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This PhD Solopreneur Started His Business During Grad School

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Lubos Brieda, a PhD in aerospace engineering who is now a full-time consultant in the aerospace industry. Lubos’s solopreneur journey during grad school started with blogging about scientific computing  and a part-time job at NASA on top of his assistantship. Lubos gives great advice on how to start consulting as a graduate student and how to transition it into your full-time job after your PhD, emphasizing making connections and choosing the right structure for your business. This episode is perfect for any graduate student or PhD who is interested in being their own boss and providing services within their area of expertise for multiple clients instead of pursuing the traditional employee route.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

This PhD Solopreneur Started His Business During Grad School

Teaser

00:00 Lubos: Whatever niche topic you might be into, and you might think like, oh, nobody else cares about this. You will find the audience for this. Just by simply the mathematics of how many people are in the world, you’ll find somebody interested in this audience. And so, you know, for all the kind of PhD students these days, you know, whatever interests you, do not hesitate to kind of put it out into the world. I mean like, there will be somebody interested in what you’re doing.

Introduction

00:28 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 15, and today my guest is Dr. Lubos Brieda, a PhD in aerospace engineering who is now a full-time consultant in the aerospace industry. Lubos’s solopreneur journey during grad school started with blogging about scientific computing and a part-time job at NASA on top of his assistantship. Lubos gives great advice on how to start consulting as a graduate student and how to transition it into your full-time job after your PhD, emphasizing making connections and choosing the right structure for your business. This episode is perfect for any graduate student or PhD who is interested in becoming their own boss and providing services within their area of expertise for multiple clients instead of pursuing the traditional employee route. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Lubos Brieda.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:32 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Lubos Brieda. He has a PhD in aerospace engineering from George Washington, and he is now self-employed analyzing spacecraft plasma, propulsion, and contamination controls. He’s going to tell us a lot more about that. That is the subject of our interview today, how Lubos became self-employed during graduate school, and how that became his full-time thing after graduate school. So those of you who have aspirations to become your own boss or become entrepreneurs, this will be a really interesting conversation for you. So Lubos, will you please introduce yourself to the audience a little bit further?

02:07 Lubos: Well, thank you, Emily. Thank you for having me. So again, my name is Lubos Brieda, and I have a bachelor’s from Virginia Tech and also a master’s from Virginia Tech in aerospace engineering. And after I finished my grad school, my master’s, I worked for three years at the Air Force Research Lab at Edwards, California. And then after working there for some years, I basically realized that I would like to go back to school and do something more, you know, have the opportunity to actually be my own researcher, and my own investigator. And this is something that a PhD would kind of allow me to have this role. And an opportunity came up to go back to the east coast into Washington DC. And I joined a program at the George Washington University. And during that time, I basically started doing a little bit of a consulting on the side. And after I graduated, this actually morphed into my full-time job. And so, essentially, I’ve never had a real job besides except for the three years stint between my master’s and my PhD. Because from the time I graduated with my PhD, I was essentially working for myself as my own boss with its own, you know, pros and cons.

Blogging in Grad School

03:17 Emily: Yeah. It sounds like a smooth transition. We’ll find out more about that right now. So I understand that this whole self-employment thing started with blogging. So can you tell us more about like, why you started blogging during graduate school?

03:30 Lubos: Yeah. So, actually what happened was, the reason I ended up working at AFRL is because the Air Force Research Lab was funding my graduate work at Virginia Tech. And so when I came in, I essentially developed some code and some simulation programs for the Air Force. And so when I moved over to AFRL, I, you know, worked on the code a little bit more and helped develop additional features. And so when I left for a PhD, there was still a need for me to essentially kind of provide like, you know, consulting services to AFRL because I was the primary author. So when some questions came up, I would help out with that. So, really my first experience with consulting was actually doing the sort of hourly work for AFRL.

04:16 Lubos: But at the same time, I also kind of realized that, you know, there’s this huge gap in the scientific computing field between what’s really available in, let’s say textbooks, that will introduce only like the basic equations for like, you know, how some solder should be written. And then in the journal papers, they only discuss kind of the outcome of it. Like, you know, basically saying like we used this technique and we got these nice graphs, but there was really this missing gap in the middle that actually shows you how to go from the equation to the results, how to actually physically implement it on a computer. And so I started kind of working on this, you know, related to my own field of plasma propulsion. I started writing these in a blog article that actually tried to illustrate how you would actually implement these solders.

05:02 Lubos: And this blog actually became quite popular. And you know, it led actually to quite a lot of additional business opportunities. I started teaching online classes, I got a book published. I’m just going to do a promo. So basically this book is a summary of the course of that came out of my blog. And it’s just been a really good opportunity to actually kind of how, by having a website, I was able to attract this audience because there was this big need for this kind of a niche topic. And people just found it and just, you know, started reaching out to me.

05:34 Emily: Is it fair to say that what you were blogging about was what you were learning in graduate school, or maybe what other graduate students were learning, like to take what you were saying earlier? Like what you read in a textbook, maybe that’s at the undergraduate level versus what you see published in a journal that’s quite advanced and to bridge those two, is that fair?

05:54 Lubos: That’s absolutely correct. That’s right.

You Will Find an Audience

05:56 Emily: Yeah. And so, I’m just trying to think about how we can, you know, how the listener can think about, be inspired by your story. And like, I do think that blogging or practicing some kind of communication around what you’re learning in graduate school, like a learn with me kind of model, can be really powerful, especially as you discovered, you know, no one was yet doing that in your niche, and you were able to step in and do that. So like wow. What a good technique, like, that’s a great idea.

06:22 Lubos: You know, I think that people need to realize that, you know, the internet or the world is huge. So I think really what the internet allows us to do is that whatever niche topic you might be into, and you might think like, oh, nobody else cares about this. You will find the audience for this. By simply the mathematics of how many people are in the world, you will find somebody interested in this audience. And so, you know, for all the kind of PhD students these days, you know, whatever interests you like do not hesitate to kind of put it out into the world. I mean, like there’ll be somebody interested in what you think.

