Oscar Pulido: Welcome to The Bid, where we break down what's happening in the markets and explore the forces changing the economy and finance. I'm your host Oscar Pulido. From our episode last year on emergency savings, we discovered that 37% of all Americans can't afford an unexpected expense of $400, and for black families, that number is 72%. So how can these statistics be overcome to allow communities to save for the future and build wealth? To help me answer that question, I'm pleased to we
lcome Troy Millings and Rashad Bilal, founders of Earn Your Leisure or EYL. Founded in 2018, EYL has grown into a multimedia business platform, an online educational platform focused on business finance and entrepreneurship, and also a successful podcast. So thank you guys for joining us on The Bid. Troy Millings: Thank you for having us. Rashad Bilal: Appreciate it. Oscar Pulido: So troy and Rashad, tell us a bit more about the earn your Leisure story. How did this become a personal passion for
you? And maybe tell us a little bit about your, your stories, your personal stories of how you met and what caused EYL to come to life. Rashad Bilal: We met in middle school. We grew up together in the same town, a small town in Westchester County, and we just became friends and played basketball together as we started to choose our professional careers. He was a teacher. In the Bronx, and I was a financial advisor when I came out of college. So we kind of combined to have financial literacy
by working in the classroom and, , teaching financial literacy to kids and that spread to social media and a variety of other things that was happening at the time with the beginning of Instagram, me as a financial advisor using Instagram to kind of grow my practice outside of the traditional realm of cold calling and going to networking events and doing seminars, I kind of saw that the new age of social media would be a good way to kind of grow the practice and to get attention o
n, , my financial services. Business. So social media was the catalyst that kind of got us notoriety and it just kind of spread like wildfire started to go viral, a lot of different clips and the demand for a show grew. And that was the birth of Eria, , five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Troy Millings: It, it kind of came at the perfect intersection of our careers. Like you said, I was teaching, he had just started his financial advising career. And originally it was just to scale his brand, wh
en he, he was trying to figure out how to become a celebrity financial advisor, it was like, how do we do it? And so we originally came up, well, we need a hashtag because that's big on social media. And so we met, I think we got one, I think it's gonna be perfect for what you're trying to do. And I said, look, earn your leisure is gonna be the hashtag. It has to be the hashtag. It encompasses everything that people have a misconception about, right? They think that there's no hard work that
goes into this. They think that everything is given. They think we silver spoon kids, 'cause we're from Westchester. They never see the hard work that was put into, to the things we had to accomplish. Ernie Leisure was the perfect title for it. And so we were using that. Um. And when it was time to come up with the show's name, it's like, all right, well there's a couple names, but this one fits. Oscar Pulido: It does seem, if you're gonna start a platform around financial literacy, no better co
mbination to have than a teacher and somebody who worked in the financial sector. Tell us more about Earn Your Leisure. We describe that as a platform, really, there's a lot of initiatives that go on. Maybe tell us a bit about some of those initiatives. Rashad Bilal: Yeah, we have a podcast network, so we have six shows under the umbrella. That's a major part of what we do as well as far as daily content that's produced on the social media side. Then we do events. We have a very big event call
ed Invest Fest, which is a financial literacy festival of sorts. We combine the best fields and elements of festival and a business conference and kind of put it together. So that's in Atlanta every year. Last year we had 20,000 people there. We've had people like Steve Harvey and Tyler Perry, Rich Paul, Kathy Woods, Mike Novogratz, , Dan Kathy, variety of different people from different walks of life and business have come to Invest Festival that has grown to be a very important corners
tone for us as far as the event side. We also do other events, we were just on a world tour for our show Market Mondays, which is a stock market show. So we went to Ghana, we went to Toronto, we went to London, LA and Chicago. We've done shows on South by Southwest Art Basel, New York Fashion Week, so the event aspect of it is very big for us, and then we're also working on curriculum for school districts, so that will be ready very soon. We'll be making an announcement on that very soon. And.
