Steven Bartlett Just Invested in This Creator Brand — Here’s How Maggie Sellers Reum Made It Happen

0:00On today's episode of the Business of Creators, I sit down with Maggie Sellers Reum, a woman building one of the most ambitious creator-led brands of this decade, Hot, Smart, Rich. She sets the tone early with her big unapologetic vision. I have no doubt that HSR will become the biggest creator-led female ambition brand of the decade. And I really think that we could and I could become the first female podcast that holds the number one spot. Then she breaks down the engine behind her explosive rise, a community that behaves more like a movement than an audience. I want you to feel like you're at dinner with me.

0:33I've worked with celebrities that have millions of followers that couldn't pull actual in real life experiences. And I'm able to curate a group of not just like women, some of the most ambitious, successful, driven women, which is one of the hardest audiences to reach. We also get into the deal that's about to rocket launch the whole thing. her new partnership and investment from Stephen Bartlett's Flight Story. And it was just a no-brainer once you actually, once I met the team, like, of course there's Stephen, who is honestly one of my biggest inspirations, but it is a female-led team at Flight Story.

1:09It is a female CFO, two female co-founders and CEO and head of revenue. This episode is full of ambition and the mindset required to build something real in the creator economy. You really don't want to miss it.

1:26Ian Shepherd:so maggie when someone asks you what hot smart rich is what's the clearest way that you define it today i think today i define it really with the community at the center of it but it is building the biggest female ambition brand that's creator led at the center of everything that we do which currently is a short form content podcast weekly newsletter and then like i said the community is really at the center of it so we just so happen to start this whatsapp channel and now we have meetups all over the world from like Toronto, my hometown to LA, where I now live, Sydney, Australia, London, England, and girls are actually just meeting up because they all are a part of this HSR movement.

2:04And we hope to really focus on that short form today and that creator IP today, and then in the future, really be able to build the future of community and also products.

2:16Ian Shepherd:Excellent. Well, I'm really excited to get into it. What's the background? What gap in culture did you see that made you think I need to do this? I think like every founder, you are solving a problem that you had yourself, right? And I think for me growing up, I felt that dichotomy and having to choose between who I was nine to five and who I was five to nine. And there was this moment where I was like, you know, it's kind of crazy that women control 85 % of consumer spend in the US roughly, and we get 2 % of venture dollars. And I personally feel like every time I get into the workplace, I'm having to like completely leave who I am, the way that I talk, the way that I dress, my hobbies, my passions at the door, this feels crazy.

2:58And it was just looking on TikTok and feeling like, okay, there's all of these hauls, these beauty shops, these fashion hauls, and it is driving consumer spend, but it also isn't helping women understand that and the connection that they actually have with financial decisions. And it was, it was like a collect, you know, it was like some people have a moment and And some people, it's like all these little things that add up. And I was diligencing a deal when I was investing. And it was in the beauty space, in medical aesthetics specifically. And all of the investors on the phone were like, I'm going to go ask my wife.

3:33And I was like, it is crazy that all of these men are going home. And these women are giving them the keys to the financial, what we're actually spending money on. And so it was all of these little things that I just finally felt as a founder, like I have to go and solve this problem. I don't want brain rot content. I want educational empowering, but also still very feminine and very like passion driven and hobby driven. And so I really when I first started creating these TikToks short form content, I said to myself, I want you to feel like you're at dinner with me. I know that if I go and niche down and only do one form of content, I will grow very quickly.

4:14But that is not where longevity is. And that is not where a community is. I want to feel like women are sitting down for dinner with me. We're going to talk about business, investing, finances, and boy, and relationships and reality TV and fashion and beauty. And that's really where it stemmed from. And I think that is really the why it's what drives me every single day. It wasn't because I wanted to be an influencer, just build content to build content to build a personal brand, it was really driven from a place of like, I need to go and solve a problem.

4:47Ian Shepherd:I've been listening to some of the shows and it's got this really eclectic mix of content. Why do you think that works in a way that traditional business media doesn't? This is Ian, like the question I have tried to solve. I don't know if you listened to the last episode, but we talked a lot about like, why is Shark Tank the only business show that has worked over the last decade of business content? And I think it ultimately comes down to the consumer wants emotion, not logic. And they want characters. They want people that they can relate to. And ultimately, business shows that it's missing that except for Shark Tank.

5:21You can see kind of like David versus the Goliath between like the founder and the sharks, right? And there's tension that feels like every single person can relate to it. Who has the power at what time? And I think when I thought about business shows, like I was so bored. I was listening to it and I was just like, this is great because I'm learning something, but I have to be at my desk taking notes, writing things down. And I want the girl who is doing everything that can habit stack listening to this podcast while she's grocery shopping or going to Sephora or leaving, dropping her kids off at daycare and feel like she's not having brain rot, but she feels understood.

