[Sales] Academia to Industry: Navigating career transitions with confidence with Ashley Ruba

The biggest thing, the biggest obstacle that you face that you're going to have to get over is yourself and your self doubt and your imposter syndrome. And like, if you don't believe that you can learn if you have a fixed mindset, if you are like really doubting your skills and abilities, your job searching is a competition. It is sales. Like you have to sell yourself. And if you don't believe in yourself, like, you're not going to do well in this process. So it's really, really hard to get people to like, I don't know, adopt a growth mindset and believe in themselves. Especially when you've been in this like, very, very critical, like borderline toxic environment for so long where your work is just criticized over and over and over again and you never feel like what you do is good enough.

Before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here at Succession. So Succession is a life Science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month, or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the. All right, we have another great episode for you here today. This one is a little bit different. We're actually joined by Ashley Ruba, who is the CEO of After Academia. She just started this brand new program to help academics, specifically PhDs, sort of find their career and find a new career path. And she was really awesome to talk to. She talked to us all about, you know, the different program that she's got, how to overcome imposter syndrome, the stigma of sales, how to stand out in the job search, and, you know, basically talking about her writing and how writing has been a really big part of building her brand on LinkedIn, you know, making sure that she gets her thoughts across in the best way and even, you know, selling in her case for selling her new program. So what did you think, Nick?

Yeah, this was really fun. I really enjoyed the conversation. Similar things to you too. The, the imposter syndrome piece was really interesting for me, having worked with lots of really smart people that still think they can't do things that they clearly can. So hearing her background in that was interesting. And also how a Big pet passion of mine is the psychology of sales. And when she starts talking about that piece, that was really great too.

Totally agree.

Awesome.

Well, what do I always say that you always say that I should say?

Let's dive right in.

Hey Ashley, welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to have you here.

Hey, thank you all for having me.

So we gave you a warning ahead of time, which is we gotta hear a crazy or funny story that's happened in your career.

Yeah. And I guess the story I have is maybe a bit crazy and funny. So when I was a PhD student or, you know, PhD students aren't paid much, so I was like, what other side jobs can I have? So I ended up doing yoga teacher training, which was a choice to do like a 200 hour training in the third year of my PhD program. So that was a little bit crazy. And then afterwards, for two years I taught yoga at a cat cafe on Saturday mornings. So if you can imagine what teaching yoga in a room full of cats is like, that was also pretty funny. And yeah, but I made, you know, made extra money to get through my last couple years of my PhD program. So you do what we have to do.

That's amazing. I have two cats, so I can 100% imagine what it is like to do yoga with cats running around.

I. Yeah, I also have two cats and they, they love, they love doing yoga. Like the mats come out and they are immediately on them. So also, no, I'm, I'm now more.

Excited about the side hustle things because if you've heard many of the other podcasts, we had lots of different people on and the ones that seem to be doing well in, let's say customer facing roles have all had some kind of out outward.

Side hustle. Side hustle?

Yeah, out facing side hustle.

Some sort of side hustle.

And I'm keeping a list of these people to see what kind of event I can get together. And so far we've got a huge list of people and now we've just added yoga to our festival, basically.

Well, you've got, you've got DJs, you got DJs, we've got cocktail bars, we've got, we got a yoga, cat yoga studio.

Right. Like I think we got Glastonbury esque festival coming up that we can do. Just side hustles.

That sounds amazing.

Yeah, that's great. Well, speaking of side hustles, you actually have been, you have your own program that you've built, your own company and now you've recently Just made the full leap, going all in on it. Want to tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. So what is the short version of this story? So the short version is. So I got my PhD in developmental psychology five years ago now. And then after being in academia for a really long time, wanting to be a professor, I ended up leaving and going and transitioning into a career in UX research. I was at Meta for a bit and then I ended up working at a medical device company. And throughout this process I had been posting about my career transition on social media, on Twitter and LinkedIn and lots of other people started asking me for help. And so I helped people for free for a really long time, did lots of free meetings and resume reviews until got to a point where I hit like 50,000 followers and was like, I can't, I can't meet with everyone for free anymore. I'm like, I wonder if anyone would pay me to do the same thing. And they did. And so back six months ago now is when I formally started like charging for services and created a coaching program. And the demand was so high, so unexpectedly high, that ended up not being able to handle that alongside my full time job. So, so I ended up leaving my full time job about a month ago to do this content creation coaching full time, which is not what I thought I would be doing with my career. But here we are.

