant. And I was like, how do I create an opportunity for myself to go teach? I ended up going to teach at a community college. And so when I think about my own education, I learned so much from that experience of being a community college, um, professor, both from the students in the class who were very different than most of the people I spent time with. They were like working adults mo- mostly first gen, low income, um, students of color. And so not only did I learn from them, but I also learned what it means to sort of educate a different population and what it means to sort of talk about sociological concepts to people who generally don’t come from elite backgrounds. And, um, and so all of that right, was part of my education. Uh, and my education also when I think about my PhD was about navigating things like gender expectations in the academy and like being, um, a sort of, uh, in a household, um, where I had to navigate gender dynamics, um, as everyone mostly has to. Um, and it was about doing a bunch of side hustles, uh, so that I could learn like, what does it mean to do, you know, statistics like act- for ac- an actual client as opposed to doing it for a class. Um, so yes, education is this like much more holistic experience, um, as you mentioned,
Emily (12:22): And now this is a little bit of a sidebar, but it’s kind of a soapbox that I get onto from time to time on the podcast, which is I really think it’s shortsighted of graduate programs to, um, disallow their students. And maybe this was not your experience, but it is in some places to disallow their students from taking outside work opportunities, very much like the ones you just mentioned, adjuncting, you know, side hustling using their skills that they’ve learning graduate school. Um, I get it that they want them to stay focused on finishing their dissertations. Um, but it’s, as I just said, it’s very shortsighted because many of these kinds of side hustles can be, um, augmenting as we were just talking about being the CEO of your own education and making you a better prepared professional once you get to the end of graduate school. So, um, yeah, little <laugh> just a little sidebar there, but I don’t know if you have any comments about, about that and how faculty might in some places view these kind of side endeavors.
Ilana (13:16): Yeah, I think it’s tricky, right? Because I, as you said, like I understand from the faculty’s perspective that they want students to be really focused because once you have some sort of job, especially if it’s like a full-time job, it’s really hard to stay focused on your research. But, um, I also feel very strongly and uh, and I did this myself, that when you take those outside opportunities, you are both, um, building your skillset, developing a network that’s really important. And also like, just being really realistic about the fact that most people who start a PhD program are not gonna end up in a a professor position, right? A very, very tiny percentage of people will end up in the, uh, being able to get a tenure track position or even a non-tenure track position. So it’s just like to, to navigate the uncertainty of academia means being really realistic with what the prospects are and to buffer yourself against that, uh, sort of crisis that is gonna come when you realize you can’t get a job. It’s really helpful to know that you have other options. Um, in my case, um, the School of Education, look, it didn’t have, I think there was a policy and some professors sort of instituted the policy more than others. I will say that, um, there was certainly not enthusiasm for me pursuing this, uh, teaching position at a community college, but I made the case, um, of why it was beneficial. And so it was allowed. And then I, and then there was a bunch of stuff that I did without telling anybody, and it was totally fine because I’m very good at being the CEO of my own education and I sort of knew what I could manage and what was valuable, like what, when I thought about it from a cost benefit ratio, like how much time am I spending on something versus the value I get out of it? And I have no regrets about pursuing anything, um, outside of academia and in the book, there are several examples of people who I interviewed, um, of how transformative those opportunities were. Because one is, it helps you sort of to have an identity outside of academia to have sort of self-worth in yourself, right? To understand that you are a person that isn’t just bound up with your academic identity. Because if, again, the academic job market doesn’t work out, the crisis that one has about their sense of self-worth is like maybe a little bit less knowing that you have value in some other, um, sort of capacity. And some, um, there have been some like amazing opportunities that people got because, you know, one person who I interviewed, Tamara worked for Kamala Harris, uh, on Fridays, and that led to a bunch of other opportunities. And particularly like if you’ve never worked outside of an academic setting, like if you are a person who’s pretty much going straight through from undergrad to your PhD, it’s really important to work in the outside world to understand sort of like the real, how the world, real world functions and not just be in like the academic bubble.
