LET’S start positively because I know I have a rant in me this week, despite it being nearly Christmas.
This is me interviewing Sir Roger Marsh at the UK headquarters of Australian financial technology group PEXA in Leeds.
I’ve been fortunate to win some work from PEXA thanks to its recently retired CEO Glenn King and his former Yorkshire and National Australia Bank colleague Simon Wright who is chief operating officer of the group which has transformed the way houses are bought and sold in Australia and plans to do the same here.
And for anyone who has been confounded by the old fashioned way property transactions take place, then that is good news.
As part of my work I hosted a panel discussion for PEXA during Leeds Digital Festival in October and I’ve followed that up with a series of video interviews with key people from both PEXA and the regional economy.
Supported by multi-talented videographer – he also does voiceovers for TV and computer games – Paul Ross, who I worked with delivering events for Sky and Stagecoach, we are creating the interviews for release in the New Year.
It has been fun spending time with Sir Roger, who I first met when he was a restructuring partner at PwC.
From there he was seconded into a senior role in the Cabinet Office working at the highest levels of government, before becoming chairman of PwC in the North and chair of the Leeds City Region LEP, leading the campaign to bring major inward investment into the region, including Channel 4.
Other interviewees are from both the public and private sectors and, while all recognise the challenges currently faced by businesses, there has been a positivity that has shone through the interviews that has acted like a soothing balm to my sometimes cynical outlook.
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TALKING of cynical, here we go:
I’VE never been a fan of Steven Bartlett.
He’s the modern equivalent of a snake oil salesman, if you ask me.
But you can’t knock his success.
Starting, growing and selling the digital marketing firm Social Chain for millions, launching a business interview podcast, Diary of a CEO, which tops the charts and having a bestselling book of the same name.
That’s aside from his profile as the youngest dragon on the BBC show Dragons’ Den and the countless businesses he has invested in through that and his other business ventures.
And that has all been achieved by the age of 33.
Not bad for a working class lad who was born in Botswana, grew up in Plymouth and flunked out of university.
He even did a live tour with his Diary of a CEO show selling out two nights at the London Palladium in 2022 which was apparently “an immersive experience” combining his autobiography, insights from his podcast, a live gospel choir, poetry and motivational messages for the large paying audiences seeking inspiration from this very modern business guru.
I knew several intelligent people who went along and raved about it.
I thought it sounded more like a cult that was perhaps benefitting from the Covid lockdowns and people making a determined effort to get out more.
I think his material is pretty unoriginal and infused with that pseudo business and psychology schtick gleaned from lots of other sources.
But whatever your view of the man, he is phenomenally successful.
And he continues to put his money where his mouth is, investing and backing businesses that he rates.
His latest was announced this week.
It is not just any old deal either.
He’s put a seven figure investment into “the biggest female ambition brand of the next decade”.
Hot Smart Rich is a media “platform” run by Los Angeles based Maggie Sellers Reum which “is dedicated to women at the intersection of culture, content, capital and community”.
Crikey.
I’ve worked out that it clearly isn’t aimed at the likes of me.
I thought that if you are looking for Hot Smart Rich, then OnlyFans was a good place to start.
The photograph accompanying the announcement is beautifully styled, with good looking Bartlett in trademark t-shirt, perching on a sofa next to his new business partner.
It reminded me of Megan and Harry in style.
I’d never heard of Maggie Sellers Reum, but she looks very LA.
She got married this summer to Courtney Reum, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur whose brother is married to Paris Hilton.
He is an investor in a Portuguese football club and was brought on at the age of 45 for the final five minutes of their last match of the season in May 2024.
Sadly he didn’t make a difference and the club were relegated to the third division.
Most of the content and photos about Maggie Sellers Reum on the internet has clearly been self-curated.
Her age is not listed but she has the glossy hair, high cheekbones, plump lips and creaseless forehead that you see in Beverly Hills and means she could be aged anywhere between 20 and 70.
According to a story I read about her this week: “The podcaster’s cultural currency, built through her honest, subversive and high-integrity content, is amplified by her high profile listeners and readers like…Queer Eye’s star, Jonathan Van Ness, who recently appeared on the show to give an exclusive on what really happened to his haircare brand, JVN Hair, after declaring bankruptcy.”
