As Published in Mentors Magazine - September 2002
by Christina Gage and Shelly Gore
Women have only fully entered the world of business in the last fifty years. The first women were pioneers, entering uncharted territory and gradually breaking down barriers for everyone who followed in their footsteps. Women not only proved their worth, but they achieved extraordinary success and now hold some of the top positions in corporate America. These women, such as Carly Fiorina, Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon, provide inspiration, mentorship and role models for women everywhere.
Now, a new group of pioneer women is forming and gaining more momentum everyday. They are self-made millionaire women, and they are unstoppable! These millionairesses are the newest group to join the elite club of the very wealthy, and they are getting noticed.
The number of women who are now building businesses has increased two-and-a-half times faster than all U.S. businesses, and female investors are the newest market for brokerage firms to pursue. Women are building wealth via entrepreneurship, real estate and stock market investing, publishing, product development, and other avenues of wealth creation. They are no longer waiting for "Prince Charming" to take care of them, and they are claiming their own feminine power to create the success and riches they deserve.
At MillionaireWomen.com, we have formed a network of women who are committed to inspiring, mentoring and instructing other women about how to create freedom, wealth and outrageous success in their own lives. We asked a diverse group of self-made millionaire women to share their inside secrets on women's success and wealth. Here are the top three million-dollar secrets they want you to know.
Wealth Knows No Boundaries
Wealth is abundant and available for everyone, regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic status. The only limitations to wealth are the ones that you create with your beliefs and thoughts.
The first millionaire woman in the United States was an African-American woman who was born just two years after the abolition of slavery. Madam C. J. Walker worked for pennies a day as a washerwoman to support her daughter and her new business that she quickly grew into a million-dollar enterprise. She amassed a fortune against all odds and became a savvy businesswoman, an inventor and an extremely generous philanthropist. She gave no power to limitations and became a legendary icon for women's success and financial independence.
What limitations have you created based on your background or history? Let them go and come to realize that wealth knows no boundaries. Madam Walker and modern millionaire women are proof that wealth is not based on race, gender or socioeconomic history. If they can defy all odds to become an outrageous success, you can, too!
Create Wealth Your Own Way
Women in business once believed that to be financially successful, they would have to look and behave like men. Women who tried this approach quickly found that their unique talents as women were stifled. They realized that they weren't bringing their authentic selves to their work. Creativity and passion were lost to "trying to fit in" and the success they sought eluded them.
Millionaire women have discovered that there is a uniquely feminine approach to power and success. They have learned the art of being receptive to others and are especially adept at building relationships. They use their creativity to create win-win situations relying on their intuition to manifest opportunities. Instead of pushing, they pull. Instead of using war tactics and combat language, they attract the results they desire for themselves and their clients. Instead of denying their unique talents and suppressing their skills as women, they leverage them as strengths, owning the power, success and wealth they deserve.
Oprah Winfrey won the hearts of millions by using her unique flair and style to create a deep connection with her viewers. Her success is based on her ability to focus on the emotional and spiritual side of things, and to create an open environment where nurturing, integrity and trust are fostered. She has used her feminine qualities to her advantage rather than trying to imitate other TV personalities.
What are your unique talents or strengths? Like Oprah, discover how you, too, can leverage feminine qualities, such as receptivity, creativity and intuition to create wealth and success your own way. Millionaire women have learned that when you are authentic and true to yourself, both happiness and success will be yours.
Great Mentors Create Shortcuts to Success
All of the millionaire women we know affirm the great influence that mentors had on their journey to success. Mentors show you the shortcuts. They fast track the process by giving you practical knowledge, inside secrets, and introductions to people and opportunities. They inspire by example. Why struggle when you can jumpstart the process with mentors and receive their valuable course corrections on your road to riches?
At MillionaireWomen.com, we are often asked the question, "How do I find really good mentors?" In response to our clients, we gathered together some of the most talented and successful women we know to create a fast track audio program for your success. Business Divas!ä brings together the expertise of many incredible entrepreneurial women to mentor women and teach them how to turn an idea, business or product into an outrageous success. Never before has so much talent, knowledge and experience been brought together in one, information- and inspiration-packed audio program created specifically for women. These Business Divasä will become your very own mentors and can lead you to your own millions.
The Millionaire Women Revolution
Success and independent wealth is an American - and increasingly global - dream that has never gone out of style. Women have reached a financial crossroads and are now speeding down the road to wealth in style. They are creating a revolution in the way women relate to the possibility and the reality of great wealth in their lives. Now is the time for all women to realize their riches. MillionaireWomen.com wishes you the freedom, wealth and outrageous success you deserve!
Christina Gage and Shelly Gore are the founders of MillionaireWomen.com, a network of mentors dedicated to helping others manifest their greatest dreams and live a rich and abundant life. Millionaire Women, Inc. offers audio programs, teleseminars and personal mentoring for success in business and investing. For information or inquiries, please send an email to Success@MillionaireWomen.com.
Want to Read A Great Article on Wealthbuilding for Women?
The Wealth Building Legacy of African American Women
by Allegra Bennett
"Don't sit and wait for opportunities to come, you have to get up and make them."
