The late Nipsey Hussle’s mission to help Black families create generational wealth is being furthered by his girlfriend and renowned actress Lauren London. She recently partnered with Microsoft, financial podcast Earn Your Leisure (EYL), and Nipsey’s Marathon Clothing brand to present the “Hussle 100K pitch competition.”
As ESSENCE previously reported, the $100,000 pitch competition offered entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch ideas for the chance to win $100,000 to help scale their business.
Judges include The Marathon’s Blacc Sam, Jorge Peniche, and Adam Asghedom alongside Earn Your Leisure hosts/Invest Fest co-counders Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings.
The four finalists used three minutes to be on the main stage and convince judges that their business deserves the funding.
Earn Your Leisure began less than a decade ago and has since grown into an international brand that has empowered millions to own their financial future with their palatable advice.
“We just have real conversations because we’re authentic people,” Millings previously told ESSENCE. Formerly a Bronx elementary school physical education teacher, he decided to launched the podcast alongside his business parter Rashad Bilal, who after realizing the lack of financial education available to the students, infused his lesson plans with money basics.
“I would encourage the people to, number one, keep your overhead low,” Millings shared. “Most people think, I’m going to start a podcast. I’m going to make millions of dollars, and then they get into the space and they’re thinking, I paid $6,000 to rent a studio, but I haven’t made a dollar for my actual show. We’ve actually documented this journey. We started out with iPhones. That was very intentional. We didn’t have cameras. We didn’t even know what it was to even produce a podcast. When we started, we just figured this thing out. We didn’t have a studio. We were doing it in my house. But also take imperfect actions. I think that’s one of the most important things. Rather than saying, I need the $2,000 camera, what do you have in your pocket right now? You got a phone? All right, cool.”