THERE’S COCO & THERE’S TEA: CODY SHORT SPILLS HER TEA ON THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

by Adrinece Beard

CoCo’s Tea, the brand, is not to be confused with Cody Short’s on-air personality as “I Am the Real CoCo.” She started her brand as an Instagram blog in college which led to a podcast in 2015. However, CoCo is finding new ways to serve her followers the tea on all things pop-culture and make a name for herself (apart from her brand). She said to think of it this way, CoCo’s Tea is what The Real Daytime Show is to Tamera Mowry. It’s just one portion of who she is but not what makes CoCo as a person. From working in radio to interviewing celebs on red carpets, the Southern belle speaks on what it means to make a name for herself—not for anybody else.

Adrinece: How are you rebranding your personal and business platforms on social media?

Cody: I started doing these daily videos where I give entertainment news and the videos are usually less than like 90 seconds. But I’ve been doing them every day and posting them to Instagram (well, not just Instagram) but all my social channels. So, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. So that’s something that I plan on continuing to do.

And then on my personal Instagram page that’s where I’ve been doing the Coco’s Quarantine Convos. That’s something that I came up with where I just really wanted to talk to individuals who work in different sectors of the entertainment industry and kind of get their take as to how the coronavirus has affected them personally, professionally, and how they think it is going to impact the industry long term.

A: How are you using your personal platform to reach people?

C: So basically, I feel like my platform is a bit different because I am getting people who are a little bit more experienced or have a little more quote-on-quote “clout” than I do. That’s part of my rebrand, is just to get people to be more engaged with my story as like a person slash personality.

My conversations are still very much centered around entertainment to a certain extent, but it’s not so newsy; it’s more conversational, and something that people can engage in, and it’s something that I guess you could say is educational as well. I mean, part of me doing it is because there’s so many people who constantly hit me up about them wanting to be in this industry; or how do they get into podcasting; or how do they get into radio ... So if you’re interested in understanding what my story is, it’s these Instagram lives that you’re gonna get pieces of that. You’re going to be able to understand my story and you’re also going to get lessons from other people who are in the industry.

A: What type of people have you interviewed?

C: The people that I’ve been able to interview are far more experienced than me. My first interview for IG live was with a woman who’s been in radio for at least 15 years. The second interview I did was with a comedian who has grown his platform to where he has thousands of followers like I think he has close to a million between Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. He’s done comedy and radio. And then the interview I just did this last week was with a hit singer and songwriter who wrote Alessia Cara’s “Here” song; and he’s constantly turning out hits in LA.

A: How did you get your first break into the radio industry?

C: I would say, on average, every five to ten years, there’s a little shake up that happens at a station, right. So, in radio those on-air positions are very difficult to get. A lot of times, it’s a waiting game. So, if you want to be on-air radio, you gotta start off at the bottom and then you gotta wait for someone to either get fired, quit, or die.

Birmingham was a good mid-size market. 95.7 JAMZ, the station I’ve been working at, has launched the careers of a lot of other people like Rickey Smiley, Roy

Wood Jr., Funny Mane. Like these are all people who’ve gone on to have success on a more national level. So, I knew right before it was announced that Tom Joyner was getting ready to retire. And that Rickey Smiley was going to take over all of his markets. I also knew that the people who had been on full-time at the radio station were either going to quit or get fired because they had been in those spots for so long.

So, I was like if I get back to that station now and I work my ass off, I could possibly take one of these spots that’s going to open up soon, and be full-time on-air. That was the plan, in my mind, and then also I knew working in radio was going to leverage me for other opportunities. I knew that it was going to allow me to leverage Coco’s Tea as a brand. It was going to allow me to get other job opportunities. So, I would like be able to possibly get other media or writing jobs, other marketing jobs.

A: Why radio?

C: So, a few reasons. Radio is my passion. I interned at our local hip-hop station in 2014, and that was when I fell in love with it. I became so obsessed with not just radio but just the audio business, period; and listening to podcasts. And I started listening to like four or five different podcasts after the internship. Then I started my own. To this day, I’m very interested in how conversations are being held. I think a good interview is when you intently listen to a person’s story and ask ‘why.’

A: Since working in radio, what have you learned

C: So, basically things didn’t work out at the radio station, without going into a lot of detail. And for me right now because I don’t have the leverage of the radio station... I’m making it a point to prove the talent that I have. Not only to them but to myself and to my peers because I don’t need a radio station to validate me or to get me to where I want to get to; I could do that on my own accord with my own work.

