28. Own the Shift: How Women Leaders Will Shape the Great Wealth Transfer
Trillions of dollars are about to change hands in what experts call "the great wealth transfer." As a woman leader, are you prepared to harness this unprecedented financial shift? This isn't just about money landing in your bank account—it's about a fundamental redistribution of power that will reshape leadership dynamics across every industry.
According to Boston Consulting Group, women currently control 32% of global wealth, but by 2030, that number will surge past 50%. This massive transfer from aging baby boomers will predominantly flow to women, creating the largest concentration of female financial power in modern history. For the first time, women will collectively wield economic influence that matches or exceeds men's—despite the political and cultural headwinds we're currently facing.
Join me this week to learn how you are uniquely positioned to leverage the great wealth transfer as a woman in leadership - but only if you’re mentally prepared to step into this power.
Whether you're leading a team, making big bold decisions, or tackling tough conversations, confidence is the key to showing up powerfully. That's why I created the Confidence Hack, a simple yet powerful tool that has helped tons of women just like you break free from limiting beliefs and step fully into their potential.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How the great wealth transfer will put women in control of over 50% of global wealth by 2030.
Why receiving wealth doesn't automatically translate to empowerment without the right mindset.
5 powerful thoughts that will prepare you to effectively steward wealth and influence.
Why many women undermine their own power by reverting to male figures for financial guidance.
How to distinguish between seeking advice and surrendering your decision-making authority.
The connection between internal empowerment and your ability to create meaningful external impact with wealth.
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Managing the Next Decade of Women’s Wealth - Boston Consulting Group study
Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
All right, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to today's podcast episode. It is all about the great wealth transfer. And if you haven't heard this before, I want to prepare you for some mind-blowing numbers. I love numbers. As an ex-global finance woman, I love thinking about numbers, but I also love thinking about power and how we can empower ourselves as women.
So, I wanted to share some stats with you, and I want you to understand the magnitude of the shift that's about to happen in the next five years. And it's actually already starting to happen. So, the Boston Consulting Group created a study a while back, and they talked about this great wealth transfer happening. And I guess a while back, it felt like ten years ago, so it felt like far away. But actually, it is starting to shift now, and it will be even more impactful in the next five years by 2030.
So, currently women own approximately 32% of global wealth in the whole world. So trillions of dollars that's managed, controlled, and owned by women. So, this figure is steadily increasing as women are starting to inherit more wealth, but that they're also achieving more career success and taking on leadership roles and making a lot of financial decisions.
The great wealth transfer is starting to happen now and will continue happening. But here are some key numbers that I think are really striking as people think about the magnitude of this. So right now, a lot of the baby boomers who are still alive are going to be passing away in the next five years. And a significant amount of that wealth is actually going to go to women.
So the Boston Consulting Group is highlighting a study that women are expected to control over 50% of that global wealth by 2030 because of these baby boomers that are going to be passing away. And the people that are inheriting this in their families are primarily women.
So, for the first time in sort of modern day times, women are going to have this massive power through inheriting this money. So it is actually something that as you being a female leader in the world and thinking about what's possible. There are a lot of things that are starting to click for me, and I'm hoping that in this episode they start clicking for you too. Because I know there's a lot of things happening in the political arena and around the world that there's a big push against sort of women and women leadership and feminine leadership. But this is also a big push that's happening.
It's going to happen on a macro level. It is going to be a big change in the evolution of how people see women and wealth and power. And as a woman leader, you can use these stories and this real big shift that's happening in the culture and in the world to your advantage. Firstly, you can just as a woman leader myself, I'm just starting to notice for myself, wow, there is going to be no better time for my daughters to be in the world than as they're growing up with women having this much power.
So really spending some time thinking about what this could look like for you as a leader, for your children, for the world, and the impact that it can make. So, as I'm thinking about it, even for myself, I think, wow, I coach women in male-dominated spaces. There's going to be so many more women in male-dominated spaces that I could be supporting, helping through this.
And if you're a woman on a board, for example, or the only woman in a leadership team, well, this is also impactful. Because you are going to be the person that they are going to be looking towards when they're like, how do we market to this new generation of women with money? Right?
How do we create products? And how do we go to market? And how do we do all of these things with women in mind? Because women are not only the people that make a lot of these decisions, but now they're going to have the wealth to do that. And they're going to have the power to do that. And what will that mean for you, for your company, for the world?
So, however you want to use this data, I want you to really spend some time sitting with it, the magnitude of what's happening. There's a study that I've heard of a lot of times that by 2030, women are going to be leading a lot of organizations. They're going to be the leaders in businesses.
