RAGS TO RICHES
I grew up working class & flogged makeup in Boots – now I sell £5 million homes & party on yachts
Watch the video to see how one mum makes over £8k a month with a savvy side hustle
A WOMAN has revealed how she went from working at Boots to selling houses to Dubai's wealthiest.
Catherine Earl left Sheffield university and went straight into a low-income job at the high street store flogging make-up and working in recruitment, but little did she know her luck would soon change.
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Eleven years later, Catherine (Cat) now earns at least £200,000 a year selling multi-million pound homes to the wealthiest people in Dubai.
A new Channel 4 show, Dubai: Buying The Dream, will follow the real estate agent and 18 colleagues at Betterhome as they show the lavish lifestyle of the city.
The blonde beauty grew up in a ‘working-class family’ in a small village in Nottinghamshire, with mother Vivien, 61, a nurse, and father Terry, 64, a retired maintenance engineer, a far cry form where she is now.
When Cat, 33, isn't selling homes, she spends her time jetting around Dubai harbour in a speedboat and sipping cocktails in exclusive bars.
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She's one of an estimated quarter of a million Brits who have moved to Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the past decade.
"I moved to Dubai for the sun. I was literally getting out of bed in the dark and walking 20 minutes to work in the cold. Now it’s sunny every day and I feel motivated because Dubai is such a nice place to live," she reveals to the .
Cat first started out as cabin crew for UAE’s airline Emirates but switched career and became an estate agent, for it’s in Dubai’s booming property market, where values rose by almost 40 per cent last year, that the big bucks are made.
It’s a glossy, high-maintenance life that costs Cat thousands to keep up with, not that she minds.
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Cat’s devotion to the job includes an eye-watering £10,000 a year beauty and grooming bill to ensure she looks the part.
From £80 mani and pedicures, £70 eyelash extensions, £500 hair extensions, £200 Botox sessions, £300 lip fillers, a hairdressing bill of almost £400 every 12 weeks, and £396 a month gym membership.
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Her Instagram has picture after picture of her showing off her tan in a variety of thigh-skimming designer dresses and vertiginous heels.
‘My friends at home always said I was overdressed for everything,’ she says. ‘It’s always been my personality — dressing up, getting my hair, nails and make-up done. I was always glamorous, but it’s gone up 100 per cent since I’ve been here because of my way of life," she explains.
Cat lives in the Dubai Marina with her husband Michael, 38, a talent booker, and their Egyptian Mau cat Princess.
Unlike in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, there is no restriction in the UAE on Westerners co-habiting, which the couple did before they wed earlier this year.
Working in the United Arab Emirates
If you have entered Dubai on a visit visa and want to start working, you must get a probationary work permit valid for up to 3 months from the Ministry of Labour. If you are caught working on a visit visa, you could get a fine or a prison sentence, and you risk deportation.
You risk arrest if you have lived or worked in the UAE and return when:
- your previous visa is not in order - for example if you did not cancel your work visa
- you have outstanding debts
- you have an unresolved legal issue
For more information, see the
Similarly, drinking alcohol was decriminalised three years ago.
Cat’s Instagram profile is filled with photographs showing off her luxurious lifestyle in the city, wearing a variety of thigh-skimming designer dresses and heels, but that doesn't mean she isn't clued up.
She says she respects the culture and would never walk around in tiny bikinis and makes sure to cover up in malls or the old town.
Over the past year, she has earned more than £215,000 selling properties, and neither foreigners nor UAE nationals pay income tax in Dubai — unless you transfer your earnings back to the UK.
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But Cat insists: ‘Don’t expect it to be like anything you see on Selling Sunset because it’s not. You have to work really hard. When I first got my job in real estate, I used to come into the office every weekend without fail.
‘I am always working. It’s not like my phone’s ever off. We want to live the life we live, so we have to work hard for it.’
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