I recently had a chat with Wilf Nelson a final year PhD candidate at the Centre for Human Brain Health, at the University of Birmingham, UK. Wilf’s research investigates how the brain processes information during simultaneous activation from multiple senses, using various neuroimaging techniques.
Aside from finishing up work for his thesis, Wilf also runs a side venture in his spare time; a media productions company. Mythos Media Productions is a podcast company specialising in broadcasting neuroscience and psychology talks from specialists.
Wilf informed me that following completion of his PhD, he’ll be pursuing his media venture full-time.
Intrigued by his decision to leave research to run his own company (and demonstrating the grit to not only establish the company whilst working full-time as a postgrad, but to also go for the opportunity whole-heartedly in the future), I was keen to learn more.
Wilf’s shared his story about setting up this venture, his impending transition from academia to entrepreneurship, and the future plans for his company.
What prompted Wilf’s decision to leave academia after his PhD programme?
After graduating from a psychology degree, Wilf did a masters in neuroscience. “I felt this would help me land a job in the long-run,” explains Wilf. But from there he decided to stay in academia and eventually moved on to do a PhD in the same department.
Fairly early on in his PhD programme, Wilf started to evaluate the two options of staying in academia vs leaving in the long-term.
A careers workshop for early career researchers organised at a neuroscience conference, provided some eye-opening information on the subject of academic careers for Wilf. “I popped along to the small room it was being held in and listened to the presentations,” he recollects.
In this seminar, Wilf learned that approximately only one third of PhD students would secure a postdoc in the UK, but the likelihood of landing a faculty position dropped to a meagre 0.1%! “I found these stats pretty shocking,” he explains.
Wilf was further put off by the idea of forging an academic career, by the realisation that he might have to inject huge amounts of mobility into his career plans, just to keep going on the academic track. “The pandemic will only make this need to move around and find work in academia, more of a necessity going forward I think,” says Wilf.
Wilf is happily established in Birmingham. His wife has a job there and they’re pretty settled. The idea of having to move around for the tiny odds associated with reaching tenure, doesn’t sit comfortably with him. Therefore, Wilf decided that he’d rather stay put, and build something for the future where he is.
This, coupled with the fact that his business is growing means that luckily for him, Wilf already has something else to move on to that’s already in place.
What was Wilf’s motivation to set up a company?
“I’ve always had a bit of a creative flair,” says Wilf. As a psychology undergrad, Wilf wrote a couple of fiction books, published, and sold them.
He attended a course at the Be Seen Academy, to learn about product promotion and help with marketing the novels. He was self-publishing, but had limited time to devote to promoting the books due to finishing his degree and ultimately, only managed to sell a few copies at the time. But this was his first business venture and it sparked an interest in entrepreneurship.
Fast forward a few years and when Wilf started doing a PhD, he got involved in some outreach work at the University of Birmingham.
This included participating in events like open days, application visit days by prospective students, and public talks. Wilf would present neuroscience research at these events, in a way that made it accessible to the general public.
Although Wilf enjoyed this work a lot, the organisers were keen to reduce the presentation component of the outreach events. The organisers felt the talks were time consuming and wanted to reduce this, so they began shortening the presentation times.
Eventually the presentations were scrapped altogether and the format of disseminating research was changed. Each contributing researcher was given their own stall where people could visit to learn more.
Wilf found that this new format for the events challenging. “It was difficult to provide sufficient background to my neuroscience work, to help people fully grasp the research we were doing,” explains Wilf. “I felt presentations were a far better way of achieving this.”
Wilf decided to stop contributing to this outreach work, and instead began producing presentations in the way that he wanted to, for a wider audience online. And the podcast Water Cooler Neuroscience (@WCNeuro) was born (during the first year of Wilf’s PhD programme).
The episodes produced for the podcast involve interviewing experts in the field of psychology and neuroscience, to help people understand how our brains work. The aim is to distil cutting-edge science (that’s at the forefront of human understanding), into a format that can be shared with a much wider audience.
In general, Wilf tries to avoid looking at viewing numbers too often. He prefers to concentrate his efforts on producing great programmes (the company has a website manager who takes care of all that). “But I do know that the podcast is now listened to in 81 countries, with around 20k website visitors a month, and roughly 1000 downloads a year,” describes Wilf.
The podcast is aimed at anyone who’s interested in learning more about the field of neuroscience. Viewers tend to possess a basic level of scientific understanding (probably final-year school leavers and those further along in the academic system). Most of Water Cooler Neuroscience’s audience are aged 18+. And more specifically, tend to be millennials who have a university-level education.
Initially Wilf received a public engagement grant and interviewed people in his department to launch the podcast. But by the second year of his PhD, Wilf turned his side-project into a company (Mythos Media Productions), because he needed more resources to grow the project.
Since then Wilf’s been managing the company on a part-time basis. He’s received funding from other sources (including the Biochemical Society), but these days more of the company’s revenue comes from advertising, and more recently, a paid-for subscription service has been introduced.
“My PhD supervisors have been supportive, although my studentship contract prohibits me from taking on too many hours work outside the lab,” describes Wilf. So he’s been running the company in-between working in the lab.
At times Wilf’s found it challenging to simultaneously juggle his PhD work and run a side venture. “There’ve been times when I’ve been carrying out large experiments over several weeks, where I’ve struggled to devote time to the company,” explains Wilf. However, once he comes to the end of his PhD studies (he’s now a final year student), Wilf will be able to concentrate on the company full-time.
What are the future plans for Wilf’s venture?
More recently Wilf’s begun working on a second podcast series entitled ‘A Brain Talking about Brains,’ which presents interesting findings about psychology and outlines basic concepts in the field.
This highlights his future plans: The company will grow through the addition of more programmes.
“I believe there’s an appetite for scientific knowledge and it’s growing,” says Wilf.
Wilf feels there’s scope to diversify in subjects and identify other areas of science (and perhaps beyond STEM) that are currently underserved. He believes that focusing on areas that are ‘myth-heavy’ subjects, where those myths need busting through expert discussion, represent interesting subject areas of expansion for the Water Cooler brand. As such, Wilf is currently exploring gaps in the market.
When I asked Wilf how he sources scientists to present on his show, he says “Fortunately, we don’t find it that hard to recruit scientists for our podcast series. As a scientist myself, I think many researchers feel comfortable to chat with me about their work.”
“I ask prospective podcast participants to imagine they’re going to talk at a conference. Then I ask, ‘what would be the thing they would love to speak about the most?’ And we take the conversation from there.”
Wilf doesn’t see why this style of ‘pitch’ wouldn’t work across academic disciplines, to recruit experts for new series based on other subject areas too.
Wilf also asks the audience for pointers of topics that they’re interested in. If specific things crop up from their feedback, they can help shape the future direction the company takes as well. Overall, Wilf has plenty of options going forward.
I think there’s some fantastic inspiration to be had from Wilf, on how your interests can be turned into a business venture with the right focus and effort. Even whilst being busy in the lab!
If you’re interested in entrepreneurship (and personally I think researchers possess a lot of the skills needed to be an entrepreneur), pop any queries you may have in the comments below…
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‘Til next time, stay safe,
Vicky