—Madam C.J. Walker
Women are making the pleasant discovery that the most important investment strategy they can undertake is investing in themselves. It is perhaps why so many women are starting their own businesses. Between 1987 and 1996, the number of black female-owned businesses increased by 135 percent and as of 1996, there were 405,200 businesses owned by black females, creating an unprecedented legacy of wealth building among African Americans. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, women-owned business is the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy.
Those numbers are likely to increase since many states are beginning to take a particular interest in helping women get started in their own businesses. Of course, this kind of help was not always available to women who wanted to go out on their own.
In the late 1800s, women were second-class citizens with few rights and little viable presence in the workforce, which makes the story of Madam C.J. Walker, the hair-care business pioneer, that much more amazing. Racism, sexism and poverty were part of her life but that trio was not strong enough to stop Madam Walker from taking strides that eventually made her the nation's first self-made female millionaire.
"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South," she once said. "I was promoted from there to the washtub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton."
Madam Walker's success with doing what she knew best parallels one of the great secrets of business success: Do what you like doing. Her enterprise established a high-water mark for women in business that, 75 years later, Oprah Winfrey would continue as a business-savvy talk show host.
Of course, to describe Madam Walker as a hairdresser and Ms. Winfrey as merely a talk show host would be tantamount to describing Microsoft's Bill Gates as a computer operator. In the narrowest sense the definitions would be accurate but the entire story would be missed. What each of them did with the ordinary is the lesson to be learned.
Madam Walker and Ms. Winfrey proved to be two extraordinary businesswomen who reigned at polar ends of the century. Their ability to identify and fill a need is a major part of what brought them great personal wealth. Madam Walker not only made herself wealthy but she made entrepreneurship among hundreds of black women possible and almost single-handedly financed the Harlem Renaissance and the early organizational efforts of the NAACP.
The last decades of the 20th century and perhaps a few of the 21st belong to Ms. Winfrey, who is listed in the top half of the nation's 100 richest entrepreneurs. Fortune magazine estimates her personal fortune at $550 million and ranks her third on its list of the highest-paid personalities in entertainment. She is the first black woman to own her own television show—an enormously successful program that is seen by 20 million people daily and grosses upwards of $70 million. Her Harpo Production company has spun off movie making deals and a book club that generates millions more, and a philanthropic Angel's Network to help people help themselves. Nestled between these two inspiring pacesetters is an oasis of successful black female entrepreneurs quietly making their own millions as they grow their businesses.
Whether they knew plenty or next to nothing, businesswomen who succeed seem to operate under a common and practical success framework: Study the business, work hard, give something back, plan, focus and respect fear. You can never have too much planning and focus, they say, but fear is a necessary active ingredient recommended only in small doses.
"Running a business is like going to school and never graduating," says Cathy Hughes, owner and chairperson of Baltimore's Radio One. "There's always one more course to take." Ms. Hughes' Radio One communications empire is 14 stations strong, employs close to 400 people and is preparing to go public. "Having the vision and determination to start your own business is essential, but it's essential that you really know the business you're about to get involved in...," advises Audrey Rice Oliver, founder, president and CEO of Integrated Business Solutions, a $12-million-dollar software development and systems integration company based in San Ramon, CA.
"Anyone can succeed in nontraditional areas if they take advantage of the opportunities," says Detroit's Geralda Dodd. Ms. Dodd is chairman of Thomas Madison, Inc. a steel and metal stamping company that employs 600 people and grosses revenues in excess of $100 million annually. She is the first African-American woman to break through the gender barrier in the traditionally male-dominated business of steel and metal stamping.
Businesswomen say they are noticing that with each generation, African-American women actually are becoming more daring, making the job traditions and the economic playing field for women as a whole more dynamic. Each passing generation leaves fewer excuses not to soar and each success story provides the all-important role models, the you-can-do-it-too psychic encouragement and, most importantly, the tools for wealth building which can determine the destiny of a people.
"The old job traditions have expanded greatly from the cooks, maids, teachers and nurses" says Josephine E. Goode, president and CEO of InnoVisions International, a Baltimore—based healthcare consultant. "Even the lowly regarded occupations of cooks and maids have leapt forward with women operating them as structured catering or janitorial businesses that compete for large corporate and government contracts."
Still, these female CEOs say, the corporate world underestimates their attributes. They are often described as being "too emotional to be in business." But their emotion may be their secret weapon. Oprah Winfrey's compassion has helped her become a very wealthy woman. Compassion is her trade mark. She may get emotional on the air but she cries all the way to the bank. For many female CEOs it appears that their compassion is one of the attributes that they bring to corporate America.
But the accomplishments of Walker, Winfrey and thousands of successful black women are built on a basic business model, one that has more to do with economic reality than emotional responses. This model is familiar to many of the world's most successful businessmen. A.G. Gaston and Barry Gordy used it and John H. Johnson still uses it. Successful African American female enterprenuers do what all successful enterprenuers do—they identified a public need and fill it. And by doing so the "hairdresser," the "talk show host" and the diligent female business owners become millionaires.
Often time their new economic status is not planned—it occurs because of their efforts to operate a viable business. Rarely do African American female business owners set out to build wealth for the sake of wealth. "When you develop yourself for the benefit of other individuals you become like a magnet: The wealth finds you," says Ms. Hughes. "If you become obsessed with building wealth it eludes you, very much like looking for love," she says, "you never find it."
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