by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 7, 2010 | Coaching, life purpose
Today’s post is part 2 of a series about the purpose behind HigherEdCareerCoach.Com and the different ways the site and my business are evolving to meet the needs of higher ed job seekers. Consider it a rough draft “blog manifesto” or sorts.
What you need to know about me:
- I believe that my purpose in life is to help others along their life and career journeys.
- I’ve helped many, many people get jobs and get into grad school, and to figure out where they are going in their lives and careers.
- I am mostly interested in helping educators, artists, musicians, and other creators, who keep pushing people, discussions and our culture along.
- I believe that knowing your purpose is not enough. You have to find the right way to express it. And for some of my clients, the answer is to not work in higher ed, go to grad school, be an artist or a musician, but something else. If I can help point them away from a wrong turn and be okay with the alternate route, I’ll be happy with that, as well.
- I got to a point a couple of years ago where I knew that I enjoyed doing this coaching thing more than the job I was doing, and that it was time to move on. There were other personal motivations, too, including decreasing my stress, spending more time with my partner and kids, and living closer to our aging parents and the rest of my extended family. I want to help people who may be similarly stuck know that it’s okay to change your plans and do something different.
- Residence Life is a high burnout field, and I got to a burnout point with it. Then I got over the burnout, and was happy. And people were happy with me. And I felt like I had done what I came to Penn State to do. And I wanted to leave on good terms, because I love that place, and the people there, just like I love my family (dysfunctions and idiosyncracies notwithstanding.)
- Once I set a few things in motion, before I knew what had happened, all the sudden, it was time. So I took a leap of faith. And I am happier in my life and career, and get to focus more on what I am meant to do on this Earth, and how I am going to do it. I’m read to help people explore their moments of career serendipity, so that when things come together, they can be ready to take their own leaps.
Which brings me to the whole business thing. Like I said, I have money. It’s not about money. But on principle, I can only justify following my dreams if I maintain the quality of lifestyle my family has, and have a stable enough income to retire one day. I have room to wiggle now, and to figure it out, but I really don’t want to spend my retirement (if there ever is one) living on the street.
So here are the critical points you need to know about me, my sites, and my business.
- I’m not motivated by money in the strictest sense, but I do want to have a sustainable business that delivers value and creates regular income, because (like most people), I value stability and want to give that to my family. They deserve it for putting up with me!
- The articles and advice you get on the blogs will continue to be free as long as I can manage to keep putting good content out there and justify the costs of hosting the sites. In some cases, I pay my writers, because this is a business, and their writing keeps your eyeballs on the page and gives my business exposure while actually providing you some value, through different perspectives and ideas. In other cases, I trade posts with other education bloggers and coaches, or accept submissions based on a particular topic (for example: Monday Morning Quarterback columns.)
- Other services will cost you money. (Resume reviews, coaching sessions, webinars, publications, and eventually one or more members-only sites and coaching programs.)
- I’m not outrageously priced, but I am not cheap, either. I do have “friends and family” discounts, package rates, and a variety of products and services, either currently available or in development, and I’m developing more short-term and one-time opportunities to meet the demand for low-cost services.
- I will continue to have some sorts of advertising on my site and more often than not, this advertising will be for affiliate programs I am a part of, for products that I use, have used, want badly (like an iPad) or just think are good. If you buy something from a link or an ad on my sites, chances are, I will earn some money from the transaction.
- I’m going to stop hinting and start selling, because I want to stay busy with the coaching, help people and support my family. In other words, it’s time to really move from being an aspiring businessman to an actual one.
- I’m going to enlist your help. Why? Because I believe the assistance of my readers, professional community, and other people and websites I admire can help me improve the sites and give you more of what you want and less of what you don’t, because I don’t want to annoy you and I do want you to keep coming back.
Here are some upcoming things you will see on the sites, as a result of the “course corrections” to get my sites and my business moving forward:
- I will be placing more prominent links and buttons on the sidebar to encourage people to consider working with me as a coach. No more hinting. If you are a job seeker in higher ed, I want your business. But if you only come to read, that’s cool too. But if and when you are ready, I want to be at the top of your mind. If you know me and trust me already, then that’s a good start, and I’ll take it.
