The Sage Sayers

It took four pageants, but for Mia Frolova, the newly crowned Miss Texas Jr. Teen, every one was worth it. Asked what helped her win this time, she credits practice, focus, joy—and staying true to herself. It's rare to interview a beauty queen. It's rarer still to interview a mother and daughter who've both worn the crown. In this week's episode of Sage Sayers , we hear from Mi...

How we answer an ad hoc question has unfairly become an audition for memorability and conviction. Way too many of us fumble the return.  Reading from this week's popular Substack post , we ponder on why a simple question does not always yield a simple answer. Also, how answering ad hoc questions in vague, convoluted ways can kill an interview, torpedo a first date, even start a fight with som...

We bring back to the show Dr. Marcia Reynolds, Global Guru Top 10 and Master Coach Trainer and Author of multiple books, including Coach the Person, Not the Problem Second Edition, now a bestseller on Amazon.  We ask Marcia about listening, receiving, and preparing our mind to listen, all essential for any coaching and conversation to go well.  We discuss how judgment can obstruct our presence and...

Founders of the New Jersey non-profit organization, Trees for Me, align with a core premise: It takes ten trees to support one life.  With that, founder Harini Rajesh and co-founder Anvita Gurumurthy, Sowmya Parthasarathy and Rupa Gurumurthy started this initiative to plant trees around the world. (Harini goes to Cornell university and Anvita is at NYU.)  "There aren't nearly enough tree...

We sit down with Melinda Gonzalez, an author and retired entrepreneur whose heart and purpose feel deeply rooted in faith and service. When her twin son and daughter both went to college, she felt a bigger pull to write the book she believes Jesus always wanted her to write.  "Jesus is the Coolest Guy I Know" takes all of her learnings from being a devoted Bible student for decades and d...

When Harvard University first year student Jonathan Rubin first launched NextTier Athletes five months ago, he did not anticipate the business reaching five figures monthly so soon from launch.  The consulting business, helping high-school top athletes get the inside edge from current Ivy League athletes, took off fast. "We had an idea. We knew time was limited, and we had to capitalize on it...

We hear the need for brevity to hook and engage our audiences. What if we're so brief, we struggle to expand or stretch beyond one sentence? Reading from Substack: How we can expand on our ideas and offerings to the world in interesting ways, and without sounding annoyingly "braggish." Tips, tactics, and analysis on the cultural and humility barriers that might be getting in our way...

If you seek motivation to use LinkedIn more liberally and well, start listening to and following LinkedIn Coach Ashi Chopra. She's a Mumbai-based entrepreneur who loves to help women (especially) tell their stories on LinkedIn, the world's largest social media site for business professionals.  We hear from Ashi on the missed opportunities of engaging on LinkedIn and that telling our audi...

We spotlight a revered and favorite MCC coach, Master Coach Trainer & Author Dr. Marcia Reynolds, who has worked in 47 countries and reached over 100k people. Dr. Reynolds comes to us weeks after her Second Edition release of "Coach the Person, Not the Problem," already an Amazon bestseller.  We learn communications and listening approaches and habits leaders and coaches can emulate...

“There’s always a gap of what men can read, understand, and put into practice with supporting the women in their lives through menopause.”  So says British author and photographer, Simon Salt, who is working on a beautiful guide, the “Quiet Transition” to help men and women ride the perfect storm of menopause.  He reasons: Men are fixers. We are solution finders. ”Problem is with menopause, there’...

We turn the spotlight this week on Dr. Haru Yamada, a sociolinguist, listening intelligence researcher, and author of “KIKU: The Japanese Art of Good Listening” to discover just how we do listen? Also, why performative skills like speaking, presenting, and offering ideas can overshadow (in many cultures) the often under-tapped skills of listening, both for receiving information and strengthening r...

Like many effervescent people, Ohio-based Austin Sussel has little trouble connecting even with strangers, and even at work. He got great at it, actually, as an international account manager of Fortune 100/500s. But even Austin struggles at times when the connection's not there. Or worse, the receiver of your attempts to converse stone walls you.   "In those moments, sales leaders told m...

We're welcoming back to the show Harvard student athlete, Nick McCullough, now on his second semester at Harvard as an Econ student and defensive tackle player for the Harvard Crimson football team. [Listener note: Nick is also my oldest son.]  We hear from an 18-year-old first-year student and footballer all about networking and what that means at Harvard: Getting in with people you like and...

Happy New Year, dear Sage Sayers listeners. Welcome back. 2026, Year of the Fire Horse, will be awesome.   If you're stuck on how to approach goals this year, or even to bother with them, British tech marketer and coach, Malvika Joshi, joins me for episode 1, season 5, with her approach, and how to communicate goals (to ourselves, and others.) (Popular data tells us 80-90% of professionals ab...

Patty McGee never cared for how grammar was taught to her at school. “It was always so strict, rigid, and not interesting at all.”  After years as a teacher, Patty pledged to make grammar interesting for the kids she taught at school. From seeing such great results and children loving her approach, she co-wrote a book on grammar, one which we can appreciate as business communicators too.  In our i...

Co-Founder of Female Mavericks, Advisor, Coach and Cheerleader to Solopreneurs Beth Mazza joined the Sage Sayers the week before Thanksgiving, and I'm so glad she joined our show.  Our paths crossed from her intriguing LinkedIn post which highlighted that AI searches of images of female founders often yielded images of men. As a mother of three daughters and whose two exits as an entrepreneur...

Award-winning author, speaker, and CEO advisor Leslie Grandy guides teams, companies, and product leaders to leverage their creative thinking to elevate their organizations. She's worked across the entertainment, retail, and IT industries for the big giants whose names you'd know (including Amazon, Oracle, and Apple.)  Although her book, "Creative Velocity," encourages us to ha...

Not often do I meet a fellow writer, entrepreneur, and problem solver like Content Creation Coach Cynthia Trevino. We met via LinkedIn after she liked something wild I put out there (a hype video for a workshop). I noticed her pithy, powerful title and headline she'd wisely crafted and invited her in for a chat.  I love that Cynthia has reinvented, started out as an entrepreneur after being l...

Entrepreneur, almost new dad, and tech leader Steven Puri knows a lot about remote teams and work. He's led remote teams across multiple huge companies (including Fox, DreamWorks, and Sony) for 20 years. He's a daily yogi, an almost new dad, and also launched the Sukha Company helping remote workers focus, finish faster, and feel healthier.  We discovered different ways to connect, even...

My guest this episode is Patrick Chou. His career path has included a PhD from MIT and a thriving Silicon Valley career in the optical telecom business where he understands both the technology and business of pluggable optics. Patrick's also a writer and actor, which helps feed (along with his technology work) a quest to better understand how humans communicate.  In our conversation, we hear...

One thing I love about being a coach? Meeting other coaches, who are often just the loveliest, upbeat people--and thoughtful too. Coach Neeraj Juneja is a favorite new coaching friend this year who has already taught me so much.  For ~20 years, Neeraj has worked at American Express, BCG, NatWest, and Axis Bank and has coached leaders for the last 6+ years at BCG and NatWest.  In our interview (Nee...

My guest this week is John Hopkins University professor Consuelo Amat whose research interests include state repression, armed and unarmed resistance, political violence, and developing civil society in authoritarian regimes, with a focus on Latin America. In a delightful conversation, a first-time meeting, Consuelo tells us what started her on this path and why she's remained there fascinate...

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...

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!) Freema...

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 cu...