We Should All Be Millionaires

How can you move from scarcity thinking to financial freedom? In We Should All Be Millionaires, Rachel Rodgers argues that women—especially women of color—have been systematically excluded from wealth for centuries. She insists that reclaiming your right to be rich is not arrogance or greed but economic self-defense. The book blends personal story, historical context, and behavioral strategy into one roadmap: you change your money stories, make Million Dollar Decisions, set Million Dollar Boundaries, and build systems that sustain both wealth and wellbeing.

The core argument: mindset and system

Rodgers rejects the idea that financial struggle is solely personal failure. She shows that centuries of laws—from the Married Women’s Property Act to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act—limited ownership and credit for women. Structural bias persists today through wage gaps, venture funding disparities, and cultural norms about self-sacrifice. But she refuses fatalism: once you recognize systemic roots, you can design counter-systems—mindset tools, pricing strategies, and operational structures—to break the cycle.

Inside every chapter, Rodgers draws from her own life—from rolling coins as a child to earning her first seven figures—to prove that wealth is both psychological and practical. You must run two economies simultaneously: one inside your head and one in the world.

Thought work and money stories

Your thoughts precede your outcomes. Early money experiences—standing in line with food stamps, watching relatives struggle, hearing cultural scripts—imitate an invisible software. Rodgers asks: “Where did this belief come from?” and gives a four-step thought work ritual: identify facts, trace origins, evaluate effects, and reframe to a Million Dollar Thought. Instead of saying “I’m not good with money,” you learn to say “Money is a skill; I will learn it.” Like cognitive behavioral therapy applied to finance, it turns judgment into agency.

Location of power: decisions and boundaries

Thinking rich must lead to acting rich. Rodgers introduces Million Dollar Decisions—choices that expand time, money, and energy. Using her WSABM formula (Want, Shoulds, Action, Body, More), she teaches you to pick options that feel expansive rather than depleting. A “Broke Boo” does everything for free and runs out of steam; a “Rich Boo” charges properly, delegates tasks, and uses negotiation as liberation. Boundaries extend this same logic: saying “No” becomes an economic act. Each enforced limit—on unpaid labor, on client abuse, on open-ended chores—protects the core resource you can never replace: time.

Community and structural counterweight

Rodgers declares that your squad determines your speed of ascent. Like mountaineers supported by Sherpas, you cannot summit alone. The people you spend time with shape your identity and ambition. By curating a Million Dollar Squad—friends and colleagues who model thriving and expansion—you fight isolation and exclusion from dominant (often white-male) networks. Joining aligned groups, initiating connections, and performing annual “Friend Reviews” become business strategies, not social pastimes.

From imagination to infrastructure

Rodgers integrates vision-setting with daily systems. “Be Her Now” means embodying the habits of your future self without reckless spending—wear the confidence, operate with discipline, calculate what your dream life actually costs, and create a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). Then build the scaffolding: bank accounts, bookkeeping, net-worth tracking, and weekly “Money Church” rituals that keep you financially literate and emotionally grounded.

The final imperative: wealth as moral power

Rodgers concludes with a moral inversion: money amplifies your capacity for good. Wealth allows women to fund schools, pay parents’ mortgages, launch equity-focused foundations, and change narratives for future generations. Instead of philanthropy through burnout, she advocates for capitalization through abundance. Her call to action—“We should all be millionaires”—is not hyperbole but a reclamation of agency: when women hold economic power, communities thrive.

The book synthesizes psychology, history, and entrepreneurship into one manifesto. It teaches that liberation from scarcity is not about self-denial but disciplined construction of possibility. By pairing internal healing with external infrastructure, Rodgers turns wealth-building into a feminist and structural intervention.

Rodgers begins with the invisible: your thoughts about money. She shows how inherited stories—food stamps, canceled checks, or seeing others lose jobs—form a soundtrack that governs every decision. To shift direction, you must reprogram the narrative. Her practice, called thought work, functions like mental weight training: you examine beliefs and replace scarcity with agency.

Recognize, isolate, and reframe

The four-question template (Facts, Source, Effect, Better Thought) dismantles self-defeating loops. Each Broke-Ass Thought (“Money isn’t important”) gets converted into a Million-Dollar Thought (“Money buys time to live my values”). Rodgers insists it’s daily discipline, not overnight revelation. Evidence accumulates, emotions soften, and new behaviors follow.

“Your thoughts are the prelude to your actions.”

Changing the internal monologue changes what you will dare to do—raise prices, ask for help, buy rest, and build structure.

