February 28, 2024 • 48 mins
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Today, unlock a world of innovation at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and public health consulting with Leah Roman and Vinu Ilakkuvan. They bring to light the motivations behind a groundbreaking survey on self-employed public health professionals, revealing the often hidden sides of self employment. Through candid conversations, we learn about the economic prospects of consulting and the pressing need for more academic training and support networks to arm future public health entrepreneurs with the tools for success.
You’ll Learn
- What prompted Leah, Vinu, and Laura to collaborate on “The self-employed public health consultant and entrepreneur workforce in the United States” and the method behind conducting the survey
- Key findings from the survey including demographics and formal training in skills related to entrepreneurship
- Breaking down the financial aspects of consulting and salary transparency
- The gap in support networks for self employed public health professionals and brainstorming how to bridge it
- What Leah and Vinu hope to achieve next with the results collected from the survey
Today’s Guest
Leah A. Roman, MPH, MCHES is the Owner & Principal Consultant for Roman Public Health Consulting LLC, where she helps public health organizations design effective e-learning solutions. She has 18+ years of experience providing training and technical assistance, health education, and project management services. Leah has a BA in Psychology (University of San Diego), a master of public health degree (Boston University), a certificate in e-learning instructional design (University of Washington), and is a Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES). Leah lives in the Philadelphia, PA area (USA) with her husband and two children.
Vinu Ilakkuvan, DrPH, MSPH, is passionate about strengthening community-driven efforts to address the upstream, root drivers of health. She is Founder and Principal Consultant of PoP Health, a public health consulting practice that partners with community coalitions and collaboratives to transform health in their communities through policy and systems change. PoP Health helps coalitions engage in community collaboration, action planning, participatory evaluation, and effective storytelling. PoP Health also issues a biweekly newsletter, Community Threads, with tools and strategies for anyone seeking to improve community health
Resources
- Connect with Leah on LinkedIn and read her blog post on how much to charge for consulting services
- Connect with Vinu on LinkedIn and learn more about PoP Health
- Read more about the results from the The self-employed public health consultant and entrepreneur workforce in the United States survey
- Listen to previous episodes with Leah on
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I feel like any ideas around kind of how we can have
more consistent kind ofconnections and peer support in
this world of public healthconsulting are very welcome and
like if folks have ideas A like,go forth and make them reality.
But also, I think, if there areways that we can all work
together to create those spaces,I think that's always something
(00:23):
we're all looking for.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you
to build your public healthcareer with.
Join us weekly right here andI'll be here too.
Your host, Sujani Siva from PHSpot.
Hey, Leah and Vinu, and welcometo the PH Spot podcast.
So lovely to have you both andyes, it is Leah Roman.
(00:50):
I think you're one of my mostpopular returning guests to Leah
.
So a lot of our listeners willprobably recognize your name and
I'll definitely link up some ofour older episodes.
And then Vinu is going to joinme again on the podcast in a
couple of weeks and we'll besharing her career journey.
But today we're going to talkabout a very, you know, favorite
topic of mine, which isentrepreneurship in public
(01:12):
health, and both Leah and Vinuhave done this, and additional
individuals and I think we'lltalk about them as well they
weren't able to join us todayhave done some incredible work
understanding this space I thinkone of my favorite pieces of
work that I've found to date,and I'm really excited to get
into it.
And I think we were even sayingthere might be a part two,
(01:33):
depending on how today'sconversation goes.
But maybe I will give you thechance to maybe just do a quick
introduction, leah, for ourlisteners, and then Vinu, I'll
hand it over to you to alsointroduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Sure Well, thanks so much for having me again.
Hopefully people are tired ofhearing from me.
So my name is Leah Roman, I'm apublic health consultant and
I'm calling in from thePhiladelphia area in the United
States and I've been working inpublic health in some capacity
for the past 18 or 19 years now,and I have been an independent
(02:06):
consultant for 11 years.
So I just had my anniversary inJanuary.
I was a generalist earlier in mycareer, so when I consulted I
did everything from, you know,grant writing to needs
assessment to evaluation.
But in the last three to fouryears have really narrowed my
work down to working ine-learning and instructional
design for public healthprojects, specifically for
(02:28):
projects that are serving adultlearners and that is often the
public health workforce so oftenhelping clients to develop
online courses and trainings forour workforce.
And so you know, we've talkedin previous episodes, which
we'll link to, about my careerjourney, and when I was
reflecting on that this morning,I was thinking how interesting
it is that I've really circledback to a lot of the things that
(02:51):
I've liked in the last 18 years, so taking you know, health
education and training andtechnical assistance and putting
those things all together andworking in e-learning and
instructional design, so that'swhat I'm currently working on
now.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
That's awesome and I know when I started PH Spot, you
were one of the individuals whoI don't know how.
I reached out to you and youhad this incredible community of
public health consultants andentrepreneurs, so it's been
super inspiring to see you kindof evolve and be at where you
are right now.
Venu, tell us about you, andthis is the first time I get to
talk to you, so it's superexciting for me Me as well.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Thanks so much.
So, yeah, my name is VenuaLuckavan, I am also a public
health consultant.
I'm based in Fairfax, virginia,and my consulting practice, pop
Health, is really focused onpartnering with community
coalitions and collaborativesthat are trying to transform
health in their communities.
I have a special focus on kindof policy and systems level
(03:49):
change work and really kind ofrun the gamut in terms of how we
support those coalitions andcollaboratives, in terms of kind
of connecting with communitymembers and really making sure
they're driving the work, actionplanning and associated kind of
strategic meeting facilitation,participatory evaluation and
learning and then effectivestorytelling.
(04:11):
My backgrounds in healthcommunications and I've always,
you know, I've loved writing,I've loved dancing, so kind of
storytelling in all its formshas always been a passion of
mine, so kind of similar to whatLeo was saying as well, kind of
bringing all the things I lovedoing most together and that's
one of my favorite things aboutbeing a you know, public health
(04:34):
consultant and entrepreneur issort of having the ownership to
be able to do that and theflexibility as well.
So very excited to be heretoday.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Love it, so sounds like well, I was looking on both
of your LinkedIn's and Venua.
You've been in this like worldof public health
entrepreneurship as a consultantfor almost seven years now and,
leah, you mentioned you're kindof hitting 11 years, or just
hit 11 years.
So what was it that inspiredone of you, or all of you, to
(05:06):
kind of come together andpublish this piece of work
called the self-employed publichealth consultant and
entrepreneur workforce in the US?
I remember when you started, Ithink, circulating the survey at
one point and I was like, okay,I'm not in the US so I can't
answer this, but I believe Ireally hope to kind of get to
see the results of it, and whenit did come out it was
incredible work that you had alldone.
(05:28):
So like I didn't hear any of yousay, oh yeah, I work in like
researching the workforce or anyof that.
So where did that inspirationcome from?
Do?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
you want to start, venua?
Sure, yeah, I think it was forme just very personal, I think,
as I entered the kind of publichealth consultant workforce
myself seven years ago afterhaving been in kind of full-time
public health employment fornonprofits, for government
whatever and was entering thisspace and just found myself with
(05:59):
lots of questions right aroundthe kinds of services to offer,
how to structure pricing, whatpricing should be Like.
I was just grappling with allthese questions and you know I
found the Facebook communitythat Leia has been running so
wonderfully for all of us and itwas just incredibly helpful to
(06:24):
get connected to a community ofconsultants and it was great to
have questions answered, toconnect with folks et cetera.
But obviously there are sort oflike these broader questions of
just like what is the state ofthis field and where are people
overall and on average, andthose questions are hard to
answer without something like asurvey and it so happened that
(06:44):
our other colleague who couldn'tbe here today, that's worked
with us.
Laura Reynolds runs a group inDC called Women in Public Health
and Women in Public Health DCwas doing a compensation survey
for all public health folks inDC, so not limited to
consultants, but Laura reallyhad a leadership role in getting
(07:05):
that survey off the ground withthat group and I saw that and I
was like I would love to dothis, but specifically to
consultants and not focused on aspecific region, but really
looking nationwide, yeah, sothen Leia was obviously a
natural person to turn to kindof managing this Facebook group
and this network, and I knew shehad been in this space for a
(07:27):
while.
So, yeah, kind of reached outto both of them and proposed
this idea and it sort of wentfrom there.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But I'll turn it to you now and I'm laughing when I
think about it, because thisstarted probably four years ago
or something and it just likethe scope expanded, as I think
we originally started with, hey,we should just do the survey
within the Facebook group, maybe.
And then it turned into well,we should ask more broadly for
(07:55):
people even outside of it.
And then we were like, well,why don't we think about getting
IRB approval in case we wannapublish this?
We've sort of followed all theresearch protocols.
So the project also, I think,started kind of small, but then
got bigger and bigger, and so,as Vinu mentioned, laura was
involved, and at the timeKealoke Worthington was working
(08:16):
with her, and so she's our otherauthor.
I wanna acknowledge both ofthem and we miss having them
here today, but they hadwonderful contributions.
So we ended up.
Then turning to the networkinggroup that I admin, and so, for
people who are listening, whoaren't familiar, I have a
Facebook group that is actuallyapproaching its 10-year
anniversary, which is prettyamazing, and this is for
(08:38):
self-employed public healthconsultants and entrepreneurs.
I checked this morning so I'dhave accurate numbers.
So we now have 186 members,which is wonderful.
We started with like threepeople.
I have a larger spreadsheet ofeveryone who's in there who's
approached me about joining, butthen also people who've
approached me who then didn'tjoin for some reason, and that
has like maybe 250 names on it.
(09:01):
So we had this collaborationbetween Vinu, and Laura came in
with the idea and I had accessto the population that we wanted
to survey, and so that's reallyhow the collaboration got
started, and I think it wasreally exciting for me, because
so much of this I mean reallyall of it has been anecdotal,
has been just us helping eachother and that's been wonderful.
(09:23):
But I think the idea of havingsome concrete data that we could
share was really exciting,especially as we are seeing and
again, this has been anecdotal,but we feel like this part of
the workforce is growing, but itdoesn't really have any
spotlight on it at all in anysort of organized or official
way.