- You’ll continue to see e-mail list sign-up forms in the sidebar and I do use pop-up forms as well. I’ll try to give you incentives to join the list. For the e-mail list, I am linking them to some auto-responders that will deliver free e-mail mini-courses over a set period, as well as regular newsletters, and the opportunity to get “blog broadcast” summary newsletters. New subscribers who sign up at Higher Ed Career Coach are currently getting a mini-course on “Planning Your Career in Higher Education” in exchange for signing up. This autoresponder mini-course has weekly topics and exercises to help you flesh out some of the steps as you plan your career journey. It isn’t really a “self-coaching” program, but it should help you get started. This mini-course will be available for the next month or so, but will be taken down and replaced by another topic-related mini-course, probably in early October. Afterwards, it will be offered (probably with some modifications and feedback) as a paid product.
- This month, I will begin offering some low-cost webinars on career topics and you will see registration widgets on the site, as well as articles about upcoming opportunities. Some of these will have set per-seat prices, and others will be offered as “Tip Jar Webinars.” This means that you pay according to the value you receive. There will be a suggested donation but if you think the seminar was useless you won’t pay anything. If you get something out of it, you’ll be encouraged to support the development of the series by “tipping” based on the length and format, number of presenters and value of the information. (Probably between $5-$20 would be an appropriate tip for most seminars)
- In the next few months, you will see offerings for e-books and for a book I am contributing a chapter to, called “101 Great Ways to Enhance Your Career.” The book is a cooperative book project from SelfGrowth.Com and that means I bought into the project to get published alongside 100 other career authors and to have books to use for giveaways and promotions, as well as selling them. There is a screening process, so hopefully my article won’t get rejected, now that I am telling you about it. So let me make it clear. I do realize this is a glorified ad in some ways.
- I’m going to revise my affiliate advertising strategy, and the first step will be to get feedback from you about what you would prefer to see, and what you might buy. I will only continue to participate in affiliate programs for products I use, would use, want or believe in. And if you have a bad experience with one of these programs or think I should stop my affiliation with a group or company, I want to know that, because I only want to advertise products and services that readers would actually use.
Thanks for reading. I’d love your feedback about what I can do to improve the sites, focus my business strategy, and better meet the needs of higher ed job seekers. I’ll be starting later this week with a brief survey about the site features and advertising/affiliate programs.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 3, 2010 | Coaching, life purpose
Let’s just jump right in and get to the point. Today, I learned that I am a failure.
Well, at least as an affiliate marketer. I’m trying to decide if I really care one way or the other about this, but let me rewind a bit and give you some of the backstory that brought me to this conclusion, so you’ll have context.
You may not have even realized that I am a marketer. After all, the site is called Higher Ed Career Coach, and most of the articles you find here are about job searching in higher education, and issues related to the changing landscape of higher ed. The ads you see are pretty much relegated to the sidebar and I took off some of my more sales-ey content a while back, including my Amazon.Com widget, my “book an appointment” Tungle calendar link, and the easy links to my shopping cart and Paypal payment buttons. You might even think the site is only about free career advice.
It’s not. The whole thing is an ad. And not a very good ad, at that. Sure, the articles can create discussion, and the podcast on BlogTalkRadio can offer different insights from guests, and you’ll certainly get the occasional articles that are really about me and the business. But the real goal of this site and my other site (Higher Ed Life Coach) are really the front gates for my business, and I’m not doing the best job with the selling part of things. It’s not why I went into business. I had more idealistic goals. I went into business to help people get jobs and find balance in their lives and careers (another thing I’d failed at plenty, myself, but learned a lot from.)
But I realized a few months back that I needed to get more comfortable with selling, because a business can’t just be about ideas and motivation. It has to be about action.
So I did a couple of things. First, I joined Third Tribe Marketing (affiliate link), a site founded by Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Sonia Simone, to try and learn how to do this without being annoying. Second, I redesigned my sites to be cleaner and to get away from Adsense ads, because their strange algorithms pull in all sorts of advertising content, and there is little you can do to truly control what ads end up on your site. It’s annoying, and I hate it. So I took a new approach, and joined affiliate networks and chose companies I have used or feel that readers can actually get some value from. But I never figured out the right way to draw attention to them, and to let people know why they are there, without being sales-ey. So people haven’t been buying.
In a recent post in the Third Tribe forum, Chris Brogan put it simply. He asked members if they were hinting or selling. And I realized I have only been hinting. And that’s pretty damn annoying, too. So it’s time I “man up” and let you know more about what I am going for with this site, with my business, and about why I participate in affiliate programs. The more you know about me and what I stand for, the better you will be able to decide how my sites and I can serve you better. And, if you can’t get past the idea that I am also looking to make money, as well as assist, enlighten, and occasionally entertain, then I guess you’ll probably be looking elsewhere for this sort of information.
