PostdocTransformation show for scienctists leaping into business
Get to know companies which hire people with a doctor title
Episode 0054 Shownotes
In this episode of the PostdocTransformation Show, Dr. Luna Muñoz, a career and executive coach, shares her journey from Psychology in academia to career coaching. Born in Puerto Rico, she built a recognized research career in the US, Sweden and UK. She discusses the challenges faced by underrepresented individuals in academia, and the importance of self-evaluation and values in career transitions. Dr. Muñoz also highlights her coaching services aimed at empowering individuals to leverage their skills and passions in business or new careers. The podcast emphasizes the potential for fulfilling careers outside academia, supported by targeted coaching and resources.
Subscribe to our weekly seasonal show on your favorite podcast platforms: Why? Postdoc scientists & PhD students / candidates will learn the basics for their career transition from research into business & industries AND will get to know a company that hires early career scientists!
About our PostdocTransformation show
Invest in your PostdocTransformation. Welcome to the seasonal show for scientists leaping into business. In every sponsored episode, we are happy to recommend employers of choice for you. Make sure to check your readiness to leap out of science with us for free, as linked in the show notes. For your career transition, we offer customized career transition e-courses and memberships, also at graduate schools all over the world.
Maybe yours too. And if your university isn't yet our customer, enroll in your free email course for career transition made simple as linked in the show notes. I'm your host, Professor Dr. Eleonore Soei Winkels, with my team who is rooting for you. And let's build your PostdocTransformation with this episode.
Announcement: Second upcoming podcast show #CreatingReorganized
[00:00:00] Thank you for listening to my PostdocTransformation Show. Maybe you want to leap out of science and start your own side business as a runway for your better future. Then you will benefit from my free business preparation quiz as linked in the show notes. If you want to organize your marketing and selling efforts, please also subscribe to my new video podcast show, Creating Reorganized.
[00:00:25] I share my tricks from creating this show, speak with business owners who run a podcast for their business, and learn from podcasting service providers about their tools boosting our businesses. My new video podcast show, CreatingReorganized, will also be a living example of applied industrial and occupational psychology for my students in real life.
[00:00:46] And now, let's get to this episode.
[00:01:51] Affirmation from Dr. Luna Muñoz: You are worthy of success in academia and business!
[00:01:51] Eleonore: Welcome, PostdocTransformers I'm so excited to have you here in this episode with Dr. Luna Muñoz, because I have been stalking her to get her on my show from the get go when I started my interviews, and now, finally, it's now time to have her on my show, because really, about the values I share in my show, And you'll be hearing her and instantly see why or know why we are on the same page.
[00:02:21] Just to give you a quick rundown on Dr. Luna. She is doing career coaching and training workshops at universities. She's also an academic coach, but also works as an executive coach. She's doing some knowledge exchange within south America for her work on gender based violence prevention and her passion is creating a compelling story. Well, people on the resumes on that CVS, but also in their grant application. And she works for social enterprises and community serving startups and organizations, whether it's in Spanish or in English, she's facilitating workshops to improve wellbeing prevention of burnout for parents. But also preventing violence within young people, helping them to manage their big emotions during their adolescence. She is also a fellow podcaster.
[00:03:10] You can listen to her academic misfit podcast on every major podcast player.
[00:03:16] Eleonore: All right, so without further ado, welcome Dr. Luna Munoz.
[00:03:21] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: you so much for having me, Ellie. It's so good to be here.
[00:03:24] Dr. Luna's Academic Journey
[00:04:49] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: So I got a job, at, an Institute for Juvenile Justice Services in New York. people kept saying, it's leaving academia. Yes, you'll be doing research, but you'll be leaving the academic world. You won't be a professor. Are you sure you want to leave that? Because you can never come back, which is just one of those myths, right? So I had gotten an offer from Sweden, to do a postdoc. And how often do you get to go to Sweden,
[00:05:15] So I didn't have a plan. Passport. I didn't have anything. they arranged everything for me. They paid for my, flight, my visa. The pay was really good because it was Sweden. I had a child there without paying for healthcare which was, a dream for me. when I had my child and responsibilities, I knew I had to go to work I finished my postdoc, came to the UK and had been a lecturer, senior lecturer, which is the same as assistant professor and associate professor in the US.
