The Money Mondays - You Deserve to Be Rich with Earn Your Leisure’s Rashad Bilal 🏝️ E155

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

Dan Fleyshman sits down with Rashad Bilal, co-founder of Earn Your Leisure, to break down the three pillars of Money Mondays—how to make money, invest money, and give it away—through the lens of building one of the most impactful finance media brands in culture. Rashad shares the mindset behind You Deserve to Be Rich—why believing you’re worthy of wealth is often the first (and missing) step to actually building it. He and Dan get practical on when to start investing (as soon as you have discretionary income), how to think about emergency funds, and why money sitting idle gets quietly eaten by inflation. They also go behind the scenes on Invest Fest’s growth—from a business “festival” concept to a 25,000-person experience—and why relationships are still the ultimate ROI. Finally, Rashad talks lifestyle creep, modern content mega-deals, and why giving back is a core part of building real wealth.Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k---The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money.If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1Dan Fleyshman,The Money MondaysLearn more here: https://themoneymondays.comWatch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6kLet’s Connect...Website: https://themoneymondays.comPodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondaysLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondaysFB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Monday's podcast. We cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. This gentleman will be able to cover all those topics and more because he has his own podcast, his own live events, his own university, and everything between teaching people the way I passionately do as well. He does it on a grand scale. He's been doing for many, many years.

As you guys know, these podcasts are. under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 35 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. We want to keep this podcast ranked super high and we have a 93% listen to rate because of you guys taking this content, sharing with your friends, family, and followers because we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money and I want to get rid of that mindset and that concept.

We have to talk about money, finances, accounting, taxes, debt, leverage, credit, all these things are part of your daily life, paying for bills, paying for groceries, paying for your family, there's nothing evil about that. A lot of people talk about money is the root of all evil. Money has function. Money is a tool to the things all encompassing in your daily life. You need it. You want it. You have to have it. And we want to make sure that we can talk about it because over the course of time, you're going to need millions and millions and millions and dollars. Not for flashy things, not for fun, fancy cars, but to literally survive over the course of time for you, your family, and the people in your downline for the rest of eternity,

you need to have capital. It is a tool. And so without further ado, Rashad, give us a quick two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm one of the co-founders of a company called Earn Your Leisure. And we started seven years ago and it's grown into an online community. We have a network of podcasts. We have a very large event called InvestFest. We wrote a book, which is a New York Times bestseller called You Deserved to Be Rich. You have school curriculum and a variety of other different things. But it's all centered around teaching people about financing, highlighting entrepreneurs, talking about investing, and done in a way that's very digestible. And that started, as I said, seven years ago, online, on social media.

And that's kind of grown into multifaceted media company today. So you deserve to be rich. Where did that title come from? you deserve to be rich it came two different ways actually so another partner of ours on the show Mark and Mondays and a strong part of what we built in he has like a mantra where he says you deserve to be rich

and that was like a seed that I guess is psychologically planted but I didn't even think about that when he was coming up with the title I felt like you deserve to be rich just kind of outlaws it from a psychological standpoint that most people don't think that they actually deserve wealth and that that leads to self-sabotage that leads to them not fulfilling you know the potential that they have so you can give somebody all of the information

introduce them to people you know they if they don't deep down believe that they actually are worthy of success or worthy of finances um then they're not going to actually go through with it so the book is is kind of a blueprint when it comes to you know personal finance and goes through the whole journey from the start to finish but the title of the book felt like needed to actually catch people's attention set the tone and also kind of like you know make it different than just a regular book about money right like it's not just about money. is also about the mindset because that's vitally important. So just coming up with different ideas around that idea

and you deserve to be rich was the go-to. Similarly, you have another cool name, which is the actual main brand name, which is Earn Your Leisure. How did that story come about? That story came about. I was a financial advisor before this, and I had my own personal brand on social media

that I was building before. we started during your leisure and i was making content based around my life based around finance tips based around a variety of different things that you know was growing my own personal page and uh at that time especially hashtags were like really big and like hashtag almost was like a slogan yeah so like you know you have an individual hashtag that's like unique to you and that's kind of become like your slogan. So I was looking for a hashtag that I could use for myself that had not been used before.

