CHARLENE WALTERS, MBA, PH.D. – BUSINESS & BRANDING MENTOR, AUTHOR, ENTREPRENEURSHIP COACH & CORPORATE TRAINER

No matter what setback you encounter, there’s always a silver lining. Jordan Levin’s guest today is Charlene Walters, Entrepreneurship Coach and Business & Branding Mentor. In this episode, Charlene shares how the painful experience of losing her husband helped her become the strong businesswoman and mother she is today. Her book, Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur, perfectly encapsulates her journey. It talks about developing the inner resilience that allows you to overcome setbacks. You will need this toughness to become a successful entrepreneur. Tune in, take the risk, and move forward!

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CHARLENE WALTERS, MBA, PH.D. – BUSINESS & BRANDING MENTOR, AUTHOR, ENTREPRENEURSHIP COACH & CORPORATE TRAINER

I have Charlene Walters. She is an entrepreneur coach, business branding mentor, corporate trainer and the author of Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. She serves as a mentor on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ask an Expert. Through her own consulting business, she is featured among the CEOs, influencers and celebrities on the BAM Network and was selected as one of 150 Marketers to Follow by Rubicly. Charlene has also developed a digital entrepreneurship MBA program and is an entrepreneur who enjoys combining her knowledge and love of marketing and business strategy with her passion for innovation and a desire to have others succeed. It is an honor to have you here, Charlene.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. I’m so thrilled to be here.

How did you get started in this whole adventure or journey of becoming a mentor or a coach? What I’m getting at is what is it that you cannot do?

There are plenty of things that I cannot do but I try everything. I always tell people that life and your professional journey are different for everyone. It’s never a straight line. It’s a lot of zigzags and curves. I started early on undergrad as an English Major. I always loved writing and I thought that’s what I would do. I grew up in Connecticut and it was cold there and I hated it. I moved to Miami as soon as I graduated to get some sun. My first job there was in sales. I fell in love with the business. I loved making deals. I worked for a company that imported fresh-cut flowers from Miami. The way the floral market works is like the stock market, the prices go up and down. I sold to customers across the US.

I decided to go back to school and get my MBA and learn more about business. From there, I was involved with higher ed and marketing. I eventually went on to get my PhD in Marketing until I specialized in developing courses and creating curriculum. Eventually, I was put in charge of a digital entrepreneurship MBA program and selected all the books, created all the courses and started working with entrepreneurs in our program. I loved it.

I started also doing some mentoring for Entrepreneur Magazine. This became a passion for me. That little voice inside my head, the one that always wanted to be a writer said, “You got to get back and write that book like you’ve always wanted to.” I started writing a little bit of a memoir and I also wrote this business book about the entrepreneurial mindset and how to get your mindset in the right way so that you can be successful. That brought me here to you.

 Life and professional journeys are different for everyone. It’s never a straight line.

For those of you who are reading, to be able to get to where you want to get to, there are a lot of obstacles and adversity that you have to overcome. I want people to understand that life is not necessarily a straight line. One of the things that I talk about in one of my ten good habits is having gratitude and recognizing what’s going on at that time and looking back and saying, “That situation happened for a reason. I’m making the right decision to move forward.” I want to go back to it a little bit. During school, you took a lot of writing and enjoyed it. At that time, you talked to yourself, “I’m going to be a writer.” I’m a little more curious about what specifically happened? Did somebody say something? Did you see something and you said, “I love writing but I’m interested in something different?”

Times have changed. Before, parents would say more, they still do. I probably do this to my kids, too. They say, “That’s not the best and most practical career choice. You should try something else.” When I was young, I didn’t necessarily see the path to get what I wanted as clearly as I do now. I didn’t have as much confidence as I do now. It grew over time. I took the easier route and then different things came up for me as I was moving along.

When I was little, all the things that I thought I might like, although I might not have gone directly into them, are all a part of my life in my professional journey now. That’s the cool thing about all of us, is that if there’s something we’re interested in and that we have a passion for, no matter what our career is, we’ll find a way to integrate that in. That’s what I’ve always done. In any position I’ve had, I try to do those things that I enjoy and add them to my job. That’s what we all need to do to get that joy and to take control of our careers to some extent.