Primary Income Source: Government Contracts

06:53 Emily: You just told us a few different ways that you ultimately monetized this, you know, the subject that you’re blogging about and so forth. I was just wondering which of those you actually did during graduate school? The teaching or the courses or the whatever, you know, what you just listed.

07:07 Lubos: Right. So there was actually another kind of side of it. So, I mean, I do blogging, but really the blogging is really more, just a way to actually get real customers. So my real income is not from blogging. It’s not from courses. I mean, I’ve made, you know, like up to now I’ve probably generated something like $80,000 from the courses alone, but that’s, you know, over like, you know, many years. But my main income is actually from government contracts. I’m actually doing like real analysis for customers. And what really the blog allows me to do is that, you know, people find me and people say, Hey, this person has a set of skills that I might be interested in. Let me hire this person to do some contract work. So, I mean, that really is my primary source of income, even up to this day. I support quite a large number of clients. You know, I have clients from NASA, Air Force, all the primary aerospace companies. And, you know, they come to me and, you know, we get some little contract, you know, some statement of work written down, and then I do some analysis for them as needed.

08:03 Emily: I think that’s really, really good information for the listener, especially like, I don’t know. I think I became maybe a little bit too enamored with like the online entrepreneur space where people are all about like selling courses and selling eBooks and selling these like passive products. But really, the fastest way to get a business off the ground is selling services. And you’ve done both of this, but you’re being transparent now that yeah, the bulk of your income comes from the services side rather than the passive income side of things, which I think is very, totally typical. So how is it that you like got this? Well, I mean, it sounds like you had a consulting client from, you know, your employer prior to starting your PhD. How did you land your first consulting client aside from that company?

Landing Consulting Clients

08:45 Lubos: Yeah, so there’ve been actually a few, but really the main contract, so also when I was working, when I was doing my PhD, I took a side job and I started working at NASA Goddard in Maryland. And I was working there as a part-time employee, you know, kind of was still in school. And while I was at NASA, I managed to get quite, you know, I made a lot of connections, you know, with a lot of people. So basically the reason I was brought in is because a friend of mine that actually used to work at AFRL with me, he got a job at NASA and he identified a sort of need for a certain skill set, something that I was really good at. So it was something that, you know, he really didn’t have the time to work on.

09:29 Lubos: And so he identified me as somebody who would come in and actually help NASA Goddard, you know, with this particular need that was there. And so I came in and I, you know, worked on this project. And doing this kind of led to meeting a lot of people at NASA. And so, at this time I was working as a government contractor through one of the contracting firms. So maybe your listeners, maybe in the aerospace field, are more familiar with this, but a lot of work in, you know, centers like NASA with so many of these research labs is actually done by contractors. So there’s only a small subset of government civilians who are essentially kind of the top-level people controlling the purse, the budget, but most of the technical work is actually done by contractors.

10:11 Lubos: And so, I came as a contractor with the understanding that when I graduate, my salary will essentially increase to a more competitive range, because I came in just kind of like a, you know, better than McDonald’s money, but I was really not making like what you would expect to make as a PhD engineer. Which is fine when I was in school, it was just a little bit of extra spending money for me. But unfortunately when I graduated, I went to my contracting company boss and said, “Hey, I graduated now. So can we renegotiate my salary?” And basically they said, “Oh, we give you like a 2% raise.” And I was like, this is not going to fly.

10:48 Lubos: And so, in the meantime, since I made all these connections and already had my business, you know, kind of set up because of these other works, I already had like a legal entity. I was actually able to roll over all my contracts at NASA to my own firm. So that instead of paying, you know, some middleman to essentially hand me a paycheck, I just, you know, became my own middleman essentially. So I was able to actually also give a much better value to the government because my overhead was a lot less than what the other company before was paying. And so that kind of led to that. So one of my, really, I think my kind of big intro into this was that I you know, started actually supporting work at NASA Goddard kind of more not full-time, but close to full time. And also at the same time, my advisor and I, we wrote a grant that was based on my dissertation work. So then I’m getting funded. There’s this program called SBIR, Small Business Innovative Research, that a lot of these government agencies essentially fund. And so we were able to get SBIR funding to do some additional follow-on work on my PhD. So that was kind of another, like a big contract that also kind of materialized around the same time.

11:56 Emily: So, it sounds to me like you weren’t necessarily like a traditional PhD student in the sense that you only worked for your advisor doing your research and you were paid like an assistantship salary. It sounded like you had sort of a foot in the real working world, although part-time, and a foot while you’re finishing your PhD. And it was sort of a more gradual shift over to, okay, well now I’m done with the PhD and now I’m fully working for myself. And I love the idea of cutting out the middle person and, you know, you’re going to be a contractor anyway. So just work for yourself instead of for a third party. That makes a lot of sense.

Navigating PhD Research and Outside Work

12:26 Emily: So, given that you had this, what might sound a little bit unusual to some of my listeners different like approach to working, like how did you sort of manage finishing your PhD and having a great relationship with your advisor with doing this outside work, whether it was for, you know, as an official contractor for NASA Goddard or your own side stuff?

12:46 Lubos: Yeah. So I was working about 20 hours a week at NASA. It was, you know, a part-time job. But yeah, I mean, it definitely involved a lot of late nights, which I think a lot of PhDs are kind of familiar with anyway. But you know, I think the bottom line is we need to make money. You know, and I lived in DC. DC is expensive. And, you know, I was lucky to also have a stipend. I was receiving a stipend, but, you know, George Washington paid, you know, fairly good money. But still, you know, just going off my memory, it’s probably maybe around $2000 a month or whatnot. And just the rent, you know, can eat up like, you know, a huge chunk of that. So it’s really difficult to survive just on the stipend alone.

13:23 Lubos: So, you know, part of the reason I took these opportunities was to make more income, but also it actually ended up being a very symbiotic relationship too, because, you know, the work that I was working on at NASA is very related to what my advisor was researching, what basically I was researching for my own PhD. And so they were actually able to generate connections that would then actually help my own advisor actually get his own foot in the door at NASA and get additional, you know, contracts for him. So I think it actually worked out really well.