Emily (16:13): Absolutely. I, I totally agree everything you just said. Um, and I guess maybe a, a a corollary, like a, another interpretation of CEO of your own education is CEO of your own career, because you don’t know for sure that you are gonna end up in academia. And it makes sense, as you were just saying, to have, um, built an image of yourself that’s bigger than just an academic in case that career path, if it’s one you’re even going for, um, doesn’t work out. And you can still be an entrepreneurial scholar in graduate school and pivot to something else outside of it. But, um, the point that I wanted to make is that being the CEO of your own career maybe includes some career development experiences that you wouldn’t, you aren’t automatically being pushed into as a graduate student, but that are available to you probably from the graduate school and the career center and so forth. And just being able to like, spend some time exploring those professional development, um, resources and career ideas can, can really help you whenever you are making that next transition point,
Ilana (17:07): Right? And I talk in the book about like, you cannot predict the future, but you can help create it. And that’s, uh, I think an important lesson because all these things that you’re doing can help create your future, um, and it helps sort of offset that uncertainty that we as grad students, uh, sort of have to live with on a, on a day-to-day basis.
Emily (17:29): Yeah, and I, I really love that you talked in the book about uncertainty and about limited resources and oh my gosh, how timely is this? We’re recording this in February, 2025, and as of now there’s been these executive orders. We don’t know in academia how this is all gonna shake out whether there’s gonna be a massive funding decrease, um, you know, know layoffs. We don’t know. We’re in a period of uncertainty. And so how, I mean, it’s, it’s horrible timing in a sense, but it’s good timing for your book to like sort of land in this moment where in academia there’s probably a lot of questions going around about what, what resources do I have? What’s the value that I can bring here? What is my career path going to look like? And so, well, for that reason, if not any other, maybe it’s time to, you know, pick up this book.
Commercial
Emily (18:15): 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 free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.
Leveraging Available Resources as an Academic
Emily (19:07): And since we were just talking about scarce resources, um, I was really compelled by the, the book is basically five, five big ideas, five big chapters, and I was really compelled by the fourth one, which is around leveraging the resources available to you as a graduate student or as an academic. And so can you just expound a little bit more about what kinds of resources, um, might be available to a graduate student or an academic that could, you know, help them as an entrepreneurial scholar?
Ilana (19:33): Yeah, absolutely. So I actually start off the book with this idea of that being, um, thinking entrepreneurially means asking yourself, given who I am, what I know, and who I know, what kind of opportunities could I create for myself? And so here we are thinking about sort of, um, like the intellectual capital that you have, the human capital that you have, and the social capital that you have, right? Who do you know, what do you know? And who are you, um, to start thinking about how you can leverage all of that. So let me talk about this. First of all, this idea of like who, you know, in academia and particularly in the humanities, um, we tend to sort of think of, um, this very, this like lone scholar sitting in a library doing work very independently. And I really wanna disrupt this idea even in the humanities, because even if you’re writing a monograph, I wanna put forth the idea that scholarship is a community sport. Even if you end up writing alone, why is it a community sport? I want people to sort of imagine that the academic landscape is this vast network where each node is a person and each link is a potential collaboration or a shared idea, or even like just a mutual support system, um, because nobody should be doing this alone. And I remember even like as a grad student, I’m in the social sciences, so there isn’t a fair amount of collaboration, but the sort of reticence that some of my colleagues had to ask each other for help to seek out help from, um, more senior people was, was astonishing to me because I came from working in startups and in management consulting where it was very, very common to just ask for help or ask for other people for ideas. So when I say that I want people to think of scholarship as a community sport, what, what that means in practice is like thinking about your network and relationships that you have, not just like, how do you in an icky way try to extract value from that, right? That’s an icky like, um, and I think incorrect version of what it means to network. Instead, I want people to think about networking as the opportunity to actually help other people, right? Not extracting value, but actually putting yourself out there so that your idea and someone else’s idea or sort of your problem and the problem that someone else is experiencing, um, can have sort of mutually beneficial, um, solutions, right? That you in, in partnership with other people can problem solve together, right? And so for example, um, at one point in when I was a sort of latter stage grad student, I was working on a paper, um, and I got really stuck on it. Um, and a new postdoc came to Stanford and I, we were having lunch and I started telling him about this paper. Um, and then I realized that like what I was missing was like a whole framing around gender.
