Bethenny Frankel: Kardashian, Clooney followed my lead | Trending Now

0:01Jägermeister knows that there's people who watch the game and people who know the game. Knowers know rivalries aren't heated. They're ice cold. They know rankings change. Traditions don't. And they know that when you drink Jägermeister on game day, you drink it ice cold. Otherwise, you just don't know the game. So drink it ice cold or don't drink it at all. Jägermeister. Damn, that's cold. Drink responsibly. Jägermeister liqueur, 35 % alcohol by volume. Imported by Mass Jägermeister U.S. White Plains, New York. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast.

0:35Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our most popular clips from a past interview. This week, Bethany Frankel. What you're about to listen to is trending this week on our Facebook page.

1:14Hope you enjoy. All right, so a big turning point for you professionally was Skinny Girl. Explain how little interest there was in your idea for the low-calorie mixed drink initially, and then how quickly that changed. There was no interest at all. Because when I got into alcohol, publicists told their clients, put the drink down. Every client, no one was promoting alcohol. No one. And the guy who is responsible for the success of Grey Goose said to me, I said to him, quote unquote, this is a f*** you idea. He said, there is no such thing as a f*** you idea in the liquor business. Because there had been no f*** you ideas in the liquor business.

1:50There were no new categories. There were no new inventions. It was you sold booze. That was it. You sold wine to women, sold scotch and whatever. before me, no one drank the clear tequila. The men did. The men were drinking the Patron, but I gave license to women to drink clear tequila and to drink this, and I invented the skinny margarita, which is literally, oh, in Russia, they're ordering skinny margaritas. I'm not exaggerating, like all over the world. It's crazy. So I would go to these different companies. I went to Diageo, to their Cuervo section, to their other sub departments. The People that got me the meetings didn't even show up to the meetings.

2:26It was literally me and the person at Diageo being like, yeah, no, we're good. And then Frangelico gave me, I remember, half a million dollars to do something, to do a skinny, like, Frangelini and like, okay. And then Sousa came to me to give me$200 ,000 to talk about their thing and make drinks with their thing. But I was like, I want to do my own thing. But I would have even done a collaboration and they could have taken half of it with any of these companies. I didn't even know what I wanted. I just knew that I wanted you to be able to order my drink my way. so but people had such little interest in it that they wouldn't know like not a little get out of here like you're in it you know you're just like yeah no like completely no interest so there was an agent that represented kim kardashian and there was a man who called for kim kardashian he wanted to pay her fifty thousand dollars to promote a product the agent called back says kim kardashian doesn't drink but i have this girl who has this idea for this drink the agent called the guy back I met the guy.

3:24He was the only guy. He was the only guy. His uncle had created Sky Vodka, and he was an interim CEO. He had never made any kind of money like that. Like, he was just like a finance guy. He made normal money. And he was the only guy. And it wasn't even a real lawyer. It was like a veterinarian slash lawyer, like a dentist slash lawyer that did the deal. It was like not complicated at all because, but I always had good instincts about what it should be like, how the deal should work. So why did you almost not sell? Because I didn't know anything. I mean, because I didn't. It was the same reasons I did.

3:59I was like, why didn't I sell? Because it was so soon. It was 18 months from the idea to the shelves. And we were the fastest growing liquor brand in history. We created the ready to drink category. And I invented the skinny margarita. And invented the low calorie category. Every can you see that says calories is because of this brand. Every can you see is because of this brand. It was a ready-to-drink product. That was like a not, they had crappy, cheap versions of Bacardi in discount baskets at the drugstore. It was not, you know, years before there had been wine coolers, like those sweet, sugary, it just, so, you know, I was very aware of two things.

4:35I created something that was lightning in a bottle, but I was also aware that I didn't have my first pile. I didn't have any money. I hadn't made a single cent. If there was any sort of legal issue, it would bury me. Like, I also knew I wanted street cred. It would give me the street cred. It would be like, we turned a brand. No one really realized it was the fastest growing liquor brand. The liquor companies did. What's interesting about this is that after my deal, Kim Kardashian learned to drink Midori for a million dollars when she went as Green Envy for Halloween. So I really was an influencer in every other celebrity, including George Clooney, including Ryan.

