Balancing Life, Love, Marriage, and Real Estate Investing: A Journey with Charisse A. Walker

Transcript

Mattias (0:03) This is the Wealthy Investor Show, where we don’t just talk about your wealth. We also talk about your holistic health. I’m your host, Matthias.

Erica (0:10) And I’m Erica.

Mattias (0:11) And this is the Wealthy Investor.

Erica (0:15) Welcome back to the Wealthy Investor. This is Erica, your host for today. Matthias is out on a work call.

He had a couple of things to do this morning, so it’s just me. And I am here today talking to Charisse Walker. She is a life coach, a real estate investor, lender, realtor, speaker, author.

Her most recent book called Flipping the Iceberg is, she wrote for people to read before. They get married to help uncover some of the depths of the relationship that might not show themselves typically until after the folks have been together for a long time or have been married for a long time and to help have some difficult but important conversations. But before we get into the conversation with Charisse, I was going to share with you what the last week has been like for me.

We, leading up to this week, I would say life has felt pretty balanced. We’ve both been working. I tend to work a little bit less during the summer months because Asra is home from school and I stay home with her a couple days a week.

I work a couple days a week but have a less client caseload. And Matthias has been working some but has also been home around us a lot too. And then this week hit, or maybe the middle of last week, and Matthias was hit with all kinds of listings, and buyer clients and showing requests.

And then also he was working on the podcast too. And so we all overnight, very literally overnight, shifted into a pretty polarized balance between us where he was 100% focused on work. And I was 100% then focused on managing the family household work on my end.

And Charisse and I talk about this a little bit about how Matthias and I managed that better this week than we have in other weeks that have looked like this, this level of intensity before. And I was recognizing that just having your partner acknowledged that this is a really stressful week and there’s a lot of tension or strain placed on both partners at the same time and it’s something that we are tackling together as opposed to something that we’re doing to each other so helpful. I started a one line a day journal, let’s say mid June, and I’ve been keeping up with that every evening and sometimes the days can feel so busy it has been helpful to reflect on the day and what I am grateful for or maybe something I did that was intentional to take care of myself.

And that was so helpful this week because I could have very easily been caught up in the strain of being the sole parent 24-7 this week. And it was stressful and there were times where I was feeling pretty touched out or I didn’t want to answer why the why question over and over again or just didn’t want to talk anymore with young kids. I think there’s always a question coming at you and I just wanted to rest my voice.

But using that journal helped me reset a bit and recognized that there were parts of every day that I was so grateful for or that I could reflect on and realize that I did that for myself and I’m so glad I did because it helped me reset. Yesterday I did a sauna session. I did 20 minutes in the sauna at 135 degrees and then I did 3 minutes in the cold plunge at 47 degrees.

Dunked my head under water because Matias told me it felt good. Although it was so cold it shocked my system so much that I ended up gasping at the shock of it and just inhaled a bunch of water. But it woke me up and then I went back into the sauna for 20 minutes.

And I felt great. It helped me reset. It helped me go into the day again.

Fourth of July we planned some to go to some fireworks and Matias wasn’t able to go just because of work demands. And so I invited a friend to go along and again like very grateful for a community and a village of people to step in and support me and my family when we need to. And I was able to take the kids and they enjoyed the fireworks and the look on my son’s face who’s too who saw fireworks for the first time was priceless would do it over again every time.

There was another day when a friend actually the same friend came over to she was just going to see if our dogs got along she’s going to watch our dogs this weekend. And she saw what a mess I was that particular morning just trying to navigate being with all three kids wasn’t going super well and she ended up spending eight hours over at our house that day and just hanging out and being there with us. And I am just very grateful and thankful for the community that we have around us to help support us especially during intense weeks like this.

And very extremely grateful for a partner who can recognize what he needs and say what he’s needing so that I can help give that to him and vice versa too. And it’s I am coming out of this week. I’m not feeling super drained I’m actually feeling pretty energized and we’re going into a fun weekend with friends and I am thankful and I’m feeling pretty satisfied with how we navigated this week.

I told Charisse there have been other similar weeks were it has not gone well. But I did not feel resentful this week and I think that’s really easy to have that resentment creep in. But I think we were we worked together really well as we had to work apart.

Anyway, that’s my musings for the week. And what’s been what I’ve been thinking about and processing the last couple of days. I want you to enjoy Charisse.

I could have many conversations with her and and hopefully we will. We talk about her her journey and several challenges that she has gone through both personally and professionally. And she talks about how important it is for your mindset and your recognition of what you can control and what you can’t and how to continue moving forward within that.

So enjoy Charisse. Here she is. Welcome back to the Wealthy Investor.

This is Erica, your host. Usually, Matias and I are here together. He was called out on a work call this morning.

