By Linda Nguyen, PhD MBA
photography by Kyle Carreon
Funemployed Girl Summer
My position at a biotech company was terminated in April, which was sad, but also gave way to a lot of different opportunities for me to explore what my next adventure could be. I’d already spent most of my life in school getting my PhD in cellular and molecular biology. I already got the dream job I wanted in NYC and negotiated huge billion dollar deals between academia, biotech and pharma companies. However, I had also been wanting to spend more time creating and writing, finding my voice and developing it further. So I started my own company, Life Sci PhD LLC, earlier this year, to start earning money and tracking my new ventures to do consulting work on biotech, pharma and lifestyle topics. Then I built out this website to share my experiences and what I’ve learned navigating my life in the personal life domains and professional science domains – hence Life Sci PhD. My hope is to be able to grow the site and build out my social media following in lifestyle and science (below) to monetize it as well while looking for full time work. So this period of funemployment was a gift and the knowledge that the world was open to me to discover its joys buoyed my spirits.
In Part 1 of my funemployment learning series, I discussed what I learned about negotiating severance packages, COBRA and health insurance. In Part 2, I covered what I learned about personal finance to prepare myself financially in case of job loss (which eventually did happen). This article is about what I’ve learned on social media and how I’ve entered the foray of teaching shuffle classes in New York City. I’m so happy you’re here to join me for the ride!
Website and Social Media
Earlier this year, I had a wild and crazy idea to start my own website and write articles on topics of interest to me. I was excited. I’d always been a voracious reader growing up and my hobby lended itself well to learning new languages and communicating through writing. I spent a lot of time writing in undergrad and grad school, but after crafting a 700+ page dissertation, I had my fill for a while. What changed for me was the desire to write and develop my voice came back. My partner and I hosted a very happy double birthday party and it reminded me of what it felt like to speak in front of an audience, teach, and spend time crafting presentations and written word. I knew I had a gift for these activities and it was yearning to be expressed in more avenues. When I told someone about my desire to write articles, I felt dismayed when she said that someone she knew who started a blog floundered because she couldn’t find her voice. However, I knew that unlike this unknown person, I did have a lot to say and luckily writing comes easily to me.
So I took the leap and set course to making things official by starting my own LLC, applying for a business credit card and PayPal to separate my business expenses from my personal ones, finding a domain and website name (what you’re reading: LifeSciPhD.com!) and picking an elegant theme and colors I loved to really make it mine. I figured that the more articles I wrote, the more followers would subscribe to read about my lifestyle and science topics that would be published weekly, and eventually I’d be able to earn money from it. When things got hard, like when bots tried to attack my site, I remembered how much I didn’t know about building a company and website and how I learned to do so, and the confidence it gave me knowing I figured it out myself.
I cannot express how good it felt to make steps towards this commitment for myself to start my own website and write for my own joy and to educate others. Even the process of writing feels good and incredibly satisfying, especially when I click publish on an article I put a lot of effort and research into because I know someone out there in the interwebs will read this and find inspiration to pursue their dreams.
To promote more of my science related articles, I started another Instagram account @lindanguyenphd to separate it from my more lifestyle, travel and dance-related account @mochirial. Having that space was perfect because I wanted to post more nerdy science content and connect with other scientists and doctors on social media. It was also interesting to note how differently the same videos uploaded across different platforms would perform, which led me to believe that cross posting on TikTok and YouTube as well are all helpful to grow social media.
Shuffle Journey into Teaching Classes in New York City
I had been dancing for almost 3 years this coming July and had been wanting to teach shuffle class for quite a while now after finding so much joy in shuffling. My first class with Elena Cruz 3 years ago was so fun. The community she built was so overwhelmingly positive and welcoming that I sought to come to as many classes as possible to learn from her and to make friends (which had been hard to do after moving to NYC at the beginning of COVID). I’d learned so much and was so inspired by the incredible teachers we had in NYC that I felt ready to give back. Plus, teaching shuffle classes would be fun because I love dancing so much! So when I got funemployed, I thought that this was a chance to really try something new, create combos and choreos and teach shuffle classes to the folks in NYC. I had taught a lot of different labs and sections in grad school, including Human Infectious Diseases, Intro to Bio Lab II, Intensive Genetics, Marine Genomics and given plenty of presentations and seminars so I was confident that I could teach and knew that I enjoyed the process.
To start teaching, I did some market research to see when people would be the most free for shuffle classes and looked to see where there was availability on the NYC Shuffle calendar to teach. Then I booked some rooms at Ripley Grier, made ads with an app and posted them on social media. It felt thrilling and liberating when I announced I was teaching classes because you make yourself vulnerable when you put yourself out there. At the same time, I’d argue that being vulnerable makes you more confident and courageous too.
As crazy as it sounds, I was not afraid of people not coming to my first few classes; I knew I had a lot of value to add and was looking forward to putting combos together for the students. I was more worried about how my 1 year old ankle sprain would handle the added pressures of me teaching classes AND taking classes AND going to pilates AND going to PT. Before I even taught my first class, I added more classes to the schedule because I was having a lot of fun with the class planning and wanted to do more of it. Some people may say to start small and slowly build up, but for me I like to operate in a go big or go home type of way.
At the time of publishing, I’d finished teaching two months of shuffle classes and learned that teaching dance classes is hard – it takes a lot of cardio, skill and endurance to count, remember choreos, answer questions and dance for 90 min. Thus, the self care in the following days is really important too to recover. I’ve also found that teaching dance classes is also very rewarding; planning the classes, teaching them and dancing with my students/(new) friends all of it has been incredibly fun.
What I learn from teaching class to class, I take with me too. If students want to cover certain moves, I try to incorporate them into future classes I know they’ll be attending. If there are common things that students are tripping up on, I think of ways to explain things better for the next time. If people are more available on weeknights, I try to schedule more class times there. These internal debrief practices are not unlike what I was doing when I taught in grad school and typically the 2nd or 3rd class I taught that week on the same biology topic would be better after I incorporated learnings from the first class I taught.
Conclusion
Starting a new business is not easy at all, but once I decided something was right for me like putting together a website, writing, teaching shuffling classes … the people came. Teachers, mentors, friends and colleagues provided guidance to support me and my endeavors. Their encouragement let me know that I was going down the right road too. Thank you for believing in me! I am having a lot of fun and enjoyment from writing, teaching, all of it and have no intention in stopping.
Be sure to subscribe and follow me for more tips and tricks on navigating unemployment, to hear more about how I prepared myself financially for it, how I’m building out my business on social media so far and what it’s been like teaching shuffle classes in NYC! Thanks for reading and for all of your support. It means the world to me. Let me know what your experience has been with funemployment in the comments below.
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