Besides my networking group orthere's a couple other
(09:44):
consultants that are offeringtraining and support to people
who want to be on public healthentrepreneurs, but not through
any sort of official channelslike membership organizations
and things like that.
So we wanted to try to movethings from anecdotal to
actually having some hard data.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's cool and I'm sure you and I have talked about
this, leah, and I think it's agreat teaching moment,
especially for our listeners whoare like, yeah, I'd like to
dabble into consultancy orentrepreneurship.
It's about taking an idea thatcame to mind and, vinu, you were
inspired and personallyinspired when you saw Laura's
work and just put it out thereinto the world to a few people
(10:22):
who then came around thatinspiration and that idea and
look at where you guys havebrought it four years later and
I think it's an incredibleteaching moment for anyone
listening.
If you have that itch forentrepreneurship or wanting to
do something in the space ofpublic health on your own, I
think sharing your idea with afew people around you never know
where it's gonna go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(10:43):
I think, if I remembercorrectly, you had 120 people
respond to the survey.
That's a really good samplesize.
Especially you have 180 peoplein the group, and do you know if
the responses came from onlyindividuals in that group or
were there people from all over?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
It was broader than that and some of the people in
the group are international,outside of the US, but the
survey itself was only forUS-based consultants.
So we did market it morebroadly through our networks and
I think you probably saw it onLinkedIn when it was going out.
We sent out email blasts toeverybody on my spreadsheet and
then also just did like a warmemail introduction to different
(11:24):
colleagues of ours who may haveaccess to consultants.
So, yeah, so it went beyond thegroup.
The group was essential inhelping us pilot the survey.
So we did have five people whovolunteered to take an initial
version of it and they gave usboth written and oral feedback,
which was really helpful.
And then we did some, I willsay, renovations, some revisions
(11:44):
and renovations on the surveyto make it better.
So the group was like reallysupportive in getting it going,
but we did have people fillingit out outside of that group as
well.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Super cool.
What would you both say waskind of the most surprising
findings for each of you?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I think that the split in terms of part-time and
full-time consultants was 50-50.
And that in and of itself wasnot surprising.
But this is a place where, whenwe kind of dove further into
the data and looked at some ofthe demographic differences with
all the caveats of this is asmall sample size and not
(12:24):
randomly selected and we cantalk more about kind of the
potential and likely, honestly,biases and things just in like
who's in our network and whoactually got this, whatever.
But with all of those caveats,I still thought it was really
surprising that when we dovedeeper into the part-time,
full-time split, there wasbasically 37% of respondents who
(12:48):
identified as white reportedother paid employment in
addition to their business,compared to 85% of respondents
who identified as black, and100% of respondents who
identified as Asian saying thatthey had other paid employment
in addition to their consultingbusiness.
(13:08):
And I know we had someconversations in analyzing and
interpreting this data aroundwhy that might be and that's all
speculation at this point.
But I think when we think abouthaving your own business, there
are obviously a number of risksand other things associated
(13:29):
with that, both kind of justlogistically you think about
health insurance, things likethat depending on whether or not
you have that through someoneelse in your family, and also
just the security economicsecurity, financial security, a
steady paycheck, etc.
So there might be variousreasons kind of underlying what
is showing up as inequity interms of just people who are
(13:54):
juggling multiple things versuspeople who are kind of fully in
self-employment on its own.
So that was something thatreally kind of struck me and
that I would be very interestedto kind of delve into further.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, yeah, okay.
And how about you, leah?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
It's interesting, I think, for me, because I also, I
think you know, when I had acourse on consulting and then
coached people I think I'veheard a lot of what we heard in
the survey before, so I don'tknow nothing really like made me
be like, oh my God, I can'tbelieve that, you know.
But there were still thingsthat I think really popped for
(14:36):
me and I think because now,working in instructional design
and e-learning, I'm alwaysthinking about people's learning
needs, and so I thought it wasreally fascinating that.
So only 7% of our respondentsreported that their academic
programs had offered courses ortraining on business or
entrepreneurship, and again,that might be changing.
(14:58):
So we had a you know, this is amore experienced group, so on
average, most people had betweenfive and 20 years of experience
in public health.
So none of them have been inschool to get their MPH, most of
them in the last like year ortwo or five.
So that may be changing.
But, you know, I think it didshow a big discrepancy between
(15:19):
the skills and knowledge thatpeople need to run their own
businesses and what they've beenable to get in their academic
program, and I think, you know,anecdotally, this matches what I
think we're seeing in practice,which is that we've had to
develop these kinds of trainingprograms ourselves.
So I, you know, developed acourse on consulting because
(15:40):
people were asking me and I waslike trying to help, you know,
and now there's otherconsultants that are, you know,
developing similar kinds oftrainings and peer support and
things like that.
So I can see that you know,sort of private businesses are
trying to fill this gap.
That's not happening inacademic setting or, you know,
from public health trainingcenters and things like that.
(16:01):
There's this gap in skills.
So for me I think that was, Imean, only 7%.
You know, reporting this, Ifelt like that was a really
glaring learning need.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And maybe just going back to kind of what Vinu found
interesting around thedemographic.
I wish I had kind of dived indeeper and I don't know if it's
in your full paper around thedemographic differences.
So I'll definitely go back anddo that, because that was an
interesting point that youpointed out and I do hope to do
that, and then maybe for ourpart two conversation dive into
that a little bit.
But yes, the training piece Ithink is huge and I don't do it
(16:36):
in a kind of way where I'mactually coaching individuals,
but inside the public healthcareer club and our membership
community I am seeing more andmore individuals interested in
consulting and I think you hadlisted the four biggest
struggles that people had whenstarting a business and it was
that setting up peace, gettingclients right and I think some
of those things.
(16:56):
We've all had to learn it, andI'm well versed in how to set up
a business in Canada, but thenI can't really help individuals
in the US because they don'treally understand the different
forms and the ways to do that.
So I think there is a huge gapthere for university programs,
if not having their own courses,but at least bridging that gap
for students, introducing themto the business schools or
(17:20):
having that option to say like,hey, you can take these courses
in the school and then these arethe ones that we would
recommend.
I think there's some lowhanging fruits that I think
could happen For me.
I think a stat that I wasn'tsurprised by was that 92% of the
individuals were women in yoursample, so I wasn't at all
surprised, I guess.
Just public health I've alwaysworked with the predominantly
(17:43):
women workforce and so I wasn'ttoo surprised and 95% of
individuals had a graduatedegree.
That was also not surprising.
I did love the piece that youhad on how much money do they
take home.
I just recorded kind of a soloepisode on like how much can you
get paid in public health and Imade sure to include your piece
at the end there because peopledon't consider self employment
(18:07):
in public health and I thinkthere was a career advisor in
maybe I think it was at theSchool of Public Health at
Harvard who had said I thinkthey had started recommending
that as an option to peoplebecause I think their students
didn't even know that was apossibility within public health
.
And just for our listeners incase they didn't get a chance to
read this, the net incomereported for full time public
(18:29):
health consultants orentrepreneurs were around 80,000
US dollars.
And then the part time one wasalso interesting because I think
people were able to take homeabout just under $30,000.
So I'm thinking you know, ifyou do have stable income that
pays you maybe you know $70,000,you can supplement that and
bump your salary up $30,000 more.
(18:49):
If you did have that luxurywith that additional time and
flexibility but yeah, any sortof interesting points you both
can remember around how muchmoney could be made.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That was a big one that people told us like when we
introduced the survey, peoplewere like we want to know how
much money everybody else ismaking and how much we should
charge.
I wrote a blog post aboutpricing your consulting services
I don't know probably five orsix years ago.
You know, to this day it is thenumber one most popular blog
post that I've ever written.
(19:22):
People really want thisinformation and there hasn't
been like an easy way to get it.
So that the comparison, youknow, because some people made
you consulting two projects ayear, and so when we were even
making the questions, it waslike how are we going to ask
this?
And so we actually asked peopleto go to their tax returns
because we really wanted someaccuracy in terms of money.
(19:42):
And then you know when we didend up, even though a lot of us
don't charge hourly, necessarily, we didn't want that metric of
you know the average hourly rate, because that's a big one both,
for I think consultants areoften kind of scared to charge
that much.
Like.
So we got, I think it was ahundred.
I don't have it right in frontof me.
(20:03):
I think it was $120 an hourwhich is a pretty big number,
and I think when you first startthat's really scary to charge.
I think many of us werecharging like $30 an hour when
we first started and like wayundercharging, not accounting
for all of our expenses andthings like that.
I also think that's animportant number for clients to
(20:23):
see, because you know I have hadpeople balk at that and be.
You know, when you look at thatas a whole, like oh my gosh,
it's so much money, like whywould I, you know?
But it's important tounderstand all that goes into
that.
So I think it's really helpfulfor people to see like this is
actually the average, like thisis the going rate, and you know
we do have a significant amountthat then goes for taxes and
(20:46):
goes for our expenses, and soit's not like we get all that
money in our pocket.
I mean, that was the number onething people told us that they
wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And I think it was also helpful to get a sense of
the breakdown.
You know we had a breakdown of83% of respondents earning their
revenue via sort of charging atan hourly rate, 68% via project
based rates, 18% via fee forproducts and 10% kind of on
retainer packages.
And I think that kind ofbreakdown and those were not
(21:15):
necessarily mutually exclusive.
I know many of us do projectbased rates for some projects,
hourly for others.
But I think that kind ofbreakdown is really helpful too.
And again, kind of justpersonally, when I started
consulting I had a lot ofquestions about not only how
much to charge, but how tocharge, like what pricing
structure makes sense.
So I think it's helpful just toknow the options that are out
(21:38):
there.
And again, kind of the lay ofthe field in terms of, okay,
most people are kind of in thesebuckets and I think that can be
, you know, reassuring, helpful,motivating, inspiring, whatever
, depending on where you are andwhere kind of the averages are.
And then, yeah, I mean I thinkfor folks who are considering
(22:00):
entrepreneurship and publichealth.