Ilana (22:26): He happened to be a gender scholar, and I realized like it would be really beneficial if he came and joined as an author on this paper. Um, and it was this very, very mutually beneficial decision and collaboration that by the way, has a, actually ended up, that paper ended landed in the top sociology journal. And I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that alone. And since then, he and I have collaborated on several other, uh, other things. Um, but it wasn’t like I was like, oh, this, this person is coming and I wanna just extract value, um, by having lunch with ’em and like seeing what I can sort of get out of that person. Like I knew that this would be a me- mutually beneficial relationship. Um, and so there are many ways to think about how can you identify people in your network, but also develop relationships with people who are outside of your network, um, by thinking about like, where might you have complimentary skills with other people? Um, how might you be able to offer value to somebody else’s project? Right? And so not just thinking about your own career advancement, but thinking about like, how can we do more with what we have, um, by, by collaborating, right? If like, I think of, uh, I think therefore I am instead, like, I think therefore I collaborate.
Emily (23:38): Hmm. Yeah. As you were talking about that, I was just thinking like, yes, this is such a human endeavor. Like it’s human to have relationships with other people and build things together. And I like what you said there because under, under the topic of like leveraging resources, really what you’re saying is think of yourself as a resource that you can offer to other people, and then they mutually can offer their resource of themselves in this case back to you. So it’s, it’s, it’s quite mutual. So I love that. Um, any other sort of categories of, of ways people can leverage resources?
Ilana (24:11): So when people hear the terms leverage resources, they immediately think of money, right? And sort of funding. And so I would do wanna touch upon that and what does it mean to sort of think entrepreneurially about funding? Um, in the book I give examples of people who, uh, have been very successful at getting different fellowships. And there are different ways to think about how to be strategic in those. Like do you go for a bunch of sort of small, low, uh, uh, sort of low bar, uh, grants where it doesn’t take very much to apply to them? Like maybe you can repurpose something and then you just apply to a bunch of really small things. Or do you invest several months into putting together something that has, uh, bigger, bigger reward, right? You always wanna be thinking in all of academic life, you wanna diversify your risk, uh, sort of risk benefit portfolio. And funding is one of those things. Um, I’ll give an example of something that happened to me recently because a lot of thinking entrepreneurially is like taking advantage of opportunities that you didn’t necessarily expect. And so recently, um, Tulane had, uh, somebody from the Russell Sage Foundation come and give a talk about, you know, their funding streams. And I went, and in that talk I realized, I was like, oh, I don’t have anything relevant for this, because they’re looking for really early, more early stage projects than anything that I have. Um, I sort of wrote it off, you know, like I didn’t even take the opportunity to meet with a program officer. And then about a month later I had kind of like a crisis in one of my projects that resulted in me pulling out of the project for a variety of reasons. Um, and I, I was having this like sort of moment of both, like panic, but also seeing opportunity emerge from this breakup where I was like, oh my gosh, like this gives me an opportunity to actually do a totally different study. Uh, and I was like, oh gosh, but that’s like really early stage. Where would I get funding? And I was like, wait a minute. I was like, I just sat through one of those RSF things. So right away I contacted the person at Tulane who had set up that program officer to come and I said, I all of a sudden have an idea, is it too late to meet with them? And she said, let me get in touch. So I met with a program officer, I learned so much, I told them what my idea was, and through that conversation I learned about like some stuff that, about their grants that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out just based off of their website. Like it turns out that there was a stream of funding that wasn’t gonna continue and it would be very beneficial for me to apply to, to this particular stream of funding. So I did, and I submitted, um, a letter of intent, um, which is their first stage. And I actually made it through to the, to the proposal stage. So I should hear back in a couple of weeks about whether I got it or not. But I at least feel very good that I made it through the LOI stage. And again, the like, key takeaway is I didn’t, you know, the sort of, I put myself out there, I went to the session, I didn’t think anything would come of it. And then when I had this like moment of, of crisis and I, and I saw opportunity, I was like, oh, wait a minute, I can connect the dots here. So, so thinking about like, um, expansively about funding and resources, um, and just like sometimes going to stuff that you may think doesn’t have any benefit for you, you never know when there will be, um, a payoff.
