PWH 28. LauraAura Interview Retrospective: Top Tricks Taught & Lessons Learned

From the energizing topic of voice preparation to the real-life hiccups with tech, Lexi delivers a heartfelt retrospective — a practice she’s picked up in her final weeks of grad school. This episode is both a celebration of growth and a resource for podcasters looking to improve their craft.

🧠 What You'll Learn:

• Why warming up your voice is essential — and how Laura Aura does it like a pro.
• Lexi’s top 3 wins from the interview setup (including her guest form template strategy!).
• A few humbling tech lessons (hint: test everything first — especially that shiny new mic).
• How to treat your voice like an athlete’s tool: warm-up, game time, and cool down.

🔧 Tools & Tips Mentioned:

• Guest intake form (and how it saved time!)
• Somatic voice warm-ups for confidence
• Using peppermint oil & throat coat tea for speaking prep
• Why first impressions start before you say hello on Zoom

💬 Connect With Lexi:

Have podcasting lessons or funny tech flubs of your own? Lexi wants to hear from you!
 📲 Text via the link in the show description
 📸 DM @whyshewhistles on Instagram

CONTACT & MORE RESOURCES

Project Start Your Podcast Workbook

Let’s Connect!
Tag me on your latest podcast episode on Instagram or LinkedIn – I’d love to cheer you on!

Podcast Inspo:

Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap

All In with Allie

Always Supporting:

Planned Parenthood

© 2025 Whistler Media LLC. All rights reserved. No content may be reused without written consent.

Transcript

Alexandra Susann  0:00  
So I'm going to practice this and give you a retrospective of this last interview. What could have gone better. Welcome to podcast with her, where we publish value driven podcast episodes every week together, and we have fun and learn so much while we do it. Hi, I'm Lexi, and my mission is to teach women how to create an impactful podcast and establish authority in their professional fields. That is what podcast with her is here to help you do, speak confidently, publish consistently, and create value with your voice. So consider this your accountability. Check. Where are you on this podcast journey? If you're right in the beginning, that's great. The first three episodes are here to help you get started already, making episodes perfect. The rest is to keep you motivated to keep going.

Alexandra Susann  1:08  
Welcome back to another episode of podcast with her. I hope your day is going great, and I'm so grateful for your time and attention here. I'm really looking forward to sharing some lessons I learned last week from doing my first interview since 2023 so I'm in my final weeks of grad school, and I'm reflecting on everything I've learned. And one of the things that I'm really taking away that we started this semester is doing a retrospective report. So we have different teams that work together to design in a group, and at the end of every session, we've been doing a retrospective so we'll do a meeting, and each person goes around and shares something that they thought went really well. Maybe it's something personal that they're proud of, or something they saw in the team, and then something that they would like to do better or think could be done better going forward, maybe with themselves again, or maybe as a group. So I'm going to practice this and give you a retrospective of this last interview. You may have noticed the last episode is with a brilliant mind named Laura ora, and it was so much fun to record. If you could have seen me on the other side, you would have seen me nodding along, cheeks huge, grinning all along with her stories and the authentic wisdom that she shared. Yet, there are some things that I will be taking away from this interview on my own side that I'm hoping to improve in the future. So let's start off with what went well. Number one, the topic, Laura ora and I met in a coaching group for women entrepreneurs, and I connected with her story right away. This coaching group is more for the woo, woo and energetic, and we have conversations about all of the things, not just the serious things. And when I heard Laura's story, I just knew that it was a conversation that I wanted to have, and I knew that she was someone who would really connect with what I'm trying to build here, which is a knowledge base of how to help yourself, Grow your confidence in your voice. And I mean, this is an episode that I will go back and listen to for sure, she shared so much about what she does to prepare for getting up on stage. She's been a public speaker for many, many years now. She shared her journey from having a marketing agency and then feeling this inner voice call her to speaking and finally giving into that. So she's also a podcaster, and that obviously takes your voice in a journey of its own. And she coaches women herself. So she has the gutsy collective of women, and her podcast is the gutsy podcast. So if you haven't listened to that conversation. Conversation, I highly recommend, because I have been using all of her little nuggets of wisdom since recording a couple of them being some somatic practices that she talked about getting up on stage. So whatever that stage might be, I, for example, had a an actual job interview for a position that I would really love to get, and I took some of her advice on the car ride to that interview, I let my voice free. I just like mumbled and jumbled and said weird words in the car, and I just hummed, and I made noise, and she talked about warming up your voice, letting your body be expansive, and definitely not letting when you start speaking be the first time you start speaking. That day, you really want to warm up your voice and physically. She said having hot beverage

