How billionaire mothers raise their children

There are women who do three difficult things at the same time: being a mother, getting rich and building a career single-handedly. What can we learn from them?

No matter how modern and advanced the world is, when you are a woman, difficulties always surround you. Being a mother is difficult, getting rich is not easy for women, raising children while getting rich and maintaining the family business through generations is extremely difficult.

Yet according to Forbes, nearly $350 billion is in the hands of 79 such mothers, including 13 female billionaires who built their fortunes from scratch. One of their characteristics is that they give birth and raise children, while making a lot of money and even contributing to the lives of young millionaires.

Billionaire mother, strong woman in business

The list of self-made billionaire mothers is not long, so it's easy to remember their names. Meg Whitman is the woman who heads the auction site Ebay, Mrs. Guiliana Benetton owns the famous fashion brand Benetton Group SpA, Rosalia Mera founded the clothing brand Zara, or Doris Fisher, who founded the brand The Gap.

There are female billionaires who have a lot of money and a lot of children. Diane Hendricks has a fortune of 2.2 billion USD with 6 children and the richest woman in Asia, Savitri Jindal, the boss of the steel and electricity corporation OP Jindal Group, has 9 children, the most of any mother on this list.

Why is it that the world has more than 3,000 dollar billionaires while the number of women mentioned above is only in the dozens? The reason is very easy to understand: Doing that is not... easy! It takes too much time, perseverance and enthusiasm to reach the goal. Among them, the responsibility of raising a family is still the heaviest because it is constantly prolonged and because of it, the initiative of women as mothers is always threatened to be broken.

Billionaire Diane Hendricks further explained this difficulty: "A business can go bankrupt but there is still hope to rebuild it, but once a home is broken, there is not much chance of recovery; if by chance it can be partially saved, the scars on life are too great."

That scar has been the case for the world’s second-richest mother, billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, who runs the French cosmetics empire L’Oreal. She and her heiress daughter once sued each other over money. Although the two eventually made up on Mother’s Day, Liliane’s enthusiasm for wealth has waned.

At 70, Diane still lives by a few simple rules: “Work hard and balance hard, let the chaos come and find a way to adjust it.” She always prioritizes her family. Her 7 grown children, now aged 35 to 55, are helping their mother run the business, but every time she leaves the office, she still cooks a meal for the whole family and waits for all the members to be present to eat together.

In Vietnam we also have strong women like that.

The recently deceased rich woman from Binh Dinh, Nguyen Thi Huong (Tu Huong), only finished 5th grade, grew up in poverty, worked as a maid, learned sewing, and sold goods. However, starting from trading seafood, agarwood, and wood, she single-handedly built a huge business with deals that made millions of dollars, then expanded her business to many industries, from real estate, hotel tourism, finance and banking to advertising and media, and education.

Her sons, daughters, and sons-in-law are now leaders in the family business network. “Emotional but strict and disciplined with a strong personality,” people often say about her.

It is also the story of "Old Lady Bao Tin" Luong Thi Diem, a Hanoi woman who created the Bao Tin gold brand, and at an old age, is still attached to every step of the industry's development.

Her children are now all successful with a series of famous gold brands such as Bao Tin Minh Chau, Bao Tin Hong Quan, Bao Tin Manh Hai, Bao Tin Thanh Van, Bao Tin Hoang Long. The secret of this nearly 80-year-old business mother is condensed into 4 T's: heart - trust - talent - money. When asked how her children are successful today, she only emphasizes one word: trust.

These are mothers who venture into the business world. There are also mothers who choose their home as their “business battlefield”, meaning they stay home to raise and care for their children and take care of the family, but money still flows in. These are the pioneers of the new mother model: getting rich right at home.

The peace of the family environment has helped them to spark creative ideas for their careers. They can come from the moments when they are doing their duty as mothers taking care of their children, from the needs of their own children at home or from the dreams in the moments of relaxation between the housework.

Sarah Blakely is now worth $1 billion thanks to launching Spanx shapewear because she felt the clothes she wore while doing housework were uncomfortable and unsightly.

Billionaire Debra Cohen wanted to do something to fill her time while her children slept, so she renovated everything in her house. Then her business took off, becoming the owner of the $3.5 billion home improvement contractor Home Remedies®.

Thanks to noticing that her children often forgot their keys, mother Sandy Stein became a millionaire when she came up with the Finders Key Purse smart keychain, which can be hooked to a handbag and helps the user get the keys quickly without having to rummage through the bag.

And while her dreamy mother, Stephenie Meyer, was putting her children to sleep, she spun the Twilight saga in her head, a love story between a human and a vampire. The story was turned into a movie that brought Meyer and her children $125 million.

Mother, the support that makes billionaires

When they are not the women who make the money, mothers are the ones who create the billionaires. Sometimes they are the inspiration, the motivating factor, or they actively understand and create the conditions for their children to develop into super-rich people. 100% of self-made millionaires have a successful mentor, while none of the poor have.

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's $1 billion fortune comes largely from characters in her books that mimic her mother Anne's 10-year battle with multiple sclerosis and multiple personalities. eBay mogul Meg Whitman uses her mother as a role model to raise her children and build her wealth.

"Since I was a child, my mother has always encouraged me to be an action-oriented person," she told Forbes. "She believes that anything worth doing is difficult, but if you don't try, you will never know what you are capable of."

Bill Gates

Bill Gates became the world's number 1 billionaire thanks to his mother's thriftiness in buying him a rudimentary "computer" and introducing him to writing software programs for Opel. Gates's spirit of charity was also "fed" by his mother from a young age. Larry Page, the founder of Google, was also taught programming by his mother at the age of 6. And Elon Musk, the father of future technology programs such as PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors... became a billionaire thanks to his mother's "forced" him to read at least two science fiction books every month.

The list of future world dollar billionaires is expected to be even longer. Because ordinary mothers have contributed to the creation of billionaires, let alone those mothers who are female billionaires!

According to TNO