How DailyWorth CEO Amanda Steinberg Is Helping Women Shrink The Wealth Gap

When she reached her early thirties, Amanda Steinberg was frustrated to realize that her net worth was negligible—despite a lucrative career in computer programming. A search for guidance proved equally frustrating: The women’s magazines she usually read focused more on controlling spending than building wealth, and sites like MarketWatch and Yahoo Finance were full of photos of men and assumed a level of knowledge she lacked. “It’s been a man’s job to think about long-term financial planning,” she says. And it shows: The Asset Funders Network reports that single women have 32¢ for every dollar of wealth owned by single men.

In 2009, Steinberg set out to empower women with more information. She launched DailyWorth, a website and newsletter where she publishes advice on investing and financial security to an audience that has now grown to more than 1 million women.

This month, she’s moving deeper into their wallets with the launch of WorthFM, a digital investment platform. While many robo-advisers focus only on investing, WorthFM analyzes a user’s entire financial life, giving advice on eliminating debt, building an emergency fund, investing, and planning for retirement. Already, 16,000 DailyWorth devotees have registered for the robo-advisers’ waiting list. Here’s how Steinberg built a dedicated following.

Start With The Basics

“Eighty-two percent of women feel confused about some aspect of finance,” says Steinberg. “Readers have asked, ‘What accounts do I need? What should I invest in?’ There’s no shame in these questions. Rather than focusing on which investments are better, we focus first on the dynamics of how it all works.”

Confront Fears

Engaging content drew readers, but Steinberg credits DailyWorth’s staying power to its willingness to address the lingering idea that managing money is masculine. “Money interferes with power dynamics in relationships, and women often come to it more cautiously and shamefully,” she says. “DailyWorth had to be as much about confidence as it was about net worth.” Posts about asking for a raise and establishing power at work are mainstays on the site.

Be Transparent

Rather than acting as the finger-wagging expert, Steinberg blogs about struggling to pay bills, juggling career and family, and navigating divorce. “We are far more relatable because we are far more authentic,” she says.

Know Your Audience

“Eighty-eight percent of our readers said they were unhappy with how they save and invest,” Steinberg says. “I thought, I know how to fix that.” Enter WorthFM. “I couldn’t further DailyWorth’s mission to empower women to build net worth unless I started [WorthFM],” Steinberg says.

A version of this article appeared in the May 2016 issue of Fast Company magazine.