The Optimistic Bulldog
Dr. Lauren McClain on why entrepreneurship feeds her soul
Welcome back to my interview series with recovering academics who have transitioned to new careers. Lauren McClain is a former associate professor of sociology and criminology at Western Kentucky University. She is also co-founder of Grantibly, a team of social scientists offering a range of program evaluation services for institutions and for faculty with grant funding. We talk about what led up to Lauren’s decision to resign a tenured position, why she settled on self-employment rather than a salaried industry role, and why the freedom and responsibility of entrepreneurship is so energizing to her.
The full transcript of our conversation is free to all subscribers, but I’ve embedded the raw audio of our conversation at the end for paying members. As convenient as text-to-speech is on the Substack app, some of you might want to hear our actual voices, rather than a robotic voiceover. So I’m experimenting with a less polished version of the podcast format, without my usual introductory narration and without cleaning up all the ums, uhs, and you knows. For access to the audio, and for at least two members-only interviews per month just like this one, please considering upgrading your subscription.
A Conversation with Lauren McClain
Joshua Doležal: Before we get to why you felt you really had to leave or why the universe was telling you that you should go, why did you fall in love with your discipline to begin with?
Lauren McClain: Well, ever since I was a little kid, I always wondered things about society. I didn't grow up in a family where we had political conversations or, you know, conversations about current events or things like that. We just didn't talk about stuff. But I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood in Florida and I was bused to a school in a predominantly Black neighborhood. And I remember in the first week of school, you had to raise your hand if you were white. Raise your hand if you were Black. Raise your hand if you were Hispanic. Because there was supposed to be a certain proportion of students from different racial backgrounds in each class and in each school. This was just normal to me, but I just remember thinking, there's a school two miles from my house, but I have to be bused 30 minutes to this other school? I noticed residential segregation and different things like that even though I didn't have the words for them.
And then I moved to New York and my school in New York was actually super white and there were maybe ten people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. And so it was just a different world to me once I moved there. I just always had this lens of, why are things like this? So even though I didn't have the words for it or know that it was even a discipline, I think I was sort of always a sociologist. And then I went to college. I thought I was going to major in psychology.
And the first time I even heard of sociology was at freshman orientation, and I read the description and I was like, that kind of sounds like psychology? So, I took it as a general education requirement and I just fell in love with it. And I just was like, oh my gosh, all these questions I've had my whole life, this is a discipline that looks at that, you know? I was a peer educator in high school. I was a peer educator in college. There isn't a career path for sociologists like there is for psychology, you know, you can be a therapist, you can be a psychiatrist, a school counselor. It's not like that with sociology. And so my professors would be like, well, you could do anything with a sociology degree. And I thought, well, that's not helpful. What does that mean?
Joshua Doležal: That sounds like the English major, right?
Lauren McClain: Right. Exactly. Like you could use it anywhere, that is true. You can do anything with a sociology degree because of the skills it provides. But I really wanted to use it and so I went to some of my faculty mentors and I said, Hey, what can I do with this if I want to be a sociologist and use sociology? And they said, well, why don't you be a college professor? And I said, oh, teachers don't make any money. And they said, well, that's not true.
They said “college professors make anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 a year.” I grew up kind of middle class, lower middle class, and so my parents made like $50,000 at the time. And I thought if I could come out of school making what they make, I'd be all right.
So I decided to go to grad school and I went to Bowling Green State University and trained under some of the best family sociologists, family demographers in the discipline. I had a great experience there, and just learned so much. But when I got out of grad school and I went on the job market, it was during the recession – 2008, 2009.
And my first job offer was not for $50,000. It was less than that. And the reality was that it took me six years to hit $50,000 after grad school. And I remember just starting off my career completely disheartened by that. Getting a PhD is no small feat. And I guess the one thing I could be thankful for is I was young. I got my PhD like two weeks before I turned 27, which is kind of young for a PhD. But I was in my thirties before I hit this $50,000 minimum that I thought I was going to get right out of school. That's a lot of lifetime loss of earnings, you know?
