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What are the secrets of six-figure women, and how can you become one of them? Here are lessons and quotes to help you!
Reading Experience
I absolutely adored “Secrets Of Six-Figure Women”!
It was much more interesting than I expected it to be. I actually learned quite a few new aspects about what it takes to succeed.
But what I liked the most were the many stories about six-figure women and their experiences.
With every story I read, I got inspired and excited to soon join their ranks.
“Secrets Of Six-Figure Women” was also eye-opening for me concerning the gender inequality women face on their way to 6-figures.
I’m sure that nowadays, women experience less sexism in their careers, but it surely is still an issue we could encounter. Therefore it felt valuable to learn about how others handled it.
And lastly, “Secrets Of Six-Figure Women” includes exercises and summaries that help to implement the lessons of the book.
All around, “Secrets Of Six-Figure Women” is a fantastic read!
Lessons
1. There is always an opportunity waiting for you
“While everybody’s been fixated on doors that were closing, feeling cynical and resigned about what struggles might lay ahead, high earners were consistently finding, and opening, windows of opportunity.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“While the rest of the world was focusing on adversity, six-figure women (and those destined to become one) were seeing growth potential and opportunity.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
There is so much pessimism in this world. Many people seem to only focus on the bad things that are happening – money they lost, jobs they didn’t get, the economy getting worse, etc.
Six-figure women are not naive. They see these things, too. However, they know that where one door closes, another opens.
Different from their underearning opposites, they actively search for and make themselves available to these open doors.
You will always find what you focus on and look for.
Pessimistic underearners see low paychecks and high bills.
Six-figure women find opportunities and a pay raise.
2. Know your value and expect to be appreciated accordingly
“This, more than anything, is what sets them apart. They acknowledge and appreciate what they bring to the table and expect to be paid appropriately.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“We women have got to stop devaluing ourselves and demand what we’re worth.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Asking for more is an act of self-love. Saying no is a show of self-respect. Refusing to settle is a statement of self-worth. And walking away is a sign of self-trust.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Stop playing small and start getting into the habit of demanding your value.
As an entrepreneur, this means raising your prices.
As an employee, this means demanding a pay raise.
Both are uncomfortable but not as much as being underpaid.
3. Increasing your income goes hand in hand with growing as a person
“Their pursuit of greater profit triggered a personal evolution. Some even referred to it as a spiritual quest of recapturing (or discovering) their dreams, living fuller lives.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
When you work on your personal development, you grow and learn faster than most people. You increase your self-worth, you overcome your weaknesses, you discover new talents, you foster relationships, and much more.
Unsurprisingly this change often leads to a higher income.
However, it works the other way around as well.
Many women have to confront their limiting beliefs around money and their self-worth in pursuing a higher income. Without realizing it at first, they start to work on themselves and not just their bank accounts.
Read also: 9 Mindsets That Are Keeping You Poor | Money Mindset Tips
Actionable Idea
Don’t separate the goals of a higher income and being a better version of yourself! They go hand in hand.
This is great because it enables you to always work towards a higher income even while you seem stuck on the financial side of things.
While being stuck, simply redirect your focus towards your personal development.
4. A degree is helpful but not necessary for success
“Financial Success Is Possible in Almost Any Field, and Lack of Education Doesn’t Have to Hold You Back.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“From what I saw, this passion for her work played a much more significant role in a woman’s success than any impressive credential or high-flying career.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Many successful people never were very outstanding in their academics or dropped out of college in the end and still achieved mindblowing things.
Don’t use your bad grades as an excuse for not being the successful boss babe you wish you were.
If others can do it without a degree or a bad one, why shouldn’t you?
5. Hard work is less about long hours and more about intense focus
“But hard work has many faces and, like success itself, means different things to different people. As I came to see, the critical factor is not the number of hours as much as the intensity of focus.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“It was the intensity of focus on their work, not the number of hours they spent doing it, that factored so heavily into these women’s financial success.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Don’t be afraid of having to work 80-100 hour weeks for a high income.
Of course, there are plenty of successful people doing that, but if that’s not your thing, you don’t have to.
Yes, at the beginning of your financial uprising, you might have to work harder than you’d like.
But if you commit to your values and build the right systems or accept suitable jobs, you can spend little time working as long as you work with intense focus during that time.
Actionable Idea
If you are currently still a student, try to cut down your study time by improving your study techniques.
