Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
So it's so funny the things that pop off and
that don't pop off. So let's talk about things that
unexpectedly pop off, which is why you ultimately always have
to be authentic, because if you're trying to produce products
or services or content that you think people will like,
it usually doesn't work. Authenticity is the name of the
(00:34):
game in twenty twenty four, and there are so many
different examples of it. But I am living proof of
that because I've seen this in so many different ways recently.
So I was on an airplane and a woman walked
up to me and she said, Hey, Bethany, it's Bozama.
I'm like, oh god, hi, And she's like, I was
on your podcast. I'm like, I know you are. I
think the first guest on my podcast, and Boza st
(00:56):
John was the first guest on this podcast. Asked she
was the CMO of Netflix. Before that, she was at Endeavor,
which is a big talent agency. It's now William Morris
Endeavor or maybe it is. Yeah, I think it's WM
ME And she said hi, and she said I'm on
the New Housewives of Beverly Hills. I said, you are.
(01:17):
I didn't know it had just aired it had just started.
I don't watch the Housewives. I do talk about them
because of the clips that I see on social media
about the Housewives. But I said, oh wow, that's so
crazy amazing, and she said, yeah, I was negotiating and
I had to sign the Bethany clause. Now she's a
bad bitch. She's a real serious business bitch. And she
said she had to sign the Bethany clause, which to
(01:38):
me was like my first real Bethany clause flex. I
know everybody's had to sign it, and I'll explain to
you what it is, but that was like my first
real flex because she was the CMO of Netflix. Heard
of Netflix, and so I know that she like respected
my gangster, you know what I mean. I could tell
she like she she kind of respected my gangster, and
(01:58):
I like that. I respect hers. So anyway, we're on
the plane and then I talk into my phone and
I say, I tell a story.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I just ran into this woman. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Do you want to meet her? And I bring my
phone over and I record her. I say, she says
it's okay, and she's beautiful, and she says hello, and
she's doing the show it's a testament to a couple
of things. One I remember years ago sitting down with
p K and Kyle PK from Beverly Hills, and he said,
we did the show because of you, and we want
the success that you've had. And I've heard this from
(02:27):
so many different Real Housewives producers, not now, of course,
because I'm persona and on Grada, but so many Real
Housewives producers that every housewive comes in and says and
I want to do what Bethany did, And I'm so humbled,
I'm so grateful. I'm so moved by that, Like I
never take that for granted, and it shows me that
(02:49):
it's correct. I remember, like the Erica Janes of the
world coming on, and the actresses that had a pre
existing career or a Lisa Rinna started being on the
show because they had seen my success. It's also why
the show has changed, and it's also why Real Housewives
of New York has changed, because the women are beautiful
and savvy and aware, and we were a bunch of
(03:11):
busted up train wrecks. So I'm going to get into
that we were has bins or nobody's. We were used
to be somebody or nobody's and now the girls on
the New York Housewives and are also savvy. It's hard
to go back to authenticity and it's hard to go
home again. And then people were saying, what is the
Bethany clause? And I was thinking, I can't believe people
(03:31):
don't know what the Bethany clause is. Actually, scratch that,
strike that f on the record. I can't believe why
would people know what the Bethany clause is? Because I've
discussed it, but that doesn't mean that everybody's heard it,
and I've taken new fans on the journey. The Bethany
clause is a clause that when you go onto reality TV,
you sign saying that you'll give a piece of your
future business because of the platform that they're giving you. Now,
(03:54):
when I went on Two Housewives, I got a contract
and there was a small blurb that said that we
would give a percentage of our business our future business.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I was a nobody, I had nothing going on.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
The fact that I didn't want to sign this is
remarkable because I'm not great at contracts, but I am
good at just like sniffing out something that doesn't work.
And in my contract, I crossed that out. I said,
I'll take the shitty money, which was a lot of
money to me because I had no money, and I'm
crossing this part out. So this became a butt hurt
moment for Bravo when I was in the Hollywood Reporter
in a major article and on the cover of Forbes magazine,
(04:28):
and everybody saw the money that I made for Skinny Girl,
something that I used the vehicle of Housewives to create,
something that everyone tries to do now, something that the
Kardashians followed suit in doing their sears integration into their show.