13:52 Emily: Yeah, I’m really impressed with this journey. And I’m also kind of, I’m a little bit surprised, honestly, that, I don’t know if it was your advisor or department and whoever, allowed this working relationship. Allowed a 20 hour per week outside position while you were still, you know, receiving a stipend, but was that just on the basis that yeah, you’re putting in the hours, like that 20 hour a week position did not affect your, you know, main progress on your dissertation.

14:15 Lubos: That’s right. And I’m also, you know, I’m a believer of you know, it’s better to ask for forgiveness later, than ask for permission first. So I mean, you know I was essentially paid for, you know, doing my 20 or whatever 40 hours a week of, you know, doing like RA work. And I was putting that in. So anything beyond that, you know, like as long as the advisor doesn’t have a concern with it, I mean, the department after all is really there just to essentially funnel the money, right? And make sure that everybody is getting paid, and the PI is getting the funding from external sources. But in the end, as long as my advisor, you know the PI who actually has the funding is, you know, happy with your output, then it just worked out really well.

14:55 Emily: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, I don’t know if this was the initial pitch to your advisor, but this ended up helping your advisor as well, your outside working relationships. So it was a whole like symbiotic thing, like all around, which is really great to hear.

Outside Income as a Cushion Against Additional Grad School Debt

15:06 Emily: So you said that one of your main motivations for taking this job at NASA and then also doing the side hustling was to earn more money because, yeah, DC’s an inexpensive place to live. What did having these other, you know, outside sources of income do for your finances in graduate school?

15:22 Lubos: Well, I mean, it definitely helped. I think I was a little bit privileged in the sense that I, you know, when I finished all my schooling, I really didn’t have a lot of student loans. Essentially, most of my loans were actually stemming from my undergrad, really from my freshman and sophomore year. But still, I was kind of glad that I was able to, with the extra income, I was able to keep making payments if needed or at least maybe save some money, and not have to essentially tap into more debt. So I was able to go do my PhD without actually taking on any additional debt on top of what I had.

15:52 Emily: Yeah. That makes a ton of sense.

Commercial

15:56 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.

Advice for Starting Your Own Self-Employment Journey

17:09 Emily: Did you have any advice for other current graduate students about balancing some side work or starting even your own self-employment venture during graduate school?

17:19 Lubos: Sure. Yeah. So I think it’s really important for everybody, and maybe this is actually more for like some of the undergrads, to really make connections with the faculty. Because, you know, the professors are always looking for more help with whatever project they’re working on. And often they might get some funding coming in, and they just simply do not have anybody available to do the funding. So if you already have a working relationship with a professor, they might say, Hey, you know, you, whatever, come work for me. I got this new grant coming in. I can fund your master’s work, maybe your PhD work. And it just really helps to actually have those connections existing there.

17:58 Emily: And it sounds like, you know, networking, in a sense, or the connections also are what got you some of these other jobs and contracts and so forth. I think you referenced earlier, “Oh, I had a friend who was working there and he knew that I was the expert in such and such.” And so having those connections obviously is amazing for getting these bits of work. Anything else? You know, you’ve mentioned a couple of times about like the official like business structure, like what kind of structure did you have during graduate school? Do you think it was a good fit at that time?

Forming a Company

18:23 Lubos: Yeah. So this actually is really, I would say maybe the most, it’s not really complicated, but if anybody wants to do kind of a consulting route, I mean, there are a lot of steps that need to be done, some technicalities. And so in order to actually be a business, there are kind of like two main routes you can choose. One is that you really just are sort of like a self-employed person, you actually do not have any kind of a business entity at all. So just really do the work as yourself. And there are some challenges with doing this because you’re kind of exposing maybe more of your own personal finances to any liability. So it’s always good to form a company, and it’s actually not difficult. It’s just some paperwork needs to be filled out.

19:02 Lubos: So I went down the LLC route. LLC is a Limited Liability Company. Another option is a S corporation LLCs are simpler to sell than S-corps. And every state has a different way of doing this. So this is kind of where things become a little bit challenging. Depending on what state you’re located in, you have to kind of research your own, you know, I guess the corporation board, I guess something along those lines. But essentially, you need to register with your own state. You also need to register with the federal government. So you need to get an employer identification number. So it’s kind of like a social security, but for a business. You also need to open a bank account. S, you know, it depends, you know, where you go, each bank will have different regulations. I bank with a credit union. So they actually made it kind of easier, I think, to open it.

Opening a Retirement Account

19:49 Lubos: And finally, then when it comes to the finances, you need to also open a retirement account. So, you know, I think some of your listeners might be familiar with a 401(k) or Roth IRA. The issue with a Roth IRA is there’s a ceiling to how much income you can make, you know, and then it basically cuts off. So you cannot put any more money into the Roth, like once you exceed a certain amount of annual income, you simply cannot put money into Roth IRAs. And with a regular IRA, you’re limited to only like $6,000 a year. So if you actually want to be saving, you know, more substantially for retirement, it’s better to have some other ways to save more. And the easiest way to do this is open a SEP IRA. So SEP is I guess self-employed or something on those lines.

20:35 Emily: Self-Employed Pension, I think.

20:37 Lubos: Yeah, Self-Employed Pension [Simplified Employee Pension] plan. And so with a SEP, you can contribute something like up to like maybe 20% of your income. I think you probably know the right numbers, but it becomes something comparable to 401(k). And the benefit is there is no expense, because the 401(k) plan has like an annual fee. So 401(k) is really the only viable route if you have a lot of employees, but if you’re kind of like an individual person, then a SEP is the way to go. And with a SEP, you just the money in, and it’s just like a regular IRA, you know, you get the deduction. And then, you know, so you can get it rolled right off on your taxes when you do your income. Also in the website, it’s also a very important thing to have some kind of website for people can find you. And besides, I mean, that’s essentially, I mean, things become more complicated once you start hiring employees, but as long as you’re just working for yourself, then it’s actually quite trivial. Like it’s not too many more steps besides what I just mentioned right now.