And listen, if you told me that 10 years ago, which I heard this quote 10 years ago. I remember being like, I don't believe it. There's too many men in the world. It's not going to happen. This shift is happening so slowly. It's going to take a long time for women to get that level of power and to be leading organizations and to be the majority leading organizations.
Well, now that we're only five years away from this big great wealth transfer, it feels more real to me, more than ever before. I am starting to see the path. And if you are allowing yourself to sink into the magnitude of this change, of this shift, of this many women having power and influence, then this may also help you to start putting some dots together and getting more clear and clear on your purpose and your legacy and how you want to best prepare yourself to talk about this great wealth transfer. To own it for yourself, to own the narrative for yourself of how empowering it could be.
And this is super important because the whole thing about seeing ourselves in the future, seeing ourselves as more powerful, seeing ourselves speak up in a room full of men, seeing ourselves as big and bold and brave, it all starts with the way we think and feel about ourselves as women. And what I love about this great wealth transfer is that there's an external piece.
Often times, people don't believe things until they could see the numbers, until they can see, we use our logic. We don't use our emotions as much. But we use a lot of our logic to predict the world, to see the world. And here are some real hard facts and hard numbers that there's going to be a big shift that's happening. And this shift is going to benefit women.
So just as in politics and who the president is and how that impacts everything, you could use the power of this great wealth transfer to really ignite you, activate you, engage you, and also help you see the future being more for women and how you can start actively playing a role in that. Because when we start seeing ourselves that way and we start feeling this big push that's going to be happening, this is just momentum we can continue to ride and amplify the things that we're already doing.
But the truth is that women actually need to empower themselves, and they need to feel powerful within themselves. Just giving women a lot of money and giving them a lot of money doesn't just equate to power, right? They need to feel powerful inside. Otherwise, women that are inheriting this money or if you're getting this money or you're being put in a leadership position, but you're just full of imposter syndrome and you're full of wondering if you deserve this, if you can handle this, if you should steward this much amount of money, what will end up happening is one, you will either indulge in your insecurities about how you're not ready to hold this much money or you're not ready to stand up in this leadership role and take up that space.
So that imposter syndrome comes back. Or you're going to revert to the man in your life, whether that's your husband, whether it's the CEO, whether it's a very wealthy uncle potentially, to ask them questions about how to deal with the money, handle the money, how to make decisions about the money. And so then women are going to be reverting back to other people outside of themselves, potentially other men, to again decide how they want to move forward.
This is why that mindset piece and you empowering yourself and you learning to be a self-empowered leader is so important. Because you could be given a massive amount of wealth or you could be given massive amounts of power or responsibility. But if you don't feel like you can be entrusted with that, if you don't take full ownership of that, if you don't rise up to the occasion of who you were to who you are right now, then all of that could feel like a big uphill battle, and you could be fighting against yourself as you could be instead embracing this new level of power, starting to see yourself as super powerful, and starting to go to school on the ways that you are a good steward of money.
I think that there's a lot of this with women, even high-achieving women that I coach. I coach a lot of women that even though they're making these huge decisions in their lives, they still, when it comes to themselves, when it comes to investing in themselves, they want to consult their husbands. They want to consult somebody else in their life. And I don't have a problem with people consulting people, but I do want women to be the last word on themselves, right?
So, I always say, hey, there's no problem of getting buy-in and talking to your partner about stuff. I do it too. I talk to my husband if I make a decision that's over $10,000, right? I don't know whatever the number is. I'm talking to him, but I'm not asking him for permission. I'm talking to him about something that I'm planning to do and sharing that with him, and I want his buy-in. But I may move forward even if I don't get his buy-in. Because I know that I can trust myself with the money. And I also, I can trust myself if it doesn't work out, I know how to fix it. And I'm going to take that responsibility and that power on because that's what I choose.
So, power, independence, financial leadership really starts with yourself. You trusting yourself with massive amounts of money and the responsibility of it. But that's where you can start doing the work now on yourself because people are going to look to you. People are going to want to know more about what you think and feel, especially if you're going to have more, I'm using the word power here, but more money and power and influence.
This is what happens when you rise up, when there are changes that happen. So you get promoted maybe two levels up and you're starting to catch up with yourself. Or you inherit a massive amount of money that maybe you didn't actually realize you were going to inherit, which is actually going to be happening to a lot of women over the next five years.
But the people that are going to gain the most from this are women that are starting to work through their mindset, in their mindset, creating themselves, looking upon themselves as good stewards of this money and looking at themselves as people who are empowered to not only have this money, but to create lots of different changes and impacts in the world.