So you have me and I am here with Charisse Walker. She is an author, investor. She’s a coach.

She hosts her own podcast, The Unbreakable Mom Renewers. And to her most recent book, which we’ll talk about a little bit sitting there behind her, is called Flipping the Iceberg. And specifically written for people getting married and I’m excited to talk to her a little bit about that too.

Thank you, Charisse, for joining me. I’m excited to talk with you. I was wondering if you could help us get to know you a little bit.

But could you tell me a story about yourself that just helps us get to know you, where you come from, what’s important to you, just about who you are?

Charisse Walker (8:33) Oh, thank you for having me first of all. So I am… At 22

I started teaching college and I absolutely loved it. It fell in my lap. It was not something that I was planning to do. My boss came to me and said, hey, have you ever thought of teaching?

And I’m like, well, yeah, actually, I thought about teaching in high school. They said, well, great. Here’s the book you teach in two hours.

And it was a four hour class. And so that one class that I was supposed to fill in for ended up subbing. And then by the end of the term, they brought me on full time.

And so I taught college for seven years. Then I moved up to be the dean and then the director and then I opened a college. And so that, honestly, I truly believe things happened to us for a reason.

And that is kind of how my journey started in my professional career. And so I went from that to, I went through a divorce about the same time I was opening up to college and then ended up quitting after I met my husband. This is a couple years later.

And that’s where a whole bunch of financial things happened to us. And also have a change in our life. I just blossomed into something else.

And so I love teaching though. And I love seeing that sparking people how it can change their life. And for me, the life changing moment for me was when I was watching my students walk across the graduation stage.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I had a hand in that, you know? Because a lot of these students went from, I’m not smart enough. I’m not good enough.

I’ve been told I was stupid my whole life and I’ll never amount to anything to, I’m the first person in my family to ever graduate from college. And so that became a journey for me where I wanted to help people change their life. They could believe that if they wanted to achieve anything in life that they could.

And so that’s kind of the purpose of the book that I wrote. That’s the purpose of my podcast. That’s the purpose really of every single client I have who is looking for a home or that’s buying a home.

One of my clients, when she bought her first home, she just started bawling. She said, never thought that this would be possible. You know, her mom had passed away and she just said, thank you so much.

So I think anything in life that’s kind of been my go to is that you really can accomplish anything you want if you set your mind to it.

Erica (10:56) Who were those people for you in your life that made you feel like you can do this and I can help you get there?

Charisse Walker (11:04) Great question. It was actually my parents. My parents, I was fortunate enough to have parents that really never held me back.

They just let me go. Unfortunately, I think that I took too much on my plate because of that. But they really were the, yeah, you can do anything you want.

So it was definitely my parents.

Erica (11:25) That’s amazing to have that voice in your head to fall back on when you are in situations where you may be questioning yourself or questioning the next step forward. When you were handed the material to teach that class, that four-hour college class, are you a natural speaker? Or is that something that has been learned over time?

Charisse Walker (11:47) No, I think I am because my goal is that I just want, it’s not about me and like, oh, look at me. I’m on stage. You’re looking at me.

I’m doing this. It’s what can I help you? What can you take from whatever I say that can help you in your life?

I don’t get nervous. I think I do better, actually, in a stage than talking in a group of people, like three or four or five people because I love to teach. I’ve never thought of it as am I natural or am I not?

What can you take from this? What can help you?

Erica (12:23) And you have put that into so many different avenues. I’m just thinking about your podcast and your books and teaching and even creating colleges too. That time in your life when you were creating a college, well, at the same time going through a divorce, right?

Those were happening at the exact same time?

Charisse Walker (12:45) Literally. So I was hired on in December in January, my husband left. So it was literally the same time.

My youngest was three.

Erica (12:56) Wow.

Charisse Walker (12:57) I have twins.

So they were nine or ten. I have to do the math. I think it was nine.

Erica (13:05) Wow. Can you help me understand what that looked like for you during that time? I’m just imagining trying to figure out where the kids are going to be and who they might be with also. So help me understand what that looked like for you during that time.

Charisse Walker (13:25) Well, in attitude, I was a nursing college and a dental hygiene college. So, I mean, it’s a whole other level because of the accreditation you have to get as a school level and then as at the state level as well and the national level. So my marriage was on the rocks for 13 of the 15 years.

It was really a difficult. Mentally, physically, the stress. I had been actually diagnosed with MS because of the stress that I was under.

And so for me, I think it was more the way it’s finally off my shoulders, like the pressure, because it was just, it was difficult. And I honestly hope that he would come back. Like we waited for, or I waited for eight months before that happened.

But it gave me time to kind of relax and figure out, you know, is this healthy? Is it not healthy? Do I want him back?