The idea is to have a new age curriculum. Right? As far as what has been taught traditionally in school is the same thing over the last century and very few things have changed. A lot of school districts still don't have financial literacy as something that's mandatory or even optional. We were in school, financial literacy wasn't taught, and our school still doesn't have financial literacy to this day. So we want to teach financial literacy to young people because we feel like if you can educa
te a kid, then they have a much better chance at success than an adult. So those are just a few things that we have under the umbrella that we're currently working on. Troy Millings: It's interesting 'cause when people look at it, the backstory is that this really started with an iPhone and the idea in my dining room and we were just creating a mission on trying to liberate people from financial trauma, trying to educate them on financial prowess. Really, it's bonded into this, right? And
so every time we look what is needed in our community, how can we help, how can we help? And so these things have been added. So it's been an amazing journey. Rashad Bilal: I've also forgot, we do have a subscription based model as well called EYL University, so that's more of a hands-on learning subscription based model and , we have around 8,000 members in that. So that's another arm to the education as opposed to the free information that's on YouTube, that's on Apple and Spotify every sing
le day. That's kind of like a public school model. Everybody's welcome. Anybody can receive the education, but some people need more of a hands-on learning experience so we have a private school model with EYL University. Troy Millings: Yeah, the original show was just me and him doing case studies and giving background information on different financial topics and different business topics and culture as well. And then early on we had an episode where a restaurateur broke down his entire busin
ess model and we were sitting back like, oh, this is the new format. And when people heard the episode, they wanted more information. And so now there's an opportunity to have a private education piece where now you could actually talk to the person who was on the episode. Right? The stock market was the same thing when during the pandemic we saw the market crash and people were trying to figure out how can I make money? Especially since I'm sitting at home with this, the pandemic, we couldn't
go anywhere. We had been preparing the entire time to educate, but the pandemic expedited everything because now everybody was locked in, how do I have more multiple streams of income? And we had all these episodes where professionals had, who had been given the details of how they created their businesses. And so the timing was perfect. Oscar Pulido: It's interesting, I think about like school back in the day was thick textbooks with a lot of information. And if that was the way you were teac
hing folks these days, I think they'd turn away pretty quick. But nowadays, do you have a lot of different ways to convey that information, social media, subscription events, and that maybe brings people closer to a topic that can feel intimidating. So, on The Bid we've talked about with BlackRock colleagues, things like employee sponsored retirement plans or sometimes what we call 401ks, we've talked about emergency savings and we've talked about these things as a way for people to chart a pa
th to more financial security. What does the Earn Your Leisure curriculum teach people about building and growing wealth? Rashad Bilal: I think it teaches a variety of different things. I guess it really just depends on where you're at, so you can kind of pick it up as you go or what's important to you. So, credit what does credit mean? How to, how to build credit, how to utilize credit effectively, how to utilize business credit, how to build business credit, right? These are all things t
hat's extremely important for individuals, employees, and entrepreneurs. Of course, real estate is a major part of what we have taught from the beginning of the foundation of Earn Your Leisure, so many aspects of real estate, if you think about it to me, it's always amazing that most people, the biggest purchase in your life will be a home. And there's really no education on buying a home. At any stage in life, right from high school to college to anywhere. If you don't know the process of buyi
ng a home, then you're really just relying on the bank to kind of guide you through it. Right? And especially if your parents were not homeowners. Who's to know if you're getting taken advantage of? Right? Who's to know if you're getting the best rate? Who's to know what a difference between a home that you're actually building from the ground up as opposed to a home that you're renovating? It's so many different things. It is not just as easy as going to the bank and getting a mortgage. Ther
e's so many different mortgages, FHA loans, there's so much different aspects of real estate that you could really have a whole college course on real estate. Stock market investing of course. So educating people on what is an ETF, what is an index fund? What's the difference between an index fund and the ETF, right? Is it a good idea to invest in tech stocks, right? Like individual stocks as opposed to collective saving for your retirement, getting the tax deduction for your 401k. What's the di
fference between a 401k and a IRA? What's the difference between an IRA and a pension plan? These are things once again, that there's really no education for right? Most people. The average American, their wealth is either in their 401k plan or their home. And those are two things that most people are very uneducated on. So teaching people about the, the fundamental aspects of the stock market, not just day trading, not just stock options. That's probably 10% of the information that we're prov
iding. 90% of the information is. More on the fundamental long-term investing, and how to have the emotional intelligence for the stock market. That's another thing, people panic. If you buy a stock and it goes down and you wanna sell it, then the stock goes back up, then you start chasing it. Of course, we're in a new age, so you have to talk about Web3. We have to talk about crypto. We have to talk about artificial intelligence. That's some of the core pillars that we've built the platform o
