In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Kate Henry, a productivity coach for academics. Kate was a workaholic who equated her work with her worth until her declining health forced her to stop overworking. Now, she coaches grad students and academics in how they can achieve career success in a sustainable manner. Together, Kate and Emily explore several overlapping concepts and strategies between productivity and financial management. We also learn from Kate what it takes to start a service-based business in terms of finances, scheduling, and mindsets.
Links mentioned in the Episode
- PF for PhDs Quarterly Estimated Tax Workshop
- PF for PhDs Tax Center for PhDs-in-Training
- Dr. Kate Henry’s Website
- Dr. Kate Henry’s Newsletter
- PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List
- PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Teaser
Kate (00:00): For productivity, often I hear folks who are like, I’m going to write my dissertation every day. I’m going to go to the gym three times every week, or I’m going to do like X all the time. And then when they don’t do that, there’s this feeling of failure, this feeling of like, oh, why should I even try? I am not never going to get where I want to get. So in a a productivity lens, we would think of like you’re trending in the direction that you would want to go.
Introduction
Emily (00:35): Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs.
Emily (01:04): This is Season 20, Episode 1, and today my guest is Dr. Kate Henry, a productivity coach for academics. Kate was a workaholic who equated her work with her worth until her declining health forced her to stop overworking. Now, she coaches grad students and academics in how they can achieve career success in a sustainable manner. Together, Kate and I explore several overlapping concepts and strategies between productivity and financial management. We also learn from Kate what it takes to start a service-based business in terms of finances, scheduling, and mindsets. By the way, I forgot to plug in my external mic during this interview, so the audio quality on my end is pretty poor. I apologize for that, and please listen anyway, as I believe the content of this interview is definitely worth it.
Emily (01:56): These action items are for you if you switched onto non-W-2 fellowship income as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac last fall and are not having income tax withheld from your stipend or salary. Action item #1: Fill out the Estimated Tax Worksheet on page 8 of IRS Form 1040-ES. This worksheet will estimate how much income tax you will owe for 2024 and tell you whether you are required to make manual tax payments on a quarterly basis. The next quarterly estimated tax due date is this Wednesday, January 15, 2025. Action item #2: Whether you are required to make estimated tax payments or pay a lump sum at tax time, open a separate, named savings account for your future tax payments. Calculate the fraction of each paycheck that will ultimately go toward tax and set up an automated recurring transfer from your checking account to your tax savings account to prepare for that bill. This is what I call a system of self-withholding, and I suggest putting it in place starting with your very first fellowship paycheck so that you don’t get into a financial bind when the payment deadline arrives.
Emily (03:08): If you need some help with the Estimated Tax Worksheet or want to ask me a question, please consider joining my workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients. It explains every line of the worksheet and answers the common questions that PhD trainees have about estimated tax. The workshop includes 1.75 hours of video content, a spreadsheet, and invitations to at least one live Q&A call each quarter this tax year. This quarter’s Q&A call is today, Monday, January 13, 2025 at 11:00 AM Pacific Time. If you want to purchase this workshop as an individual, go to PF for PhDs dot com slash Q E tax. You can find the show notes for this episode at PFforPhDs.com/s20e1/. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Kate Henry.
Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?
Emily (04:13): I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Kate Henry, who’s a productivity coach for academics, and I’m really excited to speak with her and find some overlaps between productivity and time management. And Kate, I’m just so delighted to have you on, and will you please introduce yourself a little bit further for the listeners?
Kate (04:29): Yes, thank you for having me on. I’m so excited. Um, so again, I’m Dr. Kate Henry, and I am a productivity coach who works with academics, so graduate students, postdocs, professors, and I approach my work with a lens of sustainability, a lens of wellbeing, slow living, and really making productivity more accessible, which we need in the world of academia.
Emily (04:56): And I already see the same keywords that pop up in finances as well. So that’s awesome. Give us a little bit more like background about, you know, yourself, your finances, your financial mindset through, you know, when you were growing up and then like into graduate school
Financial Mindset From Childhood Through Grad School
Kate (05:10): Of course. Absolutely. So growing up, I’m from a small town in Pennsylvania and I grew up really modeled for me was a, like a working class bootstrapping mentality, working hard and working all day was very valued and, you know, tied to worth and respect for an individual. And so I was, I did that, I worked very hard. I started working as a teenager. I actually moved out of my parents’ house when I was a senior in high school and began working and sustaining myself then. And I really carried this, um, sort of attaching my worth to my work and my output and worked very hard, had multiple jobs in college and in graduate school. So I was very intent on doing things perfectly and needed multiple jobs to sustain myself in graduate school in addition to my stipend. So I certainly, you know, um, tied my worth to my productivity and the output and really approached work with a feeling of financial scarcity, which I think had been, it’s something that I picked up as a child and then also, you know, living on my own as a senior in high school and then in college. So that certainly influenced me, you know, across decades. And I was, I’m sure that many folks can relate to this who are listening, but working multiple jobs, really trying to bring in income in addition to a graduate stipend was pretty stressful as well.
