InvestFest impresarios Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings are bringing their powerhouse financial literacy event back to ATL, and detailing the premier destination for leveling up your financial freedom.
Source: Paras Griffin / Getty
For years, Invest Fest has brought together experts to provide real-world insights, and now the event is set to be bigger and more impactful than ever.
Taking place August 22-24 at the Georgia World Congress Center, InvestFest is the result of a year-long effort, a meticulous planning process that Troy Millings describes as preparing “12 months for three days.”
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This dedication from both Earn Your Leisure creators ensures the event is “super concentrated on what we feel like the community needs to know,” providing attendees with direct access to experts on topics like AI, real estate, and cryptocurrency.
Beyond the main panels, a key component of the festival is its marketplace, which highlights over 400 businesses and serves as a unique space where networking flourishes and new business ideas are cultivated. The ultimate goal is to create a dynamic environment where partnerships are formed and “like-minded people” can explore new ventures and sustainable opportunities.
According to Millings, this focused approach is what makes InvestFest so effective in bringing valuable information and real-world connections to attendees.
Source: Paras Griffin / Getty
“We want to make sure that we have the most knowledgeable people in those spaces giving the information directly to our community.”
This year’s InvestFest sees some game-changing additions: the Deal Room and a live Open Pitch competition with a hefty $125,000 on the line.
Rashad Bilal highlighted how this builds on their core mission to provide more than just visibility for founders and connect them with active investors and business leaders to facilitate long-term growth.
“Our choice about the Deal Room is something that we started last year next, and we’re just building on that this year,” he told BOSSIP. “We got Paul Judge who’s spearheading $25,000 for Tech Entrepreneur, and we just thought it was important because funding is real hard to get in our community. So we have a platform, we have resources that we want to use, give opportunity to entrepreneurs.”
Source: Paras Griffin / Getty
The InvestFest lineup is stacked with heavy hitters, including Steve Harvey, Issa Rae, Jack Dorsey, and Magic Johnson, and the pitch competition itself will also have some familiar faces in the judge’s seats.
“Two teams will be judged this year [for the pitch competiton] Jaylen Brown, who is an Atlanta native, will be part of it, [and] Angela Simmons.”
The Deal Room, Millings emphasized, is a unique opportunity.
“We’ve been blessed over the course of Earn Your Leisure to be presented with opportunities to invest in startup companies, and rather than keeping that to ourselves, we said, let’s get a concentrated audience of people who are interested in just that and bring it.”
For Bilal and Millings, InvestFest is intrinsically linked to their vision of fostering wealth within the Black community. Addressing a common misconception, Bilal stated plainly,
“Investing is [often thought of as] gambling, and we try to change the narrative on that. InvestFest is built on education, so as long as you have education, you’re not gambling. If youre trying to invest, you’re just doing a calculation.”
To those feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scale of InvestFest, Billings offered practical advice.
“Those are the people I’m looking forward to meeting. I think when they see it at first it can be overwhelming, which is why we created the app, and I think that’s super important because now you can look before you go, you can look and schedule out the things that are important to you, people you want to hear from, and you can actually schedule out your day,” he told BOSSIP.
He also pointed to the strong sense of community within the festival.
“When people are novices to it, the networking and the friendship and the bonding that happens is pretty incredible. People will say, ‘Hey, lemme show you how to navigate through this. Lemme show you how to plan today.’”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the Earn Your Leisure founders were asked about their vision for a “new Black Wall Street,” something they’ve previously discussed.
Bilal described it as “a financial ecosystem, not necessarily a physical place” and noted the Invest Fest marketplace as an example.
“Essentially, it is that for that weekend, but also a network. A lot of entrepreneurs at Invest Fest invest in itself.”
Millings concurred, stating,
“I think Black Wall Street for 2025 is not a physical location, but an idea, an online network.”
Looking to the future of InvestFest, the possibility of going international is definitely on their minds.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Bilal admitted. “We were fortunate enough a few years ago to bring Invest Fest across the pond to London… It was super successful. We were able to sell out Royal Albert Hall… And so people have been watching us travel the world, and a lot of people are interested in seeing that type of event happen in their country, specifically in Africa. And so I would say stay tuned, but the international version could be here sooner than we think.”
For both Bilal and Millings, their legacy is tied to the impact they have on others.
“For me, it’s just a matter of just helping people,” Millings shared to BOSSIP. “If you can change the way that people think, help people make money, help people shape their families, help people avoid situations that can get them in trouble, that’d be great.”
Bilal echoed this sentiment.
“The beautiful thing about legacy, that we don’t get to write it, people that we impact, the people who attend Invest Fest, the people that listen to our podcast or see this on an outlet, they get to write it because their stories will be impacted by the information that we give.”
InvestFest 2025 promises to continue being a cultural moment, driving economic empowerment for the community, straight from Earn Your Leisure’s leaders.