Do I not want him back? And so that part of it, I felt like was, I hate to say it but more of a relief. However, now I have four small kids.

So, gratefully, my sister, because my kids were going, they called it off track. I mean, Utah, so you go on track for a little while and then you go off. And so it’s like every six weeks, the kids take, they’re on a break.

So there was never a summer, it’s a year-round school. They kind of run away from that, so think heavens. But so I called my sister up and I said, hey, you know, are you available for about a week?

And like I have two other sisters. And we didn’t really communicate with each other, but all of us, at about the same time, our husband’s like, we ended up separating from our husband’s. It was not planned.

I think we had all just said enough. So she came to stay with me for a week, but that turned into, you know, from January to November, she was with me. And so that was a help, but she started, she actually, well, it’s her story.

She’s pretty private, so I won’t go into that. But ended up taking care of her as well in a lot of respects. So that part was difficult.

So what I did is I reached out to my community, my neighborhood. There was like, I had to be at school at this certain time, our work, and then my kids didn’t go to school until this time. So I would like divvy them out to different people.

So like on Tuesday and Thursday, this neighbor could watch my daughter on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, this neighbor could. And then I mean, it was just, it was tough that way, but they were super sweet. And then I had this cute assault through your old son.

And because we worked across town, he came with me and I found a daycare close to there so that we could carpool. I could get in the carpool lane. So, you know, and so we had a fantastic time.

He didn’t know what was going on. And so it was just such a fun time that we would sing together in the car. We’d be able to talk.

So it was actually really fantastic. And then I had a network of people after work. If I had to stay late, they could go pick up my children.

Like this one from daycare and then take care of these others. And then I had a girl that was in high school and she’d come from three to six to watch my kids and take care of them.

Erica (16:36) Wow, truly a village.

Charisse Walker (16:39) It really, yes, it was a lot of coordination. But I’ll tell you, my house stayed clean because there was so much interaction. You know, it was much better than a husband.

And, you know, making sure that I would on Saturday plan out my menu for the week. So I knew what I’d make. So I didn’t have to figure it out.

So yeah, it was a blessing in disguise, but it was really, really difficult.

Erica (17:07) Yeah, I imagine both things. I hear you though and feeling like at some level, it did feel like a weight off. Like you finally had some room to breathe.

Charisse Walker (17:17) Yeah. And after the divorce went through, it was probably six months after that, they redid all the tests, the spinal taps, the other stuff. And I did not have MS. It was gone.

Erica (17:26) That’s incredible.

Charisse Walker (17:28) Yeah. So that shows you how much pressure and stress can do to a body.

Erica (17:32) Wow. Have you needed to be mindful of that going forward, just keeping tabs of your stress level, knowing what it could potentially do?

Charisse Walker (17:41) Yeah. Truth be told, I just had an MRI this past week just to check the brain again and make sure everything’s going on because stress is something that I’m the type that I’ll internalize a lot of things. And I try to be the superwoman, not for anyone else.

I just try to take it on. And so yeah, definitely can, I can tell if it’s starting to get too high. So the self care, the making sure that you’re talking to yourself and realizing that you don’t have to be perfect at everything.

Like I used to be that person. That my yard was perfect. My house was perfect.

My kids had to be perfect in terms of how they looked. And now it’s like, you look cute, just let’s brush your hair and let’s go.

Erica (18:22) Yeah.

Charisse Walker (18:23) Oh, there’s some stains on that shirt. Okay. Well, that’s okay.

Let’s go. Yes. So I’m much more relaxed than I was before.

Erica (18:31) I was just talking to a friend of mine this week. I think we had gone over to her house and she was saying, you know how everybody always says, oh, don’t mind the mess. You know, I just haven’t gotten around to cleaning it.

And I was like, you know what? I think everybody’s house is messy. I mean, safer, like the select few.

And I think we should just maybe normalize the mess. Like maybe that’s just how we live and it’s a lived in household and it’s fine.

Charisse Walker (18:55) Well, there’s that joke where like the wife’s, oh my gosh, people are coming. You have to clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, right? And then you go over to their house and they say, don’t mind the mess.

Oh, it’s okay. Everything’s okay. And the husband’s like, you know, it really is true.

People don’t come over and judge your house. And if they do, they’re probably not the people we want to hang out with anyway. So it’s true.

It’s life and it doesn’t have to be perfect at all times. And honestly, me writing that book was probably the healing part of it because in iceberg, you know, like let me just show you who I am. And if you don’t like it, I’m sorry that’s your problem

, but I’m not going to take that on anymore than I used to.

Erica (19:38) Man, how did you get to the point where you could let go of that?

Charisse Walker (19:44) Realizing that loving yourself, that’s, I guess, in a quick nutshell. I felt like I had to live my life for everybody else. And I worried about what they would think.

