Higher Ed Life Coach » About Sean Cook

HigherEdLifeCoach.Com Going on Indefinite Hiatus

Sean Cook — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:10:16 +0000

When I first launched HigherEdLifeCoach.Com in August of 2009, I was focused on creating a blog that would help s students and their families manage the transitions that are a normal part of college, and to create opportunities to craft a brand name for myself as a coach that could help them in navigating these difficult journeys.The idea seemed to resonate with higher ed professionals, especially those in student affairs.

I started networking with others, and several talented writers stepped up and wrote regular guest posts for the blog, most notably Mickey Fitch and Mallory Bower, two of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time, and who I know support the ideas behind this blog, and me, and I am grateful for all the support I received from other guest bloggers, including Shonda Goward, Lee Skallerup, Sarah Howard, Andrew Henck, and Brian Fisher, and from my periodic guest hosts on my podcast, Bryan Koval, Mickey Fitch and Dennis Charles.

I’m also grateful for the many readers who have stopped by and for their comments and feedback. I still get between 600-1000 visitors in a given month, but I’m not reaching the audience I was hoping , and honestly, my interests have changed. As my coaching practice started to get going, career coaching clearly became my focus. I have been a part of the national conversations about employment and professional preparation in student affairs, and I’ve gained a few paying clients.

But, in reality, my attention to this site has trailed off, and I can’t spend the time here that would be necessary to really have it gain the kind of traction to make it feel worthwhile. I need more clients, and I need the regular income that comes with them, so I am going to follow the money, and spend time focusing on HigherEdCareerCoach.Com, my clients, my podcasts and webinars, and place HigherEdLifeCoach.Com on “pause” for a while, while I seek partners who can help bring the content up to par, and help manage it better.

I’ve reached out to some of these people (or they’ve reached out to me) in the last few weeks, and I am going to try to work on getting some regular contributors and maybe some interns and advisors. Until then, this blog is officially on hiatus.

Thanks for reading and for your support.

Moving Forward, Plus My Follow Friday for 6.4.2010

Sean Cook — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:02:43 +0000

It’s been a busy week in my life and with my business, and I wanted to take some time to share that have helped me move forward, and feel a “sense of joy and ease” (as my friend Monica Moody puts it). I also want to share some of the things, people, and conversations I’ve been following out there lately.

First, I am very happy that I’ve had a few chances to put on my BlogTalkRadio shows this week.

Earlier this week, Eric Stoller (@ericstoller) and I had a great discussion about how to use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and RSS feeds in your job search. I learned a lot.
Today, I was lucky to have an episode on developing your own “elevator pitch” to highlight your unique strengths during a job search. I had two guest hosts, Mickey Fitch (@mickeyfitch), a regular guest writer for both my sites (Higher Ed Life Coach and Higher Ed Career Coach) and Dennis Charles (@fourth_wave) who is a career coach up in Massachusetts. See his site at http://fourthwaveinstitute.com/ We also had two great call-in guests, Jason Cassidy (@bowenkge), one of my former colleagues at Penn State, and Melissa Brown (@Brown_Melissa), a candidate seeking mid-level positions in Residence Life. They gave their elevator pitches and the guests helped critique them and offered suggestions. It went pretty well, but at the hour mark, the switchboard hung up on me and the show went on without me for a few minutes. We’re going to revisit the same topic next Friday at 11 am EST: elevator speeches and interview skills. Go to the episode page titled “Honing Your Message: More on Elevator Pitches and Interview Skills” to listen.

Also, last week, I rolled out a new coaching program on my HigherEdCareerCoach site. The program is a hybrid of 1-on-1 coaching, online groups and some one-shot teleconferences and activities. Today, I added some new features to the program, lowered the price and extended the deadline. For more details, go to http://higheredcareercoach.com/2010/06/03/beefed-up-and-slimmed-down-for-the-summer-8-weeks-to-august-coaching-program/

This week, I had some great client meetings, did some resume and cover letter revisions for people, and met a milestone goal for paid clients. (A small one, but it was great to break this barrier, and gave me a lot of confidence in how I am moving forward.) I also had my first paid, in-person client here in Athens. The meeting went great and I am really looking forward to helping this client with her goals, which include getting into a graduate program in Psychology and starting her own business.

I also joined a great community called Third Tribe. This site is a members-only forum to help people learn more about how to market themselves, network and build their businesses authentically, without overly-schmoozy marketing approaches. I’ve made some great connections already and gotten advice well worth the membership fee. I get to pick the brains of some of the smartest social media experts like Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan), Brian Clark (@copyblogger), and Darren Rowse (@problogger) Check it out.