[00:05:47] Research, 60 percent teaching, then add on top of that all the administration, there's like 150%, isn't there? I kept moving around in the UK, thinking like, maybe this is going to be better than the tenure system in the US, like the whole publish or perish thing, the getting big grants, all of that, but I kept getting pushed by people who were full professors and professors before they were like 40. They were like, you need to strive even more, which hit all of my buttons of striving, with my gold stars that I had in school. I was like, okay, I'm going to be the good girl, get my grants, and get a prize.
[00:06:23] I got a prize in parliament for my research. Then I published the paper from the prize, and, you know, came with prize money, which then I used to go around the country and talk about my research. and so I thought I was making it, like, all the good moves. but there started to come some issues with just feeling like there was a lack of fit.
[00:06:43] I wasn't feeling fulfilled because a lot of the things that I wanted to do weren't valued by academia. I wanted to collaborate with people where we were actually all equals. And nobody was a pi and that's kind of hard to do. I mean, we made it work, but I couldn't fit in.
[00:09:11] Challenges for Underrepresented Groups
[00:09:11] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: ere was the amount of time I spent with my students and mentoring, especially students of color, students who were first generation, students who were working full time while they were doing their degree, which was the same as my experience. I really wanted to Mentor them and, cultivate their passion for research, my, doctoral trainee just got his paper published yesterday, after working with me, like, however many years ago that I left. And he's a clinical, doctoral, psychology, he's a psychologist, and he has an amazing Instagram. Those are the kinds of things that really lit me up, and so it was really difficult for me to fit in. And I then started doing coaching while I was in academia. Again, they said, if you do this coaching, you can then get promoted. There was always like, if you do this, you'll get promoted.
[00:10:00] If you do this, you'll get promoted. It was like, cross this line, you die, you know, the Looney Tunes cartoons. I got promoted to associate professor, but never happened to professor full chair. But I did coaching while I was there. I set up a peer mentoring program at Durham University.
[00:10:16] And then when I came to University of Liverpool, because I had all that coaching background, they put me on their coaching program that they had started in the Institute for Psychological Sciences. I started doing coaching there, training people on coaching, doing evaluations of all the coaching and writing reports on our coaching in academic circles. We did coaching for people who wanted to be PhD students, and then we started to broaden it out to more and more of our early career researchers. Then other institutes within our university started to take Over. When I left academia, a lot of people were asking me, how did you set up this coaching in academia?
[00:10:52] We want it the same in our university. We think this is great. And then people start going, hey, I was on the wait list to be coached by you while you were at University of Liverpool, but now you're not there anymore, because I quit. And I was like, maybe I should look into this, even though it wasn't using my PhD, um, ,which is ridiculous because I have a PhD in psychology
[00:11:15] a lot of people were like, you're leaving the research. And there was a bit of me that felt inleaving something where I got that prize for my research. And separating out those components of what really drives my purpose every day, the reason I was loving research was because I got to teach it to other people, I got to mentor talk about the research in pubs tell teachers from secondary schools and primary schools about my research, which was about families and children.
[00:11:45] And so they would take that information and use it in their schools. I worked with schools, you know, connecting with my why, the purpose. The reason why I was doing that research was to have an impact for science communication, for mentoring early, next generation of researchers. So I thought how do I do that outside academia?
[00:12:05] And that's when I created my coaching business and consultancy because I really want to help organizations have better ways of evaluating their services, because that's usually only for the big companies who have an R& D department. What I really want is for All these, starting charities to do it right from the start and to understand what evaluation is so that they can better serve all of the community, because in reality, a lot of the social services are being cut, in terms of funding. So we need the community Activism to Rise Up. So I'm also working as a consultant in addition to a coach, but they come from the same passion, if that makes sense.
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[00:12:50] Eleonore: Yeah, absolutely made sense. And that vibe is really what connected you and me. You could probably see by my reactions that I can absolutely see that you've been pouring into the system to make it better, to serve the ones who really need it. But essentially it was never helping you to promote yourself into a full professorship.
[00:13:13] I see why you were leaving and I can see why you want to do this service to social enterprises, but also underrepresented individuals. You've come from Puerto Rico, establishing yourself as a family. You mentioned your mom in New York, growing up and then also traveling around the world, You know what it means to be underrepresented.
