Exceptional Female Role Models - Krystle McGilvery

Krystle McGilvery is a Chartered Accountant turned entrepreneur, she runs Mind Over Money and MyBFD.

Originally a Financial Mathematics graduate from London Metropolitan University, she became a qualified accountant whilst spending 10 years working with PR & Advertising firms. 

In 2018, she launched Mind Over Money as a financial education business, tackling financial illiteracy and supporting those starting a business. MOM offers coaching and mentoring, workshops, speaking, and works with corporates to provide educate about finance.

In 2020, she launched MyBFD which deploys proprietary software and professional experience in underperforming assets, accountancy, and financial literacy training to help people improve financial literacy. The MyBFD platform identifies and addresses the customer related problems that hinder service providers by addressing gaps in the financial capability of their customers.

She is a Trustee with the family maths charity Maths on Toast and is a Mentor on behalf of The Collective and Like Minded Females (LMF).

She is a passionate advocate in the field of personal and business finance education.

Can we start by understanding more about your background?

I grew up on a council estate in Hornsey, North London with my Mum, and brother. We were a single-parent family, and what I now understand to be a ‘latchkey kid’.

My Mum always worked extremely hard, and with my brother being 14 months younger than me, I took on a motherly role to him when I was still incredibly young. I believe this forced me to mature very quickly – for example I was tasked with keeping the house tidy, cooking, and getting my brother ready for bed!

I focused on making sure my brother was cared for and doing my homework and ended up as an ‘A’ grade student. I followed my Mum’s advice and went to university to study Financial Mathematics (despite me really wanting to be an actress!).

I didn’t know anybody who had gone to university and I didn’t have any specific role models at that stage in my life, so didn’t know what I could do with a maths degree. As a result, I just fell into accountancy.

I’ve always felt like an entrepreneur at heart though, this is likely due to seeing my self-employed mum's work. I began my entrepreneurship journey by running my own market stall near Liverpool Street when I was younger, and I had a side-hustle going as a private maths teacher since I was 18 years old.

I worked as an accountant in the media sector – within PR, advertising, and technology for many years. But one day I looked within my community and realised a problem exists in the way people are managing their money. I was raised in social housing myself, so I’d experienced the struggle of working hard to maintain the household bills.

The work I do now with Mind Over Money involves me working with individuals on either their personal finances – so for example, helping somebody create a financial plan or prepare for home ownership; or working with people who have recently started their own business, where I help people optimise their income and make sure that everything is set up correctly.

I really love the people part of my work, working with individuals to help them realise things about their finances they didn’t know, or to help them feel secure that the finance part of their business is sorted.

I also really enjoy that the work I do is life-changing and can have a significant impact on somebody’s future.

I also run another company called MyBFD – this is a financial education platform focused on vital service providers such as social housing. The platform is for use by people such as social housing tenants to improve financial literacy and gain assistance around rent arrears, drastically reducing the need for litigation and eviction.

I understand the power of financial education in providing opportunities, allowing for social mobility and empowerment. I am passionate about providing financial education to low and middle-income families and creating opportunities to make financial education accessible. 

What skills do you wish you had learned earlier in life?

Self-care.

Looking back at my younger self now, I recognise that when I first started working and studying at the same time, I got quite overwhelmed. I knew where I had to get to, so I just threw myself into my studies, but I really didn’t enjoy the process. I feel like I lost several years by just ‘going hard’ and not pausing to do any kind of self-care and reflection.

Now that I have built a structure around my self-care, I am able to do so many things it is ridiculous, but I’m also feeling great!

My new regime involves daily exercise, I used to run regularly (until I got an injury!) but now every day I find time for yoga and meditation – I do this first thing in the morning.

I’ve also dedicated my Sundays to me – I don’t look at any work stuff. I deliberately try to slow everything down - I stay in bed longer, I take my time, I try to be physically still more, I listen to soothing music, I water my plants, I read a book. I also draw portraits! Each piece takes me between 6-10 hours, and I completely switch off and drift into a meditative state.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

The power of networking – connect with people that you get a good feel for.

In the early days of my career I would sit silently working on my computer all day every day not talking to anybody. I think this is typical in many jobs, but especially if you work in a finance department.

I look at my life now and the world just appears so different simply because I am connected to people. 

Be brave – reach out to people who you resonate with, or if you like what they are about, or if they are now where you see yourself in the future. Commit to connecting – visualise a future relationship and send a message.

