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How a Book Inspired This PhD’s Financial Turnaround

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Amanda, a tenure-track professor at a small college in the midwest. At the start graduate school, Amanda was disengaged from her finances and considered grad school to be a financial continuation of undergrad. She had resigned herself to being a “poor graduate student” until she read Ramit Sethi’s book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Slowly, the financial messages in that book replaced the limiting beliefs she had absorbed from academia. Amanda took small steps to improve her finances, starting with her bank accounts and opening a Roth IRA, and over time her strides with her finances became bigger and bigger. At the end of the episode, Amanda summarizes the financial success she is now experiences and connects it to the hard and slow work she did on her finances during grad school and her postdoc.

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Links Mentioned

Teaser

00:00 Amanda: I was initially a little bit resistant and I had the, “Oh, I’m a poor grad student” identity, I definitely did. I thought of myself as a poor graduate student and thought, well, all grad students are poor, that’s what it’s supposed to be, and I hadn’t challenged that at all at that point.

Introduction

00:19 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season five, episode 15. And today, my guest is Dr. Amanda, a tenure track professor at a small college in the Midwest. When she started graduate school, Amanda was disengaged from her finances. She had resigned herself to being a poor graduate student, until she encountered Ramit Sethi’s book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Slowly, the financial messages in that book replaced the limiting beliefs she had absorbed from academia. Amanda took small steps to improve her finances starting with her bank accounts and over time, her strides with her finances became bigger and bigger. At the end of the episode, we get a glimpse at how the hard and slow work she did on her finances during grad school and her postdoc is now paying off in spades. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Amanda.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:16 Emily: I’m so glad to have Dr. Amanda joining me on the podcast again today. She was first on in season one, episode 11 talking about geographic arbitrage, and her career transition from her postdoc into her academic job. And anyway, if you didn’t listen to that episode, and you have time right now, go back and listen to it. But today we’re going to pick up and talk about something that she briefly mentioned in that first interview that I thought was fascinating enough that I wanted a whole interview devoted to it, which is her financial turnaround story. We would definitely say that Dr. Amanda is financially successful today, but she’s not always identify that way, so we’re gonna explore that story in a lot more depth. Amanda, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast and being willing to share this aspect of your story.

02:01 Amanda: Thanks for having me.

02:02 Emily: So would you please tell us a little bit more about yourself, maybe for those of you who didn’t listen to the first episode?

02:08 Amanda: Sure. I am an assistant professor in a college of education. And I work primarily with doctoral level students. I teach courses on research, writing, qualitative methods. And then I also teach a course on information and information literacy and innovation. My background is in digital media and learning, and specifically video games and learning. A lot of my research has been around the digital games industry, and then how people learn from playing video games, both games designed to be educational, but also commercial games and game communities.

Life Before the Financial Turnaround

02:45 Emily: Great. And tell us briefly about where you went to graduate school where you did your postdoc and about your family, how that formed along the way.

02:53 Amanda: Sure. I guess the first thing is, after I graduated from college, I moved out to the San Francisco Bay area for a short time, and worked as an editor in the games industry. And that’s how I developed an interest in video games and doing work on games. But I was always a school person and I had intended to go back to school to attend graduate school. And so I decided at that time that I wanted to do something with games. When I was looking for graduate programs, really my criteria was I want to work with people who are doing interesting things with video games. I felt like there was a lot of emphasis on games research, on games and obesity, games and violence, really negative things. And I thought, you know, there are a lot of great things happening in this industry. And I felt like there was a lot of potential for games to be used for a more positive impact. And so my search for graduate programs was really just who’s doing stuff around games in their potential.

Amanda: I found a group of people at the University of Wisconsin, Madison called the games learning society group, and they were a group of scholars doing really fascinating work from games and learning perspective. These were people looking at games like Civilization and World of Warcraft and how are students learning about history from a systemic point of view from Civilization, and how are high school boys, who are really disengaged with school, acquiring literacy skills and critical thinking skills and math skills from playing World of Warcraft. That was graduate school. And then following, that I did a postdoc at USC, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where I worked on a project where we were looking at using a game to teach first generation, low-income students about the process of applying for college.

04:43 Emily: Wow, that is so fascinating. And I think along the way you met your husband, is that right?

04:48 Amanda: I did. So I met my husband Dennis in graduate school. His advisor was actually married to my advisor.

04:55 Emily: Oh, wow. Incestuous relationship.

04:58 Amanda: Yeah, and I was I think resistant to dating him for a little while because of that, but he just turned out to be too awesome of a person, and so we started dating in grad school. Then we ended up getting married during the postdoc, and he went out to Los Angeles with me.

05:14 Emily: Was he doing a postdoc during that time as well? Or did he have a different type of job?

05:16 Amanda: He was working for the University. I’m blanking on his job title. But he was working with the USC games group, teaching courses, and then also helping manage their tech program. So he was working more with students who are learning to be game developers. And then I was in the College of Education, doing work – it was a large grant with the US Department of Education is what I was working on.

05:38 Emily: Okay, yeah. And going back to that first interview, the transition out of your postdoc, deciding where to apply for academic jobs, all that we covered in the previous interview. So if people are interested in your subsequent career path, they can go back and listen to that. But today we’re going to be talking about your financial journey during that whole time. Can you start with kind of the before, when you weren’t feeling so financially successful? What was your financial life like at that time and what were your financial attitudes?

06:11 Amanda: I think it wasn’t even that I wasn’t feeling financially successful. I wasn’t financially engaged. I had this narrative in my head, you know what, I’m good at school, as long as I do well in school, and I work hard, I will be successful and that is something that I worry about when I’m done with school. Later on, when I’m an adult, even though of course, if you get a PhD you end up spending a good amount of time in school as an adult. But I had this attitude that money was something that I would worry about later.

06:40 Emily: I’m curious how that actually plays in because you had work experience prior to starting your PhD. Is that the same attitude you had at that time? Or did it actually switch when you entered graduate school?

06:51 Amanda: Yeah, so I was working. I did work full time as an editor after my undergrad, and so I started paying off my student loans. I didn’t have a huge number of student loans, but I had taken out some loans, particularly I took two classes abroad when I was an undergrad, and so I had borrowed some money beyond scholarships for that. So I started making the payments, and I just sent in whatever the minimum expected payment amount was, and wasn’t really thinking about it. I mean, I did pretty well in that I was an English major, who at least managed to pay my rent and make a living in San Francisco. And this was right around the time of the beginning of the financial crisis, too, so there was a lot of anxiety and I knew a lot of people who are laid off at that time. I kind of felt like, “Oh, well, I have a job and I’m paying the rent and it’s San Francisco, so I must be doing just fine or even really great.” Things like investing for the long term or bigger goals weren’t really on my radar. I was just sort of paying the rent and paying the student loans.

07:57 Emily: Yeah, well, given the the time and the place that you were in I actually think you probably were doing very well. But in graduate school, you had that same attitude of just kind of going along and school is your primary focus. Is that right?