5:58And she feels like she's being talked to. And it's funny now, like, you know, my first boss telling me, If you don't change the way that your inflection in the sound of your voices or the way that you talk, you'll never go anywhere. You'll never be successful. And I actually think that tone of voice and that relatability was sometimes very complex, hard to understand concepts or language makes the average woman feel like if she can do it, I can do it too. And so my weakness actually has become my superpower. And I actually think that is what is relatable. Sometimes I trip over my words or fall over my words because I have dyslexia.

6:34And instead of hiding that, I really embrace that side of myself. And I think more than ever, we're about to enter into a world where that human touch of like, what is not AI, what is not perfect, and like always just feeling exactly, I feel like manufactured is what women especially will really relate to.

6:53Ian Shepherd:Well, it's very inspiring to hear about your journey there. was there a point in time where you realized it was more than just the content it's like a movement you've started here yeah I think so I used to work for celebrities and I would put brands with celebrities and we would sometimes host events and I remember we had with celebrities we had like sometimes millions of followers and I remember this one time there was a celebrity that had four million followers and we had a meetup with a brand and she brought I think it was four maybe five people. And I was like, whoa, at the time, you're just like, that's pretty crazy, because I worked with other celebrities who could fill a stadium, right.

7:30And it was in that moment that I was like, this is kind of what was embarrassing, first of all, for us with the brand, I felt terrible. And then second of all, it was like, when I started hosting my own events, and we hosted one in New York and one in Toronto, and there was like, 60 people that came and they were so engaged, they the event meetup was supposed to be for an hour, it was just a casual walk, like, let's walk around Toronto, let's walk around New York City. And people stayed for like four or five hours to the point where my sister actually had to like pull me away and be like, okay, she's got to go now, which I wasn't expecting.

8:02Like some of my great friends to this day, I actually met through the HSR community at like the first few comments and like DMs that they would send me. They've become great friends of mine today. But it was in those two meetups where I was like, whoa, I've worked with celebrities that have millions of followers that couldn't pull actual in real life experiences. And I'm able to curate a group of not just like women, some of the most ambitious success driven women, which is one of the hardest audiences to reach. Like these women control significant financial spend within their family. They're making over a hundred million dollars a year.

8:40Some are investment banking. Some are the heads of like meta AI glasses. And you're just thinking to yourself, like brands would pay thousands of dollars to reach this consumer. And we were able to bring together 60 of them when I had like 20 ,000 followers, right? And it was that moment where I was like, this is not about me. This is about this community. And how can I service them to create something that obviously doesn't exist? Because if you're going to spend your Saturday going to a coffee meetup, there's a missing part of culture right now. There is something that women are craving that isn't just a workout class or isn't just a drinking culture.

9:19It is mixing everything together to feel like you're really understood for the first time. And I think the other thing is like I've built something that I wanted and I want myself. Like I have equally as much fun at these things. It's not work to me. It's like genuinely connecting with amazing women and business deals have come from it and great friendships. And so I think that's really when I realized like this is this is different.

9:43Ian Shepherd:But we should talk about that community and the insane engagement that you're getting through it. But we're also here to talk about the investment. And what was the moment when you realized you needed a partner to go bigger? So I actually don't think that we needed a partner to go bigger. And I think that's really where this partnership has come from in the most like organic and authentic way. I really realized that HSR was going to get there eventually. but when you're building with two full-time people and freelancers and contractors like I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs and creators can relate to as they listen to this it's hard and you are doing everything yourself and I have never had a doubt in my mind that we would get there and build the biggest female ambition brand of the decade it was a matter of how quickly can we scale and how many people's lives can we impact and ultimately we can do that way faster with someone like Flight Story.

10:36They have a proven methodology. They know exactly what they're doing. There is a reason why all of their shows in the UK became number one on Spotify this year for wrapped. Like this is not something that they say they're able to do. This is something they've proven they've been able to do. And for me, like I measure everything by impact truly. Like it's even funny. This is a little antidote, but we were just talking with the team about like dropping a piece of merch on international women's day. And I was like, absolutely not. Like HSR was built to support other women's businesses. I am never going to take a day for self-promotion in that way.

11:09This is an opportunity to be able to go and build other people's brands in the HSR community. And so I think it's like, I measure everything by impact. And ultimately the decision came down to how am I going to be able to scale this IP to make the biggest impact the fastest? And it was just a no-brainer once you actually, once I met the team, of course there's Steven, who is honestly one of my biggest inspirations, but it is a female led team at Flight Story. It is a female CFO, two female co-founders and CEO and head of revenue. Most of the team that I work with is females. And I just felt like it was the easiest decision I've ever made.