Emily (27:24): Hmm. And I’ll speak as a business owner, I actually don’t identify with the term entrepreneur for my particular type of business, but as a business owner, I have to think about the revenue streams in my business. And I have, I might have predictions about which revenue streams are gonna work out to what capacity, but it’s really beneficial, as you were just saying, to have, um, ideas maybe on the back burner, <laugh> of other revenue streams, other fellowships, other grants you could apply to. And so if you have the capacity, like in your example that you just gave, if you suddenly have the capacity to be applying for things or putting effort into an area that you weren’t before, then you say, oh, I, I have some background in this. I know how to turn this on in a, in a quicker way than just, you know, starting completely like cold. I really love that example. Anything else you wanna add? Um, I, I, just for the podcast listeners, especially if you’re a longtime podcast listener, chapter four of this book is really special because Ilana included, um, my podcast, like interviews as some of the resources and also interviewed some other people that I’ve had on the podcast before. So like, it was like seeing some old friends in this chapter, which was really exciting. And also, of course also pulled in some other interviews that I found really, um, great. So I thought you actually summed this up really well in the, you know, concluding notes for that chapter where you said, remember, every funding opportunity is also a chance to expand your community and collaborate with others who share your vision and actually ties really well both of those points, um, together. So thank you so much. Anything else you wanna add in about this leveraging resources topic?
Ilana (28:48): I’ll add one more thing, and this is sort of the, this idea of connecting with people so that you can expand your knowledge of what is possible in the world. And what I mean by that is there are things like that I remember as a doctoral student that I was like, there’s no way that I can do this because I have no mental map and I have no schema in my head for how to make this possible. So for example, um, at towards the end of grad, grad school, I was like, I wanna write a book. I had written a multiple multi paper dissertation, but I wanted to write a book, but I have no mental model of how you go about writing a book when you are a PhD student. And it seemed like out of the realm of possibility. And nowhere in my graduate program did anyone ever train me to think about this. Um, and I had a friend who as a grad student was able to, uh, not a friend, he wasn’t even at my institution, but, but it was someone who I had met along the way. Uh, and I knew that he had been able to secure not one, but sort of two offers from prestigious public, uh, book presses, um, for an advanced contract. And I was like, wait, that’s a thing. I didn’t know that was possible. And once I knew it was a thing and he helped me understand how it became a thing and walked me through all the steps that he went through and even shared his proposal, I had this like ability to think beyond what I could think about earlier. I was like, oh, if he could do it, maybe I could do it too, and here’s what it could look like. And I followed some of the similar steps, um, and it became possible. Um, so I think we, we don’t think of collaborating, um, as sort of an opportunity to think beyond ourselves, but that’s what it does for me. It gives me the, the poss- that that sort of opportunity to imagine possibilities that I thought were off the table.
The Origin Story of The Entrepreneurial Scholar Book
Emily (30:37): Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. So this is your second book and you use this book as an example in, I believe it’s the fifth chapter of, um, a an entrepreneurial scholarship activity, right? Of publishing a book. So, um, can you just tell us really briefly how the book, um, came about?
