Be a Trailblazer! Female Millionaire Profile – Madam C J Walker

Successful Entrepreneurs are a rare breed of people. While the glory of a finished diamond attracts many people to it, not many will respect the stone in its raw form, and that is precisely why succeeding independently is so difficult – not many people will stand by in the beginning phase when support is really needed. That is truer if the entrepreneur is female and more so if the story is set at the beginning of the last century!

Looking back at the success stories of the last century, one lady stands out like a beacon – Madam C J Walker. According to the Guinness Book, Madam Walker was the first woman to have become a millionaire through her own efforts, and that is no mean achievement! Born of slave parents, Madam Walker, or Sarah Breedlove as she was born, started her career working as a laundress for a dollar and a half a day. She later became a saleswoman for a range of hair care products, but was unhappy with the quality of what she sold. That is what led her to launch The Madam C J Walker Manufacturing Company, and ‘Wonderful Hair Grower’ was her first big successful product. She also founded the Leila Colleges of Beauty Culture, named after her daughter.

Success came to her big time, and she amassed a lot of wealth over the years. However, what truly sets apart the story of Madam C J Walker is the way she handled that wealth. Over two-thirds of her estate has been given over to charitable causes, and even today, there are a range of philanthropic causes the estate supports. Another path-breaking thing Madam Walker did was to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship in young African-American women in the USA, when the times were not suitable for them. A significant number of sales people in her company were women, and that was unheard of at that time. From that team of women rose many more women entrepreneurs, and they scripted their own success stories with inspiration from Madam Walker.

Madam C J Walker died in 1919, but her legacy lives on – both in the form of her organizations, and in the form of the inspiration she gave to a whole generation of women

Life is Short.  DREAM BIG!