11:50Ian Shepherd:That makes absolute sense. And can you talk about how the deal came together? Like, did they approach you? Did you reach out to them? So it's actually kind of a crazy story because, so always take a coffee meeting. So two years ago, I got a DM from Grace Miller, who's the head of failure and experimentation at Flight Story. And she asked when I was in London, England, if we could go for coffee. We had a coffee meeting. It was amazing. I was left feeling like really inspired. She asked really thoughtful questions. And she was like, why do you not have a podcast? Like, this is something that you would be so great at.

12:23And of course, it's something that I had wanted to do. But like everyone says, the podcast space is saturated. There's no white space. Everyone has a podcast. And so you let that self-doubt get into you. So long story short, kept that in the back of my mind. Podcast finally launches January of this year. And for any creator listening to this, like you just never know who's watching. And I guess it was Grace that initially put it into the company Slack channel. And it was like, I started seeing some followers come from Flight Story onto my Instagram. And I was like, that's cool. But like, I never know what translates over to actually downloading a podcast.

12:58Because that's another interesting thing. and you probably know this as a creator economy expert, but like someone that's great at short form isn't necessarily going to transfer to be great at long form and especially the listener, right? Like it's a lot harder to get someone to listen to an hour than it is to listen to a 50 second TikTok video. So I had no idea that they were listening and they were from day one. They were sending it in their Slack channel. They were watching what I was doing. And it was really interesting because I get a DM. So backing up a little bit, what we had realized at our side was the podcast space is really interesting because it's what we're spending 75 % of our time on yet we are not actually able to monetize this because we're not signed to a network.

13:39And most deals happen when an agency goes to a network and then the network actually distributes it to all their shows. So it's very hard to actually monetize a podcast unless you are signed to a network. So we were kind of in this weird place where we were like, we really need to start making money from this. We're having amazing downloads. Like we know that there's something here. We're spending most of our time on it, but like we can't monetize this. So getting into a network was definitely top of mind. But when we had talked to other ones, it was just, it wasn't strategic. And it was like, we're going to help you monetize.

14:12And that was really it. And what we were really looking for was a strategic partner. And so the craziest story is that my sister, we were in New York. We shared a room because, you know, saving costs. And it's my sister. And she goes one night, you should just message Stephen like, he follows you, he's commented on a few things, just message him and see what happens. And hopefully people don't listen to my response as a piece of advice. Because I said, why? Like, there's no way that he would be interested. I don't know, like I just self deprecating, which is exactly what not to do, because you never know who's watching shoot your shot.

14:46But as fate would have it, like, you know, opportunity is luck meets preparation. We were prepared. We had done the work. And so when Steven DM'd me, he DM'd me one morning and he was just like, we love what you're doing. I have been loving watching. Like you are a founder. You are not just a creator. Could I put you on email with my team? And they would love to chat. And I was like, absolutely. And we did not act cool, like acting as if we had all these other things. We were like, yeah, let's get on email. We got on email right then and there. And just like my other favorite saying is deals that stall fall.

15:20And we made sure that nothing stalled because we wanted to make sure this deal went through and it wasn't going to fall. And I'm so happy to say months later, like we're right at now, obviously the go line. This is where the hard work starts, but it was really the most organic, authentic way to find not only a network and partner, but also an investor. Like this is the first time we've taken anyone that has any sort of equity on our cap table, minus my sister and I. And so that's obviously a huge deal. And we're just so excited to get started.

15:51Ian Shepherd:It's a great story. And it reminds me of John, who's the founder of Stan, who had a similar one where he was DMing with Stephen. So I would encourage all entrepreneurs to DM Stephen, perhaps. Now, tell us about what you think will change sort of in the short term and what's going to change in the long term with this partnership? I think in the short term, it's really about scaling the IP. And they have a proven methodology. And like I said, we were really doing everything ourselves. So they always joke with me, like the hard work is already done. Like you have the community, like you know your customer, you know exactly who you're speaking to.

16:25And so I think this scaling, like we would put out podcasts and we have a built-in audience, right? But like we weren't even able to manage putting out more than two clips every single episode because it was like on to the next, on to the next, on to the next. And I think what's really exciting about this is the opportunity to really work the catalog and the short form IP, as well as obviously the long form podcast and newsletter. And I think that really remains the focus because we know that the community and the products will come once we actually identify the needs that we are serving, the customer that we are serving on a large scale.

