This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "We Should All Be Millionaires" by Rachel Rodgers. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Why are most self-made millionaires men? Why do women find it more difficult to become millionaires? What can you do to become one?
In We Should All Be Millionaires, Rachel Rodgers discusses ways to develop a positive money mindset, manage your time and energy, and increase your wealth by recognizing the worth of your work. These steps are crucial for women who want to feel empowered about making more money.
Read below for a brief overview of Rachel Rodgers’ We Should All Be Millionaires.
We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers
Self-made millionaire Rachel Rodgers’ We Should All Be Millionaires argues that all women, especially women of color, can and should strive to become millionaires. According to Rodgers, society and media perpetuate disempowering stereotypes about women and money that keep them from earning more. She rejects common advice to simply work harder or to live more frugally and argues that women must instead change how they think and feel about money, reclaim their time and energy, and stop underselling themselves. By following Rodgers’s advice, you’ll learn to be financially confident, grow your wealth, and live with more freedom and autonomy.
Rodgers is a business coach, intellectual property attorney, and the founder and CEO of HelloSeven, a multi-million dollar coaching company that aims to teach women and people from marginalized communities how to build wealth.
In this article, we’ll explore Rodgers’s strategies for how to increase your wealth in three parts:
- In Part 1, we’ll examine the obstacles women face that keep them from becoming wealthy. We’ll then discuss ways to reframe your mindset about money and gain financial confidence.
- In Part 2, we’ll explore how you can reclaim your time and energy so you can dedicate them to building wealth.
- In Part 3, we’ll show how you can overcome imposter syndrome, recognize the value of your work, and start growing your wealth today.
Part 1: Transform Your Mindset About Money
According to Rodgers, the first step to becoming a millionaire is to transform the beliefs you have about money that hold you back from earning more and building wealth.
Rodgers writes that for most of American history, the government has prevented women from gaining economic power. In the United States, women have only been financially independent for half a century. Before the mid-1970s, women couldn’t own their own bank account, pursue higher education, start a business, or make use of other financial resources without having a man involved.
Today, even though legal barriers are gone, society and the media continue to teach women disempowering beliefs about wealth that many women have internalized. From a young age, men are encouraged to be bold with money and to take financial risks. Women, on the other hand, are taught to be cautious about money and that building and managing wealth is difficult. Because of this conditioning, women frequently undersell themselves and doubt their financial skills.
While we can’t easily dismantle stereotypes or rewrite history, we can alter our beliefs and our strategy for making money. In the following sections, we’ll cover Rodgers’s advice on how to quash the limiting beliefs many women have about money and discuss how to adopt a new, money-positive mindset.
Reframe Your Limiting Thoughts
Rodgers writes that your thoughts inform your actions, so to take positive steps toward earning more, you must think more positive, empowering thoughts about money. According to Rodgers, women’s limiting beliefs are one major obstacle that keeps them financially disempowered. Many simply don’t think they can make more money, and they justify this belief by convincing themselves that money isn’t important to them, that making money requires a grueling grind, or that they’re simply not skilled with money. This, in turn, prevents women from making changes or trying new strategies to increase their wealth.
Rodgers suggests you practice thought work—reflecting on and transforming your negative thoughts into more helpful ones. By reframing negative thoughts, you’ll have fewer self-imposed obstacles to your financial success. Rodgers provides steps on how to change your thoughts:
Step #1: Be more mindful of your thoughts. Notice when a new thought pops into your head so that you can reflect on it. For example, you might pay attention to what thoughts pop into your mind as you apply for a new job.
Step #2: Identify whether your thoughts are helpful, empowering you to believe in yourself and make positive changes to your life, or if they trigger negative emotions that leave you feeling stuck. For example, if you don’t have some skills listed in a job posting, you might think you’re not good enough to get the jobs you want. This unhelpful thought makes you feel inadequate and discouraged, which prevents you from taking positive action.
Step #3: Challenge your negative thoughts and replace them with more empowering ones. This way, you can focus on moving forward and taking action rather than feeling stuck and powerless. For example, you might tell yourself that skills can be built and you simply need to make time to develop them.
Take Responsibility for Your Finances
In addition to reframing your thoughts, Rodgers writes that you must take responsibility for properly managing your finances. Being able to manage your own money will give you confidence in your financial knowledge and help you spend your money wisely. When you know what’s happening with your finances, you won’t live in uncertainty and doubt your spending decisions. To gain control over your money, you must record and organize your finances with accounting systems so that you can make informed decisions and meet your financial goals.
Rodgers provides three tips on how to manage your finances:
Tip #1: Check your bank accounts daily. Rodgers recommends getting a bookkeeping software or hiring a bookkeeper to help you keep track of your finances. This allows you to monitor your progress toward your financial goals and detect potential challenges early on.