There are so many women philanthropists that are out there giving billions of dollars away because they have had massive amounts of money coming their way. We see this with a lot of the women already, but there's just going to be more and more of that. You can consider this just the very beginning of the type of impact that women are going to start making.
But the more discerning women are and the more focused they are on what they care most about, the bigger impact that they're going to be able to make. And the less they're going to go to the old systems or old paradigms of the ways of doing things or asking men in their lives to help them steward it or to give them permission to do it.
So you want to just start noticing that for yourself. Where are you giving permission or where are you looking for other people to solve your problems? The more you give yourself the power to solve your own problem, and that's different than getting advice. You can always get advice, but at the end of the day, you're deciding. It's your decision. It is on the line for you.
And the women that I coach that have that mentality, they are taking a greater level of responsibility for their life. And they are also experiencing greater levels of satisfaction and fulfillment because of it. Because they're not waiting for someone to save the day. Because they're not waiting for their CEO to make it okay for them to challenge him. They are choosing to believe that it is okay. They're choosing mutuality.
If you're a woman who's going to get a lot of money from this great wealth transfer, but you don't believe you're going to be there, the money's not going to make that big of a difference. So it really is an inside job.
And here are some powerful thoughts that as you as a woman and as you continuing to amass more and more financial wealth, the more you can think and practice these thoughts, the more impactful it's going to be for you as the great transfer happens, as you see the world around you changing, as you see yourself changing.
So the first one is, I am deserving of wealth and power. This is super important because I think a lot of women just don't believe that to be true. They don't think that they're deserving. And so they spend a lot of time talking themselves out of it. They feel unworthy or guilty. They don't know how to spend their money. They are really hesitant to invest in themselves. And they're hesitant to step into this leadership role of really stewarding this much money and wealth and power.
The next thought is, I create value in the world. And my wealth amplifies my impact. Wealth is not just your personal gain. It's a tool to amplify your ability to create change. And by thinking this way, you will be able to lead better, influence better, make more positive change in your community, in your company.
The next one is, I trust myself to make smart financial leadership decisions. So this is about your confidence in making financial and leadership decisions. And the more evidence you find in your life that you're good at doing this, whether it's you saving money for your family's vacation, whether it's you making sure that you guys hit the right ROI for a project in a company, you want to keep giving yourself evidence that you trust yourself to make financial and leadership decisions.
And then the next one is, true power comes from within. And I lead from a place of inner strength. So, again, wealth doesn't just make someone powerful. It's really your internal growth, your awareness, your emotional intelligence, your leadership mindset. This allows wealth to be leveraged fully.
This thought helps you ground in your sense of power in who you are and not just what you have. Potentially the money could come and go. You could make some not great financial decisions. But if you know that the true power of money comes from you, then you will lead from that place of inner strength, and you will recreate whatever you might have lost. You will be able to figure it out because it's you that's creating it, not the money, not the thing external to you.
And then that will also have you being willing to invest more and not just hold the money on because you don't think that you can trust yourself and you think the power comes from the money.
And then lastly, I am part of a legacy of empowered women, and I will lead future generations. So, this again is a real thought that taps into not only your empowerment of yourself in the here and now, but empowerment of women and men in the future that is going to be created from the investments that women make. The things that we choose to invest in, the ways that we choose to change society and the world.
I am super excited about this because I'm just seeing more trends of sustainability, more work-life balance for people, more of the feminine quality type things that make businesses not only more profitable but more sustainable. So, again, it is about the balance of masculine and feminine, but I'm just seeing that this shift and this change will just amplify that even more so. But again, it is all about your inner work. So you've got to do that work focused on yourself, focused on taking care of yourself now, ensuring that you feel empowered and trust yourself to make these decisions.
Remember, the great wealth transfer is more than an economic event. It's a shift in power. But to truly lead in this new era, you have to cultivate this mindset that allows you to rise to the challenge. It's time to step into your power and lead not just with your wealth, but with your vision and influence.
Because the wealth is going to come. That money is going to flow your way. It is just going to be what happens to a lot of women. But the ones that are going to gain the most from it are the ones that are going to be these self-empowered leaders that understand that wealth and power and independence come from within.
All right, that is today's episode. We're going to do a lot more around the great wealth transfer, particularly with high-achieving women positioning themselves on boards, positioning themselves to explain this message to more men in their lives so that they can make an even bigger influence.
And I am really excited to continue this conversation with you. Let me know what you thought about this episode. I'd love to hear from you. Find me on LinkedIn or go ahead and leave a review of this episode. All right, we'll see you next time. Take care. Bye.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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