The Sage Sayers

Meetings can drain most of us. New leaders tasked with connecting and growing their teams endure endless 1:1’s with their team and peer leaders. Without blocked off time for thinking and tasking, empty slots on shared calendars attract invitations like mosquitoes at a nudist beach. Many find that active listening can help; meaning, listening with all of our senses. Removing distractions and resisting the desire to solve or direct. Also, ensuring we give space for others to think, contemplate, and unlock the answers within.  In this week’s podcast, consider a handful of questions and approaches to build clarity and potency in every meeting from here on. You can read along to this week’s reading if you wish, via Medium.Thank you to my brave coachees, many of whom have won new teams to lead and asked for tips on how to feel less drained from meeting everyone. This request for help inspired this podcast and musing. Reach out to me, your show host, for keynote speaking engagements, group coaching, and training on public speaking fear, active listening, and reinvention via my website, or find me also on Linkedin.

Like most professionals, PTO brings up mixed feelings for NY-based Head of Technical Program Management, Jessica Pelegio: fear of falling back, fear of burdening others, or fear of a deluge of of work when coming back. The Pew Research Center tells us many professionals in the U.S. do not take their full paid time off for these very same reasons,  But last month, Jessica took four whole weeks of PTO—and only good things happened. In our interview we learn how she empowered her team, empowered herself, and with dear friends explored 12 countries. Not only was her team perfectly fine when she returned, they’d missed her and her travels inspired her them to prioritize self care and to do the same. Follow Jessica on LinkedIn by following this link. Reach out to me, your show host, for keynote speaking engagements, group coaching, and training via my website, or find me also on Linkedin.

Professionals all over wonder how to introduce themselves, especially to new bosses, teams, or a recruiter — even to new friends. Introductions (done well) become conversation starters, build connections, even elevate our personal brand. But how do we talk about our work — and life — in ways that stand out and align with our personality and values? And what are the bigger blockers getting in our way. I’m D G McCullough, and in this podcast, I hope to find some answers.Reach out to me, your show host, for keynote speaking engagements, group coaching, and training via my website, or find me also on Linkedin.

When Silicon Valley-based CTO advisor Suhail Syed tells his dear mother back in India about his work helping companies grow business revenue through using products in the cloud, she looks up to the sky. "She's wondering what’s there," Suhail recalls. This sweet story reminds us of the need to clarify any jargon we use and stay audience centered, too. It’s one of many topics we cover in this week’s Sage Sayers episode. Join us on a wander through Suhail’s early arrival here in the states from India ("wet behind the ears") as a younger man and finding his way amidst cultural confusion, new beginnings, and a grit that comes when you’re determined to make things on your own. (He found solace through his own ambitions and his Muslim faith.) We share our disdain for jargon and offer some nice alternatives to the popular ones we hear around us. You can find Suhail Syed on LinkedIn by clicking here. Reach out to me, your show host, for keynote speaking engagements, group coaching, and training via my website, or find me also on Linkedin.

Fear of public speaking has certainly intensified. I first knew this point because my clients kept telling me so. I confirmed the phenomena for sure when I allowed myself recently to feel that intense fear once more, presenting on active listening to a live audience, with a story and a live coaching session within. My essay and musings on being knock-kneed and terrified in front of a live, high-stakes audience and noticing that once I locked into a story, one relevant to my topic and one with deep meaning to me, most of my fears melted away. Reading from my essay on Medium, which you can read with me here. Reach out to me, your show host, for keynote speaking engagements, group coaching, and training via my website, or find me also on Linkedin.

My guest today is marketer, builder, and innovator Simone Morellato, an Italian born technologist and marketer based in the Bay Area, California. Having long worked as a marketer for some of the world’s largest IT firms, Simone’s become expert at many things: communicating and demystifying tech for high-stakes audiences, launching beautiful products, and building high-performing global teams from the ground up. He’s also learned to see where processes can get streamlined and as an inventive type, loves to build bots to help those moments. He’s built a handful or so including a bot to streamline repeated customer questions and requests, a resume bot to help job seekers, and one to help make great menu choices at restaurants. In our interview, we hear more about Simone’s process, the delightful rabbit holes he finds himself in as he builds, and where he learned his love for creating beautiful things (his parents in Italy are shoe artisans). We also touch on ways to make our language bots work with us better, and I plan to bring Simone back to demonstrate with me ways to ask the bots better prompts. You can find Simone on LinkedIn here. Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching and training via my website or find me also on Linkedin.

With some bias perhaps, I think Muskego Highschool’s varsity footballer here in Wisconsin, Nicholas McCullough’s, an impressive teen. He’s the youngest captain in the Muskego Warrior’s team  history. He coaches and mentors younger kids on leadership, and is ranked best in his state for his age and position. The bias comes from him being my son and I’ve brought him to the Sage Sayers this week because he’s pulled off something big we can learn from as business communicators: an invitation (to which he committed) to play football for Harvard University and to study in 2025 quantitative economics. Nicholas got on the radar of all the Ivy’s, received an offer from Cornell University, and communicated with the nation’s best football coaches in person and via Twitter, driving his communications strategy independently  at age 17. (He started his campaign at age 15.)  I promise you’ll learn from him as I do. Listen in, and congratulations again, dear Nicholas. Follow Nicholas via Twitter hereListen to our feature on the gifts of Varsity Football (from the sidelines of the Muskego Warriors) here.  Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching and training via my website or find me also on Linkedin.