I would worry about what they would say. I lived in a neighborhood that was overall the women were amazing. But there was a handful that were like the mean girls out of the movie.

No joke. And it was very, very difficult, very hard and very, very hurtful. And so when we left that neighborhood intentionally and I moved into another one and I ended up having like six surgeries.

I had three on my shoulder, three on my hips every year. So it was like I’d have one on my hip so that I could be on crutches. And six weeks later, I’d have it on my shoulder again.

And laying in bed, that first one, it’ll make me start crying because it was so painful. But laying in bed realizing that life is short and I was grateful that I could walk, not at that point. So the times like you don’t realize what you have until you lose it, I think.

So having so many health issues for a while. I started realizing I need to start being grateful for what I have and living my life the way I want to live. Not the way I want or I think other people think I should live.

And so I was really, actually, there’s always a gift in everything and those neighbors, I was this victim mentality. And with my ex-husband, I was a victim. And so when we separated and when we moved away from that neighborhood, it was just freeing because I realized I need to start loving myself for who I am.

Like I was a lot skinnier and I would just try to be this person and really realizing I can’t be. Like I cannot control anybody else on this planet other than myself. And so I need to start focusing on myself and healing myself so that I can start being happy.

And so I think that that’s where it changed.

Erica (22:00) That decision, you’re talking about leaving that neighborhood and the divorce to maybe think about a book I read recently. It’s Emily Freeman’s How to Walk into a Room. And she talks about how to know or discern whether it is time to leave a place, a neighborhood, a relationship, when to stay, what boundaries you might need to put up in order to stay.

It’s a really interesting book, but you’re talking about your neighborhood. Were those recognizing what those women were like and how that was affecting you? Was that something you could recognize while you were in it?

Was that part of your decision to leave too?

Charisse Walker (22:46) Yeah, so I’m very religious. Go to church every week on Sunday and so did all these other people. And so when I started having panic attacks when I was going to church, like I love my church, I knew it wasn’t that.

But the people, wow, it’s not worth that when you start. And I mean there was, that’s a whole other podcast we could go into because it’s a long story. But I just remember saying something to my bishop, because he made a comment and I said it’s people like you.

It’s the reason we are going to move. And when there’s one person that, like I went over and approached her before we left and luckily I’d lost my voice. Because I probably wouldn’t have been as nice.

And so I think that, again, I’m very religious. So I think that if you bring God into it and you just like, kill my heart and heal me, it does take time. It’s not like it was overnight.

But I definitely realized that for my family’s health, because it wasn’t just me, the who they were attacking. My poor twins were just the things that they went through. So yeah, there has to be boundaries.

And when you try, and the sad part is a lot of these women were like my really good friends. And they turned like that overnight because of something their husbands did to my children. And I thought, no, this isn’t okay.

And so that’s how it all kind of, you know, into this day, they still don’t talk to me. We were the victims, right? And so what I realized is that, again, you can’t control anyone else.

I call it locus of control. So if you put your hands like this and you turn in a circle, like really, that’s how much control you have over yourself. And so when I started, like, I used to teach all this stuff.

But when I’m like, wait a second, I need to apply this stuff. And realizing, like, I was always thinking of somebody else, not really realizing that it was happening to us. And so that’s where boundaries, people say it all the time, self-care and boundaries.

Like on my podcast, that’s become a recurring theme that every single person says. But it really is. Like you have to take care of yourself.

And if, I mean, I don’t have panic attacks anymore. I love going to church. I love the people in my neighborhood and just golden people.

And so that’s where you really have to think, is it you? Is it me? Like, if I were to go to every neighborhood and have the same problems, I came in to look inward.

But there are some that it’s not you. Get away from them.

Erica (25:20) Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve really had to advocate for yourself and for your family for the health of everyone.

And boundaries are so important, but it’s so easy to say it to just set some boundaries. You’re going to be fine. But then implementing them.

Oh, it’s so challenging because you have to be willing to make some people feel uncomfortable. Yeah. And then you can’t be the one to make them feel better because you set the boundary. And then it can be tough.

Charisse Walker (25:48) Yeah, especially if, you know, they’re the guilty ones and, you know, it takes you to tingle. There’s always things that I could have done differently or they could have done differently. But sometimes people are going to try to make you feel bad or feel guilty for that.

You know, my first divorce. I kept this divorce journal because one day he would call and say, I’m so sorry, I’m sure you’re just, I’ll do this and this and this one. I’m going to, you know, I’m going to chase you.

I’m going to do this. And then literally the very next day would be it’s all your fault. You’re breaking apart this family.

You’re doing it. And then literally the next day. So I started like just writing a journal of everything he would say.

