We Should All Be Millionaires

Change Your Thinking, Build Bank, and Claim Your Independence

Rachel Rodgers

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781400221639
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Women in Business
• Index: Business

Are you ready to fill your life with more peace, power, and joy?

We Should All Be Millionaires details a realistic, achievable, step-by-step path tocreating the support, confidence, and plan you need toown your success and become the millionaire the world needs you to be.

Only 10 percent of the world's millionaires are women, making it difficult for women to wield the economic power that will create lasting equality. Whatever is stopping you from having seven figures in the bank—whether it's shaky confidence, knowledge gaps when it comes to wealth building tactics, imposter syndrome, a janky mindset about money (it's okay, we've all been there!), or simply not knowing where to begin—this book shows you how to clear every obstacle in your way, show up, and glow up.

We Should All Be Millionaires will forever change the way you think about money and your ability to earn it.

In this book, Rachel Rodgers— a Black woman, mother of four, attorney, business owner, and self-made millionaire— shares the lessons she's learned both in her own journey to wealth and in coaching hundreds of women through their own journeys to seven figures.

Inside, you'll learn:

• Why earning more money is not "selfish" or "greedy" but in fact, a revolutionary act that brings the economy into balance and creates a better world for all.
• Why most of the financial advice you've heard in the past (like "skip your daily latte to save money") is absolute, patriarchal nonsense.
• An eye-opening history lesson on how women and people of color have been shut out of the ability to build wealth for centuries—and how we can fix this.
• How to stop making broke-ass decisions that leave you feeling emotionally and financially depleted and start making million-dollar decisions instead.
• Why aiming to earn $100K per year is not enough, and why you need to be setting your goals much higher.
• Strategies to bring more money in the door and fatten your bank account immediately. (Including Rodgers'$10K in 10 Days Challenge which hundreds of women have completed—with incredible results.)

It's time to construct an entirely new attitude about money, claim your power, and build the financial security that you need and deserve — so you can stop just surviving, and start thriving. Let's begin.

PART I

MILLION DOLLAR BEHAVIOR

CHAPTER 1

MILLION DOLLAR STORY

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

—OCTAVIA BUTLER

You are living in a financial prison of your own making.

We women are in jail. Our thoughts and beliefs about what our work, time, and energy are worth keep our bank accounts small and our imposter syndrome large. We don’t recognize how worthy we are.

Why is that? Why don’t women recognize their worth? Why don’t more women pursue epic wealth?

Is it because we are the weaker sex? Hell no.

Is it because we’re just not good with money? Hogwash.

Is it a part of our womanhood to not pursue wealth with the fervor that men do? Nope.

The answer is that we are all products of our environment. An environment that is uniquely designed to keep money out of our Kate Spade top grain leather wallets.

I remember the moment I decided I was going to become a millionaire. I didn’t actually think those words at the time, because I was in high school, and I didn’t even know what a millionaire was.

Everyone around me was just trying to survive—moms working their nine-to-five office jobs and trying to keep their cool while working for horrible bosses. Kids trying not to get into a fight on their way to school—they just wanted to graduate from high school on time. Drug addicts walking aimlessly up and down the street, eyes glazed over, looking for their next opportunity to get high.

On 45th Avenue, it felt like everyone around me was just trying to make it, but I believed that my life could be different. I knew I was smart and figured my intelligence and good grades could be the tickets toward a better life. One where our lights didn’t go out a couple times a year and I never worried about where my next meal was coming from.

As a biracial Black girl growing up in lower-middle-class Queens, I did not see a lot of examples of wealth, but I did see a few.

AUNT SHELLEY

There was Aunt Shelley on the Black side, my father’s sister. The oldest girl of nine children in the Lowery clan. She lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and drove a Jaguar. She owned her own home, and it had a formal dining room and a big backyard with what felt like acres of green grass. It was in the nice part of town. My sister and I would visit during brief escapes from the busy, dirty, loud city, and we’d spend time giggling and playing with her two girls, our cousins, René and Jennifer.