You enjoying it though, so far?

Yeah, no, I. Running a business is not something I ever thought I, I never thought about. I don't have a business background, I don't have sales marketing, like nothing. Like I said, I'm a developmental psychologist by training. I worked with babies for 10 years, so did not know anything about running a business. And it's given me a lot, almost everything that I really enjoyed about academia and having my own research program. I do feel similar to how a professor feels in that I am essentially like running a small business, like running a startup, like having to make all these decisions. So it's a lot of autonomy and creativity. And yeah, I get to help people at the end of the day, which is what I. Why I left academia in the first place. I just wanted to have a more immediate impact on other people in my work.

That's amazing. And I'm sure you deal with a number of different backgrounds and people that are maybe unsure of what they should be doing with their career. They're probably in their PhD. They're like, I don't love this, but I don't know what to do next. How's that trying to work through that with people.

Yeah, I end up working with everyone. But the majority of folks who end up asking for my help are usually in social sciences, psychology, anthropology, political science, humanities, education. I get some folks from life sciences, like biology, wanting to go into non R and D careers and then I get the occasional engineer. But most of the time, especially folks who are coming from social sciences and humanities, what we studied in our PhD program and academia, we can't actually study that in the real world. So I studied infant emotional development for 10 years. So working with babies and there's very few, slash no places that I could do that outside of a university setting. So it's about figuring out beyond the topic that you've studied that you're an expert in, what are the things that you actually really like doing. What are the skills that you have? Writing, public speaking, research skills, data analytics skills. All these other skills are very, very marketable and they do transfer, but it's separating yourself out from your subject matter, which is like very, very hard for people. So I do a lot of asking people, you know, like what do you actually like doing? You know, what are you good at doing? And then trying to help them find a career that maximizes those things.

So something I've seen in building teams and managing people and the smarter the person I think the more likely I am to see this, and I wanted to get your perspective, is that if someone's really smart and studied a long time to be very good at something, they tend to self reject a lot from areas where they don't have 100% of the skills, whereas they don't realize that if you have 100% of the skills, you shouldn't be applying for that job. You're already too qualified. Right. Do you see that across industries and with smart people too?

Yeah, there's a lot of imposter syndrome. I mean I'm someone who experiences a lot of imposter syndrome still, especially like running a business and like being in the coaching space. I'm like, like I said, I have no background, no background in business. I'm having to learn everything now on my own. It's hard, like for sure. And I think the biggest thing that I tell people whenever I work with them, it's like the, the biggest thing, the biggest obstacle that you face that you're going to have to get over is yourself and your self doubt and your imposter syndrome. And like if you don't believe that you can learn if you have a fixed mindset, if you are like really Doubting your skills and abilities, your job searching is a competition. It is sales. Like, you have to sell yourself. And if you don't believe in yourself, like, you're not going to, like, do well in this process. So that's a big. It's really, really hard to get people to, like, I don't know, adopt a growth mindset and believe in themselves. Especially when you've been in this, like, very, some very critical, like, borderline toxic environment for so long where your work is just criticized over and over and over again and you never feel like what you do is good enough.

Yeah, I think that the biggest tip I'd say for that is people around me, to know me in my recent career probably think that I would never have imposter syndrome because I'm very overconfident. But I would say I used to have it a lot more than I would now. And it was when I started applying for stuff that I thought I shouldn't and then you'd be like, oh, hold on, I got accepted for that or old and I got that promotion. The more you see that, the more you put yourself out there, then the less you let that imposter syndrome control you. And I think so for anyone who follows you as listening, I think you just got to go out and try.

Right.

Let someone else reject you. Don't reject yourself.

