Meet Shannon Walker

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shannon Walker. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shannon below.

Hi Shannon, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.

For me, optimism goes hand in hand with my faith. The ability to look beyond what is currently happening and to believe that there is a better outcome. To believe that all things are working out for my good. My journey has been one of starts, pauses, and pivots constantly trying to align to what is best in the moment. Initially, I started out as a blogger for fun. Then with the onset of the pandemic, I began to branch out into doing virtual conversation workshops and panels where participants could watch, engage, and ask questions on various topics from embracing natural hair to planning for the new year. This led to launching an online course walking people through how to care for their natural hair. However, other things in life were changing quickly, leaving a stressful fulltime job and starting a new one along with launching an AIRBNB.(I always have more than one thing going on.) I found myself having to pause on hair coaching due to feeling burnt out. A year later, another pivot came in the form of a layoff. While I had still been maintaining entrepreneurial endeavors as an AIRBNB Superhost, this gave me the chance to turn back to hair coaching. This time I decided to pivot into the form of a podcast called Your Hair Made Simple, breathing new life into my brand in a medium that allowed me to create and reach audiences without as much stress as being “on” for weekly courses. Now, I am in the process of regrowing Your Hair Made Simple and expanding more on the live workshop and episode recording and 2 seasons already under my belt. I’m looking to continue to grow the brand as the go to resource for healthy hair information and corner the market on healthy hair mindset. When I was in the middle of feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, and navigating a layoff, I didn’t see myself at all doing any of the things that I have accomplished in the last year. Yet, I have. And I am here. And I am continuing forward learning more each day. That is where my optimism comes from- the fact that there is no way that I could write the story of my life the way that it has unfolded. However, when I look back, I see that Jesus has worked each thing out for my good. Therefore, my faith lets me know when I encounter any obstacle that He will continue to do so.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a multi-hyphenate, finding fulfillment in my various entrepreneurial endeavors operating as the Founder of Your Hair Made Simple and host of the podcast of the same name, as Strategic Planning Consultant facilitating strategy planning and development workshops and other training offerings in my newest endeavor Elise Enablement Services, and as an AIRBNB Superhost.

Your Hair Made Simple was founded with the goal to help people embrace their natural hair with clarity, confidence, and courage. It was birthed out of my own experiences. Growing up, I never knew how to care for my hair and as I got older, society and my peers were signaling that straight hair was better as a Black woman. Eventually, I went on a trip to Europe in high school with straight hair that I did not know how to care for and came back with severely heat damaged hair. Going into college, a friend introduced me to a flat twist, and I took it from there. Over a decade later, I have navigated heat damage, vitamin deficiencies, scalp irritation, and learned my way into caring for healthy natural hair. I want people to know that it is possible for them to feel empowered in their hair journeys. This has taken different forms starting with a virtual small group course and 1-1s during the pandemic. Now, I host a podcast where I bring guests on to share their experiences learning to care for their hair as well as speaking to professionals who can share their expertise, adding in my own knowledge and incorporating reflection aspects to help build a healthy hair mindset. In addition to the podcast, in the last year, we also did a live episode and an intimate Healthy Hair Mindset Workshop where guests got to reflect on their own journeys and hair stories and make commitments for their own journeys. I really think that the first step to embracing natural hair is to change our mindset towards it, realizing that it’s not easy to do something new or different and giving ourselves grace to learn. As impact continues to spread, I’m looking forward to creating more similar spaces and providing more opportunities and resources for self education and empowerment. On the horizon with Your Hair Made Simple, I am looking forward to launching Season 3 of the podcast and expanding interviews to natural hair innovators and other hair professionals that are able to continue to help educate people with additional knowledge. I am also looking forward to expanding workshops, providing more educational resources and tools, as well as seeing merch on the horizon. Stay tuned.

My newest endeavor, Elise Enablement Services is a consulting service providing consulting for facilitation strategy development workshops, project management, and enablement support to help entrepreneurs and businesses identify and operationalize their steps towards success. It’s important to know where you’re trying to go and what matters along the journey to get there. Working professionally, I have a background working in Strategy and Operations at Google Cloud within Customer Experience, EdTech project management for software implementations, and Higher Education program management. This unique career trajectory has allowed me to understand the importance of knowing where you’re going and understanding who you are building for. Pulling on my M.Ed. and education work, I have combined that with my corporate experience and B.S. in Business Administration to create unique and purposeful experiences that allow the space for reflection and clarity needed to understand the true goals of a business or team. I believe there is power in clarity.

