The financial creator has inked a new podcasting deal with Vox Media

• Finance creator Vivian Tu’s podcast has a new home at Vox Media and wellness brand PS.
• Tu aims to make finances less complex and empower diverse audiences around money.
• Vox Media and You share why the partnership made sense and what helped close the deal.

Vivian Tu has built an online name as “Your Rich Buff” through her mission to make the financial industry less “male, pale and outdated” and provide her audience with important information about building wealth. Marginalized communities in particular have been the cornerstone of his 2021 brand.

Her ability to debate complex financial topics is informed by her previous role as a trader at investment firm JP Morgan and helped her build a very strong and engaged community of nearly 7 million social media users on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn. By 2022, she was making enough money from her social media revenue streams, such as brand partnerships and speaking engagements, that she quit her job at media company BuzzFeed to focus on her brand full-time.

As she grew her social media business, she found her audience wanted more in-depth knowledge about personal finance than the 30-second videos she initially went viral for; thus, the podcast “Networth & Chill” was released in March 2023. Here, Tu interviewed wealthy online personalities such as real estate mogul Ryan Serhant, fitness creator Cassey Ho, and Bilt Rewards founder Ankur Jain about how they manage their money. He also spent several episodes looking at topics like the racial pay gap and the psychology behind bad spending decisions.

Now Tu, 30, is teaming up with Vox Media and new wellness brand PS, formerly known as PopSugar, to launch a second season of the podcast. The podcast will now include a video format and will delve into exactly how financially affluent individuals have been able to grow their net worth into millions.

“This season, I’m asking the powerful questions,” Tu told Business Insider. “I’m asking for dollar amounts because I think it’s so important for people to hear.”

Vox Media was one of many suitors vying for the chance to partner with Tu, but they won out thanks to an aligned vision and surrender of creative control.

The the video podcasting space is particularly popular — and profitable right nowwith prominent creators such as Alix Earle and Jake Shane, who have recently launched their own adventures.

A report from Spotify published in June, found that 63% of respondents trust their favorite podcast host more than their other favorite influencer. It’s also profitable for creators to branch out into audio; The same report found that 48 percent of Gen Zers and millennials said they were more likely to be interested in ads and products when promoted by their favorite podcasters. This means that creators who choose to host podcasts can take advantage of a new revenue stream by making money from ads served on each episode.

Tu said the move to video podcasting wasn’t just a “strategic business decision, but to save significant time. While the first season of “Networth & Chill” earned more than 2 million downloads, Tu spent much of the day creating separate social assets to promote the podcast since it was audio only. With video podcasts, he can now quickly use existing video clips and post them to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to spread the word about new episodes.

“I wanted to work smarter so I didn’t have to double up,” she said.

Vox Media and PS’s new vision to center health and wellness content was a big reason he chose them; that, along with her familiarity with their work producing podcasts, was what sealed the deal.

“Financial wellness is such a big component of our rebrand, so I think it was such a natural home for Vivian because there’s a shared mission to have open and honest conversations about money and to have taboo topics or inconveniently accessible to a much wider audience.” Lillian Xu, executive director of Vox Media’s Podcast Business, told BI. “Having a very clear mission statement, like Vivian does, really helps us determine the success of a podcast.”

According to Xu, Vox Media and Tu will collaborate very closely on sales, marketing and distribution of the podcast, such as posting teasers of new episodes on Your Rich BFF and PS’s social media accounts.

“This podcast is going to be about the questions you’ve been too afraid and too nervous to ask someone in your life,” Tu said. “Even if you can’t have those conversations with your friends, you can have them with mine.”