Yeah. And I think sometimes imposter syndrome is like, it's not invalid, it's just. You're just feeling very humble with, like, I actually don't really know what I'm doing. And I felt this way, you know, I might. I, after I quit a postdoctoral fellowship that I had, and then three months later I got a job at Meta. And I remember like getting this job and feeling like I am not qualified to be here. Like, I just started in this field, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And working at Meta, they describe it as drinking from a fire hose, at least for like your first six months, because there's so much going on. And I definitely felt that. And then it got easier. And then I changed careers again and ended up working in a medical device company. And I have no background in medical devices at all or orthopedic surgery, like, anything. And it was, I remember like the first month feeling very overwhelmed of, like, I think they're going to fire me because I don't, like, I don't belong. But again, I learned very quickly and figured it out pretty fast and leveraged my other transferable skills like writing and again, teaching myself and learning. But yeah, initially I think the imposter syndrome was more just humility of like I actually don't know anything and I have a lot of catching up to do.

Yeah, I mean when I first made the transition, I was just sold in software for a long time. Sold to like it and marketing. Very different than being in, you know, biotech. And when I joined SYNTO at the beginning I also had the similar, like, only thing I knew was the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Right. Like that's my biology background. And so I was just like, what am I, how, how's anybody going to listen to me? How's anybody going to take anything I say seriously? And so I think I did, you know, similar to you, it's like, what are you good at? Well, I'm good at like learning stuff and figuring things out. So I went, took a bunch of courses and know, just soaked up as much information as I could and then eventually was able to kind of overcome that imposter syndrome.

Yeah, it's, it, it's something that like, it gets, it gets easier and it gets better, but it definitely like, if you give into it too much, kind of like what you're saying, Nick, you just kind of get stuck and you don't actually like seek out opportunities that would challenge you because you just self select out.

Once you've got a certain amount of skills of drinking from the fire hose, that is actually a skill, skill in itself. Being able to pick out the information I need to know now and the stuff I can learn afterwards. So where are my building blocks and where is the, the supplementary stuff? And that becomes a skill in itself. And the more you do that, the more, the better you get to it and the more easy you can take on new roles, I think, and I think that's a, a key skill you have to learn. Because every time I go into a job I've been, I've been in sciences for years, but each time it's, it's in depth in a specific area. You can't be an expert in every area.

Yeah, and I think that's, that's, that's very true. And Even during a PhD program like you, there's so much literature to read and I mean I've probably read like 2000 papers at this point and at some point you just learn how to read very quickly, skim like get the information that you want and move on. Um, but I don't know, I, I have adhd, so sometimes I get very lost in the details. Just because I find the details to be very interesting. So it is sometimes hard to zoom out and like to see the big picture.

Yeah. Nick is well aware of those of that as well. So very similar.

Sorry.

But yeah, I mean, so. So now. So now you're kind of overcoming your own kind of imposter syndrome, learning a bunch of whole new stuff, starting your own company, getting into business. And I know one of the things that you've recently gotten more excited about is actually sales. So I know, Becca, you mentioned, I should say that you've had one really bad sales experiences, I'm sure. So that'd be great to hear some of those stories because those are always funny. But then this sort of like aversion to sales that exists and people just like, especially in academia, it's just like, I will never go into sales. Sales is a dirty word. Don't. Don't say that around me. But in reality, your sales is just about helping people. Right. It's about identifying a problem and helping people solve that particular problem. So we'd love to hear kind of your experience having gone through that shift.

