RICH CHICKS has gone from its founding in a coffee shop in 1998 to helping 25,000 plus women to reach their goals of financial freedom.
Mickey Mikeworth, a welfare-to-work success story and Alan Eleria, a financial advisor, started the company.
Mikeworth started this program as a member not as a leader. She said she came from a public health education and didn’t know a single thing about money, but wanted to be a rich chick herself … not start a company.
RICH CHICKS teaches a unique model that 90% of the most impactful financial choices you make are about the every day choices you make, NOT the 10% of decisions you make with a financial advisor, according to Mikeworth.
“We are not selling financial advice, we’re an education company that believes in changing the way you interact with your resources,” she said. “The real power of wealth is in your hands every second of the game by earning to your potential, saving for the stupid stuff that always happens like car repairs or a dental bill, cutting out behaviors that don’t help you get ahead, talking openly about money, getting clear on your goals, and having a community to share your story with.”
RICH CHICKS mentorship program combines personal mentoring, group education, and resource sharing to create a unique and accurate personal growth model. They base their program on the idea that money is about more than being a consumer. Money is one of the many tools needed in a prosperous lifestyle. As trained educational specialists, they use a cutting edge approach to demonstrate how to apply financial concepts to every day living. They put more than 4,000 hours of education a year into the community and offer about 70 classes a year through all of their programs – some are open to the public and some are institutional.
They have a set series that starts in the fall and includes Introduction to Wealth 101 and 102, which are six weeks each of learning to understand larger wealth concepts like Survival vs. Growth Mentality, The Law of 72, Understanding Taxation, Bondage Free Budgeting, What is the Stock Market and how does that apply to each of them. They also offer small three-day sessions.
Mikeworth’s favorite program offered by RICH CHICKS is their largest fundraiser, which is their SUPER CHICK Awards Gala.
“It’s the don’t miss party of the year and it’s our formal gala,” she said. “RICH CHICKS has a full closet full of party gowns that women can rent if they need to. People from the community nominate women who are outstanding in some way like trailblazing, sharing their wealth, acts of courage, or creating worldwide thinking and they pick eight amazing stories to celebrate and then we throw them a party.”
RICH CHICKS has some big plans for the future. “We believe that network = net worth and we created a business mastermind group NW2 that works just on those concepts,” Mikeworth said. “After over 10 years we have realized that when you look at wealth as “forms of capital” and that your “network IS your net worth” wealth becomes an unlimited and renewable resource. This is a paradigm of thought that has emerged. Abundance can be negotiated no matter what socio-economic level you are at as long as you can connect with others who would like to do the same. So RICH CHICKS is moving into a membership organization ($30-$250 a year available starting Oct. 10, 2009 when we roll it out at our GALA) and is shifting towards using the power of our network as a business model.
Mikeworth added that they are doing much more group work, hosting the classes of the small business owners that they grew, connecting business owners and community leaders so that they can partner together.
“We want to continue the work of prosperity education, the way we teach and present information should make your mind hungry for more. That is the purpose of prosperity based education and people in India have been doing this style of teaching for thousands of years – curiosity is a very clever cat, it always sleeps with one eye open, it is agile and interested and that makes for a well rounded cat. Isn’t that what you want in a student – the desire to learn because they are hungry for information?” —Lynn Celmer