08:10 Amanda: Yeah. I hadn’t really had a good understanding of how graduate school was different from undergraduate, and so I borrowed money my first year of grad school. I took out whatever loans were offered as a part of the FAFSA, even though I had a project assistantship that year. And it wasn’t until I was kind of well into that first year that I understood, “Oh, you can work as a project assistant or research assistant, a teaching assistant and throughout grad school, I had each of those roles. And that can be enough to live on.” It’s not an exciting lifestyle, but I hadn’t realized at first that I didn’t need to be taking out those loans. So I took them out, and then I just didn’t do anything mindful with them. I probably did a little bit of travel, I ate out probably more than I needed to, and just that money sort of trickled through. I didn’t blow through it right away or anything like that, or need to take out additional loans, but I just didn’t understand the ways that you could avoid taking on additional debt in grad school. I sort of treated it like undergrad, just not knowing how that system worked until I was further along.

What Sparked the Financial Turnaround

09:16 Emily: I see. Yeah, that kind of makes sense, actually, because you were thinking about yourself as a student again. I guess that’s part of what this podcast is about, right? Making a wider awareness known that graduate school should be handled financially completely differently than you’ve handled your undergraduate degree. So when did this start to change? When did you start to have a greater degree of engagement or awareness around your finances?

09:40 Amanda: Sure. So my boyfriend at the time, now husband, had started reading, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, a book by Ramit Sethi. And if you’re not familiar with it, it’s really a book that just sort of walks you through how to set up a financial framework tohelp you be successful. He talks about how to use credit cards strategically how to set up the right sorts of bank accounts — checking savings, how to get started investing. He was reading that book and we just decided to read it together. We worked through it chapter by chapter. And from there, we started feeling really motivated by by that book, in particular.

10:23 Emily: This is really interesting to me, because this may be a better question for your husband, but the title of Ramit’s book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich — how did you even have the idea that that book was for you, because rich was nowhere near what was going on for you at that time?

10:40 Amanda: Not even close.

10:41 Emily: Maybe it was the teach you, like you were a learner, you wanted to be taught?

10:45 Amanda: I remember being really resistant to the book because I hated the title. I remember actually making fun of it or just saying, wow, it seems really cocky. And there were parts of the writing style where I felt like it was a little more aggressive than really appealed to me. But I also found I was just kind of drawn in by some of the message. I was initially a little bit resistant. And I had the, “Oh, I’m a poor grad student” identity I definitely did. I thought of myself as a poor graduate student and thought, “well, all grad students are poor. That’s what it’s supposed to be.” And I hadn’t challenged that at all at that point. But I do remember being actually turned off by the title of the book, so it’s funny that you mentioned that. But he was reading it and it was fun to be reading a book together too, and having that partner to talk things through and bounce ideas off of, and then we were able to hold each other accountable to actually doing something once we had read through the book.

11:42 Emily: Yeah. So did you encounter any other resistance to that identity as a poor graduate student? Was that pushing back at all against the messaging you’re receiving from the book?

Mindset Shift

11:55 Amanda: Yeah. I came up against some limiting beliefs at that point. As I was reading the book, I started having these feelings that “oh, well, I feel like I’m starting too late” or “as a graduate student, I don’t make enough money for financial planning to be worthwhile, that that’s still not something I can do.” I was simultaneously feeling like I had waited too long and like I still needed to wait longer. And that was really frustrating for me, because I have the type of personality where once I decide I want to do something, I want to act on it right now, or yesterday. It was frustrating to me to start learning about all these things, but not really feel like I had the means to put everything that I wanted to into place right away.

12:38 Emily: Yeah, I can imagine that a lot of people starting to learn about personal finance in graduate school, from whatever source, can feel that way. And it’s to your credit that you kept engaging with the material, instead of just totally turning off and say, “Oh, I have to pick up this book again in a few years later on.” I can definitely understand why hearing the message, while maybe this is not what he intended, but to you interpreting as I’m already starting too late when you were probably in what your mid-20s or so?

13:07 Amanda: Yeah.

13:09 Emily: Yeah, it’s not like objectively actually that late, but when you understand that people who did not go to graduate school route can be working on this right away when they finish their bachelor’s or even potentially earlier, that can be really frustrating. And like you said, you have all these great ideas once you start accepting the messages, but still, nothing has really changed in terms of your means and ability to work on them.But still, you were able to start making some changes. Once you started accepting the messages, what did you do right away even while you were still in graduate school?

Small Steps Make a Difference

13:47 Amanda: The book actually had really specific instructions about how to set up — I don’t think he frames it this way, but it’s essentially setting up a framework for yourself. One of the things that Sethi talks about is getting away from high-fee brick and mortar banks. A lot of banks charge to have a checking account if you don’t have a certain amount of money in it. And for most graduate graduate students, those minimums aren’t necessarily realistic. ATM fees are things that just can kind of bleed through. He had recommended switching to an online bank, and at the time, he had specifically, I think, recommended the Charles Schwab high yield investor checking. And so we both switched over our banks, because I think one of us was with Wells Fargo at the time, the other was with Bank of America. We were with exactly those banks that he was saying, “you know what, these are just set up to make you fail. They’re never going to do you any favors, get out.”

14:42 Emily: I don’t think anything has changed in the 10 or so years since that point. I would still say anyone who’s a Bank of America and Wells Fargo, get out of that relationship ASAP.

14:53 Amanda: Exactly. And one of the things that I love about the Charles Schwab account and that I think is really good for grad students, especially if you’re presenting research, is you get reimbursed ATM fees from anywhere in the world. Any ATM fees that you end up paying while you’re at a conference, it can even be an international conference where those can be really steep fees, at the end of the month, you will get a deposit in your checking account that reimburses you for all of those fees. That’s a feature that I just really like, and it’s not a lot of money, but over you know, several years that does start to add up.

15:25 Emily: And I think that on a graduate students stipend, those $3 or $5 here and there — it’s a higher percentage of the money that you’re working with as a graduate student that it would be for Ramit’s general audience. Like maybe that tip is “okay, it’s a good thing for them to do, but it doesn’t make that big of an impact,” but for graduate students, coming up at the end of month with 20 extra dollars or so like that can make a decent difference in your life, especially if your savings goal starts out at that $10, $20, $50 level. That can really help you meet that

15:58 Amanda: Yeah and it’s okay if that’s where you’re starting. Another thing that we did is we set up higher interest savings accounts. This was when interest rates were really low. Right now it’s realistic to maybe get, at the time of this recording anyway, 2% or a little over 2% on a savings account. At that time, I believe 1% was the absolute most you’re going to get, and so we weren’t talking a lot of money, but it was the same principle. I was with one of those banks where I think the interest was under 0.5%, so even with a lot of money, you’re not going to be earning anything. And so, you know, with the amount of money that I that we had in savings at that time, 1% was still only earning us, maybe pennies, but a few more pennies. But over time, as we started saving more and built up an emergency fund, those pennies became a latte every month. Now it looks a little bit more like a dinner out, maybe a modest dinner out, but it’s something. I think it’s important if you can aggregate those kinds of small gains across a bunch of areas, then they do start to make a difference. It’s changing your attitude from I don’t care that I’m bleeding money a little bit here and there on fees and interests that I could be earning. It’s saying, I’m taking control of this and I am mindful of where all of those dollars go and how I can now be in control of my financial situation.