Tip #2: Schedule a regular time each week to review your net worth, credit score, and recent spending habits. This helps you better understand how your spending affects your wealth, enabling you to make decisions that save you money. Additionally, when you see positive changes, you’ll be more motivated to continue tracking your wealth.
Tip #3: If you have debt, stop feeling ashamed about it. Rodgers argues that shame is counterproductive and makes it harder for you to confront your debt, which you must do if you want to erase it. Reframe your debt in a positive light. Doing this helps you accept your financial situation and take action to resolve your debt. For example, if you have mortgage debt, you might reframe it by recognizing that you want your family to live in a nice home and be well provided for. When you see it this way, you’ll feel empowered to work toward eliminating it.
Focus on Growing Your Wealth, Not Shrinking Your Lifestyle
Rodgers proposes another change you must make to your approach to money: Rather than obsess over how to save money, focus on how you can make more money. Rodgers argues that it’s hard to build wealth if you have a substandard lifestyle due to penny-pinching. For example, if you sleep on an old, broken mattress because you’re afraid to spend money on a new one, you can’t get the quality sleep needed to pursue a promotion at your job or study for a higher degree that will increase your income.
In many cases, you must spend money to make more money. Rodgers describes steps that let you upgrade your lifestyle so you can better build the future life you want:
Step #1: Imagine your dream life in detail: your ideal home, the experiences you want to have, and the things you want to own. Calculate how much that lifestyle would cost you each month. This provides you with a clear goal to aim for and inspires you to pursue it.
Step #2: Picture the person living that dream life—your ideal self. Think of how they treat themselves and others, how they spend their time, what they eat, and how they dress. Now, think about what changes you can make right now to be more like your ideal self. For example, you might devote more time to making home-cooked meals instead of eating fast food on the drive home from work.
Step #3: Brainstorm new ways to meet your financial goals and take your first step toward your dream life. Rodgers suggests you set a deadline for making one positive change to your life—like getting a new mattress before your birthday—and come up with ways you can make extra money. By making an upgrade to your life, you’ll improve your mood, environment, and ability to make money.
Part 2: Maximize Your Time and Energy To Make More Money
We discussed how shifting your mindset and attitude about money can help you overcome self-imposed barriers, but Rodgers believes that’s not enough to make you a millionaire. To build your wealth, you must also make decisions that free up your time and energy, things women tend to give away too easily. In the following sections, we’ll explore Rodgers’s advice on how to reclaim your time and energy.
Set Healthy Boundaries
Rodgers writes that the first step to reclaiming your time and energy is to honor your own needs by setting boundaries: Know and communicate to people what you will and will not do. There’s a widespread belief that women should always put others, such as their children or the household, first. As a result, women usually handle the majority of domestic work and parenting on top of their jobs, leaving them with no time to advance their careers or pursue other goals.
To combat this imbalance, you must refuse to let people exploit you and use up your time, whether at home or at your workplace. When deciding on what you will and won’t do, Rodgers suggests you make decisions that add to your life rather than detract from it—decisions that make you happier, healthier, and more energized. Stop accepting demands that leave you exhausted and overextended (for instance, agreeing to look over a coworker’s project when you’re on vacation). Rodgers argues that you don’t need to feel guilty for setting boundaries and declining others’ requests. You’re simply saying “yes” to yourself after sidelining your own needs for so long.
Recruit Help and Delegate Tasks
Even after setting boundaries, you may still face many tasks that take up your time and energy. Rodgers suggests you hire people to do household or administrative tasks that are necessary but not enjoyable. She recommends you outsource anything that drains your energy, that you hate doing, or that you find difficult to do. For example, if you have a messy household and spend a lot of time cleaning, consider hiring a cleaning service. Rodgers advises you start by hiring a personal assistant who can handle a variety of tasks, like sorting through your emails, doing errands, and managing your schedule.
You might be reluctant to spend money when you’re trying to grow your wealth, but Rodgers argues that you can build your skills and career with more focus and energy and spend more time generating income this way. Further, when you learn to delegate, you can lower your stress and free up time to do what you want, which can improve your health and happiness.
Build a Close Network of Successful Women
Now that you’ve cut out unreasonable demands and delegated tedious tasks, Rodgers proposes a way to use your time and energy: Build a network of successful women who can support you and your financial goals. A close cohort of women can provide you with gender-specific support, a sense of belonging, and more opportunities. Rodgers explains that the majority of highly-successful women have a close group of women.
Rodgers offers tips on how to cultivate a small, close network of women:
Tip #1: Join new communities. You don’t have to limit yourself to professional groups. Rodgers recommends you simply find a community that shares your beliefs, values, and interests and focus on building sincere relationships with other women.
Tip #2: Reach out to friends and colleagues you’ve lost touch with. One way to reconnect is to do something for them. For example, you could reach out and tell them that you voted on their entry in a photography contest.