Yeah. Because like you said, in academia especially, and maybe this is the case more in certain areas, at least in my program, you were like industry, and particularly in tech, when lots of folks were going into UX research of a psych background, it was always framed as like, well, you're just doing research to make Mark Zuckerberg richer. Like, you're not actually doing research. It's going to help anyone. You're just like creating profits for shareholders or CEOs. And that's how it was always framed. And so of course, when you frame it that way, you view like, well, my basic science is like so much more. It's much more moral. And so I'm going to stay in this path. But then I, you know, I never imagined that I would be working at Meta and like doing it and be able to see the applications of. I was working on augmented reality and working in that and then moving to a medical device company where I'm like, I'm actually building products that are helping surgeons treatment their patients better. Like, that was the whole mission of my company. And in viewing it that way, I was like, yeah, we have a whole sales team, but the medical sales team is just trying to figure out what surgeons need so we can be able to create products that help them. And so that is ultimately the point of UX research. And also when I was creating my own company and continuing to essentially do market research, do UX research, talking to PhDs and trying to figure out what are your problems, like, what can I create that will help you solve this problem that you have? I don't know. I just. The process I found to be, like, it was very interesting. And then I realized that sales is just. There's a lot of human psychology involved in sales. And like I said, My PhD is in psychology. And once I realized that, I found it was much more, much more fascinating to go through, like, other people's sales funnels and be like, why is this working for me? And like, but why is this not working for me? And I don't know, it's just a. It's so much more, like, interesting, complicated than just you. Sales, like, they're evil, because, like you said, it's not. But I do get a lot of pitches as someone who I guess is CEO in their LinkedIn bio, and most of them are just very, very bad. It's just, just like your standard pitch of like, here's this product, like, do you want it without any kind of conversation first to develop any sort of rapport? But at this, and at this point, when people do have those conversations to develop rapport, I'm just like, I have a feeling like you're going to try to sell me something, but I'm like, less upset about it because at least this doesn't feel bad.

Yeah. Yeah, it's so. It's. It's pretty. It's pretty tough out there, that's for sure. It's like, do you. You and I both breathe? Do you want to buy my stuff? Right. It's like, that's the sort of connection they make. It's the. Yeah, it's rough, especially on LinkedIn with the whole connected pitch. It's like, nowadays, if somebody connects with me and I see that they have a sales title or some other title, I'm like, I know they're just going to pitch. They're just going to pitch, slap me. And like, the next message is going to be, you know, the, you know, buy the product, whatever. But, yeah, it's like, yeah, but you don't. And I guess the big picture or the grass is always greener on the other side version of this is that because everybody's doing that, it's not hard to stand out. No, it's not. Meaning, like, if you just. If you are human and you're doing something to add value to other people, you will stand out. And I heard something from somebody the other day which was, you know, talking about cold outreach. It's never Cold. If you're adding value, I'm like, that's good. I like that.

Yeah. I mean, someone emailed me the other day and was offering to write like, I think free ad, like, like advertising copy for. I don't, I don't do paid ads right now. But they were like, I'm happy to like write this for you for free and like in exchange for it for a review. And it's like leading, leading with that kind of value. I was like, oh, this is a very rare, this is a very rare sales pitch. I think the, the one that worked. I kind of, I worked with someone to rebrand my business because I, you know, started as a content creator, did not really have a strategy. And I was like, I would like to be more intentional about this and ended up like messaging someone who I like kind of knew who was in branding, who's also a PhD. And we were just kind of, I was like, hey, I think like, I see this one person who's kind of copying my content, like, what would you, what would you recommend? And then we, he like started talking to me about it and was like, well, there's like other ways that you can stand out in the branding space. And as we started talking, I'm like, you know, I can, I get, can I get on a sales call with you? Like, I feel like I'm about to get on one anyway, but this, you're like genuinely trying to help me. And, and then later on he was like, I actually like, wasn't trying to get you on a sales call. I was just generally trying to give you advice. But at that point it was just so, it was because it was so genuine. And I think that's why I found that to be like, very effective because he actually wasn't trying to like get me on a call at all. Just trying to like, be helpful as a friend.

I think one of two things work both ways. You have to advantage. You either have to be genuinely trying to do something without the alter ulterior motive of pitching people, or just be very upfront and not try to hide that you're pitching someone. If you're doing somewhere between the two, I think it's quite transparent and we don't like it. So I feel like I'm trying to be tricked. But if I'm like, hey, I know you probably get a load of sales pitches, I just want to let you know about the things. I think it's important to you and you sort of build around that, then it's obvious and people can choose to ignore it or listen where or genuinely care about something I've seen in your publication, etc.

Then.

Then that's also genuine and they can tell.

