Inside DailyWorth: Financial Resources for Women

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of Green Money Journal on “Women and Investing.” Read more excerpts here. 

By Elsie Maio

It is always great to hear two knowledgeable people having an engaging conversation, as is the case with this interview between two inspiring businesswomen.

Amanda Steinberg is the founder and CEO of DailyWorth, the leading financial media company for women. She is interviewed by Elsie Maio, founder of Humanity, Inc. and the SoulBranding Institute, which provides e-tools and business consulting for positive social impact.

Elsie Maio: Amanda, I’ve heard you say that the company you founded, DailyWorth, is ‘at the nexus of women and financial services.’ In a way, you’ve been sitting at that intersection since you were a child, yes?

Amanda Steinberg: My single mom demanded I learn financial independence at a young age. I remember so many days watching my just-divorced mom cry due to being stressed and overwhelmed. She was never supposed to be anything but the good wife and mother. One day, she snapped, forcefully gripping my scrawny 5-year-old biceps, and said with utmost intensity: “Always earn your own money and create your own wealth.”

Despite political aspirations, I knew I needed to make major dollars. So, in college I learned programming and pursued Web development, building my first agency to over $1 million in revenue by age 23. I also joined Social Venture Network, a member organization of CEOs committed to social enterprise – creating a better world through for-profit enterprise.

EM: Since founding DailyWorth in 2009, you’ve become a mainstream voice, bridging the business community, popular culture (that Cosmo article), and world of responsible investing and business practice. Did you ever imagine such an expansive role for yourself?

AS: I knew it at age 8, watching LiveAid on TV. I knew I would be a leader in shifting that kind of injustice, on a stage with millions of people. On Jan. 14, 2011 my dream merged with my reality when Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, invested in DailyWorth.

EM: Now, there’s general agreement that within a few years, people who are relative ‘strangers’ to investment decisions will control two-thirds of the wealth of the United States. Those people are women. What are they up against? What kind of support do these women need?

AS: I’ve lived the range of challenges many of them face. For example, in spite of earning more than $200,000 a year at age 30, I had another painful financial awakening. An excessive mortgage and then an unexpected tax bill wiped out all attempts to fulfill on my mother’s wish. But it wasn’t just me, I realized. Women all around me, despite limitless ambition and professional achievement, were lacking the confidence and know-how to manage money. I thought: How could we have a world of empowered women, shattered glass ceilings and prosperous communities if women struggled with personal finance?

I launched DailyWorth.com in 2009 to transform women’s relationship to money, by cultivating her self-worth as the missing element in enabling her to build net worth.

DailyWorth is now the leading financial media and education platform for women. We help women at every stage of their financial lives, and are the first place they go for help.

EM: Observers say DailyWorth is ‘ahead of the curve’ in helping women – and the financial services sector itself – to prepare for this massive shift in ownership of $23 trillion. How is DailyWorth staying ahead of the curve?

AS: By leading the leaders. They are women in careers with upward mobility. They are running the media, running the banks. They have corporate, political and social influence.

Through our media platform we publish financial advice and news, and are building the central eLearning platform connecting women to financial advisors and educators. Second, by retraining the financial services industry and building its capacity to serve the unique needs of its new customers. This year we will have trained 1,000 financial advisors to specialize in serving women. And third, by encouraging the industry to innovate with specific products that meet the unique preferences of this new market.

EM: So, you and DailyWorth are influencing this huge shift in two ways: One, empowering women, the soon-to-be owners of most U.S. wealth, to step into to their new role; and two, helping the financial services industry to build specialized capacity and innovate its offerings to the preferences of this emerging, dominant market. Let’s talk about each of those in turn. First, women’s personal awakening.

AS: Women lack confidence and know-how around money. Also, they are concerned that too much power around money makes them less desirable. We need to reframe it as opportunity and freedom.

Read the full interview at here.

Elsie Maio Elsie Maio is the founder of Humanity, Inc and the SoulBranding Institute, which provide e-tools and seasoned business brilliance for social good. Elsie has helped catalyze notable corporate transformations and, in her Private Client practice, personal breakthroughs for individuals, many of them women in business. She has a knack for getting to the heart of the matter fast.

Amanda Steinberg is the founder & CEO of DailyWorth, the leading financial media company for women. Amanda is a thought-leader on the topic of women and money. She’s a computer programmer by training, a sales woman by profession, and a serial optimist at heart. A graduate of Columbia University, Amanda lives in Philadelphia with her two children while commuting to DailyWorth’s headquarters in New York.