5:12Well, yeah, now everybody has. You're welcome. Like that is fully as a result of, because I remember Mark Berg saying to me, Charlie Sheen wants a liquor deal now. And I remember him saying Justin Timberlake wants, everyone wants a liquor deal because I, because the cover of Forbes and The Hollywood Reporter was just disruptive. And it drove Bravo crazy too because they didn't have a piece of that deal. And the company that bought us was like, we're going to do this with Skinny Sousa, which I now realize wouldn't have competed. And none of them have ever competed with Skinny Girl. You can't f*** around with what you're not willing to lose.

5:42You know, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. It was a lot of money. It would have been probably five times the amount. If it were now, it would be five times the amount. If it were Clooney days, it would be. The f***ed up thing is I started it, so we couldn't set the price to what it would end up being for brands like the Clooney or the Pinnacle because I started. So I was too early, but someone had to f***ing start the Band-Aid off. Looking back now, are you glad you sold when you did? Yes, I had to start it. It was the first horse, and other people got a lot more money because of it, but it doesn't mean if I stayed in, I would have gotten more money because of it.

6:13And we were too, someone would have, I wasn't willing to take the risk that someone could drown us. Right. In a category I didn't deserve to be crushing when it's the mafia, the liquor business. The liquor business is the mafia. So getting on those corners was crazy. And you did it in 18 months. And I did it in 18 months. I was an animal. Just more money. I did that on my first book too. When you're young and you're hungry like that or you're thirsty, I did it. I did a pregnant. I was pregnant selling alcohol. It was insane. When I'm an animal, I'm a full animal. But I have to be in beast mode.

6:44And I'm telling one of my other partners now, I'll be in, like, you have to give me more equity and I'll go into beast mode. But without more equity, I'm not. So she's making very small picture decisions because she's against the clock and she's sitting in purgatory. So I'm either in beast mode or I don't give a shit mode. And right now she's got me in, she's in purgatory and we're going one way or the other. And she'd be very smart to, like, say, go in beast mode. So you sold Skinny Girl to being global, but you retained the rights to be able to use the name in any way that's not connected to alcohol.

7:20Right. So, like, what does that entail now? I love the licensing business and I don't love the licensing business. What I love about the licensing business is that the few categories I entered into, they're still making me millions of dollars now. And they don't want me to do anything, which is bizarre. Like, no one's calling me from ConAgra to say, push that popcorn. I just do one. So I forget I even have these brands, and I love them. No one's pushing me to push salad dressing because they've got it in the machine. It's the distribution machine. So what it entails is not a lot. It entails not a lot.

7:53It entails good product, good partners. Is that also what you dislike about it? No, I don't not like it. I just, a lot of them don't hit. And in the beginning, you have to really make the decisions right, and you have to decide you're going to be with the right partners and everyone promises you a whole big thing. I also don't love it because it comes from external. It's they come to you to want to do the thing.

8:19And I'm a person that usually comes from me to do the thing. So when I'm on Shark Tank, it's bizarre and counterintuitive because they've got this thing that they want to do. And typically, if that idea has been presented to me, it's presented to me because the producers have known and it's something that's geared towards a female audience or something that's either health or beauty or something that I touch. So then now I'm going to take a small percentage of that thing that if I wanted to do it, I could do it because I'm actually a founder and an entrepreneur. Most of the other sharks are investors.

8:51They understand businesses and they understand brands, but I haven't seen a product come from Kevin O 'Leary's body or Mark Cuban's body. They are amazing at investing and understand so much more than I do about the other side of it. but it's not usually if it's not a financial product it's not usually coming from like a solution that they're seeing in society so relicensing is usually coming from the market and often the market doesn't know what the people want they're late i've got i've had partners come to me a beverage company came to me a multi-billion dollar beverage company to try to like chase the product that someone else is doing which means that in a year we're going to be on the shelves next to them and i knew i predicted this i knew that they would be already out and i wanted to do something else and battled with my partner.

9:34I was like, I don't want to chase the market. I know what I want to do. And the person who ended up doing what I wanted to do sold it for like$60 to$100 million fast. So I like the ideas that come from within for the most part, because I don't like to listen to like data and research about what women are going to want. And that's this week's fan favorite. To see more popular videos, go to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger.

10:02Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro Plans. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney Plus. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go. A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world.

10:45Return to Pandora on Disney Plus. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick. Avatar Fire and Ash now streaming on Disney Plus rated PG-13