Emily (06:40): Yeah, it’s something that I do like to encourage side hustling when it’s necessary. Uh, but I’m always like trying to tell people about that time, money, energy trade off on it. Like at some points certain types of jobs are not worth it and maybe you can find something with, you know, fewer hours but higher pay rate and, but they’re all hard trade offs because it’s just, it’s a difficult time of life where you’re strained in a lot of different, you know, areas. And so this mindset of tying your worth to your work and the hustling and everything, how did that ultimately impact your health?
Kate (07:14): Well, not well <laugh> as you might expect and as many people experience, and actually I’m a productivity researcher and I publish about that. Many folks in the productivity scholarship world often come to study productivity because they have some sort of physical, mental, you know, like breakdown and hit a wall with their physical or mental health. And for me, in 2017 when I was in my PhD program, I actually developed, you know, pretty severe lower back pain and issues with fatigue and chronic illness that wouldn’t get diagnosed for three years. So I was forced to stop working as much as I had because I truly could not sit at a desk for long and I had to attend so many appointments to try to find a diagnosis or to find a way to relieve that pain that I was experiencing. So I had to halt the overwork that I was doing at that point. And in order to find a new way to still be productive, I turned to external support. So I turned to podcasts, I turned to books, self-help books, time management books, and that eventually led me to start researching productivity, which led me to where I am now in my job. But initially having to find a different way to truly be an academic and work at my desk is what forced me to acknowledge that I was a workaholic. This was not sustainable. Um, like my body stopped me from doing that overwork that I was doing.
Dr. Kate Henry’s Business Origin Story
Emily (08:45): Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know it’s gonna be relatable again to a lot of the listeners and maybe not at this point in their lives, maybe they’re still in graduate school and their youth is holding up or something, but like at some point if you work like that, you’re gonna hit some kind of wall. And so how did like all these events coming together and this mindset and everything lead to you starting your business? Can you tell us that story?
Kate (09:06): Yes, I love to tell this story. So I started researching just personally looking at productivity and time management and self-help, uh, you know, podcasts and books as I said in 2017 and found that I was really, really into it and I was doing these little experiments on my own. And at the start of 2018, I was like, I want to explore this even further. So I set a goal for myself that if I could blog every single week, trying out a new tool, practicing it, writing it up, creating how-tos for others and blog every week for a year, then I could consider shifting my career path and going into productivity coaching. And it went super well. I did it for a year and then I decided to do it for a second year. So that was two years straight of weekly blogging about this, which both increased my knowledge of what I was doing and also just helped me to share a lot of free resources for folks. So folks started to get to know me and during that time I started practicing doing some productivity coaching while I was still in graduate school. So by the time I graduated in 2020, I already was prepared to start my business. I knew I was going to officially do that. I had made the decision to not go on the job market because I wanted to start the business and I already had all of this really great content there. So I started planning for my business around two years before I actually finished the PhD. But I also knew I wanted to finish the PhD. I liked my topic, I had a great advisor. Um, but it was this really nice playground, I guess to start to develop a mailing list and start to develop clients and for folks to get to know who I was as a productivity scholar,
Emily (10:50): I love how intentional that was <laugh>. Um, and it’s, it’s actually advice that I took like from the personal finance space, like if you’re planning on starting a business, like give yourself runway, right? So like you gave yourself runway both in the sense of you’re doing those early steps that are not gonna immediately, you know, see monetary ROI but are building you up to be able to offer that, you know, in the future. Um, at the same time on the financial side, we would say like, okay, you’re saving, you know, you’re, you’re getting ready for like potential, not having as much income once you, you know, commit to the business maybe. And again, I find parallels with my story, although you were much more intentional. So I was doing the same thing of, you know, blogging and so forth about personal finance and figuring out that people needed more education on this topic that was, you know, specific to my peer group of graduate students and postdocs. Um, yet, you know, there wasn’t anyone doing it. And so I was kind of like stepping into that vacuum, but I didn’t actually plan to start a business until it was like upon me that I was starting a business. So I didn’t give myself the same intentional kinds of runway that you did, which is amazing. So for the listeners, if you’re thinking