My guest this week is Kenza Fourati, a Tunisian fashion model in New York, U.S. who’s co-launched a shoe business that’s done very well, teaching she and her co-founders many lessons along the way. The business employs local Tunisian shoemakers, helping keep a craft alive, repurposes leather that would otherwise go to waste, and brings comfortable, stylish Mediterranean shoes to customers as far away as New Zealand. Kenza’s idea came to her amidst pregnancy and motherhood, a perfect opportunity for deep thinking. She’d long wanted to do something good in the fashion industry, one she finds exploits models and factory workers. She also wanted to challenge others’ view on her Tunisian motherland, which many associated with dark things vs. hope, creativity, and beauty. You can follow Kenza on LinkedIn here. Kenza’s shoe business, Osay, via their beautiful website. Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching and training via my website or find me also on Linkedin.

Hyacinth Tucker always loved people, enterprise, and community when growing up in Jamaica. Here in the states, she’s found a way to channel that love through her new venture, the Laundry Basket, an on-demand mobile laundry and dry cleaning delivery company in Maryland, U.S. In a short time, she’s scaled, gained a considerable client base, and gained a nod from Martha Stewart’s team for novel eco-friendly laundry solutions. In our interview, we hear how Hyacinth built her brand the old-fashioned way: getting in front of people, going to events, saying hi and asking how she could help with their laundry needs. It’s work she loves because she’s bringing time affluence to many, even saving marriages. Want to reach out to Hyacinth? Find her on LinkedIn. Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching and training via my website or find me also on Linkedin.

I'm still swooning over the delightful Chicagoans I met on a recent April visit. (They're the nicest and most open people ever!) In another ad-hoc interview, we learn from Gina Magro, a fashion model adorned in an $8.5k leather Carolina Herrera gown, on how to focus when on stage. She's also expert on seeming open, calming our mind, and showing neutral but warm facial expressions--all super helpful tactics for us as business presenters. Discover Gina’s agency page here. Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching via my website or find me also on Linkedin. I'm currently accepting corporate training engagements on active listening, storytelling, brevity, and building trust amidst low morale.

My guest this week is product, strategy, and operations leader Nupur Thakur who has spent a greater part of her career ensuring that leaders and customers understand her technology well. In a lovely conversation from her Bay Area, SF base, she unpacks what’s helped her  understand her audience and how she breaks down and demystifies technical topics in ways where even the most impatient audiences really get it. You can reach out to Nupur for speaking engagements or to connect via LinkedIn here. Reach out to me, your show host, for communications coaching and group coaching via my website or find me also on Linkedin.

John Chang moved to the U.S. from a balmy part of China with one core goal: To perform violin for orchestras. His practicing’s intense and rigorous as are his auditions. We spoke a few days after auditioning for Chicago’s opera where he and other players must perform their excerpts to faceless judges separated from the musician by a black curtain. Chang tells us of his early years in the U.S., settling in to a new land as a younger student and man, his love for the violin which brings him happiness and calm (he even plays for us some.) And he offers us as business communicators some hacks and tips for staying on course, even when our fear feels intense. Ways exist for us to talk ourselves down. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

North Carolina-based executive architect Abhijeet Patil has long led complex hybrid cloud initiatives for Fortune 500s and loved the challenge. A recent self-generated challenge to write in the public space—his “writing spree”— has helped him discover the joy, clarity, and courage that comes from expressing ourselves in the written word. He’s also learned that writing about India, his motherland, and the people he still cares about there brings geographies and hearts closer. In our interview we hear of Abhijeet’s writing process. His first beautiful essay “About My Father!” chronicles the coaching and leadership his father provided him and took him one hour to write. We hear of his love for two lands: the U.S. and India—and how writing reminds him of what’s most important: family, authenticity, courage, kindness, and love. Please follow Abhijeet and his writing via Medium, with About My Father here. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

Jill Staudacher has spent the best part of her career in pharmaceutical sales; but since COVID she’s felt drawn additionally to alternative ways to heal—both herself, her family, and friends as well. In this timely interview, from my Muskego, Wisconsin base, Jill shares her journey into a powerful career selling excellent medicines to finding a growing interest in healing naturally, both remedies and through simple dietary changes. Profound shifts have happened, including improving the vitals and prospects for cancer sufferers.We conducted this interview on International Women’s Day. So, entrepreneurship, sisterhood, solidarity, and why we must surround ourselves with those who care for and uplift us (as part of our mental and physical health) becomes an additional theme. If you’d like to reach out to Jill for friendship or guidance, find her on Facebook via Refocus your Health. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