[00:13:38] what unique challenges do you see today? for early career scientists or individuals in social enterprises, for Latinas, for the LGBTIQ plus community, especially when transitioning from academia to a corporate
[00:13:53] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Yeah,I think a lot of the big challenges come from how education is sold as the American dream isthrough education. the way that education is structured is about, if you get a higher degree, you start up at a higher ladder and you climb up from there. But we know lots of white men that I'm thinking of right now that don't do that. They just get up the ladder by falling upwards, or failing upwards. I think there's this that narrative about education is valuable, there's this idea about achievement and striving that never ends and you never feel good enough and you never feel worthy. I applied to 16 PhD programs and I got into one, which was Penn State University, which is not, at least back in the late 90s, was not very diverse. And actually a black professor had only been there four months and he left and that was our only black professor in psychology. So, when I got there, I realized I don't really feel like I fit in here, and I feel like I was one of those diversity hires, basically, for my PhD program, right?
And so it made me feel like I'm not worthy, because I'm just here because I had a tutor, I worked every day, like hours and hours on the statistics, that then people were coming to me about statistics, and going, you're such a natural at it, it's like, no, I frickin worked my butt off until I could do it, work harder than everybody else to be treated the same.
[00:15:51] Right. And a lot of like ethnic minority or underrepresented groups, you're working twice as hard to get like the same treatment. And so I think that really wears on you and that kind of burnout as well. I think some of the things that I see when people are leaving academia who come from backgrounds that are first generation or they're underrepresented are. This innate worthiness, like I'm not worthy of whatever, whether it's financial or it's, I don't deserve this, but there's something about that.
[00:18:27] Thanking our advertisers for their financial support, we are happy to return to our inspiring episode.
[00:18:37] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: And then there's also something about struggle. In Puerto Rico, we do a lot of struggling because we usually have hurricanes and earthquakes, but then we also have colonialism because we're still owned by the US and we're not allowed to vote. I think having that struggle and a lot of people have that kind of like their family has struggled to get them into a good country or whatever. It then makes you feel like I need to struggle in order to do well. Or I don't deserve this if I haven't struggled. That was a lot of the emotional labor that I had to do and I help a lot of people manage those emotions, but also the idea of I need another degree. I need to go back to university. I get a second phd because you know obviously if you're gonna be a lawyer or something like i know somebody who is a neuroscientist and she left. And became a lawyer so obviously she needed to go back to university and do her law degree but i think really querying. Do i actually need another degree to do what i'm going to do next do i need an mba masters of business administration if i'm going to start a business no you don't you know i think. Our lived experience is also not validated and not valued in our higher education world, except when they want us to be the Equality, Diversity, Inclusion lead, but it's really just our skin color or our name. It's not really our expertise and our experience. They don't really want to know about it. And they don't really want to make a change. It's really about creating reports that give a certain, a little rosy glow to the reports. So I think lived experience. Experience and valuing that and finding your strengths and your assets in that and that they are absolute gems is really important. So yeah, I would say that's the lived experience or your value as a person who's lived a certain kind of life, your worthiness and the idea about getting more degrees.
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[00:20:35] I think those are like the big things, the big challenges that people from underrepresented groups most often have, but other people would probably. relate or resonate with that as well.
[00:20:44] Eleonore: Yeah, absolutely. I can, I do resonate. I was lucky in the sense, I know I'm privileged. I have tenure, so I understand that. But I always said that it was playing roulette. And it was also luck. So I saw others who deserved it as much as I did, who didn't get through. And that acknowledgement is important.
[00:21:09] And to share the privilege as well. And that's why I do this PostdocTransformation show to make them see that there are options that you don't have to go through the struggle to deserve a better life, whatever is there In academia, you can have manifold in business and it's good and bad in business as well.
[00:21:32] But there's also bad and the ugly in academia. So now I would love to switch gears to your offerings and you were mentioning having a business.
[00:21:41] Luna's Coaching and Consultancy Services
[00:21:41] Eleonore: You are offering also career coaching, but also other services to social enterprises. So Luna, can you please provide an overview of your services? How do you also meet the specific needs of individuals from diverse backgrounds, knowing them or relating to them?
[00:22:00] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Yeah. And when you were just talking, I was thinking about the diverse backgrounds. I'm also, Latina. I'm a mother. I was a single mother. I have ADHD. I'm bisexual. There's a lot of different things. And I think a lot of people who come to me also are neurodiverse because it's so hard to start a business. Or to look for a new career when there are so many things, and I think it's really, you get stuck. A lot of people are talking about that stuckness. And one of my clients said she was a paralyzed overachiever, right? Because you get paralyzed by I need to achieve something and I don't know where to go. A lot of the people that work with me are neurodiverse, are underrepresented in higher education and in the real world, at the top levels, my passion is to really get people to think bigger than what they're maybe thinking right now, I call them big visionary people, one of My first Facebook groups was called Reach for the Moon. It's now called the Great Academic Escape. Because I really wanted to like do the Great Escape poster, but put a university building as the part that he's escaping. Then I put my face on it, escaping from the ground. That reach for the moon is what I really want people to get in the mindset of, is that big visionary thinking. So my services are about that.