Joshua Doležal: I was just speaking last time with, with Joe Stubenrauch, who put it a little bit differently. He was reflecting in one of his LinkedIn posts on the earnings that you forfeit by providing free or undercompensated labor as a grad student. So for me it was four years of teaching as a PhD candidate, and I taught some advanced courses. I had a 300 level honors class for pre-med students only. They were a very select group of students and it was great experience for me. But the university got a lot of value from my PhD area in the medical humanities for basically nothing. So it's not just the earnings that you forfeit, it's the kind of exploitation of your labor, during that time that's problematic.
Lauren McClain: I mean, frankly, I think that much of higher education exploits us. Not just the PhD students. I mean, having a PhD and working for less than $50,000 a year is just pathetic. Working for less than $75,000 is really pathetic. I am leaving and I never came even close to that as my base salary. I feel like that's one of the things that I've said about higher education over and over is that they harp on the fact that we do it because we love it and it's a passion and you know, all the intrinsic value that you get. And it is true. We are passionate and we do get this intrinsic value. But it's really hard to get academic jobs, you know? And so for that reason they can just get away with paying us what they want, which isn't enough.
Joshua Doležal: I don't know if this fits within anything you've thought about as a sociologist or not, maybe an economist would be the right person to ask this question, but graduate programs seem to bear no responsibility for this. There are too many PhDs.
Lauren McClain: I've been saying that for years.
Joshua Doležal: But programs can take the revenue for as many people as they want to let in and there's no accountability to the graduate program for your placement. And I can't remember who it was, Steven Pinker, the evolutionary psychologist, might have been the one who said it, but grad programs should be exercising more birth control. You should not have been expected to know all of that before becoming a PhD candidate. The graduate faculty should have had the primary accountability for that. Why do you think that doesn't happen?
Lauren McClain: I think because the model of higher education is butts in seats. I went to a PhD program with 12 people in my cohort, so they're not bringing in 30, 40 PhD candidates. But with that being said, a lot of schools during the recession were on hiring freezes. Like I would've loved to have gotten a job in Colorado just because it's so far away and it would've been beautiful. And I was like, I'll go live in Colorado for a couple years. The entire state was on a hiring freeze during the recession. So then you have this backlog, right? You have all the people that didn't get jobs for a couple years. Plus you have the people like me. I was at Savannah State University for three years. I had a great experience working there with the students. The university itself was a little bit of a mess. So I wasn't really where I wanted to be. I wanted to be somewhere where I could focus a little more on research. I was teaching like a five-five load at Savannah State and it was really hard to do research.
So you had people like me who got a job — were fortunate to get a job, but then were going back on the market to try to get somewhere that we’d rather be. And all the people who didn't get jobs for a couple years who just created this backlog. And then we hear these stories all the time of universities where people retire and they don't replace the line. And so I think you're absolutely right. PhD programs need to just stop admitting people for like three years. Let the market catch up. You know? And they don't. At Western Kentucky University, which is where I've been for the last 10 years, we had a master's program. And that was one of the reasons that attracted me here because I wanted to work with graduate students. I sent almost every grad student that I worked with to a PhD program. We actually got our grad program cut because of the budget. But there's always been talk about maybe we'll bring it back. And I've just gotten to a point where I can't in good conscience send students to PhD programs anymore and set them up for this career path. Higher ed, frankly, has been a sinking ship recently. The threats to tenure going on around the country. All these laws that are going up around the country about not talking about race, or not talking about transgender people. I mean, as a sociologist, I'd be fired tomorrow if I couldn't talk about controversial topics in my classes. So I can't in good conscience keep telling people that going to grad school and getting PhD is a good career path anymore.
Joshua Doležal: I wrote about this in a discussion thread some weeks ago. I don't think many people who go for a PhD understand that they're actually getting a diminished return on investment compared to maybe a master's or just a bachelor's degree. That should be truth in advertising, I guess, for those graduate programs. But as you said, there is this exploitation of graduate student labor because you should just love your discipline and it's a passion project and so on. Was that kind of how you justified the low salary to yourself when you were early days? As a tenure track faculty member?