The less you have to study for good grades, the more time you have for your passions or side hustle.
6. Everyone has fears; successful women act despite them
“Their secret is this: Feel the Fear. Have the Doubts. Go for It Anyway.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Here’s the biggest secret to overcoming your past and upping your earnings: You’ve got to be willing to be uncomfortable.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Fear and anxiety are to financial success what labor pains are to childbirth—an unpleasant, but unavoidable, part of the process.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Every successful person has their doubts and fears. Ironically, imposter syndrome is especially bad among the successful.
What’s important is that successful women don’t let their fears and doubts stop them from achieving their goals.
They take all their courage together and march straight ahead into the unknown.
Actionable Idea
Quit using your fears and doubts as to an excuse to hold back.
If you keep waiting for the day, you will fear brave and confident; you will wait your whole life.
Action precedes confidence. It rarely happens the other way around.
7. Underearners complain, 6-figure earners appreciate
“As a whole, six-figure women are a very happy bunch. Their conversations were liberally sprinkled with words like gratitude, fortunate, lucky, and blessed.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“These women demonstrated an indispensable secret for living a prosperous life of genuine wealth: Appreciate Abundance.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“The power of gratitude derives from a universal law: You draw to yourself whatever you dwell on.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Quit being a whiny baby.
You have it tough in life; I get it. I firmly believe that everyone is allowed to feel sorry for themselves, no matter whether others are struggling so much more.
However, what I can’t support are people that do nothing but whining and complaining.
If you are reading this, you are most likely among a small percentage of very privileged people in the world.
There are tons of things for you to appreciate – many more things than the ones you can complain about.
How do you expect to ever attract more abundance into your life if you are hell bend on putting all your attention on the lack?
Actionable Idea
Make gratitude a part of your daily routine.
I always write down three things I am grateful for first thing in the morning.
And throughout the day, I always make sure to appreciate my possessions and other blessings in my life.
8. You won’t earn more as long as you are hating the rich and priding yourself on poverty – you need to give yourself permission to be wealthy
“Underearners believe in the nobility of poverty.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“It’s a universal law: Our state of mind shapes our way of life.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Until you’re able to give yourself permission to pursue prosperity in your own right, as your right, your best intentions will remain mere pipe dreams or, at best, delusions of grandeur with no relationship to reality. Until you see profit as a virtue, not a vice, as a prerogative and not an impropriety, you won’t have a sliver of hope for increasing your earnings.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
You will always unconsciously sabotage yourself if your mindset and goals are not aligned.
You have to decide which one needs changing: your mindset or your goals.
9. Six-figure women know that they have control over their life
“Underearners, typically, are quick to blame someone else—the government, their upbringing, whatever—for their problems. As a rule, underearners believe the world controls them. High earners know they control the world.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Successful women don’t play the blame game.
They know that they have power over the direction their life takes, and they are eager to use it.
Of course, they also acknowledge the role luck plays in any achievement. But since luck without action is useless, these smart women put most of their energy and focus into action-taking so that they’ll be ready for luck to strike.
10. Working more is unlikely to make you richer
“The way out of underearning is rarely by working harder. Chances are taking a second (or third) job, putting in overtime, or finding a scheme to get rich quick will wear you out before it will make you wealthy.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
I’ve seen this in uni as well. Just because I studied more didn’t mean I got better grades.
Far from it, actually. Only once I improved my study strategy and studied less did my grades improve.
It’s the same thing with your finances.
To a certain extent, hard work will get you more money. But there always comes the point where working smarter is the only way to raise your income.
11. Successful women don’t always have a plan to achieve their goals, but they’re always open to receive them
“One of the most hopeful messages I learned from these six-figure women is that we need not fully believe something is possible, much less have a full-blown plan firmly in place. We just have to decide what we want and be willing to do whatever comes next.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
You don’t need a full-fledged action plan on how to achieve financial success.
All you need to do is taking action one step at a time in a direction that seems to get you closer to your goal.
You have plenty of time to overthink your strategy and to course correct.
Most often, you only truly get a sense of direction after you’ve taken some steps.
Action trumps overthinking and procrastinating any day.