I had no idea what Aunt Shelley and Uncle Scrappy, her husband, did for a living, but I knew it must be important. I could tell by the big, fluffy cushions on their gold sectional couch, by the sound system out of which she would play Earth Wind & Fire, and by the amount of food in their fridge.

Aunt Shelley played no games. She used to put us in the tub and scrub us down (I was sheepish about her seeing me naked, but she did not care. I was gonna get a good cleaning. No kid was going to bed filthy in her house!). She would comb and grease and braid our hair, too. So, not only did Aunt Shelley accept no BS, make good money, and own her own home, she also took exceptional care of her girls, including my sister and me when we visited.

When there was a financial crisis in the family—if there were expensive funeral fees to be paid or a family member who needed to go to rehab—my Aunt Shelley got the call and often covered some of the costs. As a kid, I heard her scolding her younger siblings about the financial messes that occurred and that they typically were unable to contribute to cleaning up.

I could tell Aunt Shelley and her husband had a level of financial freedom that my family did not have. It was literally in the air. You can just tell when someone was worrying about the light bill and when they weren’t. Financial security is palpable.

Aunt Shelley was a millionaire in my eyes.

AUNT BARBARA

Then there was Aunt Barbara on the white side, my mother’s sister. Aunt Barbara used to come to visit us and get us girls in line. I remember her saying I was “as slow as molasses” while she hustled me through the morning routine. She did not tolerate my sister and me fighting and carrying on. Just like Aunt Shelley, she was no nonsense.

(I’m just now realizing that I had some powerful women in my life as a child. Now I know why I’m like this, but I digress).

While Aunt Barbara might have been a bit of a hard ass when it came to our upbringing, she was also kind. She sent us a birthday card with a $50 check enclosed every year, like clockwork. Even when I was thirty-five years old, she still sent me a birthday card and check with “Happy Birthday Rachel” written in the memo. She never forgets about me or my sister.

When my mother was having a really hard time after my father passed, it was my Aunt Barbara that I called for help. She arrived a few days later to take care of us, bring some order to our household, and support my mother.

And when I exhausted all my financial aid options and still had a $6,500 balance of tuition in my junior year of college, it was my Aunt Barbara who wrote me a check and kept the party going. It took me a long time to finally pay that loan back.

I loved visiting Aunt Barbara and Uncle Tommy’s house. They lived in a beautiful suburb in Long Island. They had a sparkling clean home with a guest room and a big tree for Christmas. I enjoyed wrapping presents with my Uncle Tommy and laughed when he made crude jokes that embarrassed my aunt. They always brought us beautiful gifts: lambswool sweaters and nice pajamas. The kind of expensive things our parents would not buy us, and we wouldn’t think to ask for, but that were lovely to receive.

When my Aunt Barbara and Uncle Tommy retired, they moved farther out on Long Island to the Hamptons and had the beach in their backyard. My jaw dropped the first time I walked into their new home and saw the stunning view of the ocean from their living room. At their house, we ate Death by Chocolate ice cream and talked about life.

Uncle Tommy was a Union worker at Madison Square Garden and got us tickets to quality shows like WrestleMania and Billy Joel concerts. I have no idea what my Aunt Barbara did for a living. But I knew with certainty that they were millionaires.

ALANA

And then there was Alana. Alana was a twelve-year-old Jewish girl who lived in Little Neck, NY. An only child, her parents hired me at age fifteen to be Alana’s after-school companion. My job was to pick Alana up from school and walk her home through the tree-lined streets filled with hilltop mansions. Then I would give her a snack and entertain her while her father worked in his home office upstairs. When I met Alana’s mother, she told me how beautiful I was and was so incredibly kind. Working for their family was my introduction to nice, rich people.

I remember her mom telling me to eat whatever I wanted. Every day after school, I would open up the fridge, freezer, and pantry and ask Alana which of the snack options she wanted. There were many. I was amazed by how much food they had in their kitchen with only three people living there. They had the frozen pizza bagels and egg rolls that I always wanted to get from the grocery store but my mom wouldn’t let me. They had Pop-Tarts, ice cream sandwiches, and those cracker sandwiches with cheese or peanut butter. Alana and I snacked a lot.