It’s my sincere hope that you’ll stay on as a reader, and help me get where I am going with this. And not just for my sake, or the sake of my bank account. (Let’s just say that I’m fine in that area, for the most part, and that money is not my primary motivation for doing this. I actually believe that coaching helps people, and that I am good at helping people.There is a legitimate need for coaching in the higher ed space, and I feel that coaches need to come out of the ranks of our institutions and help others find the way. I’m uniquely qualified to do this, because I have known both great success and major failure in my career (and my life) and I love sharing what I have learned. Especially what I learned from failures.
If some parts of my life and career only happened to serve as a warning to others, then I am honestly okay with that. What value would they have as distant memories and trivia, when they could be signposts in the road, steering others in the right direction?
Monday: More on me, my business model, and where I see affiliate marketing and pa
Like this:
Like Loading...
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jun 18, 2010 | life purpose
Third Tribe
These days, you couldn’t swing a LOLCAT anywhere on the internet without banging kitty right into someone pitching themselves as a “guru” of something or other. I’ve become especially aware of this as a new business owner, because people call me to pitch this-and-that, and probably some of the other.
Some examples:
- I had a nice lady from a major search engine optimization (SEO) company explain their service and promise to get me to page 1 on Google and entrench my brand, for only $9000 a year.
- I signed up for a coaching client management and referral website (for a small monthly fee) that promised to get me new clients and improved SEO rankings. Before they had even sent me a referral, they sent out a message to all their members saying they’d want 20% of a client’s fees for a year for referring someone. I wrote them a pointed-yet-polite you-can-kiss-my-ass comment. I didn’t cancel the service yet, because I am showing up better in search, but honestly, I know I can design a better client management system using Moodle, a blind web designer, and maybe some monkeys. And Moodle is free and easy to install.
- I’m constantly getting messages from coach training programs, companies that sell skill assessments of various kinds, web designers, social media consultants, etc., etc. and on and on…
In a couple of earlier posts, I explored what it means to be a guru, versus a “who-do” (i.e., someone who does what they are passionate about, for the sake of doing it, rather than someone who is revered for having some secret source of knowledge, or who promote themselves as such.)
So if you’ve been reading along, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I think these people are full of shit, and that I’m not really interested in working with them for the long haul. At least not on their terms. If the cost of doing business is negligible and I am willing to pay for benefits that I actually receive, then fine, I’ll put up with some of the annoying BS. At least until I find something better.)
Who have I found to help move my sites and my business forward? Who do I trust to guide me? Where do I take my questions and concerns? How am I learning to be a better businessman, and a better coach?
You.
I learned it by watching you! And talking to you. Or exchanging e-mails. Or subscribing to your blogs. From the co-creative procress. From finding, and interacting with, communities that share my interests and passions.
My involvement in several communities has shown me the way forward, because I have connected with people who are interested in not just the content, but in the communities I serve.
- When I got mired down, I found guest bloggers and radio show co-hosts and guests from the Student Affairs Chat community on Twitter.
- When I needed fresh perspectives or to stretch myself to understand new and different things, I’ve done guest posts and had guest posters. I’ve tried to plug in to the community and connect around professional issues.
- When I needed to understand the needs and desires of job seekers, I joined discussions on Twitter, Linked In and Brazen Careerist, and even gave some free coaching (online and over the phone) to some people met in these places.
- When I needed to understand more about business and marketing (and selling), I joined the Third Tribe, a great membership group dedicated to helping people connect with their audience in authentic ways, instead of being annoying. In this group, I get to interact with interesting people like Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Sonia Simone, Chris Garrett, and other top thinkers in social media, business and blogging. That was the selling point for me. What I didn’t expect was all the incredible people in the forums and how affirming it would be just to be there, read about their issues, peek over their shoulders (so to speak) as a community helps them dissect their issues, understand them, and suggestions to get them unstuck and help them move forward. And even though I am a coach, I didn’t expect to be helpful to anyone, but I’ve been surprised a few times already by how easy it is to help others…not by being smarter than anyone (I wouldn’t dare) but by being encouraging and helpful, a decent listener and a helping hand. The power of joining such a group is incredible, and I gladly signed up to be an affiliate. If you are interested in learning more about how to join the Third Tribe, let’s connect. You can always click on the banner ad on HigherEdCareerCoach, but I’d want to talk with you first so you coud really make an informed choice. For me, it’s the best money I have spent on my business development so far.
The lesson here is the same one I learned long ago in a reading from the Elders of the Hopi Nation. I used to read it at the beginning of staff training, to emphasize the power of working together toward community. To summarize the quote:
“The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | May 14, 2010 | life purpose
Careers are funny things. We spend the early parts of our lives learning through experience and discovery. In our teens, we imagine our adult lives, dream about possibilities, and revel in the wonders of figuring it all out.