about starting a business or even honestly like doing any kind of alt ac career, like this is the stuff you start in graduate school years ahead of time to lay that groundwork, to do the internships, to do the networking, to get the experiences because you know, chances are you’re not gonna get those things automatically in the course of your time in graduate school. So, and I also love it because I think you used the word like experiment. You were experimenting with the productivity, you know, tips and so forth, but you’re also experimenting with can I become a business owner and can I be committed in this area? And it’s that same thing for anyone coming up on a career change, like go ahead and experiment if you’re not sure what you wanna do, do you know, low stakes, little, um, experiments, different things as you go along, and then it’ll help you make those decisions as well as get you ready for that next step. So I just love <laugh> that how intentional you were about that. Um, we’re gonna get back to like what your full fledged business, like what you’re up to now in a couple of minutes. And before we get there, I kind of wanna, you know, riff for a bit here on like these parallels between productivity and finances and what, you know, what a person who’s maybe more competent in one sphere can draw into the other one and back and forth and, and those things. So let’s see, let’s just go through a couple different items, like what productivity principles can we apply to our finances so that we can give them the right amount of time and attention and they’re not <laugh> taking over our life?
Parallels Between Productivity and Personal Finances
Kate (13:15): Yes, certainly I am really excited about this question. So I really approach productivity through the lens of how can we make it accessible, how can we personalize it for each person? And in that way, I think about what I would call personal resources. So this is our time, our energy, our focus, also our physical health, our mental health, our mood, how we’re doing, and really approaching our productivity in a way that goes with the flow of that. So for example, are there certain times of day or certain days of the month where it would make more sense for you to schedule time to work on a particular productivity task? Like for me, I block off the last day of the month and the first day of the month to do my accounting and do my, you know, things like that. So that’s a way I approach that. But I think in terms of checking in with your personal resources and coming up with a plan that’s not going to overtax those or cause additional stress works for productivity. So I imagine that it might also work for like certain types of financial practices that would be potentially stressful or really need more time or energy or effort. So that’s one thing that, yeah,
Emily (14:25): Uh, what that is making me think of is actually sort of using that tip as as you just, you just gave an example in the financial realm. Like I know that this is a good time of the month to be working on my bookkeeping and accounting. So that could literally be in other areas of your finances too. Like especially if you’re partnered up like having that weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever it is, like money date with your partner or if you’re not partnered up by yourself, that’s okay to do like a general check-in. Um, I would also say figuring out, like you were kind of just saying like what is sort of easy and natural for you within the financial realm and what is gonna require you to set aside some time and put some more intention behind it. Like I’ll say for example, at this point in my life, it’s like very habitual for me to like check in on my expenses, my spending, you know, keep on track, keep on top of those transactions. What’s been new for me recently is having to do a little bit more hands-on management of my investments because I opened a new type of account and I don’t quite know everything about that company and how their website works and what I can automate. So I need to, I literally did this today I need to like set aside some time just like do some actions and also learn how to automate those things in the future. And it’s not something that’s top of mind, so I have to like put it in my schedule just to make sure it gets done because I can’t leave those things, you know, un uh, untended to forever and ever.
Kate (15:43): Yes, of course. Absolutely. I, I feel that, and that also makes me think of something else that, you know, for me when I think of like ways that things may align with our approach to productivity and finances and personal finances is like outsourcing and having folks who can help you or automation programs that can help with that to sort of lighten that load. Of course, like different types of outsourcing are going to cost different things and they’re an investment. But that’s something certainly in terms of like, what can you streamline or like, are there folks you can go to who can provide you with information that will ultimately save you time and not needing to self-teach how to do it? That also comes to my mind and that’s something I’ve done before working with, you know, hiring professionals to help me learn how to do x, y or Z or like having an accountant do my taxes instead of even trying to do it myself. Right. Like, so that comes to mind in terms of outsourcing, which I imagine is super like also happens in financial world too.
