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High-profile business guru and former host of The Celebrity Apprentice Mark Bouris says he will fire himself this financial year if the company he founded, Yellow Brick Road, does not make a profit.
Bouris made the bold declaration to Chanticleer around the same time that YBR came under attack from another successful entrepreneur, Brett Kelly, who says the YBR wealth management strategy will never work.
Kelly, who owns the fastest-growing network of accounting firms in the country, says people buying low value mortgages from YBR's network of 40 branches do not have enough money to make the YBR wealth management strategy profitable.
But Bouris is determined to make wealth management a larger proportion of earnings at YBR. In fact, he plans to open 40 new branches a year until the network of branches reaches about 100.

Kelly's firm, Kelly+Partners, has about 8000 clients and more than $3 billion in funds under management. YBR has $700 million under management.

Bouris last week discovered the sort of pressure that has been felt by contestants on Celebrity Apprentice when Kelly tried to grab a stake in YBR.
There is a dispute over who said what to whom but Chanticleer  understands there was a series of emails between Kelly and Macquarie and Bouris. The result was that Kelly failed in a bid to buy any of the shares in YBR held by the two biggest shareholders –  Macquarie Group and Nine Entertainment Co.
Strategic partners

Macquarie and Nine each owns a 20 per cent stake in YBR and both are strategic partners of YBR. Macquarie supplies YBR with mortgage loans while Nine has been supplying a certain amount of free advertising as part of a contra deal from 2012 worth $6.5 million. The contra deal was in settlement for shares in YBR.

Separate to the contra deal, YBR has been a big advertiser on the Nine network but that is not expected to be repeated this year as Bouris seeks to cut costs.
Bouris refreshed the YBR strategy this year after he failed to meet a promise made last year to earn a profit in the year to June 2016.
An investor update issued last week by YBR summed up the company's competitive advantage as scaling lending, with $38 billion in mortgages under management, distribution scale with 1500 credit representatives and brand equity, which is much stronger than competitors'.
Bouris' goals for 2017 are to pursue a substantial lift in lending conversion, drive out the wealth model, leverage the strong YBR brand through "in-market" activation and have a firm cost discipline.

Kelly believes that Bouris has done well to build a strong finance business but he is convinced that Australians with money for wealth management do not go to mortgage brokers. He says that over the past decade the big four banks have not been able to make wealth management work in a profitable way and he questions whether Bouris can do so.
Kelly refused to comment on his approach to buy Macquarie's stake but Chanticleer understands it was via email to a divisional director at Macquarie, Kirk Kileff.
Kileff responded to Kelly by email last Saturday, saying that Macquarie's stake was not for sale and that YBR was a strategic partner of the group. He also urged Kelly to stop making any comments in the market about YBR.
Email exchange
Bouris was informed of the approach. Kelly and Bouris later exchanged emails on Saturday night about the approach.
It is understood that Kelly told Bouris he was interested in doing business with him. He told Bouris he was impressed with his finance business and believed the Kelly+Partners business was complementary.
Separately, a broker associated with Kelly approach Nine about selling its stake.
Bouris says Nine is not a seller but there is a suggestion that Nine asked about the bid.

Macquarie's strategic relationship with YBR is obviously important enough for the bank to sit on a loss-making equity position.
It is believed Kelly is a fan of Bouris', who built a mortgage business and sold it to GE before the global financial crisis. But it is likely he would agitate for Bouris to take a pay cut if he controlled the business.
Bouris is sitting on a mortgage book worth at least $43 million, which is more than the market cap of YBR. One peculiar aspect of mortgage lending is that if Bouris stopped writing new loans he would make more money.
Bouris admitted to Chanticleer that his reputation is at stake in the quest to build YBR into one of the country's largest independent financial firms.