Ilana (30:56): Yeah, the book came about, um, from something I totally didn’t expect and out of a sort of a story of failure, which I think is like a very defining, uh, feature of entrepreneurship. When I was a graduate student at the very end of grad school, I was a sixth year, you know, I wasn’t even taking classes, but because I was in this mindset of like, I wanna get everything I can out of Stanford while I’m here and while it’s free, um, I decided to, I was auditing a bunch of classes. I was auditing classes on like how to be a good public speaker and improv. And one of the classes I audited was how to Write for the Public. And it was taught by Sam Weinberg, a professor, um, at the School of Education. And our final assignment was to write an op-ed, right? Not surprisingly, and mostly everyone in the class took this opportunity to write an op-ed about their research. And at the time I was about to graduate and I was reflecting sort of deeply about how my own PhD journey, um, went. Um, and so I took this opportunity to write, um, an op-ed that like, basically I submitted to a couple places and it failed. It did not get published. And it was really frustrating. And Sam, who, um, who I really, really have to give a lot of credit to, he was like, you, you shouldn’t give up on this idea. There’s something there, there. And even if you sort of put it down for a little while, you have to promise me that one day you will pick it back up because I see it, it has a future. Like he, he believed in it. Um, and so for two years, Emily, I kid you not two years, this thing just like sat on my computer. And so about a week before I started my job at Tulane, I was already in my new office and I was about to go home for the day and I was like, you know what? I was, was like, I have childcare. Nothing is gonna like blow up at home if I just like stay in the office for two more hours and I’m gonna pick up that op-ed and I’m gonna dust it off, you know, and see what I can do with it. ’cause I promised Sam that I would. And, and I did, and I, I sort of spoke from a place of what I knew, like I leaned into this startup and, um, consulting experience that I had and I wrote this op-ed that was, or I revised it I think with the title Why PhD students Should Think Like Entrepreneurs. And I submitted and then I thought about, okay, I have this, where can I submit it to? At that point, I already had published once in Inside Higher Ed, so I submitted it to them, right? That was like the, the, the, the most obvious choice. I already had a personal connection there. And within two hours they wrote me back and I, and they were like, yeah, this is great, we will take it. And I was like, oh, that was easy. Okay. And then a few weeks later it came out and, you know, I got a, a couple of nice emails from, um, faculty and some from therapists who said how much this resonated for them and working with grad students. And then I got the most unexpected email. It was from, uh, the editor at Princeton University Press, Peter, and he was like, this is great. Do you wanna flesh this out into a book? And I was like, I’m sorry, come again, <laugh>, uh, you want me to write a book on this topic? And so that, that is the, the sort of birth story of this book. Um, and so it really came out of something very unexpected and to, to write this book, I went out and I interviewed about, um, 45 people who hold either different positions in academia or who have left academia or who are entrepreneurs. So this book really required me to think about like, who am I? What do I know and who do I know to make it happen? So in that way, it is very much like a story of an entrepreneurial, uh, endeavor.
Emily (34:30): Absolutely. I can see that so clearly. I’m so glad that you brought that up so that I could ask you this question about how the book came to be. Um, and so interesting that there was that two year just time period, and I dunno what it was, I don’t know if it was the rewriting that you did or how things had changed in your perspective in two years, or how the world had changed in the two years, but somehow the idea clearly hit <laugh> the second time around. Um, and that’s, that’s fantastic. Where can people find the book?
Ilana (34:57): The people can find the book at Princeton University Press, and I think in your show notes, uh, I can share a, uh, discount code, um, that people can use. People can also find it on Amazon as well as learn more about it on my website, www.IlanaHorwitz, that’s I-L-A-N-A-H-O-R-W-I-T-Z.com. Uh, and I encourage people to reach out to me, uh, if they wanna learn more about it.
Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD
Emily (35:27): All right, and since you said that you love dispensing advice, we have one more opportunity for you to do so, which is with the standard question that I ask of all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it could be something we’ve touched on in the interview already, or it could be something completely new.
Ilana (35:44): My best advice is to pursue a side hustle if possible. And I recognize that it is not possible for everyone, especially international students, students who are parents. Um, I get that this is something that isn’t available to everybody, but if you have the opportunity and sometimes the pay might be so bad, like my first side hustle, I made $12 an hour and it was absolutely worth it because I gained so many skills from the experience. But don’t just think about it from a financial perspective, think about all the other different ways that it could benefit you. Um, and the money that you get on the side is also a really nice perk.
Emily (36:26): Very good. Uh, thanks for tying all those themes together. Well, Ilana, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you again.
Ilana (36:34): Thanks Emily.
Outtro
Emily (36:45): 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 me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.
