We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shani Walker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Shani thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

There’s so much information out there that it can sometimes be overwhelming! And my co-host and I started from absolute scratch – no AV experience, no podcast experience… we barely could edit photographs for content! I think the most essential skills are marketing and AV. Because without great marketing, no one will know about your show! And regarding AV; a clear, crisp podcast will make your viewers stay for the full episode and come back. I would honestly say we got in our own way as far as learning more… sometimes life be life-ing, and that takes up time that could be used for learning. But other times, we were a bit intimidated with how much we had to catch up on, that it was better to just hire it out or do the best we could with what we had. If I could speed up our learning process now, I would just have us jump straight in! Take it a bit at a time – maybe watch 2 youtube videos a week and then practice what we’ve learned. Every little bit helps!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Shani and I’m a podcast host, chef, and CPA! I host the Mocha Message Podcast with my lovely Co, Jackie B. Our show is geared towards uplifting Black women and women of color, and we deliver our news and advice in a super relatable way. I’d say experiencing the Mocha Message is like sitting down at a coffee shop with your best girls, just having a chat about anything that’s important to y’all. We cover a wide range of topics from music, to Black feminism, to current events. I’m most proud of our growth as a podcast since we started with almost no knowledge of the field or no network to lean on!

I also have a food blog called Coined Cuisine, where I provide free recipes, cookbooks, and tips & tricks to help you conquer your kitchen and your budget.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being a creative is seeing the ideas & concepts in your head become reality. There’s something about taking a thought, adding some magic to it, and seeing people you know AND don’t know have a positive reaction to it! It really makes all of the time doing the more mundane stuff (scheduling, editing, etc.) worth it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson to unlearn is that you can’t expect perfection before EVERY release. I had a bad habit when I first began podcasting of delaying our episode releases or content releases simply because everything wasn’t perfect! Maybe we didn’t have the best equipment yet, or know how to tweak our audio, or whatever. But the episodes that I were most worried about turned out to be some of our best-performing ones yet! And it’s really because if the talent and drive is there, some of those other details will come with time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mochamessaget.com
• Instagram: mochamessagepodcast
• Facebook: Mocha Message Podcast
• Other: Feel free to also follow me on my food pages – @CoinedCuisine on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook!

Image Credits
Khamel Carter, Beej Burton, Lex the Flex