"A website whizz kid and wordsmith with designs on a new way of publishing"
Lee Steele owns online website Yucatan Expat Life. It does what is says on the tin, but is breaking new ground for stylish and innovative design, with its fresh and engaging approach. Fundación BAI's roving reporter, Mark Callum, caught up with Lee over a glass of sparkling mineral water.
How did you come to visit Merida and buy a house here?
It must have been early 2010 when we saw a couple of “House Hunters International” episodes about Mérida on TV, and for months, our conversation kept returning to those shows. We had money set aside for a weekend home on Cape Cod, and it was during one of those trips to the Cape, in late summer, that we decided to finally visit Mérida. I had never even been to Mexico. We were there in November, and the rest is history.
Have you worked in publishing and design all your life?
I started out at a tiny community newspaper in Ocean City, New Jersey, back in the mid-80s after college. I had intended to have a big fat career in advertising, but the community news bug bit me. I’d always imagined myself running a little weekly paper in retirement. Now that news has gone digital, I’ve traded in a printing press for Wordpress, and I couldn’t be more contented.
Yucatan Expat Life has made a big impact as a stylish and very informative website, what's the concept?
That’s very kind! I’m really just trying to find a way to apply my skills to something that makes me part of the community here. We also do advertising and social media marketing for local businesses and non-profits, which is something my partner and I have done for about 20 years as Arroyo + Steele.
How has your business changed since you started?
Yucatán Expat Life took about three years to find its voice. Over time, we gauged reader reaction to each story, and figured out what kind of topics attract positive attention. We learned that relevancy matters, or maybe that’s just the type of story we’re best at. Ponderous think-pieces flopped. Helpful stories with a positive message do great. Facebook, of course, has become increasingly important as well. Social media is a wonderful tool when you use it thoughtfully.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Funny you mention mornings, because I’m an early riser at heart. When we’d stay at guesthouses in Mérida, I’d drive the proprietor crazy hunting for coffee at 6 a.m. I get up out of bed when the thought hits me, “What’s happening? What am I missing?”
Lee Steele´s favorites:
BOOK - Anything by Hamaca Press! (That’s the other little sideline I’ve been working on, helping authors publish their own books.)
FILMS - “All About Eve” never gets old.
ON MY IPOD - It’s all RuPaul, hunty!
HOBBIES - Cartooning! I need to brush up on that.
RESTAURANT - The jury’s out. All I know is Yucatán has been a revelation, despite all those printed reports about it not being an area for great restaurants. That’s changing fast.
DRINK - I talk a lot about Scotch, but really I’m a coffee fiend.
TRAVEL - My favorites change daily. It might be Mexico City if I ever get around to going.
BEACH - Nope. Give me paved surfaces!
What do you most love about spending time in Merida?
I’m rediscovering a social life. Living in the Centro is almost like being in college again, living close by so many like-minded people, people who are adventurous and intellectually curious enough to be expats in a beautiful, if challenging, tropical, colonial, ancient city.
You are very generous with your time supporting Fundación BAI, and we are delighted that you are a Media Sponsor for us, what motivates you to help?
Thank you for saying that. All you have to do is look around and see the need. You can give people bread and circuses, but without education, how will young people enjoy a good life? If Fundación BAI needs the resources to do its good work, how can anyone just sit there and not pitch in, as and when they are able?
Lee Steele is one of our socially responsible PLATINUM sponsors investing in the future of the young people of the Yucatán. More at yucatanexpatlife.com
For more about becoming one of our caring Sponsors please contact us.
ONE thing about you that people might not know?
I’m such an open book, I can’t think of what’s not out there. Whenever people ask me that as an ice-breaker, I just make up stuff. I have six toes on my left foot, I invented the ped egg, I appeared in the original “Cats,” stories like that!
What were the careers of your Grandfathers?
I’m descended from Almeric Lake from Southampton, England, whose two distinguished sons were Arthur, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Sir Thomas Lake. It’s all downhill from there. I never knew my grandfathers, but on my dresser I keep my Grandfather Lake’s 1940s taxi medallion from a stint in Washington, D.C., and on my mantlepiece I have a World War I boatswain’s whistle that belonged to Grandpa Steele. That’s all I have from either of them.
If there was one thing in the World that you could change, what would it be?
OK, now I feel like I’m in the Miss America pageant. There’s so much in the world I’d change, it’s quite a burden to single out the one. But you know what I’d like to see more of? Calm, rational thought. How do we promote that?
Any future plans you can share – an exclusive piece of gossip for our Fundacion BAI readers?
God laughs at those who make plans. I’m just going to lock myself in my courtyard and work on thinking calmly and rationally, maybe start a trend.
Do you aim to retire here?
You know, for a hot minute I thought this move to Mérida would be an early retirement. But I see so much opportunity now that I didn’t have back in Connecticut. But if by “retire” you mean stay here until we die? Yeah, maybe. I don’t know where else we’d go. There’s no city that even comes in a close second.