I’d write it all down. And I came across that when we moved into this house about a year ago. Holy cow.

Wow. You know, manipulation. So journaling and me realizing that sometimes it’s people’s own insecurities.

They’re going to project on you and you cannot own that. That’s their issues, not yours.

Erica (26:44) Right. Sometimes when I talk about that Locus of Control with my clients, I describe it to them. Just feel how strong you are internally, like your internal Locus of Control.

Whereas if something changes in your environment, is it going to knock you over to the ground? Or have you built up some of this inner strength where it might bend you a little bit, but you’re going to be fine. You’re rooted in who you are and how you feel about yourself too.

Yeah. And how to build that too.

Charisse Walker (27:16) Yeah, no Totally.

Erica (27:18) Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about your book. Flipping the iceberg.

Charisse Walker (27:22) Yup.

Erica (27:22) So tell me, tell me about that. I want to hear more.

You only, we just touched on it before we started.

Charisse Walker (27:29) Well, I was literally in the kitchen making dinner with my daughter. And she, I talk about the story in my book. She like comes into the kitchen like, I am so sick of it.

And she’s talking about this one particular person and then how he totally stood her up again. And so she talks about how when they go out, he can walk into a room and everyone’s like, oh, hello, we love you. You know, he’s so Mr. Wonderful. She’s like, how can people not see that he’s not Mr. Wonderful? The only people that keep projects that, but if you really knew the real him, that’s not him. And so I’m like, well, sweetie.

It’s like an iceberg because I was a huge Titanic. I used to teach it all the time with social stratification and sociology. And so I love the analogy of an iceberg.

And they said, well, he’s just like an iceberg. And someday I’m going to write a book about that. And so I did, you know.

And so 10% above the water is all you see of an iceberg, the other 90% below. And so I liken it as we all have trauma in our life. And sometimes we don’t realize what that trauma is until it destroys a relationship.

So it’s there, you know, bobbing up and down in the water, which it doesn’t really, because it’s Titanic heavy, but and waiting to just like tear into our relationship. And so looking back at my first marriage, there’s a lot of things I could have done better, like way just so many things. And so

I realized with myself and all the healing that I went through that part one of the book, you have to heal yourself from those traumas or I call them the icebergs.

And so there’s a whole like flipping is an acronym for that first part of the book and it stands for lots of different things like finding the iceberg limiting beliefs, your intuition, your intention. So they’re giving into pressure from your family, from your culture. I don’t care what it is.

And so you’re understanding your potential. And so that’s the first part of the book and giving yourself grace. And so then the second part of the book is now that you’ve found this person that you think you want to spend the rest of your life with, let me tell you the iceberg that they are portraying to you.

You have got to flip that iceberg and understand the person that you’re marrying, because how many times do you get married? Well, I hope you tell it a lot, but how many times do people get married? And they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re not the person I married.

Or, you know, a couple months later, a couple years later, and they give up, oh, we’ve just grown apart, or we dissed or that, or it’s not the person I thought I married. And so my goal with the second part, which is iceberg, is getting to know who they truly are. And so it’s in the book, it gives you activities, but really there’s a workbook.

And so it has you answer all these questions and go through stuff that I wish I would have gone through with both of my marriages, actually, because there’s so many questions that you don’t want to talk about when you’re dating, because you don’t want to have a fight about it. Well, why would you wait till you’re married to have a fight about it? Because you’re going to.

And so that’s really, the book is fully intending to help you understand. And I mean, it can work for married couples. There’s a second part too that’s going to be after they do, but really trying to understand who you are and who the other person is, so that you can have a healthy and happy relationship.

Erica (30:52) Can you give me an example of one of the activities or questions that you have couples ask?

Charisse Walker (30:59) I think, well, for the one part, I’ve developed what’s called the has method. And so, you know, sometimes we get into this situation. I remember my son, he was in a specific situation.

And so we were at a counselor and my current husband, he was getting so mad, right, about stuff. Like we, my husband, my son was institutionalized. He’s a special needs kid.

And he was having some issues with stuff. And so we were going once a week to be canceled. And my husband, like, would walk into the hospital and he’d, like, be instantly angry.

And so I remember the counselor looking at him and she’s like, why are you so upset about this? Because it’s nothing that has to do with him, right? And so she’s like, why are you so upset about this?

And he looked at her like a deer in the headlight, you know, deer in the headlight. And he couldn’t answer that question. And so I realized, okay, there’s some work that you need to do.

You know, to try to come to terms with that. And so the has method, it’s like halt. And you have to just stop yourself and then acknowledge like, why am I feeling this way?

And that’s tough, right? Why are you so angry about something? Why are you crying about it?