I know for me when I firststarted and we can talk in a
little bit about sort ofpeople's motivation for getting
into consulting, because I knowthat was another thing I was
really interested in and I thinkis valuable on a couple
different fronts, kind ofunderstanding that motivation.
But for me the initial start wasmore out of necessity, of what
(22:24):
needed to happen in my life atthat moment, and I found myself
quite surprised by, you know,just like the income potential
that exists in this space, andit's certainly not anything that
anyone told me about orintroduced me to in any of my
academic programs and thingslike that.
I feel like you hear aboutworking in government, working
(22:44):
in nonprofits like, etc.
But I think that in a lot ofways I have found kind of the
income potential as a consultantto be substantially higher than
what was in the range of, like,the places I was working full
time.
And so you know, I feel likethat's important for people to
hear that this is a viableoption and one that you know it
(23:08):
has certainly challenges andthings but also a lot of
benefits, and I think that'spart of what came through in
terms of people's motivation tostart consulting as well as
continue it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I think we're at a point in like just public health
careers, that this option isbeing considered more and more,
and I'm very happy to see itbecause I think the potential
for earning is as high,especially with cost of living
going up.
And I just find I know I stillhave a full time job and then I
have a page spot.
So I'm one of those individualswith a full time job and an
(23:45):
entrepreneurial initiative.
But I do love kind of all thethings that come with that right
, like the flexibility, theability to just be creative and
work on projects, the way Ispend my time with my son right.
So I think a lot of those perksare there, although the risks
can be high at the beginning.
And I think that's wherepotentially exploring a
(24:07):
transition period where you aremaybe doing both and then
eventually taking some time offfrom one or the other and kind
of like easing your way into it.
And to your point earlier, leah, you know it was a request that
was very popular about incomepotential when you were doing
your survey, and I think it'sprobably because we don't talk
about money, whether it's inpublic health or other
(24:29):
industries, but I think more soin public health it hasn't been
a topic that's being discussedout openly.
You know, even if you look atGlassdoor or some of those
directories and repositories,you can't really find
information on public healthsalaries.
There have been someindependent work, like you
mentioned.
Laura's group has done some.
I know Daisy is anotherindividual I met on LinkedIn
(24:50):
who's done some.
You know, personal work on justcollecting public health
salaries.
But I do hope we can kind ofopen that up a little bit more
and your survey definitelyallows us to explore that a bit
more.
And you know, leah and I had awebinar it was called Pricing
for Profit when Leah was doingher course and it was a popular
(25:10):
session.
People had lots of questions.
And when you are stepping intoconsulting or any
entrepreneurial venture, it'shard to really understand what
your value is, what you shouldbe charging, and I think there's
the hourly rate or the valuebased rate, like just different
ways of doing it.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So I think the black to your point of how, like we
don't talk about it enough,there's not enough transparency
around it, and I think thatblack box of it all puts public
health, students and people whowork in public health at a real
disadvantage.
And I mean not, I mean I thinkthat black box around sort of
income and salary exists in alot of fields, maybe even all of
(25:47):
them, most of them, I don'tknow, but like I think it really
puts us at a disservice becauseyou know, we don't know the
benchmarks in order to then seekout our value, whether it's
someone applying for a full timeposition or beginning
consulting, whatever it is.
So I feel like that definitelywas a big motivation for us in
(26:10):
creating the survey and askingthe specific questions we did,
associating up with the taxreturns like we always talking
about, like all of that wasreally from this place of like
we want to see more transparency, we want to provide a benchmark
, we want people to be able tohave a better sense of that.
I don't know that this is goingto reach this particular
audience, but I always, likeanyone who's an employer or
(26:33):
posting requests for proposals,it drives me absolutely crazy
when there is not a salary or abudget range posted.
Like, you have a budget range,I like I know you do so like,
please don't put out an RFPwithout a budget range, because
it's a colossal waste of timefor people who are submitting.
You know, again the black boxof it all like doesn't help the
(26:56):
hiring and it doesn't help theperson applying again, whether
it's a full time job or an RFP.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So sorry, that's just my little soapbox for a second
and I also think I just want tomention too, like I also think
the transparency goes in bothdirections.
So I think that there'stransparency about the high end,
like wow, like what you talkedabout venue, like you can really
make a good salary doingindependent consulting.
(27:20):
I also think that we need to betransparent, that not everybody
is making that much money right,like so some people in our
survey, we're making a lot ofmoney now that could be, because
you know, I've had years whereI've made less money, like
during the pandemic, when I washomeschooling my kids and I had
a new baby and like all thatstuff, you know.
So there's obviously variations, but I think, especially with
(27:42):
social media and people doingtheir products and their courses
, there's a lot of people outhere who are bouncing into the
space and being like I make sixfigures and this and that, and
maybe they are, but we don'talways know what somebody's net
is, so that person can have anenormous amount of expenses and
all sorts of other things.
So I do think there's also somelike false advertising, that
(28:05):
owning your own businesses foreverybody and everybody can work
20 hours a week and make sixfigures, and that's not always
true either.
So like, I think we need sometransparency on both sides so
people know what they're goinginto.
Over the last 11 years I've metplenty of consultants that have
really struggled.
They've gone back to full timework, they've had trouble
getting clients, they've hadtrouble getting high paying, you
(28:28):
know consulting gigs.
So like it's all there, thewhole spectrum, and there's so
many factors.
I mean we can have a wholesession just on that, but I
think I like transparency.
You know really at both ends ofthe spectrum in terms of how
much money people are making.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I love that.
Yeah, I was going to add likejust full transparency and to
add to the conversation.
I've run PH spot for aboutseven years now and haven't
taken any salary because I'vejust invested it all back in and
I found the biggest value forme is to hire a team so that I
could get time back with my son.
That's my biggest motivation,like I want to build something,
(29:03):
that's the driving factor, butevery single dollar goes back to
funding a team who can keep itup and running so that I can
spend that time with my family.
So I think there's lots of waysto do it and I think, like you
said, both Vinu and Lea, thetransparency needs to start both
ends and I'm very happy thatyou both have started us off
(29:24):
with this.
I know how I want to use thisword that you've all put
together and I have some ideaswith PH spot and I definitely
like sharing it.
When I have young kind of earlyprofessionals considering
consultancy or entrepreneurship,this is a great resource for me
to send their way, just to belike, okay, go read this, you
(29:44):
kind of get an understanding.
Hence why I wanted to bring youboth on the podcast so you know
they have a starting point.
But curious to hear you knowwhat you both and others on the
team who kind of inspired thiswork, what you're hoping to do
with this.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I think for me two things come to mind.
So one is and you know assomeone who went through a
master's in public health theDRPH like was in kind of this
academia world for a while, aswell as and I'll get to this in
a second worked at state healthdepartments, nonprofits.
First, the academia piece.
I think that I would love tosee public health academic
(30:22):
curricula reflect more of theactual information around kind
of public health,entrepreneurship and what that
looks like, what it might entail, as well as skill building
around things that you need.
I've always felt that you knowpublic health inherently is a
very applied field.
So I feel like the academiccurricula around public health
(30:46):
to me it's really important thatthat, especially in a program
like a DRPH that's very muchintended to be an applied sort
of a spirit degree, I would loveto see those academic curricula
reflect.
And again we can go in into thedetails of the sorts of things
you need when you're aconsultant but you're talking
about, you know, establishinglegally a business, liability
(31:09):
concerns, you're talking abouthiring, you're talking about
pricing there's, you knowaccounting and tax things
involved, like there's a wholegamut of things that come into
play and I would love to seemore of those kind of practical
skills built in, and some ofthose are specific to
entrepreneurship and some ofthem honestly aren't.
(31:31):
You know, if you're, you mightbe a full time employee trying
to market a particular publichealth initiative and I just
think there's a lot that couldbe done to really make the
academic curriculum more robustand inclusive of a range of
career paths, includingentrepreneurship.
The other audience I think abouta lot is traditional public
health employers.
(31:51):
You know, I worked at stategovernment, I worked at
nonprofits and I think this iswhere I find the information
around kind of people'smotivation to enter into and
stay in consulting reallyinteresting.
And again, not that it'ssurprising, but I think, just
boiling it down to these thingsaround autonomy and ownership
(32:14):
and flexibility, I think it's agreat sort of list of reasons
for traditional public healthemployers to keep in mind and to
think about how they can craftroles and jobs that allow more
of those things that people areseeking, as Leo was saying, and
I think it's such an importantpoint like that transparency on
(32:34):
both ends and the fact thatthere are a lot of us who
struggled at the beginning, alot of people who continue to
struggle in consulting.
I also would agree it's not apath for everyone.
It involves a lot of things,and some people might thrive
having to do all of those andother people.
It might not be for them, andthat's totally okay, but for me
(32:54):
it's sort of I want to see thepublic health workforce,
regardless of whether they'reentrepreneurs or consultants or
not.
I want to see that workforcetreated well and be in jobs that
they're satisfied with, and soI think there's a lot that
traditional public healthemployers can learn from this
about like.
These are the things thatpeople are seeking, and I don't
(33:16):
think, you know, flexibility andautonomy and ownership don't
have to be the purview ofconsultants and entrepreneurs.
Like those things can beintegrated into full-time jobs
in public health, and I wouldlove to see more of that happen
as well.
So that's another kind ofaudience potential use for this
that I would love to see.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Excellent.
How about you, Leah?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I think we talked about one of them which was, you
know, I think, the pricingpiece.
I was really hoping peoplewould use that, especially
consultants, to feel confidentin pricing.
So that's a big part of itwhich we already discussed.
The other part that I wasjotting down some notes is that
I really would love to see thesedata help us get support for
the segment of the workforce insome sort of official way and
(34:00):
even like just acknowledge thatwe exist and we wrote about this
a bit in the paper.
It feels like we're a littlebit behind in terms of
acknowledging the self-employedpart of the workforce.
So, like the AmericanEvaluation Association has a
really active topical group thatis for self-employed evaluators
.
The Academy of Nutrition andDietetics they have a whole
(34:21):
self-employed group as well, andso they do professional
development in there.
