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Welcome Home! DollarDiva.com is the site for Y-Gen women who are on a quest to find their voice, establish their own style, and create a financial base for themselves that will allow them to make their dreams come true.
And hey, before you go – remember to sign up for your free copy of our bi-monthly DollarDiva Newsletter. Just fill in the form below...
Want to know more about The DollarDiva Story? Read on.. In 1990 Independent Means founder, Joline Godfrey, a social worker from Maine, turned corporate woman and entrepreneur in Boston, moved to California to write Our Wildest Dreams, a book about women entrepreneurs, their passions and their challenges. (It has been an eclectic life of surprise she says.)
And with that mission, the DollarDiva Story began. In May of 1992, Joline and her friend Karen Schafer invited 50 teenage women from Ojai, CA's Nordhoff High School to meet with twenty DollarDivas to talk about money, business and independence. They had no idea how the day would turn out, or even if it would work, but decided to experiment with bringing the two groups together to see what might happen. (Exploring the unknown is a trademark of any true DollarDiva!) The high school women and the DollarDivas spent that day talking about how to be taken seriously, what it means to own your own business, why role models are important, the role of money in one's life and sense of independence, and how to make FUN central to work. By the end of the day, everyone – DollarDivas and DollarDivas To Be – had become so excited by the ideas that had formed, that the only question that seemed to be on anyone's mind was, "What Next?" What next turned out to be more conferences bringing cool First Wave and Next Wave DollarDivas together to talk and exchange ideas about work, money, life, passions, and fun. What next also turned out to be the launch of the National Business Plan Competition for Teen Women. No one was sure if any high school women would even submit their ideas for such a competition, but applications were sent to girls clubs, schools, and invitations placed in Seventeen and Teen Magazine. Before long, Independent Means' telephone began to ring incessantly as new DollarDivas called to ask for an application. And when Hilda Gonzalez, one of the winners from that first competition, stepped to the podium to accept her cash prize and a trophy, she said to the 400 people in the audience: "This is the first time my father has ever taken me seriously," and brought the house to tears. After the Business Plan Competition began to take on a life of its own (click on the Biz Plan button to get your own application!), the What Next question surfaced again. By now it was clear that Next Wave DollarDivas wanted more experiences, more intense experiences, and more opportunities to meet with one another as well as to share the lives and insights of the First Wave DollarDivas. Since 1996, Independent Means Inc. has continued to be guided by the dreams and hopes of Next Wave DollarDivas, launching Camp $tart-Up, a summer program for high school and college women who want a supportive environment for getting their first business idea off the ground and Summer $tock, a beginners introduction to investing, as well as numerous special events and experiences, many planned by the New Wave DollarDivas themselves. Of the early founders, Karen Schafer went off to start her own cool adventure in Australia (the first business journal for companies in Sydney), while Joline has continued to pursue the What Next question, write more books, (check out her latest, Twenty $ecrets to Money and Independence: The DollarDiva's Guide to Life.) and travel around the world, meeting, talking with, and learning from the Next Wave DollarDivas that seem to be finding themselves, and each other, world wide. So What Is A DollarDiva? It's you, your friends, possibly your grandmother, aunt and mother – anyone one who has made the connection that the responsible and creative use of money to earn, learn, and change the world makes a difference for one's life, as well as family and community. True DollarDivas have sorted out their values about spending money, saving and investing money, earning and giving it away. How do you expand your Divadom?
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By
the time she'd written the last chapter of her book, she had had
an epiphany: many of the stories the women told about their lives
and their businesses reflected the fact that each of the women she
wrote about had had both a late start in their own journey of financial
independence, and too little help. By the time the book hit the
shelves of book stores around the country, she had a mission: find
a way to help young women get an early start on their own journey
for independence.|
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