Just B Rant: The Bethenny Clause

Published Dec 11, 2024, 8:00 AM

Kim broke the internet, the Bethenny Clause broke media contracts and launched a whole business model. All in a day's work!

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 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 bo Saint 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. 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 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 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. I just ran into this woman. Blah blah blah. 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 so many different Real Housewives producers, not now, of course, because I'm persona on grata, but so many Real Housewives producers that every housewive comes in and says, 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 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 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 don't know what the Bethany clause is. Actually, scratch that, strike that 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, 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. I was a nobody, I had nothing going on. 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, 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 seers integration into their show. And Kim promoted Madori after my deal. Why because we had the same agent, the same agent named Brian dh 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 Dao with Madori. Because that started the modern cocktail celebrity space. I 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. You know. It's not that easy. 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 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 livelys and the Jennifer Lopez Is and a lot of these celebrities that were trained in the glossed over, frosted, coached, 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 in the article on the Hollywood Reporter and Forbes came out, agents and lawyers started implementing the Bethany clause 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 to audit day and day out. She by Chara and and you know rando businesses from everybody on The Housewives and other shows, you know, snooky slippers or Gretchen Rossi's handbags. Like, they're not going to do that. It's an insurance policy. 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 dor EAT's Beverly Beach, what happened to that? You know, I think Dorit was also involved in nectaria wedding gowns, Like what happened to that? You know, it's not that easy. 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? So what's all that's so interesting is not 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. They want the show to do well. 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 network should be focused on, Like, they shouldn't really 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 taken 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 in a business or a television show. It can be even a small business or a restaurant. We 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 and that culture. And it's funny. 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 proven 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 does Paris Hilton sex tape tape define her? No? Is it part of her journey? Yes? Was Paris Hilton on The Simple Life? Yes? Was Kim Kardashian wearing cheesy bandage dresses in the beginning on her show? And have people sort of forgotten that? Yes? But is it where she came from? Yes? 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? But am I allowed to talk about something I was part of? Yeah? 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, you know, I don't know. 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 of people sometimes like Mark Cuban talk about it. But the way we're consuming 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.

Rants with Bethenny Frankel

Bethenny Frankel tells it like it is. RANT Definition: speak or shout at length in a wild, impassio 
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