Continuing education, there'sobviously like a lot of peer
networking and support, and thatreally doesn't exist in public
health.
There isn't some sort ofcentralized database.
I mean it's me really Like.
I mean we joke that I'm likethe keeper of the list, but kind
of, you know, and so it wouldbe nice if you know an
(34:44):
organization like APHA or SOPHYwhich is for health educators.
You know there's enough of usnow that it feels like we could
have a section or a topicalgroup for self-employed, and I
think then through thatmechanism, you know, we could
get the peer support we need.
We could get the professionaldevelopment we need.
(35:04):
We could maybe do some kind ofongoing survey to look at all
these issues.
You know in terms of what ourprofessional development needs,
you know what are the financial,you know questions Like how
much are we charging?
And you know different incomethings.
I think having a place for usto be together in an official
capacity would be wonderful.
I mean I love the networkinggroup and I'm planning to
(35:26):
continue it, but certainly Imean, like all this research.
I mean you know you're kind ofdoing it in your free time, on
the side, and there's limits towhat is available, and so it
would be nice, I think, if we'vemade all this data public.
Could the right person you knowtake this?
Or could we use it to advocateto have a section for us in
these types of organizations?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
That's wonderful, both of your future plans with
this.
Is it in the future plan to dosome outreach and like pitch
these ideas, whether it's withuniversities to include
curriculum in this area, or evenAPHA to see if they would
consider?
Like a committee, I think?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
in theory we would love to do all things.
I think that to Leah's point.
You know this is a sidevolunteer project for us.
And there are limits tobandwidth and time and all these
things, you know.
I mean, I feel like to Leah'spoint too.
I think, again, this is where,like, if there was a section at
APHA or like some sort of moreformal structure that could
(36:30):
provide some kind of protectedtime or budget to do something
like I mean, I do think thiswould be great to do on a more
you know, a survey like thiscould be done every year or two,
If it could be done in othercountries, like there's so many
ways that this could expand andbe helpful.
I think right now it's sort ofa time bandwidth issue, but that
(36:55):
is not to say, you know, Ithink we would be interested and
we haven't talked specificallyabout this, but, like I do think
it would be great to, you know,get a group together to propose
something to APHA or Sophie andsee if there is any traction to
that.
And I think this is the sort ofthing I think we all work on
(37:15):
stuff like this.
That's sort of like it doesn'tmean it doesn't exist, but it's
hard to imagine, like who wouldfund this besides ourselves?
Like I don't know, but I thinksome of these more.
I think that's kind of why wegravitate towards member
associations is sort of likebeing kind of mission aligned in
that way, and if there could besome traction there, that might
(37:36):
be a way to at least kind offormalize some of this work and
make it more consistent.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
And I'm trying to remember this is years ago now,
I feel like somebody in thenetworking group approached APHA
Are you remembering this tovenue and like they said they
would need I think they wouldneed like 50 signatures from
members that they wanted thisgroup, but at the time they were
not adding additional sections.
I'm pretty sure this is whatI'm remembering, but this was
years ago too, so that you know,things may be different at this
(38:05):
point and it's also, I meanagain, sort of the where's the
best place for us.
I know again, this is anecdotal, but lots of people in the
networking group now thatthey're self employed are no
longer APHA members because themembership is so expensive, and
so when their employers used topay for the membership and the
travel to the annual meeting, alot of us went.
(38:27):
But now like I can say, like Ithink I went when it was local
one time since I startedconsulting, but I mean the
meetings are like almost what,like $1,000 or something.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
I don't either, so it's a good point, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
So I think for a lot of us we're not APHA members
anymore but like, maybe if therewas something for self employed
we would be.
You know, I am a Sophie memberfor health education, but I
think that's something to thinkabout too is sort of where can
we gather, but in a way that'salso affordable, you know, for
those of us who are selfemployed and don't have a you
(39:00):
know, a employer who's able tofund our memberships and travel.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
It almost makes me wonder if we need a not to have
our own organization associationwith virtual meetings?
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean, this is how we ended up with the
Facebook group, right.
Because it was like this,doesn't exist and how can we,
all you know, gather together?
But yeah, I think, I thinkthat's really the place where
we're stuck is because this wastotally unfunded.
I'm a time tracker.
I actually didn't track my timeon this project, maybe because
I didn't want to know.
(39:35):
But, I would say easily hundredsof hours.
I mean, yeah, you know at thispoint where it kind of is where
it is, I think, until we areable to have maybe some sort of
funding, I would love you know,in terms of like linking this to
my consulting work, like Iwould love to work with like a
public health training center oruniversity to create a
(39:57):
curriculum you know, I thinkthat there's some subject matter
expertise there but then alsofrom the instructional design
side, I would love to like thinkabout what that kind of course
or training would look like.
So I think, you know, I also seepossibilities to integrate this
into my niche of consulting, Ithink, and that would be a way
for me to do it in a funded wayand we could base you know
(40:20):
things on.
You know, and, as Vinny said, Imean, obviously there's
limitations to these data, but Ithink they do give us a really
solid picture, more than we havehad in the past, of you know,
the kinds of skills andexperiences that people are
looking for to try to starttheir businesses, and so much of
is transferable.
I mean, I think if you wererunning a nonprofit, you would
(40:41):
still like need to understandlike a lot of these things.
So I would love to you know,use it in that way, going
forward.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I love the live brainstorming that just took
place I had to just sit back andwatch you both bounce off ideas
.
It's awesome and for anyonelistening, who's, you know,
working at a university, who's aprofessor, who's part of APHA,
you know, I'm going to encouragethem to reach out to the two of
you if they have any ideas.
And definitely PHSpot we'rehere to leverage our platform to
(41:12):
support in any way we can andthat's also a question I had for
the two of you.
You know, how can the communityat large listening?
Or when we publish it on oursocial media platforms, in our
newsletter, how can we help withthis work and any future ideas
you might have, aside from theones that we've already talked
about?
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Yeah, I think the ones that we've talked about are
probably the major ones.
I think that there is always adesire for community, right?
You know, that's one of thewonderful things about PHPOT,
that's one of the wonderfulthings about Facebook group that
we has started.
And so, you know, I feel likeany ideas around kind of how we
(41:57):
can have more consistent kind ofconnections and peer support in
this world of public healthconsulting are very welcome.
And like we've thrown someideas out there, I'm sure there
are others.
I've thought a lot, especiallylike initial part of 2024, like
I feel like when I'm doing endof year reflections or start of
(42:17):
year kind of planning,brainstorming, you know, one of
the hard parts of being anindependent consultant, solo
entrepreneur, is that it can belonely, sometimes like it's your
thing, and I've often felt likeI would love to like get
together with other people whoare also like reflecting on
their last year of public healthbusiness in the coming year and
(42:39):
to be able to reflect together,brainstorm together, all of
that.
And so if folks have ideas, alike, go forth and make them
reality.
It's not something that has tocome through us by any means,
but also, I think, if there areways that we can all work
together to create those spaces.
I think that's always somethingwe're all looking for, and even
(43:00):
better if we can get it fundedin some way to help value our
time.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah absolutely, and we you know it was a couple
years ago I don't know if any ofyou are on this call, but we
did through the Facebook group,we did like an end of year
celebration.
Were you there?
I was, yeah, one of our groupmembers, amy Schlatt-Hauer.
I don't know if she's ever beenon the podcast Sujani, but
she's wonderful and she's anexpert at designing virtual
meetings and facilitation andthings like that.
(43:26):
So she actually designed acelebration for all of us and,
you know, volunteered her timeto do so, and so it hasn't been
something we've been able tocontinue every year.
Cause, again, it's, like youknow, always hard to ask people
to kind of do everything forfree and volunteer through the
group, but I know like we had areally big turnout for that.
People loved celebrating theend of the year together and I
(43:48):
think that's really what we're,you know what we're looking for
going forward at.
You know how could we kind ofmake communities and support for
self-employed consultants likepart of something that is
sustainable over time?
You can pay for programs,masterminds and things like that
, but, again, not all of us havethe biggest budget for these
(44:10):
kinds of programs, and so ifthey were integrated into
something we're already a memberof, or it was just really
affordable, I think more peoplewould do it.
You know, I think that'ssomething I realized when, I,
you know, created a course forthis population.
So, like aspiring or newconsultants they don't have the
biggest budget, right.
So people who are coming upwith products and services, it's
(44:33):
great, but you know, peopledon't have like $1,000 a month
for your coaching program orthis, or I mean, some of them do
, but, you know, not everybodyhas that.
So, like, how can we help peoplewho have maybe a low budget for
this kind of professionaldevelopment or support system
and how can it be integratedinto alumni programs from our
MPHs or whatever?
(44:54):
Is there something like who canwe partner with to make this
affordable and accessible topeople?
I said certainly.
Also, you know, there's theequity issue that Venue talked
about, you know.
So those of us who are able totake the leap without having,
you know, needing to worry abouthealth insurance and this, and
that are those, the same peoplewho can afford the masterminds
(45:14):
and the trainings and this, andthat you know, or is there some
way that we can make it moreaccessible and equitable, you
know, to everyone that wants tostart their business or who's
just starting out.
So I think that's a big pieceof it for us too.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
I love that.
It's a big call out to thecommunity and I really hope
we'll get a few people reachingout with some ideas, and I think
that's where I lean quiteheavily on the community you
know when I'm stuck withsomething ask them and they'll
tell you.
So, very confident, we'll getsome ideas.
So thank you both for joiningme on this episode.
I'm pretty sure we'll have apart two.
We'll have Laura here and diveinto some of the topics.
(45:51):
I think money was a big one,and then the demographic, the
differences that we saw.
I think those two will be somegood conversation points.
Maybe there will be a third one, who knows.
But thank you, and I reallyappreciated both of your time
and the work that you've putinto this.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Thanks for having us.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Hey, I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you
want to get the links orinformation mentioned in today's
episode, you can head over tophspotorg slash podcast and
we'll have everything there foryou.
And before you go, I want totell you about the Public Health
Career Club.