From scarcity to possibility

Rodgers uses her pivot moment—declaring “I will never be poor again” after a humiliating bank hold—to illustrate mindset transformation. Money stories are not erased; they’re rewritten through practice. Like Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, this method makes wealth a learnable skill. Through reframing, every financial decision becomes training toward abundance rather than apology.

Thought work grounds the entire book: until your mental filter changes, no system or strategy will stick. By identifying origins and installing new scripts, you build cognitive capital—the mental environment where external wealth can grow.

Rodgers refuses to treat personal finance as isolated self-help. She situates every woman's financial behavior inside systemic history. Laws once barred women and people of color from owning property or accessing credit; even after reform, enforcement lagged. This historical framing converts guilt into clarity: if structures restricted access, strategies must include structural work.

Systemic disadvantage, modern form

Today’s pay and capital gaps echo those old statutes. Women remain paid less, invest less, and lead fewer high-income firms. Black and Latina women earn cents to the white man’s dollar, and only around 1.7% of women-owned businesses surpass $1 million revenue. Venture capital skews even harder. Rodgers calls this “government-engineered scarcity.” Naming it deflates shame.

Using awareness as strategy

Awareness leads to leverage. Knowing that bias exists lets you design counter-actions: insist on asset ownership, negotiate for clarity, and build networks of mutual support. Rather than internalizing stereotypes of female incompetence, you build infrastructure to resist exclusion. Rodgers’s blend of activism and entrepreneurship reframes “getting rich” as political reclamation.

By linking mindset and system, Rodgers makes financial growth civic work. She teaches that liberation requires both inner reframing and outer institutional competence—contracts, capital, and community alignment.

Rodgers distinguishes Million-Dollar Decisions from Broke-Ass Decisions. Every choice—pricing, delegation, even relationships—either expands or drains your wealth. The WSABM formula (Want, Shoulds, Action, Body, More) converts vague wishfulness into concrete direction. You ask what you truly want, shed social obligations disguised as “shoulds,” take aligned action, check body intuition, and confirm that the choice yields more freedom and joy.

Boundaries as income protection

Boundaries translate decisions into economics. Saying no to unpaid labor—whether babysitting or overextending for clients—directly saves thousands. Rodgers uses the Effective Hourly Rate method to quantify losses from poor limits. Enforcing boundaries prevents burnout and communicates value. “No is a complete sentence” becomes a financial rule.

“Boundaries are preservation, not cruelty.”

Protect time, enforce consequences, and measure savings afterward; respect births wealth.

Environmental detox and community filters

Annual Friend Reviews and clutter purges amplify Million-Dollar Decisions. Clean environments and supportive peers reduce scarcity cues. As tasks and people align, decision quality rises. (Note: this mirrors minimalism philosophy from Marie Kondo but tied directly to economics.)

By practicing one bold decision and one clear boundary, Rodgers says, the compound effect begins. You free time, confidence, and future choice—all prerequisites for scaling wealth.

Rodgers teaches that success is social, not solo. Your network multiplies opportunity. Analogous to Richard Branson’s partnerships or Lean In’s circles, her “Million Dollar Squad” serves as support and referral engine. 95% of success correlates with your habitual associations, she notes—backed by McClelland’s research and LinkedIn data on job referrals.

Build deliberately, not passively

The squad should energize and challenge you. Rodgers’s example—joining Pam Slim’s Lift Off program—illustrates how communities return tenfold. Build squads that reflect ambition and diversity; don’t wait for approval from dominant networks. When a male mentor’s group excluded her, Rodgers founded her own tribes—proof that women-led networks produce lasting lifts in revenue and confidence.

Practical method

• Join aligned communities or masterminds.
• Reconnect with dormant contacts by offering value.
• Write a clear Squad Description; invite people who fit.
• Perform annual energy audits of relationships.

Rodgers redefines networking as an emotional and strategic discipline: build connections that mirror your future wealth, not past scarcity.

Vision turns desire into math. Rodgers asks you to design your rich life line item by line item—home, car, school, travel—and calculate monthly costs to find the income you truly need. Her own dream required $25,000 per month. This clear BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) replaces vague wishes with implementable numbers.

Behavioral embodiment

“Be Her Now” isn’t about spending on credit cards—it’s about acting like the woman who already lives that vision. Dress sharply, use rituals that enhance clarity, present yourself with confidence. Yale-style experiments suggest attire shifts cognition and negotiation success. These micro-upgrades condition the nervous system for larger achievements.

Language and daily action

Rodgers borrows Andrea Isabelle Lucas’s linguistic trick: replace “but” with “and.” This simple syntax teaches possibility thinking. Her four-step process—upgrade lifestyle mentally, run numbers, brainstorm 25 income ideas, and implement one upgrade—creates continuous forward motion.