17:26 Emily: Yeah, I can see how this example of changing where you bank can be a really impactful psychological when at the start of a financial journey, like what you’re talking about, because it’s not like you’ve set a savings goal and that you’re feeling discouraged about that, because you know, you only make X amount of money. It’s something that you do have complete control over and it doesn’t cost you any money. In fact, it’s going to be bringing money back into your account, a few dollars at a time. I can definitely see how this can be a wonderful first step to take when you’re starting to take in your financial life. You actually just mentioned a term I wonder, based on our last interview, if you also listen to the Choose FI podcast?

18:07 Amanda: Definitely. What was the term that I used?

18:08 Emily: You didn’t quite say it the way they did — aggregation of marginal gains. I’ll explain that for the audience. This Choose FI podcast is about the financial independence movement. We’ve had a pair of interviews on that with Gov Worker in season three, so if you want to learn more about the FIRE movement, financial independence and retire early, you can listen that one. We also touched on it in Amanda’s first interview. But anyway, on this Choose FI podcast, they have this term that they’ve come up with throughout their episodes, the aggregation of marginal gains, which is when you just make a tiny little change in your financial life, like the one that Amanda just mentioned, of stopping to pay ATM fees or stopping to pay fees just to hold a small balance in a checking or savings account. Those are very, very small things to do. But once you add up ten small things or hundred small things, that aggregation becomes really significant in your finances. This can be that step one for your aggregation of marginal gains. So yeah, thank you so much that example Amanda.

Commercial

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Long-Term Changes

20:17 Emily: Anything else structurally that you changed around your finances at that time when you first started following the I Will Teach You to Be Rich framework?

20:24 Amanda: One other account that I got set up, which I think in the long run is going to have been really important, is taking control of getting started with retirement savings. Because I had opened the checking account with Charles Schwab, which is an investment firm, I also then opened a Roth IRA and I forced myself to remember that I had had some 401k savings from that editorial job that I had had before, but I wasn’t paying any attention to it. I couldn’t have told you how much I had saved. I sort of knew where it was. I still to this day today do not know how I had had that money invested at that time. So what I did is I opened up an IRA and I rolled that 401k over. And it was not much money, because I had not been — at the time I had been in San Francisco, I was proud to be paying my rent, I wasn’t worried about saving for decades out in the future. But what I did is I got that money to where now I knew where it was and then I had it on my radar to when I had windfall money from contract work or side projects that I was doing, I was like, “You know what, I can start to invest in a Roth IRA.” And that’s something that, sure, it would have been great to start at 18, but I can start right now and that’s still going to be really good for me over time.

21:41 Emily: Yeah, that’s amazing. I love that you specifically tied any windfall money or any extra side hustle money or whatever it was, you then had a place to put it. There wasn’t the extra hurdle of, “Oh, I have an extra $50 in my account right now. What do I do with it? I’m not sure” and it ends up just floating away somewhere you don’t even know where it went. You had then a place to put it. This is another great first step to take, is just to open an account, just to set it up, as long as there’s no minimum, or you can meet the minimum required to open it, just so you have a place about money to go. I think it makes such a huge difference that once you have that goal in mind, okay, any money extra money that comes in, this is where it goes. And it’s really easy to follow through on that once you’ve gotten over the activation barrier of setting up setting up the account.

22:31 Amanda: And both my husband and I, throughout the years have split that money between Roth IRAs and then that’s how we made substantial payments to our student loans. Both of us have done side projects where we might get a couple thousand dollars here and there, for consulting work or book projects or other things. We were very mindful that 100% of that money, we would just take it and allocate it toward one of those two goals. We had actually paid off a good chunk of student loans while we were still in school or within that first year, just because we were really consistent about taking that extra money and putting all of it towards either long term investments or towards the student loans with the highest interest rates, because at that point, we had pooled together all of those loans and actually started tracking, “Okay, what are the interest rates on each of these and which do we need to tackle first?”

23:28 Emily: Is that something else you learned from I Will Teach You to Be Rich, how to handle the debt? Were you following that part of earnings plan as well?

23:37 Amanda: Yes. And we were big fans. It was it was obvious for us that we wanted to tackle highest interest rate first. I know some people will start with the smallest loans, just to get those those wins, that sort of dopamine hit from getting a loan paid off. But for us even if the higher interest rate loans were bigger, we started with those.

23:57 Emily: So you’re going through the remainder of your graduate degree and you had this system for living off of your stipend for your budget and then pushing forward your finances with the extra money that was coming in. That’s how you finished out graduate school. Was there anything you did to keep yourself on this path of sticking to your goals and sticking to this idea of financial improvement through that time?

24:20 Amanda: Yeah. I mentioned that I have an “I want to do things now, now, now” sort of personality. As we transitioned from graduate school to the postdoc phase, we were in a higher cost of living area, but we are making more money. I felt like “okay, now we can start to do some more things.” There are things that we couldn’t do as students that now we can really tackle. One of the things we did, we were in Los Angeles, which means we spent a good amount of time in traffic. We were fortunate enough that we both were working at USC, at the same university. That meant we had a good chunk of time every day in the car and so we started listening to podcasts at that time.

Amanda: Really there’s a handful of podcasts that we had started listening to. We started listening to Afford Anything, Paula Pant’s podcast. We listened to The Mad Fientist, which is another financial independence podcast. We started listening to some entrepreneurial and side hustle podcasts. We were really just looking for ideas for things we could do and those podcasts really kind of helped keep us looking for new improvements that we could make and kept us motivated too. Sometimes the smart thing is not to change your goals, but just keep doing what you’re doing, but for me, I needed that motivation. I needed to be constantly learning new things and assimilating new information, and then making little tweaks along the way.

25:55 Emily: Yeah, I think those are all fantastic suggestions. I also love listening to podcasts. Not surprising, having my own podcast, I love the medium and listen to a lot of different ones. All the ones that you mentioned are excellent. We’ve already mentioned Choose FI, that could be another one to throw into the mix for the listener. Of course mine has a completely different audience than many of these other ones. If you’re already a listener, please stick with it, because I think this will help motivate you as well. And then the other one that I really like for motivation is Dave Ramsey’s podcast/radio show. You probably have to be in a debt repayment phase of life to really appreciate it, but he is very motivational, I will say that. That’s another idea if you’re looking for motivational podcasts.

Life after a Financial Turnaround

Emily: Let’s take the last couple minutes here, Amanda, and just give us some highlights of what’s been going on. What did you hit? You eventually paid off your student loans. What would have been the financial highlights of years, finishing out your postdoc, and then since then?

26:54 Amanda: We were fortunate enough to really get our loans paid off within a couple years of us graduating. That was a huge win for us. But of course, I wanted to keep that momentum going. Every time we complete a goal, I say, “okay, but we can’t lose momentum. So what are we going to do next?” And so we, we paid off the student loans and then we were kind of in that transition to a lower cost of living area, which I covered in that other podcasts, so I won’t talk about it. But that was another thing we wanted to do. My family’s in the Midwest, I had wanted to get back to the Midwest. That was something that we felt was important before we started a family.