And Troy actually, my partner, he came up with the name, Earn Your Leisure. He just came up when he was like, that's a good hashtag. That's something that you should use. And I used it. And right away, it just got people's attention. Like, I still, you know, I looked at the hashtag. You can see, like, if other people use it. And I saw other people was using the hashtag.

Like people would be like, somebody was in Cancun and they like, earn your leisure. I didn't even know this person. So I'm like, it's catching leg. People were asking me, like, if it was a multi-level marketing firm. Like, people was asking me. And all I was doing was just putting it on my hash. Every, everything I was, every post that I did, I would put Earn Your Leisure, hashtag. Like, what is Earn Your Leisure?

What is Earn Your Leisure? Like, you know, and I actually never did. I never really liked the name at first. I didn't like the name. I didn't really see like how it was going to catch on. It kind of seemed a little, like, cheesy to me. So I stopped using it for a while. And then another friend of mine, he had asked me, he's like, what happened to earning

your leisure? Like, why did you stop using it? I'm like, you like, you like that? He's like, yeah, yeah, that was good. All right, cool. So we started using it again. And once again, it started to pick up traction. So when the time came for us to actually start a show, because that was the first thing

that we did together as far as on the online side, started a podcast. and ask Troy if you want to be my partner in the podcast. Yeah, so we're coming up with different ideas for the name of the show. And I had a name. I wanted to call it Money Power, Respect. That's great. Troy had another name. We kind of went back and forth.

But then we're like, look, we already have Earned Your Leisure. That's something that I've been using for a while. It's original. So we might as well just go with that. And that's what we named the show, Earn Your Leisure. and that started the whole Erinia Leisure brand. So at what point did it add in the live event side?

Live event side came early. We probably 16 weeks into us starting a show. We did a pop-up event. Okay. And Carson, California. And that was just a spur of the moment thing. We were in California. We were shooting some content.

Like I said, it was 16 weeks in. So we was relatively still early in the show. and another one of our friends had did a networking event in Atlanta like a week before and I saw it online and it looked pretty cool this is a good idea, a networking event so we just put online

and we wanted to do an event in California, we was there a restaurant owner hit us back like, look, I have a restaurant I like you guys, I would love to host you you, you know, you don't have to pay anything you're like, all right, cool so we did that event

and the event, you know, it was a free networking event but it was packed like probably 200 people came and people came from the IE some people came from San Diego so that's when we knew like okay we had something because spurred a moment thing across the California on like a it was like a random Thursday or a Monday something like that and it was packed so that led to us doing a series of networking events all over the country we did one in Brooklyn we did one in Atlanta we did one in Houston we did one in Chicago we was just going around the country we was doing free networking events we was working out deals with the bars, we'd pick like a Thursday, and we would sell merch.

So we'd try to make some money from it. We'd get a percentage of the bar. The idea was just to kind of cover the cost of travel. But we wanted to just see how we actually were in person, but also, like, to gauge the interest of the people in different regions and just taking a model also, like, from just music. You know, you see, like, hip-hop people go on promotional tours, promo tours, like, before the album comes out.

So we was doing that And every stop it got bigger Every stop it got bigger I think the last stop that we did I think it might have been Houston or Chicago It was like 600 people Whoa It went from like 100 to 200, 300, 300, 400

500, 500 and 500 and 500 And it just kept getting bigger and bigger And bigger. So at the time, so at that time We got a good gauge of like this now Now we start to do paid events So the first paid event that we did Was in Atlanta

And it was a two-day event It was actually the day that Kobe died Because I remember we had made that announcement to the audience. And that was crazy. But we did that event and it sold out. I think we sold like probably 500 tickets. And it was a live podcast one day, then like an educational workshop the next day.