You bring up a couple of great points about passion and joy. Those are two different things. We have to understand that because we love to do something, it doesn’t always necessarily mean that it can become a career. When we get older, we get smarter. We look back and go, “That was a pretty cool situation.” Back to the passion part. For me, I was taught how to speak. I always joke that I make my living speaking. For me, that’s a passion because it was something that someone told me I wasn’t going to be able to do. That’s where the drive comes to me to be able to always try and to continually improve and succeed. There are always going to be those roadblocks. What I’m curious about is when you moved to Miami and you were writing and then you started this whole new career, what challenges did you overcome?

I had my share of challenges. Probably the biggest challenge that happened to me was when I met my husband and I moved around with him a little bit. He was a pilot. I moved with him to California and different places. He was wonderful. We had two children. When the kids were small, 2 and 4, I was enrolled in my PhD program, attending to my kids, teaching online for a few universities. When he left for work one day and was involved in an accident and didn’t come home. I thought to myself, “There’s no way I will finish this PhD, take care of these two girls myself and that I will be able to do all the things that I want to do with my life. This is not what I picked. This is not what I wanted. How am I going to go on from here?”

In reality, that situation caused me to completely pivot. I finished the PhD. My kids are doing great. I overcame that grief and all of the loss. I’ve gone on to do a lot of different things in my career and my life that I don’t think I would have done necessarily if he was here. It pushed me to broaden my horizons and do different things. There’s always a silver lining with any loss, any setback. The important thing and why I try to talk about it a lot is that when it happened to me, I can’t think of anyone whose husband died when their kids were so young. I could think of Jackie Kennedy. That was my big go-to person. That was all I could think of. I like to tell people and share this example. If something happens to anyone in a similar situation, they can think about me and think, “It was okay for her. She made it through. If it happens, I can make it through too.”

Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur: 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity, and Achieve Financial Success

I’m sorry to hear that. At the same time, it’s a learning lesson. One of the biggest things that I’ve learned from different people that I’ve spoken to with different situations such as yours is don’t hold back and know that there are other support systems out there where there are people, individuals, companies and somebody like yourself who could help someone and help them get through that situation.

As traumatizing as that situation or any other situation, you have to recognize that it’s going to be hard. It might take a couple of weeks, a couple of months or a year and that’s fine. To create change, what happened? It was after you recognized that you have to say to yourself, “It’s time to move forward. What can I do to allow myself to move forward?” That’s the lesson they can take from here, which allows individuals who are strong and have lots of willpower to be able to do it. It’s not an easy thing. People do understand that it’s okay to grieve in such and such. I’m not saying be tough and go crazy, just recognize it and move forward.

The same is true in business and life, we always hit obstacles and setbacks. To me, when something happens that I wasn’t expecting for my business for myself, I was counting on something to go through and then I get a rejection or someone says no. It hurts. It’s a knife through the heart. I have to say, “You’re in a bad mood. You’re not feeling good about this. What can I do to reset my mindset? Maybe I need to take the afternoon off if I don’t have any meetings or if I don’t have any commitments. I’ll spend some time with my kids, get some exercise, whatever it is to get me back.”

That’s what I always stress. It’s normal and healthy and it’s okay to feel sad and disappointed. Find a way to not get stuck there. Don’t live there and find your plan B, plan C, plan D or whatever it is to get you on the way to where you want to go. I believe and I know you do too, Jordan, that you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. You have to have that desire, tenacity and ability to overcome those setbacks and to keep going because there will always be something to get you along the way.

When you’re told no, even as a child or an adult, it’s heartfelt. Everybody takes it so personally. You have to take a step back, go be with the kids and take the afternoon off. That’s okay. It’s important to recognize that. For me, in this example, I’ve been told no so many times. What I’ve done is I’ve learned to instinctively become my own private investigator. That means finding out a way to find that yes. If it takes me ten people or ten companies or whatever it is to get what I want, I’m going to keep going.

You all should always be able to find what you want. A slight change but not be able to do it but it might be able to deviate around that situation, especially in business. A lot of that has to do with how you react to that situation. If you are in a corporate setting and your boss has told you something that you do not like and you begin to complain about it, some of you go, “Hold on a second. You shouldn’t be doing that.” You have to understand how to navigate it. Those who become successful are the ones that know how to navigate through those situations.

There’s always a silver lining with any loss and any setback.

You have to find another way and reframe it. A lot of times, we take things personally. We think it’s important but we’re not looking at it. Let’s say you are in a corporate setting. A lot of it has to do with, “This is a business.” It might be a great idea and it may be something wonderful but is it going to drive the bottom line? Is it important to the company? Sometimes it’s hard for us as individuals to think about that. The decision is usually coming from a different place. What I always say too is if you get a rejection or someone tells you no, ask for feedback. If we don’t ask for feedback, we’ll assign some meaning to whatever happened that probably has nothing to do with anything.