Emily (16:43): Absolutely. And I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m not gonna remember all of these, uh, points to this like acronym, but with any sort of task that comes across your plate, you can either like do it, delegate it, discard it, like there, you know, a limited set of things that can happen like for something that comes to you and within your finances. Like you gotta be careful because there are certain things that you should not delegate. Like you do really need to be intimately connected in some areas of your finances, but others, like you said, preparing the tax return, you can totally delegate that to someone else. You should take a look at it once it’s done, make sure it seems okay. But the actual process is totally fine to delegate and on a budget, you know, that’s using free tax software, that’s using very low cost tax software that can be totally adequate as long as you’re, you know, comfortable with the interface and so forth. Um, I, a lot of people feel differently about this, but I just mentioned, you know, tracking finances, tracking transactions, I like to do that manually, but I also have a tool that helps me with it. So like I use Empower, which is kinda like a dashboard. It like brings all my uh, different accounts together into one place. So I have one place that I log in and sort of check on everything and some people might even be more hands off and they don’t need to even log in that often or check that often. I like to be a little more hands on, but that’s kind of like a personal choice as to how, what’s gonna work best for you in terms of ultimately making decisions about your money. ’cause that’s what it kind of comes back to is what decisions are you gonna make and are you prepared with the information that you need to make those decisions well and that amount of information’s gonna be different for different people.
Kate (18:07): Yes, absolutely. I mean I still, I, I use QuickBooks but I also have my like tried and true Excel file that I’ve been using for like eight years that I update individually. Right. So I think there’s like different ways that I can do that in like a low tech way and also like a high tech like legit way. Um, and that works well for me ’cause I get to feel like I have, you know, I’m really engaged and I know what, what my numbers are and things like that.
Emily (18:33): Yeah, and this also goes back to our previous point about like that finding that rhythm of if you are gonna do something like manual tracking, manual updates like once a week, once a month, whatever it is, like schedule it and, and find the best time because you know, maybe late at night <laugh>, like when you’re sleep deprived, it’s not the best time to be looking uh, at your accounts. Like you need to find for your, uh, chronotype or whatnot when you’re most, um, open <laugh> to looking your finances and making decisions about that. So what is another idea that you had about some crossover here?
Kate (19:01): Another idea I had about this was thinking of like trending in the right direction. So for productivity, often I hear folks who are like, I’m going to write my dissertation every day. I’m going to go to the gym three times every week, or I’m going to do like X all the time. And then when they don’t do that, there’s this feeling of failure, this feeling of like, oh, why should I even try? I am not never going to get where I want to get. So in a a productivity lens, we would think of like, you’re trending in the direction that you would want to go. So even if you don’t do something every day, you’re still, you know, developing a habit, you’re still chipping away at it. Some is better than none. And that’s something that I like certainly see being a successful way that folks can reframe their approach to their productivity and, you know, feel better about making progress even if it’s not some idealized magical way that you know, where every, all the planets align and you always have energy and nothing goes wrong, right? So trending in a the right direction you want to go is something that I think probably has a crossover as well with finances.
Emily (20:07): Oh my goodness, very, very good point. Um, sort of like what you’re just saying, like I think the phrase I’ve heard from other people in the space is like, start where you are. Okay, let’s take a, let’s assess where we are and take a small step as you were just saying, in the direction that you wanna go. But if you are gonna like do a whole schedule makeover or a whole budget makeover and think that you’re gonna be an entirely different person being able to adhere to this new plan, uh, it’s just not realistic. And especially if that causes you to feel discouraged and go back to you know, where you started from or even like regress from that point, like that is not helpful <laugh>. So let’s take like one thing at a time and move in the right direction Absolutely. Within your finances that could be like, oh my gosh, you know, you realize you’re, you’re kind of overspending and maybe you’re going into debt or you’d, you’d rather save more or whatever and you know you’re gonna be frugal in every single area of your life you possibly can. And um, it’s just, it’s just not realistic. It’s not gonna happen. So let’s, like this was actually some fun experiments I did back when I was blogging. Let’s take like one frugal tip at a time, try it out, uh, I would say maybe for 30 days and just see what kind of time and energy did you put into it? What kind of money was actually saved for, or you know, reduction in spending from it and weigh those against each other. Was it worth it or not? And then I like that to find period of time because you have that natural reevaluation point and you can really say, okay, I’m, I’m not just gonna automatically continue this forever, I’m gonna make sure that it’s actually working in my life. And then you can eventually layer on the ones that work for you, but give it time and give it space, you know, for it to become a habit. I’ll actually tell you within, ’cause you mentioned, you know, going to the gym three times a week, uh, I am gonna the gym three times a week and I was not doing that a year ago when I joined this gym and I, I gave myself some space, like I gave myself some time to figure out if it was the right place for me, if I really enjoyed it, how could I fit into my schedule. And gradually over the course of the year, I’ve gotten up to that frequency and that might seem like a long time, but uh, I’m really happy with it now and I’m okay that it took that time because I, I got to the point that I wanted to be with it, you know?