Why are you, like a lot of times we don’t understand and we don’t take time to understand what our emotions are and how we’re feeling. And then to shift after that, you know. So if we are nervous about going out and getting a job, then what’s causing us that nervous feeling?

What’s causing us to feel bad or scared or like whatever it is? And then shift it. How can we change our limiting beliefs or our mind to be able to help us?

Because a lot of studies have been done where your brain doesn’t really know. Like you tell it what to do and you tell it like it doesn’t know fantasy from reality. And so if you’re constantly like affirmations, which I used to think are a joke, but I don’t anymore, I really did.

That it’s like, okay. And so you can switch your mindset. Now you can go and accomplish the thing that you want.

And so that’s the has method. It’s one of the things that we talk about.

Erica (33:05) That also seems like it comes, you can tell me if this is right, but you know how earlier you were talking about really feeling like you were the victim early on. And how you really had to make that mindset switch for yourself also. And this is a really nice way to break it down and help somebody do that.

Especially if like the limiting beliefs are telling you that you can’t change it. You can’t do anything. This is happening to you.

You’re stuck. You’re paralyzed. It seems like it’s such a nice way to give you a very practical step by step how you can turn that around and start moving forward.

Charisse Walker (33:43) Yeah. And then understanding like that would be part one. Part two is the acronym terms.

So I use acronyms a lot. In terms like the Twitter painted phase where everything’s so wonderful, you know, and that can last sometimes up to two years. And then correct me if I’m wrong, you’re the therapist.

But according to the research, it can this honeymoon phase that oh my gosh, they’re so wonderful or they’re so miss is wonderful. So this is the Twitter painted. And then you go into the enlightenment phase where it’s like, okay, I’m starting to realize things about you.

And then you have the R and then the M is like, now we can go and we can start accomplishing things. But true love really doesn’t come until later because yeah, you might love how they look. You might love what car they drive you like all these surface level stuff.

And so terms, I really think it’s kind of like a roller coaster because you can fall in and out of love. You can fall. I mean, you can get really angry at somebody.

But if you can go back to, okay, why did I fall in love with him in the first place? And remember that and work towards that and focus on that. Then you can come back.

And so in term is what I use to realize that a relationship, you know, when someone says we’ve fallen out of love, I go back to, I used to love this movie and I totally just forgot it enchanted. You know, the little couple there at the divorce table and she’s like, what? How can you do this?

And they end up reconnecting. And it’s because they talked about things are vulnerable. And again, it’s a Disney movie, whatever.

But that’s kind of, you know, it’s not for everything. Abuse is something I’m not going to, that’s not what I’m talking about when I come to. You can come to a relationship.

But really it’s understanding that and trying to reconnect with each other.

Erica (35:30) That, that pause is so, so helpful. There have been many, many, many conversations that Matthias and I have had where initially one of us is reacting to something, you know, we have some sort of an emotion that’s coming up. And Matthias is really good at saying you and I both were up several times last night with the kids.

I know I have a lot of my plate with work. You had this happen this morning. Like those are probably some things that are feeding into it.

And it takes me a little longer because I’ll be like, no, it’s not. That’s not true. And then, and then, you know, a couple minutes later I’ll come back and I’ll go, okay, that’s probably right.

And to take a little bit of space that I come back and talk about it in more of a calmer setting without the kids also asking for cereal and milk and all these other things too. But, but that pause is so helpful because if we had our conversations and never stopped to think about it and just let the reaction play out, well, I mean, it would be really tough to even have a relationship.

Charisse Walker (36:34) Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yep.

Getting married a second time, obviously, divorce statistics are higher, but when I have four kids and my husband, I mean, he had an adopted son, but that’s another situation story. And so, I mean, he lived by himself almost his whole entire life. He was the youngest, only boy, and four girls.

And so, his life was, I mean, he didn’t have to share his toys with his sisters because the sisters don’t care, and they were older. And so, to bring four chaos with two special needs, and then him, who’s, it’s been very quiet at his house coming together, that was tough, you know?

Erica (37:11) I bet.

Charisse Walker (37:12) So, there’s no reason why we should still be together. Other than we love each other, we want it to work and we’re committed to that, right? So, yeah, marriage is tough.

Erica (37:24) It is really hard. Yes. Yes.

Yes. This last week, I was telling you earlier, Matias got hit with all kinds of work, listings, listing appointments, and then also some buyers who were wanting to see lots of different houses that were like 50 minutes away in different directions, and so was driving all over.

And so, the last week, we just both recognized

and we talked about it, and that was the helpful thing for me. We just sat down and said, this week, he has to be all work, like 24-7 work. It’s just the way it is this week, and that means I have to be all kids.

