The Sage Sayers

Requests for updates on our work can startle and befuddle us as communicators. Much pressure exists: We must be brief, clear, and on point with what the requester of information needs and wants. Communications strategy and self awareness on why we feel unconfident in that moment helps. 

This week’s episode shares all of that, including a framework for getting in and out of your update in a minute or less, and with reasonable specifics within. 

Wanting more tips and strategies on self promotion, brevity, and staying humble and confident? Join my Sept 9-12 Maven workshop, Brag Anyway. Move your one-liner and bios from basic to powerful in 7 hours. Write to me at [email protected] for a 50% off discount code. Put “Brag Anyway 50 off” in the subject line. 

My guest this week is Jacqueline Freeman, a New Zealander TV industry insider, a media strategist, and the unapologetic voice behind a platform thats rewriting what relevance looks like after 50. After her posts speaking out against ageism went viral, reaching 1 million views (and counting) her podcast interview with the Sage Sayers is her first after many invitations elsewhere. (Lucky us!)

Freeman’s a voice worth listening to. Thousands of people write to her saying they feel heard, stronger from her truth, and that her posts are real. 

Her hope: that those 50 and over can sit and stand a little taller, find their place in a job market that discriminates, and go out on their own. Entrepreneurialism empowers, we both agree, and that brings creativity and an entirely different perspective and point of view. We’re not over the hill, yet. We’re doing the best work of our careers. 

You can find Jacqueline on LinkedIn here. (Don’t be surprised if she writes back, as she did to me, to accept this interview.) 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her upcoming communications workshops on Maven, Brag Anyway, and Listen Like a Boss. Her free Lightning Lessons: Be brief with your Brag (Aug 14) and How to feel less awkward with pause in conversation. (Aug 13)

Polly Leung has long loved conversations on finance. She enjoys getting us talking and thinking about our money and planning ahead so we can enjoy our lives when retired, taking that time to travel. 

Her lesson on money came from growing up in Hong Kong and then starting over in her teens in California, US, moving here with her mother and siblings—an expensive move, and one that also taught her cultural agility. 

In a lovely interview, we hear of Polly’s cultural transition across two continents and a wish that she’d connected with more locals when starting out. We also learn of her fascinating work as an associate director of finance for a leading university, and how we can make small tweaks to how we spend each day to save that nest egg for that rainy day. 

Business owner of College Sharks Lee Norwood helps break down the complexities of college admissions for thousands of college students. And she loves the lessons the teens teach her on humility, storytelling, grit, determination--all which they need to enter a college that will take them places. 

In a lively, unscripted interview, Lee shares her segue from Pharma to college consulting (which happened with serendipity). She speaks on the challenges for students, which include intense competition and misinformation from scaremongering parents. And we hear of her love for helping teenagers get their hearts and minds in the right place for the otherwise grueling college admissions process.

You can find Lee at College Sharks, recently featured in Forbes, by the way, and on LinkedIn. 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her upcoming communications workshops on Maven, Brag Anyway, and Listen Like a Boss. 

A recent live, online workshop I hosted reminded me of the power of grounding in our bodies, one sense at a time—-and with nature, my favorite tool and companion. A documentary essay of my last few hours before going live.

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her upcoming workshop on Maven, Brag Like a Boss.

British Marketing and Product GTM Leader, Nirav Patel, rejoins us on the Sage Sayers for an update on his life since our earlier episode. 

He’s now a podcaster, like me, five episodes into his show Unwinding Pursuits, and has learned a lot from his rich conversations with his guests. He’s still thriving as a leader and on Father’s Day weekend, reflects on parenting his three daughters and the gifts, opportunities, and knowledge within. 

We take a lovely wander down memory lane, two foreign born professionals and parents drawing on our lessons from our own childhoods (Nirav’s from India and the UK and mine from New Zealand, Pakistan, and Brunei where I spent part of my girlhood.) 

We agreed that while children are better off in many ways today, much freedom and heightened innovation and creativity came from our youths; making your own fun and games, structuring our own time, without much input from adults at all. 

You can find Nirav Patel here on LinkedIn and follow his delightful show Unwinding Pursuits here. 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her upcoming workshop on Maven, Brag Like a Boss, and her free Lightning Lesson Brag Anway. Defy your Cultural Norms here. 