Amanda: We started transitioning from high cost of living area to a lower cost of living area and that made home-ownership really feasible for us. We saved up and at the end of the last year — we weren’t planning to buy a house until this year, but we just ended up finding the right house in the right neighborhood, and we we had enough saved where we were able to make that happen. That was one of the latest things we did and now we just had our first child. I had a daughter in June, and so we’re wanting to get a little bit put away for her college already, too. We’re working on that and we’re kind of hoping to make a purchase of a rental property in the next couple years, so that’s another goal that we’re working on right now.

28:14 Emily: I think this is an amazing example of how much your financial progress accelerates once you have the higher income to be working with, and you can’t expect that to necessarily happen if you haven’t laid the groundwork earlier. If you do have the attitude of, “well, I’m still in graduate school, I’m still in my postdoc, I just have to worry about money later,” It’s not necessarily all going to turn on a dime for you when your income changes. But for you, Amanda, because you guys have been working so diligently on these various goals with whatever means you had for all those years, once you had the higher incomes, it was just like, boom, you knew exactly what to do with it. You knew where to funnel your money. You could make really, really quick progress and that’s the same thing that happened my finances as well — laying the groundwork during graduate school, once the income changed, the winds just come faster and faster and faster, even though they were really slow and hard fought in the beginning years. I really appreciate hearing this more about that “after” aspect of your story, after the financial transformation.

29:17 Amanda: I’ve heard that the first $100,000 is the hardest, for net worth. And I do believe that that’s probably true. I don’t know how well documented that is, but that’s something that I’ve heard before on podcasts and on blogs. It does seem like, it doesn’t really matter if it’s $100,000 or whatever it is, the beginning is the hardest to make progress because your money isn’t making much money, you probably aren’t making much money, because otherwise you could be making things move a lot faster. But it is true that if you’re just consistent about it, and have a framework set up and have goals that you’re working towards, it does really feel like your ability to do things does you know pick up pace a little bit.

30:01 Emily: Yeah, I would agree with that. I can definitely attest in my own life, the first $100,000, which I documented, actually, it’s in season one, episode one, of how we got to our first $100,000 of net worth, that was a long journey and it’s the next iterations that have come a lot faster, obviously. Now, I didn’t start very much in debt, we had sort of a slightly negative net worth, not huge. But if you have like a very negative net worth, maybe you’re working on over $100,000 of student loan debt to pay off, there’s sort of two phases to that journey — there’s getting to zero and then there’s getting to the first $100,000, and your first $100,000 of positive net worth will be easier than when you’re working to get to zero. It’ll be easier than that, but it will not be totally as easy as someone who started at zero, if that makes sense, just because of the way compound interest work.

30:54 Amanda: When we first calculated our net worth it was negative. It wasn’t significantly negative. And I do agree that if you are one of those people who happens to have six figures of student loan debt, you’ve got a different process to go through. Hopefully a soon to be future income that will help you tackle that with pretty good pace. When we first calculated it, it was below zero, and that was frustrating. That was definitely something for us that didn’t feel good. But we knew that we couldn’t get to zero and above zero without just tackling it. We were fortunate enough, right around the time we got married, we calculated and we were at zero when we got married, and we had a very, very modest tiny family only wedding in order to keep it that way. We didn’t want the wedding to drag us further down, but I think when we got married we are right around zero. So that was kind of a neat place because symbolically It was like okay, you know, we’re married and now we have nowhere to go but up. Let’s get moving on that.

31:57 Emily: Yeah, that sounds amazing.

Final Words of Advice

32:00 Emily: Final question here, Amanda, which is one that I asked all of my guests. Now, we’ve already heard you say a lot of financial advice during this entire podcast, but it was mostly you following the advice of others. I’m curious now that you’ve been through this whole process, what you would turn around and say to another early career PhD, in terms of your best financial advice for that person?

32:18 Amanda: Sure. So something that we do, and I guess this applies for people who have a partner, something that my husband and I do is we do a monthly finance update. It’s really just a spreadsheet where we keep track of our debts, and our savings and investments. We just go through and update the balances of all of those accounts every month. It doesn’t really take long, but it’s something that I look forward to because it means that we have a conversation around money and it means that at least once a month, probably more often just because it’s become a hobby of mine. But you know, if it’s not something you’re that interested in scheduling a regular check in, like once a month, it’s just a good way to make sure that you’re communicating financially. And I feel like that’s been really good for us because it means we’re making sure we’re still on the same page about our goals. And if we are starting to have different ideas, then we have a conversation about Okay, do we want to prioritize this thing or this other thing first?

33:18 Emily: Yeah, that’s a fantastic suggestion. Again, for anyone who is in a relationship with another person, however you handle your finances, you know, joint separate or Yours, Mine and Ours. I think that monthly check in can serve any one of those models really well.

Emily: Amanda, it’s been an absolute delight to have you back on the podcast. I’m so glad that you made time for this. Congratulations on the new addition to your family, both the baby and the house and the potential next rental property, all of it. It sounds wonderful, and it was really great to catch up with you today.

33:47 Amanda: Yeah, you too. It was good to talk to you, Emily. And thanks for having me on.

Outtro

33:51 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode. PFforPphDs.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, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars covered the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and taxes. Four, 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 and show notes creation by Lourdes Bobbio.

How The Lucrative Artist Identifies and Reverses Negative Money Mindsets with His Clients

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Brian Witkowski, a Doctor of Musical Arts and the founder of The Lucrative Artist. Brian serves as a business and leadership development coach for artists and teachers. Brian often sees money mindsets in his clients that don’t serve them well, and these mindsets are common among PhDs as well. If left unchecked, these mindsets have detrimental effects on our finances. Brian and Emily discuss how to reverse negative money mindsets and how entrepreneurship is often the most lucrative and satisfying career for a PhD with a transformed money mindset.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

toxic money mindset academia

Teaser

00:00 Brian: When you’re starting out just by yourself, you don’t have to do all that. It’s just a matter of figuring out what’s your actual service, and who are the people you’re going to serve, and then what kind of value exchange you’re going to be creating that you can reasonably get paid pretty well for it, from the right people, in the right way.

Intro

00:20 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 five, episode eight and today my guest is Dr. Brian Witkowski, a doctor of musical arts and the founder of The Lucrative Artist. PhDs, like many artists, tend to have certain money mindsets that do not serve them well, such as a scarcity mindset. Brian and I discuss how negative money mindsets can detrimentally affect our finances and how to reverse them. For many PhDs, and Brian’s clients, the most lucrative and satisfying career path forward might be through entrepreneurship. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Brian Witkowski.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: I am delighted to have on the podcast today Dr. Brian Witkowski, and we’re going to be talking about mindset work and entrepreneurship and other fascinating topics like that. So, I’m really looking forward to this conversation and learning a lot from Brian. Brian, will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for our audience?