Sometimes we would play hide-and-seek to pass the time, and it was very easy to get lost in their house. It had so many rooms. There was a fancy dining room with upholstered chairs and a long polished wood table that no one ever seemed to eat at. The house had two living rooms, and I could barely figure out how to work their complicated TV. The house also had a large playroom in the basement filled with Alana’s many toys. Upstairs, Alana’s bedroom had a large tent she liked to hide in, a big beautiful dollhouse, and pink ruffles everywhere.

Alana’s childhood was basically the opposite of mine. Where my house lacked food, space (I shared a tiny bedroom with my older sister), and toys, this house was teeming. This encounter with such abundance let me know that wealth was possible, and it was a reminder of the abundance we had in my early childhood. You see, we didn’t always live a life of struggle. There was a time in my childhood when I thought my parents were rich.

MY MOTHER

One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is going to Macy’s on Saturdays with my mother and sister. I was about seven or eight years old, and I remember coming out of the train station and carefully crossing the big boulevard where there were frequent accidents. My mother wore her electric blue leather coat that she had treated herself to a few months earlier, and held our hands tightly as we made our way across the street to Queens Center mall.

Every single Saturday morning, my mom, sister, and I would head to Queens Center to buy clothes or other things the family needed. Every Saturday, my mother would purchase a treat for my sister and me. We would always get new shoes, a new dress, or maybe some new hair bows and earrings from Claire’s Accessories. Us girls loved our Saturday shopping trips.

It wasn’t so much the new stuff we would buy, although that was nice, but it was the feeling of fun and adventure and having my mom’s attention. It was the fact that these shopping dates were our special girls’ time. It was the lack of struggle. This was 1989, a short, plentiful chapter for the Lowery family.

This chapter included one of the only family vacations we ever took. We piled into the car and drove eight hours to Virginia Beach. We stayed at the Howard Johnson’s right on the water, and my mother and I wore matching green-and-white striped bathing suits. We spent our days in the hotel pool or in the ocean. We spent our evenings walking the boardwalk, browsing shops, and eating at restaurants.

One night we decided to do a haunted funhouse that had masked killers and deranged clowns jumping out at us at every turn. The spooky music and strategically placed mirrors added to the horror. I remember crouching on the floor terrified and screaming for my father to come get me halfway through. I got separated from my family because I was too scared to walk by another threatening character. I’m still scarred from that depraved funhouse, but you know what? We were on vacation and, dammit, we had fun!

This short-lived abundance era included my parents buying their first piece of real estate. We moved from our one-bedroom apartment on Bowne Street—where my sister and I shared the bedroom and my parents slept on a pull-out couch in the living room—to a two-bedroom condo in a nicer building on 45th Avenue. The building was called The Jefferson and, like The Jeffersons we were “movin’ on up.”

We moved to apartment 2M when I was in first grade, and it felt like a palace to me. It had a big living room, an actual dining room, and a ton of natural light. My parents finally had their own bedroom and my sister and I shared a bunk bed in the smaller bedroom off the kitchen. The kitchen was large and all the appliances were brand new. The whole apartment had fresh, beige carpet, and I remember my dad going out to buy a plastic runner that took you from the front door to the living room and bathroom. If you needed to step off the plastic runner, you had better have your shoes off.

We lived next door to the Bellas from Canada who had four kids and were biracial like us. The father worked for the United Nations, and the mom stayed at home. The Bella kids went to private school; we went to public. We had another neighbor who owned a car dealership, and another who was a nurse at the local hospital. It seemed like we were all doing pretty well. And then shit hit the fan.

My mom decided to quit her job after being passed over for a promotion that she felt she had earned. Just a few months later, my father was unexpectedly laid off from his job. We went from owning a condo and Saturday shopping trips to paying for groceries with food stamps and the unemployment line. We lost the condo and the Chevy we lovingly referred to as the “Silver B...