And then we're like, okay, now this is a model that we can replicate. So we started doing that model again. We went to D.C. We did the same thing that we did in Atlanta. We did it in D.C. Then we were scheduled for Philadelphia. and that's when COVID hit. So like literally like

three days before our event because COVID it kept building up we kept hearing about it but still nobody was really 100% sure what was going on. Yeah, March 19th it became real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like three days before our event

that's when everything shut down and we had to cancel the event like three days before the event so that was kind of sucked because we put a lot of work into that we was really, really looking forward to it. But we canceled the event in Philly and then we took a break, obviously, because COVID.

And then, actually, Marcus, him 500, we went to his event. He had an event, like, probably like a year later, when people started to pick up events, he did an event in Miami, and we saw his event, and that was, like, real inspiring. So we knew we wanted to come back to the event space because that was something that we did before, but we wanted to see how we can do something different. And at the time, everybody, you know,

a lot of people had business conferences, business symposium, in the world of business, but wanted to see how we could do something that had never really been done before. So I thought about having a festival and like really, like, not just using the word festival, but like actually having a festival but built around business. So that's where InvestFest came in and we kind of looked at what music festivals do and what other type of culturally relevant festivals do, the framework for it. And we took from that and added like the traditional.

business conference model and put them together and then that was invest fest and then that that's how we got invest fest how big was the first one 4,4,400 people wow that's big yeah yeah it was big off the gate I mean relatively and we only had eight weeks to plan so we started it we had eight weeks to plan and we put together the whole thing and about a month and a half and yeah so you know invest fast out the gate it was it was um it was really good and then from near the anticipation had just just built and then following that we um we did a few different things and we did an interview with steve harvey and that interview went viral and during that after the interview we spoke with steve harvey and he just took a liking everything that we had going on he wanted

to work with us so he's like come up with some ideas for us to work together so we pitched him the idea of him coming on as a partner of InvestFest. Nice. And he came on as a partner. And then the next year for InvestFest Fis year, too, he was one of the headliners. And then he also got as Tyler Perry as a headliner. There you go. And then, yeah,

that was like 14,000 people. 14,000? Yeah. Jesus. So then it just, yeah, every year from there. So you got 25,000 at the recent one? Yeah. What's your plan for 2026? 2026 um scale scale and not just in a way of people every year we add to invest fast so like the pitch

we added a pitch competition two years ago for $100,000 last year we did a pitch competition we actually gave away $250,000 to each person we added Friday programming two years ago this year last year we it was the first year we added like full day Friday programming so now it's like a full day it's three days it's a real three day because at first it was just two days then we kind of dipped our toe in with the Friday to make it three days but now it's all day on Friday workshops so we added that aspect to it so vendor marketplace has grown every year we have around 400 small business to large business vendors inside of our vendor marketplace um so really that's that's really the focus is to like how how can we make the experience better and better every year for you know

people coming to invest fest so you know from speakers to you know the vendor marketplace pitch competitions different um value ads so that's definitely in the works for this year why should people go to invest fest and events like it um it's something that you really can't get online as far as the online education is great. You can learn a lot online. But, you know, the key to success, well, one of the keys to success, one of the keys

to our success is relationships. And so there's a few things I think that you get from a live event, like InvestFest. You get to education. That's one thing, right? Like, you actually get to sit in on panels. And I feel like if you can go, if you can't learn something in three days, you're not trying to learn. Right? Over 100 panels,

workshops. I mean, a variety of different things that's happening. So you're going to learn something in person. That's one thing from an educational standpoint. You're going to get inspired. And that's not talking about enough either because like I said, invest fest comes from us being inspired. So we started something with tremendous amount of scale in a very short period of time because we saw something. If we didn't actually go to that event, we might not have gotten inspired to do invest fest. So the inspiration, I think, is something that you get in person. The relationships. Like, that's probably the biggest part for me. It's like you're in an atmosphere