16:59So my goal with this partnership is really to go from a devoted niche audience to an engaged prestige audience of the same consumer, but on a greater scale. And so I think that's really where the focus lies for this first, you know, couple months and years of focus for us is really to focus on reaching as many people as possible with the current business that we currently have. Great.

17:25Ian Shepherd:Well, let's talk about the community. And I know they referred to themselves as the angels. When did you first notice that was forming? I kind of forget if it was like I called them angels. Well, first of all, I just say like angels all the time. Like, thank you so much, angel. It's just like a natural thing that I've always said. And then I thought there was a really interesting play on words when I became an angel investor. It was like a token of I've made it, even though I hadn't. Like my first angel investment was$2 ,500. And I think that's something that is really relatable to a lot of people, right?

17:56I didn't start investing$25 ,000,$50 ,000 checks that we do now. I started with$2 ,500. And I remember being able to call myself an angel investor. And I was like, whoa, does this mean I've made it? And so I was kind of thinking through a shared language of the community, right? Something that really ties us together and not just saying, hey, guys, which actually most of our audience is actually not guys, it's women. Interestingly, though, we have about 30 % of listeners that are actually male. But I speak to the angels. We've actually now branched off to Angeleno. So we have the angels and the Angelenos, which is actually a term that someone at Flight Story came up with.

18:34And I just remember thinking, like, how can I make every single person feel like an angel investor by making them a plus one? And I think that's really where my content has come across is like, it's about democratizing the access that I get. And through a lot of different factors, like I feel really privileged to be in a lot of rooms that sometimes I have a lot of imposter syndrome of and thinking like, why am I here? Like, I'm so lucky that I'm here. And what am I going to do with that? Like, am I going to sit here and feel bad that I'm in this room or am I going to sit here and figure out how can I actually democratize this information?

19:10And so I think that word angel became really important to figure out how to actually translate to people before they were an angel investor. and it's been really cool now because of course we have a lot of different angels some of which have no interest to become an angel investor and that's great too but there is that little kind of easter egg of okay it started because i was an angel investor and it was more about like okay how can i create that sense of democratizing access into a place and into a community and i think i just started doing like hi angels hi angels hi angels and it just kind of took off from there.

19:44Ian Shepherd:And in a world of AI, I think that real life events are really going to come to the forefront. How did your meetup start? They literally started with those walks. And it was funny because I would post on my story and I would say, if anybody wants to go for a walk, well, actually, I was getting a lot of DMs to have one-on-one conversations. And I think this is one of the hard things around when you are scaling and when you're growing, like you want to be able to give attention to a lot of people that are interested in your advice, right? And that's where I started being like, okay, maybe I can start creating content because that will be the way that I can help a lot of people with like questions that they have.

20:24Kind of the same thing with the walks. It actually started because when I would go to New York, I would get maybe like five to 15 messages of people that I actually would go for coffee with. Because again, these angels are not an average community. They're doing amazing things. Like they actually have been people I've invested with or investment bankers that I take like their research docs and actually make informed decisions off of. And so I was like, Oh, I wonder if I post that I'm like going to do a walk if I can get like five or 10 people to get together and join me. And then they just started growing from there to the point where like, we've done meetups now with hundreds of people.

20:59And now we're at an inflection point, I would say of trying to really identify a strategy because as helpful as they are like on, I think they can be a lot bigger. And I think that we can create more impact and also just like forge connections a lot easier. So we have this WhatsApp channel that again, we started and it's funny talking from a place of like, everything's going well, but that's not how it started. We started a Slack channel initially first, it was a complete failure, because it was about asking Maggie a question, direct access to Maggie. And interestingly, we just did a survey with all of the angels in the WhatsApp channel.

21:34I think maybe like 400 of them responded. And we asked them like, what's the number one reason that you're in the in the chat? And they like most people, I think it was 80 % of people said it was to engage with other angels. I think there was 12 % of people that said it was to engage with Maggie. And that was where I was like, we are building a community first brand. I actually feel like, yes, I'm very connected with HSR. But that was a signal that like HSR can actually live on without me one day, we're going to grow such a big movement and such a big creator-led media business that like there can be other really cool people that can come in that it doesn't necessarily it's not connecting just with Maggie anymore and I think that's how we want to evolve the events as well as it's more about the community and less about even my involvement with them it's fascinating to hear that if you had some advice

22:24Ian Shepherd:for another creator that was thinking about building a community and not just content what would that be the first thing is start with a why my favorite book for any founder is start with why We hear so much like, start building your personal brand, start creating content. But it's like, why? Because I agree with that. And I think everyone should have a personal brand to a certain extent. But your personal brand might not be posting every single day, right? And I think that like, what I've seen as a through line as an investor and also as a creator, and I look back, you know, we were creating some assets for the launch.