01:23 Brian: Yeah, so I’m originally from Michigan. My grandparents immigrated from Poland. My dad grew up in a very poor area of Detroit and kind of aspired to a much higher middle-class life and worked his way up and eventually became a professor and then raised me to someday want to be a professor, too. Obviously, the world is a lot different today than it was for the generation back then. You know, I’ve had to explore how else, where I can take my teaching and my work and what I really want to do. And so, when that tenure track job, after I finished my doctorate eight years ago, didn’t quite come up, I started exploring other opportunities. I started to really think what else is not being taught that we all could be taught and how can I better serve people. So, I started studying more about business and finance and looking to see where we can help people. Especially as myself, I have a doctor of musical arts degree, and especially in music and the arts, we know nothing about finance or financial literacy.

02:13 Brian: There’s so much to be learned and needs to be learned. So, you not only can just, you know, understand about money and know how to conduct yourself in life. And because we can’t just expect those few jobs we’re trained for, we have to be entrepreneurs, we have to come up with multiple streams of income, and come up with other opportunities and open our minds up to creating new opportunities as opposed to competing for just a few things that less than 1% actually end up having. So, basically, entrepreneurship is kind of the new golden age for higher education in some ways, is what I like to say. Because we can take our expertise and leverage it in new ways and recreate different learning opportunities, not just for the people in the college classes but for the lifelong learners. So, that’s kind of where I’ve taken my teaching nowadays.

Unhealthy Money Mindsets

02:56 Emily: Oh, that’s fantastic. I’m so excited to dive more into all of that, and I’m really excited to have you on as a guest because a lot of my audience, I think, is currently still in PhD training as graduate students or postdocs or maybe closely following that. They may still be competing for that tenure-track job or not sure what they’re going to do if it doesn’t work out. And so I’m really glad to have you on as someone who’s several years further down that line and has a lot more life experience and career experience in that way. One of the things that we said that we would talk about during this interview was money mindset. Because I think the people who you work with through The Lucrative Artist and also the people who I see through Personal Finance for PhDs have some troubling mindsets around money. So, can you talk a little bit more about the mindsets that you see your clients that also maybe overlap with mine? The money mindsets that they have that don’t serve them very well?

03:48 Brian: In some ways, one thing that doesn’t serve a lot of people is just that mentality that we don’t have enough and there’s never enough there. And we always think that it’s a scarcity mindset complex that so many of us have. Even my own father did, even though his adulthood was phenomenally better than his childhood, he was still struggling financially as a professor just putting it all together. There’s a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad* by Robert Kiyosaki. More or less, he talks about how his poor dad actually worked his way up in higher education and became the administrator in the state of Hawaii, and so forth. Back in the fifties and sixties, when his “poor dad” was his friend’s dad who didn’t have any college training and just focused on acquiring real estate and thinking about owning a business and trying to earn money that way. And so, he more or less points out how we’re not taught about how to actually earn money other than to expect the job. So, part of the mindset is having your mind open to the possibilities of where you can create new income opportunities and new sources of revenue, and so forth, for your personal life using all you have to offer.

[* This is an affiliate link. Thank you for supporting PF for PhDs!]

04:52 Emily: Yeah, I can definitely see how the scarcity mindset–if you’re thinking only that, again, that tenure-track job is the only one for you and the only thing that’s worth doing after after a doctorate–there is scarcity in terms of that actual career path. That’s not imagined. That’s perfectly real. But I guess the mindset that doesn’t serve you is thinking of course that that’s the only or the best option for you following finishing your higher education. So, to think a little bit more broadly about your career track would be, I guess, the way to combat that scarcity mindset. Any other kinds of mindsets that you see in those populations?

Aim High: Raise Your Anchor Point

05:30 Brian: The only thing is, I guess we’ve focused so much like on student loans and the cost of higher education. It’s like we let the four-figure, accruing interest, to get in the way of thinking how we could maybe use that same energy toward, “How can I create maybe six figures of income or more later on?” We don’t open our minds up to the possibility of earning way more than what certain salaries we’re used to or what our parents or colleagues are earning. In a lot of different ways, if we package our expertise and services in the right way, you can find that clientele or that other startup, that kind of business that can easily make you enough money to more than pay off your debt and then some. And sometimes we get so bogged down with getting depressed over having a big student loan sum and we don’t realize that yes, it’s not that great, but it’s better than some other forms of debt that are out there.

06:19 Emily: Yeah. So, I think that’s like having an anchor point, right? So, like you in your mind around the amount of money you can make, you have anchor points, whether it’s what you were earning as a graduate student, if you had a stipend or as a postdoc or what you expect to earn as a faculty member or another kind of professional. Or, like you were just saying, the balance of student loan debt that you have or maybe the living expenses that you have to cover each month. These are anchor points that float around in your mind as, “Okay, I need to make this much money.” But really there’s no limit to that. Like, why are you anchoring yourself there? Go ahead and anchor yourself at 10 times that amount or a hundred times that amount, maybe.

06:55 Brian: Yeah, definitely. And there’s one interesting exercise that I sometimes give the clients to consider. Okay, what are you earning right now? What would you have to become to suddenly earn double that? Like who are some role models out there? Because there’s always going to be somebody out there we can imagine who’s already making more than what you’re making that you could easily–sometimes not even actually do a whole lot more, but just adjust the way you’re presenting yourself and to the right audience, and so forth. And then figure out how we can double that from there. If all else fails, at the end of this exercise, people usually say they’re going to be Oprah or Tony Robbins or something, which is great. You’ve got to not be afraid to think big like that.

07:32 Brian: Too often we think small, we don’t think we can be these celebrities and these great leaders, but anyone can really grow themselves to be more than just what they thought they could. And sometimes we’re not taught enough of that in our school. My father taught leadership courses when he was a professor. So, those are classes where I’ve kind of avoided anything that he taught when I was in school. Hence, I’ve got a doctor of musical arts degree. His degree was in criminal justice. And so, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just recreating everything I absorbed by osmosis as a child. I guess you could say it was part of my motivation to make sure I picked a very different degree program. But there’s so many of these things that my father taught in his classes that are not taught to people in the arts and so many other fields as far as management skills, how to interact with people, and what kind of personal growth is out there. We’re too conditioned to just do the exact training for the exact skill to get specific sets of jobs and not necessarily create the jobs instead.

Challenges in a Culture of Volunteerism

08:29 Emily: Mmm, yeah. Great point. So, anything else on your observations around detrimental money mindsets and then how they translate to ill effects in our finances?

08:42 Brian: Yeah, I think partly the scarcity mindset that sometimes starts with just the job market and the opportunities for earning money. Another problem is, especially in the arts and education fields, it’s almost like there’s a nonprofit aspect to it or more if you’re working for a religious institution or, in my case as a professional singer, getting paid to sing in churches and so forth. There’s that guilt trip kind of situation where some people who are cutting the checks kind of make you think you shouldn’t be earning as much as what you should be. And there are other situations too where it’s kind of like the negotiation turns into a coerced charitable contribution in some ways, but not in one in which you can actually get a tax deduction for your time in a concrete kind of way. So, it’s another situation we have to deal with, whether we’re in the arts or in education. There’s that mindset, “Wait, I’m not supposed to get paid this much. I’m supposed to do it for the children and do it for God or whoever, whatever the cause is, basically.” So, that kind of keeps people from realizing their potential. And then I try to tell people to be in a position where you can actually tithe or donate that 10% back as we all ideally should later in life.