with 25,000 like-minded people, it's not just 25,000 people. If you could go to a basketball game with 25,000 people, not know one person and then leave. But if people actually pay for a ticket, they pay for a hotel, they've taken time out of their weekend. A lot of people travel. Sure. Not from Atlanta. So they got to get, you know, all the plane ticket, everything that goes in, these are serious people, right? So you're around 25,000 like-minded people over the course of a weekend. If you don't make at least five very valuable relationships,

like you're going about it the wrong way. And these relationships can change your life. And I've heard stories ever changing life. People have met their real estate partner. People who've met somebody that invested in their business. People have met their wife or their husband, right? So I feel like a lot of times people, they always say, like, you are the greater sum of,

like your seven closest friends. But what if you don't have seven productive friends? What if you're in a place where nobody in your neighborhood or your environment is thinking how you think, right? Like, well, you have to get out of that environment. And it may not be like a permanent move, but it may be an intentional escape to establish different relationships, different friends, and different levels of connection. So that to me is huge.

Like, you know, you never know who you're going to meet at in VestFest. everybody's there. And like I said, just from a vendor marketplace, the VIP night, just walking down the halls, being in the actual seminars. So that aspect of it, I think, is really big as well. So a few different reasons why people should go to events that you can't. Because that's some people say like,

well, anything that you can learn at an event, you can learn online. And that may be true from an educational standpoint. but if you're only going to an event for an educational standpoint, I think you're missing a lot of other key elements. Sure. I'm obsessed with events. I throw 42 events a year.

The experience is how we build memories and how we forge relationships. We'll remember if we went to a concert together. We'll remember if we went to Best Fest together. We'll remember those moments, even years and years and years later. Oftentimes we retain information for a while and only percentage of it stays in our minds. but those relationships lasts

hopefully for a lifetime. What about EYL University? Talk us through the online university and why is it important for someone to go there versus going through a traditional college or traditional online information? Yeah, I mean, EYL University, so we have the platform of Earnier Leisure

is we have Instagram page, we have TikTok, we have all the social media, we post content all day on that. Then we have three shows under the umbrella. We have a show earn your leisure we interview entrepreneurs we have a show called market mondays which is a stock investment show happens every monday then we have a show called blackout which is like a late night opinion opinion based show um you learn different things from different shows that you watch

or the different content that we post and you can definitely utilize that information to change your life because people have done it right like you go watch an episode about real estate and actually go and buy multifamily home. You can watch market Mondays and actually start investing in the stock market and make, you know, 50% on your money in one year, potentially if you get the right stock. That's happened. Those are real stories that have actually happened. But I like to say, like it's similar to like a public school versus private school. That, what I just described, all of that is free. And everybody, there's no barrier entry for it. Everybody has access to Wi-Fi. You can watch it. But some people want them more hands-on,

learning approach. Some people want more of a hands-on community. So how we built out EY University is not like just the online course. It's actually an institution. So we have regional groups, in-person regional groups. So we have a D.C. group. We have a Chicago group. We have a South Florida group. We have a L.A. group. We have a New York group. And these are regional chapters where people meet together with different people that's part of EYYO University and then they'll go out. They'll go out for bowling. They'll do community service. But once again, their relationships, right? They get to build relationships with people that's close to them. We have classes that happen that we don't have the capacity to have on YouTube because

it's just not enough time. So like Troy, he does stock options. He'll teach a two-hour stock options class every month. Market Monday is only a two-hour show. It's not designed to actually sit, go through a chart, go through the fundamentals of a company. Like, it's not the framework for that, right? So when you get that, you get that. in-depth teaching in EYO University, I was a financial advisor for 14 years. So one of the things that I started when I went online, I was offering people free consultations. Like, you could book a 30-minute call with me. But I didn't have the capacity for that anymore, obviously.

But now with EYY University, I do monthly calls with people for your university. And it's just like a free-flowing session. and ask me any question you want about investing, about business, about marketing, about college savings, about retirement. And I'm literally just sitting down answering questions. It's a one-on-one in a group setting, right? Like, I don't have the capacity to do that on shows. We bring in experts in the field to actually, you know, teach about real estate or teach

about credit or different things to that nature. So we've really jam-packed the curriculum with anything that you want to learn about there's a video for it, and then there's ongoing lessons, tutorials, there's a community. We have an app. So there's a community that talks every single day, especially on the investing side. What are you looking at? I just found this company. Da-da-da-da-da.

