Connection isn’t about personality—it’s about how your brain works. In this episode, Rei McColley joins Jeff Ostroff to explore the brain science behind trust, rapport, and presence. Rei breaks down the three key brain networks that shape focus, imagination, and social connection, explains why simple actions like yawning and shared values build trust, and reveals what’s really happening in the brain during social anxiety. This episode lays the foundation for understanding connection as a learnable, brain-based skill.

Highlights:

1. How neuroscience became the missing puzzle piece in Rei’s self-growth journey
2. The three key brain networks that shape focus, imagination, and connection
3. Why yawning and shared values build trust faster than words
4. What really happens in your brain during social anxiety or overwhelm
5. How switching brain networks creates flow, agency, and deeper presence

Featured Guest:

Rei McColley is a Certified NeuroCoach, Art and Movement Therapist, Master Certified in Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, and Certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. With 35 years studying human communication and seven years in neuroscience, Rei blends brain-based strategies, mindfulness, and creative expression to help people build clarity, confidence, and authentic connection in life and work.

About the Host:

Jeff Ostroff started interviewing and recording people when he was barely seven years old! It started when his father bought a 7” reel-to-reel Webcor tape recorder that had a microphone. Jeff constantly used that microphone or a bottle of hair tonic (to represent the mic) to announce baseball games and rock-and-roll songs.

These days, Jeff has reconnected more strongly than ever with his interviewing and voiceover passions. While handling his clients’ voiceover projects, he’s interviewed different leaders on nearly 180 programs since June 2020. His two audio/video promotional interviewing platforms are Voices in the Spotlight and Looking Forward®: It’s All About Opportunities. He also interviews business owners to help them sell their businesses or create client/customer video testimonials for them, and mid-to-senior-level job seekers to help them land jobs or Board positions.

Jeff’s helped create and hosted (or co-hosted) podcasts for others including BBX World’s “Business X” (Australia) podcast, episodes of the “My MacDLife” and “The Local Business Show” podcasts, and, most recently, the Jewish Family Services of Delaware and Grand Connections podcasts. He’s created and hosted podcasts of his own, too, including “Health Care on the Horizon.”

Jeff’s also a job/media interviewing coach and the author of the books, Successful Marketing to the 50+ Consumer (Prentice-Hall) and 6 Great Global Opportunities for This Decade (self-published). Previously, he was an executive in marketing and communications for two large health care organizations. He also founded and led a bicycle-touring business, and a marketing consulting and speaking/training firm which helped business targeting the seniors’ (age 50+) market.

Jeff Ostroff can be reach at www.jeff-ostroff.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-ostroff/

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