Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker

I’ve been engaged in online marketing since the early 2000s. In 2000 I became responsible for my organization’s website and was extremely fortunate that a Board Member was an internet pioneer having launched Medscape, which was a doctor’s portal to information and later acquired by WebMD.

Peter was the board member and became a tremendous mentor. He was always thinking ahead and following technical advancements to identify future business opportunities.

Through him I learned all about emerging online initiatives like wikipedia (founded in 2001), began following legal issues related to internet regulation and ethics.

By 2004 I had an idea to leverage the internet to benefit the community by setting up a site where people could share news and information in a local area. Originally these were placeblogs and began the citizen journalism movement.

My community site became the go to for information related to the boroughs and townships of our school district. That was it. If it was state or national in nature, I didn’t cover it unless it included the region in some specific way.

It worked well, but couldn’t be monetized and I found most people didn’t mind commenting, but they didn’t want to write content.

Ever since then, I’ve maintained a personal site. Typically it was an online resume, I began doing this before Linked In, along with areas of personal interest. As I engaged in freelance, it became a place for potential clients to learn more about me.

I also used different platforms through the years. I did this to test them and remain current by doing a rebuild every few years.

In January I had been giving thought to creating a new site. I wanted this one to blend more life skills, experience, and personal philosophy as a basis for why to hire me.

The problem was I didn’t think I wanted to go back to work as a website and software application project manager. I was thinking more and more about leveraging my project management skills to help people ‘reinvent’ themselves as I had following my divorce.

I decided to build a site that had a more personal philosophy side and a consulting side to see how the activities of my personal and professional lives benefitted one another.

Three months later, I had a much clearer sense of making my site about my coaching and using my life as an example and basis of my coaching approach and methodology.

My landing page is now for my coaching, Resilient Seeker Coaching with my tag line: the Pursuit of Self – Align. Act. Evolve.

There are six areas and a contact form and they all cross-reference one another.

One goes to my perspective on the world, about me, why coaching, the life coaching framework, my consulting, and former employers and clients.

I also have a blog on the site with three weekly posts. TRSS is the Resilient Seeker Series, where I make a post per week reliving my journey from my low point forward for people to learn what happened, how I responded, and what I learned.

Tolkien Thought is a weekly post on something related to Tolkien’s work. Often this is tied to research I’m doing related to my annual presentation, which is related to the book I am working on. My book is a biography of Turin Turambar that serves as a reader’s guide to the Children of Hurin.

The third weekly post is specific to coaching and aspects it addresses such as life-event changes, identifying and responding to problems, focused attention, and other areas people can use help with better understanding and how to respond.

I don’t worry about traffic stats. For me, as a person who enjoys reading, writing and thinking, these posts give me great pleasure in and of themselves.

A web site isn’t for everyone and neither is blogging, but the tools are available to have a free site or for a nominal fee a basic paid site that can look professional.

Question for You:

Have you kept a blog or maintained a personal web site? What worked and what would you do differently now?

Lessons Learned:

Having a web site is no longer a technical challenge and is available to everyone. It is a good way to organize and present who you are and what you do in a succinct and compelling manner, and this part is not easy, but worthwhile if only to help you, understand yourself better.