So if you've been looking for aplace to connect and build
(46:29):
meaningful relationships withother public health
professionals from all aroundthe world, you should join us in
the Public Health Career Club.
We launched the club with thevision of becoming the number
one hangout spot dedicated tobuilding and growing your dream
public health career.
And, in addition to being ableto connect and build those
(46:49):
meaningful relationships withother public health
professionals, the club alsooffers other great resources for
your career growth and success,like mindset coaching, job
preparation clinics and careergrowth strategy sessions in the
form of trainings and talks, alldelivered by experts and
inspiring individuals in theseareas.
So if you want to learn more orwant to join the club, you can
(47:12):
visit our page at phspotorgslash club and we'll have all
the information there.
And as a space that's beingintentionally curated to bring
together like-minded publichealth professionals who are not
only there to push themselvesto become the best versions of
themselves, but also each other,and with that I can't wait to
(47:36):
see how this is going to have aripple effect in the world, as
we all work together to betterthe health of our populations
and just have immense impact inthe world, and I hope you'll be
joining us in the Public HealthCareer Club.
We'll see you in the next video.
I feel like any ideas around kind of how we can have
more consistent kind ofconnections and peer support in
this world of public healthconsulting are very welcome and
like if folks have ideas A like,go forth and make them reality.
But also, I think, if there areways that we can all work
together to create those spaces,I think that's always something
(00:23):
we're all looking for.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you
to build your public healthcareer with.
Join us weekly right here andI'll be here too.
Your host, Sujani Siva from PHSpot.
Hey, Leah and Vinu, and welcometo the PH Spot podcast.
So lovely to have you both andyes, it is Leah Roman.
(00:50):
I think you're one of my mostpopular returning guests to Leah
.
So a lot of our listeners willprobably recognize your name and
I'll definitely link up some ofour older episodes.
And then Vinu is going to joinme again on the podcast in a
couple of weeks and we'll besharing her career journey.
But today we're going to talkabout a very, you know, favorite
topic of mine, which isentrepreneurship in public
(01:12):
health, and both Leah and Vinuhave done this, and additional
individuals and I think we'lltalk about them as well they
weren't able to join us todayhave done some incredible work
understanding this space I thinkone of my favorite pieces of
work that I've found to date,and I'm really excited to get
into it.
And I think we were even sayingthere might be a part two,
(01:33):
depending on how today'sconversation goes.
But maybe I will give you thechance to maybe just do a quick
introduction, leah, for ourlisteners, and then Vinu, I'll
hand it over to you to alsointroduce yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Sure Well, thanks so much for having me again.
Hopefully people are tired ofhearing from me.
So my name is Leah Roman, I'm apublic health consultant and
I'm calling in from thePhiladelphia area in the United
States and I've been working inpublic health in some capacity
for the past 18 or 19 years now,and I have been an independent
(02:06):
consultant for 11 years.
So I just had my anniversary inJanuary.
I was a generalist earlier in mycareer, so when I consulted I
did everything from, you know,grant writing to needs
assessment to evaluation.
But in the last three to fouryears have really narrowed my
work down to working ine-learning and instructional
design for public healthprojects, specifically for
(02:28):
projects that are serving adultlearners and that is often the
public health workforce so oftenhelping clients to develop
online courses and trainings forour workforce.
And so you know, we've talkedin previous episodes, which
we'll link to, about my careerjourney, and when I was
reflecting on that this morning,I was thinking how interesting
it is that I've really circledback to a lot of the things that
(02:51):
I've liked in the last 18 years, so taking you know, health
education and training andtechnical assistance and putting
those things all together andworking in e-learning and
instructional design, so that'swhat I'm currently working on
now.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
That's awesome and I know when I started PH Spot, you
were one of the individuals whoI don't know how.
I reached out to you and youhad this incredible community of
public health consultants andentrepreneurs, so it's been
super inspiring to see you kindof evolve and be at where you
are right now.
Venu, tell us about you, andthis is the first time I get to
talk to you, so it's superexciting for me Me as well.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Thanks so much.
So, yeah, my name is VenuaLuckavan, I am also a public
health consultant.
I'm based in Fairfax, virginia,and my consulting practice, pop
Health, is really focused onpartnering with community
coalitions and collaborativesthat are trying to transform
health in their communities.
I have a special focus on kindof policy and systems level
(03:49):
change work and really kind ofrun the gamut in terms of how we
support those coalitions andcollaboratives, in terms of kind
of connecting with communitymembers and really making sure
they're driving the work, actionplanning and associated kind of
strategic meeting facilitation,participatory evaluation and
learning and then effectivestorytelling.
(04:11):
My backgrounds in healthcommunications and I've always,
you know, I've loved writing,I've loved dancing, so kind of
storytelling in all its formshas always been a passion of
mine, so kind of similar to whatLeo was saying as well, kind of
bringing all the things I lovedoing most together and that's
one of my favorite things aboutbeing a you know, public health
(04:34):
consultant and entrepreneur issort of having the ownership to
be able to do that and theflexibility as well.
So very excited to be heretoday.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Love it, so sounds like well, I was looking on both
of your LinkedIn's and Venua.
You've been in this like worldof public health
entrepreneurship as a consultantfor almost seven years now and,
leah, you mentioned you're kindof hitting 11 years, or just
hit 11 years.
So what was it that inspiredone of you, or all of you, to
(05:06):
kind of come together andpublish this piece of work
called the self-employed publichealth consultant and
entrepreneur workforce in the US?
I remember when you started, Ithink, circulating the survey at
one point and I was like, okay,I'm not in the US so I can't
answer this, but I believe Ireally hope to kind of get to
see the results of it, and whenit did come out it was
incredible work that you had alldone.
(05:28):
So like I didn't hear any of yousay, oh yeah, I work in like
researching the workforce or anyof that.
So where did that inspirationcome from?
Do?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
you want to start, venua?
Sure, yeah, I think it was forme just very personal, I think,
as I entered the kind of publichealth consultant workforce
myself seven years ago afterhaving been in kind of full-time
public health employment fornonprofits, for government
whatever and was entering thisspace and just found myself with
(05:59):
lots of questions right aroundthe kinds of services to offer,
how to structure pricing, whatpricing should be Like.
I was just grappling with allthese questions and you know I
found the Facebook communitythat Leia has been running so
wonderfully for all of us and itwas just incredibly helpful to
(06:24):
get connected to a community ofconsultants and it was great to
have questions answered, toconnect with folks et cetera.
But obviously there are sort oflike these broader questions of
just like what is the state ofthis field and where are people
overall and on average, andthose questions are hard to
answer without something like asurvey and it so happened that
(06:44):
our other colleague who couldn'tbe here today, that's worked
with us.
Laura Reynolds runs a group inDC called Women in Public Health
and Women in Public Health DCwas doing a compensation survey
for all public health folks inDC, so not limited to
consultants, but Laura reallyhad a leadership role in getting
(07:05):
that survey off the ground withthat group and I saw that and I
was like I would love to dothis, but specifically to
consultants and not focused on aspecific region, but really
looking nationwide, yeah, sothen Leia was obviously a
natural person to turn to kindof managing this Facebook group
and this network, and I knew shehad been in this space for a
(07:27):
while.
So, yeah, kind of reached outto both of them and proposed
this idea and it sort of wentfrom there.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But I'll turn it to you now and I'm laughing when I
think about it, because thisstarted probably four years ago
or something and it just likethe scope expanded, as I think
we originally started with, hey,we should just do the survey
within the Facebook group, maybe.
And then it turned into well,we should ask more broadly for
(07:55):
people even outside of it.
And then we were like, well,why don't we think about getting
IRB approval in case we wannapublish this?
We've sort of followed all theresearch protocols.
So the project also, I think,started kind of small, but then
got bigger and bigger, and so,as Vinu mentioned, laura was
involved, and at the timeKealoke Worthington was working
(08:16):
with her, and so she's our otherauthor.
I wanna acknowledge both ofthem and we miss having them
here today, but they hadwonderful contributions.
So we ended up.
Then turning to the networkinggroup that I admin, and so, for
people who are listening, whoaren't familiar, I have a
Facebook group that is actuallyapproaching its 10-year
anniversary, which is prettyamazing, and this is for
(08:38):
self-employed public healthconsultants and entrepreneurs.
I checked this morning so I'dhave accurate numbers.
So we now have 186 members,which is wonderful.
We started with like threepeople.
I have a larger spreadsheet ofeveryone who's in there who's
approached me about joining, butthen also people who've
approached me who then didn'tjoin for some reason, and that
has like maybe 250 names on it.
(09:01):
So we had this collaborationbetween Vinu, and Laura came in
with the idea and I had accessto the population that we wanted
to survey, and so that's reallyhow the collaboration got
started, and I think it wasreally exciting for me, because
so much of this I mean reallyall of it has been anecdotal,
has been just us helping eachother and that's been wonderful.
(09:23):
But I think the idea of havingsome concrete data that we could
share was really exciting,especially as we are seeing and
again, this has been anecdotal,but we feel like this part of
the workforce is growing, but itdoesn't really have any
spotlight on it at all in anysort of organized or official
way.
Besides my networking group orthere's a couple other
(09:44):
consultants that are offeringtraining and support to people
who want to be on public healthentrepreneurs, but not through
any sort of official channelslike membership organizations
and things like that.
So we wanted to try to movethings from anecdotal to
actually having some hard data.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's cool and I'm sure you and I have talked about
this, leah, and I think it's agreat teaching moment,
especially for our listeners whoare like, yeah, I'd like to
dabble into consultancy orentrepreneurship.
It's about taking an idea thatcame to mind and, vinu, you were
inspired and personallyinspired when you saw Laura's
work and just put it out thereinto the world to a few people
(10:22):
who then came around thatinspiration and that idea and
look at where you guys havebrought it four years later and
I think it's an incredibleteaching moment for anyone
listening.
If you have that itch forentrepreneurship or wanting to
do something in the space ofpublic health on your own, I
think sharing your idea with afew people around you never know
where it's gonna go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(10:43):
I think, if I remembercorrectly, you had 120 people
respond to the survey.
That's a really good samplesize.