Yeah. And I, I mean, and going back to what you were saying, Harrison, it's like cold, Cold outreach and the sales process, it's applicable to job seekers. It's actually not that hard to stand out on the job market if you are genuinely, like, adding value, like putting yourself out there, not just messaging people like, hey, can you give me referral? Hey, can you look at my resume? Hey, can you give me a job? But instead actually trying to build a relationship with someone, figuring out, like, can I be the solution to your business problem? Is this a good mutual fit, like, for me working at your company? It's, it's. Most job seekers don't do this at all. And they just do, like, a lot of cold outreach that almost never works.

Do you have a couple tips for people around that? Because, yeah, I always recommend people to do cold outreach to try and get those connections and do that. So I'm just kind of curious, like, other, Other avenues as well.

Yeah, I mean, it can, I guess, like, cold outreach depends if you're like, immediately, you know, again, like, asking for someone, like pitching someone on, like, hey, hire me versus, I mean, you, you can like, cold email. I never cold emailed people until, like, get a job. But I know that some people have, have done that in terms of, you know, like, here, here are the skills that I could bring to your company. But again, it's. You're still framing it as not, like, can you give me a job? But like, here's how I could add value to your, to your business, how I could solve a problem. I think the, the hardest part is, you know, people, job seekers, most of the time they just submit hundreds of resumes to online job apps, which is only effective like 10% of the time. And it's much more effective. And most jobs are filled via some sort of connection. So at least like, warming up your leads potentially, like, just having them know, like, who you are. My last job that I got, which again, I transitioned into medical devices, having no experience. I had met the hiring manager on LinkedIn. He started following me because of my content. And we had a very brief conversation, like, four months before he approached me about an open role on his team. And at that point he had already been, like, exposed to my content, like, through the months and, like, knew who I was. And then when I said I was looking for a job, then he told me that he had an open role on his team. And that's a much more effective way to cut the line than to just be like, reaching out to people and asking for jobs?

Yeah. To your point earlier, it's like, if you treat it like a sales process, what I, what I would recommend to people is you make a list of your, like, top 20 companies that you want to work for, whether they're hiring or not. Find out who the head of sales is, director of sales, whatever for your region, and then reach out to them proactively and be like, hey, you know, by the way, you know, here's a bit about my background. Here's why they get a great fit for your team. I know you're not hiring right now, but when you are, would love to be first on that list. Right? Like, is that kind of what you're getting at where it's like, how do you provide some sort of value? How do you sort of build these connections without, like, the hard pitch or.

Yeah, no, exactly. It's kind of. I mean, I view networking more as. I mean, I think people treat networking as this very transactional process of like, hey, give me a job, or like, I'll give you a job. But it's just. For me, it's more about making professional friends. And like, when you're making a friend, you, you're not making a friend with like, the expectation of something in return. You're just genuinely interested in them. So, you know, I'm, I, I talk to folks all the time who have different careers and I'm like, not interested in being in any of these careers, but I'm genuinely just interested in, like, what do you do for work? Like, what is your day to day? And when you come, when you approach it from that kind of a very like, genuine interest rather than like expecting something in return, then it just feels a lot better in the long run.

When, when we write a newsletter also, and one of the topics that we take, well, Harrison writes for this one, I'll be honest, but sometimes I jump in and write one. But one of the ones we did was networking aimlessly because. And that was kind of the ethos behind it. Network for the sake of networking, building connection, learning about people, building rapport. Don't network to get to the point where you can pitch. And then it's just, it's more enjoyable for me actually with doing that because I'm getting the connection and there is more enjoyable for them. But the, the opportunities come out from it eventually.

Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, Networking, it's a very, it's an investment, is a long term process. I also see like most people on LinkedIn and when I tell people like, oh yeah, I create content on LinkedIn, they're like, oh, I think I have a LinkedIn, but I don't use it because they're not like actively looking for a job, which is what most people do. And I'm just like, no, you should be on LinkedIn now because like, who knows if you're going to get laid off? Like, who knows if all of a sudden you're going to need to find a new job and then you're just starting at like square one and you have no network and you haven't given anything and you're just, and then you're in this desperation stage of like, okay, now I'm trying to find a job. And it's just, it's a very different energy than if you're just networking before you actually need to ask someone for something.