Experts tell us AI writing adoption's now mainstream with 82% of businesses using AI tools for creating content. Good news for the AI market, now projected to reach a $1.8 trillion global AI market by 2030. 

And yet we know AI's not perfect at writing. In fact, partners I team with, like Maven, a popular platform for cohort-based learning where I'm building several communications workshops, discourages course creators to use AI for writing a course design. It reminds us to use AI to brainstorm content ideas, not to write them. 

I fully agree, and so does entrepreneur and Carnegie Mellon University professor of entrepreneurship Mark DeSantis. In this week's episode, one of my favorite entrepreneur buddy's back, discussing with me how we use and don't use AI for our writing.

You'll learn some new ways to use AI to help kickstart your writing. And you'll hear some cautionary tales on how the world's most talked-about technology can actually muddy and cloud our written word in ways that don't serve us (nor our readers) well at all. 

You can hear our earlier interview from January, another favorite episode here. You can find Mark DeSantis who also consults and teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University here. 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her upcoming workshop on Maven, Brag Like a Boss, and her free Lightning Lesson on one-liners here. 

My guest this week is Dr. Elise Wilkerson, a culture champion in the workplace, an evaluator, educator, and researcher. Dr. Elise is also a woman eager to share her story with endometriosis, a condition impacting 1:10 women of reproductive age globally—an estimated 190 million. 

Its symptoms can cause pain and potential infertility, and yet what Elise, who struggles with endometriosis has found, too few women talk about what this is like, especially the most painful part: the infertility. 

In our interview, which we recorded on Mother's Day week, Elise shares her experiences in hopes that other women can feel less alone. We learn about her self advocacy, her struggles with not being able to be a mother, and how faith and hope and love from her husband (and even self love) play a helpful role. 

You can reach out to Dr. Elise Wilkerson via LinkedIn. 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her workshop on confident storytelling, Brag Like a Boss. 

Harvard University received 53,700 applications for this incoming class of 2029. Of those, 1,950 were admitted, a 3.63% acceptance rate. My oldest of two sons, Nicholas McCullough, is one of them. He’ll play defensive tackle for the Harvard University football team, who recruited him, and he’ll study economics.

As mother’s day weekend approaches, my last with him under our roof, I’m feeling what any Harvard parent might feel: Pride. Euphoria. Excitement. Awe. 

The deeper feelings, impending heartbreak of him moving away from our Wisconsin base to Boston, I’m processing—and managing, in part through honoring Competency No 5. That deceptively tricky competency of staying present in a space of not knowing feels super powerful and potent to me now, with one delightful and lovable son still with us and one getting ready to leave. 

I’m reading this episode from a first essay published today on Medium, honoring an 18-year chapter of raising a son within two cultures and in ways that instilled confidence, calm, and a quest for adventure. And we’re starting another. I’m calling this essay series “the Harvard Mum Project” (because we say “mum” vs. “mom” where I come from).

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her active listening workshop on Maven, Listen Like a Boss. 

“It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” So said Muhammad Ali — the late boxer, social activist, and cultural icon known as The Greatest. He was right. And yet, too many of us shy away from bragging in our self-appraisals and self-assessments. We can default to vague, corporate language, light on specifics. Gems — the crowning achievements — get buried or left out.

I think I know why. Most professionals spend 1–3 hours writing their self-appraisal (McKinsey tells us), but privately many spend beaucoup hours agonizing over it. Why? Fear of disdain from a dismissive boss. Lost confidence from missed promotions. Awkwardness from childhood messages that praised humility and discouraged self-praise. 

When coaching, I’ve found a few things that help. For the writing piece, approaching your writing like a journalist works: Capture the win, offer context, and tell a darn good story. That’s what we’re offering in this week’s Sage Sayer’s episode—my gift to the restless and ambitious. 

Read my musings this week on Medium or join our conversation on LinkedIn. 

Your show host, D G McCullough is a former reporter for the Guardian, the Economist, and the FT of London. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders all over the globe. Find her on LinkedIn.  Join her active listening workshop on Maven, Listen Like a Boss.