It was an advertisement for a tele-sales job in the mid-1990s that set Becky Fatemi on the path to success.
It meant standing on her feet all day, cold-calling hundreds of people, and talking, talking, talking while knowing she was under pressure to seal a deal in minutes.
A role at which many people would baulk came naturally to the self-starting whirlwind of energy, who moved to London from Iran as a baby and was mostly brought up in a single-parent family.
It forced Ms Fatemi to rely on her natural people skills, honing her ability to read what people wanted. She went on to use those skills for more than a decade as a top operator at estate agent Foxtons, a similar amount of time at her own property firm Rokstone, and now as a partner at Sotheby’s International Realty where she has evolved into a wealth adviser.
Along the way she has worked as a hip-hop DJ, at McDonald’s, in Selfridges, sold tables at nightclubs, been a stylist to celebrities, worked for a children’s charity, founded a charity and launched a social media platform.
“Any type of work that I felt that could fortify my CV, I did,” said Ms Fatemi, 50. She spoke to The National during lunch near her office in Marylebone, and over Zoom while she spent the summer in Portugal.
Having spent the best part of three decades learning how people are willing to spend their money, and where they wish to invest, she is well positioned to know how those with wealth will respond to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s leadership, as he and Chancellor John Healey head towards their first budget, on October 28.
Taxing
The Labour government has already made significant changes to the tax regime: scrapping the non-domicile status, raising employer national insurance contributions, increasing capital gains, applying VAT to private school fees and toughening property taxes.
More changes are expected, with the middle classes and wealthiest expected to take the brunt.
Ms Fatemi has more confidence in Mr Burnham than she had in his predecessor Keir Starmer, but still does not think he is the right person to steer the UK’s economic fortunes. Trying to please everyone, an accusation immediately laid at Mr Burnham’s door as he entered Downing Street seemingly happy to respond positively to requests for funding, simply will not work, she believes.
She is in no doubt those with money need to pay their fair share of tax, to “address the disparity in wealth”, but should not be squeezed too hard.
“A lot of my clients are working far longer hours than I've ever seen, and working much harder,” Ms Fatemi says, adding: “Politically, we cannot alienate wealth. It helps support the [country’s] infrastructure and, at the moment, our infrastructure is failing.”
Exodus
She is well aware of the exodus of the ultra-wealthy from London, especially after the decision to scrap non-doms, the status to ensure only money earned in Britain was taxed.
The number of non-dom taxpayers in the UK in the final year before it was scrapped dropped by 1,200, statistics show, as the wealthy geared up for the change.
About 16,000 millionaires were predicted to leave the UK last year as the taxman’s grip tightened.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index suggest about half of the UK’s billionaire wealth – £120 billion ($160.7 billion) – has been lost.
It is too soon to tell the true impact of such decisions, says Ms Fatemi, but there is no doubting the direction of travel.
The government is avoiding addressing the issue of “a mass exodus of our uber-wealthy who are our biggest taxpayers”.
Inheritance tax and being taxed on global wealth has “driven a lot of people out”, but she says: “I don't think we have seen the ramifications of exactly how that has affected the economy.
"Someone employing over a thousand staff, who has personal staff, chefs, security guards, physiotherapists, tutors, teachers – all of these things have a domino effect to another workforce, like black cab drivers. I don't think we're going to understand these figures for a good five to six years.”
Hidden quitters
More than a dozen people with multibillion-pound fortunes have left or loosened ties with the country in favour of more favourable tax regimes, the Bloomberg index showed, including steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Aston Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris and telecoms investor Shravin Bharti Mittal. The UAE has been the preferred destination for many of the billionaires, along with Monaco, Switzerland and Italy.
But for the UK, all is not lost.
“Is there money still coming into London? Yes. Could we be more tax-smart? Yes. Do they need to be taxed? Yes,” Ms Fatemi says.
She says there is a need for transparency on how any wealth coming into the UK is taxed, with anything enveloped in a company structure paying “ridiculous” taxes. “That’s where the government is missing a really big trick,” she says.
The people really making money from the current situation are tax advisers, Ms Fatemi says, as there are so many moving parts.
She suggests the government gets a grip on the situation by speaking to wealth advisers like her “who are looking at where that tax position is and speaking to the people at every level to understand exactly what is going on”.
Immigrant mindset
Ms Fatemi puts her irrepressible work ethic down to her immigrant background, which created a determination to succeed.
Born in 1976, with a father who was a pilot with Iran Air before the revolution deposed the Shah, she spent time growing up in Kuwait and Bangkok, but mostly London.
She was even a "baby boarder" at the Norland Nursery in London for a year, which she recognises was a bizarre start to life in a new country.
“Both my parents felt it was imperative that my brother and I were educated,” she says, adding her father in particular fitted the immigrant stereotype of hoping she would study medicine or law, even though her passion was to work in the music industry.
“My mother really wanted us to live in the UK. We came at the time of [Margaret] Thatcher, having to work very, very hard. Nothing was for free, you should be grateful to be here and you're going to work very hard in order to stay here.
“It took 10 years to get my passport.”
Her father was rarely around, and her mother had multiple sclerosis, so she learnt to fend for herself. Her mother returned to Iran as her health deteriorated, meaning Ms Fatemi left home at 15 and surfed sofas until she found somewhere permanent to live, “on one of the roughest council estates in north London”.