That’s happened to me before where I’ve been upset about something that didn’t go the way I wanted. I came up with a reason why I thought it would be and then I asked for clarification. When you do that, you’ll get something. Maybe it’s something you need to know. Maybe it’s something about you that you need to improve. If you’re in business, maybe your company can improve. Sometimes it might not have anything to do with anything. Maybe it’s a personal thing, whatever it is. Most of the time, we can get some feedback to help us move forward.

I want to dig a little bit deeper into Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. Can you give us a little more insight into what that entails?

What I talked about is the entrepreneurial mindset and what you need to do as an entrepreneur to be successful. The book is aimed at women. The reason why is there’s many women out there who are primary breadwinners. I didn’t see a lot of books that were specifically for women. A lot of the men that have read it have told me that they can relate to everything in it too because it’s all true for entrepreneurs. I tell them they can read it too as long as they don’t mind like, “You go, girl,” every now and again. It’s a book that everyone can relate to.

It’s about developing that toughness, that resilience and that ability to overcome setbacks. It’s about becoming more comfortable with risk-taking and putting yourself out there because you need that as an entrepreneur. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur but nobody wants to give up that paycheck we’re getting every single week. We love that paycheck. We can count on it. It’s about becoming more comfortable with risk, planning, organizing your time and confidence. Everything comes down to confidence. It’s hard sometimes if we don’t naturally have that confidence.

I read a stat that said 70% of people feel like imposters or they have imposter syndrome where they feel like they don’t belong, they’ve only got unlucky. That happens to me sometimes. It’s about finding out what you can do. Jordan, you said this too. When you’re in a situation where you feel uncertain, you don’t feel like you’re sure about where you are, for me, that pushes me to research, prepare, practice, and find out more so that I can do a good job. A lot of times, when we’re feeling that way, we’ll perform better. It’s about all those things, getting comfortable with money, bootstrapping, budgeting, managing our time, working on work-life balance and the most important part is that resilience. Keeping to go after it day after day so that we can be successful.

Entrepreneurship Coach: If there’s something we’re interested in that we really have a passion for, we’ll find a way to integrate that in no matter what our career is.

I can very much appreciate that because I’m not a woman but from a business standpoint, there’s a lot of parallels. I got your point about risk-taking. There are different levels of risk-taking. Some people will go 100% whether it’s moving to a different city and beginning a new job or starting a new company, or on a smaller scale, taking a little bit of money, testing out the market, and see how it is. If it’s going well, you keep going. If you don’t have enough money, you have the option of raising money. There are so many different options. For you, it’s been about the pressure to let viewers and visitors know that you are their support system. You’ve been there and done that. Therefore, you have the knowledge and expertise to hook them.

We talk about risk. I often recommend to people that if they’re not comfortable with the risk and they don’t have the budget, it’s always a great idea to start a side hustle so you still have that money coming in while you’re formulating your plans, you’re working on your business plan and your website, you’re setting up your sales strategy so that you can get a little further along before you take that leap. That can ease it for a lot of people. Many people do that. I did that myself when I first started. If you’re feeling like you want to jump in, all in and you have a business where you can do it a little bit at a time, that’s always a good way.

Get that support system. It can be a mentor. Mentors come in all forms. It can be somebody that you hire to meet with every once in a while to make sure you’re on track. As entrepreneurs, we have many ideas and things that we want to do. We’re all over the place. It’s hard to juggle that and manage that. If you have somebody you can talk to, to help strategize and to streamline and say, “Goal number 1, 2 and 3 are the ones we’ll focus on first then we’ll then get to 4, 5 and 6. We’ll get to the other ones.” It helps. It could even be someone that you know.

When I was writing a book, I didn’t know anything about book publishing. I didn’t know about that business. I met with whoever I could for half an hour, an hour or whatever they had to pick their brains and see what they thought. You might not always agree with what everyone says but you take pieces and then you determine what’s better for you because everyone is different. It’s not like there’s a person out there who’s going to say, “Call this person. Do this. This will be perfect.” There’s no specific path for everyone but it’s good to have someone on your side to help you and cheerlead for you. Look for other people that are also starting businesses and form your support system too. Get those people you can turn to because it’s lonely as an entrepreneur. It can be isolating especially now during the pandemic when we’re all home.