Lauren McClain: Absolutely. I loved my job. I loved my career, I loved teaching, I loved working with students. I loved doing research. I loved doing service to the university. I could see how I was making a difference in other people's lives. Even on days where I was tired or I was sick or didn't feel good, I would walk into the classroom and it would just all vanish.
I would just come alive and that felt great. I was just so energized by what I did. And so it was like, I like everything about my job. My salary is what's low. So if you think about a scale, I have all these things that I like about the job and my salary is terrible. And so that kind of outweighs it. But what happened for me was that over the years, the things that I didn't like about the job started to go up and the things that I did like about the job started to go down. And when they flip flopped and there was more that I disliked than I liked, that's when I knew it was my time to go.
I had never thought about doing anything else. I was tenured – who leaves tenured positions? A lot of people these days actually. But you spend all these years getting a PhD. Then you spend all these years on the tenure track, you get tenured, you're living the academic dream. Except I wasn't. I had seen so much behind the curtain because of all of the service work that I had done about the university. And, I think the pandemic changed so many things for so many people.
Joshua Doležal: Is there, you know, one thing or a couple things that you saw behind the curtain? You’ve talked about some gains that you'd made. You felt like your seat at the table was making a difference for 16 weeks parental leave you were making the institution better and all of that. But you must have witnessed some other things, either through committees or interdepartmental stuff. What were a couple examples?
Lauren McClain: I think that, you know, upper administration – it just became very clear where their priorities were and they weren't with faculty. And I think just seeing that over and over and over again… I am forever the optimist. In fact, I think one of the best compliments I ever got was one of my colleagues, who said that the first time she heard me speak at a faculty senate meeting, she thought of me as an optimistic bulldog. I thought that was like the coolest thing because I'm not afraid to ask hard questions and challenge things, but I am always optimistic about it. I always think there's going to be a better end because of it. I think just year after year after year after year of faculty making good arguments for why they need to address compensation, and the administration saying, oh yeah, it's important, but then never putting money there. I think that just all of those things became more and more disheartening.
I'm in an institution where we would go years without salary increases, even cost of living increases. I mean, literally no raises for like four or five years in a row. And then when we did, it was like 2% or one and a half percent. You see things swept under the rug. You see values in the wrong place. You see priorities in the wrong place, just over and over and over again. It just really wears you down.
Joshua Doležal: It sounds like you're confirming my theory, which others have agreed with, that it wasn't the pandemic that came in and changed everything. It just pushed what had already been happening out into the light and clarified things rather than being a real disruptor.
Lauren McClain: No, the one thing that I will say, I do think the pandemic changed the students. Teaching was totally different after the pandemic, like night and day different. I've always had fantastic relationships with my students – my idea of a successful semester is when everyone becomes friends. Because we've created that environment and everyone gets along. I've had people come out for the first time in my classes. I've had people share intimate details of their lives, from their childhood and things like that in my classes. It's those moments and those relationships that always sustained me. At the end of the semester we would have a little party, and it wouldn't be my idea even. It would be the students like, oh, let's take a class picture, or all the students would hug me on the way out of the classroom and things like that.
First of all, teaching during the pandemic was awful. Like teaching about white privilege and institutional racism and police brutality and all the things we talk about in sociology. The little boxes on a screen where you can't get anyone's reaction was a nightmare. Because so much of how I teach is based on their reactions. Am I making them mad? Are they frustrated? Are they crying? Are they happy? Are they agreeing with me? Then I adjust accordingly. I couldn't see any of that.
But even when we got back in the classroom, I just have not felt like since then we have had those same kinds of relationships. I really do feel like teaching has been harder. It used to invigorate me, I would leave the classroom like just on cloud nine and like now I'm just like, I need a nap. I don't blame the students for that. They have also had a lot going on. Their learning environment has been different. I don't have a single college student, I don't think, that doesn't have a job or doesn't have caretaking responsibilities, so they have a lot on their plate. So I don't want anyone to take this as me saying there's something wrong with the students. It's just they have so much going on.