Kicking off this launch, I recently hosted a Strategy Planning Workshop focused on reflection and work sessions to help entrepreneurs understand their why in business, review the goal of strategy, identify their strategy type, establish a strategy statement, and develop overall goals and OKRs to move their businesses forward in the next steps. With backgrounds from nonprofit to event creation to government consulting, it was such a pleasure to provide a space for entrepreneurs to gain clarity and direction. On the horizon, I look forward to serving more clients and partnering with other consulting services, businesses, and government entities to ensure that our entrepreneurs and leaders are equipped to enable impactful visions.

Lasly, I operate as an AIRBNB Superhost, constantly thinking about how I can provide the best and most welcome experience to my guests as they travel to pursue adventure and exploration. I have been able to host people from all over the world – Pakistan to Paraguay. Navigating new spaces can be challenging, and I love being able to run my own BNB providing people the opportunity to experience a new place and have somewhere safe to rest!

On the horizon with Your Hair Made Simple, I am looking forward to launching Season 3 of the podcast and expanding interviews to natural hair innovators and other hair professionals that are able to continue to help educate people with additional knowledge. I am also looking forward to expanding workshops, providing more educational resources and tools, as well as seeing merch on the horizon.

At the core of each endeavor is service, allowing others the ability to learn and/or explore in a safe, welcoming, and supportive environment. Each endeavor provides a space for people to feel covered and seen. That’s truly what I love doing!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

For me, I think it comes down to 3 skills: encouraging, teaching/organizing, and analyzing. Early on in my career, I had a mentor, Mike Fulford, who challenged me to think about what my top 3 values and top 3 strengths are. The idea is that once I figure this out, everything I do or big choice I make could be filtered through these buckets. For my values, faith , my well-being, and community rose to the top. For my strengths, I naturally found myself to be an encourager, always analyzing things, and naturally able to teach and explain. I love being able to speak an encouraging word to others and creating spaces for reflection. I enjoy explaining things, sharing stories, and learning new ways to share information with others. My mind is always analyzing things and thinking about how they are connected, how they could be organized better, or other ways to do something. I’m driven by curiosity.

Knowing these strengths, I thought about how I could apply these things to areas that I care about or connect with my professional backgrounds to create a service.

WIth Your Hair Made Simple, it initially started out as a group course bringing community together to learn about caring for natural hair. Growing up, I never knew how to do my own hair until college after encouragement from a friend. A decade later, I have learned so much through hair damage, vitamin deficiencies, and more. Now I feel confident in my ability to care for and grow healthy hair, and I used that to take what I learned and help others as I listened to their issues. I used the knowledge from my M.Ed. to create the course in a way that was interactive and helped people to reflect on their own experiences and hair journeys. This has now turned into the podcast driven by the same values of teaching, analyzing, and encouraging.

The same applies to being a Strategy Planning Consultant. It’s really about creating space for others to ideate and to get clarity on their overall business direction. I simply provide the framework and structure for them to do this work. I use my strengths in combination with my understanding of strategy and operations work during my time at Google, and understanding of customer experiences and learning methods/workshops from my professional experiences in tech and education.

Overall, I really recommend people do the same exercise. Start with thinking about what your top 3 personal values are followed by your top 3 strengths. Then think about an area where you have relevant experience and knowledge to create something or how you can shift what you are already working on to better align. Then of course, if you need a workshop to reflect and craft your strategy, then you can reach out to me. 🙂

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I am always looking for collaborators. After all, my third value is community.
For Your Hair Made Simple, I am focused on bringing on guests who have inspiring stories of embracing their natural hair, entrepreneurs and business professionals with impactful natural hair journeys, innovators and researchers in the natural hair space, and professionals focused on healthy hair and scalp knowledge that would be impactful for people to know (cosmetologists, dermatologists, trichologists, cosmetic chemists, colorists, braiders, locticians, etc. )

Additionally, I am interested in collaborating with any similar type of people or those in the overall wellness space interested in hosting/sponsoring our signature Healthy Hair Mindset workshop, allowing people to reflect on and center their own unique hair stories and find encouragement for their journeys.

For Elise Enablement Services, I am interested in collaborating with other consultants, programs, businesses, and entrepreneur groups seeking to provide a space for business leadership development and want a reflective space to focus on facilitated strategy creation.

For speaking and hosting, I am interested in collaborating with those interested in discussing natural hair care & wellness, self-empowerment, community building, navigating professional pivots, thinking through your strategy and operations, operating in your zone of excellence, and building for impact.

Finally, if you’re in the DC, Atlanta, or Charlotte areas, don’t hesitate to reach out and connect. I’m always happy to chat!

For collaboration with Your Hair Made Simple, you can email: admin@yourhairmadesimple.com
For collaboration with Elise Enablement Services, you can email: eliseenablementservices@gmail.com

Contact Info:

Image Credits

All outdoor Your Hair Made Simple LIVE Event Images taken by Eye of the Dier Photography
Image of 4 women against brown background taken by Brittany J. Galvin
Business Headshot

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