Black women can and should all be millionaires.
Unfortunately, however, many of us don’t have the tools — or at least believe we don’t have them at our disposal.
While that couldn’t be further from the truth, there are many other realities that try to convince us otherwise. For example, we often hear that despite holding a Bachelor’s degree, the average net worth of single Black women hovers around $1,700. Moreover, for educated and married Black women under 40, the median net worth peaks at a mere $7,700.
Not to mention, Black women in the United States face significant disparities in educational debt, according to an analysis by the American Association of University Women. 28% hold over $50,000 in student loans, compared to just 11% of the general adult population.
Despite all this, there’s one woman — a Black woman — who is helping Black women reclaim our power and providing us with the tools, resources and encouragement to not only help us fight these statistics, but also grow our net worth for generations to come.
Meet Rachel Rodgers.
In the realm of entrepreneurship, Rachel Rodgers stands as a beacon of empowerment, reshaping the financial landscape — making it more accessible, understandable and even attainable for all. As the CEO and founder of Hello Seven, a company focused on empowering women to achieve financial success through entrepreneurship, she has propelled countless individuals towards financial independence breaking down barriers and challenging conventional norms along the way.
Rodgers’ primary objective: assist historically marginalized communities — women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and those with disabilities — in cultivating their businesses and achieving millionaire status. Since the establishment of Hello Seven, she has empowered hundreds to attain millionaire status and thousands to attain financial independence.
“Women in general — and I’m not saying this is only Black women that do this — but we have been taught, and this message is constantly reiterated to us in our society that we have less value,” says the We Should All Be Millionaires author. “So, of course, if that message is always there, we would think that our creative ideas, the brands that we want to create, the business ideas that we have are not good enough. It’s completely the opposite. Our ideas are amazing and they’re often missing from the marketplace.”
She continues, “I think it’s learning how to bet on ourselves and doing it faster and not waiting for validation from other people or waiting for somebody to understand your idea.”
Rodgers is a true testament of “practicing what she preaches.” Her own personal money journey and career path as an intellectual property attorney and business coach, is a testament to the transformative power of ambition and resilience. She had a bold vision, fought against the status quo and ultimately used her platform to create an unapologetic commitment to equity. Ultimately, this has inspired a new generation of changemakers to seize control of their destinies and rewrite the script of success.
One of the first narratives that she’s helped to rewrite is that Black women can “save their way to wealth.” In fact, through her work, she is preaching quite the opposite. Her book is a guide to earning more, building wealth, and women gaining economic power. According to Rodgers, “we should be more focused on our income as women, and we should be raising our prices.”
The idea behind this is that increasing our income provides greater financial stability and security, allowing Black women to better support themselves and their families, and to weather unexpected financial challenges. “We should be asking for raises a lot more than we do, and we should be demanding our worth,” says Rodgers. “Not only that, but really paying attention to our money and not outsourcing our financial decision-making to the men in our life, to husbands, brothers, fathers, which is another thing that I found in my research that a huge percentage of women, when they’re making important financial decisions, they feel like they can’t do it by themselves or with the advice of other women. It’s like, “I got to talk to a man, they know better.” I’m like, “No.”
Earlier this year, Rodgers released several Audible books, Plan Your Year Like a Millionaire, Six Figure Side Hustle and Million Dollar Habits, as additional resources for her audience to plan and build a side hustle they love that generates six-figures in additional income and establish the seven daily habits needed in order to do so.
“This is how we get there because we live in a capitalist society, whether we like it or not, and the chances of it changing in our lifetime are very slim.”