My guest this week is my friend and mentor coach Sophia Casey who trains coaches like me to strive to become our very best version of ourselves and with that, our most present. We chat about all the barriers getting in our way, including wanting to perform, or solve, even direct our coachees towards profound epiphanies and results. (None of which makes us very present at all.)

Coach Sophia, whose MCC and runs a fabulous coaching training business by the way, also humors her mentee by coaching me using a three-word question technique. Very powerful results come from our session indeed. What a treat. And how beautiful to feel and hear how our conversation slowed with just three word prompts. (Or, less.)

If you’d like to find Coach Sophia Casey’s academy, ICLI Rising, click here. You can also follow Coach Sophia on LinkedIn here. Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages on everything from active listening. public speaking fear to storytelling. You can find my LinkedIn profile here and my website here.

Guess who my podcast guest is this week? It's Jackson James McCullough, my 14-year-old son who I consider a hugely calming influence on me and my life. (I've long wanted to interview this wise young man and he finally said 'yes.' )

Join us on our adhoc interview and woodland walk in our leafy state of Wisconsin, just days after Jackson finished his first year at high school. You'll hear his insights on how to try not to overload, to rest when we're done, to block off time for our bigger tasks, and to make time for things outside of work and school that connect us with our community and bring us joy, every day. (He's a leader beyond his years.)

Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages on everything from active listening. public speaking fear to storytelling. You can find my LinkedIn profile here and my website here.

I’m one of millions of people globally who not only love bird watching, I love to do so from my garden. What a treat to interview Jacqueline Crivello, an award winning photographer, author, bird feeding store owner, a birder, entrepreneur and even an inventor of a bird feeder for hummingbirds. (The latter comes inspired from her very first bird feeder she created as a girl in the forest behind her Wisconsin home. She used a baby food jar and nail polish to attract them.)

In our interview, we’re both surprising crisp and sharp given we both woke at 3:30 a.m. that day, drawn from our sleep by the fuller moon and bird song. (Jacqueline hears her from her forest backdrop in Colorado and mine from my Wisconsin garden.)

You’ll enjoy hopefully hearing two entrepreneurial women who’d never spoken prior to our interview and find plenty of through lines and shared loves: birds, nature, reinvention, and finding peace and calm through the outdoors. Also, lessons from our girlhoods, which still guide us today. Join us.

Follow Jacqueline Crivello on Instagram and find her photography and children’s nature books via @jacqueline_crivello_author and her website.

Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages on everything from active listening. public speaking fear to storytelling. You can find my LinkedIn profile here and my website here.

More coachees are asking me each week how to become an International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified coach and how I became a coach, specifically the decisions before me and the training itself. (I’m delighted they ask, because coaching’s a truly delightful field.)

I’ve found a fantastic home in this new industry, now coaching full-time for an audience I adore and relate well to. (Most of my clients are foreign-born leaders or managers on their way to the top.) I’m training coaches and corporate leaders on active listening, because they realize they must listen well to get places. My training’s broadened what felt possible. Reading from my article on Medium, in this week’s podcast, I’m sharing how I trained to become a coach, letting the most popular questions I hear guide us.

Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages. I’m for hire as a corporate trainer with active listening and public speaking as popular topics. You can find my LinkedIn profile here and my website here.

Certifying with the International Coaching Federation, the world’s largest nonprofit for professional coaches, challenges many coaches because it’s no easy feat. We must speak only 10% of the time, drive clarity, insights, and accountability too. Submitting a recorded coaching call to ICF evaluators for review often erodes our presence with our coachee, who we care about the most, even over the exam itself.

With the calm wisdom of Coach Sathyanarayanan Sethuraman, my friend and peer coach, we unpack and troubleshoot these problems as we pursue our ICF goals. (Sathya’s certifying at the PCC level and I’m pursuing MCC— level two and level three of the ICF’s core credentials.)

Join us for tips on saying less, doing more, and staying calm and present, no matter what. And thank you again to Sathya who had a work emergency amidst our interview which he dealt with midstream and came back to our show! Talk about presence.

Listen for our earlier episode here on taming our monkey brain.

You can reach Sathya on LinkedIn here. Reach out to me, D G McCullough, for insights on my group coaching and training packages and individual packages on reinventing, promoting, and using your voice through refining the written word. You can find my LinkedIn profile here.

Solar eclipse. Mercury retrograde. New moon. Job layoffs. Overwork. No surprise many of us are losing it at home and at work.

But if you’re a mental fitness practitioner with a goal to stay calm and peaceful no matter what, some ways exist to find the ease and flow and stabilize the mood and feeling in yourself and those around you.

In our delightful conversation, fresh after time digging in her garden (where she loves to play the most), Coach Karen du Four des Champs, who has been coaching for several decades, tells us her tips, tools, and asks me some too.

My interview with Chicago-based fashion consultant and stylist, Magdalena Kranz, kicks off a series of ad hoc interviews across my two podcasts. (I also host the Sage Sayers on Apple podcasts).

I love that dear Magdalena takes us from her turbulent past in Poland before migrating to the U.S. We hear that she arrived in Chicago as a teen with little more than books, two t-shirts, one pair of pants, and one pair of sneakers. Today, she serves as a fashion consultant at the U.S.’s most luxurious retailer, dressing Michigan Avenue’s high-end shoppers, and being a true fashionista, collector, and connoisseur of gorgeous fashion herself.

And yet, as our conversation reveals, despite driving for more (like most immigrants), she finds that sometimes it’s the simplest times in our lives when we feel the most peace and our happiest.

I thank Magdalena for her brave story, her honesty and tenderness. Magdalena, you’re an amazing storyteller and woman—my new friend, too.

If you’d like to know more about your show host and my coaching and training services, find me on LinkedIn or visit my website here.

Building your own venture can bring a whirlwind of creativity, problem solving, and joy from building something you love. Partner it with coaching and certifying as a coach and you’ve endless surges of energy and happiness. This becomes the life and outlook of Coach Malvika Joshi, a London-based coach who’s just launched her own coaching practice with a co-partner while thriving still as a marketing leader.

In our interview, you’ll hear Malvika’s learnings and hopes as a coach, and her intention for the Coven, a group coaching supper club bringing together community, self awareness, and self growth, over food. You’ll also hear the vital role that solidarity and sisterhood can play, and that everything we’ve ever done prior to coaching brings perspective.

If you’d like to find Coach Malvika, reach her on LInkedIn or via Instagram. If you’d like to know more about your show host and my coaching and training services, find me on LinkedIn or visit my website here.