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In this episode of the GradBlogger podcast, we talk with Dr. Jennifer Polk about the role blogging played in starting her early coaching business. We discuss what her business looks like today and how she got started. We also discuss the role blogging played in her early coaching business, the importance of starting niche and working your way out, how personal branding fits in and her advice for people just getting started in this space.
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Introduction
[00:00:00] Welcome to Episode #5 of GradBlogger! Where we are helping academics build businesses and change the world through their online businesses. I’m your host, Dr. Chris Cloney, and in today’s episode, we’re talking to Dr. Jennifer Polk about the role that blogging played at the beginning of her coaching business.
Today, Jen’s primary business is Beyond the Professoriate, aka Beyond Prof, a career-coaching community that helps academics reach the next stage in their life after getting their PhD. However, this is not her first enterprise. She started with a blog called From PhD to Life, which was aimed at people who weren’t sure what they wanted to do after getting their PhD. In this interview, Jen discusses:
- How blogging played a role in creating her coaching business
- Some interesting insights she gained in the process, including the importance of starting in a very small niche
- Personal branding tips such as whether you should put your name on your blog and how to be authentic and be yourself as you progress
Dr. Jennifer Polk’s background
[00:02:01] After completing her PhD in history, Jen blogged about her experience in FromPhDtoLife.com. She started a successful coaching business and began building communities like Beyond the Professoriate, all of which enjoyed loyal followings and brought her to where she is today.
What is your business today?
[00:02:39] Today (spring 2019), Jen works full time with Maren Wood and the rest of her small team at Beyond Prof. As co-founder, she manages all of the live events, which are recorded and turned into closed-captioned videos. Jen is also kept busy with Aurora, an eLearning Platform that helps graduate students explore career options and discover ways to apply the skills acquired through their education
How did you get started with a coaching business?
[00:05:00] After Jen finished her PhD in early 2012, she hired career coach Hillary Hutchinson to help her get some perspective and direction on what she wanted to do next. A month later, in December 2012, she launched From PhD to Life.
As she recalls it, “The name came to me sort of in a flash and that same evening, I bought the domain fromphhdtolife.com, wrote the first two blog posts and published it.”
It was a while before Jen realized that she had the beginnings of a business, but in sharing her story and those of other PhDs via transition Q&As, she built the foundation for everything that she does now.
What role did blogging play in your business?
[00:08:40] Once Jen started blogging, she was putting herself into the world, which can open up unexpected avenues. She shared her story and started getting active on Twitter. Jen was also inspired by her coach and intrigued by the idea of becoming a coach herself.
“Anyways, I fessed up to Hillary ,” she laughs, “and she’s like, oh I think you would be great at this actually! So I did initially did a bit of coaching, read a lot of books about coaching, and the months went by.”
The importance of finding your niche
One of the first things Jen learned while doing coach training was the advantage of having a niche. At the time, she wondered who she wanted to help, but it soon became apparent that she had a niche: academics like herself.
“I felt confident in that,” she says. “I’m not just a random coach who has no perspective on what it means to be a PhD. My clients are going to be people who are me, but in the past.”
Not only did Jen have a niche that came directly from her blog, but once she launched her business and spread the word on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook, she quickly had people come to her, and not all of them were what she expected.
Jen had been focusing on PhD graduates who wanted help planning their next move, but one of her first clients was still finishing her dissertation and not thinking about what came next.
“I didn’t anticipate that,” Jen admits, “but I think it’s a pretty common story that you put yourself out there in a particular niche and then other people, sort of around that niche, start to see you as.. someone that can help them. That is also the value of putting yourself out there. Even if you’re not necessarily talking to that specific (niche) person, other people are going to stumble upon you and sort of get you.”
Start specific and reach your way out
Online marketing resources tell you to find a niche. For Jen, it was PhD graduates. The advantage of starting really small is that you can work your way up.
When Dr. Chris Cloney started blogging about the science of deflagration, it was a highly niche topic. Today, his blog covers a wide range of industrial safety topics, from regulations and mindset around safety to research, physics, and chemistry. If he had started there, however, it would have been hard to find a loyal following. Starting niche made all the difference.
How does “Personal Branding” fit into blogging?
Today, Jen is a lot more confident about having a personal brand. She is her own person and doesn’t think that there needs to be a distinction between herself and her business. Sometimes she will share a picture of her cooking, which has nothing to do with Beyond Prof, and it will still get a hundred likes.
“(It’s) not because I’m a grand chef, because I’m not,” she laughs. “But I think that people really relate to people.” For this reason, she avoids ‘hot button’ topics like politics, which can detract from her message and have a negative effect on her ‘p to p’ (person to person) interactions.
Should you put your name on your blog?
When Jen started her blog in December 2012, she wondered whether she should put her name on it. Academic spaces were full of caution about social media and being a person instead of a researcher. She finally decided to include her name and email address but not her phone number.
Dr. Chris Cloney also advises that bloggers put their name on their work. He says that if he had not done so for DustSafetyScience, he wouldn’t have the business he has today. The possibilities are bigger, but it’s a personal and even difficult decision.
Two example accounts that don’t use their name
Not all accounts use the name of the blogger. Below are examples of two accounts that have gained large followings despite the separation between the author and their work or, in the second example, the complete anonymity of the author.
- Sh#t Academics Say by Dr. Nathan Hall at McGill University is a separate social media brand than his own Twitter handle, @prof_nch.
- Lego Grad Student, which has a completely anonymous author. They even respond to emails with “cheers, LGS.”
What advice do you have for people just getting started?
[00:24:53] Jen recommends that new bloggers love what they do and not stress about it. “Any avenue for writing is good,” she says. “You can choose what style you want … and also figure out much more about who you are. Sure, like bad shit can happen, but everything is a risk, and I think it’s a risk worth taking.”
Conclusion
[00:28:37] Jen provided a lot of valuable advice in this interview, but one of the biggest takeaways is that it’s better to start really niche and expand than be too broad at the start. When you start small as a blogger, The possibilities are exciting and endless.
If you like the material that we’re posting on the podcast and it’s helpful in your work and in your blog and in your business, please rate and review GradBlogger on iTunes, so we can reach more people!
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