Would you be willing to share an example of a client that maybe you work with that came to you with this specific situation? How are you able to help them?

I’ve had many different clients. I feel like I’ve had some that were starting out so I’ve helped them organize what their business will be. I can think of one and she had about five different business ideas. We tried to streamline her and get her towards what’s the most important, what should we concentrate on first and then we can move on from there. I’ve had a few like that now that I’m thinking about it. I’ve had others that are trying to scale up their business. They’ve gotten to a certain level and now they want to get to the next level.

It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to feel disappointed. Just find a way not to get stuck there.

I’ve also met with people in terms of their professional careers and helping them with personal branding and visibility. That’s something else I talk about a lot in the book. Jordan, you’re doing a lot with that. Even if we’re not entrepreneurs, we don’t stay with companies for 40 years normally as they did in the past. The more visible we are out there in the world, the more that people will think of us when there’s an opportunity, the more people will know about us and the more things we can get involved with. It’s super important for people to also work on their personal brand and making themselves known as an expert. A variety of different types of businesses and types of people I work with. I’m here for them no matter what they have going on.

That’s the thing. I fear this. There are always different struggles. Make sure that you have the right support system. Ask a lot of questions. If you are brand new, if you’ve never done it before, ask 1,000 questions until you find out what to do. What I’ve learned is when you start a business, you want to plan out where you would want to be. Let’s think about a certain phase in 3 to 5 years. You got to reverse engineer the whole plan. If you reverse engineer the whole plan, you can follow the plan as if you were already there. For some people, that doesn’t make any sense but it does because you have to be able to imagine it. You have to imagine that you’re doing what you love and what brings you joy. If you could imagine that and you feel comfortable in your own skin in that situation, you’re going to make it happen.

You have a plan. Nothing happens without a plan and without that plan B, C, D, E and F. Particularly with sales, I find a lot of times people fall in love with the beauty of entrepreneurship, the sexiness and the appeal of it but then they forget about the selling. We have to get ourselves in that sales mindset where we’re working on generating revenue. If we want to get to $500,000 in sales, what does it take to make that happen? How many calls? How many outreach attempts? How many sales do I need to make and close? It is a lot more strategic. We have to have that plan in place. Otherwise, we’re not going to be able to make it happen the way we want. An awesome idea on planning, for sure.

Let’s get a little specific. If somebody wants to begin a career like yours, what would be one piece of advice to suggest? In general, you’ve done so many different things. What would be one piece of advice would you give to someone who says, “I’m lucky to do what you’re doing. What do I have to do? Where do I begin?”

It depends on what they want to do, generally. A lot of people ask me about thought leadership and how to put yourself out there. I wrote an article on personal branding and somebody reached out to me on Instagram, which I thought was great. Somebody had been following me and said, “Your article helped me because I was overwhelmed and I didn’t want to put myself out there.” I remember being that person who thought, “How do I get started here?” I started initially because I realized that being an author involves also being a speaker. It also involves having a presence. I started focusing on all that.

The easiest way for me to get started with any of that was to start with a blog. I like writing. I started writing a little bit. I remember being that person who was thinking twice about every little thing I was saying before I published it. I wasn’t quite comfortable in that yet. Now I’m at the point where I don’t think like that anymore. When I had a person reach out to me on Instagram and say, “It helped me and I’m starting.” I thought, “I do remember being in that same.” It was cool to see that come full circle.

Entrepreneurship Coach: The important thing is to start somewhere, then build, be consistent, and keep going with it.

I always tell people, in general, to think about what are their skills, their areas of expertise and what do they want to be known for, concentrate on 2 or 3 areas and then think about what they like to do. Do they like to do videos? Would they like to do a podcast? Do they like to write? How can they start putting content out on a regular basis? The important thing is don’t worry about doing everything. People get overwhelmed. They think they have to do twenty things. The important thing is to start somewhere and then build and be consistent and then keep going with it. When I first started out, it was something small with a blog and then it kept moving from there. You never know where it’s going to take you next. The important thing is to get going and then keep up with it.

You’re speaking my language because I started this show out of whim. My business coach said to me, “Do a show.” The backstory to that is I started recording myself speaking on Zoom talking about a topic. I kept trying to make it too perfect. I kept hitting record. “I’m not going to delete that.” I got frustrated. That Monday morning, I had a meeting with him on Zoom and I told him what happened. He looks at me and says, “Do a show.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” It wasn’t even a thought. Within two days, I got my first show up. I did the research, talked to people and I figured it out.