Kate (22:09): Yes. That’s a congratulations. That’s amazing. And it like if it took a year, that’s fine. That’s like the perfect amount of time for it. That makes me think too as well, like something for productivity and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts of how this works in the finance world, but like something like developing a new habit, going to the gym or let’s say for productivity like writing or you know, like applying for jobs or whatever it might be, setting up the external accountability, whether that’s through coworking or body doubling. So I was thinking like, oh maybe you have a gym buddy or you tell your partner, I’m gonna go to the gym. So then your partner can say, Hey did you go, that’s like such a helpful thing in productivity worlds so you can have more, um, more potential to show up and do the thing because you have that external accountability. Is that something, are there like ways that like in the finance world there’s like coworking or like scheduled things that cut- with others, like I’m curious to hear what you think.
Emily (23:04): I would love it if that were a thing and I’m not very connected to social media right now so it’s possible there are things like that going on that I’m not aware of. But no, I do think there’s, you know, that taboo around talking around about finances is in play here. And so if people find accountability partners in this area, I’m suspecting they’re gonna be like their spouse, their sibling, their best friend. Like it’s gonna be someone very close or like a mentor, you know, someone very close to them already. I don’t necessarily think this is something you’re gonna find a casual acquaintance who’s willing to do this with you <laugh>.
Kate (23:37): Yeah.
Emily (23:37): But I’m just thinking that there are probably some like sub areas like doing things that help with your finances, but the focus isn’t on finances, it’s on the doing of the other thing. So I’m thinking of meal prep for example. That is something that you could probably find a community that’s supporting you in that maybe do even doing some body doubling, you know, body doubling like Sunday prep day or whatever they call it. Um, and that’s gonna have a major impact on your finances, but you don’t have to approach it with like, yeah, that’s the reason I’m doing this and let’s talk about how much money we’re, you know, not spending on other things. It’s more just like let’s do this action together and whatever positive effects it has are sort of outside of that. So I could definitely see that happening. But yeah, it’s probably, if you’re talking money, it’s probably gonna be with someone really, really close to you.
Kate (24:18): Yeah, And I probably with productivity as well, like there are like platforms where you could like do coworking with like a random person who you’re paired with like from all over the world, right? But also often things happen with folks who you know, um, but yeah. Okay, cool. Body doubling effective for productivity can be effective in ways for finance as well.
Emily (24:39): Yeah, if you can find the right pers-, the right person, yeah. To be part- with it.
Commercial
Emily (24:45): Emily here for a brief interlude! Tax season is in full swing, and the best place to go for information tailored to you as a grad student, postdoc, or postbac, is PFforPhDs.com/tax/. From that page I have linked to all of my free tax resources, many of which I have updated for this tax year. On that page you will find podcast episodes, videos, and articles on all kinds of tax topics relevant to PhDs and PhDs-to-be. There are also opportunities to join the Personal Finance for PhDs mailing list to receive PDF summaries and spreadsheets that you can work with. Again, you can find all of these free resources linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. Now back to the interview.
Spoon Theory and Personal Finances
Kate (25:38): Now one thing, another thing that I thought of is, I mentioned personal resources earlier. So we were thinking around like everyone has their individual experience with their time and their energy and their focus. I’m also really invested in my approach to productivity working with folks who have chronic health conditions or chronic illness, chronic fatigue, long covid. And I’m thinking there around this term called spoon theory, which for folks who haven’t heard of this, um, this was coined by Christine Miserandino and the concept is that you, if you do live with a chronic health condition, you have a limited amount of energy to expend each day. So she used the metaphor of spoons saying like, you only have a certain amount of spoons that you can exchange. She said that ’cause she was out to dinner with her friend. So spoons were readily available, but really with spoon theory we’re thinking that you have a limited amount of energy units you can expend. It changes day to day. If you’re having a chronic health flare, you might have three spoons and you have to decide does one go towards a shower, one goes towards work and one goes towards, I don’t know, like warming up leftovers to eat right? And like some days you might have 10 and the concept here is that it’s a way to um, communicate with others like others who are close to you around your ability to do certain things, but also as a way that you can think of what is truly going to be accessible to you. So in in the productivity realm, I often encourage folks to think about like what is the type of day that you are having? Is this a very high focus day or is this a day where you have a migraine? How might you approach your product different productivity differently to make it more accessible? So you will like first and foremost take care of yourself but also you know, progress on your productivity in a way that feels actionable and achievable. So spoon theory can be a helpful thing when we’re thinking around what do I act-? What can I actually do for my to-do list today that’s going to be accessible and help me to move forward on my goals. So I’m curious like what comes to your mind when you think around like having to adjust your approach to, you know, your finances dependent on like if you, your health is shifting or you have much lower energy or you’re sick or things like that.
