DBA
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When I filed for a business license for the Pasayten Institute I picked up a designated business alias or DBA: Pasayten Industries.
The Pasayten Institute in other words, does business as Pasayten Industries.
At the time of application, I knew that I was going to need some way to finance the mission of institute, which is
“To build and share physics knowledge, without barriers.”
In some sense that means putting out physics material online, for free, which isn’t exactly a sustainable business model. At least by itself.
The B-Corp Model
You might ask. If you’re giving away educational material for free, why not start a nonprofit instead? It’s an excellent question. I’ll answer it fully in a future post. Suffice it to say: I tried. The for-profit model makes more sense given that I’m bootstrapping this whole operation.
Now for-profit doesn’t mean profit above all else. I’ve modeled the Pasayten Institute after the B-corp model. It’s an organization specifically devoted to achieving social good (open access STEAM education and research) and doing so by doing business.
Definitely easier said that done.
Nevertheless, it’s an extremely exciting model for the bootstrapper for a few reasons.
Success is directly proportional to work: the more material I ship - to the website, to YouTube and to various other platforms, the more my audience grows. I’ve already seen this, personally, in action.
The entire marketing budget amounts to education and outreach materials in physics. In short, what I’d love to be doing anyway.
Virtually everything I do - whether it be for coaching, educating, even research - can be repacked as learning material, which for us is literally the same thing as branding and marketing.
It’s consistent with where the education market, writ large, is going. For example: Quantum Information Science and Technology. Federal agencies are devoting time and money towards getting our young people ready for jobs in these emerging fields, and we also have to do our part to get the general population up to speed with what these technologies are capable of, lest they become “indistinguishable from magic”.
If you’re psyched on QIST, check out our course, Quantum Mechanics for the Working Professional. If you’re not, no worries, although please keep your ear to the ground. These technologies are coming sooner than you’d think.
Business concerns aside, it feels good to be back, participating in the academic ecosystem. This blog - and its associated YouTube playlist - will be my documentation of this process. So please stay tuned for more!
