This interview was with Chef Zweli Williams, the chef-owner of Ekhaya. I’ve seen Zweli speak on a panel at the Take No Bull conference on female entrepreneurship, and she was fantastic. On the day of our interview, she was deeply uncomfortable on camera. It ended up helping her to pause the a-roll interview and gather the b-roll of her cooking first. Doing something she loved and is great at in front of the camera allowed her to warm up to being filmed, and the second half of the interview went a lot more smoothly because of it.

Nicole is a lovely entrepreneur and small business owner but was also very self-conscious on camera. For this series, I provided the small business owners the interview questions in advance because they were usually very busy and it helped them feel more comfortable. I realized Nicole had rehearsed her answers to death and was too in her head, so I came up with new questions on the fly, and she was eventually able to answer conversationally.