I’ve already rebranded three times. I’m potentially going to be doing another rebrand because I’m learning so much about the industry. You’ve got to do what’s right for you as an individual. It doesn’t matter what you look and sound like. It doesn’t matter how perfect it is. Get yourself out there because there are many people out there that even if you have a small following, that small following will eventually grow because you are being authentic, you’re being your true self. That’s one of my good habits is to understand that you have to be yourself, be honest with yourself. If you are, you’ll be able to get to where you want to go.

Reciprocate. The more you support other people and you have good intentions, it comes back to you. I started that with social media. I have my core followers. I feel like we’re in it from the beginning. When they see you and what you’re doing, one thing leads to another. They’re rooting for you along the journey and you’re rooting for them. The more we collaborate, help, lift, and support each other, we’ll all watch each other’s journey. It’s nice to see how it all unfolds. Podcasting is great for networking, building visibility and getting to know other people because when you have people on, you learn from them and they learn from you. Maybe they start a podcast and they invite you on their podcast. It snowballs. It’s a good way to approach that personal branding and thought leadership.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been learning. I have a couple more questions for you. What do you do to recalibrate with all these things going on? You got a lot of books and TV shows and all these things. How do you recalibrate?

I’ve gotten much better about paying attention to how I’m feeling. If I’m feeling burnt out, I’m telling myself, “You are burnt out. You need a little break. You have to recharge.” When it was in the pandemic, it’s something that I’ve always done with the kids, being a single mom, working, juggling and everything. I like to work. I’m one of those people who like that. I have to force myself to relax a little more. It’s always been good for me to get away for a few days, change the atmosphere because then I can focus on my kids and doing other things. I tried to do that. As we emerge from the pandemic, we’ll be able to do that more. Make sure we’re getting those breaks.

Get some feedback to help you move forward.

I’ve always been good about getting fitness because we can all put ourselves, our health, and our sleep last. Especially for business owners, we want to do everything and we want to work 24/7. We want to make it a success. That can be detrimental if we’re not spending our time with other areas because we’ll be rundown, we won’t have our energy, we won’t have happiness. The more we can work on that work-life balance, the better. For me, it’s been those two things is being good about my fitness and about spending time in other areas of my life.

What I do with the girls, my girls are great about this, we all have to share time. We’re in this family together. We’re vying for time. If they have certain things, I say, “Talk to me about it.” We can all work around each other. It’s important to have that communication. If you want to go and get something that’s important for you, for someone’s birthday or something coming up, we can do that but I have such and such during these times but I’m setting aside this time for you. The more we can all communicate, talk to each other, balance and go back and forth, the better. For me, that’s what I’ve done for years and it seems to have worked okay.

That’s important. A lot of us tend to overwork. Find 1, 2 or 3 things to help you reground and recalibrate, very important.

What do you do to recalibrate?

I’m similar to you. For me, it’s fitness. I own a CrossFit gym. For me, I keep going to the gym and workout. I’m more driven. You have your good days and bad days. One of the things that I’ve learned is to pay attention to how your body feels. If you’re feeling good, go ahead and push yourself a little bit harder in the workout. If you feel a little bit in between, maybe your workout isn’t quite 100% and that’s fine.

You don’t need that to see if you have to work out every single day. At least 3 to 5 days a week but at least do something every day whether it’s to go out for a walk, get outside or whatever it is. For me, it’s sports. Hockey, waterski, surfing, snow skiing, those are my recalibration, regrounding because, for me, that’s my escape to forget about everything else. My brain only focuses on those things. My wife knows that if I’m feeling like, “Oh.” She loves it. When I come back, I’m good to go.

Entrepreneurship Coach: When you support other people, and you have good intentions, it comes back to you.

It’s important to realize that you don’t have to work a 9:00 to 5:00 schedule as an entrepreneur. If it’s noon and you feel like you have no energy and you don’t have a meeting right then, go do your fitness and come back and work at night when you’re feeling better. Pay attention to how you’re feeling so you can maximize your time every place. A lot of times, we have to be doing a certain thing at a certain time. Pay attention to what your body is saying. It’s important.

In that same token, we are talking about fitness. The mental side, paying attention to how you feel. If you are feeling down or up or whatever it is, talk to somebody about it. Know that 99.9% of the time, whatever you’re feeling or thinking, there’s going to be somebody else in that situation. Be sure you reach out to someone to help you with that. Don’t let that bring you down.