Then, as adults, we crush those dreams trying to fit them neatly into a so-called “career”, tug and pull them to stay on some defined path, fret about choices we make until we are sick at our stomachs, and then spend all our energies on efforts to be “successful.” If we aren’t sure, we look for external validation–other people’s opinions, higher paychecks, and opportunities working for the top employers in our fields.
And we wonder why, so often, upon taking hard looks at our lives and careers, we see a jumbled, crumpled mess that we can hardly recognize.
Isn’t it obvious? You can’t force something as huge as your life purpose into a small container and expect it to fit. Forcing it in will only fray the edges. And sooner or later, the whole thing will break in front of you, or simply fall apart.
Buddhists look at life and they see it full of suffering. The human condition, as most people experience it, is like a “wheel out of kilter.” The unexamined life, lived in the pursuit of external validation, will occasionally give you a bumpy ride. And anyone who’s ever been four-wheeling in the mud can tell you it’s fun stuff-until you get thrown off and break your neck when your ATV rolls right over you.
The answer to suffering, then, is to quit wanting the wrong things, and to quit stuffing your life purpose into a box, forcing into a corner, or putting it where other people tell you to put it.
Well, you might ask, “Since there is no perfect job, I might as well find one that will pay me well and leave it at that, right?”
That’s not a good way to look at the situation. You see, your job may be easy to understand and your tasks easy to accomplish, but sooner or later, if it’s not a natural fit, and you lack passion (or lose passion) for it, you will find yourself feeling empty and you will suffer.
In careers, the best promotions and opportunities are not always given to the most qualified content expert, or the person who has shown mastery for a skill. They are just as likely (perhaps more likely) to be given to those who show an interest in the topic, a passion for getting it done, and an appreciation for the process that gets them to the solution.
So you can’t really fake it forever. And you really shouldn’t try.
We hear a lot in the workplace about supervisors who look over their employee’s shoulders, give overly specific instructions for how to do things, deadlines that may not be realistic, and criticism that is neither warranted nor helpful. We call these people “micromanagers,” and the general consensus in the workplace is clear: workers hate to be micromanaged.
Why would your life be any different?
Imagine that you are not merely a planner for your life, but its manager. The employee (your life) looks for guidance, not control. Circumstances outside your realm of experience come up, and your life comes to you with questions, with opportunities, and with new, creative ways of thinking. But since they don’t fit some plan you have, you yell at your life, tell it you know what you want, and send it away crying. After that, your life shuts down and decides not to bring you questions, or help you examine opportunities. And it sure as hell won’t bring you creative ideas, because we all know how that’s going to work out.
In the end, your life is a miserable employee, and you wind up bitter because your plan doesn’t fit the circumstances in front of you. It eats at you until you do one of three things: give up, blow up, or walk away.
Wouldn’t you be a better manager for your life if you gave up pushing for circumstances to be how you want them to be, and started accepting them for what they are, and listening to what your life is telling you?
Of course you would. This is the essence of purposeful living. Accepting how things are, and approaching them with enthusiasm, creativity and an open mind will lead you to discoveries and accomplishments you hadn’t yet imagined.
So maybe it’s time to ask yourself some hard questions. Are you managing your life and career? Or micromanaging them?
Sean Cook, M.Ed., Certified Life Purpose & Career Coach, Publisher & Lead Writer
Sean Cook is a Certified Life Purpose and Career Coach, specializing in work with Higher Ed Professionals. In addition to serving as lead writer/editor/publisher for this site and companion site HigherEdLifeCoach.Com, he provides individual and group coaching, and offers presentations to campus and community groups.
Today, from 12 pm to 1 pm EST, he is again hosting the Higher Ed Life and Careers Show on BlogTalkRadio. Today’s topics: Accidents, Purpose, Job Searching and Twitter. Guests include regular co-host Bryan Koval and Monica Moody, a Life Purpose Coach who also serves as Director of Career Development at Wesleyan College in Macon, GA, and writes a blog on discovering your life purpose at IgnitePurposeNow.Com. Monica and Sean will be introducing a new segment on putting Passion, Purpose and Presence into your life and career. Please listen in (go to show link above) and call in your questions and comments to (347) 989-0055 or send them via twitter to @hiedcareercoach
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Bryan Koval | May 13, 2010 | Doctoral Study, life purpose
An unexpected consequence of being a doctoral student and working in higher education is trying to help my parents to wrap their heads around what I am doing with my life. When my father introduces me to someone for the first time, its not that unusual for him to refer to me as “the perpetual student.” My mom thinks I am the”head RA.” While I have nothing against Van Wilder, I know that I have my life more in order than my parents believe.