Nate, they go back and forth all the time. We have investment clubs inside of it where people actually, you know, learn about cryptocurrency and what's happening. So it's an extension of what we're already doing with the online, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Instagram, but it's just more in-depth. And like I said, that's something that we don't have the capacity to do that on YouTube, but we have the capacity to do it online, but in a different version, which is EYY University. So that's for people that really want the hands on learning, experience, people that are serious, people that just want to cut directly through,

get exactly what they want, put together, you know, put themselves in places with people that's like-minded to themselves in-person events, different things of that nature. So That's the framework behind E.O. University. What do you think is what holds people back from making more money? A lot of people get stuck at 40K and 60K, 80K a year, and then they're complacent. What do you think holds them back from making more money and starting to invest? Scalability, like I think at every level, right? Like as far as how can you replicate yourself, right?

If you're an entrepreneur, it's like how, if you're wouldn't. whatever you're doing to make $40,000 and $50,000 a year, what is, what's the pathway to 10x that? And that's what, and sometimes you, you have to change industries almost to actually, because me as a financial advisor, that's why I started this whole online thing. I saw a ceiling for myself of making, you know, six figures. And I just sat down and I was young at that time, but I just looked at everything that was like working against me. And I'm like, okay, Like, in order to make money as a financial advisor, I got to talk to people, got to close deals.

I have to have either a tremendous amount of deal flow coming in, which that's difficult to get hundreds of clients on a monthly basis. Or I got to work with less clients, but extremely wealthy clients. But I'm like, okay, I don't really have access to extremely wealthy people. So that's why my first idea was sports and entertainment. I wanted to build an online platform to become a celebrity financial advisor so I could work with athletes and entertainers because I felt like

that would be able to scale my business. But even that was kind of a still limited model. So I'm like, okay, well, I could still talk about the same things that I'm talking about as far as personal finance and retirement and investing and different things in insurance. But if I could reach thousands,

hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of people, that's a way to scale my message. So I saw Instagram as that, that way to actually, you know, be able to grow and scale without having me sitting down booking appointments, somebody canceling at the last minute, traveling an hour and a half to tell somebody, for me to, for somebody to tell me that they're not ready, they got to talk to their wife. So it's like, you know, but that, but that required me to go to a different, a different industry. Same framework, same idea, but I went from wealth management to

media, but taking the, the, what I was talking about in wealth management and taking it over to media. So I think that that's something a lot of times, you know, you just have to realize like some, some, some industries or some, sometimes in life, you're in, you're in circumstances that you're, you're up against, you know, bad odds as far as your scalability. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do something completely different, but you might have to look at different avenues to take what you're passionate about, take your skills. set and scale it. So someone starts to make more money.

They get up to 100K a year, 120, 140, 160 to start growing in their career over the course of time. At what point should they be considering investing, whether it's the stock market, real estate, cash flow and businesses, et cetera. At what point do you think that they should start at least researching or starting to invest from the capital of their earning from their core job? You should start investing as soon as you have enough money to pay your bills. You know, as soon as you have enough money to pay your bills, you have money left over,

which is called discretionary income. that's when you really start to have to do something with that and think about it. So whether it's putting money in a 401K, whether it's having a life insurance policy, whether it's having a 529 plan for your kid, whether it's invest in money into stocks, over and above any money that you absolutely have to have to live, which is your rent, your mortgage, you know, groceries, your light bill, your cell phone bill, anything over and above that is all discretionary. You don't have to invest every single penny of that,

because, you know, you do have some leisure that you're going to do. You're going to go out. You're going to have to, you know, you're going to buy some clothes. You're going to, you know, take a trip every once in a while. But I think you should really take a strong look at how much money you have over and above what you actually need and put as much money of that as you can and start investing that. So I have this thing that I've been preaching about for many years. It's a very similar concept.