Emily (27:50): Hmm. Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say decide what are the real essentials within your financial life and what is an extra. So like I mentioned earlier, I love manual tracking. That’s an extra, I don’t need to do that at this point. It’s something I enjoy doing to a degree, but it’s not absolutely something that needs to happen. Now do my credit cards need to get paid off every month? Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that needs to happen <laugh>. So, but what I would do is I would automate as much as possible something like a credit card payment. It’s on auto. I’m never gonna forget or fail to follow through on that. So like I think it would be about like setting yourself up for those periods that you know are coming when you’re going to have fewer spoons and understanding like what is absolute baseline things that have to happen and automating as many of those things as possible and also having a really realistic sense of how much time or energy certain actions take. So like, um, I actually had a period in my life it was around, um, two years ago when I couldn’t do my manual tracking for a long period of time. I had, it was a sandwich generation situation that ultimately resulted in a death in the family and it was a difficult time and that was something that I could drop. Okay. I’d love to hear a little bit more about like your personal finance, your personal story and how finishing graduate school and becoming a business owner has actually affected your personal finances.
The Impact of Grad School and Business Ownership on Finances
Kate (29:17): Yes, totally. So I feel like I am lucky. Like I, my dad before he retired, um, ran his own autobody mechanic shop. So he was self-employed and I had this model of someone being successfully self-employed from when I was literally born. So that, like when I started a business, I of course didn’t know like everything that I would need to do do, but I at least knew like, yes, this is an accessible thing, this is something I could do and I can try. And I felt really proud to do that. And I also, when I started my business, reached out to folks, like hired a business coach to be like, what do I need to, what do I even need to know how to do? Do I need a business bank account? I really didn’t have the literacy for what you needed to do. So I learned like what’s a sole proprietor? Do I want an LLC? Just really was a beginner to learn that sort of stuff. Um, and I also was a little stressed to immediately, you know, like after my six month grace period to go into paying student loans and I have a lot of student loans. I did undergrad and then I did 10 years of graduate school, two master’s and a PhD. So that was also a real shift for me after having been in grad school for forever and not having had to pay student loans. Um, which I’ll say something about later when I share a tip. But, so my experience in my business was I need to learn like what are the things I need to know how to do to start a business and how do I navigate shifting to pay student loans? And um, also, you know, how do I sort of grow my income when I’m a bit of a newbie? So I, the first couple of years of my business I had part-time jobs as well. I worked as a tutor, I worked as a writing consultant and I did these things so that I could earn income while I was developing my books. So my personal finance experience when I started a business was that when I had been setting things up intentionally just to launch the business and to have the website and things like that, um, I still needed to be procuring that external income for a few years before I could shift to just fully earning income from my business. So that was a shift in my experience with personal finance as well. And I think from the outside perhaps people didn’t know that from the outside folks might just be like, wow, Kate’s thriving as a coach and realistically like I was working part-time as well to sustain that. So that certainly affected my personal finances behind the scene while I was developed starting to develop my business.
Emily (31:52): Yeah, I’m so glad you share that. That’s an excellent example of the runway that I was talking about earlier. So you gave yourself runway before launching the business if it, you know, in in the new way of like taking in revenue and so forth. And then you also had runway after that of like, okay, revenue’s coming up over here, but while it’s coming up I still need <laugh> some income coming in from another source. And I did the exact same thing. I worked like freelance, you know, part-time for several years after I started my business and eventually I got to drop it and that’s great. But like I was glad that it was, you know, there for me when I needed it. How have you been doing with um, I guess, you know, keeping your health in mind and of course the subject matter that you like coach in, but how do you apply that to yourself in your business?