21:29 Emily: Yeah. You put that so well. I want anyone who’s interested in going out on their own, hanging their own shingle, like to go back and listen to what you said, because you covered everything important. You said it very succinctly and very, very clearly. And I totally agree with everything you said there, and it’s the journey that I’ve taken with my own business as well. I’m going to link in the show notes, I actually have a course available inside the personal finance for PhDs community called Best Financial Practices for Your Self-Employment Side Hustle, which goes into some of the elements that you just talked about, like setting up a separate bank account, like retirement plan options. So I actually don’t have a SEP IRA, but I have a solo 401(k), which I decided was the better fit for me. Which actually, because I set it up at the same place, Vanguard, where I have my IRA, it actually didn’t have any additional fees, which was cool.

22:19 Lubos: I also bank with Vanguard. So I didn’t actually realize Vanguard has options.

22:21 Emily: Yeah. Look into it. Because I liked with the solo 401(k), especially when I was making like less money, you can contribute up to that $19.5K cap, like a hundred percent of what you make basically, and not be limited to that 20% limit that the SEP IRA has. So anyway depending on your level of income, one or the other could make more sense. For me earlier on, definitely the solo 401(k) made more sense, so I liked using that at first. For me also, like I’m actually right now going through the process of registering my LLC in California, because I moved to California recently. And California wants their hands in everything you do if you live there. So I’m registering my LLC in California now. It used to be in Washington. And actually I’m doing an S election this year with my financial advisor. So she’s helping me with that. But yeah, it’s the same, I totally agree when you’re starting out, like do the LLC, it’s not really a big deal, set up the bank accounts. All of what you just said is perfect.

From Side Hustle to Full-Time Self-Employment

23:16 Emily: Let’s talk more about your transition. Like you mentioned, you know, coming out of grad school, maybe you expected to keep working for that contracting company, but then they weren’t going to raise your pay. So, no. Like how did you expand to like, make this be a full-time thing instead of just a side thing as it was during grad school?

23:34 Lubos: I don’t know. I guess maybe I was kind of maybe lucky. I kind of stumbled into this field that apparently there was a huge need for people to do analysis. And there really aren’t many who have the set of skills that I have. So it kind of almost got to a point of where, like, I almost have more work than I can handle, which on one hand is a good thing, but it also can be, you know, you need to be really careful with like, how are you balancing, you know, your life and your work commitments.

24:02 Emily: Yeah, I mean, that is really fortunate that the demand was there and you were stepping in like at the right time to provide these services. It definitely seems to me from the way you’re speaking about this that you could have a full-time job. You could have an employer if you wanted to, but you are, you know, committing to this contractor lifestyle. Why is that? Why do you prefer this?

Flexible Contractor Lifestyle

24:21 Lubos: I think I really enjoy the flexibility of it. You know, so I’ve been actually working from home like long before COVID came. And I do enjoy that I to work with many different customers. So I kind of get like an insight into what’s happening and, you know, I kind of get to see like, you know, I get to work on many different missions. As opposed to, let’s say I work at NASA Goddard, or another NASA center. I might be working only on one mission. So you get to see the one mission from build to launch, which is great, but sometimes it’s good to actually, you know, learn more about more things happening. So it just kind of gives you more insight into the world. But there is one big downside and that is that you know, working from home, like by yourself, you kind of start missing a little bit of that kind of face-to-face interaction.

25:09 Lubos: And so I actually took a job you know, a year and a half ago at the university. So I also teach at a university and I basically do the job so I could get a chance to interact with students and actually kind of try to teach them some of the stuff that I learned myself. And just kind of have more like the kind of face-to-face interactions with other faculty and you know, more people in academia. So I think it’s important that even if you do work kind of for yourself is, you know, try to find a balance a little bit and actually try to like interface with other colleagues kind of in your same field, just so you can have the kind of back and forth a little bit of discussion.

The PhD Opens Doors

25:45 Emily: Yeah. I’ve found the same thing, and thankfully I’ve made some good, like kind of online contacts through my business, who I can have, they’re not literally my colleagues, but kind of have a collegial relationship with them, which is really, really lovely. And definitely yeah, it’s a needed outlet when you’re self-employed. Is there any other advice that you want to add about you know, being full-time self-employed?

26:11 Lubos: I would basically, I guess say like, you know, do not hesitate to try this out. And also, like, I think that people should realize that, you know, a PhD is really just a way to open a set of doors that maybe wouldn’t be there before, and it may not be for everybody. Maybe not everybody wants to open the door, but having a PhD really gives you the credibility to kind of be your own independent researcher. So, you know, I’ve met a lot of people, brilliant people who only have a bachelor’s. So, in no way am I knocking down any other, you know, any other degrees. Just because someone has a PhD doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to be, you know, smarter than somebody who doesn’t. But at the same time, by having that, you know, a PhD after your title, it kind of makes people kind of trust you a bit more, so maybe like a new person or you want to kind of get into consulting.

26:58 Lubos: Just the fact you have the PhD will give a little bit more credibility. And so if there’s anything you’re interested in, you know, do not hesitate. And I feel like now, especially with the internet, you know, there’s really no need to have this survey standard career path. You know, you go for a PhD and then you do a post-doc, go to faculty. I mean, there are many, many opportunities to be an independent researcher. And a lot of, you know, now there’s a lot of private funding coming out. Let’s say my field in the space environment, the space industry, maybe, you know, five years ago, all the money was coming just from the government entities, you know, from NASA, maybe from the DOD. Now there’s a lot of private venture capital coming in. So there are all these companies being formed all over the place and everybody needs some kind of analysis to be done. And so if you have a set of skills, you know, don’t box yourself into this whole, like, you know, post-doc faculty route, because there are many, many other opportunities available.

27:52 Emily: I love that advice. That’s perfect. A perfect way to end this interview aside from our standard last question. And I loved hearing sort of the arc of your story here from you know, just starting a blog about something that interested you and what you were learning in graduate school and it blossomed into this whole like full career, which is amazing. And I’m so glad to hear that you, you know, you’re so gratified in that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

28:13 Emily: So the question that I ask all my guests at the end of our interviews is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? Would you please share that with us? It can be something that we have touched on already in the interview, or it could be something completely different.

