Hot Smart Rich with Maggie Sellers Reum - Becoming Hot Smart Rich With Maggie Sellers

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Join Maggie Sellers for the long awaited debut episode of Hot Smart Rich as she shares her journey of launching this podcast after years of hesitation, anxiety, and growth. With her sister by her side, Maggie dives into personal challenges, her bold transition to entrepreneurship, and building a thriving community of 200,000 women. From personal holding companies to finding purpose, this episode is your entry into the world of Hot Smart Rich and will help you navigate overcoming your own fears, embrace your own vulnerability and take risks to change your life. ✨CONNECT WITH HER✨: INSTAGRAM: @maggiesellers TIKTOK: @maggiesellers_ YOUTUBE: @hotsmartrich LINKEDIN: Maggie Sellers ✨READ THE NEWSLETTER✨: HSR ICYMI ✨SHOP HSR✨: HSR MERCH SHOP MY AMAZON ✨ ABOUT MAGGIE✨: Maggie Sellers is revolutionizing modern female empowerment, leading the charge as the Canadian-born, Los Angeles based multi-hyphenate creative entrepreneur and investor, unapologetically blazing new trails. The founder of Hot Smart Rich, a media and investment platform, Maggie is on a mission to help women embrace their hottest, smartest, richest selves. Known for shaping iconic consumer brands and global superstars, she seamlessly blends the worlds of entertainment, branding, and venture capital, and was the first to carve out a space where influence and investment collide. Maggie’s meteoric rise began on TikTok, where her candid, sharp-witted content struck a chord with over 180,000 ambitious Gen-Z and millennial women, rapidly expanding her influence as the blueprint for the future of influence. But Maggie’s vision extends beyond content. Hot Smart Rich is reshaping how modern power players connect and collaborate while her investment arm, HSR Ventures, backs some of the fastest growing consumer brands like Allara Health, De Soi, Mixlab with equity stakes in 18+ brands across the consumer ecosystem. Maggie’s influence goes far beyond the brands she builds and invests in. Forget outdated notions of female empowerment, she’s redefining what it means to be an empowered woman in today’s world. Maggie Sellers is setting a new standard—unapologetic and impossible to ignore. This episode is produced by HSR Media, a division of Creative MES LLC, with support from Megan Coyle and Connor McGlynn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In case you missed it, you're allowed to be hot, smart, and rich. So let's get into it. Welcome to Hot Smart Rich. I am so excited to be here today. I can't believe we are finally here. It is wild. It has taken me this long. I asked my sister, who is my best friend in the world, she's also my business partner to sit across from me and make this a little bit less of a daunting experience. I also have a pillow on my lap because it helps me with my anxiety just to have something resting on me. But I am so excited to be here. And I'm also a little anxious, a little nervous because it's the start of something new, which is actually one of my first tattoos I got written on me from my sister's handwriting

is the word once because when you have anxiety, the idea of doing something new for the first time brings you a lot of fear. And you only have to do something for the first time once and then it's over. So today will likely be a short and sweet episode to get me comfortable on the Mike. My sister is sitting across from me to make this even better. I have to be honest, it has taken me a year or longer, actually. I remember the first HSR walk that we did in Toronto, which was like a year and a half ago. Everyone was like, we're going to do the podcast. I'm so excited to listen to it. And I was like, oh my God, we're going to do this. And I still haven't done it.

And it's because, yeah, that's not true. Why? We have done a lot of testing. which I think a lot of people might not know. And that's something that you can talk through, like, how long we've actually been like producing it in the background. Right. But I still think that it's like I didn't, the main reason is I didn't want it to be bad or fail. Yeah. And I think that stems a lot from growing up.

Like I talk a lot about my career on TikTok, but I don't obviously dig into my childhood. And I think our childhood is a huge indicator of where you will be in the future. And I was so blessed in so many ways. But growing up, everybody would tell my parents, like, Maggie's so amazing. She's so smart. She's so whatever. She's going to be so successful. And you get so much pressure put on to you that the idea of failure, even though I take a lot

of risks, especially as the stakes get higher, have felt just like things are working, why rock the boat? But things are working to the 200,000 people that follow me. And I still feel like there's such a big opportunity to create a space that is like, the call her daddy meets how I built this, where women can come that are 18 to 35 and feel like they're learning something, they're entertained, they're growing with me. I want to fail forward with this community and I feel like we've been at this growth, we've been at a little bit of a stagnant growth because I have felt more afraid to take the risks that I once never would have

thought about taking. Yeah. Because there's just so much more to lose. And so. And do you feel like it's so many more eyeballs that it's like a little bit scarier to try. I think there's a lot of different reasons, but then I get the message of the girl who is stuck in a relationship and is running a business and wants to call off her engagement or figures out that she is so miserable at her job and listening to my TikToks has helped her start her side hustle that I'm like, okay, there's those people. There's got to be more than that. And I think we're at this really critical time in society where everybody that at least I know wants to be financially independent. They want to have their own career.

