The Sage Sayers: How Can We Apply For Grants, Funds, (and Patents) Others Say 'Yes' To? Tips From CEO of Phyla, Yug Varma.

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

Diwali, an annual Hindu festival of lights, celebrates Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, and marks the beginning of the fiscal year in India. For the 17.9 million Indians living overseas, many still celebrate Diwali this month in the countries where they’re based.  Madhu Chawla, an Arizona-based Senior Manager at American Express, says Diwali becomes a piece of something you own and hold dear to your heart. And Diwali’s even more powerful when celebrated outside of India because of the deep connection with joy, their culture, and tender memories from the past. 

Madhu returns to our show after an earlier interview, which I share here: https://thesagesayers.buzzsprout.com/1526614/12808036. In this week’s episode, hear the gifts and opportunities of India’s festival season, including Diwali, and a call from Madhu for us all to celebrate one another’s culture and traditions, finding the joy and learnings within.

Reach out to Madhu Chawla via LinkedIn by clicking here.

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. 

My guest today wants to share her story (anonymously for her privacy) of two fertility treatments she has undertaken (the second still in progress) and the gifts, the learning, and the opportunities she has found along the way. Her motivation: Wanting to plan ahead to ensure she can have a family, when she’s ready. And she’s part of a larger and growing trend.  

World over more women are having fertility treatments through egg retrieval and freezing. The Pew Research Center’s new September survey found 4:10 adults, around 42% of Americans say they’ve used fertility treatments or know someone who has—a 33% uptick from five years ago.  Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s April 2023 report cites infertility affecting 1:6 people globally.

Our interview shares the thought process, the system and processes, the challenges, but also the joy that comes from self-advocacy and taking charge of what we really want.

Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for group or individual coaching and training on reinventing, communicating, and creating (or reinventing) your personal brand. Follow and connect with me here on LinkedIn and my writing/musings via Medium.

 

If you're job interviewing, you may feel a bit nervous about the inevitable blips which come up in our work story, especially during turbulent times. I've beaucoup ideas and tactics in this week's podcast episode and in my article on Medium on how to iron out those kinks in confident, non-apologetic ways and in ways which help our personal brand.

A lot of lovely requests for help on this topic from peers and my coachees inspired this week's musings. I'm drawing from my own career transitions when no narrative seemed to thread the changes together (and how I found then shared that narrative). I'm also pulling from job seekers out there right now and what we've co-created and applied. These tips have landed them progress in their search and/or the role of their dreams.

Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for group or individual coaching and training on reinventing, communicating, and creating (or reinventing) your personal brand.