09:49 Emily: Yeah, I agree to great, great extent. There’s this, I guess I call it kind of a toxic culture of like compulsory volunteerism in academia and in other similar fields. Exactly as you were saying. When the high level institution has some kind of nonprofit-like status that somehow translates to, “We don’t pay people what they’re worth or we don’t pay people to do work for us. We expect a degree of volunteerism.” I encounter this myself sometimes with institutions who want me to work without pay or with much less pay than I’m asking for. They can kind of use that, “Okay, well we’re a nonprofit,” as like an argument, somehow. But it’s just something that it’s hard to combat because as you said, when you’re sort of indoctrinated into that culture, you think, “Yes, well I’m supposed to be giving back. I’m supposed to be doing this for X, Y, Z. What about the people who won’t benefit from receiving my talents if I don’t take this opportunity?” But at the end of the day, you have to feed yourself, right?

Finding Balance in Value Exchange

10:54 Brian: Yeah. And that’s the other thing. I also tell people that, at the very least, it’s a two-way street. How can they serve me in return if there’s an imbalance in the actual value of exchange that’s taking place? At the very least, maybe that institution could give you a referral for another service you’re providing, or they might allow you to advertise something else. Or, like I tell people who are performing artists, maybe they can sell CDs or trade their mailing lists. There are other ways to at least get some kind of fair exchange of value if you open your mind to those things. I try to help people think about those things and make that happen so that at least if they’re not getting necessarily the actual money, maybe they’re getting a leisurely vacation out of it if it’s a traveling musical gig or something like that. They’re getting something that makes it still worth their while to otherwise feel like they’re volunteering their time.

11:41 Emily: Yeah. Something that can be mutually beneficial instead of just beneficial going one direction. Okay. So let’s say, you know, someone in our audience has identified, “Okay, well I do have that scarcity mindset,” or “Yeah, my anchor point is 10 times lower than it should be,” or what have you. Any of these money mindsets we’ve been talking about. How do you actually go about changing a money mindset that doesn’t serve you well once you’ve identified it?

Changing Your Money Mindset: Self-Talk

12:05 Brian: For me and for people who I work with, sometimes I give meditative exercises. You have to think positively. Positive manifestation-type statements, saying to yourself, “Your bank account may be empty,” but rather than say it’s empty, say, “It’s wide open and ready to receive.” It sounds silly, but you have got to think, “Okay, the money is going to come to me eventually.” You can’t think that you’re never going to get it. It’s just a matter of figuring out the right way to find the right people willing to give you that money, basically, for when you willingly deserve it and earn it.

12:37 Emily: So, it’s kind of about self-talk, then, I guess is what you’re saying? Like it’s about, “Okay, I’ve identified my bank account is empty. Oh, it’s always going to stay empty.” That’s the toxic mindset.

12:48 Brian: So, it’s reinforcing that negative stuff. And before you know it, you’re staying on the floor at the bottom and not working your way up. And then another thing is, there’s the song “Love is in the Air,” but also you could say money is in the air, too. The way the global economy works, the way money compounds everywhere, there’s always going to be enough. You know, sometimes we think, “If I take this job then suddenly somebody else is not going to have any money,” and that’s not how the world works, actually. When we keep getting all that we’re supposed to earn, then there’s more to give around and more to grow the pie.

13:22 Emily: Mhm, yeah. So, it’s not like a fixed pool of money, right, that we all are trying to grab a little bit of a piece of,  it’s about growing the entire economy–the entire pie for everyone. Is that what you’re saying?

13:34 Brian: Yeah, exactly.

13:34 Emily: Yeah, so we aren’t thinking, “Me gaining something is someone else losing something.” That’s not how it is.

13:40 Brian: Yup.

13:41 Emily: Yeah, great.

13:42 Brian: It’s how the markets work. If you notice, if you had invested a dollar a hundred years ago, it would probably be who knows how much now. It’s partly a result of that.

13:51 Emily: Mhm. Yeah. Anything else that we can do to change the money mindset aside from turning things in a more positive way and reinforcing that by self-talk?

Open Your Mind to New Revenue Streams

14:02 Brian: The other way probably: be open to thinking of new ways to earn, and be open to new revenue streams. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box as opposed to how you can make a living. Because we all get so caught up trying to apply for the exact same jobs and thinking these are the only ways to earn. There are so many different audiences out there and clientele that we could actually be serving that we don’t even think about. Especially for myself. People, my colleagues mostly, aspire to teach students who are college students and aspiring professional singers. And it’s kind of like we subconsciously only focus on the clientele that is like ourselves. And we don’t realize there’s another whole clientele out there that might be willing to pay way more, or you could actually set up scalable situations where you could easily earn way than you otherwise are used to earning. So, you’ve got to let go of that in one direction and think 360 every way around you, there’s something more you could probably do.

15:00 Emily: Yeah, I think this kind of relates. For people who are still in academia, they might not feel very special because everyone they’re surrounded by also has crazy advanced degrees. Very smart, very talented, very trained in a similar way. But if you can turn and look outside of that immediate environment like you’re talking about, you can see that there are many, many other opportunities to serve different groups of people or to leverage your skills in a different kind of way. And once you do step outside the ivory tower, your skills are going to be regarded in a way that you’re not used to. Right? They’re going to be much more highly looked upon because you are special. There’s only like 2% of the population or less or something that has doctoral level degrees. So, it’s not actually that common if you find the right group to serve. So, this translates really well once you’ve opened your mind to these other types of clients and other types of work that you might be able to do. At that point, why is self-employment more attractive than a job? Or why does self-employment serve you better with a different kind of money mindset than a job would?

You Can Be Self-Employed and Still Have a Job

16:07 Brian: It’s not necessarily mutually exclusive from having a job. And I think sometimes people get caught up thinking they have to quit their job and suddenly be a sole business owner right away. Not necessarily, although sometimes there are situations where you just need to get out of a toxic environment that doesn’t pay you enough. Then you easily find that one client and you can easily–or a few clients–you can suddenly afford to just say farewell to the job that wasn’t really serving you. But I think when you’re stuck in a job, you’re stuck with a cap on your income. Whereas if you start a business, you could think owning your own business, being self-employed, you’re open to more possibilities and there’s no limit necessarily. So, it’s like you’re removing an artificial cap and you’re also giving yourself more freedom once you get it going, you find the right clientele to serve, and so forth.

16:51 Emily: Yeah, I think this goes back exactly to that Rich Dad, Poor Dad book or idea that you were talking about earlier. The poor dad, right, has a job and his income is, as you were just saying, capped and scaled by the employer. It’s sort of out of his hands, right? But the rich dad is an entrepreneur and–well, Robert Kiyosaki’s really into real estate, so lots of different ways to be an entrepreneur–and in that case, the income streams are unlimited. And each income stream itself is unlimited in how much money you can actually bring in. So, there’s a downside to that, but there’s a big, big, big upside too, if you choose to walk away from a job. Which, like you said, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. So, some people in my audience, again, are still in training. Self-employment is something that they can do on the side while they’re still in graduate school, while they’re still in a postdoc for now, as long as it’s permitted by their visa and their job and everything. But it’s something you can dip your toe into and see how it’s going, and you don’t have to just take the leap, like you said, right away.