They want a purpose. They want a mission. But they also don't want to sacrifice their femininity. And I think we have girl bossed so hard that we are now getting killed by. We girl boss to the sun and the sun is now too close. Like we're either sunburn or we're like dead because that was all we cared about was like our careers. And now I think we're at this place where women are trying to find this equilibrium between all of the facets of our life that make us who we are.

And that's the space that I hope to create. So one of the promises that I want to do in this podcast is never come across as a guru. And this is something that is always a benefit of not being the first mover because you kind of watch what people do and then you can adjust your behavior accordingly. And there's a few influencers who I think had really great overnight success during COVID, who I actually love to follow and think they're great. But they kind of had a fall from grace because when there was old tweets that surfaced or things that came out, they went from this position of being a guru.

And then all of a sudden couldn't learn with their community because they couldn't fail. And so one of the things that I think I've gotten away from is learning with people. Like I am not the best investor out there. Am I a good investor? Yes. Am I in great deals? Yes. But I'm also, there's so much for me to learn, which is what.

I want this space to be is not only a place where people can come and feel heard and understood, but they can learn with me as much as I'm learning from them. And it was really interesting a few days ago. My boyfriend had arranged time with the number one movement coach in the world. He trains like the best NFL players. He trains F1 drivers. And he said this thing that really stuck with me and I wrote it down and he said, the stupidest people in the world pretend they are the smartest.

They never ask questions because they're afraid to look dumb. And the smartest people in the room always look stupid because they know that that's what will get them better and grow. And so this podcast, I really hope makes me look stupid or feel stupid at times because I know that that means that I'm going to grow. So I want to start off with like a little, I always do these life updates, which is really fun. And I feel like I've done this 180 from last year where last December all my stuff was in storage. I was living in Calabasas. I had just called off my engagement. My business was doing okay.

You had only been in for six months, but it was like sketchy going into next year with nothing booked and like, it was sketchy. Like what is this kind of? To fast forward, now I'm in my first, dare I say, healthy relationship as a 32 year old.

I finally have a visa that doesn't potentially kick me out yearly back to Canada and get supported from the states. I'm finally clear on my life mission, purpose. I have the best community ever in my opinion. We just launched our first global collaboration with one of my investment companies nude sticks. Some of my investments are trending towards being real winners. Shut out locker, sidecar, Alara, Mix Lab de Swat, and many more. I'm my own boss. I've traveled more this year. I've seen my family more this year than I ever have. And yet still some days,

I feel like I don't know what I'm doing or things are really bad. And it's really interesting to be in this place where I want to learn with people versus feeling like I'm coming across as that guru. So I want to, I know that there's going to be so much to cover, but is there one story that you think I should share that like is off the cuff? Because that's what I'm always better at is like thinking on my feet

versus like being super prescriptive. That would like really encapsulate hot, smart, rich and what we want to do at least next year. I can think of one if you can't. I can't. Okay. That's why even just want to bounce ideas off of because usually my gut is right. But, okay, there's a secret that your favorite billionaires and millionaires are using in terms of like how they set up their corporate structures that I happen to just had to have to do out of sheer necessity to stay and live in the States.

And it is called a personal holding company. And it is essentially a legal entity. Mine is an LLC that has allowed me to pursue my passions, really design my own career and my ideal lifestyle. in a legal structure that like kind of has your ability to set up anything underneath it. And that was not like a genius thing that I did. It was out of needing to because I was going to be deported if I wasn't. And so how did I go from having a salary to like taking a risk on myself to starting what has now become hot smart rich, which technically operates under my legal entity of Creative Mass LLC?

And I had spent eight and a half years working in startups. I had gone public with one startup. I reported to our CEO. I worked in a startup sales force. I worked at a startup called DOSIS where we had raised $120 million. I personally underneath our CMO was in charge of deploying an $18 million a year budget.

And then I decided to go over and work in entertainment. And I worked for an entertainment management company, helping develop all of the infrastructure. I work with the biggest celebrities in the world, helping launch their brands, incubate companies, literally designed the infrastructure for the actual management company. And I was in a situation where I had gone in with one role and I had suddenly taken on like

eight different responsibilities, different team members, and I was still being paid the same amount that I was being paid when I first started. And I worked in a predominantly male environment. And there are a lot of stories that I will share about my experience. But to keep it PG today, there was a time where I was just dealing with all male energy. I had sacrificed my entire life in the hopes that like, my boss would one day wake up and realize my value and I would be paid what I was worth and I would be able to live my dream life because I was living my dream career but my paycheck was not living

after that. I was like literally dipping into my savings to afford my lifestyle because I had taken a pay cut to join that company. And long story short, my previous boss not understand my value or worth. And after six months of negotiating trying to get to a place where we were both feeling comfortable with what I was doing and what my responsibilities were and what I was being paid, I was given an, I gave him an ultimatum. Like, either you pay me this or I leave. And he was like, you're not worth it. So leave. And as a Canadian that's working in the US, you have 60 days to figure out what you are going to do during COVID where I hadn't even left my apartment to find a new job in order to stay in the United States.