everything above six months in your piggy bank you are literally losing money on if you don't invest it because of inflation when you start to hit to 12 months let's say your overhead is five grand a month for your family of three and you get to $60,000 saved up every dollar above $60,000 you're literally losing money on because what people aren't thinking about is 9% inflation is very real right when it's 8% 7% 10% etc let's just call 9 let's say you get up to 200,000 saved up, but you only need 60,000. That 140 spends like 132,000 the next year. It spends like $123,000 the next year. It spends like $114,000 next year. It still looks like you have $140,000 saved up in your bank account, but that 140 spends less because your Ford truck is 55 grand, not 51.

Your bread is $4.40 instead of $4.00. Your gas is $5 instead of $450. And so if you don't invest it and at least fight with inflation, you're literally losing money by sitting there. even though you think that you've hit this goal of I'm ahead of most of America which sadly only has $5,500 saved up in their bank accounts. You've got $200K. You only actually need $60 to cover your rent

and overhead for the year. I am passionate that people have to invest even if it's just into a CD something, just getting 4% or 5% a year just to battle with inflation. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, 100%. I think that

That goes back to the financial advisor and things to where I used to say like you needed at the bare minimum three months that's like a safety because anything can happen so even though every dollar that you're not investing you're losing money on but you know you have what's called

an emergency fund yep so three months is an emergency fund like that was a bare minimum six months if you really just wanted to be safe yep like some jobs are more risky than others and it's like you know if you really want to be safe than six months but yeah anything over six months

unless you're like using it for a specific reason like okay I know I want to buy home in two years. And I can't really afford to lose it. So that's different. But for, yeah, the average person, yeah, six months, savings, the maximum that you really need, because even investing is a form of savings too. Like, you know, if worse comes to worse, you can pull money out of your stock portfolio,

right? But, yeah, definitely inflation kills your money. And you don't want to just have money sitting and not doing anything because if it's not growing, then it's losing. Stock market, cash line businesses, Bitcoin, there's so many different options for people to invest into, angel investing into their friends restaurant or barbershop or nightclub or salon. Oh my God, this company came over here.

I got this pitch of this new fancy product and business. Like, people are bombarded with options what they see on social media or they're hit up in real life. How do they decide for themselves? How do they protect themselves on what to finally invest into? Um, education is key. I think you should, you should always educate yourself before you invest in anything, but easy, some of the easy basic investments is like, you know, you could dollar cost average into index fund, stock market. That's like an easy barrier of entry. And that's something that a lot of people are already doing with their 401k, stuff like that. So, you know, that's, that's something that you can definitely get into easily. Um, and then when you start to look at, you know, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, that's something that, you know, you have to, I think, have some exposure. to for sure if you look at the future and where the world is going, especially, you know, money and monetary, you know, systems. So, you know, you might want to put, okay, I'm going to put

some money into Bitcoin every single month, dollar cost average into that. And then as far as a business, I definitely think that if you're an entrepreneur, it's better to start low-costing businesses that you can self-fund. A lot of people kind of go into debt when they first start out I think that puts them under pressure. You don't want to have to borrow money for your business, especially when you first start. Maybe when you get more seasoned and it's experienced, then it's like, okay, but I think that, you know,

going into business without the pressure of making money to support yourself gives you a lot more clarity. You know, we first started. We both had our own careers. And the business was relatively low-costing. So it wasn't like we had to turn a profit on day one. to support ourselves. Like when you, when you start doing that,

then you do things that you might not necessarily do. You start to compromise on different things. And it doesn't put you in a good, you know, mental space. So definitely you have to invest in your business. I think that if you are an entrepreneur, you want to self-fund your business at first, if you can, but also start a business that doesn't require a lot of self-funding. right start with the MVP and then build it out from there as opposed to going into something that's going to be tremendously costly at the start so overhead is the biggest killer of most businesses and most households a lot of times people get that fourth bedroom even though there's only two of them living there they get that third car even though there's only two of them they get that third watch even though they become numb to the second and third watch i've watched it happen and i'm sure you watch it happen over the years a lot of