17:53 Brian: Yeah, definitely.

Commercial

17:58 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Tax season is upon us, and while no one loves this time of year, it’s particularly difficult for post-bac fellows, funded grad students, and postdoc fellows. Even professional tax preparers are often thrown for a loop by our unique tax situation. And don’t get me started on tax software. I provide tons of support at this time of year for PhD trainees preparing their tax returns, from free articles and videos to paid at-your-own-pace workshops to live seminars and webinars for universities and research institutes. The best place to go to check out all of this material is pfforphds.com/tax. That’s P F F O R P H D S.com/T A X. Don’t struggle through tax season on your own. Visit my website for the exact information you need in the most efficient form available. Now, back to the interview.

Pay Attention to What is Not Being Taught

19:01 Brian: The great thing is, while you’re still in grad school, it’s your perfect opportunity to realize what is everybody doing the same? Where do you feel like you’re literally just in “the Matrix,” and what’s not being done? I stress to people that it’s the perfect time to really observe and reflect and take notes for what’s going on and what’s not being taught that still needs to be taught in real life. Because there’s just so much of that that still needs to be taught. Whether it’s with finances or just personal development or other aspects of just knowing how to live. Too many aspects of our degrees are just kind of geared to train us for specific jobs but not for creating jobs. So, one strategy is to just observe what’s not being taught. And then how could you actually teach that? I like to joke with people who are getting their terminal degrees, their PhDs, that they could actually create something in which those same people who may not hire you for a faculty job might actually hire you to do their professional development. Because you never know. That fresh perspective of being young, just finished your degree, and offering a different viewpoint is something that’s going to be valuable to them.

20:07 Emily: You’re exactly describing my own journey into Personal Finance for PhDs, because what was going on for me in graduate school was, I was learning about personal finance because I had to apply it in my own life, or felt that I had to, right? So, I was learning how to apply it and then over some time sort of looking at the way my university was or was not supporting that growth and that journey. And I should say that Duke, which is where I did my PhD, actually does a great job with personal finance in comparison to many, many other institutions. But even so, I could see that there was more that could be done there. And that’s exactly how I stepped into my business was seeing, “Okay, well no one is teaching personal finance from the perspective of a graduate student or a postdoc or a PhD. They’re teaching personal finance from the perspective of a CPA or a financial advisor who deals with very, very wealthy clients.” And this is just completely foreign to the people that I was coming out of. And so, I decided to turn around, right? And teach the people who are coming up behind me those principles. So, exactly what you described. And as you said, I never applied for jobs, universities, or faculty positions, but I am now hired by plenty of universities to do professional development in this area. So, it’s totally, totally, exactly what you said.

Different Business Models for PhDs

21:22 Emily: So, what are the different business models that you can see with PhDs or other people with doctorates that are successful, that are easy for them to access, given the skills they’ve been learning throughout their higher education?

21:35 Brian: Yeah. One thing is just to simply think, “What kind of professional development services could I offer? Are there businesses, are there organizations or clients where what I have to offer with my knowledge and expertise can be valuable to them?” And sometimes it’s not necessarily just regurgitating the same content, but how can you repackage it in a way that is more meaningful to them. Sometimes, with my work, I stress that you can kind of integrate some personal development, leadership growth, using your content as the vehicle, so that people are thinking not just that they’re learning more about a certain thing about history, but they’re realizing how their own life embodies that same historical thing you’re trying to reinforce. Find something like that.

22:19 Brian: It personalizes it more and really fits the clientele or the audience that you’re serving. So, there’s that. Sometimes you can do something as simple as different kinds of coaching, whether it’s life coaching, business coaching. There are so many forms of coaching out there that still people need to hire people. That’s not enough just to go about life waiting for the job or expecting your business to take off. We always need more people to help us in different ways to give us different perspectives, different viewpoints to push us in different ways. In the arts, even though I have my degrees, I still take voice lessons. My voice is an evolving instrument. I’m always learning how to use it in different ways. And the older I get, the different kind of repertoire I suddenly get to sing. So, it’s a never ending thing. And there are other aspects of life where it’s the same way. So, people with PhDs and other graduate degrees, just that background alone gives credibility with certain types of audience members.

Self-Employed PhD and Beyond the Professoriate

23:11 Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m part of a community called Self-Employed PhD, which is underneath the Beyond the Professoriate umbrella program. And so, what Jen Polk and Maren Wood do, who run that program, is they are career coaches for PhDs. And there are many other people who have stepped into the same area. Seeing again like we were just talking about that a lot of universities don’t prepare PhDs well for knowing the possibilities for their careers outside of academia or being prepared to actually apply for those jobs or network for those jobs or get those jobs. Many people have decided to become career coaches in this area because there is a lack of support from many universities in that area. So, exactly what you’re just saying. Any other business models that you see as very accessible for this audience?

Think Big, Think Lifelong Learning

23:56 Brian: Sometimes it can just be simply, create your own school. It might even rival your university. Don’t be afraid to think big like that. Or something else to that effect. Some kind of supplementary, after-school program for elementary kids or high school. Really any age group. I read an article that there is going to be an enrollment crash in higher education soon where suddenly, because there’s going to be way more retirees than young people, not as many young people enrolling in college. So, more job cuts and other drama might be around the corner. But at the same time, we have a retirement population that is just growing, and they’re bored. There are ways to serve them. So, rather than think higher education, think lifelong learning or higher learning and other things you can offer that can serve any kind of population.

24:45 Emily: Hmm. Yeah. If what you really wanted to do when you were pursuing that faculty position was teach–I mean there are so many different audiences and different ways that you can do that. Even within the subject matter that you were highly trained in, if you want to stay in that area.

24:59 Brian: If you’re willing to leave the country, there are 7.6 billion people in the world. There’s going to be somebody out there who will pay you to teach them something.

25:06 Emily: Yeah. Or work online, and have access to everybody in the world. Yeah. Any other business models you want to add to that list?

Other Business/Teaching Models

25:14 Brian: Yeah, one-on-one coaching, teaching, offering professional development seminars or other workshops, and so forth, using your expertise. Also, you don’t necessarily have to not teach the same students you’re expected to teach that you went through school. You just need to be offering them something that’s different from what they’re used to. So, that’s why I also, with my own business, I help people specifically in the arts figure out how can I do this likewise? How can I create something different and empower myself to have control over my career and do more of the things I actually authentically want to do? Because one thing, especially in the arts, there’s a lot of interesting toxicity that goes on when it comes to career expectations. Especially with professional singers. We have a lot of people who started their careers in the last century and sometimes they just went about teaching as if that last century way of life was still going about and everybody could easily have the same career they had. Or at least that’s how they’d go about, conduct themselves, and just kind of otherwise disregard your actual career and what you’d be doing.

26:16 Brian: You have to really be more of an entrepreneur nowadays as a performing artist if you’re not going to suddenly get some of those few jobs that are still out there. So, position yourself to help those same people who are in your field, not getting the help they probably should have had.

