Cindy Charles & 'Sister Talk'

Cindy Charles, realtor, producer, mother, and wife chats about seeing dreams come true, the importance of celebrating, and her journey towards creating

the much needed talk show - Sister Talk.

Photo by Candice Pantin

Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey into real estate.

I am a woman who loves to make my own rules. Entrepreneurship was a great way to do so. After a bit of trial and error in other fields, I discovered that real estate was the perfect middle ground between entrepreneurship and the 9 to 5 world. You’re very independent but you still have access to the structure and support of an office or team. Becoming a mom had a lot to do with my decision to go into real estate as well. I felt like it would give me the time and financial flexibility to be the kind of mom I wanted to be. Being a mom actually influences just about all my business decisions, including the shows I create.

Share some details about your show, Sister Talk, and the inspiration fueling it. What can viewers expect?

Sister Talk is a talk show where people can find real, unscripted, authentic conversations. It’s definitely not about being politically correct! The idea was simply to let the cameras be a fly on the wall during a girls' night. So, like any girls' night, there’s a lot of laughter; we jump from one topic to another. There might be a little bit of male bashing here and there, but it’s all in good fun. The second season coming up is a bit lighter and spicier than Season 1. The questions are chosen at random and it just happened that this season has more relationship questions.

My personal goal for Sister Talk is to showcase a

diverse group of professional black women in a positive light. I created the show with the intention of pitching it to TV networks, as I did with my first talk show, Couch Talk. I felt like diversity is something that is still lacking in Canadian media and I wanted to show people something different from the stereotypical portrayal of black women in television.

What obstacles did you face while producing the show and how did you manage to overcome them?

Similar to most entrepreneurial ventures, the hardest part is always funding. The other thing I find challenging is when you’re one person wearing several hats managing all the moving parts of a production; it can be quite difficult to please everyone. In terms of overcoming these obstacles…well, it is an ongoing process. In terms of funding, I back my production personally and then work on recouping my costs through donations, sponsors and investors. Filming is the easy part, the business side of it is the part that will test your patience.