friends make money. But at the end of the year, they have the exact same money saved up, and they don't know why. They're like, wait a minute, I went from 100K to 160K, why do I have the same amount of money? Well, it's because you went and got a four-bedroom house instead of a two-bedroom apartment. It's because you got a third car. Now you're paying 800 bucks a month and $600 a month for these two extra cars. We don't realize all these extra things that go under our overhead is holding us back, that they could be invest in that capital. What would you say to someone to try to not have to keep up with the Joneses and take the extra capital they're making from earning more in their career and putting into investing instead of

putting into a third watch. Yeah, keep, you know, lifestyle creep is a real thing. The more money you make, the more money you spend usually. And that's why most people, you know, they stay broke, no matter how much money they make. And I think that it's important to rethink the way that you think about money a lot. Most people would train to think about money as like kind of a voucher in a sense where you get it and it's something that is exchanged for something. else. So I work and then I get paid money and then I use that money to pay my rent. I work. I get paid money. I use that money to pay for clothes. I work and I get paid money and I use that money to, you know, go to Miami. And that's like a continuous cycle of working, getting money,

spending money. And like I said, no matter how much money you make, if you have that mindset, And that's what if you value, if you look at money as a voucher for a good only, then that's, that's, that's what you're going to continue to do. Well, I think when you start to rethink about it and you think of money as a tool that in at its core is part of it is used as a voucher, but the other part of it is as a tool to make more money. Then you start to rethink your relationship with money. you start to value it more, you start to not necessarily just be overly, you know, frivolous with the decisions that you make because you look at the potential that it could cost you. So looking at money as a tool to make more money, that's something I think just really

buying into that belief system, it changes it because it's not like every single dollar that you get, you're going to invest, but you're always thinking about investing. So, you know, you're always going to think, okay, if I get $100,000, I'm going to put $50,000 up. That's not even a question because I need to make in another $100,000 down the line off of this $50,000, right? So without having that understanding, it's easy to blow a million, $10 million you can blow. Like, you see this happens all the time with lottery winners and athletes and people don't understand. like how can somebody have a hundred million dollar contract and not have any more money left because they never looked at it as anything other than something that they should just spend and eventually

when you don't have money coming in or at the money coming at the same rate anymore and you spent all your money now you're broke so recently in the podcast space and content space we've been seeing some mega deals in the last few weeks we saw Netflix buy 15 shows to put on there with barstow sports being three of those shows. We saw a friend of years get a $200 million five-year deal in the space in the category. What are your thoughts about the podcast and content creation space and now these mega deals that are occurring? It's interesting. I feel like Netflix kind of followed the same business model almost that Spotify did a few years ago.

I remember Spotify was spending a lot of money, Joe Rogan, everything like that. And Netflix, you know, they need inventory for videos. so it's expensive to make a scripted show it's even probably more scripted expensive to make a movie original movie and Netflix spends so much money on content they spend more money on content than anybody else

combined probably yeah yeah so you know the podcast is a low costing show even if it's a good produced podcast it's still low costing compared to like you know scripted show or a movie right so it's a way to get cheap

cheap content and fan base right and people you know watch especially like a show that people like really like tune into they watch it as part of their like their ritual weekly rituals like to watch the show so from from that standpoint I think it's interesting to see I'm not 100% sure how that's going to play out as far as Netflix is concerned honestly because I do feel like it does add a barrier that makes it harder because even I don't know if the Joe Rogan thing really worked out with Spotify when he took his videos off of YouTube and I don't know how many people actually watched his videos on Spotify I don't think a lot did and I think that um Netflix could go either way honestly in my opinion because it's like me person to breakfast

club I watched the breakfast club on my phone I watch the breakfast club on my phone I don't really watch YouTube on the television because I'm out all the time yeah and I only watch Netflix on the television I don't watch Netflix on my phone I watch Netflix at 11 o'clock at night and it's like I know I got to I got to be at a certain point mentally to sit down and watch Netflix. Well, I could just, at any point in time, I could just watch YouTube. So will I be watching the Breakfast Club

at the same rate that I was before? No, I won't. Just from the barrier of interest. But Netflix has obviously an extremely large base, and they push, and they control the algorithm too. So, you know, they might push it to a new audience that never even watched it before.

