150 episodes in: why I stopped trying to sound "polished"
Ten years ago, while working in leadership development at Aritzia, she hired a speaking coach because — despite getting great feedback — she wrote in her journal that she felt like she'd "lost her voice." That coaching relationship ended without ever quite clicking. It took almost a decade, and 150 episode of doing the actual thing, for the lesson to actually land: the ums, ahs, and pauses she wanted to fix, are the actual things that make her sound human, specially in 2026, when we’re second-guessing every audio, and video is AI-made or human-made. Andrea gets into the full speaking coach story, why paying for something is what really cements the intention, her client’s pottery goal as a case study in “doing the thing”, and the podcast’s own milestone numbers after four years!
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Intro
(01:51) The story starts at Aritzia in front of a room of 100 people
(03:54) Losing confidence and losing my own voice
(04:53) Hiring a speaking coach
(07:14) The TED Talk lessons and why people like to hear humans
(09:17) 150 episodes of practice and finally getting compliments on vocabulary
(10:53) The real lesson: Pay the money, do the thing
(11:35) The strawberry bowl case study
(13:42) Podcast’s milestones: Four years, two kids, top 3% podcast
(16:01) A love letter to my listeners 💜
KEY TAKEAWAY
The investment is what makes the intention real, anyone can write a goal on a piece of paper, but not everyone is willing to put money behind it. You don’t need to have “all figured out” (pun intended), just keep showing up for it, on purpose, every week.
