Nicole Lapin Is Building A Financial Literacy Media Empire With Money News Network

Nicole Lapin, founder of Money News Network.

Courtesy of MNN

For more than a decade, Nicole Lapin has built a powerful personal brand as a financial expert, translating complex money concepts into language that felt accessible and human. But the deeper she got into the space, the clearer she realized her personal brand could only go so wide. As money touches everything from markets and careers to relationships, entrepreneurship, psychology, taxes, and long-term planning, one person cannot credibly hold all that terrain alone. That led Lapin to build a financial literacy ecosystem designed to scale expertise. Money News Network (MNN), a media platform structured to bring multiple experts together under one coordinated umbrella—each contributing specialized knowledge, shared frameworks, and consistent education.

“I didn’t want to be a personality brand forever. I wanted to build an institution. Money News Network was built to be a system, not a solo act. By platforming multiple experts inside one coordinated ecosystem, we can accelerate financial fluency much faster than any one person could on their own. That shift from individual authority to networked trust is what gives the model durability,” Lapin shared.

“A lot of financial podcasts were either too basic to be useful or too technical to be accessible. They also tended to exist in isolation. You’d listen, maybe learn something, and then you were on your own. MNN was designed as a slate, not a collection of one-offs. Our 15 shows work together to build daily habits and cumulative understanding across news, markets, behavior, and culture. Over time, listeners don’t just pick up tips; they build fluency. We also designed the ecosystem so listening isn’t the end of the journey. Education through The Money School and action through Private Wealth Collective give people a clear next step when they’re ready.”Money News Network currently operates 15 podcasts across business, markets, money psychology, culture, and news. Recent expansions include Mo News, Social Currency, and Superwomen, alongside partnerships where MNN power shows across Entrepreneur Media’s slate. The network collectively has 93 million+ total downloads, 105% year-over-year download growth and 7.5 million monthly reach across podcasts, social, and newsletters.

Lapin has also taken a different approach to advertising compared to traditional podcast networks setting MNN into eight figure profitability, “Most financial services companies accept high CAC (customer acquisition cost) because they’re chasing customers with very high lifetime value. Most financial media companies, meanwhile, enjoy low CAC but significantly underestimate the lifetime value of their audiences. Money News Network was built to sit directly in that arbitrage. Podcasts are a low-CAC acquisition channel because listeners self-select into financial content. At the same time, financial audiences inherently have high LTV because money decisions repeat over decades.” The combination of the low CAC of media with the high-LTV economics of financial services is what has allowed MNN to become profitable as a network while delivering more meaningful wins more efficient acquisition for advertisers.

At MNN the shows are designed around two complementary models, host-led stickiness and owned, subject-matter IP. Some shows are built around trusted hosts who create strong audience relationships over time while others are built as host-agnostic franchises grounded in deep expertise and repeatable frameworks that can scale beyond any one personality. For Lapin, she sees the biggest opportunity ahead is scaling the bottom of the funnel. “With Private Wealth Collective, we’ve added an RIA model that converts media trust and education into long-term, recurring revenue through assets under management. That creates a fundamentally different growth profile than most media companies of similar size. Lifestyle media monetizes through one-off purchases and advertising cycles. An AUM-based model compounds. As assets grow, revenue grows with them, creating significantly greater and unique ARR potential over time,” she explained.

With no outside investors, Lapin is set on building a durable financial institution where media feeds education, education feeds action, and action compounds for decades. Success for her now isn’t scale for its own sake. It’s being able to stay with that audience as their lives get more complex. Money News Network growing with the customer to offer learning when they’re starting, perspective when the noise gets loud, and real options when they’re ready to act.