She dealt with racism, prejudice and inequality but felt determined that she was going to “make a difference” by being a disruptive force.
Ms Fatemi had made her way through university when she saw the tele-sales advert.
“It said: ‘Are you good at talking? If you're a good salesperson, come and join us. You'll make a lot of money’. I got to number one in that company.”
Still in her early 20s, she then had to deal with both her parents, plus her boyfriend and best friend, dying in quick succession. She needed a change, so she threw herself into her career.
She badgered estate agent Foxtons for a job as a receptionist but ended up selling homes.
“I came from a tele-sales job of cold-calling over 400 people to this job where people would call me to spend millions.
“The Park Lane office, which is where I ended up in the late '90s, early 2000s, was where the real money was. International money was pouring into Mayfair.”
Speaking several languages and being well-travelled was an advantage as it gave her an understanding of people. “I know culturally how these people live,” Ms Fatemi says.
It was still not easy.
“You were just in this pit of sales. Each for their own. It was very cut-throat, very male, very chauvinistic. Very hard to navigate.
“But I was just born with this inherent female strength, being Iranian, Persian, but just being an immigrant. When you're an immigrant you're fighting just to be included, to survive. You don't know where your next meal's coming from and you're grateful just to be there.”
Wrong side of the tracks
Her personal situation also made things difficult.
“I was leaving Mayfair and going home to the worst estate in Kilburn, or sofa-surfing in the worst parts of north or south London, living in hostels, while still working at Foxtons.
“I was living in two worlds, which allowed me to see the other side of the track how people were really trying to survive. That allowed me that street-smart mentality.
It led her to set up a charity years later, called Shadow to Shine, to give opportunities for young people from underrepresented, diverse backgrounds to break into tech, fashion, construction, law or creative industries.
Perception
When Foxtons was sold, she set up her own conglomerate, Rokstone, inspired by Richard Branson’s multi-pronged business empire.
“He did Virgin Brides, Virgin Trains, Virgin planes, Virgin Holidays. And I thought, why can't I do that? So I set up this company called Rokstone.”
It allowed her to promote her love of music and entertainment with bricks and mortar, plus tech and philanthropy – all from her living room.
Ms Fatemi started travelling the world, running parties and events, amalgamating brands and styling for celebrities such as Rihanna and Beyonce.
A phone call from a former client asking her to act as a property buying agent returned her to London. “I didn’t even know what a buying agent was,” she says, not entirely convincingly.
She found a £500,000, one-bedroom flat after about 100 viewings on a small commission. Through word of mouth, she gained a few more clients before opening an office in Devonshire Street, Marylebone, the neighbourhood where she still operates.
It was all about perception, Ms Fatemi says. If she could persuade customers that Rokstone was a luxury real estate firm, it would live up to her exaggerations.
“We had one property to start, then got a house in Mayfair for £5 million and then I was selling two flats in Camberwell for £220,000. All referral, referral, referral.”
She would go out on viewings with other agents and pretend she was looking for a place for herself while learning their trade secrets.
“I was fearless,” Ms Fatemi says. “I was that ‘Persian princess’, because I had been at one stage, and my mother had been. I believed that I had a right to be there and because of that conviction I think people believed that I was one of them.”
She ensured she was “in every conversation, in every restaurant, at every opening” and even got a Hummer that was Rokstone-branded, which kept conveniently breaking down on Park Lane, where it could be seen by everyone.
At the time Ms Fatemi also became a single mother herself, so knew she had to make it work “because there was no other option”.
Networking
After 13 years of running her business, achieving a profit every year from £6 billion worth of sales, even through Covid, it was time to look for the next challenge.
During a viewing of a £30 million property in Piccadilly, an old colleague suggested she meet George Azar, who was assembling an "Avengers team" after buying the Sotheby’s franchise. They agreed after a 10-minute Zoom call that she should become a partner, with support for her charity and the wriggle room to set up a tech platform called Blackbook part of her conditions.
Blackbook is the culmination of 30 years of networking for Ms Fatemi and is intended as a sort of LinkedIn/Instagram for creatives, to allow them to display and monetise their skills in one place by connecting them with other "talent".
But her day-to-day is spent speaking with lawyers, tax advisers, compliance and most importantly, clients. She has just been advising a client in New York, a "prominent billionaire", about bricks and mortar investments.
“I am a global wealth adviser, which includes real estate, but really it's looking at their life position, how they're living, what's in their best interest for quality of life as well as investment.
“The conversations I'm having now are with the most powerful, leading people in the world.”
She says she deals with lots of Middle Eastern royal families and has clients in the UAE and across the GCC.
“I make sure I'm in Abu Dhabi and Dubai three or four times a year, in Qatar, in Saudi, and supporting them with the investment that they're bringing into London and globally.”
London calling
Despite its troubles, she is likely to recommend London as a place for long-term investors to place their money due to its “durability” and “tenacity”.
“The market is going to stay firm if you invest in best-in-class and super prime," she says. “And really, the people that I told to do that have made a lot of money.”
After three decades of deals, she now has a sixth sense for spotting long-term opportunities.
“I'm sad that I never pushed myself into investment banking because I think I would have been one of the best investment bankers in the world,” Ms Fatemi says.
But at the very least she can appreciate what she has achieved for herself.
“I'm going to be a better billionaire at 50 than I would have been at 30,” she says.