Alexandra Susann  6:06  
also helps to warm up your voice. So a cup of tea, she recommended throat coat, and then she suggested using peppermint oil on your wrists, on your temples, just to wake up your body and really ground down in this energy. So those were all things that I used to get ready for this interview, and it went so well. I felt so confident because my voice was clear and warm, and I felt like I really spoke my truth. So her tips definitely helped. And then she talked about being on stage, and actually what it's like to have a script and maybe feed into the audience a little bit and go off script, and where that balance is. And then she also mentioned how afterwards, there's this misconception maybe that speakers are typically extroverts. So she is not, and I'm definitely not. I totally related when she said that she essentially has a like a hangover after being on stage and being on for that period of time. So she has to find a quiet place and just regroup and fill up her cup again, maybe shake it out ground, put your actual feet on the earth in the grass. So she had some really good suggestions for that whole process of preparing your voice for something big, something important. Maybe that's a conversation with a friend or a family member that you've been needing to have. Maybe it is hopping on a podcast or actually public speaking. Maybe it's something at work giving a presentation or going into a meeting with your boss and wanting to feel prepared, but there are so many times where we use our voice that we can strengthen it in a way before we we just ask it to meet this challenge. So treating this almost like an athletic event and like you are a voice athlete, do what you need to warm it up, to get in the game, and then to cool down. So that was number one, definitely topic. She was amazing. The topic was perfect for this podcast. Number two that went well was prepping questions that I really wanted to dig into. In the past, I would put together a rough list, and maybe it was the night before. But with this one, I knew that I really wanted to dig in, and since I knew more about her, I had a couple weeks just to think about her background and what I really would maybe ask her if we were just having coffee, and that's how I treated this interview, is, If she was a mentor for me, what would I be asking in order to learn from her? So it was questions about stage presence and, you know, going through that energetic journey of being on it was questions about growing the podcast and also about shifting from the thing that you feel like you're called to do, in one sense, that was her marketing agency, and then listening to her voice and shifting into something different, it happens, and I wanted to hear what that was like. So having those questions that I. Really felt excited about made this interview so much fun. And then a third that went well. This is something that I implemented this year, and it's to have a guest form to fill out. So I just set up a Google forms that has essentially an invite to the podcast. And then a lot of these speakers, if they have done a lot of podcasting or speaking on stages, they may already have a speaker sheet, or maybe they have a speaker reel. So I had a section for them to input something like that, like actual to drop a PDF. And then I had places that had questions like, What is the bio that you would like us to use? You know, your updated bio and your social links, and are there any topics that are off limits, you know, and then one of the most important is, do we have permission to use this recording and your voice and your images that you gave us a yes or no question, pretty simple, but just to cover your ass if anything happens, And then a spot where they can import their professional headshot, whatever they would like to use. So instead of doing all of the email back and forth, that just saves both of us time, it's an organized way to have all of that information in one place. So that is something I'm looking forward to just iterating on and maybe improving it in some ways, but right now, it's working now to the juicy stuff. What could have gone better? Okay, so you guys, the microphone that I'm on right now, she is my love. She has come with me from Minnesota to Colorado. She's been around for, I don't know, five years at this point, I trust her. I i plug her in. I know what it's going to sound like. I'm by no means an audio engineer, and sound is not my top priority, so my standards are pretty medium. I would say my top priority is to get the information across so that I can share what I've learned and you can learn from my mistakes. So I upgraded my mic set, and it's the fancy Shure microphone that all of the podcasters have. I was really excited to set it up and try it out. I have the audio interface, but I just haven't quite figured the right settings out. And this is very disappointing. I was very disappointed listening back to the episode in my microphone quality. I had tested it the night before. I thought it sounded pretty good, and then I went back, and I had to do so much editing to get it to what it sounds like now, but moral of the story is, the best mic is the one that works for you, the one that you Trust. And I'm so sad that I didn't stick with the one that I know until I have tested and made sure that I trust this new one. So please use the equipment that you have experience with for any new interview the second piece of shit that hit the fan was that I was testing my mic out the night before, and I was listening to it through the headphones, and I could not figure out how to shut this off the Next day. So we did our our, like, intro, introduction. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I am going crazy because I'm trying to figure out how to shut it off so that I don't hear my own voice in my microphone while I'm interviewing you. And she was like, no problem. I mean, she was so patient, and we hadn't started recording yet. So she was like, I'm just gonna go make a cup of tea and and you do your thing. And I it took me like 10 minutes till I just switched some shit and I. Made it happen, but it was so it was embarrassing. Um, you know, she was so patient and kind about it, but I wanted things to go smoothly. That's not how you want to feel when you start an interview. So I might end up having a test run before, just, you know, zooming in with a friend or one of my classmates or someone who can get on zoom so that we can see how everything is running before I hop into an interview with a guest that I'm hoping to have a good experience with.

Alexandra Susann  15:41  
And final piece of lessons learned is the camera. Now I only plan on having voice first content typically, but it is nice to have your background set up, and the camera can definitely be better for the next interview. I mean, the position wasn't quite right. It's like that bad angle when the camera's facing up at you, rather than you looking up at the camera. So it's just not my best angle. And when you hop on Zoom, or you hop on an interview, wherever that is with your guest, it's it's not the first time that you talk. That's your first impression. It's that first frame that they see of you. So if you're still like, fiddling around with your headphones or something, that's your first impression. It's not when you say hi, how are you or like, can you hear me? You know it's it's all a first impression. So I want to show up the best way that I can. And I'm considering getting a webcam, just so it's better quality when I actually do hop on Zoom. Because even though I have a new computer. The camera quality is still pretty 2015 so yes, test, test, test everything out and get on a practice interview with someone who you trust, who can laugh at you while you're setting up or figuring out how to get your fucking microphone to work properly and use the equipment that you know and trust. I mean, lots of lessons learned, and going forward, I'm excited to keep improving. If there are any lessons that you would like to share with the community or me, you can actually send me a text on our podcast. It's in the description of the show, and you could also DM me on Instagram at why she whistles, and feel free to reach out in any way I am here and ready to connect and looking forward to seeing whatever you are creatively flowing through right now. So with that, I hope you have a great summer. I am looking forward to the next chat, and until then, go and spread your positivity and value your voice. Cheers.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai