By Andrew R. Chow
When Troy Millings and Rashad Bilal were early in their careers as a public-school teacher and a financial adviser, respectively, they both quickly realized how little their charges understood about finance. Millings’ students knew almost nothing about how to save or grow money; it wasn’t on any curriculum. And Bilal’s clients—even those in lucrative professions like medicine and law—weren’t much further ahead. “You realize that if these successful people don’t have any idea of money, then the average nine-to-five person really has no chance,” says Bilal, 40.
Given this dearth of knowledge, the two friends decided to team up and start a podcast, Earn Your Leisure, which teaches financial literacy specifically catered to Black audiences who have historically been shut out of financial systems. The podcast found a curious and sizable audience during the pandemic, and the duo now helms a rapidly growing media empire t…