As we work together and pool our resources, there's room for everyone to be successful.

Something happens in the middle when women are in their 30s, and we can start with an array of things that happen, whether it is - you hope this doesn't exist any longer - but overt discrimination; whether it's subtle gender discrimination, which absolutely does exist among men and women; whether it's the fact that it gets hard to juggle at that point children, housework, etc. But people still have to go home and cook the dinner and clean the dishes and get the beds made and so on. And so, for a whole bunch of reasons, women tend to fall out in their 30s still today.

Women have different characteristics and needs than men do.

The industry financial advisers, on average about 85% male, tends to be a more mature financial adviser - so I think in their 50s, really. For so many companies, in their 60s. In fact, there is one company that was telling me they had more financial advisers over the age of 80 than under the age of 30.

What I saw a thousand times during the downturn was, 'We'd like to give her that opportunity, but we need to go with the sure thing - we can't afford diversity right now,'

The truth is, if you are a woman saving 10% of your income for retirement, and you put it in the bank account, your chances of retiring well - living on 90% of your pre-retirement income for your full life - is 0%.

If you haven't had a major fail in your career - face-plant level - you aren't trying hard enough.