Building a Business and Prioritizing Well-Being
Kate (32:34): Certainly. I was actually just talking to my own business coach the other day about this and we were talking about the metaphor of like, I’m sure you’ve heard of this, everyone’s heard of this, but like you have your jar with the largest rocks in the bottom and you put those in first so the pebbles can fall in the sand. And like thinking around like it’s really important for me to like approach my business where the first thing I’m thinking about is my own health. So when am I available to book coaching client calls? Like how many calls can I book in a day? What days do I need to have off in case I have to have doctor’s appointments? And really approaching my business with that stuff has to be the, that has to happen first or else I’m not going to be able to show up for my business. Um, so that’s something I certainly think about and I limit the amount of clients that I can work with and I also regularly schedule to take time off. Like if I know that there’s gonna be a busy season and I’m gonna need long weekends or need to take, you know, a whole week off or something like that, scheduling that in which I’m able to do because I have a service-based, you know, business. Um, so I’m certainly approaching it in that way. And also, you know, many of my clients, almost all of my clients have some sort of similar experience. Either they’re working parents or they’re working full-time and going to grad school or they also have a chronic health condition. So I set up my business in a way that, you know, can make things accessible to them as well. Like, so I’m thinking about that in terms of my availability.
Emily (34:02): I think one of the issues I know that I dealt with, I’ve talked with other academic business owners about this, um, that I dealt with, especially like in the first few years of my business coming out of graduate school was, um, setting pricing. Because you might think if you’ve never run your own business that you can bill 40 hours a week and just whatever you wanna make, divide it by 40 and 50 weeks a year and whatever it is and that’s gonna be your rate and it’s just so not that way <laugh>. Um, and so if you’re willing to, would you like to talk a little bit about like how you make that balance with your time but also make those pricing decisions, you know, again, keeping your clients in mind?
Kate (34:41): Yes, certainly. I’m, so this is like an excellent question. I’m so glad you asked this. I love talking about this stuff. So as a business owner, like once I started my business, I like it totally changed my mind in terms of like the folks that I work with where I’m like, oh, these people are really only making like 60% of what I, they’re billing me ’cause they have taxes, they have overhead, right? So that’s a little side note where I’m like often thinking about that now. So when I approach coaching, right, like I’m thinking of my pricing not just for the hour that or the two hours or whatever the thing is, but also like what is the extra labor that goes into this? So I think something I do that not all coaches do is I create really elaborate detailed notes for my clients and that’s something that’s going to take me up to an hour to do. So when I’m like scheduling out my day and making myself available to clients, I also have to know like that’s an extra hour where I’m gonna be looking at a screen and how many hours a day can I truly look at a screen? And so I’m thinking about like what I would call this like behind the scenes labor or this invisible labor that we might not think about when we are doing something like just scheduling for a one hour call. So I’m thinking about that in terms of how I approach my prices. Certainly that’s one thing that comes to my mind. I’m curious if there, there are other things that come to your mind as well.
Emily (35:59): Well I was just thinking that it probably was a great thing to have your parent as a business owner and being able to see how much work goes into running business aside from just the time you put into specifically the service that you’re performing if it’s a service-based business. Um, do you have any comments around like specifically like graduate students or people coming out of academia or generally being anchored at like sort of undervaluing themselves in this thing, in this, you know, um, consideration of how much to charge because it’s something that can come up for everyone at some point. Like whatever type of job you take, whether it’s in academia or later, like you’re gonna have to value your time and yourself and your skills in some manner and like, it’s just so difficult when you’ve been underpaid for a decade or more. <laugh>.
Charging For Your Services as a Business Owner
Kate (36:46): Oh my gosh, certainly. And I also think this as well, like when folks are starting a business, I know at least for me, when I started my business, my coaching calls were like $30 to $60 sliding scale an hour, right? And they’ve certainly increased since then over the years. So that’s something I think as well that like when folks are starting out, if the it is like, yes, you wanna get testimonials or you wanna build your books or you wanna get recc- yeah the recommendations or network like having a lower rate, you know, but then shifting to raise that and like I’ve raised my rates every year that I’ve been in my business. Um, certainly thinking about that and valuing that labor. And also I know for me, like there are truly, and this is one of the reasons I started a business, I cannot have a 40 hour a week full-time job because of my chronic health conditions. So I truly only have x number of hours a week that I can put towards my business and I need to make x amount of money in order to thrive. So like that affects my what I’m charging and like that affects my rates as well. Um, and that’s also something I think about in terms of sliding scale as well, like offering sliding scale. When I do that, knowing for me like what, like how many sliding scale spots I might have available or like what is the lower level that I can do in a way that’s not going to overtax me as well. Um, so that is something that I have in mind and like I encourage folks to, to think about as well, like how they can meet their enough number, how they can meet a number that can help them to thrive.