And I just have to manage that. And July 4th was this week too. And so, fireworks and all of that, the holiday stuff, and so we just said, you know, I’m going to schedule things that I’d like to do with the kids, and I’ll put it on your calendar, and then if you can come, come, and if you can’t, that’s fine.

And that feels okay to me because we talked about it beforehand. And then throughout the week, I don’t think I could have said this at the beginning, but I realized it was really helpful to me that occasionally he would just say, it didn’t change anything, but he would just say, I’m realizing that this is putting, my work is putting an incredible strain on you this week having to juggle all of the kids by yourself, and I just, I know that. And so, I’m trying to work through all the work stuff as fast as I can so that we can kind of get back to a more balanced lifestyle together.

And him just saying, that was so helpful. And then he also has been intentional about making sure I wake up with coffee right beside my bed in the morning. And it’s just those two things.

It doesn’t really make a big difference in terms of the help that I received or the support he received for work, but it made it manageable that we, it was like this thing happening that we were tackling together as opposed to me feeling resentful that he’s gone, and I don’t have any help. Which is not, we’ve handled it worse in worse ways in the past, so we did a pretty good job this week.

Charisse Walker (39:34) But he was thoughtful. I think that’s the thing. And I like, and people always say, well, I gave 100% to the manager.

I always gave 100%, and he never, or she never. And it’s like, I don’t agree with that. Because, I mean, just yesterday, so I do have a bad hip, obviously, three surgeries.

And for the first time in a long time, my hip went out. And so, I am a huge fireworks person. I love to watch fireworks.

I love to be under it and see you hear the boom-booms. And I couldn’t walk. So my kids, you know, we, I went to bed.

I couldn’t. No matter what I did, like the pain was so bad. And for my husband, the key has taken on so much.

And I, he’s very supportive. My kids went anyway. And I think sometimes, like in a situation like that, it is like a roller coaster where he might be going up, and then I’m going down.

And so as a couple, you’re giving 100% together makes 100%. But maybe I’m at 40, he’s at 60, or I’m at 80, he’s at 20, but together we’re working together. And so when your husband does sweet things like that, it shows he’s thinking of you that, hey, I’m not out of this yet.

Like, I’m just busy. And so you’re willing to step up because he can’t be there as much for the, for the family. And then vice versa.

And so that to me is the part of the marriage that it hit me that we have to work together to make that 100%. Not a part.

Erica (41:07) Right. As opposed to feeling resentful right away, if your partner is not giving 100%, and expecting that all the time. That’s so true. Shreeze, I have to ask you about the investment real estate side, other ways Matthias is going to bug me about it later. Can you tell me what that part of it looks like for you?

How do you incorporate that in?

Charisse Walker (41:29) It actually saved our family financially. So a couple years ago, my dad came and my, well, it wasn’t my dad. It was a family member that came and said, hey, I had this great family investment opportunity.

Let’s all go and invest in Honduras. We can buy a hotel, a boat because he had a dive shop. And so my dad and my mom got involved in it because they thought it would be fantastic.

And, you know, again, when you’re trying to please somebody and get them to like you, right? So we ended up mortgaging our house and we were on food stamps at the time. So it was really stupid of us to do that.

But I had called this person and said, hey, we can’t, we’re on food stamps. We can’t afford this house payment, like the HELOC payment, which is a home equity line of credit. And so they said, okay, we’ll make the payment.

And so we did. It was a huge amount of money that we gave. And it was a loan.

We hadn’t filled out all the stuff, blah, blah, blah. But it was a family member. And so when it all went to pot a year later, we’re $200,000 in the hole and they made the payment for like two months.

And that was it. So we’re like, okay, now what do we do? And so we started investing in real estate.

I had been, luckily I had been studying it for about a year and a half. And then I’d gone to, it’s a, it’s called a Ria, but it’s real estate investing group. And so I don’t know.

Someone said something at that meeting. They’re like, just stop learning and start doing. So I left that meeting, looked up some homes because I was a realtor and went, made an offer.

They accepted it. And so we flipped our first home. And while we were doing that, I’m like, oh, this is working out pretty well.

So I’m going to look for another home. And so before we closed on it, I had made an offer on this home. And so then we started flipping that home.

And so it kind of just morphed. And we worked our stink and tails off. Like my husband went back to school.

So he was getting his bachelor degree. He was in working the full time. He had a part time coaching job that he was doing.

And then we had six kids. And we were amazing. And the youngest at that point was like 18 months, right?

And so we finally get ourselves out of that financial hole. And my best friend comes to me and she’s like, oh, I have this great opportunity. And so next thing you know, like $40,000 morphed into another $200,000.

And here we are again, trying to get out from under that. And we did. And so that’s how real estate investing just changed our lives.

Because first of all, don’t business, family, best friends, just don’t do it. Like listen to the people because now new friends, I mean, they took us for everything we had. But we really did work hard.