If I could go back, I would have started posting on LinkedIn five years ago. Oh, so like, I cannot, I cannot believe I just was gonna be, I was the person who was like, no, I'm not gonna do it. Yeah, it's cringy. And then we started succession. It was like, okay, now I have to do it, right? Cause it's like, now this is gonna be how we're gonna grow. And oh my God, the amount of opportunities, connections, jobs. I mean, this whole conversation here is from LinkedIn, right? Like, oh yeah, this podcast exists from LinkedIn. Everything is like built off the back of what we have been in putting on LinkedIn and like our network and connections. And man, if I could go back and do it, it would have been do it way over. I'd, I'd start way earlier. So for anybody out there, if you want to like, you know, have people come to you and like look to you for your expertise that you have, start posting on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I tell, I tell everyone to do that because I feel very similarly. I only started posting on LinkedIn because I was posting on Twitter for a while. And then when Elon Musk bought Twitter, it was because most academics are on Twitter, not LinkedIn. I was like, I, I guess I'm gonna go to LinkedIn. I think Twitter's gonna die. And then I just was cross post, I was just posting, literally copy paste of my Tweet threads onto LinkedIn and I had like 20,000 followers in a month. And I was just like, wow, why haven't I been Doing this for years and I was just. Then I was just like filled with like so much regret of like, I just. Again, Yeah, I thought LinkedIn and there are pockets of LinkedIn that are very cringey and annoying, but there's also pockets that are like, very thoughtful and helpful as well.

Your, Your content on LinkedIn I think is impressive.

So, like, thanks.

I think your copywriting and the way you write your post is really well done. And I'm curious how you learned that. Like, did you just do it from writing all the time? Like, how did that come to be.

Yeah, all right, I appreciate that. I. Well, I was always into creative writing, so I started, I wrote poetry for a while. So that was like my original foray into writing was taking like every creative writing class I could in undergrad. And then it was always something I really enjoyed. So went to scientific writing, obviously, like, did a lot of that, published a lot of papers. But I think what helped me was writing content on Twitter where you have to be very brief because you only have 280 characters per tweet. And so I, a lot of like that cadence and that style of writing I had developed like from writing on Twitter because you're also trying, with every tweet you're like, how do I get the person to read the next one? As opposed to just like clicking off. So I think that's, that's like part of what's helped. But then I've also learned more about copywriting over the last, like, year. Selling on my social media posts is still like, very, very weird and hard for me, but I tried to do it more. I'm trying to find like the balance between being like, very, very direct and being like, buy my thing and instead being more subtle. But it's, that's, that's like the short answer for like how I write, like my posts now.

It's interesting because, like, I think in sales, sales is a lot of it is written, right? So a lot of people think it's, oh, you gotta be able to talk really well where it's like, sure, part of it. But I think a lot of sales is written in your outreach that you do for prospecting in the follow up that you do, like how you write a business case, whatever it is, right? So it's like writing is so important when it comes to sales. And if you are posting and writing on a regular basis, you're learning how to like, catch people's attention with the hook and how to be concise with your wording and your messaging that you're putting on social media. And so it's like, it's a very transferable skill now into sales. So it's not just, it's not just like for your own personal brand. It's also like a skill that you're learning at the same time.

Yeah, no, it's absolutely a skill. And I was also a writing tutor for eight years, so that's also helped as well because I've been able to like see other people's writing and see like from, from like a sentence level, like why it's confusing and like why does it make sense? And I'm a big fan of like being very brief. I actually just finished reading, um, this one. Smart Brevity. I don't know if you've read oh, Smart Brevity.

No, I have not.

Um, but yeah, it's written by the co creators of Axios and Politico. And so they talk a lot about how to be like very brief if you're writing content online specifically and everything from posts to emails. Because we're just inundated with content and most of it does not need to be as like long and wordy as it is. But especially academics, I think, have a tendency to be very, very long winded.

