Reality TV Meets C-Suite: Prime Video Launches "The CEO Club" With Founder-Led Cast
Prime Video premiered "The CEO Club" on Monday, a reality series featuring four women who run their own businesses, marking the latest entertainment industry attempt to package entrepreneurship for mass audiences.
The show stars Winnie Harlow, founder of skincare brand Cay Skin; Loren Ridinger, CEO of Market America; Isabela Grutman, founder of ISA Grutman; and Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger, a designer and former model. In a February 19 interview, Ocleppo Hilfiger distinguished the program from conventional reality television, though she didn't elaborate on what makes it different beyond the cast's business credentials.
For finance leaders, the show represents a curious cultural moment: the C-suite title as entertainment currency. Reality TV has long trafficked in wealth and aspiration—think "Real Housewives" or "Selling Sunset"—but explicitly branding a show around CEO status suggests the title itself has become the draw, not just the lifestyle it enables.
The cast composition is telling. Harlow brings celebrity cachet from her modeling career before launching Cay Skin. Ridinger helms Market America, a multi-level marketing company that's been operating for decades. The other two founders run smaller ventures, though the source material doesn't specify their companies' scale or revenue.
What's notably absent from the promotional material: any discussion of actual business operations, board dynamics, or the unglamorous mechanics of running a company. (One suspects the show will not feature extended sequences of cash flow forecasting or vendor negotiations, though that would certainly be novel programming.)
The timing is interesting. We're in an era where "founder" and "CEO" have become aspirational identity markers, divorced from the traditional corporate ladder. Everyone's a CEO of something—a personal brand, a side hustle, a Substack. Prime Video is betting that audiences want to watch people who've claimed those titles navigate... well, whatever reality TV protagonists navigate. Presumably not EBITDA optimization.
For CFOs and finance operators, the show is likely irrelevant to their actual work. But it does signal something about how business leadership is being marketed to the public: less about operational excellence or strategic decision-making, more about personal brand and lifestyle. The CEO as influencer, rather than operator.
The question is whether this helps or hurts the broader perception of what running a company actually entails. On one hand, any visibility for women-led businesses could be positive. On the other hand, if "CEO" becomes just another reality TV archetype—somewhere between "housewife" and "real estate agent"—it may further muddy public understanding of what corporate leadership actually requires.
One thing's certain: if your finance team starts asking about getting the company featured on reality TV, you'll know the genre has officially jumped the shark. Or perhaps that's the point—turn business leadership into entertainment, and maybe more people will want to try it. Just don't expect the show to cover Section 404 compliance or treasury management strategy.
The show is now streaming on Prime Video, for anyone curious about what happens when you put "CEO" in a reality TV title and see who watches.
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