Called, Not Planned: My Path to Soulful Speaking (mini-sode)

This one’s personal.

In this solo episode, Lauri pulls back the curtain on the winding, unexpected, soul-led path that led to the creation of the Soulful Speaking Immersion and the Speaker Studio.

What started as an urge, a whisper, a “no way,” became a calling she couldn’t ignore—blending theater, coaching, voicework, and entrepreneurship into something entirely her own.

If you’ve ever wondered how to follow your deeper ‘yes’ (even when it doesn’t make sense), this story is for you.

TAKEAWAYS:

1. The Soulful Speaking Immersion wasn’t born from a business plan—it unfolded like a calling.

2. Resistance can be part of the process when something truly matters.

3. Sometimes the best business strategy is listening—really listening—to what wants to emerge.

4. Voicework isn’t about learning something new; it’s about remembering what we came in with as babies.

5. Public speaking rooted in soul can transform lives—starting with your own.

6. The Speaker Studio blends bursts of creative growth with long-term integration to create lasting impact.

7. Presence, not performance, is the key to authentic communication.

Story Magic
A Soulful Speaking Playshop for loving rebels on a soul-driven mission.

Join me for Story Magic — a live, interactive Soulful Speaking Playshop where you’ll learn powerful secrets from the ancient art of theatre for telling engaging, dynamic stories.

Chapters

• 2:08 Theater roots, resistance, and unexpected mentorship
• 3:12 Coaching, entrepreneurship, and the moment it clicked
• 5:19 The evolution of a calling: from one-day playshops to the Studio model
• 6:25 The WHY behind the work: Humanity’s next evolution and reclaiming the voice
• 7:59 Building a business by listening, not forcing

Transcript

Lauri: 1:08

Welcome back to Soulful Speaking, where we explore the messy, magical path to finding and freeing your true voice. In today's episode I'm sharing something on the personal side the story behind how the Soulful Speaking immersion in the speaker studio came to be. It wasn't part of some cookie cutter grand business plan. It unfolded like a calling, through unexpected turns and resistance and theater degrees and coaching, certifications and a whole lot of eventually following what felt true. If you've ever felt pulled towards something but didn't quite know how or why this story is for you, why did I start this? I was called that's the short version resisted it.

Lauri: 2:09

I was teaching theater. I was teaching theater and kept getting this urge to go get a degree in theater and saying no. And then I met with a mentor who said you know, theater jobs are really hard to come by, except for voice teachers. And my response at that time was like, because there are kind of two different worlds in the voice teaching for theater world, one of them, if you imagine, newscasters and like the way people talked in the movies in the 1930s, it's that like one good sound. And then there's the new wave which, after my there then I was, you know, called again and again and again and went toward it and stumbled into. Stumbled into was led by a student, a theater student, into coaching and right before the certification exam I called up my old boss from when I was an executive assistant because I wanted to make myself nervous and I coached him. And he is an entrepreneur. So he started giving me lots of advice like you need to raise your prices and what's your niche, and all that kind of stuff. And he said you were always very fit and that's all the rage these days. This is like 2007, 8, 9. And I was like no, but you know what it could be? It could be bringing like all the good stuff from theater to leaders to speak. And it then was like you know the journey of being an entrepreneur, where you drift away and come back and you keep trying to coach everybody on everything and um, very thankful to him for that moment.

Lauri: 4:06

And I remember also going on a hike with a friend of mine who I had met in graduate school and said I'm thinking about weaving it all together into public speaking. And she did a double take on the trail and was like yes, there's something about that and even the like my story on my website has this moment of playing a goddess character, and she was there in the room that day where it was like this primal finding of my voice. So at first I was just leading one day workshops with people and then had a group that was like what else do you have One day is great, but one and done's are kind of like they don't last. And that has morphed several times into what is now the speaker studio, where I'm pairing together play shops and immersions with this regular meeting every couple of weeks for a year, so that you're getting like bursts of new stuff and then expand it or maintain it over the course of time.

Lauri: 5:18

And it really took its shape in 2023 when some things fell apart and someone was like, well, if you couldn't do what you're doing now, how would you do it? And I was like, well, I would do it like acting studios because that's the only way it works. So it's kind of been the same the whole time and it's kind of morphed into. It is more now what I really really, truly believe works and creates lasting change and confidence and magic. And I did about a year, year and a half of the studio without this immersion and it just energetically felt like, oh, it would be even better if we started with like, let's get in and get immersed. And we've done one immersion and it feels like, oh yeah, this is awesome this way. So that is what led us here and I believe like my biggest, biggest why for doing this work is it's like I was born to and I have this image of like man, humans, going from Cro-Magnon man or whatever it is, to standing upright.

Lauri: 6:36

And when it comes to the voice, it feels like humanity is trying to raise consciousness and it's trying to change the world and it thinks it's standing upright in terms of our voices, but, depending on who we are, we're actually one or two levels backward, like more imploded, more suppressed, and there is this possibility of the sound that comes out of our bodies and our ability to spread the change that we are here to spread on our voice and on our presence, going up by actually recapturing what we came in with as babies and connecting that to our why or our life purpose or our soul's mission. So we're relearning it. It's not like I use the Steph Curry metaphor all the time. It's not like I don't know how to shoot like Steph Curry the Steph Curry metaphor all the time. It's not like I don't know how to shoot, like Steph Curry. When it comes to voice, we knew it as babies. Someone told us, consciously or unconsciously, to not do it that way. So it's a matter of remembering and it can feel safer as an adult and like there's a point when it's connected to a sense of purpose. So that's how we all got here.

Lauri: 8:00

As you can see, the journey to this work wasn't linear. I actually think it never is but somewhere along the way I stopped trying to build my business and started listening to it. I started letting it speak to me and through me. That's what the soulful speaking immersion is built on Not strategy alone, but soul. Not performance, but presence, not in doing it the right way, but doing it your way. That's also what we do here on the Soulful Speaking podcast. If that's the kind of path you're walking to, I'm so glad you're here. Keep coming back for more stories, more sparks and more soul to come, more sparks and more soul to come. And please take a moment and share this with other people just like you who are walking their path to authentic soulful speaking and impact.