[00:23:27] I have Life After Academia, which is about unlearning all the rule books that we had, maybe that we were trying to fit into when we were in academia, and really getting out of that and not trying to fit ourselves into a new box, but thinking bigger and widening the prospects that are in front of us. And then at some point, as we start to feel like we know who we are and what we need, it allows you to navigate those paths and start to go at each intersection or junction. No, that's not the right path for me, or yes, I think that's the right path. Let me look beyond those trees.
[00:24:07] I love helping people through that. And that's what Life After Academia is. It's really about getting your confidence, you're seeing the value that you have, but also connecting with your values, because a lot of it is steeped in our why or our purpose. But in a way that also fulfills us and allows us to just be. I feel like we're always thinking, what can I do? Like when people are applying for jobs, I need to be doing something. I haven't done anything. I'm not there yet. I haven't arrived. We are fine where we are. We do not have to arrive.
[00:24:39] We never arrive. That is life. Just being and resting and being in our purpose is so important.
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Stress is holding your back
[00:26:20] Thanking our advertisers for their financial support, we are happy to return to our inspiring episode.
[00:26:30] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: So I help people to just release themselves from expectations and outcomes. And I think that's what you were saying, Ellie, about being able to manifest or once you release the fact that my joy is contingent on what external people think of me and what external validation I get. It's hard to find real joy and fulfillment when all of your fulfillment and your satisfaction with yourself is based on things that you can't control. They're not in your control. And It took me a long time.
[00:27:03] Obviously I went through therapy and EMDR therapy is the best thing ever. If you deal with post-traumatic stress disorder stuff, I thought that was amazing. Hypnotherapy, all those kinds of things. But in terms of my coaching, I'm not a therapist, so I work with people in terms of their their emotions because that's my background.
[00:27:23] Empathy, emotions, stress. A lot of my work was on the psychophysiological effects of stress, especially with the cardiac and the autonomic nervous system. So I help a lot of people tap into somatic awareness.
[00:27:38] It's getting into the knowledge that your body has. And that's what a lot of our ancestors did. If I think back to what my dad did and what my grandparents did, it was a lot of like bodily awareness work. And so it's tapping into that because we're told to ignore that in academia, right?
[00:27:56] You don't eat at lunchtime, you don't drink enough, you don't go to the bathroom because you forgot, we ignore so much of our body. And even in school, we're told to ignore them because you have to go to the bathroom at designated times, right? Eat at designated times. What? You didn't have that in Europe? Definitely in the U. S. Yes, and the UK, yeah, you're not allowed to go to the bathroom unless it's between classes, or you raise your hand and you're allowed to, but some teachers might not allow you to. So yeah, it's getting back into the body, and a lot of the work that I do is on reflection and values, and also acceptance. And self compassion, like radical self compassion, which is about understanding that you have some responsibility for where you are now, but not the culpability that there is a, I forget what doctor said this, but the whole idea of Me, we, and the world, like there's me, I have some responsibility, we have some responsibility, the people closest to me and my context, and then the whole world, the environment that I live in has some responsibility because we are treated different ways depending on what the world finds acceptable, Knowing all those things is really important.
[00:29:12] So I combine all of those in addition to how do I write my CV to resume?
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[00:29:18] Building a Business Plan: The Marathon Mindset
[00:29:18] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: How do I build a business plan? But you need to do that self reflection first because it's like preparing for a marathon, right? You don't just go straight through to the marathon. There's a lot of mindset work in marathon running, there's a lot of emotions that are going to come up while you're running, I can't tell you how many things I divulged to people while I was running with them, I don't know why your mouth just talks, but all of that is really important in order to prepare for the writing the business plan, creating your business, otherwise what ends up happening is if you don't have trust in yourself or you don't feel worthy, you get connected to all these social media, how many likes does this have?
How many people have rejected my services? Oh, maybe I should say yes to this client, even though it's not aligned because I'm going to need that money. I don't think there'll be another client. I'm not worthy of another client. It's all those things. That's the part that I felt I needed to deal with in order to not get burnt out in my first year of my business.
[00:30:23] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: And I'm now in my third year of my business, and My mindset is just at a whole different level. And it was that coaching experiences that I've had throughout the years. And then also the therapy, which was about like dealing with my self worth in addition to the post traumatic stress that I was bringing from probably just the whole life. So that's part of it.
[00:30:46] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: probably went too far into that, but I also have other programs that are membership programs for people who want just like a light touch, and who are building a business, but want to do a lot of it themselves with a community on Slack or WhatsApp. And then I have my consultancy. So I have social enterprises that either pay me monthly or for a project, and we build on their expertise, making connections. Again, it's the same kind of thing for coaching. I'm helping them to build networks, realize their biggest strengths, and what they're serving in terms of their community.
[00:31:23] so that they see the value of the work that they're doing and they're able to then articulate it into grant applications and other. So it's very similar to the coaching one because you're also then seeing your strengths and articulating them for your resume and in job interviews or to clients and really talking about what you do.
[00:31:42] Storytelling and Marketing
[00:31:42] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: I'm so interested in storytelling. I've always been someone to write fiction and non fiction and poetry. And I love helping people with their message. We talk about it in terms of marketing, but I love talking about, how do you introduce yourself to a client, how do you introduce yourself to a hiring manager when they ask you, tell us a little bit about you. I love creating those stories with people because I think there is something that will connect you to a job or a client. If you can get a magnetic way of speaking your message and your story. So I absolutely love that. And it's something that I'm working with a couple of clients on right now. And I just, I think there's something to that.
[00:32:28] I always thought that when I moved to LA and I worked in Hollywood, I'm like a director, but with my PhD, my research projects are like director, I use virtual reality in some of my research and I was always like what's the next tech that I can use. A lot of the programs that I have are finding people's passions and then articulating them.
[00:34:45] Client Success Stories: From Academia to Business
[00:34:45] Eleonore: Now that you've been talking about clients, can you unveil a success story of a client who you guided successfully from academia to a fulfilling career or even a business?
[00:34:57] How do you measure success for your clients? When do you think it is successful or is it a contingent thing? It's a never ending story and it's continuously evolving. So what can you share
[00:35:07] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Yeah, I think, yeah, I love that idea about it's always evolving. I feel like we're always evolving. Yeah, I think when I first started out, I was thinking about getting people to a job, right? Like a career coach should, and my clients actually, listening to them and doing feedback sessions with them and getting their critiques on my coaching and their critical feedback was really useful because some people said to me, Luna, it wasn't about like making more money or having. Like this kind of job outside of academia was really about seeing my potential and seeing how much I could do, and then finding my balance after leaving academia and that work life balance that just never really seemed to happen and that you were all always striving for in academia. Luna, you gave me like a new outlook on life. At first I thought, I should be tracking how much money my clients are making after they leave academia, but that's not who my clients are. Obviously there are people who hire coaches for that. So I think in terms of my success stories, for example, was one of my first clients on a full one to one coaching. So we did six sessions of coaching every two weeks. And she had called me and said I'd really love to do coaching, but I'm leaving my professor job and I am in biology and I think I need to do an e commerce course. And I was like, have an idea about whether you need to do this course and whether you need another certificate. Do you already have some of these skills? Let's, have a think about it. And she was like, yeah, I think I'm going to do this first and then I'll come back to you if I need help.
[00:36:45] So that was over the summer. And then, July or something like that. She was like, I've quit the e commerce course and I want to work with you. I was like, okay. So we started to work together and she was really thinking. Yeah, I do have a lot of skills.
[00:36:59] So we identified all of her skills, did a whole audit of her skills, but also translated them for a new market. I asked her everything she's ever done. How did she support her students? What were the qualities, like soft skills that she brought in doing that? Turns out she already had a very small side business. Started to ask her about that. She just lit up. You know about her business. And I was like, wait, what if you put all your energy into the, oh, but it hasn't really taken off. Right? But you won't be working full time at the same time as running the side business when it has your full attention. Just give it a try. Let's experiment. Like we would in a lab. And she experimented and within a few months, so before she'd even quit her job and before she finished coaching, she came to me and said. I'm making more money doing that and I'm actually like loving every part of it and I'm seeing how I'm using my PhD and all these strengths that I didn't even know in my business. We articulated what all those strengths were. I had her write Like her own badass resume. She didn't need a resume because she's building her business. But build the resume that you would fricking wanna see for yourself, and it was just amazing about all of the things that she's accomplished for no one to see but herself, you know?