Build friendships groups, join circles and networks. Show people what you do; see how other people do things; learn from others; meet up for coffee or have zoom chats – it has vastly changed my life.

What is the biggest life lesson you have learned?

I can do anything I want.

Comparing the fearful version of me, where I feel incapable of doing things and allowed fear to stop me from even trying versus me realising that in life there aren’t actually any rules or restrictions except those that I put on myself – you are free to just go for it if you have the courage.

Once I realised this, the floodgates really did just open, and opportunities started pouring in.

Like a lot of people, I had some imposter syndrome at the beginning, and I actually started working with a coach - this process evolved into me having therapy to gain the self-belief I needed.

I think a part of the reason I struggled so much, was that there was nobody I could see like me, I didn’t see successful women from similar backgrounds.

For a time this created a massive obstruction to me visualising myself being a success. I didn’t appreciate that there is no ‘right path’ to pursue, that you are the author of your own story, you decide what you are capable of achieving.

How important have mentors been to you in your journey?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a formal mentoring arrangement. What I have done is identify people around me that I look up to as having achieved something that I deem to be success, or people who have tried something that I would love to try. Then I’ve reached out to connect with them.

This has been 100% useful to me. Helping me to understand that ideas I have in the back of my mind could be actualised. Also, just been exposed to new ways of working or thinking, different theories and approaches – this has been fantastic.

I now get involved with mentoring in collaboration with 2 organisations – Like Minded Females (LMF) and Delicate Rebellion / The Collective. 

I love this – seeing these young women and how they look at life. Because of the age gap their world is completely different to mine and discussing what their world looks like and the challenges they are dealing with, but also where they are really strong and even audacious in certain areas really teaches me and gives me a kick up the backside.

What are your thoughts around the importance of visible black female role models?

This is huge – especially when I think about the black community in London and how lots of people live, in terms of their limited access to seeing other people who look like them doing amazing things.

In my view, seeing people who are just like you means so much. Understanding other people’s story and the journey they have been on, maybe even being able to compare yourself to where they came from and find the similarities with your own life is powerful.

I love anything that helps a younger person see a thread of commonality and see themselves as possibly that person in a few years’ time.

People like Paul C Brunson and Tracee Ellis Ross were both very influential for me. Tracee talks a lot about self-care and self-discovery – living in your truth and being comfortable with you.

As a black woman in a country that is predominantly white – I was one of 2 black people out of 70 staff in one of my previous companies, so I didn’t bring my culture into the workplace, and looking back I didn’t even bring my authentic self into the workplace. 

Realising that ‘I’m okay, there is nothing wrong with me’ is a huge turning point in your life. Variety brings amazing solutions into any team, when people aren’t comfortable, they aren’t themselves, and so they also aren’t able to give their best.

When you face challenges, what strategies have you developed to overcome?

I’m naturally really organised so when something goes wrong the first thing I do is prioritise – how important is it that this be dealt with right now?...what do I need to do first to stay on track?

This space I find often allows me time to remove panic and emotions out of a challenging situation. 

I think the golden rule is allow yourself some time to breath, never make decisions when you are in an emotional state, either positive or negative. 

My process will then always be to conduct a mini-audit of the problem. Keep calm and dive into the detail to develop your game plan.

What does success mean to you now?

I’m starting a Master’s degree in September looking in more detail at the psychology of economic life and behavioural science. I’m really interested in taking a step back to look at individuals and how their culture and thought-processes influence their financial decision-making and impact their financial literacy.

I now know that financial illiteracy isn’t just about a lack of knowledge, it incorporates accessibility, attitudes and behaviours. We all have unique belief systems, thoughts, and feelings about money. The work I have done to date, along with many studies, evidence a link between emotions and the financial decisions we make.

When I explain how our brains work to my clients – looking at things like our automatic versus controlled minds - it shows them that there is more going on within the subconscious than they thought, and I find that it relieves people of the burden of thinking that they are just incapable of making good financial decisions. As a result, people are more willing to commit to making the changes necessary to improve their finances and they do! This is success for me.

I am considering taking this area of study forward to PhD level because I’d really love to be able to impact meaningful change in the personal finance education space – ideally, I’d want to get up to a policy level so I can influence structural change.

My passion is getting people amazing financial education without them having to pay for it. I want to help as many people as possible and improve social mobility.