Emily (38:16): Yeah, it’s interesting like, because both of us are service-based business owners and we’re also have to apply our area of practice to our own lives and businesses like we think about a little bit differently. ’cause I don’t think as much about how many hours per week I work, I think more about how much money am I making <laugh>, you know, because, and I have that like bias, right? Because of my subject matter. So that’s really interesting. Let’s take a minute here and just have you tell the listeners a little bit more about your, your business, what you actually do with clients and how they can get in touch with you.
Contact Dr. Kate Henry, Productivity Coach
Kate (38:47): Yeah, of course. So I’m a productivity coach, I work with academics and my main offering is a six month productivity coaching offer. I call it, um, success and accountability coaching. And I actually created it because it’s what I wanted when I was doing my dissertation. I couldn’t find anyone doing it. And it’s a really hands-on coaching approach where we meet every other week, I take really detailed coaching session notes and share them with you and then we’re in conversation between calls. So it really helps to break down the goals, the projects that you’re working on. And I work with folks on dissertations promotion and tenure materials, book proposals, book manuscripts, things like that. So I only work with a, as this fits with our conversation today, I can only work with a small handful of folks at a time because of the time and energy and effort I put into that. So you can learn more about success and accountability coaching on my website, it’s katehenry.com, easy to remember. And I also have a free newsletter and a ton of free resources because I spent those two years blocking and I have that at katehenry.substack.com.
Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD
Emily (39:54): Well that is so great to hear and it’s just lovely to hear your approach to everything. Let’s end with the question that I ask all my guests, which is, what is your best financial advice for another early career PhD? And it can be something that we touched on early in the interview, I think you gave us a teaser or it can be something completely new.
Kate (40:12): Yes. So I’m thinking with this, like what I wish I had known when I was starting my PhD. That’s what I, I thought of with this was like, I wish that- I did not have financial literacy and I did not understand how things worked. I did not understand credit cards, I did not understand student loans. I did not understand how to buy a car. And um, I really do like now me wishes that back then me had like even gone to this, the financial aid office on campus and been like, can you under-, can you explain to me how student loans work? Like I wish I had known that I could have paid my student loan interest while I was still in graduate school and like things that would have really shifted that experience for me that I’m dealing with now with paying off loans. Um, so that’s something that comes to my mind is really just like, how can you access other folks who can help to inform you of things that will set you up for success, whether that is with loans or whether that’s with retirement or interest or how those things work. Um, and yeah, I feel like that all-, that’s what I did when I finished my PhD and I started my business as well, reaching out to folks and sort of, um, going towards experts who could help me to streamline and teach me things that I didn’t know on my own.
Emily (41:26): And this is not a criticism of you because I think this is absolutely natural what you did, but when you were in graduate school, those on campus resources were free for you. They were included in the whole package that was going on. And if you had asked those questions to financial aid or financial wellness or whatever it’s called on your campus, maybe you could have taken some different steps and maybe you could have, you know, learned more along the way and not have to have paid the higher price that comes, you know, in your thirties, et cetera. Uh, once you have the, the big job and, and so forth for, you know, similar kinds of advice or education or content, right? So like it’s like with compound interest, like that early investment just keeps compounding and growing and uh, if you don’t do it early, then you gotta do more later, right? So I am really glad you shared that. Again, not a criticism because I think it’s pretty much what everybody does <laugh>, but, uh, I will say that I have had the opportunity to meet many, many people who work, um, in financial aid offices in similar kinds of roles where they help students with their finances and they are lovely. Everyone I’ve met has been wonderful and approachable and just eager, eager, eager to help. Um, even in areas that seem a little bit off of maybe what they normally do. So like you could walk into financial aid and ask a question that’s not precisely about financial aid and they, they’ll either help you or they’ll point you in a direction where you can get help from someone else. Um, and you know, the more you ask those questions, the more these people on campuses realize that graduate students and postdocs need this kind of support as well, which of course is the drum that I’ve been banging for many years now. So it’s all helpful to our community just to get more attention on making those early educational investments that turn into financial investments, um, you know, early, early on in our career. So thank you so much for, um, that advice and it’s been wonderful to speak with you and I’m really looking forward to listeners getting to hear this.
Kate (43:16): Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on.
Outtro
Emily (43:31): Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! Nothing you hear on this podcast should be taken as financial, tax, or legal advice for any individual. The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by me and show notes creation by Dr. Jill Hoffman.