[00:38:16] But it was like a power statement. It was incredible.
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[00:38:20] Empowerment and Self-Efficacy
[00:38:20] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: And I think that is the success. It's the empowerment. I love running empowerment workshops, but I don't call them that. It's really about just seeing your strengths and really being able to articulate them in the way resonates with you, rather than going, Oh, that's the way a job description writes it.
[00:38:39] Or that's the way this person writes. Let's write your own story about what your strengths are and say them in the way I don't know, authentic. I know a lot of people are talking about that, but it is authentic, and really a positive belief about yourself. I love when people think, I can do this. You know what I mean? When I hear people say, I can do that, I can do this, I can do that, that self efficacy is so powerful. I think that's where people talk about manifestation, it's really self efficacy, but I'm talking as a psychologist. So those are the successes. So it wasn't just about how much money, but the fact that she could have freedom. The fact that she was saying she has more time for family. The fact that she was saying, I want to give these skills that you just taught me, Luna, to my child, because I don't want him to think that he has to do things in a certain way, because other people and society or education says you have to do it in this linear way. I want him to know to follow his values. And I checked up on her eight months later after we had finished. And she was like, Luna, I'm such in a good place. And I use the values that you taught me every day to make decisions. I am not being dramatic. It's actually true.
[00:41:34] Values and Positive Risk-Taking
[00:41:34] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Values is the way I make all of my decisions. And I think That's incredible as well, because I think there is something about connecting to your values. I use a lot of the training that I had in terms of values, that I learned on thriving adolescence work. So I had done a lot of training on thriving adolescence, and I think there is something to a second adolescent when we're in our Mid 40s to 50s.
[00:41:58] You know what? Let's go back to being like teenagers and having that kind of questioning, questioning of the rules and positive risk taking, because otherwise we stay in that paralyzed achiever if we're not in that. Let's take a risk here. Let's do it in a positive way, in a way that we're being responsible to ourselves, let's take a little bit of a risk. It sounds funny, but that kind of risk taking, that kind of joy for life and finding hobbies, another woman had said to me, I've started doing football again, Soccer for Americans when I hadn't done it since I was a teenager and I'm making all these new friends and now I've started hiking and she gave me hiking clubs to contact as well.
[00:42:40] So it's that kind of joy for life, I think is, I don't know how to measure that exactly, but that quality of life. That's a good measure.
[00:42:49] Eleonore: Absolutely, and I have prepared so many questions, but I would just skip them because essentially you were able to share a real example and how you are able to connect a person just as an example, but a real person to see how her unique experience that she had, gathered through all her lecturing, but also her sleeping beauty side business, so to speak, how she could leverage that into a full business then.
[00:43:19] So that really speaks to so many questions that I would have asked you, but instead I'm also, I just wanna express my gratitude because I'm a psychologist as well. So what you said about Bandura's self-efficacy, is this is the moment that I want my bachelor and master's students to listen and to see that what we talk about in lectures is really important.
[00:43:43] I'm stressing it anyway, at the end of the day, it is relevant for your life. And you measure success, not by key performance indicators and money. The thing that you said about coming out of age or adolescence, you mentioned that before as being the good girl and trying to accommodate whatever External expectation was put forward to you.
[00:44:05] But the thing is that if we have been only socialized in academia and we never know what is also possible outside, and we don't have a navigation system in the sense of what is good and what is bad, then we believe in that. And believe can lead to good things, but mostly also to bad things, right?
[00:44:25] So having the option to understand what is possible for you and what is possible for me. And that might differ because we have different privileges, right? The systemic influences, right? We might be same in the same boat, but the sea is different for you and me, depending on the wave, whether you are there or not.
[00:44:49] And maybe I don't even have the same boat like you. Maybe I'm a good swimmer. So all the different obstacles that we can face, we also have to acknowledge that and to make the best out of that. There's no use of waning and saying, I could have done this. You have to make the best out of it.