Especially you have 180 peoplein the group, and do you know if
the responses came from onlyindividuals in that group or
were there people from all over?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
It was broader than that and some of the people in
the group are international,outside of the US, but the
survey itself was only forUS-based consultants.
So we did market it morebroadly through our networks and
I think you probably saw it onLinkedIn when it was going out.
We sent out email blasts toeverybody on my spreadsheet and
then also just did like a warmemail introduction to different
(11:24):
colleagues of ours who may haveaccess to consultants.
So, yeah, so it went beyond thegroup.
The group was essential inhelping us pilot the survey.
So we did have five people whovolunteered to take an initial
version of it and they gave usboth written and oral feedback,
which was really helpful.
And then we did some, I willsay, renovations, some revisions
(11:44):
and renovations on the surveyto make it better.
So the group was like reallysupportive in getting it going,
but we did have people fillingit out outside of that group as
well.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Super cool.
What would you both say waskind of the most surprising
findings for each of you?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I think that the split in terms of part-time and
full-time consultants was 50-50.
And that in and of itself wasnot surprising.
But this is a place where, whenwe kind of dove further into
the data and looked at some ofthe demographic differences with
all the caveats of this is asmall sample size and not
(12:24):
randomly selected and we cantalk more about kind of the
potential and likely, honestly,biases and things just in like
who's in our network and whoactually got this, whatever.
But with all of those caveats,I still thought it was really
surprising that when we dovedeeper into the part-time,
full-time split, there wasbasically 37% of respondents who
(12:48):
identified as white reportedother paid employment in
addition to their business,compared to 85% of respondents
who identified as black, and100% of respondents who
identified as Asian saying thatthey had other paid employment
in addition to their consultingbusiness.
(13:08):
And I know we had someconversations in analyzing and
interpreting this data aroundwhy that might be and that's all
speculation at this point.
But I think when we think abouthaving your own business, there
are obviously a number of risksand other things associated
(13:29):
with that, both kind of justlogistically you think about
health insurance, things likethat depending on whether or not
you have that through someoneelse in your family, and also
just the security economicsecurity, financial security, a
steady paycheck, etc.
So there might be variousreasons kind of underlying what
is showing up as inequity interms of just people who are
(13:54):
juggling multiple things versuspeople who are kind of fully in
self-employment on its own.
So that was something thatreally kind of struck me and
that I would be very interestedto kind of delve into further.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, yeah, okay.
And how about you, leah?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
It's interesting, I think, for me, because I also, I
think you know, when I had acourse on consulting and then
coached people I think I'veheard a lot of what we heard in
the survey before, so I don'tknow nothing really like made me
be like, oh my God, I can'tbelieve that, you know.
But there were still thingsthat I think really popped for
(14:36):
me and I think because now,working in instructional design
and e-learning, I'm alwaysthinking about people's learning
needs, and so I thought it wasreally fascinating that.
So only 7% of our respondentsreported that their academic
programs had offered courses ortraining on business or
entrepreneurship, and again,that might be changing.
(14:58):
So we had a you know, this is amore experienced group, so on
average, most people had betweenfive and 20 years of experience
in public health.
So none of them have been inschool to get their MPH, most of
them in the last like year ortwo or five.
So that may be changing.
But, you know, I think it didshow a big discrepancy between
(15:19):
the skills and knowledge thatpeople need to run their own
businesses and what they've beenable to get in their academic
program, and I think, you know,anecdotally, this matches what I
think we're seeing in practice,which is that we've had to
develop these kinds of trainingprograms ourselves.
So I, you know, developed acourse on consulting because
(15:40):
people were asking me and I waslike trying to help, you know,
and now there's otherconsultants that are, you know,
developing similar kinds oftrainings and peer support and
things like that.
So I can see that you know,sort of private businesses are
trying to fill this gap.
That's not happening inacademic setting or, you know,
from public health trainingcenters and things like that.
(16:01):
There's this gap in skills.
So for me I think that was, Imean, only 7%.
You know, reporting this, Ifelt like that was a really
glaring learning need.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
And maybe just going back to kind of what Vinu found
interesting around thedemographic.
I wish I had kind of dived indeeper and I don't know if it's
in your full paper around thedemographic differences.
So I'll definitely go back anddo that, because that was an
interesting point that youpointed out and I do hope to do
that, and then maybe for ourpart two conversation dive into
that a little bit.
But yes, the training piece Ithink is huge and I don't do it
(16:36):
in a kind of way where I'mactually coaching individuals,
but inside the public healthcareer club and our membership
community I am seeing more andmore individuals interested in
consulting and I think you hadlisted the four biggest
struggles that people had whenstarting a business and it was
that setting up peace, gettingclients right and I think some
of those things.
(16:56):
We've all had to learn it, andI'm well versed in how to set up
a business in Canada, but thenI can't really help individuals
in the US because they don'treally understand the different
forms and the ways to do that.
So I think there is a huge gapthere for university programs,
if not having their own courses,but at least bridging that gap
for students, introducing themto the business schools or
(17:20):
having that option to say like,hey, you can take these courses
in the school and then these arethe ones that we would
recommend.
I think there's some lowhanging fruits that I think
could happen For me.
I think a stat that I wasn'tsurprised by was that 92% of the
individuals were women in yoursample, so I wasn't at all
surprised, I guess.
Just public health I've alwaysworked with the predominantly
(17:43):
women workforce and so I wasn'ttoo surprised and 95% of
individuals had a graduatedegree.
That was also not surprising.
I did love the piece that youhad on how much money do they
take home.
I just recorded kind of a soloepisode on like how much can you
get paid in public health and Imade sure to include your piece
at the end there because peopledon't consider self employment
(18:07):
in public health and I thinkthere was a career advisor in
maybe I think it was at theSchool of Public Health at
Harvard who had said I thinkthey had started recommending
that as an option to peoplebecause I think their students
didn't even know that was apossibility within public health
.
And just for our listeners incase they didn't get a chance to
read this, the net incomereported for full time public
(18:29):
health consultants orentrepreneurs were around 80,000
US dollars.
And then the part time one wasalso interesting because I think
people were able to take homeabout just under $30,000.
So I'm thinking you know, ifyou do have stable income that
pays you maybe you know $70,000,you can supplement that and
bump your salary up $30,000 more.
(18:49):
If you did have that luxurywith that additional time and
flexibility but yeah, any sortof interesting points you both
can remember around how muchmoney could be made.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That was a big one that people told us like when we
introduced the survey, peoplewere like we want to know how
much money everybody else ismaking and how much we should
charge.
I wrote a blog post aboutpricing your consulting services
I don't know probably five orsix years ago.
You know, to this day it is thenumber one most popular blog
post that I've ever written.
(19:22):
People really want thisinformation and there hasn't
been like an easy way to get it.
So that the comparison, youknow, because some people made
you consulting two projects ayear, and so when we were even
making the questions, it waslike how are we going to ask
this?
And so we actually asked peopleto go to their tax returns
because we really wanted someaccuracy in terms of money.
(19:42):
And then you know when we didend up, even though a lot of us
don't charge hourly, necessarily, we didn't want that metric of
you know the average hourly rate, because that's a big one both,
for I think consultants areoften kind of scared to charge
that much.
Like.
So we got, I think it was ahundred.
I don't have it right in frontof me.
(20:03):
I think it was $120 an hourwhich is a pretty big number,
and I think when you first startthat's really scary to charge.
I think many of us werecharging like $30 an hour when
we first started and like wayundercharging, not accounting
for all of our expenses andthings like that.
I also think that's animportant number for clients to
(20:23):
see, because you know I have hadpeople balk at that and be.
You know, when you look at thatas a whole, like oh my gosh,
it's so much money, like whywould I, you know?
But it's important tounderstand all that goes into
that.
So I think it's really helpfulfor people to see like this is
actually the average, like thisis the going rate, and you know
we do have a significant amountthat then goes for taxes and
(20:46):
goes for our expenses, and soit's not like we get all that
money in our pocket.
I mean, that was the number onething people told us that they
wanted to know.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And I think it was also helpful to get a sense of
the breakdown.
You know we had a breakdown of83% of respondents earning their
revenue via sort of charging atan hourly rate, 68% via project
based rates, 18% via fee forproducts and 10% kind of on
retainer packages.
And I think that kind ofbreakdown and those were not
(21:15):
necessarily mutually exclusive.
I know many of us do projectbased rates for some projects,
hourly for others.
But I think that kind ofbreakdown is really helpful too.
And again, kind of justpersonally, when I started
consulting I had a lot ofquestions about not only how
much to charge, but how tocharge, like what pricing
structure makes sense.
So I think it's helpful just toknow the options that are out
(21:38):
there.
And again, kind of the lay ofthe field in terms of, okay,
most people are kind of in thesebuckets and I think that can be
, you know, reassuring, helpful,motivating, inspiring, whatever
, depending on where you are andwhere kind of the averages are.
And then, yeah, I mean I thinkfor folks who are considering
(22:00):
entrepreneurship and publichealth.
I know for me when I firststarted and we can talk in a
little bit about sort ofpeople's motivation for getting
into consulting, because I knowthat was another thing I was
really interested in and I thinkis valuable on a couple
different fronts, kind ofunderstanding that motivation.
But for me the initial start wasmore out of necessity, of what
(22:24):
needed to happen in my life atthat moment, and I found myself
quite surprised by, you know,just like the income potential
that exists in this space, andit's certainly not anything that
anyone told me about orintroduced me to in any of my
academic programs and thingslike that.
I feel like you hear aboutworking in government, working
(22:44):
in nonprofits like, etc.
But I think that in a lot ofways I have found kind of the
income potential as a consultantto be substantially higher than
what was in the range of, like,the places I was working full
time.
And so you know, I feel likethat's important for people to
hear that this is a viableoption and one that you know it
(23:08):
has certainly challenges andthings but also a lot of
benefits, and I think that'spart of what came through in
terms of people's motivation tostart consulting as well as
continue it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I think we're at a point in like just public health
careers, that this option isbeing considered more and more,
and I'm very happy to see itbecause I think the potential
for earning is as high,especially with cost of living
going up.