Maybe its a Millennial thing (I’m right on the cusp between being a Gen X-er and a Millennial), but for the longest time it really important to me that my parents are interested in what I am doing and I want to know that they are proud of me. Prior to working in higher education I was a science teacher, and this was basically the ideal situation for having career discussions with my parents. My dad is a retired teacher and my mom is a school secretary. We could talk about lesson plans, the union contract, continuing education credits, and a wide range of other topics for which we were all on the same wavelength. My mom could easily tell her friends “my son is a science teacher” with absolute conviction. Now that I am a student affairs professional, that’s a little more ambiguous.
Forging ahead with a career in higher education has resulted in me re-evaluating my relationship with my parents, as well as looking at how much of my identity is tied up in my career and academic goals. My parents and I have a good relationship, but I have learned that outside of making sure that they know I have a roof over my head and plenty of food on the table, I don’t need to have their approval or support when it comes to work. I’ve made connections with people who can play that role when my folks are not able to.
This whole discussion about my parents helps to put my career in perspective, though. I constantly struggle with work/life/school balance, and knowing that there are people in my life who are more interested in parts of my life that have nothing to do with work and school is really refreshing. My parents don’t care about quantitative research methods. They just care about me, and that is good enough.
Bryan Koval
Bryan Koval holds two degrees from the Pennsylvania State University (B.S. Secondary Education 03, M. Ed. Higher Education 08). He has worked in Residence Life at Penn State for 5 years, and has made meaningful contributions to projects related to living and learning communities, cocurricular learning outcomes, and resident assistant training in the department.
Prior to working in higher education, Bryan taught 7th grade science in Harford County,Maryland. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in higher education administration from the
George Washington University. Bryan writes about his experience as a working professional and full-time graduate student.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | May 12, 2010 | life purpose
Editor’s Disclosure: This post reveals that the author is a 40-something interloper on the “Gen-Y” career network Brazen Careerist. For anyone disturbed by this revelation, the author claims to really only read it for the “stories.” And now, on to the show….
The other day, I got involved in an interesting discussion on Brazen Careerist about whether length of experience matters in establishing credibility these days.
The comment that led off this discussion:
The conversation really struck a chord with me, because I think it is central to understanding, and perhaps navigating, the divide between Millennials and their Gen X and Boomer managers. There is a disconnect between their generation, which wants to be acknowledged for their ideas, and those who came before, who do value ideas, but feel they’ve earned respect through hard work and years of experience (and sometimes feel they don’t get it from the youngsters.)
The discussion about the value of experience and status, versus the value of ideas, goes back much further. The young have always felt discounted, the old disrespected, the rich and scholarly have always felt more enlightened than those who work in the trenches, and those who work in the trenches have valued their experiences in life and work more than ‘book learning.”
My favorite example:
Socrates was a great example of someone who was in fact a great teacher (and a guru), but it’s useful to remember that he’s only thought of this way because of what others said about him, and none of that would have gotten down to us, if it hadn’t been for Plato.
Socrates was actually a stonemason, who spent his days in the Forum taking people down a notch, by asking them simple and pointed questions, giving his observations, and playing devil’s advocate. It was Plato who enjoyed his style, wrote about it, emulated it, and taught it in his academy.
So herein lies the crux of the credibility issue: Are you someone who is engaged in questioning as the means for discovery, in debate as a delivery vehicle for new knowledge and points of view, and in mutual interplay between others who might teach you something (including people you may not agree with, or even find to be “small-minded?”) Are you nimble enough, confident enough, and curious enough, to be engaged?
The key to wisdom, then, is to know a good question when you hear it and a good conversation when you are in it. And to ENGAGE.
There are many, many cartoons that depict a seeker going to the mountaintop to ask a wise guru for advice, only to be met with questions. The punchline here shouldn’t be lost on you…this is how people learn.
So you can’t be a guru if you only learn by osmosis, or repeat back what you have learned verbatim. To be a guru, you must light a fire in others for knowledge, ask them compelling questions, and send them away with their minds racing, frenetic, and full of wonder for the search.
And how will you know if you are a guru?
They’ll climb back up the mountain with more questions.
And this time, they’ll bring friends.
This article is a cross-post to both the Student Affairs Collaborative and HigherEdCareerCoach.Com
Like this:
Like Loading...
