Last episode, hosts Eric Keith and Jonathan Wells sat down with Dr. Brian Nwannunu, one of the few Black orthopedic surgeons in the country, for a conversation about joint health, medical bias, and why too many Black men are still putting off the doctor’s appointment that could change their lives.

It was the kind of episode that reminded QG’s audience why Quintessentially Speaking exists: to have the real conversations that matter, the ones that go beyond the surface and get to what’s actually going on in the lives of Black men.

Episode 4 keeps that same energy, and this time, the conversation is about money.

Hosts Eric Keith and Jonathan Wells sit down with Rodney V. Williams, co-founder and president of SoloFunds, the largest Black-owned FinTech company in the country, for one of the most honest, grounded, and eye-opening conversations about Black wealth, financial systems, and entrepreneurship that Quintessentially Speaking has produced to date.

Rodney grew up in Baltimore, the youngest of six, in a household shaped by entrepreneurial parents and the kind of environment that forces you to make a choice about which direction you’re going. He chose education, athletics, and eventually Howard University, where seeing successful Black people in professional spaces for the first time shifted something in him.

“I remember thinking, I gotta get to a point where I’m writing my own rules,” he told Eric and Jonathan. “I need to own a business, and if I’m gonna do something that has never been done, I’m going to have to teleport to a new wealth stature.”

SoloFunds is his third venture and the one that made it plain he was onto something unprecedented. Built on the concept of community finance, people lending to and borrowing from each other in a peer-to-peer ecosystem, the platform processes nearly 70,000 loans a month, has facilitated $800 million in loans, and offers lenders returns of 30 to 40 percent annually, numbers that most traditional investment vehicles simply can’t touch.

“The most powerful, most successful, most wealthiest businesses in the world are financial services businesses,” Rodney said. “We uncovered a massive problem that’s not just in the United States, it’s in every country in the world. And we created a new financial product for it.”

The conversation goes deep on what it actually means to build wealth as a Black man navigating a system that was not designed with you in mind.

Rodney’s take on the famous Monopoly board analogy, the idea that Black Americans are always the last to the table, is one of the more memorable moments of the episode.

“If you want to create wealth, it requires something completely different. It requires you to beat that board and system that’s not designed for you.” His answer to whether he eventually won on that board or built a new one? Both.

Eric and Jonathan also pull back the curtain on what entrepreneurship actually costs: the vulnerability, the years without a paycheck, the investors who fall through at the worst possible moment. And through all of it, Rodney’s message stays consistent: build together, not alone. “I do not think you should do things by yourself,” he said. “I don’t tap you on your back by being a solo entrepreneur. I think that you might’ve left some opportunity on the ground.”

Episode 4 of Quintessentially Speaking is available now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Listen to the full episode.