Through vision calculation and behavioral rehearsal, you collapse the gap between current and future identity. You train daily in wealth consciousness, creating conditions for monetary outcomes to match psychological ones.

Rodgers links underpricing and partnership mistakes directly to imposter syndrome. When you doubt competence, you give away equity, discount fees, or accept inequity. Her story with a partner named Amber—$80k product launch followed by betrayal—cost her over $150k in fees and years of distraction. The root cause: she didn’t yet trust her sales ability.

Diagnose and dismantle self-doubt

Imposter syndrome manifests as hesitation: you undercharge, procrastinate, or decline to apply for jobs below your balanced skill set. Studies show women apply only when they meet all criteria. That restraint creates lifetime wealth loss. Rodgers prescribes proof collection—track wins and evidence—and therapy or structured coaching to rebuild trust in competence.

Discover your million-dollar value

Discover your zone of genius, as Gay Hendricks calls it. Catalog every way you’ve created value—solved problems, reduced risk, increased morale—and design pricing and offers around transformation, not toil. Tools like CliftonStrengths or DiSC help identify natural gifts. Rodgers’s own assessment revealed zero execution strengths, prompting her to hire help and amplify public speaking—the activity that hit her first million.

Claiming value requires self-trust backed by evidence. Once you prove your ability to deliver results, ownership and pricing shift from emotional guessing to data-driven confidence.

Rodgers flips traditional billing on its head: charge for result, not time. Hourly pricing punishes efficiency; value-based pricing rewards transformation. Her turning point came when Lurie Daniel Favors told her she was undercharging. Rodgers doubled her trademark fee, quoted $1,500, and the client bought two instantly. That experiment became her norm.

The logic of value-based pricing

You calculate worth by impact. A $1,000 copywriting project that yields $300,000 in sales is a $10,000 service mispriced. For employees, the rule applies too: value-based negotiation focuses on contribution, not past averages. Rodgers recounts hiring a director who justified higher pay by detailing saved founder hours and measurable IP growth.

Implementation and objections

Simply double your rates and observe. Scared clients self-select out; better clients invest deeper. Complaints happen at any tier, so respond with professionalism. To guilt over charging more, Rodgers counters: wealth enables social impact—like Beyoncé or Sara Blakely channeling millions into philanthropic ventures. Pricing high gives you bandwidth to give generously.

Price for transformation, and your income aligns with the value you provide. The goal isn’t greed—it’s sustainability and positive ripple.

To reach wealth, you must delegate, document, and systematize. Rodgers shows that solo entrepreneurs rarely break revenue ceilings: 76% work alone and earn only 4% of small-business income. The other 24%—employers—create 96%. Her solution: buy back time.

Buy time and happiness

Hire help even if small. Her $4,000/month chef offset takeout costs while restoring peace and focus. Harvard research confirms: time-saving expenditures yield more happiness than material goods. The first hire—a part-time assistant—can reclaim twenty hours weekly for under $400/month.

Delegation and leadership

Rodgers teaches step-by-step hiring—job description, test days, fair pay—and lists 25 tasks a PA can handle, from returns to scheduling. Freeing those tasks converts time into creativity and profit. Shandra, a photographer, turned $800/month into $20,000/month new business through freed capacity.

Financial infrastructure

Systems turn effort into durability. Track net worth monthly, monitor credit, and use tools like QuickBooks. Hold weekly “Money Church” to reconcile accounts and ideate revenue. Replace shame about debt with gratitude and strategy. Infrastructure makes wealth sustainable.

Rodgers’s system philosophy: money grows where respect for time and process exist. Teams and rituals are scaffolding for millionaire behavior.

Rodgers ends with a call to arms: financial power equals social power. Wealth lets women fund therapy for others (Rachel Cargle’s Loveland Foundation) or schools (Beyoncé’s Phoenix House project). Since women reinvest up to 90% of earnings in family and community, the ripple of female wealth rebuilds society.

Motive and moral clarity

Wanting money is not greed—it’s fuel for justice. Rodgers invites readers to list 25 reasons for becoming millionaires. The responses range from paying parents’ mortgages to “funding the revolution.” Recognizing existing giving (emotional labor, unpaid service) reframes financial ambition as self-protection.

Amplification principle

“Money doesn’t change you—it amplifies what’s inside.”

When moral people hold capital, they can fund transformation ethically and at scale.

Rodgers’s ultimate argument is collective: when women possess wealth, politics, commerce, and philanthropy all bend toward equity. Building wealth becomes activism.