Joshua Doležal: Well, their costs are going up. Their stressors are intensifying,
Lauren McClain: And they have more responsibility. I don't blame them as individuals or anything like that. I just, I think that the circumstances of their lives have changed. And that has just changed the dynamics of what's going on in the classroom.
Joshua Doležal: What you're describing is the “why” of the profession, which has been diminished to the point where it's not enough. And I think that's a pretty common story, but even so, you know, jumping off the cliff, giving up tenure, that's an enormous thing to do. Can you describe the steps that you took? I think you said you took a class, you met other people, you kind of networked a little bit. How did you prepare yourself for that transition out?
Lauren McClain: I had really never considered leaving higher ed. And then I had this one week in 2022 where I felt like the universe was telling me it was time to go. A number of things happened that week. One is that one of my good friends in a different department who I was working on some research with called to tell me that she had taken a job in industry and was leaving higher ed. And I was like, oh my gosh, people do this. That’s amazing. I just felt kind of inspired by her. I also had gotten a report from another friend and colleague of mine – it's like the state of women in industry report, with a particular focus on women of color. And you know how there's always this gap between white women and women of color, and then between all women and men in terms of salary, promotion, you know, all of these things that I teach about.
And I just got to the point where I was like, I am so tired of talking about this stuff. Like, I want to do more about it. So she sent me that report, and that kind of put a little bit of a fire under my butt to do something different and maybe hopefully contribute more to those kinds of issues in the real world.
And then I got an ad for this PhD transition challenge, a free one week class that I signed up for. It was great for me because so much of what the guy said just resonated with me. And it was like just light bulb after light bulb going off. Like, oh my gosh, you can do so many more things than what you're doing and people are doing this all the time.
Then the university had hired this external consultant to come in and do a market analysis of every job on campus. And I am dramatically underpaid and so many people across my campus are, but I know for a fact that I am dramatically underpaid. And these people that came in and did this analysis put every single person in my college, which is the College of Arts and Letters in the same category, which is the lowest ranking category that they had in this little table that they put together. That week we were supposed to be finding out if we were getting one of these market equity raises. And the Wednesday of that week, I got the email that I was not getting one of them when I thought for sure I would. And I really feel like that combination of things and that email was the final straw. And I was just like, that's it. I'm out. Like I can't do this anymore.
I will say my way out was a little non-linear. So I had started an evaluation research company with two friends of mine in 2021 as a little side hustle. It's called Grantibly.
Joshua Doležal: Can I just ask, in case someone doesn't know what program evaluation is?
Lauren McClain: Yeah, program evaluation is basically when either a faculty member has a grant to start a program at their university, maybe to get low-income students into STEM for example, or nonprofits who have different programs to serve their community – it could be any kind of program. People can hire us to come in and evaluate what they're doing. We collect data, whether that's interviews, surveys, focus groups, document review, or policy review to basically report back to them and say, here's what you're doing really well and here's what's working. And then here's maybe where you have some opportunities to improve. And so our tagline at Grantibly is “evaluation to do MORE good.”
Because we know that they're already doing really great things, but evaluation can help you kind of see where you might have some blind spots or if there's little tweaks that could be made to make things better. And if you're doing a really great job, and we can tell that story, then it helps you get more support, more funding, more political support or community support. So that's, sort of in a nutshell what program evaluation is.
Joshua Doležal: So it started as a side hustle. Collaboration with friends. How did it start taking off to the point where you can count on doing that full time?
Lauren McClain: When I made the decision to leave higher ed, I did not think about Grantibly as being my full-time thing. I was like, I need to just get another job. Right? So I did what most people did. I started working on converting my CV to a resume. I started writing cover letters and I thought I was going to go into the DEI space, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I was like, I want to help organizations be more equitable, be more inclusive, you know, break down barriers that are contributing to these racial and gender inequities and things like that. And so I spent from that April when I made that decision till about December, trying to do that. We're kind of conditioned in our society that like you're supposed to have a job, you know, and get benefits and do all those things. And so running my own business was not something that I really considered early on in this process. I had a couple interviews, but nothing that really panned out.
