Book Review : Secrets of Six-Figure Women

March 1, 2009

Like many women, understanding any aspect of finance, wealth, or investment by staring at charts and graphs gets me nowhere. Women don’t learn that way. It makes our eyes glaze over, causing the male financial advisor across the table to conclude that we’re bored or too dumb to get it.

Presenting information to us in the way that is effectively presented to men does not work. Bring on the female financial advisors who can explain in pictures, or with stories, and we’ll get it. Women care about money. We may attach odd values to it, but we especially want to look after those we love. We don’t want to be in the dark, but there is a linguistic issue here.

Armed with knowledge and understanding, women will become very powerful in dealing with money (and probably bigger risk-takers than the men). In fact, the more knowledge women have about a topic, the better and more confident their decision-making. Think about this : is the same true for men? I think it’s the reverse, actually.

Barbara Stanny’s book, Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies To Up Your Earnings And Change Your Life, first published in 2002, does not contain any stock charts. It’s not even about how to invest or manage your money. It enters the picture sooner than that, with how to make the money in the first place by creating an inner change. Fulfillment and empowerment, with very practical and realistic advice on how to get there, are the biggest landmarks on the road to financial success.

Stanny is the daughter of Richard Bloch, one of the founders of H&R Block. Her first husband lost her trust fund through bad investments, leaving her with huge bills and no knowledge of finance. She was forced to face up to a common trait of inherited wealth, namely big insecurity about her ability to support herself. Her journey is recorded in her first book Prince Charming Isn’t Coming : How Women Get Smart About Money , and this one.

Barbara Stanny

For Secrets Of Six Figure Women, Stanny began by interviewing hundreds of women in many income brackets, searching for traits that were common among the high (and low) earners. If you take a group of equally bright, equally educated, very capable women, why is it that some of them will always struggle financially while other will earn ever-rising amounts? Is there a shared set of characteristics that can be found repeatedly among women earning more than $250,000 per year?

Turns out that there are at least 7. And since they’re not personality traits, but rather ways of guiding decision-making, they can be learned.

This is really about finding that thing that you were born to do with love and passion, whether you are paid or not, and from there gaining the self-esteem to charge what you’re worth. Lessons in uncovering your own set of underlying values, in not being a victim, in finding gratitude for obstacles, and so many of the thoughts that resonate strongly with women, are found here.

There are chapters on facing fear and declaring intention, about pulling away the safety net, and about negotiating on your own behalf. The information comes to you through stories about how other women cope with these issues, how they succeeded and how they failed, and what they learned from it.

There is some great advice to be found on speaking up for yourself. This is probably the spot where women are weakest. The biggest reason that men make more money for the same job is this : THEY ASK for it. Until you learn to take yourself seriously, nobody else will either. Learning to do this can be extremely intimidating for girls and for women. Most of us need all the help we can get at using our elbows.

Secrets of Six-Figure Women by Barbara Stanny

Chapter 11 is entitled Claiming Our Power. With some thoughts about how women lost it in the first place, and continue to give it up to keep the peace instead of compete, and finishing with some beautifully motivating words about taking up your own space to the fullest, Stanny has written a book that any woman who is thinking about her life will find great meaning in. You’ll read many sections that you’ll feel were written for you personally. What would it be like to be at the center of your world and have all the rest spin around you for a change, instead of whirling around the periphery of the lives of everybody else all the time?

This is entirely action-oriented. She knows that failure, rejection, debt, insecurity, and mortgage bills exist but small change is still change. What she really says is this : Women hold themselves back by believing that avoiding stress and responsibility is pro-family. I do that. I know more women who choose this avenue on purpose for this reason. I’m beginning to see that Big doesn’t look like I think it does. Big is where the choices are.

So many of us can feel another woman living inside us that the world has never seen. We keep her buried because we don’t have time to become her, or think about what she’s like, and besides, we’re a little afraid of her. We feel the things she could be, but she’s so far away from the day-to-day role we play that we don’t know where to start. Whether you become a high-earner or not, Secrets Of Six-Figure Women will help you discover Your Deeper Self.

Have a look at Barbara’s blog. She posts about once a month, but it is worth reading. This is money and life advice written for the way women understand and learn. My favorite entry, at the end of this page, is entitled “Fear Got You Stuck?” In it is a line I’ve repeated to myself a thousand times :

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness, Money

Comments

3 Responses to “Book Review : Secrets of Six-Figure Women”

barbara stanny on March 2nd, 2009 2:33 pm

Thanks so much, Christine, for your wonderful endorsement of my book, and for helping spread the word about my work. I deeply appreciate it.

Keep up the great blogging,

Barbara Stanny
http://www.barbarastanny.com
Chris on March 3rd, 2009 6:00 am

My husband earns 6 figures but is so over-committed at work that I am left with the bulk of raising children. I chose to put my career on hold for many years because he works so much. I am back in school now and working now but it is very difficult to have the energy to devote to my career when I need it to take care of my family!
If you want a big beautiful well-paid career as a woman, and a husband, and kids, you need a very good support system.
Christine Scaman on March 3rd, 2009 8:12 pm

You are completely and entirely right, Chris.

In fact, if you want to have some mediocre badly-paid career as a woman, you’d better have a good support system there as well.

I wonder if you have friends who ask you why you’re in school and working and doing the majority of the home-care when your husband’s income is high. I would be like you… I need to have a place I go to in my head that is my own and to build something of my own.

I see families where the husband earns the money and the family has to adjust around him for 20 years. As time goes on, his authority gets bigger, his ego gets bigger, and his income gets bigger. The wife, on the other hand, is not growing in those ways.

Now some women are very glad to enjoy their lives, and rightly state that it would have cost him a lot of money to have someone look after his kids as well as she did, and she’d be entirely right. I often envy those women who are content in their lives. I spend more time irritated with my husband and not content and always wanting something different.

I really like Steve Pavlina’s writing. I was never able to read The Power of Now but I do like what Steve wrote about it and I read it quite often,

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/the-power-of-now/

I find it quite grounding on many levels.

Thanks for your comment.