28:26 Lubos: Yeah. So, you know, obviously while doing a PhD, you know, your funds may be kind of limited. But you know, once you do get a job, or once you have a more steady income, you know, try to save money for retirement. Because it is not the percentage you’ll make, it’s a time that’s going to save you. I mean, it’s just the, you know, once you have the money there for a couple of years, just the compound interest, it just starts, you know, accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. So the earlier you can start with saving for retirement, the better. And, you know, for other people it’s like, oh, I’m going to put it off. I need to buy a car. I need to buy other things. But you know, please do that as quickly as you can. And the second one is, I was just listening to your you know, recent podcast with I guess Alexandra about, you know, purchasing a house.

29:09 Lubos: And so again, you know, buying a house these days is quite challenging as well because it’s a lot of money. But at the same time, you know, my wife and I, we bought a house, a townhouse maybe three years ago. And I was very, very hesitant to buy any property for like many, many years, because it’s just such a huge, huge expense. But it was a really great decision because what I kind of didn’t really realize before is that mortgage is really a forced saving, especially now with interest rates being so low. And we actually were able to get into a 15-year loan. My monthly non-principal payment is about $800. So even though my mortgage is about $3,500 I pay every month, out of that only $800 goes to the bank. The other one is the left hand pays the right hand. So I’m essentially just paying myself, you know. So it’s like the remaining $2,700 or whatever it is really just me taking money and just putting them into the equity of the house. And so it’s really a wonderful way to accumulate a lot of net worth you know, pretty fast.

30:12 Emily: Yeah, I totally agree. That was wonderful advice. Lubos, thank you so much for joining me for this podcast today. I had a fantastic time with this interview, and I hope it’s going to really help out some grad students who aspire to a career similar to yours.

30:25 Lubos: Thank you very much, and good luck to everybody!

Outtro

30:32 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.

This PhD Entrepreneur Advocates for Universal Basic Income (Part 1)

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and co-host of the Basic Income Podcast. Jim earned a PhD in computer science and subsequently worked for the Democratic National Convention and other progressive groups. He always aspired to start a business, and his post-PhD work experience inspired him to found ShareProgress, a software product and consulting service. Jim describes the evolution of his business, which now brings him sufficient income to support him in San Francisco in exchange for about 5 hours of work per week. Jim’s observations of changes in technology and the workforce while building his business and newfound time freedom drew him to investigating universal basic income.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

PhD entrepreneur basic income

Teaser

00:00 Jim: As you’re doing something, you’ll see many other, adjacent great things to do as well, but that can so easily be a distraction from actually figuring out, “Alright, what is the core of this successful business going to look like?” And if you let yourself be pulled in that direction, it can really detract from your chance of building something big.

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 six, episode one, and today my guest is Dr. Jim Pugh, the founder of ShareProgress and cohost of The Basic Income Podcast. Jim’s doctoral work in computer science and his experience working for the Democratic National Convention inspired him to start ShareProgress seven years ago. In this first half of our interview, we discuss the growth and evolution of his business, which now brings him sufficient income to support him in San Francisco in exchange for about five hours of work per week. Jim’s observations while building his business and newfound time-freedom drew him to investigating universal basic income. Without further ado, here’s the first part of my interview with Dr. Jim Pugh.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:15 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Jim Pugh. It’s a really special episode for me because Jim and I know each other in real life. He is the older brother of a dear friend of mine and my husband’s from college. And we actually had lunch a couple months ago when we were visiting and had gotten into this really interesting conversation about what Jim’s up to these days, the activism that he does. And it was just really exciting and I could see there was a definite PhD angle there, not just because Jim himself has a PhD but also because what he works on has implications for PhDs. So, we will get into all of that in just a few minutes. So, Jim, will you please take a moment and introduce yourself a little bit further to the listeners?

01:53 Jim: Yeah. Well Emily, thanks for having me on the podcast. My background brings together a few different areas. My academic background is in the sciences. I did my undergraduate and doctorate in computer science, specifically robotics, my doctorate. And following that, ended up getting involved in the political world. And so, I spent some time working on the 2008 Obama campaigns, spent a few years in D.C. after continuing political work out there. And then about six, seven years back decided to take honestly experiences on both those fronts to start my own company called ShareProgress, working primarily with political and nonprofit organizations, providing them with tools and other technical support. And then just in the last few years, I started to delve really in on the activism side of things myself and helped to start an organization that does a lot of work around universal basic income doing both advocacy around that topic and also some policy development work in that field.

What Role Did Your PhD Have in Starting Your Business?

02:58 Emily: Yeah. Super, super exciting. Thank you. Clearly, you have a lot of skills and a lot of interesting experiences that you’ve brought to bear on these most recent endeavors. So, kind of backing up slightly to the business that you started, ShareProgress. How did your PhD prepare you for ultimately starting that business? Obviously, you had some work experience after that point before you started it, but how did the PhD specifically prepare you? Or how did it not prepare you very well for that?

03:25 Jim: So, I would say the PhD itself wasn’t terribly relevant for starting that because I was really in a hard research area and was working on algorithms and models that didn’t have any clear path to monetization to turn it into a company. So, that I don’t think was terribly relevant. What was a bit more relevant is I was involved with, at the university I was working with, which is the Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. They actually were making a pretty significant investment in cultivating entrepreneurship amongst their students, both undergraduate and graduate. And so there was a program on campus that was talking a lot about that. And so, I feel like there was some stuff I learned through experience with that going through events, and they had various activities that they would organize. And so, I felt like that it was informative in some ways, but it really was very much focused on taking the sort of research you do through your doctoral degree, through your academic work afterwards and turning that into a company. And my company that I ended up starting really didn’t resemble that much at all because that was much more informed by the political work I’d done and seeing what the needs were in that space. So, there were there aspects around “what does it look like to go through that process?” that I would say generally provided me with some guidance. But as far as the specifics, really not much at all.

Jim’s Entrepreneurship Journey

05:02 Emily: Did you have in your mind at that time that you did want to pursue entrepreneurship?