And so because of that, like I started investing and there’s actually eight different ways that I invest. So you can do buying holds, which I’m just going to give the titles. The short term rentals, the long term rentals, you can flip a home, you can flip land, you can do multifamily homes.

I don’t know how many that was. I stopped counting. But so we’ve actually started doing all of them.

And because of that, it really has changed the trajectory of our lives. And we went from being so far in the whole to having multiple properties that we manage or we own. And so I swear by real estate, like it is the way to go.

So this podcast is a fantastic thing because it really does change people’s lives. And so I heard my parents because they were out almost as much money as we were. And I heard my dad say one day to some sales call, well, I’m on a fixed income.

And I thought, nobody should have to be on a fixed income. You know, if you can learn some of the things that you can do in real estate, you don’t have to be on a fixed income. So I started becoming very passionate about that and wanting to teach other people.

Erica (45:21) That’s very cool. Yeah, it’s real estate investing. We’re just a couple of years into it.

But we have found that too. It’s just such an incredible and fun way to get some movement and some pretty quick movement too. We’ve done some, oh, gosh, I hope I get these right.

But we’ve done mostly flips through the BRRRR method. And we’ve held on to some of them. And some of them we’ve resold.

And we have two we’re working on right now. But they have been really fun. I tend to be more of like the risk adverse side of our partnership and Matthias is more of the action oriented.

Let’s go for it. Which works well for us because we balance each other out. But he, when we first got into it, it was like a whole new world for me.

I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t have anyone around me that had done it. And so that was a big learning curve to become comfortable with him coming home.

And this has happened several times now. And just like jumping up from his chair and be like, there’s a house that’s almost on the market. I’m going to go out there and see it.

I’m going to put an offer on it if I like it. Are you okay with that? And needing an answer from me in about two seconds.

And for me to get comfortable enough to say, you know what? I trust you. I trust

your judgment.

And whatever you decide is great. Just shoot me a text if we’re buying a house. Yup.

Yup. Etica is pretty well. But that’s great.

Are you in partnership with anybody? Or did you create like its own LLC for the flipping stuff or the investment stuff?

Charisse Walker (46:53) Not in partnership, but I work in a network of people. So I’m in a few groups. And that’s the other thing is you have to be in like a community of people.

You’re learning from them, but you’re also being able to network. So like I’ve done the two things I left off, hard money loans, wholesaling. And so right now that’s kind of what I’ve been doing a lot.

And so you have to have that network of people. You have to have a list of buyers. You need a list of sellers so that you can contact them and communicate and have that group.

So no, I do not have a partnership. I’m a little jaded from the other two experience.

Erica (47:26) Understandably.

Charisse Walker (47:28) But it’s not that I’m out of it. I really have tried to bring some people in to work, but I’m still looking for that motivated person that wants to work as hard as me or harder.

Erica (47:39) Yeah. It’s got to be a good fit. Understand. Well, before we end, we always ask if you have a book that you would recommend that spoke to you that you always go back to or you think of what comes to mind for you.

Charisse Walker (47:57) There’s so many. And so for me, The Color Code. And like I could give you the Abundance Now, Nine Figure…, you know, all these different things. But the color code is one by, I believe it’s a Taylor Hartman that for the longest time, that’s why I stayed married as long as I did because I understood that my husband was a certain color and I was a certain color and disc is something else people use, but I love the color code.

And so that’s one that if you can understand the type of person, because I’m always the one that says, okay, how, like, what was their intention? What did they mean?

I don’t really take their, what they say at face value. I tried to, you know, clearly you didn’t mean that or something. So if you can understand what the type of personality is of a person, it helps me in my, like my clients.

It helps me with my business, my home, my family. And so that one is a huge, that was a changing point for me.

Erica (48:55) Awesome. I have not heard that one yet and I have not read that. So I, I will pick that up.

I have a reading list, like, like just long after listening to all these podcasts. But I love it. I’m an audiobook person because I can do lots of things while I’m listening.

So I’ll, I will check that out. Well, Charisse, thank you so much for joining me today. I have loved our conversation and I’m going to have to do more of these alone because this was really fun.

Charisse Walker (49:19) You can ask the questions you want.

Erica (49:21) Yeah, it’s so fun. I love having Matias here too, but this was great.

Thank you so much. And yeah, I’m sure we’ll talk more.

Charisse Walker (49:33) Thank you for having me.

Mattias (49:35) Thanks for listening to the Wealthy Investor Podcast where we talk about wealth and holistic health. If you enjoy our content, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and hear new episodes every Thursday. If you really like our content, you can follow us on social media at the Wealthy Investor Wealthy spelled W-E-L-L-T-H-Y. Thank you very much.