The Sage Sayers

There's real folly right now in not writing in clear, accessible, and audience-centered ways. Here in the U.S., the home for The Sage Sayers, 30% of workers plan to resign from their jobs and Gallup polls track around 70% feel dejected and not interested in work.

In this week's podcast, I'm sharing tips and techniques for bottom lining key information in your next robust informative message. Whether you're emailing leaders about your stellar performance or alerting a team of a morale boosting initiative, this podcast offers all you need to keep the message crisp, compelling, well structured, and therefore read by many. 

Have a communication challenge to tackle with Coach Debbi? Sign up here for a sample session. Her next communication workshop on active listening lives here and then our first narrative coaching workshop here. Or you can visit her website.

If you're like me, you want to share your story willy-nilly without much thought for strategy. But Coach Pam Knox, my guest this week, advises nothing beyond purposeful, strategic storytelling. Unless we have purpose and know our audience, we'll not be targeted, nor will our message resonate, she says.

Coach Pam's a global business strategist, storyteller and communication coach helping her clients confidently leverage their authentic story as an empowering strength.  In our interview, we unpack best practices on getting our story across, the role mental fitness plays, and the joy in storytelling, which often starts in our youth.

For more information on Coach Pam Knox, visit her website. To book 1:1 or team communications coaching with me, your show host, try my Calendly link. Or, join my next narrative coaching workshop. 

In this week's episode of the Sage Sayers,  I’m narrating Chapter One of the Perfect Novel of My Life. This narrative coaching and mental fitness exercise builds discovery of our inherent gifts to the world and the gifts, knowledge, and the opportunities within each challenging situation. 

I learned this exercise through the Positive Intelligence mental fitness program under the training and leadership of Coach Shirzad Chamine. I loved the experience so much, I created my own hybrid version combining journalism, narrative coaching, and storytelling. 

The result: Self awareness. Storytelling excerpts no marketer can possibly find and confidence.  Also, comfort and clarity from knowing the source of our strengths and values and how and where we learned them. 

Enjoy Chapter One, based in New Zealand's wilderness and chronicling excerpts of the first five years of life and all that was swirling around me as I grew up.

Have a communication challenge to tackle with Coach Debbi? Sign up here for a sample session. Her next communication workshop on active listening lives here and then our first narrative coaching workshop here. Or you can visit her website.

My guest this week is Colby McCullough, a supply chain expert with a combined 24 years of experience in the aerospace and consumer goods industries.  He grew up in New Orleans and holds a BS in Structural Engineering and an MBA in Operations Research from Carnegie Mellon.  

Colby now directs the supply chain analytics at a large, Mid West consumer goods company where he and his team develop analytical tools and reporting to ensure the supply chain runs most efficiently (a great thing, especially within these disruptive, singular times). Clear, succinct, and compelling communications, a craft we can all continue to refine, becomes essential, he says. 

How do I know Colby? Because he’s my dear husband and at his side, I’ve seen his career flourish (and him learning and thriving) from the challenges before him--a true Sage response.

Have a communication challenge to tackle with Coach Debbi? Sign up here for a taster session. Her next communication workshop on active listening lives here and then our first narrative coaching workshop here. Or you can visit her website.

My guest this week is Charles Cranston Jett, a certified coach specializing in career management, critical skill development, and career crises. Charles got here through years of management consulting and executive search experience, especially CEOs and those reporting to CEOs. He also finds calm from lessons and wisdom learned from his former Navy leaders.

Charles reminds us of the power of pivoting, retooling, and reinventing our careers; staying passionate about what we do, and using mental fitness (achieving your full potential from a positive vs. negative mindset) as a vital tool.

You can find more about Charles and his services here and follow his podcast here.  His leadership books are featured on Amazon.

You can book me for a complimentary coaching session via my Calendly link. Or, sign up for my latest communications workshop. My goal and gift always: Helping you replace fear and discomfort with courage and joy when communicating with spooky and high-stakes audiences. 

In this week's podcast, we offer tips and strategies on asking for a raise, promotion, or improved rates and terms with a contract. This podcast provides a revised audio version to Coach Debbi's article on feeling brave as we persuade, published this week on Medium, which you can find here.

Have a communication challenge to tackle with Coach Debbi? Sign up here for a session. Her next communication workshop lives here.

My guest this week is Pastor and Dr. Thomas A DeLoach who captures the hearts of North Carolina's youth through preaching, coaching, and his provocative messages on God and community. 

With Father's Day approaching, Pastor DeLoach's beliefs feel extra timely: He wants to raise the standard of character and integrity of our leaders and help young, troubled youth remember the love of God and their community when they feel lost in their ways. 

As communicators, we can learn from Pastor DeLoach's integrity, his vision, but also his techniques on finding calm, passion, and center as he shares his views from his Word of Life Church and Ministries in front of audiences of hundreds, even a thousand. 

His faith in God, loyalty to his mother, his wife, and determination to reach out to as many people as possible makes him a trail blazer--and an inspiring communicator.

Have a communication challenge to tackle with Coach Debbi? Sign up here for a session. Her communication workshops live here and here. Want to learn more about Pastor DeLoach, his church and ministry? Visit here. 

Gunter Schaber wants to transform how salespeople (and entrepreneurs) view their prize. He means: Rather than focus exclusively on the big payout at the end, enjoy the journey along the way. Doing so becomes vital, if you want to feel happy, he says, and will help you become more successful, too.

In this week's podcast, we hear from Gunter, a Munich, Germany-based sales coach, how (and why) we must rebound with positive vs. negative emotions as we persuade others to say 'yes' to our products or services. Guenter believes mental fitness becomes a vital tool for weathering the inevitable rejections and stresses that come from sales. And he thinks we ought to re-frame the idea of "selling" to "sharing," too. 

You can hire and find Gunter on LinkedIn. You can book Debbi for a coaching or training session via Calendly, attend her workshops, or share ideas for future episodes at [email protected]. 

My guest this week is Peter Khoury, a professional speaker and public speaking coach from the West Bank based in San Francisco.  Peter's a great story to tell of a life full of art, priests, and wonder as a boy to his career in engineering, training, and now public speaking and training through his business, Magnetic Speaking.

Peter's a firm believer of learning, growing,  and retooling. He offers within this episode great tips on how to sound lively, authentic, and fearless with your next presentation, too.

Visit Debbi's website, book her for a complimentary coaching session on any communication challenge messing with you, or attend her next workshop:  Asking powerful questions which yield interesting depth vs. frivolous fluff.

In this week's podcast, we explore how mental fitness through Positive Intelligence (the science and practice of mastering your mind so you can reach your full potential) serves us with high-stakes presentations and messages. Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, becomes a universal problem and no other tool (I've discovered) helps like mental fitness does. 

Today's episode (a kick-off in a series on mental fitness and direct communication) shares the Sage perspective and the Sage Empathy power. These two super powers will help you ground, worry less, and deliver your message from a place of love, confidence, and clarity vs. fear-induced worry, self doubt, and panic. Sound familiar? Listen in. 

You can learn more about Positive Intelligence here.

Visit Coach Debbi's website here and try her new Hanging Rock workshops: 

• The Active Listening workshop (Wednesday, May 26 @ 9 a.m., Noon, and 6 p.m. CST). 
• The Powerful Questions workshop (Wednesday, June 9 @ 9 a.m., Noon, and 6 p.m. CST). 

We're going global, helping the world communicate from a brave, compelling, and loving place!