If you’ve reworked your resume recently via Resume IO, Canva, or (my favorite platform: My Perfect Resume.com) you’ll see the creative challenge in describing our work efforts, skills, and triumphs within a few words. The summary section on Resume IO rations a cruel 200 characters. The work experience for each role? Three bullets, each worth 200 characters each. (That’s about 4 well-margined lines per role.) One recruiter told me they want to read a resume within one minute. Doable for the author? I say so. But how? We get creative. Stay open. And we trust that less becomes more. We know that the résumé’s a vessel to whet the readers’ appetite. We also learn how to remove the superfluous and retain the substance. Like one dear software developer explained our process as we refined his resume: we find the truth; remove the fluff, and then make the important stuff fit. That’s what we’re here to co-discover this week; ten quick editing tips to cull your word count and make the important and most defining moments for your personal brand fit. Read from my musing on Medium. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

My guest this week has reinvented herself multiple times through multiple life stages—even focuses of her study, career, and the way she chooses to live her life.  Her name’s Rebecca, and after several decades in the corporate world—most recently in a high-powered supply chain role—she’s decided to step down, change her focus, and move away from the U.S. to Casablanca, to top things off. Like others who have created lasting change, Rebecca says the feeling that we need to change is gradual. But when the message becomes clearer, you know the feeling’s not one to ignore.  In our interview you’ll hear laughter, some fear, and some realizing that if we’ve reinvented ourselves once, we can do so again—it’s part of the human condition and strength. And as a former medieval history expert, Rebecca reminds us: we can look to history for some beautiful examples. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

As we rise closer to the top-tier audiences of the companies where we serve, hooking and compelling our audience in our opening sentences feels vital. I know, because I’ve needed to cut to the chase when interviewing experts and executives for articles I’ve written — or anyone with power and visibility. I find this audience more rushed than rude and often switching from one meeting to the next, which can make them seem impatient, especially if we dilly-dally with what we want to say, why, and why they ought to care. My coaching clients echo the same and getting quicker and more nimble with leaders becomes the number one request for help, especially now with performance review feedback trickling in. So how do we hook and compel an audience within a minute or less? Here lie a handful of tactics to try out in your next pitch, sales call, job interview, or  update. You can read these musings on Medium, too. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching and trainings via my website.

Job seekers and those on the rise within their org need data. Numbers and trends within those numbers quantify how we excel at our craft and trade, become proof, and help paint a story — a vision — of success we can bring our future employer or team.But at least 50% of the coachees I coach struggle here because not enough time has passed to show the results, the project or product got torpedoed (typical in big tech firms), or results from our work remain downright ambiguous. That’s what we’re unpacking in this week’s Medium post, which you can read here, and what I’m reading for this week’s Sage Sayer’s podcast—our hundredth episode! How to quantify trends, patterns, and successes, when no hard data exists and plugging in some tips and tactics journalists and reporters use, (which I’ve personally used) and which translate beautifully in business. What a great way to start and kick off 2024. Happy New Year, dear listeners, friends, coachees, and colleagues to come. Want to work with me or join my podcast(s)? Write to me at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching via my website.

I often get asked how to boost our confidence—a tough question, because so many ways exist! My guest in this week’s Sage Sayer’s podcast shares a passion with me for travel. Her name’s Azra Bandali and she’s ventured to 32 countries, an almost annual practice she started as a girl. Azra feels convinced travel has molded her into the woman she is today. In our interview, Azra shares her favorite visits (Africa’s amongst them) and the role a self-imposed sabbatical to Hawaii played—something she negotiated with her employer— in navigating burnout and exhaustion during Covid. (She kept her job, by the way; and she’s risen since.)You can find Azra on LinkedIn and Instagram, and enjoy updates of her travels. (Her #AzrasSabbatical comes also with #KeepingitReal) You can follow me also on LinkedIn and find details on my coaching via my website.  This post becomes the last post for 2023. Thank you for supporting my podcast this year! We did so great and we’re almost at 100 episodes! (Not bad for an immigrant-owned, woman-owned venture and when podcasting’s something I fit around full-time coaching.) I’ve more guests coming in the New Year and will feel inspired for more podcasting after visiting my motherland in New Zealand. Thanks again to Dotun Ayeni for his BEAUTIFUL edits. He adds magic to these captures every time. #bravecommunicators

Many of us dread cold calling and following up with folks, especially when we want or need something from them. Why? Because we can feel (in these delicate moments) that we’re a bother or demanding or even desperate, when none of the above’s normally true. I’m convinced that our Inner Judge plays a role. Our critical inner voice wants to protect us overall from humiliation, rejection, or loss of reputation to our integrity or personal brand. And yet, if we really need someone to do something for us or seek clarity from our audience, then that follow-up’s pretty vital. (Job seekers, sales people, and journalists must do this all the time.)That’s this week’s offering: Ways I’ve almost always gotten through to those I’m needing and answer from, the role journalistic language and approaches can play, and some helpful and even fun framings to play with.Thanks again to Dotun for his gorgeous edits. Thanks to my coachees—especially those putting themselves out there each day while job seeking—for inspiring this episode. Connect with me, Coach Debbi McCullough, about your group's communication challenges via my LinkedIn profile and website.  I'm all about us becoming braver communicators.  Find Dotun Ayeni (my highly-talented producer) on Fiverr via his tagline: @titan32