I mean, that's how we're taught to write. I mean, how. I mean, I remember growing up, it was like you have to write a 1500 word essay and it was like you had these word limits that you had to hit arbitrarily. It's like, well, what if I could tell the story in, you know, three paragraphs or something, or one paragraph. Why do I need to write 1500 words? And I remember doing all of the tricks in the book, right? Like putting an extra space between the words, you know, like instead of 1.5 spacing, it's like 1.55, right? Like we did margins. You bring them in, right? You bring, you do all this stuff to try and make it like it's 1500 words.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's, I find it really annoying because the way that we were taught to write in high school most of the time does not really translate to research papers. And this was a lot of the work that I did when I was in grad school. Worked as a tutor in the Psychology Writing Center. So having, you know, undergrads come in with their papers and it's like five, five paragraphs, but they like, they don't understand. I'm like, you know, a paper can be, it should be like much longer than Five paragraphs. And it's just like teaching people how to like reteaching how to write. And it's like very, very. I don't know, it's like scientific writing is a completely different process than like creative and narrative writing. And yeah, I found going through that process of other people was like very helpful in terms of me like developing my own writing too.

Yeah, that's great.

Go full circle. We spoke about ADHD and being distracted briefly. You mentioned the book and I was out of that conversation because I've just ordered it. I just went off on.

Classic. Yes. And then he won't read it because he got his satisfaction just from purchasing the book. He actually won't even read it.

Yeah, I need to put widers with a chocolate between to keep me going.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I mean honestly, like adhd, I, I only got, I, I realized that I had ADHD like seven months ago. I had no idea because I just like managed to find a career in academia that was like, worked with my interest based attention system. And it wasn't until my last job when I had so many meetings and I could not pay attention in my meetings, I couldn't pay attention when I had like very what I thought like kind of boring work assignments to do or like what is wrong with me? But yeah, it's, it's hard. And that's why I think entrepreneurship like worked a lot better for me still with its struggles because I work almost, I don't have any employees, so there's always so much to do and prioritizing things can feel like a struggle.

Do you find though that there's a satisfaction in like making a checklist and like being able to like knock them off the checklists? Because I know for me, I don't, I don't know if I actually have adhd, but I feel like sometimes I do. I haven't actually been diagnosed, but I feel like for me if I get like the satisfaction of like completing a bunch of different tasks, it's highly helpful.

Yeah, I have, I have to do lists. This is my daily to do list. I also have like notion pages with like quarterly to do lists and so some. So that does, that does like help like having some, having some structure. I think for me being so new at this and also in a niche that I think for the most part has not been monetized like very much slash at all with like a, a few exceptions. I'm not, I'm. There's not really like a roadmap for doing what I'm, I'm doing and so trying to figure out like okay, with scaling what makes sense to do first because I just, I will get so excited about everything and try to do it all at once and then burn out and so.

Sounds about right.

Learning how to do. Okay, I'm going to do this one thing first and then I'm going to do this next thing and then telling myself like this is going to be like a decade, decades process of doing this thing hopefully and trying to just be like patient and do like a little bit every day. But that is, that's hard for me because I'm a achiever for sure.

Well, I think we are actually just coming up right here on time, but I know you mentioned you might be coming with a cohort coming up for your new program. So we'd love to maybe hear a little bit more about that, share with all of the listeners who may be, you know, in the lab somewhere still doing their PhD and trying to figure out, you know, what the, the right career progression is for them.

Yeah. So what I have right now is a, it's like a career incubator program. So it's currently eight weeks and it walks you through every step in terms of how to decide what you'd like to do for a non academic role. Creating a LinkedIn profile, networking, resumes, interviewing, all of the things end to end. And I just, my fourth cohort started. We are now on week four, so we're like halfway through. And yeah. So I'll be opening a new cohort at some point in July and last time I had 15 spots open and they sold in like a few days. So if you want. Yeah. Which is. Blew my mind. I was just like never thought that they would go that quickly. So if you want to hop on the wait list that is on my website, which is ashleyrupa.com and that is the. Will be the first place that I will be opening spots for folks.

Awesome. And we will put that link in the show notes here for everybody as well. Sweet. Well, thank you so much, Ashley. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Love to hear about all the great things that you're doing to help out the community because we know everybody needs help out there. So thank you so much.

They do. Yeah. Thanks for having me.