Ilyce Glink
This week, we are highlighting Best Money Moves’ founder and CEO, Ilyce Glink. She is an award-winning television and radio personality, a nationally-syndicated columnist, an innovator in content marketing and is the author of more than a dozen books with nearly 1 million in print.
Her latest ebook/webinar offering is Intentional Investor: How to be Wildly Successful in Real Estate. In 2018, she will publish the fourth edition of her bestselling first-time homebuyer book.
More than 15 years ago, Glink started Think Glink Media, a digital communications agency producing award-winning work, profitable campaigns and loyal customers. TGM’s clients include Fortune 1000 companies in the financial services, real estate, and health sectors as well as start-ups and nonprofits.
I was able to sit down with Ilyce and asked her to answer a few questions about why she started Best Money Moves:
Q: What made you focus on financial wellness?
A: I’ve always believed that consumers should be able to (and can) make 95% of their best money moves on their own, without a paid professional. So, I’ve dedicated my career to helping people to make smarter decisions with their money. In the early years, I focused more on real estate, which is why I wrote 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask, but as I learned more about personal finances and how integrated it is, I focused on holistic financial wellness.
Five years ago, I was hired by some Fortune 500 companies to design financial wellness programs but they wanted them to be selling machines for products and services. Given that we were in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I didn’t think that would work. And, it didn’t.
Q: Is that when you decided to start Best Money Moves?
A: Yes. I started it because I knew there was a better way to help people and employees.
Q: What would you say were the drivers behind the design of the product?
A: It had to be based in the cloud, so you’d get real-time reporting and features. We wanted it to be mobile-first, because folks need to be able to use it anywhere. We wanted to make it simple to use, easy to understand, yet provide great depth of knowledge. And, we wanted to use machine learning so it would be smart enough to be extremely personalized and relevant. Lastly, we wanted employers to get the same real-time experience that they were providing to their employees.
Q: There’s a lot of noise around financial wellness now. What are the key differentiators for your business?
A: Wherever we go, CEOs, CHROs, and CFOs are fascinated by our Stressometer(™), which we use to measure someone’s financial stress. We break down financial stress into 15 categories and use machine learning algorithms to delve deeper and identify the root causes of the stress.
Q: Where did the idea for the Stressometer™ come from?
A: From my years of being a radio talk show host. It sounds kind of funny, but when I would take people’s questions on WSB Radio or WGN Radio, they’d say they wanted one answer – but if I dug a bit deeper, I’d realize that there was another issue that had to be solved first. For example, if they said, “I want to refinance,” I’d ask why. And I might get an answer like, “Well, I’m getting divorced.” And, that would require a completely different set of questions to get to the right solution.
Q: What’s your favorite part of Best Money Moves?
A: That we’re helping people. That we seem to have figured out how to make individuals understand their finances and we are helping people get out of debt.
https://bestmoneymoves.com/leadership/
