The Secrets to Making More Money

By Rachael Bender

Who among us doesn't want to make more? If we're earning $50,000, we'd really like to be making $100,000. If we're making $100,000, we feel we deserve to earn $200,000 - just like the boys. Perhaps you tell yourself that to make more you'd have to work longer hours. Or maybe that only doctors and lawyers really can achieve high incomes, or that you'll need a degree from an Ivy League school to break through the glass ceiling. But what is really holding you back?

Barbara Stanny, author of "Secrets of Six Figure Women," says the person holding most women back from becoming high earners is themselves. In her book, Stanny reveals that what you really need isn't more education, longer hours or a different career - you just have to change your perspective.

"It's entirely possible for any one of us, with average intelligence, to increase our income without selling our soul. No matter how difficult your circumstances or how discouraged you feel, climbing the salary scale is entirely within your grasp," she writes.

Stanny should know. She interviewed more than 150 women who earn between $100,000 and $7 million. What she found was that these women didn't share the same educational background, work experiences or professions. A couple of these women hadn't even finished high school and started out in minimum wage jobs yet somehow they overcame the obstacles and broke free from a life of under earning. In fact, many of these six-figure women were once under-earners. Stanny defines an under-earner as someone who earns "less than they need or desire."

Here are a couple of the secrets that Stanny discovered from these women:

Education and Lack of Experience Doesn't Have to Hold You Back.
One of the women Stanny interviewed said, "I was destined for the trailer park." While working as a meter maid in Beverly Hills she started meeting wealthy people who first started talking to her to get out of their parking ticket. What she discovered is that knack for talking to people. Soon she was introducing the people she had met to each other - setting up dates. She then put an ad in the paper and now charges thousands as a matchmaker.