n. Troy Millings: I think it, it goes for all ages, right? And so when you're talking about buying a home. That's great, but a lot of people are just trying to buy a car, and understanding the difference between leasing and buying and advantage of it. What are the tax advantages of buying a leasing? What's the advantages of having it inside of your business name? And so when we talked about the 6,000 pound rule, right, this became a viral moment. And we started hearing people discussing it ar
ound us and it was like, wow, this is really good information, but it existed for so long. That's kinda why I was telling you prior to sitting down was that decoding process, right? What are custodial plans, right? These are all these things that can generate wealth from a sustainable standpoint for your family. But nobody had decoded it or at least explained it in a way that it felt transferable to a community Oscar Pulido: Demystifying just the financial landscape which we can relate to
actually in terms of a lot of the discussions that we have on this podcast. And you also mentioned that the, the origins of Earn Your Leisure was for more like the students children, or let's say high school students. But you notice that gap existed also at their level of their parents. So it was kind of across generations. And that gets me to the question or one of the findings that the Wall Street Journal reported on recently, which was that black investors are now the biggest new group o
f retail investors and goes on to say 68% of black Americans under 40 are now investing. So why is this trend emerging now? Troy Millings: I think it's incredible, first and foremost, I think that that stat is incredible. And if you look at the, the start of when they began taking the statistic was around 2019. And so it, it just so happens that, , we started our mission in 2019 and so I, I like to think that we had a little part to play in that, but it's encouraging because people are looking
at themselves and saying, again, it goes back to that 80 oh that is one income is too close to none and it's tough to save your way to wealth. And so, investing is very important. And so to hear that statistic, to understand that people are looking at creating brokerages accounts and looking at their long-term, financial gains, I mean, it's an incredible stat we've seen and we've heard all statistics, especially when we're talking about wealth gaps in our country. And so this is one of the
ways to combat it, right? We can, we can talk about real estate, we can talk about investing, but these are just steps, like I said, it's extremely humbling and gratifying to know that at that number, but. Let's see what happens when it's 90%, when it's a hundred percent, 'cause like I said, it's, it's tough. It's almost impossible to save your way to wealth. You have to invest, you have to figure out other, create businesses and other ways to create generational income. Rashad Bilal: I wou
ld say that the reason for that is social media and is the influence that like. As far as what we have, I think that that's something that should be highlighted. I think the New York Times had a term, what they call it, Finfluencers, like financial influencers. So when you see the rise of that, that is something that there's been institutions around forever. There's been banks around forever, and that hasn't moved the needle. So having people that speak in a language that you understand and a
re relatable is something that is beneficial. So I definitely think that that would probably be the majority reason for that uptick in young, black people investing. Oscar Pulido: Let's go back to that cohort of black investors now getting more involved in the market, what are they investing in, and do you see any trends among this cohort among the Gen Z, the millennial type that you come across? Rashad Bilal: Yeah. So you see a lot of people invested in tech stocks. Well, everybody's inves
ted in right now, all the chip stocks. That's what the market, that's what's leading the market, black investors, young investors, because they can relate to the company. They understand it. They, they know that artificial intelligence is now and is going to lead the future. We'll see how it plays out in the future, but definitely that's something that has gotten people excited over the last 12 months for sure. Troy Millings: Yeah, I'd be interested to look at the correlation between those accou
nts that they said that 68% and the correlation between the amount of money that's been poured into ETFs, 'cause they've hit record numbers over the past five years. And so again, I mean it's just, it's beautiful to hear, right? We're, we're talking about what are they invested in rather than them not being invested. So yeah, I mean tech, a lot of people are looking at opportunities around them more so than ever. And so people, the mindset has changed, but the vision and the landscape has chang
ed as well, is now we're walking around seeing each thing that we probably have our eyes on has a company that HA is running it. So I think it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful time. But that correlation would probably be interesting, the amount of money poured into ETFs with the amount of new brokerage accounts that are open, especially for our community. Oscar Pulido: When we talked about the various initiatives that EYL has going on, Rashad, I think you mentioned Invest Fest, so let's just go b
ack to that. I must confess, I did a little bit of research before this and I found a video of, I think it was, this past year's in Invest Fest, and I think there was a drone flying through the convention center. And I remember thinking there's not just a couple hundred people there that looks like a couple thousand, and you said it was 20,000 and it did occur to me you might need a blimp to fly overhead if you want to capture the whole audience. So, tell us more about Invest Fest and tell us mo