I did start doing some DEI consulting, which I'm still doing, with Inspirus Consulting, and I really enjoy that. All of our projects that we deal with at Grantibly have some sort of DEI focus, whether they are just trying to help low income students or minoritized students or women. But one interview that I had, which came out of a group that I'm in of other professors who are looking to leave, was for an evaluation research company. And I decided to apply and I had a really good interview with one of the two owners of the company. And he asked me, why evaluation research? And when I answered that question, I almost convinced myself how much I really enjoy it. And I was upfront about Grantibly. I got an email from the other owner saying, Hey, we'd really like to move you on to the next round, but we need to know if you came to work for us, that you would walk away from your company because it's a conflict of interest.
And my first reaction was like, well, no, it's not. They were a growing company. I can't remember exactly how many employees they had, but over 20, I think maybe even 40. And on their website it says that they do evaluation for nonprofits and government organizations and whole universities. And I was like, oh, we just work with faculty with grants and you guys work with big clients. And they said, well, actually we also work with faculty with grants. And I just sat back and I said, you know what? I don't know what my company can be yet, and I am not willing to walk away.
So I just wished them well in their search and bowed out.
Joshua Doležal: Wow.
Lauren McClain: And I talked to my two partners because I was really frustrated at this point that I wasn't getting another job, and things were just not working out. And I said, I really wish I could just quit my job and run Grantibly full-time and build it. They came back to me a week later and they said, we both had this idea separately and realized we were on the same page – what if we just don't take any money for the next like year or two and let you have all the money that Grantibly earns so that you can quit your job and run this full time. And then eventually we'll come back in and, you know, start taking money again. We'll still help with the company and all that and, but we just have total confidence in you that you can build this and make this what we know it could become.
It just made me cry that they would even be willing to do that and that they had that much confidence in me. And at first I was like, I couldn't do that. And then a couple more weeks went by of just being incredibly frustrated at work. And thinking about that company that I interviewed for – those were two PhDs. It was a husband and wife couple, PhDs that built that company into what it is. And I was like, why can't I do that? So I went back to them and I said, you know what? I think I am willing to take you up on that.
June 30th would be my last paycheck for the last academic year. So I figured out how much I would need make for half the year plus all the stuff that WKU puts in for insurance and benefits and retirement. So I had a number in mind and I said, if I can hit that number by June 30th basically, I'll know that this is sustainable. Because I have a mortgage, I have a husband, I have two kids, like I can't just not have my salary. So I figured if I can at least make what I make at WKU for the second half of the year, then I'll know that I can do this. And so, I started putting from December on much more attention just into Grantibly. And I hit that number with three clients and I hit it on the nose, which I think also was another sign from the universe that this is the right thing. When that last one came through that got me to that number, I was like, okay, we're doing this. I am so incredibly grateful to my partners and I am so incredibly grateful to my husband because, without his support I don't know if it would've gone this well. The day after I resigned, I had another client project come through, so I'm already on track to make more in the second half of the year for my company than I would have at WKU. And it's only the middle of the year.
Joshua Doležal: Awesome.
Lauren McClain: Thank you. And I will say, I am fortunate that my husband has health insurance. My kids were always on his, because our university insurance was terrible. I think health insurance is one of the biggest barriers that people face to doing something like this.
Joshua Doležal: As I'm listening to your story, I wonder if that “optimistic bulldog” nickname that one of your colleagues gave you is maybe the answer to my question of why entrepreneurship is reinvigorating your soul? I was wondering why it was so renewing and, and why it was hitting you at such a deep level.
But it seems like entrepreneurship gives you a space where your optimism and your tenacity can go somewhere and it's not hitting this arbitrary ceiling, it's not ignored.
Lauren McClain: I just got goosebumps.
Joshua Doležal: Well, I don't know if you have anything to add to it, but that's sort of what I was thinking?
Lauren McClain: I really appreciate you putting it in that perspective because I have felt for a long time like there's a lot of intrinsic value to all the things that I've done and there's a lot of value to other people for policies I've gotten put in place and things like that, but none of that was ever going to get me financially to where I wanted to be.