I’d guess he probably revealed that…it went bust.
Sellers Reum says she’s building a show that is very much the “Unwell for well girls”, with content that leaves her audience hotter, smarter and richer.
“As you can tell by the name, we just aren’t afraid to go there,” she says.
“I started creating content that felt like you were out to dinner with friends – a place to be vulnerable, learn, laugh, cry and most importantly have fun.
“It’s exhausting for women out there. We constantly have to choose who to bring to the table to feel like we deserve a seat. I started creating content to build my own table when I realised I no longer had to choose what part of me to bring because that was inherently the special sauce of being a female in business.”
I told you her stuff wasn’t aimed at the likes of me.
To some people I’m sure what she says is totally inspiring.
But to me it has the ring of empty modern platitudes.
And if you do get special sauce on your table then I recommend a good squirt of Cillit Bang and plenty of elbow grease.
As curated as the photo accompanying the deal announcement was a 25-second video which if I was being non-judgemental I would describe as very modern and very now.
And if I wasn’t I would say it is nauseous nonsense purely designed to blow smoke up the backsides of two already highly inflated egos.
It starts off filmed through the spy-hole in the front door of Sellers Reum’s luxurious Beverly Hills pad with Bartlett approaching and ringing the doorbell.
Cut to his new business partner working on her laptop, who hears the bell and exclaims: “Oh my God, he’s here!” before donning impossibly high heeled shoes, putting on lipstick, descending her staircase and striding towards her front door.
She opens the door and says: “Steven Bart-Lett, are you ready to get Hot Smart Rich?”
He hands her a laptop and replies: “Let’s get into it.”
I know.
It isn’t going to win an Oscar, but I’m sure it does the job on TikTok and Instagram.
If I was handing over a big chunk of money to a new business partner, I think I’d be slightly concerned if, given they operate in the content creation and media sector, they couldn’t pronounce my name properly.
But that’s just me.
I’m off to polish my table.
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YOU spend two-and-a-half years preparing for the challenge of a lifetime rowing across the Atlantic Ocean and then you don’t know when you are going to start.
I reported on the incredible efforts of Yorkshire lawyers David Knaggs and Richard Larking last week and the meticulous planning they have put in to taking on The World’s Toughest Row, 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
You can do all the training and mental preparation you like but the weather often has other ideas.
The pair of golfing buddies who make up team Greens2Blue were due to set off from La Gomera this morning.
But with more than “punchy” conditions forecast, organisers brought the start forward by 24 hours.
Low pressure over the Canaries has now seen the start postponed for the 43 teams taking part in this year’s race and they are likely to set off on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.
But Richard and David will be well prepared and I’m sure raring to go.
They have already raised more than £160,000 for two great charities, Maggie’s Yorkshire and The Friends of Alfie Martin.
And now they want to complete their quest, which they first started talking about over a game of golf at Alwoodley Golf Club three years ago.
I know friends and family will be waiting for them in Antigua in the New Year with cold beers at the ready.
In the meantime those of us who have sponsored them and are supporting them can follow their progress on an app of the race route and plenty of social media updates being posted by former journalist Guy Dresser.
“With a name like that, I thought he should have had a job as the global editor of GQ, but he says he knows you,” Richard told me with a chuckle.
Guy worked for the Birmingham Post as a City correspondent in London at the same time as I was London Editor of the Western Mail.
We were both members of an esteemed group of business journalists called the Association of Regional City Editors.
I think it was too late to change the name when the group’s founder, John Heffernan, a former City Editor of the Yorkshire Post, was told that it had the acronym ARCE.
I think it was after a particularly long lunch in the private Graham Greene dining room at Rules, London’s oldest restaurant, hosted by a rotund and hospitable PR man that I glanced round the room and said I thought the name did seem entirely appropriate.
Most of us didn’t know our ARCE from our elbow.
Good luck fellas and bon voyage.
For more information
https://www.greens2blue.co.uk/
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THIS is my final blog of the year so can I take this opportunity to wish you a very Happy Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
And if you are in business, 2026 can’t be as challenging as this year, can it?
I think I said the same thing last year.
Have a great weekend.