That will sponsor you for a visa, though, as well. Which no companies will do. And my lease for my car was signed here. My apartment, so I'm thinking, okay, 60 days from now, I'm still going to be paying for everything here, but I can't legally live here. Plus, the border is closed to Canada. Like, how the fuck do you expect me to even move home right now? And it was out of sheer necessity of survival.

Like, I have been operating in survival mode until literally last year, for five years. that I developed what we now know as this personal holding company. And can you do a job of explaining like why you're able to like design your own life? Like I don't really know the intracins and outs of it, but are you able to describe what a personal holding company is in like a legal way? I mean, it's the same thing that like Google has as an entity. It's the same thing you have as a person. You have a legal entity that you are the shareholder of.

Yeah. But instead of as operating as May. as the individual, you're operating, like, Maggie Sellers doing business as Creative Mess LLC, where you have a lot of the same protections as a legal entity, where it's like, I'm operating through a business. So like, let's take an office as an example, if you sign a lease and you can no longer pay the rent through the business because there's no revenue coming in. They can't come after Maggie as a person. Yeah. They're coming after the creative entity. And a lot of it stems from your need for a visa. Yeah. Where as a Canadian, even though you're highly educated, have had jobs, you are paying

taxes to the state of California and the United States government, they don't just offer visas to people like you, unfortunately. The one way you can get one is through a legal entity or a personal holding company where you can prove to the United States, hey, I've invested X amount of dollars into this legal entity. But before you think that you can just like, sign a, up and do a personal holding company, which is a hack amongst successful people. To get a E2 visa, which is essentially what I got, you need to invest at minimum $150,000 into the U.S. economy where the money is at risk and spent before you've been granted your visa, which is completely backwards.

But when I went to go, so I have done probably nine months of putting all of us together, setting everything up, spending the money, hiring people, still not sure. if I'm even going to be able to be approved and stay here. So you can just imagine the PTSD that that creates when you've literally sold your house in Canada to be able to put it into your business without even knowing if you're going to be able to stay. Like the trauma I have from that is insane. I go into the U.S. Embassy in Toronto to apply for my visa. It's the coldest day in Toronto.

Like I am frozen. You're not allowed to bring your phone. Nothing. I have to like walk back to my parents apartment to like go and drop off my phone, my myths, like everything. I walk into the embassy, I'm shaking. I've spent $150,000 of my own money. U.S. Of basically everything that I owed until that point in time

because that was the profit that I got from selling my house. I've spent this money and I'm like this next five years, 10 years of my life depends on this one person's decision. Hopefully they're in a good mood today, even though it's the coldest day ever in Toronto. So I go in and I'm face to face with the officer. I hand them all of my papers and I'm like shaking. And he's like, Miss, what's the name of your business?

And I'm like, creative mess. And he's like, okay, you're approved. And I was like, you're not even going to look at the package. Like I've just spent. Did you say that? Yeah, I said, I just spent nine months putting this together. And my lawyer had actually called me five days prior saying a few of our clients that have been applying, they can ask for supplemental information.

And if you don't have it ready, then it's like a whole process of like having to submit and you can be banned from the U.S. during that time. So I had had to put together like every single place I had traveled for like 10 years prior, everything that they wanted for supplemental. So I look at him and I'm like, I'm so happy I'm approved, but are you seriously not going to look at my application? Like I just spent $150,000 and nine months of my life putting this together. And he's like, no, ma'am.

Because out of every 100 people that apply, one of them is a woman because no women take the risk to do this. And he's like, you're accepted. And that is the story of how HSR. came to be because I was just getting a visa to start a consulting company to do what I was doing, like helping put celebrities like Sophia Richie into newssticks, Joe Jonas into Oza, little yachty into future mood, taking a consulting gig there, taking a consulting gig there, just trying to survive.

And it's turned into, like, I'm going to start crying, but it's turned into this community of like 200,000 women that are all doing that. Like they're all operating from survival mode to find what they're passionate about to like live their best fucking life. And so even though it's been slow growth, I'm hoping that by sharing all of these stories and by being really vulnerable, this turns into a place where everybody

can sit on a couch a year and a half later and be like, I've made some progress. Like I've done the thing that I was always afraid to do. And I hope that I also just start to take more risks again and just feel like this safe space that I can just experiment with and be creative and like take the next. risk of putting all my life savings now into the next thing and starting more businesses. So thank you guys so much for joining. I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so glad I did to do this

with my best friend and my sister. And we have an amazing now podcast team. So get ready.