And you're absolutely right that why I find entrepreneurship so invigorating is that now it is completely up to me. I am in control of my destiny. I am in control of my income, I'm in control of all of those things. I actually would like to work less, but I want to work efficiently and I want to work really diligently. That's what I always strive for, and it can now be rewarded. Because now I can get paid what I am worth. I can get paid for the value that I bring, whereas I could never do that in higher ed.
The other thing that happened in December when I had that interview, when I had that conversation with my colleagues, was I also took a free class online with a business coach, Chanel Morales. She is all about freedom businesses and online businesses and things like that. And, when I took her class, the one thing that she had us do was journal. Every morning she would post a question that we were to journal about and then we had the class in the afternoon. And I keep coming back to this as advice to anyone else who's considering leaving higher ed. When I made that initial decision last May that I wanted to leave, I did not do any self-reflection. I just jumped into a job search that I thought was going to be the way for me to go. What Chanel did for me is she forced me to sit back and to do more self-reflection. What are my strengths? What do I want my life to look like? What are my goals? What are things that I'm not willing to put up with? I realized that I don't want to have a boss. You know, I'm very autonomous.
Joshua Doležal: How very PhD of you.
Lauren McClain: I know, right? I know it's a common thing that I hope people reading this can identify with. I was just like, why am I trying to get a job where I'm going to have a boss where I'm going to have to be at a job at certain hours? Sometimes I like to work at 11 o'clock at night when my kids are in bed, you know? And I can't do that if I have a regular job.
I realized that in doing evaluation, I could do all the things that I wanted to do and that I value by running my own business. And that is really where Chanel helped me realize that my superpower is my confidence. And I think this goes back to that optimistic bulldog characterization, you know, I believe that I can do anything I set my mind to. I just know that if I have a goal, I figure it out.
I'm a sociologist trying to be a business person. I've never taken a business class. I didn't know anything about what an LLC was or how to set up a website or a business bank account or filing taxes for a business. But I figured it out. I talked to people that had knowledge. I read a bunch of stuff online. I've watched YouTube videos. That's what has reinvigorated my soul is that I like to learn, I like to be challenged.
I like to accomplish things. That is also very academic, right? We set goals and we try to achieve them. What has been so exciting about this is just it's been a challenge. I have learned and grown so much, and actually what I would really love to do in the near future is coach other academics who want to start businesses, because I do feel like it's really scary and there is so much to learn. If I could take my experience and the time that I put into doing that and help streamline that for other people so that they don't have to do all of that themselves and that they could have some support in doing that. I would really love to do that.
Joshua Doležal: I’ll throw in a little plug for my writing coaching here. This is something that seems to fit your story as well. In my case, I taught an online creative writing course last spring, and it was just four weeks, once a week, and the students thought my feedback on their writing was valuable enough that they asked if I did developmental editing or coaching. And I’d never thought of it, but I put together some packages and priced it so it'd be worth my time and figured that it'd be too much, and nobody would go for it. But I have two clients from that class, and I've started thinking more recently about expanding because it scratches the itch the teaching did. All of the instincts that you're describing in terms of paying attention to where someone is on the learning spectrum or how they're advancing, what their fears are, when they need affirmation, when they need to be pushed, how you can give them something to reach for but also show what they've already made… I mean, all that is what you do instinctively as a teacher. I assume that this is something that comes out with your work with clients as well — all that energy that you brought to your classes, the humor, the passion, your clients appreciate that and respond to it. What's feeding your soul is not just that you have the freedom and you don't have a boss, but that you have reciprocity or you get enough of a response to know that you're making progress?
Lauren McClain: Absolutely. And we're helping people. You know, I think that's the thing that we're helping people, not just in the organizations, but the people that they serve. I think for a long time I had this very narrow view that teaching was the only way to change the world. And that's just not true. I mean, there are so many ways to change the world and people do it every day in all different capacities. And there's a lot of things that I can do in evaluation, and eventually in the coaching space, where I could really help make a difference in people's lives and address the DEI issues that I want to address. And help make policy change and all kinds of things through this work. I can still live my values, it's just in a different way, which I think is really cool.
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