And I just find I know I stillhave a full time job and then I
have a page spot.
So I'm one of those individualswith a full time job and an
(23:45):
entrepreneurial initiative.
But I do love kind of all thethings that come with that right
, like the flexibility, theability to just be creative and
work on projects, the way Ispend my time with my son right.
So I think a lot of those perksare there, although the risks
can be high at the beginning.
And I think that's wherepotentially exploring a
(24:07):
transition period where you aremaybe doing both and then
eventually taking some time offfrom one or the other and kind
of like easing your way into it.
And to your point earlier, leah, you know it was a request that
was very popular about incomepotential when you were doing
your survey, and I think it'sprobably because we don't talk
about money, whether it's inpublic health or other
(24:29):
industries, but I think more soin public health it hasn't been
a topic that's being discussedout openly.
You know, even if you look atGlassdoor or some of those
directories and repositories,you can't really find
information on public healthsalaries.
There have been someindependent work, like you
mentioned.
Laura's group has done some.
I know Daisy is anotherindividual I met on LinkedIn
(24:50):
who's done some.
You know, personal work on justcollecting public health
salaries.
But I do hope we can kind ofopen that up a little bit more
and your survey definitelyallows us to explore that a bit
more.
And you know, leah and I had awebinar it was called Pricing
for Profit when Leah was doingher course and it was a popular
(25:10):
session.
People had lots of questions.
And when you are stepping intoconsulting or any
entrepreneurial venture, it'shard to really understand what
your value is, what you shouldbe charging, and I think there's
the hourly rate or the valuebased rate, like just different
ways of doing it.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So I think the black to your point of how, like we
don't talk about it enough,there's not enough transparency
around it, and I think thatblack box of it all puts public
health, students and people whowork in public health at a real
disadvantage.
And I mean not, I mean I thinkthat black box around sort of
income and salary exists in alot of fields, maybe even all of
(25:47):
them, most of them, I don'tknow, but like I think it really
puts us at a disservice becauseyou know, we don't know the
benchmarks in order to then seekout our value, whether it's
someone applying for a full timeposition or beginning
consulting, whatever it is.
So I feel like that definitelywas a big motivation for us in
(26:10):
creating the survey and askingthe specific questions we did,
associating up with the taxreturns like we always talking
about, like all of that wasreally from this place of like
we want to see more transparency, we want to provide a benchmark
, we want people to be able tohave a better sense of that.
I don't know that this is goingto reach this particular
audience, but I always, likeanyone who's an employer or
(26:33):
posting requests for proposals,it drives me absolutely crazy
when there is not a salary or abudget range posted.
Like, you have a budget range,I like I know you do so like,
please don't put out an RFPwithout a budget range, because
it's a colossal waste of timefor people who are submitting.
You know, again the black boxof it all like doesn't help the
(26:56):
hiring and it doesn't help theperson applying again, whether
it's a full time job or an RFP.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
So sorry, that's just my little soapbox for a second
and I also think I just want tomention too, like I also think
the transparency goes in bothdirections.
So I think that there'stransparency about the high end,
like wow, like what you talkedabout venue, like you can really
make a good salary doingindependent consulting.
(27:20):
I also think that we need to betransparent, that not everybody
is making that much money right,like so some people in our
survey, we're making a lot ofmoney now that could be, because
you know, I've had years whereI've made less money, like
during the pandemic, when I washomeschooling my kids and I had
a new baby and like all thatstuff, you know.
So there's obviously variations, but I think, especially with
(27:42):
social media and people doingtheir products and their courses
, there's a lot of people outhere who are bouncing into the
space and being like I make sixfigures and this and that, and
maybe they are, but we don'talways know what somebody's net
is, so that person can have anenormous amount of expenses and
all sorts of other things.
So I do think there's also somelike false advertising, that
(28:05):
owning your own businesses foreverybody and everybody can work
20 hours a week and make sixfigures, and that's not always
true either.
So like, I think we need sometransparency on both sides so
people know what they're goinginto.
Over the last 11 years I've metplenty of consultants that have
really struggled.
They've gone back to full timework, they've had trouble
getting clients, they've hadtrouble getting high paying, you
(28:28):
know consulting gigs.
So like it's all there, thewhole spectrum, and there's so
many factors.
I mean we can have a wholesession just on that, but I
think I like transparency.
You know really at both ends ofthe spectrum in terms of how
much money people are making.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I love that.
Yeah, I was going to add likejust full transparency and to
add to the conversation.
I've run PH spot for aboutseven years now and haven't
taken any salary because I'vejust invested it all back in and
I found the biggest value forme is to hire a team so that I
could get time back with my son.
That's my biggest motivation,like I want to build something,
(29:03):
that's the driving factor, butevery single dollar goes back to
funding a team who can keep itup and running so that I can
spend that time with my family.
So I think there's lots of waysto do it and I think, like you
said, both Vinu and Lea, thetransparency needs to start both
ends and I'm very happy thatyou both have started us off
(29:24):
with this.
I know how I want to use thisword that you've all put
together and I have some ideaswith PH spot and I definitely
like sharing it.
When I have young kind of earlyprofessionals considering
consultancy or entrepreneurship,this is a great resource for me
to send their way, just to belike, okay, go read this, you
(29:44):
kind of get an understanding.
Hence why I wanted to bring youboth on the podcast so you know
they have a starting point.
But curious to hear you knowwhat you both and others on the
team who kind of inspired thiswork, what you're hoping to do
with this.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I think for me two things come to mind.
So one is and you know assomeone who went through a
master's in public health theDRPH like was in kind of this
academia world for a while, aswell as and I'll get to this in
a second worked at state healthdepartments, nonprofits.
First, the academia piece.
I think that I would love tosee public health academic
(30:22):
curricula reflect more of theactual information around kind
of public health,entrepreneurship and what that
looks like, what it might entail, as well as skill building
around things that you need.
I've always felt that you knowpublic health inherently is a
very applied field.
So I feel like the academiccurricula around public health
(30:46):
to me it's really important thatthat, especially in a program
like a DRPH that's very muchintended to be an applied sort
of a spirit degree, I would loveto see those academic curricula
reflect.
And again we can go in into thedetails of the sorts of things
you need when you're aconsultant but you're talking
about, you know, establishinglegally a business, liability
(31:09):
concerns, you're talking abouthiring, you're talking about
pricing there's, you knowaccounting and tax things
involved, like there's a wholegamut of things that come into
play and I would love to seemore of those kind of practical
skills built in, and some ofthose are specific to
entrepreneurship and some ofthem honestly aren't.
(31:31):
You know, if you're, you mightbe a full time employee trying
to market a particular publichealth initiative and I just
think there's a lot that couldbe done to really make the
academic curriculum more robustand inclusive of a range of
career paths, includingentrepreneurship.
The other audience I think abouta lot is traditional public
health employers.
(31:51):
You know, I worked at stategovernment, I worked at
nonprofits and I think this iswhere I find the information
around kind of people'smotivation to enter into and
stay in consulting reallyinteresting.
And again, not that it'ssurprising, but I think, just
boiling it down to these thingsaround autonomy and ownership
(32:14):
and flexibility, I think it's agreat sort of list of reasons
for traditional public healthemployers to keep in mind and to
think about how they can craftroles and jobs that allow more
of those things that people areseeking, as Leo was saying, and
I think it's such an importantpoint like that transparency on
(32:34):
both ends and the fact thatthere are a lot of us who
struggled at the beginning, alot of people who continue to
struggle in consulting.
I also would agree it's not apath for everyone.
It involves a lot of things,and some people might thrive
having to do all of those andother people.
It might not be for them, andthat's totally okay, but for me
(32:54):
it's sort of I want to see thepublic health workforce,
regardless of whether they'reentrepreneurs or consultants or
not.
I want to see that workforcetreated well and be in jobs that
they're satisfied with, and soI think there's a lot that
traditional public healthemployers can learn from this
about like.
These are the things thatpeople are seeking, and I don't
(33:16):
think, you know, flexibility andautonomy and ownership don't
have to be the purview ofconsultants and entrepreneurs.
Like those things can beintegrated into full-time jobs
in public health, and I wouldlove to see more of that happen
as well.
So that's another kind ofaudience potential use for this
that I would love to see.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Excellent.
How about you, Leah?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I think we talked about one of them which was, you
know, I think, the pricingpiece.
I was really hoping peoplewould use that, especially
consultants, to feel confidentin pricing.
So that's a big part of itwhich we already discussed.
The other part that I wasjotting down some notes is that
I really would love to see thesedata help us get support for
the segment of the workforce insome sort of official way and
(34:00):
even like just acknowledge thatwe exist and we wrote about this
a bit in the paper.
It feels like we're a littlebit behind in terms of
acknowledging the self-employedpart of the workforce.
So, like the AmericanEvaluation Association has a
really active topical group thatis for self-employed evaluators
.
The Academy of Nutrition andDietetics they have a whole
(34:21):
self-employed group as well, andso they do professional
development in there.
Continuing education, there'sobviously like a lot of peer
networking and support, and thatreally doesn't exist in public
health.
There isn't some sort ofcentralized database.
I mean it's me really Like.
I mean we joke that I'm likethe keeper of the list, but kind
of, you know, and so it wouldbe nice if you know an
(34:44):
organization like APHA or SOPHYwhich is for health educators.
You know there's enough of usnow that it feels like we could
have a section or a topicalgroup for self-employed, and I
think then through thatmechanism, you know, we could
get the peer support we need.
We could get the professionaldevelopment we need.
(35:04):
We could maybe do some kind ofongoing survey to look at all
these issues.
You know in terms of what ourprofessional development needs,
you know what are the financial,you know questions Like how
much are we charging?
And you know different incomethings.
I think having a place for usto be together in an official
capacity would be wonderful.
I mean I love the networkinggroup and I'm planning to
(35:26):
continue it, but certainly Imean, like all this research.
I mean you know you're kind ofdoing it in your free time, on
the side, and there's limits towhat is available, and so it
would be nice, I think, if we'vemade all this data public.