05:08 Jim: I did. That was something from I think pretty early on in college I realized was an area I was quite interested in. And when I was graduating from undergraduate, actually, I kind of had in my head either go to grad school or do a startup. I didn’t have an idea for a startup, so I said, “Well I guess it’s grad school.” But it definitely was something that I had been thinking about for awhile.

05:34 Emily: And did you initially, when you were getting involved during your PhD program with this training program for entrepreneurship, were you thinking about the possibility that you might turn your PhD work into a company? Or were you already like, “No, that’s definitely not going to happen, but this is just like for future reference?”

05:50 Jim: More the latter. Maybe there were a few moments where I considered something that was closely connected, but in general, that wasn’t where I saw opportunity. I more generally was thinking about, “Oh, I want to do something at some point. And this is an area that interests me and is just an area that’ll be helpful to know more about.”

Relevant Technical Skills Gained During PhD

06:10 Emily: Gotcha. And what about, I guess I could say, your technical chops. Did you use those in your business, or were you always hiring out for that? And then also is that something you got from your PhD, or do you think your undergraduate education was sufficient in that area?

06:23 Jim: I think there definitely was some of that from my PhD. Obviously, as an undergrad I had done a lot in that space, but I think that some of the specific technical skills and areas of expertise–and I think also just generally understanding different technological ecosystems–some of that did come through in my PhD. When I was starting my company, I very much structured it to not have put myself in the role of that technical person because I was interested in really taking on the CEO mantle in the more traditional sense. So, I had hired out for a developer to actually build out our software platform from the get-go. That said, I was being involved in various ways with the technical stuff throughout, and at different points definitely got more engaged on that front. And so, having that background definitely proved to be important and a valuable asset. And honestly, I mean I think those of us who are deeply into tech, and particularly doing software development and whatnot, we think of tech in a pretty extreme way as compared to the population in general. And so, just knowing how to work with various technical systems out there, I know it’s a leap for a lot of people not committed to that space. And so, certainly my background had equipped me well to be able to handle that sort of thing.

07:50 Emily: Yeah, I kind of see this as being a common sort of value of the PhD. You sort of prove yourself in an area, you can work very deeply, you can master something completely. And then after that, a lot of people do take a step back and allow other people to do that kind of work and do more of the management. And that’s kind of the PI model. Right? So, that sort of does apply, in a way, to what you did after. But it sounds like the actual work experience that you had after your PhD with the Obama campaign and so forth, that was what gave you the idea–right?–for what your company would ultimately be. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Inspiration While Working for the Democratic National Convention

08:19 Jim: Yeah, so the work I was doing, to some degree on the campaign, but in particular when I was out in D.C., I was working for the Democratic National Committee at that point, and we were actually running, effectively, the continuation of the Obama campaign. It was called Organizing for America at that point. And so, my role, I was the director of digital analytics and also web development for the program. And so, it was really paying attention to/digging in on what was actually happening under the hood with all of our digital presence, our social media, our email lists, our website, and so on. And so, I got a chance to see what’s possible, what’s not, what works well, what doesn’t. And one of the observations I had was that so much of our ability to do anything, whether that was raise money, whether it was to try calls to Congress, whether it was to get people turning out in their local communities for events, it depended on us having a wide reach.

09:19 Jim: And that reach, to a large degree, came from us intentionally doing outreach to get people involved. Whether that was big publicity efforts, whether it was paid acquisition online. But then the third category being people bringing in their friends. And actually during that time period, that was really crucial for us that so much of the new people we had coming in, it wasn’t from anything we were doing in particular, it was because our existing supporters were recruiting people they knew to get involved in a campaign and whatever the moment was. And it was an area that there really had not been much investment in as far as figuring out, “Alright, well how do we facilitate, and how do we amplify this?” So, that was really the motivation for my company, which was, “Let’s build some software tools that make this more effective and easier to do.”

How to Gain a Wide-Reaching Audience

10:10 Jim: And so, basically we had a plug and play solution where organizations, as they were doing this sort of advocacy work, they could be encouraging their supporters to be reaching out to their friends through various digital social channels. So, social media, Facebook, Twitter, but also just getting people to email folks they knew and say, “Hey, I’m involved in this really important thing. Will you be involved as well?” And that’s proved very, very effective at bringing in new people, particularly in high-energy moments. And then we allowed organizations to track the analytics on what was happening there. And so they really understood what was going on and actually allowed them to do controlled testing around what sort of messaging they could give to their supporters that made them more convincing, basically, to people they knew. So, when their supporters post on Facebook they could have a couple of different headlines, a couple of different thumbnail images and the system would be able to measure, “Okay, well how effective are those different pieces of content at getting their friends to say, ‘Oh, I’m interested,’ and click through it and get involved.”

Evolution of ShareProgress

11:16 Emily: Yeah. Super scientific approach to that. Right? I’m sure your background helped with that, the design of it. Okay, so that’s around the product that you created. I think you said when you introduced yourself that this was maybe six, seven years ago that you started the company. Two years ago, you transitioned more to doing this advocacy around universal basic income. So, I’m curious about how your role within the company, and in particular the time that you put into it, evolved over that, five-ish-year period.

11:44 Jim: Yeah. So, at the start, the software that I just described, the plan was for that to be the company. That was what we were going to do. I realized relatively early on about six months in that the growth that we were seeing from that wasn’t going to allow us to sustain. And in exploring different investment strategies, the type of company I was looking to build, which very much had a social mission, wasn’t looking to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible if that compromising that, wasn’t actually a great target for traditional investment routes with startups. And so, what I decided to do was to couple on with that a consulting arm where we would actually work with the same sorts of organizations that we were providing the software to, but a system with either data analysis work or some sort of web design development work, which is similar to what I had been doing out in D.C. prior to that.

12:42 Jim: And so, that actually ended up being the bulk of what the company did for most of its existence. We were able to find clients there. I was able to scale up our staff with that sort of work. And so, while we were doing the software, we were continuing to grow the consulting side of the company. And so, our peak was I think early 2017 we were nine people and most on the consulting side. But it was around that time I had realized–I had known pretty early on, I didn’t really want to start a consulting company. That seemed like where the path to profitability was. But around that time, my interests had started to shift to more of the advocacy work around universal basic income. And we went through some tough periods as far as expectations around business and profits and not matching reality. So, we had to do some downsizing. And so, at that point I actually decided, “This isn’t where I want to be investing my time and effort for the future. So, let’s just ramp down the consultant product company.” And at that point, our software was making enough money that I could support a much smaller staff. And so, over the course of 2017 I went through a process around that. That ended with, at the end of the year, I was having more of a skeleton crew and requiring not very much of my time in order to just keep our software running, or the clients that we had there.