re about this term that I heard you say once edutainment, and how that captures I think what you're trying to do at Invest Fest? Rashad Bilal: When we were putting together Invest Fest, we wanted to kind of break the mold and be different. So even with the Wording Festival was was a word that I had never heard used in conjunction with finance or business. Now it has been used several other times, but at that point in time I had never heard it. So it was like, okay, well if we can combine. A fest
ival element and festivals have become very big over the last couple of years, especially music festivals. It was like, okay, well how do we. Have the excitement of a music festival, but educational, like a business conference that shot that you saw that that room holds 15,000 people. So we wanted to create that rockstar element, right? You come on stage and there's smoke and there's fire, Mike Novogratz walks out, so it's just like a different aspect to highlight entrepreneurs. But we also, a
s far as the edutainment, just being in education and learning from teachers that in order to get kids' attention, you have to have some level of education attached to it. But it has to be entertaining at the same time, adults are the same way. So, if you just make things plain and boring, a lot of times people will check out. So putting all of those things together and just kind of merging pop culture with business, which was the original thesis of Earner Leisure, was the blend pop culture with
business, and that's kind of happened in a real life format as far as Invest Fest is concerned. So you have a vendor marketplace, you have the food experience, you have musical performances, you have live podcasts, you have a keynote address, you have panel discussions, and it's all happening simultaneously. So that was something, like I said, I think that we kind of broke the mould with Invest Fest and it just grown every single year. One year, the first year we had around 5,000 people. The
next year we had 14,000. Last year we had 20,000. A lot of good energy. For sure. Troy Millings: Yeah, and it's, it goes back to that, that core principle that I talked about. It was, it was that kid who walks in the classroom, sees a note on his desk, and realizes that he's gonna learn today about financial education through a lyric from his favorite artist. It's like now the relatability is there. I could imagine, edutainment in the classroom. All right, here's the Beyonce lyric. "It's put som
e respect on my check." Pay me an equity. Well, now this is a financial lesson. What's equity? Is that, how do you get equity inside of a company? And so that's always been the core principle and it's been elevated to a point where now, like you said, invest Fest becomes a place, it's the center place for, for culture and business, right? People are looking to network, they're looking to, to raise funds, they're looking to potentially invest in people and in themselves. So we're very proud of it
. , and, and this year, , will be no different. This year is gonna be the biggest one yet. Oscar Pulido: I can think of a few classes I've taken over the years where I could have used some of this entertainment aspect to liven it up. But you guys have thought about the experience, for the person attending as much as the curriculum and the information itself, and making sure that both are important to keep the engagement level high. Look, it's clear that both of you had, have had a massive i
mpact on investors over the last few years. And, maybe talk to us a little bit about what's been the key to success and the popularity of earn your leisure and where do you see this going from here? Rashad Bilal: I think the key to success has definitely been the relatability, has been democratization of financial literacy and business. That's probably the number one thing. We were in Ghana for December, we did a show there, and that's a place that we're very focused on as far as different bu
siness opportunities. We met a lot of great entrepreneurs on the ground there. That's a main, main focus for us currently, for sure. Troy Millings: Yeah, and like you said, we're, we're super excited about the curriculum. We're going to start here in New York. But this is not just a, an issue that is, synonymous with just New York, right? This is something that we see as, it could be an elective in high schools, but. Throughout the entire country, and we also see it as not something that is sy
nonymous with America. Like you said, we, we travel a lot and we do it very intentionally. Whether we're in Davos, Switzerland, or we're in Accra, Ghana, or we're in London, the message is the same. People are looking for someone to democratize the theory of what finance should be and, and how it can be relatable to them. And so global domination is something that we see. This message we want to spread through throughout the world, because it, we took it from that. , watching sports, right?
I always give the analogy, the rumble in the jungle was bigger than a boxing match. The thriller in Manila was bigger than a boxing match. It wasn't to say I'm the US champion. It was to say I'm the champion of the world. And so we're taking that same approach when it comes to finance. We want to be the champions of this message, but not in a way where it's encompassing saying, we're we're gonna send our message. No, we want to take what's being done in all these other countries and see how w
e can incorporate, how we can build bridges and how we can work together to champion for everyone. Because like I said, it's a mission that's worthwhile and is definitely needed. Oscar Pulido: Well, troy and Rashad, on your path to global domination or taking your message around the world. We appreciate you stopping in here and joining us on The Bid podcast. Troy Millings: We appreciate you having us. Thank you. Rashad Bilal: Thank you for having us. Oscar Pulido: Thank you for listening to t
his episode of The Bid. If you've enjoyed this episode, check out the episode on emergency savings from September last year featuring Claire Chamberlain, where we dig into factors that are exacerbating this problem and solutions to overcome them. Subscribe to The Bid wherever you get your podcasts.
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