Tip #3: If you can’t find the community you’re looking for, Rodgers suggests you create your own group based on your interests.
Part 3: Recognize Your Value and Increase Your Wealth
Now that you’ve learned how to adopt a better mindset about money and make time and energy to build your wealth, how can you actually make more money? Rodgers writes that women often underestimate the worth of their work and do more work for less pay than men. So to become wealthier, you must overcome imposter syndrome and start charging what you’re really worth. In the following sections, we’ll look at Rodgers’s insights on how to do so.
Overcome Imposter Syndrome
First, to be able to recognize your value, you must overcome imposter syndrome—the tendency to doubt your skills and abilities and feel undeserving of your accomplishments. If you have impostor syndrome, instead of owning your successes, you might credit them to luck or the efforts of others and feel afraid of being discovered as a fraud.
According to Rodgers, imposter syndrome is a major reason why many women aren’t as wealthy as they should be: It stops them from pursuing more wealth by making them afraid to apply for a promotion, take on tough projects, or start their own business, for instance. Imposter syndrome can also cause stress, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, thereby negatively affecting your overall well-being.
To increase your wealth and get the pay and recognition you deserve, you must overcome imposter syndrome. Rodgers provides a few tips on how to do this:
Tip #1: Don’t be hard on yourself for having impostor syndrome. Many successful women have struggled with it, so you’re not alone in feeling doubtful about yourself. Acknowledge your insecurities around your worth and commit to overcoming them.
Tip #2: Write down your achievements, both big and small, as proof of your value. Reviewing your list of accomplishments can remind you that you’re skilled and competent when you feel doubtful.
Tip #3: Seek support. This can mean getting help for your imposter syndrome, like by seeing a therapist or finding a space where you can express yourself and feel understood, like a friend group.
Tip #4: Challenge yourself physically—run a marathon, go scuba diving, learn to ice skate. Doing physical activities that push you beyond your comfort zone can boost your confidence, which can spill over to other areas of your life, like your career.
Tip #5: Reflect on your natural strengths and talents. Think about the skills that came naturally to you as a child or that contributed to your past successes. You can also consider taking a strengths test. Once you’ve identified your strengths, Rodgers suggests you commit to one and focus on creating related products or services that can make you money.
Charge What Your Work is Worth
Next, Rodgers argues that you must raise your prices to match the value you produce rather than the hours you work. So, for instance, instead of charging $1,000 because your rate is $50 per hour and you estimate that a project will take 20 hours, think about how much value you’ll bring to the final project and charge that—perhaps $5000.
If you’re an employee with a fixed salary, Rodgers suggests negotiating for a higher salary by explaining how much value you contribute to your company. Determine the value you provide by considering the results of your work—the clients you acquired, the time you saved, and the money you helped your company make.
Rodgers recommends value-based charging because if you charge by the hour, you actually make less money the more experienced you become at your work. This is because as you gain experience, you’ll be able to complete the work more quickly, thereby reducing your income from the project. For example, you might be a freelance artist who charges $20 an hour. As you gain experience and improve your skills, you might finish a project in 10 rather than 20 hours. Despite producing work of higher value, you’ll earn only $200 instead of $400 from the finished piece.
You might realize that your work is worth more than you’re charging for it, but how should you adjust your rates? Rodgers suggests you simply double your price, whether it’s your salary, hourly rate, or the price of your product. She argues that many people produce the same work you produce, but they charge much more. To increase your wealth, simply demand what you deserve and provide high-end results to match. When you increase your rate, your work becomes more valuable. As a result, you make more money and people become more eager to work with you.
Challenge Yourself to Make $10,000 in Ten Days
Now that you’ve learned to overcome imposter syndrome and charge what you’re worth, kickstart your wealth-building journey by tackling Rodgers’s challenge to make $10,000 in ten days. This challenge helps you prove to yourself that you’re capable of making more money than you think you can and empowers you to start increasing your wealth now.
Let’s look at Rodgers’s steps on how to do the ten-day challenge:
Step 1: Decide how much money you want to make. While Rodgers suggests you aim for $10,000, you can choose a different target you feel comfortable with. She recommends you estimate how much money you think you can make in ten days and then add 30%.
Step 2: Decide how you’ll reward yourself for reaching your goal. This will help motivate you to go through with your challenge. For example, you might reward yourself with a dream piece of furniture or a vacation.
Step 3: Figure out what you’ll do to make money. Rodgers recommends you choose short-term projects instead of long-term commitments—consider offering a service, selling a product, flipping old furniture, charging for your expertise and advice, or hosting a yard sale.
Step 4: Spread the word to your friends, family, and coworkers about your challenge so that they can encourage you and support your efforts.
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Here's what you'll find in our full We Should All Be Millionaires summary:
- Why all women can and should strive to become millionaires
- Why working harder and living more frugally will not make you wealthy
- How to develop a positive money mindset and grow your wealth