I also want to give Follow Friday mentions for a few other people and things out there:

I watched the movie Searching for Angela Shelton on Netflix. If you are not familiar with the actress Angela Shelton from this movie, your kids might know her as SafeSide SuperChick from the DVD of the same name on child safety. I did not know much about Shelton’s story until my wife (@paxsarah) told me about this movie. Shelton made the film to raise awareness about sexual abuse. She suffered abuse from her father and other family members as a child and as a filmmaker, she illustrated very powerfully the impact of this kind of violence on has on people and its wide range of occurrence, by traveling the country to meet other Angela Sheltons who had also suffered from sexual abuse. Shelton is can be followed on Twitter at (@angelashelton) and you can visit her website at AngelaShelton.Com
Jeff Jackson over at BreakDrink made some announcements the other day on his BlogTalkRadio podcast about his efforts to re-brand his site as a podcasting site for podcasts on issues related to higher education. I am all for this and actually recently discussed this kind of thing on Twitter with several others. Jeff wants to make it happen and has set up an IndieGoGo fundraising site for his efforts. Please follow him at (@jacksonj or @BreakDrink), visit BreakDrink for more details about this and his next BreakDrink Online Conference.

There were probably some other things I meant to mention, but I’ll save them for later. It has definitely been a productive week for me, full of discovery, goals (set and met!) , new experiences, and a feeling of moving forward. I hope the same goes for you.

Thanks for reading!

Go out there and put your purpose to work! Have a good weekend.

Learning about SEO, Feeds & Marketing

Sean Cook — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:12:25 +0000

I never dreamed when I decided to go off and start my own coaching business that learning the ins and outs of blogging, marketing, internet advertising and search engine optimization would take so much of my time. But so far, I am learning quite a bit and I’m excited to put this new knowledge into practice.

During the last couple of weeks I have spent several hours taking in web seminars on topics like search engine optimization, marketing on a shoestring, making the most of social media in your marketing, and client attraction. I learned a lot from these seminars, and it’s great that so much information is already out there and that so much of it is free. But I’ve found also that for every piece of free information out there, there is also a pitch to buy this great product or that great service. There’s always a catch.

I spent 2 hours talking with a very nice lady from HubSpot about their tools for enhancing your blogs and getting more traffic. It was, indeed a nice product, and the $9000+ per year price tag would probably be worth it to some people, but I find myself struggling to define the goals for this blog in relation to the coaching practice. I do want to write and present information of value to my readers, and hopefully some of this will translate into clients or bookings for consulting or workshops. But I am not trying to make a living through the blog itself, so it’s hard to justify paying that kind of money to pump up traffic.

This morning, I decided to spend time working on stuff related to my business model, and to catching up on client notes, so that my upcoming client meetings can really help people get where they want to go. I may be stuck in the old way of doing things, but I am convinced that being a good coach will help me get the clients I need, and the rest will take care of itself.

In the meantime, I will keep doing what I can on my own to get the blog up to speed and my thoughts out to the world. If any readers out there have advice or perspectives, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment on the blog.

22M5PY3NUMR3

The Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated…

Sean Cook — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:28:01 +0000

Due to my recent move, and all that goes with buying and selling houses, relocating, etc., my blogs took a backseat to life for about a month, and it is likely that some followers may have assumed that I had died, become gravely ill, or simply lost interest in the subjects.

None of this, of course, is true, and I thankfully report that now that I am in a new location and devoting myself full-time to building a coaching practice that will serve college students, their parents and higher ed professionals, readers will begin seeing more frequent posts, and soon enough, links to a BlogTalkRadio show where I will invite guests to address common college life issues and take your calls. By early spring, I hope to also begin offering teleseminars, online chats, and online short courses to help college students and their parents prepare for college life, and the travails that come with it.

Next up...Chickering’s 7 Vectors…Moving Through Autonomy Toward Interdependence.

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Back on the Grid!

Sean Cook — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:22:03 +0000

My relocation is now complete, and I am in my new home in Athens, GA, though not completely unpacked. Glad to be back online! I am ready to dive in full-time to this new adventure.

Besides all the moving-related stuff (buying a house, selling the old one, packing, unpacking, frequent trips to Goodwill, etc.), I have been meeting with my first round of clients. So far, I really enjoy the interactions I’ve been having, and it’s really neat to see people start to set goals for their lives and careers, and to see them make some progress.

Though I do miss State College and Penn State, I haven’t really missed my old job yet. I guess I really haven’t had the time, but if I have, then I’ve filled it with excitement about my new path as a life and career coach. I will be back to blogging about collegiate life transitions, student development, and related issues, and developing this blog as an informational resource.

By January, I will have hopefully completed my certification requirements, and my goal is to have 10-15 paying clients by the end of March, and to be ready to offer workshops, in-person and online, to help incoming college students and their parents ready themselves for the life transitions that come with college.

Stay tuned as well for new editions of “A Different Kind of Freshman 15″ and the ongoing series about college student development theory. The next installment of that series will cover the subject “moving through autonomy toward interdependence,” and explore ways that college students can become more autonomous, how parents can support them in achieving more autonomy, and finally, how students and parents can meet each other at the other end as fully-functioning adults, who appreciate and support each other in healthy ways, and honor the rights of the other to be their own people.

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