[00:47:16] Connecting with Luna: Resources and Services
[00:47:16] Eleonore: And I think that you do help them, your clients, with that. And how can my audience reach out to you? How can they connect with you if they want to learn more about your work and what you can do
[00:47:28] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Yeah. So I'm also on TikTok. I should go back on there, but I'm Luna Moon Reacher on TikTok, and then I'm Luna c Munoz or Luna Clara Munoz on various social medias. I have a Facebook group and a LinkedIn group called The Great Academic Escape. And then I have luna leadership.com. So it's L-U-N-A-L-E-A. D E R S H I P dot com. So people can go there to see the various services that I offer. You can listen to my BBC interview about defiance, which I love because, yeah, I feel like I am, I'm embodying defiance now outside of academia. Yeah, you can connect with me on there. And I'm also dancing.
[00:48:12] So you've probably seen me dancing on TikTok and things like that. I love music. I used to work for Warner Brother Records. I used to work for Tower Records. So music has been a huge influence in my life. So also, if you go to my website, you can listen to a Quit Your Job playlist. Playlist on YouTube. I have lots of free resources on YouTube that are not just music playlists, but are master classes and workshops that I've given.
[00:48:37] There's one on starting your own consultancy business and finding your strengths and starting out. So I hope to do more masterclasses. I'm trying to do one a month, one on Facebook, one on LinkedIn, alternating. So if you do have any ideas about next. Topics that I should cover.
[00:48:54] I'd love to your listeners to contact me and let me know what things I should cover next. Send me a DM on LinkedIn or Facebook. And yeah, I love taking recommendations for what I should cover in a masterclass. One of my favorite master classes was for Halloween and I just made it like with all spider webs.
[00:49:12] there is a spider web of academia that some people are trying to escape, so I might use more spider webs actually because I really had fun with the Halloween. I think it was my goth girl phase, coming out on that one. But yeah, connect up with me on all the channels.
[00:49:29] Eleonore: Oh, wow. Luna, that really sounds interesting. And I really would love my. I would really love my audience, the Postdoc Transformers, to follow your lead, and to sign up for the services, because I really do think even though that you and I offer similar services, I really do think that the client needs to be served well.
[00:49:53] And if a potential client can relate more with you, And benefit more from you, then I'd be more than happy to show them an alternative and maybe it's you. So is there any coupon that you can share for our postdoc transformers so that they have a perk for them?
[00:50:13] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: yes. So the coupon code is PostdocTransformation.
[00:50:20] Eleonore: Okay. So just for my listeners, so that you don't have to scramble. I repeat that again. Use PostdocTransformation when you're at the checkout for any of the services that Luna is offering. And then you will get a perk. And you will find everything all on her website.
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Thanking our advertisers for their financial support, we are happy to return to our inspiring episode.
[00:50:37] Wrapping Up: Final Thoughts and Offers
[00:50:37] Eleonore: To wrap up, Luna, is there anything that you want to share with my audience now before we close.
[00:50:44] Dr. Luna Clara Muñoz: Yeah. Before thinking about investing in coaching, I think it's good to get a view of what this person's like, right? So I think a big way to do that is to go to my website, go to resources, and you'll be able to download some things right away. So the skills workbook is something that people said was really helpful. You don't have to have any emails after you sign up because you can just say, I don't want to receive any emails. And that's totally fine. You get the workbook and then you go off on your way. I have a CV to resume template workbook on there as well. So you can download that. And there's a free course, which is time to plan your exit.
[00:51:22] And it's just about owning your own time. So if you want to get rid of all those time management things that you see out there and want a different way, which your values, Get the own your own time. The time to plan your exit is a good resource as well. And that way you can just get a sense of who am as well.
[00:51:42] Eleonore: That's perfect. Thank you. And Luna, what I really want to say is that all that you have just mentioned, I will also put down in the show notes, also the discount coupons, so that everyone who wants to follow up with you will find you. And again, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure to talk with you because really This is also an episode for my real life students, right?
[00:52:08] So that they know some of them want to become a coach. And I always tell them that you don't have to do a PhD to be a coach. You don't even have to do a master because really you need to have real life experience and business experience to help also your clients. And it's not just theory. It is really connecting with whatever you have.
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Leveraging podcasting for attracting the best students from all over the world
If you are a university chancellor, grad school dean, speaker, professor, have you ever wondered how to make your grad school stand out in the crowded landscape of academia?
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Now, let's talk about a powerful branding tool, podcasts. They're a game changer for higher education institutions. As a professor, active on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and a podcast host and producer of this Postdoc Transformation Show, I'm here to encourage all the graduate school representatives to think beyond the conventional marketing mechanism.
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