13. Successful women let go of what’s holding them back
“You must let go of where you are to get to where you want to go.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Amazing coincidences so often occur as soon as people let go. And there’s a perfectly valid explanation. This is the inevitable outcome of the first two strategies working in tandem. While “intention” is a magnet that attracts what we want, “letting go” provides the space for our desire to manifest.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“We must first empty the container before we can refill it. Similarly, if our minds are full of limiting thoughts, there’s no room for the expansive ones. Success can only come when there’s space for it to enter.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
We all have baggage that’s holding us back. This can be in the form of unsupportive relationships, limiting beliefs, fears, doubts, or the golden handcuffs of a high-paying job.
The things you cling to prevent you from discovering new things. You first have to make space in your life for something new to enter.
Actionable Idea
Letting go can be scary. Often enough, we don’t even realize what we should let go of.
Consider hiring a coach or mentor to help you on your journey. His or her objective view on the situation and no-nonsense support will help you through your struggles.
14. Successful women know failure is inevitable on the path to success
“To six-figure women, losses are as inevitable as ants at a picnic. And they don’t let those losses ruin their plans. They focus on winning and not on defeat. Oddly enough, the object of the game is not winning per se. The whole point is to do your best and go the distance.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Failure is inevitable in the game for success – unless you quit after having a one-time beginner’s luck.
Successful athletes don’t win every competition.
Not every product of a successful business owner is a raging success.
And not every song the most famous singers release to top the charts.
The key is to stay in the game for long enough so that your successes weigh out the losses.
15. Successful women dream impossibly big
“Think big. And then keep thinking bigger and bigger.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Can you imagine what our world would be like if the most successful people in history had stayed ‘realistic’?
The greatest inventions, trends, and changes in our societies come from outlandish dreams.
It’s time you allow yourself to dream about a 5-figure or even 6-figure monthly income!
Actionable Idea
Imagine yourself in the first-person view living your dream life.
Visualize and script about that dream life often.
16. 6-figure women challenge themselves
“A stretch in any area of life, regardless of where, has a ripple effect in other areas as well. If you can’t quite get yourself to volunteer for that tough assignment, try signing up for art class or running a marathon, anything that puts you out of your comfort zone.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“So the next time you find yourself saying, “No way I can do that!” smile knowingly. You are that much closer to becoming a splendid, audacious, six-figure woman.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Unsurprisingly, six-figure women don’t just relax inside their comfort zone.
To grow personally and financially, you have to do things that scare you and take risks.
Most people rather stay comfortable, so not many women reach six figures even though they desire to do so.
Actionable Idea
Keep track of every time you challenged yourself.
Seeing this list grow will make you feel proud and motivated to get uncomfortable more often.
16. Successful women seek support
“In fact, on the six-figure path, seeking support is not an option, but a requirement.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
Sooner or later, every successful woman had to seek out support. This can be in the form of a significant other, friends, or mentors.
Either way, support is important. Many women interviewed for “Secrets Of Six-Figure Women” mentioned the people who supported them as one of the most significant factors for their success.
I don’t think you can forcefully create a support system like this – besides hiring a mentor, of course.
The key is to stay open to these kinds of relationships. Don’t close yourself off due to toxic pride and the belief that you can do it independently.
Instead, keep an eye out for like-minded people who you just click with and whom you feel you can trust.
You might not find them first on your journey towards being a six-figure woman, but I’m sure you’ll eventually find them.
17. Wealthy women invest their money
“It’s not what we have but what we do with what we have that gives us or denies us financial security.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“What wealth building does require is consistent application of the three rules of money. You simply must make the following actions a way of life. You must do all three. There are no exceptions. 1. Spend less than you earn. 2. Pay yourself first. 3. Put your money to work.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
“Wealth doesn’t come from what you make, but from what you don’t spend.”
– Barbara Stanny (Secrets Of Six-Figure Women)
After what happened in 2008, I get it; investing seems like a sure way to lose your money sooner or later.
But there is potential in the financial market even for us normal people that don’t have millions to spend.
The key is to understand that not every investment of yours will be a success.
I’ve learned from “The Psychology of Money” that even the most outstanding investors of our time only score big with a small percentage of their investments.
They make sure that losses like these won’t ruin them because if they keep investing sooner or later, they will hit gold, and that’s at least going to balance out their losses.
So, follow these financially successful people and consider your first investments.
Read also: The Psychology of Money Book Review | 13 Lessons + Quotes
Can you see yourself becoming a six-figure woman? Or perhaps even a 7-figure woman or more?
I sure can, and I am determined to make it happen. That’s what this blog is for.
What is your plan?
Until next time!
Sophie
