by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 30, 2010 | Podcast, Student Affairs
This week’s incident at the University of Texas at Austin probably hit a nerve for many of us who work in student affairs, because we are often called to assist in responding to the practical and emotional impacts of violence on campus.
Every time something like this happens, I respond in two ways:
- Go into an autopilot sort of mode while responding to what everyone else needs.
- Push aside thinking about it as much as possible, until I crash.
The first way is clearly healthier than the second, but for me at least, both are entirely necessary for maintaining focus. And generally, I have done this well.
During my career in Residence Life, I was called on to respond to a few high-profile emergencies:
- Incidents in the halls in response to the first so-called ArtsFest Riot
- A completed suicide and the follow-up around it
- The aftermath of an on-campus shooting
Dissecting this event is inevitable, and the supposed warning signs that people will parse over and second guess have already begun. I’m not sure what all the answers are, but I’d like to create an opportunity to talk about this, share experiences and process.
So I want to open up the conversation a bit to our readers and listeners. This Friday’s edition of my BlogTalkRadio podcast will be dedicated to discussing Violence on Campus, how to be prepared, how to respond, and how to work through it when you have to push your needs aside and take care of others.
Listen to internet radio with Sean Cook on Blog Talk Radio
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 23, 2010 | Podcast
Hey everyone, it’s late September, and Friday morning, I am back for a new season of my BlogTalkRadio podcast after a hiatus since early August. I didn’t really plan on being away that long, but August and September have been full of busy. Since most readers of this blog work in higher ed, or aspire to, you know what the first month or so of the academic year can do to you, and how quickly your best laid plans, and best intentions, can get swept away along with your usually productive routine.
I’ll let you know what I’ve been up to lately, and I would love to hear from you about how Fall is starting off in your neck of the woods. Do you have some great stories to tell? Some gripes to vent about? Some advice you critically need? Call in, and maybe I can help you with your Fall kick-start. I bet some listeners can also offer you some great advice. So call in to 1 (347) 989-0055 or via the Skype click-to-talk logo once the show is on the air.
We’ll talk about how August and September can consume you, getting back in the saddle, and the transition issues that higher ed professionals, college students, and their families go through during fall. This show will be a stream-of-conscience free-for-all, hopefully with callers. It’s just been too long. I had to get back on the horse. So tune in for insights, rants, weak attempts at comedy and maybe a few special offers. I’ll be winging it!
Listen to internet radio with Sean Cook on Blog Talk Radio
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 13, 2010 | Who-Dos
Now that we are full-swing into September, it’s time to recognize another Who-Do of the Month. This is a simple recognition activity that began this summer. Jeff Jackson was recognized for his efforts to create free and low-cost-of-entry professional development programs for student affairs professionals through BreakDrink.com and his emerging podcast network. Ed Cabellon was recognized for his social media education efforts and his live uStream video interview series at On the Go with Ed Cabellon.
August was a strange month, as it always is, for those who work in Student Affairs. As usual, staff went into training and orientation mode, and social networking and blog traffic slowed to a trickle of what it could have been. At the end of July, both HigherEdCareerCoach and HigherEdLifeCoach hit their highest single days of traffic, only to have traffic flattened by August and training.
Amid this comparative silence, though, I kept finding tweets and blog posts about LeaderShape at different schools across the country. There are other great back-to-school leadership programs, not to mention staff training and new-student orientation programs that likely deserve recognition. Some of these happen in August and some later into the semester. But conversations about LeaderShape did stand out. So for this week’s advisory poll for Who-Do of the Month, I’d like to get input about Leadershape, and other programs that help students kick off the academic year.
As usual, I’m offering the opportunity to nominate other people and programs, and it’s possible that something else will emerge as the right answer.
What do you think? Please take the poll, reply with suggestions and leave some comments about the feelings and rationale behind your vote. The poll closes Friday and the honoree will be announced in a blog post next week.
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.
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
