The Millionaire Bootcamp for Women is an annual event, which brings together women from all over the world to share their experiences. The bootcamp focuses on women in business, but it also provides women with an opportunity to share their thoughts on life, learning and spirit.
The bootcamp was conceived by entrepreneurs Stephanie Hale and Mark Anastasi who set up the seminar off the back of Stephanie’s best selling book entitled Millionaire Women Millionaire You. Stephanie and Mark were expecting to host the seminar to between 50 and 100 women, but the response they received was overwhelming. More than 3,000 women signed up forcing Stephanie and Mark to cancel the original venue and relocate to a larger site. After the first event, Stephanie received an amazing response and demand for a second seminar was high. “I had so many people contact me after the event that Millionaire Bootcamp just developed from there. It was never supposed to be as big as it has become,” says Stephanie.
This year, the Millionaire Bootcamp is playing host to 12 exceptional businesswomen, all of whom have triumphed in the face of adversity. Business Review Europe catches up with a handful of the guest speakers and hears about their individual paths to success.
Stephanie Hale
“It was desperation that made me overcome all of my fears,” says Stephanie, who after an acrimonious divorce was left as a single parent with a very poor income. Stephanie began her career as a journalist and newsreader, however gave up her high profile job to become a full time parent. When she and her husband divorced, Stephanie was forced to live in a dangerous area because she was too ashamed to admit that she had fallen from a high powered, successful position to live in squalor. “We had sunk so low and I just wanted to get out of there,” she says. “I did not want that to be my life but I knew that unless I did something that was how it was going to be. Something had to change.”
Stephanie taught herself how to trade and spent her evenings reading charts and teaching herself about business, but she received a powerful wake up call when she was told by her doctor that she may have a tumour behind her right eye. “I suddenly thought that I may not be able to achieve all the things I had planned on achieving, and I didn’t know how much time I had left,” she explains. “Because I was in a state of heightened awareness at the time I was more willing to take risks and I wanted every day to count for five. I was cramming as much as I could into every day; I was seeing lots of friends and spending as much time as I could with my family, then I wrote my book Millionaire Women Millionaire You. It was off the back of that the Millionaire Bootcamp materialised.” Stephanie thankfully did not have a tumour, but she admits that it was the kick-start she needed to break into business. “You have to want it badly enough,” she says. “You have to be in such a bad place that you want to get out of it, or you need to have a big enough reason.”
Listen to Stephanie speaking about the 2011 Bootcamp
Alexandra Watson
“I love what I do and it is an extension of who I am,” Alexandra says today, but she has not always felt that way about her career. Alexandra began working in marketing and public relations as soon as she left university and by her own admission she was good at it, but she recalls waking up one morning, knowing she had a big client meeting and thinking, ‘Is this all there is?’ “I remember thinking: Is this going to be my life, I have worked so hard, but now I am here I don’t want to be. That was a very frightening thought at the time,” she says.
Alexandra gave up her career in PR, but it was not until she met somebody who suggested she would make a good life coach that she turned her life in the direction she wanted it to take. She realised that you need to love what your doing and be true to yourself and the money will follow. She says, “When somebody said to me that I would make a good life coach I looked into it and thought is sounded amazing. I have never looked back.”
Dawn Mendonca
“The internet is full of get rich quick schemes but it is important for people to realise that in order to make money you need to spend time learning about your chosen field,” says Dawn. As a single mother, Dawn was working from 9am to 5pm in a marketing agency, trying to juggle her home life with her career, until she hit rock bottom in 2002 and suffered from a nervous breakdown. She took some time out and realised that she needed to get out of the daily grind and decided to begin working for herself as a dance coach.
Dawn started her business teaching classes of about 20 children to dance, however she realised that she could expand her career if she took advantage of the internet and marketing 2.0 strategies. However, by her own admission, Dawn was not very ‘techy’ and even struggled to operate the remote control for her television so began to teach herself the principles of online communication by reading around the subject, practicing and speaking to mentors. As Dawn explains, “I set myself a challenge to make a YouTube video everyday for 90 days, because they say it takes 90 days to develop a new habit. By doing that I learned a lot about online marketing and a lot about myself. Business is not about get rich quick scams, but about hard graft and determination.”
Marsha Wright
Marsha Wright turns normal people into experts, reads her mentorship programme tagline and she believes that becoming an expert in your field is key to success. Marsha had a tough upbringing and her background includes living in and out of children’s homes and moving around a lot, however it is this that made Marsha sure she would become self reliant later in life. By the age of seven she was showing off her entrepreneurial streak by selling sweets in the school playground, and by the time she was 17 Marsha had her first office and consultancy company.
Today Marsha is a pioneer in her area of expertise and advises her clients to become experts in order to build a successful business. She says, “I tell my clients, that once they come up with an idea, they should work tirelessly for five or six months to become known as an expert in that area.” She has a tried and tested business model, which she teaches her clients and she strongly believes that you can accelerate your business by providing knowledge to others. “I have succeeded in business and I want to share my knowledge with the people I mentor.”
Katherine Denver
“If you are in the right frame of mind, opportunities present themselves,” says Katherine. Katherine went to a strict boarding school when she was young, so when the opportunity of freedom arose she decided to grab it with both hands. Katherine recalls her determination to travel to Australia in her gap year and speaks about how she worked tirelessly in a pub to save up the money to go away. As she explains, “I had an amazing trip and I really got to grips to universal principles with success. I was in the flow, meeting amazing people, creating opportunities and making money. At the end of my trip I sat on the steps of the Sydney Opera House and I asked somebody to take a photo of me because it was the first time I had achieved something on my own.” Katherine wrote in her travel journal, “I believe anything is possible and I can do anything.”
Today it is that young woman, sitting on the steps of the Sydney Opera House that inspires Katherine and makes her believe that women are supposed to work within their passions and strengths. She believes that having a positive attitude is key to success and states that people need to take responsibility for their own destiny in order to be happy. “Create money, don’t make it, and do something you love,” she says.
The Millionaire Bootcamp is from 28th to 30th October 2011. For more information click here
To read the September issue of Business Review Europe click here
