Becky Fatemi Is The Real Estate Mogul Connecting Creatives

In October, Fatemi announced that Sotheby’s International Realty – a luxury property brand founded by the fine art dealers in 1976 – had acquired her business following Rokstone’s strongest year yet. “I’ve traded as an SME [small and medium-sized enterprise] for 13 years at a profit every year; we’re part of only one per cent of SMEs that have done that,” says Fatemi. “I was always told that the time you should look to sell your business is when it’s at its highest.” After secretly manifesting that she could potentially sell Rokstone, Fatemi was approached by Sotheby’s earlier this year.

She credits her successes to her nine-strong staff, which is made up of mostly women, all of whom will keep their jobs as part of the deal. “I am a lot of what I am because of my team.” She’ll stay on as a partner for the next three years and her team will continue to work in Rokstone’s former office just off Chiltern Street in Marylebone. It’s close to where Fatemi lives with her nine-year-old son in a beautifully decorated flat. “I found that they key to negotiation was learning entirely through experience. I was lucky, not because I’m a kickass bitch, but it’s because of all the mistakes I made previously. My mistakes are the reason I was able to pull that off.”

Fatemi is passionate about nurturing the next generation in worlds beyond multi-million pound houses, too. Her charitable initiative Shadow to Shine, which provides industry mentoring to 16-25-year-olds who’ve faced hurdles through their day- to-day lives, works with the likes of British Vogue and the London Stock Exchange to provide professional opportunities to accelerate the careers of inner-city youth. “The amount of creative talent that we have with us at Shadow to Shine lets us give young people the opportunity to be in front of someone in the industry who holds the power to systematically change people’s lives,” says Fatemi, who in the last two years has grown eager to find new, innovative ways to connect people in the creative fields.

So much so that she decided to launch BlackBook by Roksia, an app that gives creatives the opportunity to monetise their skill sets. Based on the idea of a little black book of contacts, the exciting tech development allows people – whether they’re photographers, stylists or writers, through to hair and make- up artists, and set designers – to house all their work on a single platform. “It’s a space to create, collaborate and curate,” says Fatemi, who’s developed an adaptable and accessible interface where a person’s profile becomes their portfolio. It’s as easy to navigate as simply scrolling through Instagram. Fatemi envisioned it as a way to easily unite creatives at different career levels in the industry. “With BlackBook, if someone comes to you and says, ‘I need a great hairstylist’ or ‘I need a journalist to write a feature for me’, you can simply recommend someone great by sharing their profile, where all their brilliant work exists in one place.”

Beloved television fixture and host of Love Island Maya Jama jumped on as an investor in BlackBook after she’d reached out to Fatemi looking for a photographer recommendation. “When I met with her, I showed her this photographer’s BlackBook profile. Straight away, she could see the quality of his work and they instantly reached out to each other. Now, he does all of her photographs. It was just this organic way of collaborating.” Investing in BlackBook was a way for Jama to support a woman of colour who had self-funded and built an entire tech platform in a field that’s still predominantly dominated by white, cis men. “I decided while I was running my company full-time and my charity, and also being a single mum, to put the money and time into creating BlackBook myself,” says Fatemi. “I’ve gone against everything that everyone has ever told me on how you should create a successful tech startup. I’ve chosen fields that I love. I’ve looked around in the past and not seen anyone that looks like me in the room and then thought, well, hang on, how can I open those doors for the next generation?”

Growing up, Fatemi always had the instinct to document her own life. She recently rediscovered an autobiography she wrote at only 12. “There was a chapter in there on injustice and racism, and one on equality for women,” she says. Fatemi grew up living a nomadic life, following her father, a pilot, around the world. But in 1984, aged seven, she and her brother were moved by her mother, an Iranian refugee, to South-west London, where the family moved into a bedsit with their grandfather. Fatemi began taking Saturday jobs, first as a paper girl for the Putney Gazette when she was 12, “which I used to walk because we couldn’t afford a bike”, before working at a sports shop and volunteering at a mental health charity, then left home at only 15. “I’ve done everything. Waitressing, cleaning toilets, McDonald’s. I was an MC. I was a dancer. I was a club promoter. I was even a stylist,” she says. (In 2009, Fatemi was brought in at the last minute to dress Rihanna for the London premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, where she styled the star in a vintage Alexander McQueen jumpsuit she found in a charity shop and lace gloves and pearls she bought from Primark.)

She fell into real estate because “I realised that it was an easy way of making money,” she adds with honesty. Before she joined Foxtons, where she would eventually become the agent’s highest billing sales executive on record in Park Lane, she was working in telesales. “My target was 400 cold calls a day,” she says. “I actually phoned the owner of Foxtons after my job offer to work there was rejected and pitched him to buy something. He said to me, ‘I don’t want to buy what you’re selling. But I want you to work for me.’ I told him I had already applied to be Foxton’s receptionist, because at the time I thought that, you know, as a woman, you could only be a receptionist or a PA. But no, he said, ‘come and sell houses.’”

Fatemi would rise through the ranks to become one of Foxton’s first female directors, but increasingly grew tired of the lack of appreciation for her work ethic. “I had this amazing office in Park Lane, I was driving a Porsche and was sitting in Nobu every day, but I would think to myself: I’m so unhappy.” She handed in her notice after 11 years of working there and threw all her efforts into an events company she had started as a side business, which had an A-list client list including Naomi Campbell, Leonardo DiCaprio and Beyoncé.

Rokstone began on Fatemi’s kitchen table when jewellery and furniture designer Lara Bohinc MBE asked for her help in finding a flat. From Bohinc’s referrals, business began to flourish, and soon enough Fatemi had moved into her own office space. “I remember just sitting there thinking: how am I going to afford this? I was always living right by the wire.”

Her success story is something to be admired, yet Fatemi is the first person to tell you how difficult it can be. “When you run your own business, people think you’re some sort of superwoman. That’s not something that I want women to aspire to. I mean, I had my son by emergency C section and had to get back to work three days later. I shouldn’t have had to do that. I don’t sleep. I drop the ball. I cry a lot. I have anxiety attacks. There are days my son has to sit in the office because I don’t have childcare. I’m always looking at the role of women and, continuously, I’m not happy with what support is available for us.

“All through my life, people have giggled and told me I cannot do things simply because I’m a woman,” she continues. “‘You’re not gonna build an app.’ ‘You’re not going to run a property business.’ ‘You’re not going to be able to pull off the charity.’ In a way, I’m thankful for that, because that means I’m always going to push even harder.”

Taken from 10+ Issue 6 – VISIONARY, WOMEN, REVOLUTION – out now. Order your copy here. 

@beckyfatemi