And Kim promoted Madori after my deal. Why because we
had the same agent, the same agent named Brian dw
(04:48):
When called for someone to pay fifty thousand dollars to
Kim to do a small liquor deal, he said, no,
she doesn't drink, but he said, I have this girl
who has this idea for the skinny margarita. And that's
the deal that I ended up doing. After my deal,
Kim ended up doing a deal via Brian Doo with
Madori because that started the modern cocktail celebrity space. I
(05:12):
also started the TV show integration as that vehicle, meaning
that's why there was the Seers deal and all of
this stuff with the Kardashians fueled into that show, and
that's why they're billionaires now because they learned that model
which I created, and they've been much more successful and
(05:33):
lucrative than I have at it. They probably work way
harder than I do. There are many more than them.
They have a Chris Jenner and give them their flowers.
They've done incredibly well. But that was a model that
started because I was on the show and the other
women were like buying diamonds and getting facials and talking
about how rich they were. I was telling the truth
(05:53):
about how poor I was and what I wanted, and
in real time, I was going through the experience of
being hungry, being alone, being single, being in my late thirties,
being broke, and wanting something. And I went through that
with the audience, which was an authentic experience. And now
people are trying to sort of re create that, but
it's they can't help themselves by want to act rich.
(06:27):
And it's important to say to you all who are
in business or budding entrepreneurs or have an idea or
dreams that people like myself and like the Kardashians have
had many more failures and successes. I had the lunch meets,
I had a nutritional shake, I had bars. I've had
a bunch of different things. The Kardashians have had tanning products,
They've had hair products, They've had credit cards, they've had
(06:48):
diet pills. They've had so many different failures. But it's
like throwing spaghetti against the wall and something hit. Kim's
makeup hasn't blown the doors off the way that Kylie's did.
Kim Skims is what really popped it off, you know.
I mean, it's still supporting Kanye presumably now. And Kylie
had this apparel that didn't seem to do that well.
(07:11):
And it's not easy. J Lo has had skincare, body glow,
hair clothing, all of it. Beyonce had Darian Jean's. I mean,
people have had major businesses that have hundreds of millions
of followers and failed. So do not be discouraged. If
you have failed, you can succeed. There are many roads
to rome. And like I said, not everybody has a
(07:33):
Beverly Hills Hollywood powerhouse machine like the Kardashians and a
momager and this infrastructure and the television show they got,
which was a vehicle to push you through.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
You know. It's not that easy.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
So that's why it's difficult, you know, for the new
women on Housewives to come on and just be savvy
and be that bitch and have a social media presence
and that be enough. The audience wants to see the struggle,
wants the authenticity, but they also want the money. It's
very difficult. They want to see the Beverly Hills backyards,
but they also want to see someone struggling. They want
someone to succeed, but they also don't want them to
(08:07):
forget where they came from, you know, and you just
can't configure what the audience is going to want in
your small business, in your restaurant, or in a television
show or in a brand. You have to just be authentic.
And that's what most people aren't realizing. That's why the
Blake Livelies and the Jennifer Lopez is and a lot
of these celebrities that were trained in the glossed over, frosted, coached,
(08:31):
scripted land of Hollywood have fallen short. They just don't
know how to do it. It's not that easy to do.
It's not that easy to be authentic. So the Bethany
clause is something that Bosom assigned. And once My deal
happened and the article on the Hollywood Reporter and Forbes
came out, agents and lawyers started implementing the Bethany clause
(08:55):
because the networks were saying, we're not going to let
what happened with Bethany happened to us, and if someone
cash is out and has a big success, we are
going to want a piece. And the thing is it's
not that easily enforceable because networks, and this doesn't happen
with streamers, but networks aren't gonna be good at auditing.
