This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
Courtesy
“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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He was always the first voice I heard on my birthday, and he had this Sagittarius way of making this Aries day feel like the national holiday they were always supposed to be, just like my dad always did; I still remember the first birthday present he ever bought me. It was a Ne-Yo CD, and I listened to it so much after he bought it that it wouldn't stop skipping.
We dated for five years, but we were young, so when we broke up, while it was difficult to adjust to the new normal, our continuing to keep in touch on birthdays made us feel connected in some way. It's become so normal that when I talk to my friends on my birthday, they'll ask, "Did _____ call you today?" And my response is always, "Yeah, he did."
Whether I was single, in a relationship, or dating a guy he could not stand, he was calling (and some years texting) no matter what.
Were there times when I 100% thought, is this healthy? Is he only calling so he can keep tabs on me? Should I be accepting calls and FaceTime from a man I'm no longer with on my favorite day of the year?
Absolutely.
When trying to decide if communicating with him was healthy at all, I went through a range of emotions and asked myself various questions: Do I want to still hear from him because it feels good to know he still cares? Is the need to hear from him rooted in ego, and if so, have I not done enough self-work? Would I be okay with dating a man who called his ex every year?
But none of the answers to those questions made my decision any more straightforward for me.
The truth is that I answer his birthday calls, and I wish him a happy birthday in return yearly because, on some level, we still love each other, and anyone who tells you they no longer love their ex is lying to you.
When you really love someone, you will always love them. Is love the same? Not always, but I think we look at love and connection as this black-and-white thing, and the truth is most relationships are complex. There was a time in my life when I looked at this man and felt all the romantic love in the world, and couldn't imagine a life without him in it as my partner.
I thought we'd get married, have babies, and that his hands were the safest place in the world for me and my heart to live in.
But as you age, you realize that love isn't enough and life isn't like the movies.
You can love someone who deeply loves you and still know that you don't need to be together. Now I look at him and love him so much that I want him to have the best life possible, even if that life doesn't include me, and I know he feels the same way. Our love has transitioned from a romantic love to a love that cheers for one another from the sidelines of our lives.
But does that mean that because I'm no longer in love with him, I don't want to hear from him on my birthday? No, because it still matters to me - he still matters to me.
Now, don't hold me to this as my final opinion on the situation because, in one, two, or ten years, I could be happily married and tell you that we haven't spoken to one another on our birthdays in years. But I could also tell you that even with a happy marriage, I still maintain a healthy relationship with my ex with boundaries. The truth is I don't know. Only time will tell.
What I can tell you is that as a Black woman navigating this world, often feeling like no one gives a damn about us, having someone who has loved me since I was a child continue to reach out to me on my favorite day in the year, doesn't feel like something wrong, it feels like the care that I deserve.
Not all exes are created equal, and not all couples who were once together hate each other. We went through a period where we couldn't stand one another, but we'd both tell you that that was due to resentment of things not working out.
Ex Etiquette: How To Handle an Ex That Calls or Texts You ‘Happy Birthday’
If you're open to maintaining communication with an ex, ask yourself these questions.
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Now, my ex isn't your ex, and I understand that there are men out there who will use your birthday as a way to find their way back into your life, heart, and bed with a text message. If you're still maintaining communication with your ex with boundaries, ask yourself the following questions.
1. Is this a person genuinely caring about me, or was this a relationship that brought out the worst in me?
It's imperative to ask this question because you don't ever need to hear from someone who broke you. Breaking up with someone is one thing, but continuing to keep in touch with a person who intentionally broke your spirit, heart, and self-esteem is never acceptable.
2. Why do I want to keep in touch? Is it because I want to get back together?
Keeping the lines of communication open with an ex in the hopes of rekindling the relationship can lead to heartbreak all over again. If the two of you have made a conscious choice to stay in touch with boundaries, you should know why that is, and if your goal is to reconcile, you need to make sure you're on the same page.
3. How do you feel about your ex as a person?
Is this a person that you'd have in your life if you never dated? Are they kind-hearted, genuine, and, overall, good people? These are questions that you should ask yourself because love can blind you, and you want to make sure that you're entertaining a person worth your time, even as a friend.
4. Is this relationship impacting my ability to find someone new?
While I'm all for healthy communication with an ex, you don't want to block new blessings by holding up entirely too much space in your life with an old partner. Make space for the new love that you deserve at all times.
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