Consulting as a Stage of Growth

14:20 Emily: So, I’m curious, with the evolution of adding the consulting aspect and then winding it down, are you happy that you did that, or do you think that you should have just stuck with the software product kind of throughout that whole time and come to this point where you are now maybe a little bit sooner?

14:36 Jim: Well, it honestly wasn’t an option to do exactly that because we did need the consulting early on in order to make payroll. So, it took a while for us to build up enough of a client base and the software where that was an option at all.

14:49 Emily: So, it’s a stage of growth, then.

14:51 Jim: It was a stage of growth. Whether or not I would have invested as much as I did in that, I think looking at it solely from a business perspective, I think that was probably a mistake. I think that it would have been a better approach to say, “Let’s keep focused on the software. Let’s do this as much as we need to, but let’s not really invest in growing that as the company.” Because I think that in most cases, when you’re trying to do more than one thing, you’re not going to do either of them as well. And so, that would have been the better business decision. As far as from a personal perspective, I think I certainly learned a lot through the whole process. So, I wouldn’t say it was a bad decision from that. It certainly was stressful at times, but I think that it’s hard for me to make a valuative judgment on it.

San Francisco Venture Capital (VC) Environment

15:40 Emily: Sure. I want to say for the context, for the listeners, that you live in San Francisco right now, and you mentioned living in D.C. before that. Did you start the company when you were living in San Francisco?

15:50 Jim: Yes, that’s right.

15:51 Emily: So, you’re in a very different environment than probably most of the listeners who are maybe still on academic campuses, you know, spread throughout the U.S. and other places. So, anyway, I just want to say that because you probably had a lot of exposure just from your environment in things like how to approach for VC funding, whether that’s actually a good idea for your business. You decided that the values that they’re going for are not exactly the values that you were going for. And so it wasn’t a good match there. This is actually something I’ve heard about quite a bit that people elect not to go the VC funding route for various, I guess, “vision” reasons.

16:23 Jim: Well, I should clarify that I did attempt to raise funds for the company with already knowing that there would be certain people I wouldn’t accept money from, certain types of investment that I wouldn’t be comfortable with. But, I was hoping to be able to do it in some capacity and was not successful at it. So, that was part of it. Maybe had I met the right people, those things could have looked differently. But I will say, both prior to that and since then, having observed the dynamics in that space, I see how that would be a challenge for many, many people who are attempting to do something similar. But it wasn’t as though I was equipped to know upfront, “Oh, there’s no way this is going to work.” It was very much a learning experience for me.

Current Role in the Business

17:11 Emily: Yeah, that sounds really great, actually. And you’re still living in San Francisco, so you’re still exposed to all of that stuff. But I’m curious about this decision that you said around two years ago, you wanted to focus more on the UBI stuff and you restructured the business. And now, how much time do you spend working on the business now, maybe per week or per month? And what is your role in it now, exactly?

17:32 Jim: Yeah. Well, I’m still CEO of the business, but to be honest, it probably averages about five hours a week at this point because we want to keep running, we want to keep our clients happy there. The idea is really to have it be maintaining the service rather than doing new things. And so, that just doesn’t require that much work. So, I have an employee who is, basically, like any sort of support we need to provide, is dealing with that, keeping an eye on things, and then myself overseeing things. And that allows us to keep going with that.

18:06 Emily: And to ask kind of a more pointed financial question, but you are supporting yourself entirely off of your business income for which you’re only putting in about five hours a week at this point?

18:16 Jim: That’s right, yes.

Financial Independence and Early Retirement (FIRE) Movement

18:17 Emily: Wonderful. Wonderful set up for you. So, we’ll talk about this a little bit more in the upcoming UBI conversation. But the reason I was kind of interested in your story and sharing it on the podcast is because there’s this big movement in the personal finance community called the FIRE movement, Financial Independence and Early Retirement. In season three, I released a pair of interviews with someone on that subject. And your story, while the FIRE community might not call you financially independent by their definition, a lot of what they’re going for, financial freedom, you have bought for yourself with your business, right? So, there’s a lot of overlap there between the goals of the FIRE movement and what you’ve done for yourself. So, I was really interested in having you on the podcast for that reason.

Business Advice for Early-Career PhDs

18:59 Emily: So, okay, now that we’re going to transition to sort of the universal basic income aspect of our conversation, I kind of wanted to wrap up the aspect of our conversation about the business by just asking if you had to give some advice, if another early-career PhD asked you advice around starting a business, what would you tell that person now?

Advice #1: Talk to People

19:20 Jim: I think just go and talk to a lot of people who’ve been through the process because I think part of the challenge is it does look very different in different situations. And that was something I struggled with early is thinking, “Okay, well, there’s going to be standards around this. And so did a bunch of Googling online for like, “Okay, what is the standard, whether it’s around the equity or whether it’s around other aspects of the business.” And I found some stuff but not as much as I expected. And so, I think that, if you can just talk to a lot of people who have gone through the process, you get a sense of the diversity of ways that can work. And so I think it can give you a better idea as to what the trajectories may seem to be. That was something I know I struggle a lot with, and I think may have delayed me deciding to start a business, is that it just felt too amorphous and scary. Alright, what does it look to get something like this off the ground? And in hindsight, it’s such a simpler process than so much of the work I had done before, but I think that there is that opacity and then those unknowns that make it difficult. I feel like I was not unique in having that perspective.

Advice #2: Find Your Focus

20:33 Jim: And then I think focus is another big thing that I continually struggle with frankly, but I see many, many people struggle with. There’s many great things to do and, as you’re doing something, you’ll see many other, adjacent great things to do as well, but that can so easily be a distraction from actually figuring out, “Alright, what is the core of this successful business going to look like?” And if you let yourself be pulled in that direction, it can really detract from your chance of building something big.