Networks aren't gonna spend the time and money and accountants
(09:15):
to audit day and day out. She by cheat and
you know rando businesses from everybody on the Housewives and
other shows, you know, snooky slippers or Gretchen Rossi's handbags.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Like, they're not going to do that. It's an insurance policy.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So if one day somebody has a public cash out,
they can go claw back audit and then they can
get the money. But every day they're not just looking
at what Dori EAT's Beverly Beach.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
What happened to that?
Speaker 1 (09:40):
You know, I think Dorit was also involved in nectaria
wedding gowns, like what happened to that?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
You know, it's not that easy.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So they're not clawing back to see how many nectaria
wedding gowns door eats sold. They're just or Beverly Beach
bathing suits that happen back then. It's if Beverly Beach
bathing suits got bought by Monday Swimwear, what would that
look like?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
So what's also so interesting is not.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Every that's a model that not everybody, So like Shark
Tank does not implement the Bethany clause, Shark Tank doesn't
care if Kevin O'Leary takes a piece of that business
that makes ten million dollars, or Mark Cuban or Barbara Corkran.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
They want the show to do well.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
And it's an interesting cultural discussion because they're not looking
to nickel and dime and take a piece of what
everybody does. They want a successful show. They're in the
business of successful shows. And if you want a good culture,
you should want your people to make money. You should
want all boats to rise with the tide. You should
want everybody to win and that's frankly what Bravo and
other networks should be focused on, Like they shouldn't really
(10:39):
be focused on grabbing everything from every person. They should
be focused on treating their talent really well. The reason
that Shark Tank has done so well and been like
a plug and play is because they taking care of
their people. They have a model that works, they have
a good culture. They make it very easy to shoot
the show, to produce the show, and everybody does well
(11:01):
in a business or a television show. It can be
even a small business or a restaurant where you have
a big turnover. You're constantly churning and burning and trying
not to pay people, not to reward people, trying to
take some of people's you're gonna bump into a lot
of turnover, and you're gonna bump into a different model.
So it's been interesting to watch the shifts in the Housewives.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And that culture. And it's funny.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I'll tell you this too. You know, my publicist is like,
stay away from the Housewives. We finally rinsed it off.
It's not really you and it isn't really me. It's
been so many years, but I've proved myself in so
many different ways, And it's like, is Kim Kardashian the
same person as she was in the beginning of her
reality show or does her sex tape define her? Or
(11:48):
does Paris Hilton sex tape tape to find her? No?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Is it part of her journey? Yes? Was Paris Hilton
on The Simple Life? Yes?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Was Kim Kardashian wearing cheesy bandage dresses in the beginning
on her show? And have people would have forgotten that?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yes? But is it where she came from? Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So it's like I talk about Housewives because I know
intimately about it and because it's also a flex sometimes
that like when I was on it, it was over
three million viewers and now it's got two hundred and
fifty thousand. Like I'm only human, I'm going to talk
about that. So yeah, So sometimes I go back and
forth about why do I want to have a show
about it and like talk about all these people and
care every day? No?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
But am I allowed to talk about something I was
part of? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Because talking about the Bethany clause is talking about business
and talking about the shift there, and it is also
fairly shady, you know. It's sometimes I look over there
and I'm like, are they still talking about the same
shit all these years later? Like, are they really still
like in that same spot doing the same shit when
you know the world has orbited so many times?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So anyway, I am conflicted and sometimes don't want to
talk about it. But recently I've been talking about it
a bit more because it's just there's a big transition.
So it's like the entertainment industry has changed and it's
got to be discussed from a business standpoint. People like
Gary Vee talk about it a lot. People sometimes like
Mark Cuban talk about it. But the way we're consuming
(13:07):
content is definitely changing. It's a different world. When I
got into The Housewives, there was no Twitter, no Instagram,
no TikTok. There was Facebook, Okay, there was no Twitter.
I didn't want to go on. I didn't want to
tell anybody what I'm doing. Now I talk to you
about my fucking chicken salad travails all day, Like it's insane.
The world has changed so much.