The pandemic has been a perfect time and opportunity for this because so many people have been feeling isolated and not sure what to do. I recognized in myself that I was working a lot and spending a lot of time with my kids and my kids were home school. There are many things going on. I reached out to a couple of my friends and we decided to go out to a restaurant, living on the edge here. We are all thankful for that because we were all feeling exactly that same burnout. It’s common for entrepreneurs and for people in business no matter what. Particularly during the pandemic, it’s more prevalent for everyone. Make sure that you’re finding those outlets however you can and when you can as long as you’re safe.

It goes back to what we talked about, business, personal, relationship or whatever it is, find that support system that allows you to feel a sense of camaraderie.

You can’t do it alone. It’s lonely as it is working on a business, particularly if you’re a solopreneur. That goes to outsourcing too and hiring help when you need it. A lot of times, when we’re first starting off, we feel like, “I’m Superwoman. I’m Superman. I have to do this all myself.” That can hold the business back. The quicker you can start to delegate and outsource, the better for you and your business because then you then can focus on other areas that are more important than spending your time particularly on tasks you don’t like or you don’t want to do.

My last question is what brings you joy?

You need to have a plan. Nothing happens without a plan.

My children bring me joy. I’ve talked about that a lot. I love connecting with people and meeting people. The thing I’ve loved most about becoming an author, going out there, being on podcasts and getting to know other people. The incredible amount of people that I’ve connected with has been great. I love to travel when we’re able to again, hopefully, someday. I love fitness. Those are the main things in my life, helping and supporting others and spending time with friends and people that I enjoy. That’s what life’s all about. Life is short.

I want you to give a recap and let the readers know how we can get ahold of you. Do you have any upcoming projects that you’re working on that you might like to share with us?

Everyone can find me on social media, either @CharleneWaltersPhD or @CWaltersPhD. The reason I add the PhD is there are a lot of Charlene Walters out there. This enables me to differentiate myself. You can find out more about me on CharleneWalters.com. That’s my website. You can find out more about my book, it’s called Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur, on LaunchYourInnerEntrepreneur.com. It’s available on Amazon, Walmart, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, wherever you can look for it.

If you’re interested, I wouldn’t hate it if you checked it out. I’m writing another book called What’s Next? It’ll be about what we’re going to do as businesses as we emerge from the pandemic, how we’ll approach remote work, how we’ll bring women back to the workforce, how we’re going to work on hybrid schedules and what impact the pandemic has had in terms of our target audience, our attitudes, our changes and buying preferences This is interesting as we’re regrouping in this next stage. We’re starting to get there. I became a TV host of a show called Launch. It is on Roku, Apple News and Amazon Fire. You can find it, it’s under DBA Network. I’d love for you to check that out, too.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to learn more about you and for the readers to have all the information. I hope to talk to you again soon.

You too, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me on. I wish you the best of luck with everything and to the audience too. Good luck. Reach out if you need anything.

Thank you so much.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

• Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur
• @CharleneWaltersPhD – Instagram
• @CWaltersPhD – Twitter
• Amazon – Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur
• Walmart – Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur
• Books-A-Million – Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur
• Barnes & Noble – Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur
• Article – Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs

ABOUT CHARLENE WALTERS

Charlene Walters, MBA, PhD is an entrepreneurship coach, business and branding mentor, corporate trainer and author of Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur. She serves as a mentor on Entrepreneur magazine’s “Ask an Expert” forum and through her own consulting business (Charlene Walters, MBA, PhD, LLC), is featured among other CEOs, influencers and celebrities on the BAM Network and was recently selected as one of 150 Marketers to Follow by Rubicly. Charlene also developed a digital entrepreneurship MBA program and is an entrepreneur who enjoys combining her knowledge and love of marketing and business strategy with her passion for innovation and desire to help others succeed.

Charlene is also the author of a memoir (pre-publication) about overcoming tragedy/loss and moving forward in life based on her own personal experience. As part of that, she serves as a speaker and mentor, and writes and contributes to numerous publications on business and motivational topics. You can find Charlene quoted in media outlets including Entrepreneur magazine, Woman’s Day, Redbook, UpJourney, Fupping, Bustle, Business Insider, Business News Daily, Best Life, Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, Women’s Health, Martha Stewart, Forbes and many others. Charlene also writes a blog called Entrepreneurship, Life Enthusiasm & Energizing Your Brand and has taught hundreds of business, marketing, and entrepreneurship courses and workshops for businesses and universities. She has also appeared in or on many podcasts, shows and blogs.

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