Exactly. So I think it's interesting to see how that's going to play out. But the overall, I think that the podcast space is in an interesting place, because I do feel like it's kind of oversaturated a little bit. I feel like a lot of people are not original. And they just copy what's already been done. And it's a lot of the same content kind of getting regurgitated. There's a lot of celebrities that's coming in.

And they're doing similar content to each other. So it would be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out. obviously people's attention spans or attention for media is only growing. Their attention spans are getting smaller, but their appetite is getting bigger. So I don't think that that's going to go anywhere, but even like streaming, right? I think streaming has taken a large chunk of new media where people might not necessarily, young people might not watch a podcast, but they'll watch a streamer. Right, because they can come in and out.

They can just watch it for a little bit and exit. Exactly. So it's interesting, but I definitely think that it's only going to continue to revolutionize media. And it's going to evolve over the course of time even more than what it is now. So we talked about a bit making money, investing money. Let's talk about the charity side. Why do you think it's important for a household to have some type of charity for their kids, family, and friends to see and be part of?

I feel like it's, you know, it's all reciprocal as far as, like, whatever you put out in the world comes back to, and I feel like it's just part of your calmer. But I also feel like, you know, the more, from a, like, even from a selfish standpoint, the more you help, the more you get. So that's something I don't think a lot of people fully understand either. Like, you know, it's not meant to just have and just hoard everything for yourself. Like, I feel like you do have a certain level of responsibility. if you're fortunate

to help people that are less fortunate because why not as long as it's not going to hurt you and I think that in any level of charity it never really

is preached that you have to like hurt yourself financially give charity charity is something that you can afford to give right? Like if you see somebody

on the street and you give them you know $5 you have $300 in your pocket $5 is not hurting you right but it could actually really help somebody.

So something that doesn't hurt you and could help somebody, why would you not do it? Right? And I feel like that's something that if everybody did that, then it just makes, it makes the world a better place

because ultimately every one person's problem is everybody's problem. Like, it's not like, you know, okay, I could just avoid this because it doesn't affect me. It's going to affect you one way or another. Like, you know what I mean?

So I felt like helping people is beneficial, for the person that you're helping, but it's also beneficial for yourself also, right, from a variety of different standpoints. But the more, the more that I think people really buy into that, understand that the less that we'll have to rely on entities like the government, which we can't rely on the government.

We don't know what's going to happen. So, you know, we got to really take the matters into our own hand. So encouraging that, showing that, and really just, you know, having that level of compassion, I think, is something that's important. Do you have children? Yeah, I have a son. So there's only one question that I ask on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer before.

Many, many years from now, when it's finally time for Rashad to pass away. But you've built up hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth, built up a multi-billion dollar company with earning leisure. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your son? to be honest i have not fully thought about it yet um but i feel like he'll probably get a substantial amount um as it stands now i mean if my life changes you know but as it stands now he's my only child so you know you leave money for your family you'll leave money to charity but as like my soul air, you know, he'll probably get a substantial, substantial part of it.

So talk to us, your social, the business social, talk us through all those things so people can find you and all the earn your leisure world. I appreciate it. Yeah, earn your leisure across all platforms. And then my page on Instagram, my, my name is Rashad Bilal, so that's my Instagram name. And yeah, appreciate it. It's awesome. So as you guys know, this episode, so is important, not just for yourself, but it could be for your friends, family, and followers. And not just for them, it could be from people from your past, present, or future. Things that you hear on this episode might be relevant a month from now or a year from now to someone in your life. And so forward this to them. Make sure you're talking to you with

your friends about money, credit, finances, because it's important for your daily life. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you guys here next Monday on the Money Mondays.com.