A: What have you learned about podcasting?

C: The thing that I’ve learned about this podcast industry is that everybody’s gonna pretty much say the same--stay creative and be consistent. And that’s a lot easier said than done, because you can do a show every single week. And it may not produce the numbers or the results that you’re looking for.

To be honest, I’m still figuring it out. I’m not satisfied with where I’m at. The thing that struck me about the podcasting business is that there is no blueprint. There’s no one way to do it. A lot of people make money off doing a podcast, and there’s logical ways you can do that. I’m still working on trying to get my numbers up. Everybody knows that in podcasting the only thing that you can do is work on increasing your numbers. You can’t really do much else until you have a decent amount of listens per episode.

A: Do you feel there’s competition in the podcast industry?

C: Yes and no. So, I feel like podcasting is very much like blogging was in the last decade, or like the early 2000s. I feel like in between like 2016 and 2018, you saw a lot of people who started podcasts who are not podcasters today. You have a lot of people who are interested in doing a show, but don’t necessarily understand that they need to be consistent. They don’t necessarily understand that their content has to be something that makes them marketable, something that makes them stand out.

A: What makes a podcast worth listening to?

C: There’s a lot of different things that go in the podcast and that makes the show great. I think for some people ... they think that just because their friends circle is funny that they should be on a microphone and talk. And it’s like no. There’s even people who are on Facebook, who do Facebook live once a week and call it a podcast and that’s not wtf it is. A podcast is an audio show. There are a lot of people who were able to reach large audiences and have really great, meaningful conversations via other platforms, but that’s not what a podcast is. Don’t tell me that you have a podcast and I can only find it on Facebook live.

A: How did you know your voice was good for radio or podcasts?

C: I didn’t. So, for me, I just always enjoyed listening to radio. I always knew that I wanted to work in media, to some extent. I used to want to be a singer so I knew I always wanted to be in the entertainment industry, to some degree. I just didn’t know what I was going to be doing. I didn’t know if I was going to be a writer.

I interned at a law firm, I interned at the City of Birmingham in the communications department. And then, I ended up at a radio station and that was when I was like oh this is it! Everybody there was kind of like, oh, you’re like natural at this. So before then I didn’t know, but I was always listening to radio, listening to interviews and just being really enthralled with the music industry and the entertainment industry as a whole. I mean, I come from a musical family, so that was always kind of in my blood.

A: Tell me about the type of music you grew up listening to and who’s your favorite artist.

C: I mean, now…I love Beyonce: the queen of everything. But growing up, I listened to old school music. My grandmother used to be a background singer for The Temptations. So, she was a musician within her own right. My dad studied music. And so we grew up listening to a lot of old school music, of course from Motown to Jack Swing to early hip-hop. I feel like I can appreciate a little bit of everything. Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, obviously.

A: Who was the music artist you were most excited to interview? And why?

C: Probably, Meg Thee Stallion. That was about a year ago. To be honest with you, I feel like I’ve become a super-fan since I’ve interviewed her. Initially, when I interviewed her I was more so a fan because she didn’t sound like anybody else, and she could really rap. It was very clear that Meg was creating her own lane, and she sounded different. And she was from the South; she’s not from New York!

A: What other music artists from the South, specifically Alabama, would you be excited to interview?

C: I gotta get Chika and Flo-Milli on the podcast.

A: What music do you listen to when life gets hard?

C: I usually listen to something really aggressive like Cardi B, or Nicki Minaj or Megan. I love hearing a woman rap about her p*ssy and how n*ggas are gon’ pay for it. That’s my favorite kind of rap.

A: What keeps you motivated?

C: I think you have to always have a little bit of hunger in you. You have to always want to not be satisfied and not settle. So for me, right now, I’m pushing myself even more because you know I moved to Birmingham almost two years ago. I moved back here so that I could pursue a media career. A lot of people were like okay well why would you move back to Birmingham? I decided to come back home because this is where I knew I had a network in media that I could leverage-- that’s one. Two, I really wanted to get back into radio.

A: What’s your advice on building a network?

C: One thing I’ll never forget that Issa Rae said, ‘It’s important to not always reach up but reach across.’ She was like it’s coo’ if you are able to reach up and leverage your platform because somebody who’s an exec[utive] here or does this here may have more pull. But she was like if you can reach across the aisle and work with people who are on the same level as you, that’s the best way to grow yourself a level up.

Instagram: @cocos_tea