26:29 Emily: Mhm. Yeah. And you mentioning actually using the specific skill you’re trained in, singing. But I’m thinking about–so I have a colleague named Chris Cloney who has a business doing research. He has an independent research company, specifically translating the research that he did as a PhD student into basically another way of delivering it to the world. So, we’ve talked about teaching and coaching and speaking and so forth, which is what you and I do. But there are other ways to translate even more precisely what you were doing in graduate school into the entrepreneurial sphere instead of just going after a job. So, you brought up what you’re doing through The Lucrative Artist. I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about that. Maybe a couple of minutes on how you came to this point. We’ve already heard some of that journey, and then what you do for clients right now.

Brian’s Work with The Lucrative Artist

27:16 Brian: Yeah. So, what I do is I help clients literally figure it out. Sometimes, the biggest barrier that we need to break through is figure out what else we can do other than those few jobs we were conditioned to expect to get. And so I help people think, “Okay, how can I assess all your skills and your strengths, your weaknesses? What’s something that you can synthesize that can actually become a viable product or service that you could give to other people? And you’re more or less in a position where you’re not having to worry about competing against other people and you’re serving the audience that really wants you to serve them and so forth?” And so helping people really package that together. We do authenticity training where we think, “What is it we really, truly want to do?”

27:57 Brian: Like, “What is your purpose? What really drove you to want to teach? And how can you get more to that?” Like for me, it wasn’t really necessarily about the actual content, but it’s about helping people really actually change their lives. Like I’ve witnessed my father as a child, growing up. He did the same thing with his students, seeing people who were, likewise like him, grew up really poor, had no idea what they’d be doing later in life. Then finally they realized, “Oh, I can learn this. I can do this.” And suddenly they have great jobs or they have their own businesses, they’re making a great living, and so forth. So, helping people realize there is another way out there, and anyone’s capable of doing it. And then basically once people figure out what ideal business would be for them, what kind of service they’d be providing–sometimes there’s not a specific service, it’s like a bunch of different services related to themselves through their art form. So, for people in singing, for example, sometimes it’s teaching lessons, sometimes it’s teaching speaking lessons, presentation lessons, helping people patch together other skills related to their singing. So, they’re not just performing, but they’re also providing expertise and educating the public more about the works to bring awareness and you know, make that same connection between a certain classical work and you know, what its audience is going through right now.

Combat Limiting Beliefs and Imposter Syndrome

29:12 Emily: That sounds like, based on what we were kind of talking about earlier, you help people identify the limiting beliefs they have, the mindsets they have around their career, for example, and then coach them in how to combat that within themselves. I guess I just think about this as related to imposter syndrome, right? There’s nothing that we are trained for to do outside of academia. All we can do is teach. And if we can’t get that job, we’re like worthless, right? That’s a horrible thing to think about yourself. But I think it’s indoctrinated into so many of us who go through academia to have that imposter syndrome that “I’m not worthy of another kind of job. I’m not worthy of being able to start a business. I don’t have translatable skills into these other areas.” And so, once people see, “Okay, well this is what’s holding me back. I’m going to engage Brian,” you help them turn those mindsets around in a very practical way. Because you can say, “No, here is what you need to be telling yourself instead of what you have been thinking.” And then they do the work, right? To actually uproot those mindsets.

30:14 Brian: Yeah. And then once they get through there, once they realize what they want to do, then I coach them through step-by-step, “What can I do to actually make a viable business take off the ground.” And it’s not always necessarily too scary or confusing. Some people, you tell them you’re helping them grow a business, they want to see all these weird numbers and other things. And when you’re starting now just by yourself, you don’t have to do all that. It’s just a matter of figuring out what’s your actual service and who are the people you’re going to serve and then what kind of value exchange you’re going to be creating that you can reasonably get paid pretty well for from the right people in the right way. And it’s a matter of figuring out how you can package that and who you’d be serving.

Growing a Business is a Gradual Process

30:52 Emily: Yeah. I think some people when they hear like starting a business, they think about the startup world and where you have to have a highly refined business plan you’re pitching to investors and so forth. And it is really important to have this high degree of models and understanding of what you’re going to be doing in that world. But just to dip your toe into self-employment is much, much, less than that. You don’t have to do all that. You have to try out some things, see what people aren’t going to pay you for it, see what you like to do. It’s a lot of experimentation at the beginning and it’s not really high stakes.

31:21 Brian: Yeah, exactly. I love helping people, walk them through that and realize, “Oh, I can do this.” And yes, there’s actually a demand. One interesting exercise to really take people through is just called hot or not. What are some ideas that can work, and we talk them out. And then we also might contact some other people and see what they think about that if it’s a totally new thing that they hadn’t heard of before. And just a matter of, you need an opportunity to just test the waters and you openly be in a safe environment where you can express ideas without somebody thinking you’re stupid or whatever. There’s no stupid idea. There’s, you know, millions of ideas everywhere. And it’s a matter of figuring out how to piece together to create something viable as far as the business goes.

Origin of The Lucrative Artist

32:00 Emily: Mhm. Yeah, that gives me a good idea of what your services are. But I wanted to ask you about your name, The Lucrative Artist, which is very provocative. So, can you tell us a little bit how you came to that?

32:09 Brian: It’s fascinating. It’s a provocative word. It’s a word they say all the time on CNBC and all the other finance channel for other businesses. But for some reason we’re conditioned to think we have to starve as artists. And it’s not necessarily the case. So, I try and help people realize, “No, actually if you’re getting paid what you deserve and what you should be, you’re actually in a position to make even higher quality art and you’re serving people even better.” So, it’s actually an empowering mindset that better serves them later on.

32:39 Emily: Yeah, I love that. Oh my gosh. Well, where can people find you?

32:42 Brian: Well, my website, thelucrativeartist.com, the lucrative artist, three words there, .com or there’s facebook.com/thelucrativeartist where I’m active on a Facebook page. I also have a Twitter and an Instagram where I try to be accessible to as many people as possible through all those platforms, wherever the world’s taken me. There’s a Self-Employment in the Arts conference taking place in Chicago in February that I’ll be presenting at. And also some universities here and there. I’ll be doing some presentations and masterclasses and so forth. So, I try to be all-around.

Best Advice for an Early-Career PhD

33:13 Emily: Sounds awesome. So, final question. This is a standard one that I ask all my guests, which is what is your best advice for another early-career PhD or another early-career doctor? And this could be something related to what we’ve talked about today or it could be completely other.

33:30 Brian: Yeah, I think as far as the best advice, always keep a mind open to creating new sources of income and having multiple sources of income coming in. And think of ways you could create some passive income for yourself as well as the active income. And then, when you’re in your PhD, look and see what everybody else is doing and then think, “What is everybody not doing they should be doing?” And realize that might be a gold mine of a business opportunity just waiting to happen. So, just to open your mind up to that possibility and not being afraid to go for it.

34:03 Emily: Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you so much for the interview. I’ve learned a lot. I hope the audience has as well.

34:07 Brian: I really appreciate it.

Outtro

34:07 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, here are four ways you can help it grow. One, subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. Two, share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media or with your PhD peers. Three, 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 taxes. Four, 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 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.