Interview with Chaim Geller | Founder of HelpMeBuildCredit

Written by True Tamplin, BSc, CEPF®

Reviewed by Subject Matter Experts

Updated on March 21, 2023

Chaim Geller | Founder of HelpMeBuildCredit

Introduction

Success leaves clues.

Finance Strategists sat down with Chaim Geller of HelpMeBuildCredit. He shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of the company, as well as insight gained from running the business.

Who is Chaim Geller?

Q: Who are you and what’s your background?

My name is Chaim Geller and I am the founder of HelpMeBuildCredit.

When I bought my first house, I didn't have enough income to qualify for a mortgage and I needed to get a cosigner. My grandmother was willing to cosign but she didn't have any credit and would not be able to cosign like that. Not ready to give up, I spent hours searching the internet and I called every broker I could think of, until I was able to figure out how to get credit for my cosigner.

The mortgage went through successfully.

But then, I started getting people who were having similar issues referred to me.

I helped them out but after a while, it was getting too time-consuming to counsel over the phone. I decided to start a website so that people could educate themselves on credit concepts and tricks.

That's how and when I founded HelpMeBuildCredit.

That was over 5 years ago. Since then, I've had over 600k readers visit the site. I advise and guide thousands of people with building their credit and managing their debt.

Q: Who has been your biggest influence, and why did they have such a significant effect on you?

When I started my website, I had less than 100 visitors.

It was pretty depressing and I couldn't understand why my site wasn't attracting more readers. I knew I was putting out good content but with so few readers, what would become of it? You can have gold but if no one knows it exists, it's just not worth anything.

This went on until I bumped into Yanky Horowitz and his successful website, KidStir. We talked a bit and connected right away.

He got right down to guiding me and helping me to be as successful as he was. I always liked the concepts he taught me and since he had lots of experience with online marketing and SEO, he was able to help me out a lot with that. He introduced me to the right people and helped me grow.

He always pushed me to think big and always believed in me.

He had a big effect on me due to his guidance and that he always pointed me in the right direction.

Q: Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?

When I started out, I thought all you need to do in order to build up an audience was create good content and people would come running. I was frustrated when people were not appreciating my content, and that Google was not going for it either.

I realized it doesn't work that way, it isn't meant to be Easy street. The easy jobs were all taken already and if my business would have been easy to build up then there would have already been people doing it. Obviously, I had to put in a lot more effort to be better than any existing credit or credit card website. I realized that in order to succeed, I needed to push myself and work extremely hard. Otherwise, I'd be just like the thousands of businesses around and not make any income.

I understood that the harder it was for me to build up my business, the harder it would be for competitors to catch up with me.

What I would tell my younger self is that it's not easy but had it been easy, it would be worse. I'd be too busy fighting competition.

Once I broke out, there was a lot more space to expand and enrich my business.

Staying at the top of the line is a constant struggle. It's not easy to work on ranking high with Google, to appear as one of the first Google results, to keep readers enticed, etc. But the effort and devotion I put into my career are what makes it shine.

Business

Q: What is HelpMeBuildCredit?

HelpMeBuildCredit is a website where anyone can educate themselves with anything credit. We have many resources about all topics related to credit to read up on, plus in-depth guides for related matters, available for free download. We also have built great tools for choosing the right credit cards. Choosing a credit card that suits your needs has never been easier. The website is totally free to use so it is a no-brainer for anyone to make good use of it.

We are all credit hungry. Credit is not taught in schools, yet is a crucial thing to learn. HelpMeBuildCredit brings justice to consumers by providing the tools and trade for all things credit.

Q: What makes HelpMeBuildCredit different from its competitors?

The credit industry is an easy place to make a few dollars by not being honest. Because consumers are not educated about credit, the people in the credit industry can use that to their benefit. They can simply promote what works for them, whether it benefits their client or not.

We would never do that. We're honest. We would not recommend a card to someone if it doesn't really work for them just so that we can make money off them.

As a matter of fact, we list all credit cards available, even if we don't get paid for them. We have 250 cards on our site, and we only get paid for 79 of them!

How do we make money, you may ask? We believe that even if we don't always do things that make a profit, but rather what benefits our clients, they'll come back to us for our honesty. After they build trust in us, they come back to apply for cards that help us out. They are hooked and keep coming back, so we make our money then.

Q: What led you to start HelpMeBuildCredit?

What pushed me into the world of credit was what happened to me when I went for my first mortgage. After I chose a house, my broker informed me that I would not be eligible for a mortgage with the income I had.

Devastated as I was, I started working hard to get my grandmother, who had a good income, to be eligible to cosign on my loan.

Over the course of those months, I encountered things that were new to me. The credit details I was involved in fascinated me and I got that passion to share it with the world.

I went on to build HelpMeBuildCredit to help anyone who'd ever find themselves in the situation I had been in, and for spreading credit information to anyone willing to join the ride!

Q: What has the experience of building the business taught you?

Definitely consistency. Way at the start of my career, I was getting very few visitors to my site. It really got to me and I was feeling down. I had envisioned masses of people drinking in the information enthusiastically.

I did notice that those who did visit the site, loved it. What I learned from that and thank goodness, incorporated into my business, is to just keep doing the good things over and over again. When someone likes what they get, they'll come back for more. My job was to keep feeding them the same great things again and again. I learned not to give up.

I consistently provided them with worthwhile credit information so that they had what to come back for. That's what built my business because from those first few, came many, many more.

Q: Where do you see things headed for you and the company in the next 5 years?

I have a very positive outlook for our future. Firstly, I'm happy we reached the point we're at in such a quick time. We're ranking well with a lot of search engines and things are picking up.

In the first few years of a business, you may just go from one penny to another penny. But then the pennies become dollars and it starts doubling and tripling by leaps and bounds and all the efforts are worth it.

I've personally witnessed my business grow by leaps and bounds and I look forward to watching it expand even more.

For more information, visit helpmebuildcredit.com

About the Author

True Tamplin, BSc, CEPF®

True Tamplin is a published author, public speaker, CEO of UpDigital, and founder of Finance Strategists.

True is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance (CEPF®), author of The Handy Financial Ratios Guide, a member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, contributes to his financial education site, Finance Strategists, and has spoken to various financial communities such as the CFA Institute, as well as university students like his Alma mater, Biola University, where he received a bachelor of science in business and data analytics.

To learn more about True, visit his personal website or view his author profiles on Amazon, Nasdaq and Forbes.