Could the right person you knowtake this?
Or could we use it to advocateto have a section for us in
these types of organizations?
Speaker 2 (35:49):
That's wonderful, both of your future plans with
this.
Is it in the future plan to dosome outreach and like pitch
these ideas, whether it's withuniversities to include
curriculum in this area, or evenAPHA to see if they would
consider?
Like a committee, I think?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
in theory we would love to do all things.
I think that to Leah's point.
You know this is a sidevolunteer project for us.
And there are limits tobandwidth and time and all these
things, you know.
I mean, I feel like to Leah'spoint too.
I think, again, this is where,like, if there was a section at
APHA or like some sort of moreformal structure that could
(36:30):
provide some kind of protectedtime or budget to do something
like I mean, I do think thiswould be great to do on a more
you know, a survey like thiscould be done every year or two,
If it could be done in othercountries, like there's so many
ways that this could expand andbe helpful.
I think right now it's sort ofa time bandwidth issue, but that
(36:55):
is not to say, you know, Ithink we would be interested and
we haven't talked specificallyabout this, but, like I do think
it would be great to, you know,get a group together to propose
something to APHA or Sophie andsee if there is any traction to
that.
And I think this is the sort ofthing I think we all work on
(37:15):
stuff like this.
That's sort of like it doesn'tmean it doesn't exist, but it's
hard to imagine, like who wouldfund this besides ourselves?
Like I don't know, but I thinksome of these more.
I think that's kind of why wegravitate towards member
associations is sort of likebeing kind of mission aligned in
that way, and if there could besome traction there, that might
(37:36):
be a way to at least kind offormalize some of this work and
make it more consistent.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
And I'm trying to remember this is years ago now,
I feel like somebody in thenetworking group approached APHA
Are you remembering this tovenue and like they said they
would need I think they wouldneed like 50 signatures from
members that they wanted thisgroup, but at the time they were
not adding additional sections.
I'm pretty sure this is whatI'm remembering, but this was
years ago too, so that you know,things may be different at this
(38:05):
point and it's also, I meanagain, sort of the where's the
best place for us.
I know again, this is anecdotal, but lots of people in the
networking group now thatthey're self employed are no
longer APHA members because themembership is so expensive, and
so when their employers used topay for the membership and the
travel to the annual meeting, alot of us went.
(38:27):
But now like I can say, like Ithink I went when it was local
one time since I startedconsulting, but I mean the
meetings are like almost what,like $1,000 or something.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
I don't either, so it's a good point, yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
So I think for a lot of us we're not APHA members
anymore but like, maybe if therewas something for self employed
we would be.
You know, I am a Sophie memberfor health education, but I
think that's something to thinkabout too is sort of where can
we gather, but in a way that'salso affordable, you know, for
those of us who are selfemployed and don't have a you
(39:00):
know, a employer who's able tofund our memberships and travel.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
It almost makes me wonder if we need a not to have
our own organization associationwith virtual meetings?
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean, this is how we ended up with the
Facebook group, right.
Because it was like this,doesn't exist and how can we,
all you know, gather together?
But yeah, I think, I thinkthat's really the place where
we're stuck is because this wastotally unfunded.
I'm a time tracker.
I actually didn't track my timeon this project, maybe because
I didn't want to know.
(39:35):
But, I would say easily hundredsof hours.
I mean, yeah, you know at thispoint where it kind of is where
it is, I think, until we areable to have maybe some sort of
funding, I would love you know,in terms of like linking this to
my consulting work, like Iwould love to work with like a
public health training center oruniversity to create a
(39:57):
curriculum you know, I thinkthat there's some subject matter
expertise there but then alsofrom the instructional design
side, I would love to like thinkabout what that kind of course
or training would look like.
So I think, you know, I also seepossibilities to integrate this
into my niche of consulting, Ithink, and that would be a way
for me to do it in a funded wayand we could base you know
(40:20):
things on.
You know, and, as Vinny said, Imean, obviously there's
limitations to these data, but Ithink they do give us a really
solid picture, more than we havehad in the past, of you know,
the kinds of skills andexperiences that people are
looking for to try to starttheir businesses, and so much of
is transferable.
I mean, I think if you wererunning a nonprofit, you would
(40:41):
still like need to understandlike a lot of these things.
So I would love to you know,use it in that way, going
forward.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
I love the live brainstorming that just took
place I had to just sit back andwatch you both bounce off ideas
.
It's awesome and for anyonelistening, who's, you know,
working at a university, who's aprofessor, who's part of APHA,
you know, I'm going to encouragethem to reach out to the two of
you if they have any ideas.
And definitely PHSpot we'rehere to leverage our platform to
(41:12):
support in any way we can andthat's also a question I had for
the two of you.
You know, how can the communityat large listening?
Or when we publish it on oursocial media platforms, in our
newsletter, how can we help withthis work and any future ideas
you might have, aside from theones that we've already talked
about?
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Yeah, I think the ones that we've talked about are
probably the major ones.
I think that there is always adesire for community, right?
You know, that's one of thewonderful things about PHPOT,
that's one of the wonderfulthings about Facebook group that
we has started.
And so, you know, I feel likeany ideas around kind of how we
(41:57):
can have more consistent kind ofconnections and peer support in
this world of public healthconsulting are very welcome.
And like we've thrown someideas out there, I'm sure there
are others.
I've thought a lot, especiallylike initial part of 2024, like
I feel like when I'm doing endof year reflections or start of
(42:17):
year kind of planning,brainstorming, you know, one of
the hard parts of being anindependent consultant, solo
entrepreneur, is that it can belonely, sometimes like it's your
thing, and I've often felt likeI would love to like get
together with other people whoare also like reflecting on
their last year of public healthbusiness in the coming year and
(42:39):
to be able to reflect together,brainstorm together, all of
that.
And so if folks have ideas, alike, go forth and make them
reality.
It's not something that has tocome through us by any means,
but also, I think, if there areways that we can all work
together to create those spaces.
I think that's always somethingwe're all looking for, and even
(43:00):
better if we can get it fundedin some way to help value our
time.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah absolutely, and we you know it was a couple
years ago I don't know if any ofyou are on this call, but we
did through the Facebook group,we did like an end of year
celebration.
Were you there?
I was, yeah, one of our groupmembers, amy Schlatt-Hauer.
I don't know if she's ever beenon the podcast Sujani, but
she's wonderful and she's anexpert at designing virtual
meetings and facilitation andthings like that.
(43:26):
So she actually designed acelebration for all of us and,
you know, volunteered her timeto do so, and so it hasn't been
something we've been able tocontinue every year.
Cause, again, it's, like youknow, always hard to ask people
to kind of do everything forfree and volunteer through the
group, but I know like we had areally big turnout for that.
People loved celebrating theend of the year together and I
(43:48):
think that's really what we're,you know what we're looking for
going forward at.
You know how could we kind ofmake communities and support for
self-employed consultants likepart of something that is
sustainable over time?
You can pay for programs,masterminds and things like that
, but, again, not all of us havethe biggest budget for these
(44:10):
kinds of programs, and so ifthey were integrated into
something we're already a memberof, or it was just really
affordable, I think more peoplewould do it.
You know, I think that'ssomething I realized when, I,
you know, created a course forthis population.
So, like aspiring or newconsultants they don't have the
biggest budget, right.
So people who are coming upwith products and services, it's
(44:33):
great, but you know, peopledon't have like $1,000 a month
for your coaching program orthis, or I mean, some of them do
, but, you know, not everybodyhas that.
So, like, how can we help peoplewho have maybe a low budget for
this kind of professionaldevelopment or support system
and how can it be integratedinto alumni programs from our
MPHs or whatever?
(44:54):
Is there something like who canwe partner with to make this
affordable and accessible topeople?
I said certainly.
Also, you know, there's theequity issue that Venue talked
about, you know.
So those of us who are able totake the leap without having,
you know, needing to worry abouthealth insurance and this, and
that are those, the same peoplewho can afford the masterminds
(45:14):
and the trainings and this, andthat you know, or is there some
way that we can make it moreaccessible and equitable, you
know, to everyone that wants tostart their business or who's
just starting out.
So I think that's a big pieceof it for us too.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
I love that.
It's a big call out to thecommunity and I really hope
we'll get a few people reachingout with some ideas, and I think
that's where I lean quiteheavily on the community you
know when I'm stuck withsomething ask them and they'll
tell you.
So, very confident, we'll getsome ideas.
So thank you both for joiningme on this episode.
I'm pretty sure we'll have apart two.
We'll have Laura here and diveinto some of the topics.
(45:51):
I think money was a big one,and then the demographic, the
differences that we saw.
I think those two will be somegood conversation points.
Maybe there will be a third one, who knows.
But thank you, and I reallyappreciated both of your time
and the work that you've putinto this.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Thanks for having us.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Hey, I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you
want to get the links orinformation mentioned in today's
episode, you can head over tophspotorg slash podcast and
we'll have everything there foryou.
And before you go, I want totell you about the Public Health
Career Club.
So if you've been looking for aplace to connect and build
(46:29):
meaningful relationships withother public health
professionals from all aroundthe world, you should join us in
the Public Health Career Club.
We launched the club with thevision of becoming the number
one hangout spot dedicated tobuilding and growing your dream
public health career.
And, in addition to being ableto connect and build those
(46:49):
meaningful relationships withother public health
professionals, the club alsooffers other great resources for
your career growth and success,like mindset coaching, job
preparation clinics and careergrowth strategy sessions in the
form of trainings and talks, alldelivered by experts and
inspiring individuals in theseareas.
So if you want to learn more orwant to join the club, you can
(47:12):
visit our page at phspotorgslash club and we'll have all
the information there.
And as a space that's beingintentionally curated to bring
together like-minded publichealth professionals who are not
only there to push themselvesto become the best versions of
themselves, but also each other,and with that I can't wait to
(47:36):
see how this is going to have aripple effect in the world, as
we all work together to betterthe health of our populations
and just have immense impact inthe world, and I hope you'll be
joining us in the Public HealthCareer Club.
We'll see you in the next video.
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