Commercial

21:07 Emily: Emily here, for a brief interlude. I bet you and your peers are hungry for financial information right now, especially if it’s tailored for your unique PhD experience. I offer seminars, webinars, and workshops on personal finance for early-career PhDs that can be billed as professional development or personal wellness programming. My events cover a wide range of personal finance topics or take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you’re interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking. We can absolutely find a way to get this great content to you and your peers even while social distancing. Now, back to our interview.

Should Entrepreneurs Move to San Francisco?

22:06 Emily: I’m trying to think about for someone who is, let’s say still affiliated with the university, I would imagine there are some people to talk to there, networking, especially universities that have incubators or something from launching a business out of. But I asked you before about living in San Francisco, what do you think about moving to a place like San Francisco where you can just run into other people who are on a similar path? What do you think about that idea?

22:31 Jim: I mean, I think it’s a very double-edged sword because certainly the density of that happening is a significant asset for a lot of this sort of work. And it is so expensive here that if you’re looking to hire locally, you’re gonna be paying, sometimes easily two, three, four times as much as you’d be paying, not too far away. And so, I think it’s a question of balancing those sorts of things. I mean, I think there are ways, like either if you live somewhere not too far away, where you can go into the city and have those easy conversations in-person with folks, but still be in a place where it doesn’t cost you thousands and thousands of dollars every month to pay for your rent. That could be your compromise. Or, just take the occasional trip out here. Assuming you can afford whatever the travel costs are. And then I think there are other areas where you’re starting to see better density. I don’t really have a great sense for what it actually looks like yet. And I do think that there is a cultural component to why Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley because there’s kind of a pay-it-forward mentality, pretty broadly, where people who have done well are eager to help new people coming in, which I think has made a big difference. But yeah, you get both sides of it.

Advocacy for Universal Basic Income

23:54 Emily: I see. Okay. So, now that you pay for your life based on your business, which you only work in a few hours per week now, I’m curious about this transition that you made two years ago. I mean, you said it was kind of like you became more interested in universal basic income and that movement. You then structured your life so that you didn’t have to work so much. So, I guess the question is, how has your experience of having that business and having that source of income that requires only a very small amount of work at this point or small amount of time, how did that lead you into your advocacy for universal basic income?

24:34 Jim: So, I think there are a couple of different ways that I can answer that. So, as far as what first got me interested in universal basic income, a big part of it was the process of starting my company because I had certain expectations coming in around staffing related to operations, to payroll, to HR services, and expecting that, assuming things at all got off the ground pretty quickly, I would need to be hiring at least part-time help to assist with that. And what I found is that there were all these new online services that automated a lot of that. And so, from the beginning for payroll in the company, we use Gusto. It used to be called ZenPayroll, which you have to plug in the information to start with people’s where they live, their bank account transfer information, what the unemployment insurance rate is in the state. But then every twice a month you just say, “Okay, go,” and it pays them and files their taxes and that’s it. And costs not very much money to do it. And so, that being one example of how technology is allowing us, not just to replace jobs because I think you lose something when you describe it just that way, but is A) definitely changing the way that that work is being done, and B) and this is the thing that really stood out for me, is allowing much smaller groups of people to be able to do far, far more than was true before.

Small Business is the New “Big”

26:14 Jim: Because in the past, if you wanted to start a big company, or I shouldn’t say big, I should say a company that was going to generate a lot of income and wealth, kind of inherent to the process is you would need to involve a lot of other people. And it’s far less true now. You can have a team, I mean if you look at I think, what was it, the WhatsApp team, which is like half a dozen, a dozen people who then sell a company for multiple billions of dollars. Never in human history before could something like that happen. And so I think that was an A-ha moment for me and realizing that things are already starting to and will continue to look very differently than they have in the past and we need to stop assuming that the economic solutions that have been effective before are necessarily the right ones going forward.

27:06 Emily: So, it’s not necessarily just jobs are going away, but maybe some jobs are going away, some other jobs are popping up, the people that create the companies and the software and so forth. Are you also speaking about wealth concentration?

27:20 Jim: Yeah.

27:21 Emily: Gotcha.

Changing Mindset Around Universal Basic Income

27:22 Jim: Yeah. And I think for me, that was as much of a factor as jobs are not. I think we’re used to thinking about the jobs thing, so it’s more clear why that would be problematic if we had only a requirement that 10% of the people have a job. But I think that, particularly as I’ve worked on the issue more, that piece more clearly is a big issue that I think as our systems are structured now is really incompatible with having a fully-functioning society, I would say. Anyway, so that was kind of how I first started to think about UBI, universal basic income. And I don’t even remember where I first heard about the idea. I think I read maybe some piece about the referendum that Switzerland was pursuing.

28:18 Jim: It started back in 2013. But my initial reaction was, “This seems dumb, frankly.” I was like, “Oh, this seems like an oversimplification. Just thinking you can give people money and that will solve things. And then I started to look more into it and look at the research and understanding what are the actual, both economic and psychological ramifications when you do this. And it turns out it was incredibly positive that this is something where we have, at this point, a lot of evidence that unconditional cash–people take that and use it for whatever they actually need to use it for. And that, in fact, it confers a sense of agency to people that they might not otherwise have. And that in itself is hugely beneficial because it encourages people to think more longer term in terms of sensing more responsibility for a situation, all things that are actually very valuable in sending people out for their own longterm success.

29:15 Emily: I want to leave this for part two of this interview. Where we’ll be talking less about your personal story and more about, well, maybe what you’ve been learning over the last few years. We’re going to take a step back and define universal basic income because we haven’t done that yet. So, listeners, if the next part of this conversation sounds like it’s going to be really interesting to you, please tune in next week. For the second part of the interview, we’ll be talking a lot more about universal basic income with the expert, Dr. Jim Pugh.

Outtro

29:40 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes and a form to volunteer to be interviewed. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider joining my mailing list for my behind-the-scenes commentary about each episode. Register at pfforphds.com/subscribe. 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 and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.