Lori Greiner may be the reigning “Queen of QVC,” but when she strolls into a boardroom, she doesn’t think of herself as a woman. Instead, she sees herself as a confident, capable leader. Gender doesn’t factor in.

“The big thing for me is I never think about myself as a female in business,” the Shark Tank star investor says. “I’m a person in business.”

And it’s the “warm-blooded” Shark’s indefatigably optimistic, never-quit mindset that escalated her from a fledgling inventor to the owner of a $500 million retail sales empire in a few short years. The longtime QVChost is just about everywhere you look these days, from the cover of her own new book, Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! (Ballantine Books, 2014) to the pages of Town & Country, Family Circle, InStyle and, yes, Woman’s Day.

But Greiner, who has 400-plus products and 120 patents under her belt, says being a woman has nothing to do with her astronomical success in business and on TV. Her gender never held her back, even if some men thought it should.

“Sure, I’ve run into some chauvinistic people in my life, but I don’t let that stop me,” she says. “I don’t even consider it. If anything, I’ll call it out or I’ll go work with someone else.”

Instead of biting your tongue and not asking for that raise you deserve (Hey, that’s what karma’s for, right, Mr. Nadella?), Greiner thinks women should stop thinking of their femaleness a potential roadblock to success.

“Don’t think of it at all,” she says. “It can be a pitfall if you think, ‘I’m a woman and I’m walking in the room and I’m going to be treated different.’ Or ‘This is going to be harder because I’m a woman.’ Don’t think like that. You’re an expert at what you do. You’re on a mission and you are a person in business. Not a woman in business. Ever.”

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