Just B Rant: The Bethenny Clause

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

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Episode Transcript

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 bo Saint

(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. I

(01:17):
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. 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

(02:22):
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,

(02:45):
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

(03:05):
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

(03:26):
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,

(03:48):
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

(04:10):
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,

(04:33):
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,

(04:55):
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

(05:18):
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

(05:40):
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,

(06:02):
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

(06:27):
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.

(06:49):
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

(07:12):
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

(07:34):
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

(07:54):
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

(08:16):
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.

(08:37):
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

(08:58):
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

(09:22):
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

(09:44):
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

(10:07):
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

(10:29):
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

(10:50):
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

(11:11):
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

(11:32):
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

(11:53):
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

(12:14):
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

(12:35):
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

(12:57):
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

(13:19):
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.