When Wanda McPhaden was growing up in Louisiana, she had no idea that she could become an accomplished businesswoman. “I never dreamed a girl could be anything, other than do good in school and maybe get married,” she said.
She did those two things ”“ she was good in school and she got married. But she”™s done more than that, as well. She”™s built a successful career that began when being a stay-at-home mom when there was nobody around to be a mom for began to get tedious. “I used to clean the doorknobs with a toothbrush, that”™s how bored I was,” McPhaden said with an airy and sometimes exaggerated humor that peppers her conversation.
“I”™m thinking, ”˜I”™m miserable,”™” she said of that period in the late 1970s. “I remember saying to myself, ”˜You”™ve got a beautiful house and a fabulous husband and kids, what is wrong with you that this isn”™t enough?”™” Many women, she said, “are very happy to be married to high-level corporate men and have that the focus of their life.” She wasn”™t. Big time. “I was unique,” she said. “And I didn”™t have a lot of patience, either. I would think, ”˜What is it with these women? Don”™t they want to do something with their lives?”™”
McPhaden”™s corporate husband came to the rescue, though. “He said, ”˜You know you love going to school. Why don”™t you go back to school?”™ So I want to Western Connecticut State University and I got a master”™s degree in human resources, just because it seemed like something to do, really. I had a goal at that point to be a career counselor for other women who had to be as miserably unhappy as I was in these Connecticut woods.”
The phone call
Getting to those Connecticut woods ”“ actually, it was Ridgefield ”“ is another story, by the way. McPhaden was born in Louisiana but graduated from high school in Texas. Her father was in the Air Force “and we moved every three years until I met my husband,” she said. “When I was growing up I said I”™m going to marry someone and never move again. I got married and moved 13 times in 20 years. We were like migrants.”
She met her husband, Gordon, after she moved back home ”“ this time home was in Maine ”“ “sick, tired and broke” after trying to work her way through college. She took a job as a secretary at the local General Foods plant, where Gordon was the new plant manager. “Gordon and I started dating and he moved to California,” she said. “He said, ”˜If you marry me, I”™ll take you to California.”™ We lived there 13 months and moved to Illinois, where both our sons were born. Then we just kept moving, moving, moving. He”™d say, ”˜I”™ve got an opportunity,”™ and I”™d think, ”˜Oh, no. Here we go again.”™”
The family landed in Texas long enough for McPhaden to finish her undergraduate degree in marketing from North Texas State University in 1977 ”“ 17 years after graduating from high school “So now I get my first real job, the boys are settled and everybody”™s happy and we get the phone call about the opportunity,” she said. Gordon promised they”™d stay in Connecticut for only two years. That was in 1979.
The problem was that even though he had moved to the Pepsi and Frito-Lay headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., “there were too many jobs in this area to be transferred around to, and he kept changing positions but staying in the area.”
That”™s when Gordon suggested she go back to college. “So I tried that perfume on,” she said, receiving her master”™s from WestConn in 1981. A year later, “the phone call” came again, but this time it was for her. Her days of scrubbing doorknobs with a toothbrush were about to end.
Survivors
The phone call was from WestConn, which offered her a position teaching consumer behavior at its Ancell School of Business. “I had a ball,” McPhaden said. “I discovered that I had a skill I didn”™t know I had ”“ I was a really good teacher and had the ability to recognize talent where other people hadn”™t seen it before.”
She remained at WestConn until the 1987-88 school year, when she left to pursue a career in real estate, joining an agency where she became the third-highest producer in the office. “Wow,” she thought, “women can make a lot of money in real estate.” But she discovered something more than that. “I fell in love with the concept of real estate investment.”
During the next 20 years McPhaden worked at a series of real estate agencies in Danbury and Ridgefield, even trying to go it alone for about a year. “That was painful,” she said of that entrepreneurial experience. “I really didn”™t understand what it took to run a business. If nobody is there to answer the phones, there”™s no business. I really needed a bigger name than just me.”
But she learned enough over the ensuring years that she felt secure enough to create a real estate investment business a few years ago that she calls BCA Real Estate Investment, for Believe, Create, Achieve. “I”™m putting groups of women, primarily, together and we”™re investing in residential real estate together. The two projects we”™re working on right (now) are in Westport. We bought one single-family house, tore it down, and are marketing a new construction for $4.5 million.” The other is a one-story single-family house that”™s being totally renovated, including the addition of a second floor that will sell for $2.1 million.
“In my first group, I had 50-50 men and women, and 75-25 women in the second,” McPhaden said. “Women are not the risk takers that men are. I thought they would be, but they”™re not. Next time around, I”™m going after a different group of women ”“ high net worth business women.” That group of investors, she said, “are women who have been in corporate at some point, are self made, maybe have their own business. They are successful and usually have a story. By that I mean that at some point in their childhood they figured out what they had to do to survive. One way or another they determined how to survive and become successful.”
National franchise
McPhaden”™s goal with the investments is to make money, and lots of it. Her reason, though, is to pour that money into a nonprofit she calls Women Helping Women (WHW). “When couples get divorced, very often the woman gets the house and children. It looks like a very good deal here in Fairfield County, but it”™s not because unless you”™ve structured the financials just right and your husband continues to give you money, you run out of money to make the house payments if you”™re not working. A lot of these foreclosures are single women with children. Having gone through this process with someone in my family and figuring out how to not go into foreclosure, I know there are ways to help.”
McPhaden said she originally thought she formed the nonprofit to help women, “but I really think it”™s to help women to help their children, like teaching them how to be financially free and have a life that works on every level.”
“In between BCA and WHW, I have a group I”™m calling Women Building Wealth,” she said. “I want some very successful business women who want to give back to women.” This year her goal is to make both BCA and Women Building Wealth “strong and healthy, because I can”™t do this nonprofit if I don”™t have financial freedom myself.”
McPhaden isn”™t”™ thinking small about her Women Building Wealth, either. “I”™m going to make it strong in Connecticut and New York, then take it nationwide through a franchising system at some point,” she said.
