So people have been enjoying my business stories that seem just obvious to me because I've talked about them so much. But I realize that you probably haven't heard them, because if you haven't read every Forbes, Inc. Business Inside, or New York Times article that I've been quoted in, or if you haven't read one of my books, or you have your own life, or you're new or here, you may not know some of the stories. And I think that the first lesson in business that I want to
convey is to be creative with contracts. I think that people are intimidated by business, intimidated by contracts.
I don't love contracts.
They overwhelm me, and yet I'm excellent at them, but not reading them, not writing them, not contract language, at navigating them. And contracts should be thought of as chess and createtivity. So what I'm saying is first season of Housewives. It is well documented that I only got the two hundred fifty dollars that we got for the season. But I saw something in the contract that someone explained to me. Because someone has to explain something to me for me
to really understand it when it comes to contracts. So someone explained to me that I would have to sign away that I would give a piece of any business to the powers that be at the network. When I signed on to reality TV, I had no business who cared. But for some reason I didn't like it. So I took the low seven two hundred and fifty that was in the contract. But I said, we're crossing that part out. They didn't care I was a nobody. They crossed it out.
That was the Skinny Girl deal that landed me on the cover of Forbes magazine and trust and Believe Bravo was extremely frustrated that they didn't have part of that, and they made sure everybody signed that language in the future. That was the Bethany clause. So that's being creative within a contract. In addition, prior to that, when I did the deal with my partner, my lawyer said to me, do you want to do equity and licensing? I said, I don't even know the difference. He said, licensing you
start to get money now. It's not the big pay day, but you start to get paid now, which you have no money and you're not getting paid anything. He said, the risk of your proposition is equity. That means it's your idea, you own it, you have skin in the game. But if something happens, you take the responsibility. If you get sued or something happens, you take the responsibility. Most people would take licensing at that point because I was a nobody. I had nothing and I just wanted any money.
Ten thousand dollars would have been a million dollars to me then, But I still said because he explained it to me and I understood the concept, I was able to say, no, I'll take equity. This is my ace in the hole, this is my retirement, this is my big idea. Now I didn't know would succeed, but conceptually I understood, and I just knew in both those cases that conceptually I didn't like what I was hearing, so I chose that other option. In addition, when I did
my Skinny Girl, big deal came to buy me. They wanted to buy Skinny Girl cocktails. Gray Goose was bought for two billion dollars. They sold the entire brand. You don't see Gray Goose anything now. You can't do a Gray Goose furnishing line, no drinks, no nothing. It'd be a great energy drink line, it be a great anything line, nothing, Grey Goose clothing nothing. Why they bought the whole brand,
They bought all the intellectual property. I didn't understand intellectually why Beam would need the whole brand because they only operate in cocktails. So I said, what, I don't want to sell it to you and everything else. I can do this in all other categories. I can have jeans, I can have salad dressing, I can have popcorn, I can have smoothies, I can have coffee, I can have anything I want. They said, you're selling the brand. They
wanted it bad. They wanted to copy it. They told me they were gonna copy it if they didn't if I didn't sell it to them.
They kind of had me over a barrel.
And the numbers now are probably three to five times more than they would have been then because I started the celebrity cocktail space in the world way it's seen today for these big numbers. So they said they were gonna copy me. I said, fine, but I had them too. I had a hot brand. They wanted it. I said, you only need the cocktails. You need to let me have the other categories. So they said no, I said, well, tough shit. Then you can't have it.
I pushed.
I pushed them, I owned the skinny Gral brand, Beam only owns it in cocktails. The only thing that they could exploit it would have been all these other categories. And I make every year seven figures for fourteen years on the other categories, a lot of money. So I've been making money off that deal for years. So that was the double dip. The triple dip is that they wanted me to be a spokesperson. They wanted to give me an endorsement deal that was seven figures every year
also and it lasted for ten years. Here was the kicker. Here's the quadruple dip. They wanted me to promote certain items. I said, no problem. I said, I don't want to promote something I don't want to promote. They said, I suggested carving out, I would write down a list of items that I would promote that I wanted to promote, and a list of things that I didn't want to promote. Not on that list for did or didn't want was wine in vodka, something that the next year they wanted
me to promote. I said, I didn't have it on that list. They said, well, we own the brand, we can do it. I said, you could do whatever you want. You could have wine and vodka all day long. I don't have to promote it. Well, we need you to promote it. I said, great, then you're going to pay me. They said, you can't sell the brand. Twice I said, well, then do it on your own. They ended up having to pay me a per case fee another seven figures for the per case. Then the fifth thing was the kicker,
the one time bonus kicker. There was a bonus kicker that when I mean kicker, it's like a bonus that one time in the whole contract if you hit one hundred thousand cases, I think it was, Yeah, if you hit one hundred thousand cases, you'll get this big, giant.
Multiple million dollar bonus, okay.
I said in the contract that they had to guarantee a certain amount of money that they would spend every year on money marketing, and if they didn't, they would take one hundred thousand off that number, one hundred thousand cases off that number. The number was a million cases. This year we got not We sold nine hundred thousand cases. I think in the second year they didn't spend that money. So I got the several million dollar kicker because of it.
If they had spent that money on marketing, I wouldn't.
Have gotten it.
But if I hadn't put that language in, they wouldn't have had to pay it. So I quintuple dipped all by being creative with contracts, and my real sustainable generational wealth that's happening is still happening now because of that.
Because I have salad dressing that people are using right now, that microwave popcorn people are eating right now, skinny girl coffee that people are drinking right now, skinny girl shape where that people are wearing right now, and I'm getting I'm making money on it because those are licensing deals because I kept that intellectual property. So be creative in contracts. Understand the contracts. You don't have to be an expert, but understand what they mean so you can be creative
and thinking about workarounds. On Housewives, there were years that I would take a small pay bump.
I was making a lot of money.
I was making must know six figures an episode, but where I wouldn't take a massive pay increase because I would ask for something else creatively, I like, I want to be able to do shark tank. I want to be able to do this other thing. I want to be able to come to trips late and.
Leave them early.
Other language. It made my life easier. Other language. That made it that I could make money in other ways long term. So don't only think about the bottom line in a contract. Think about the creative language in business. I'm literally I'm having the best time watching people go into my comment as a spectator sport. So the Chanelle content that everybody knows about, I don't even have to tell you about it. I always have to tell you things because I don't assume that you know anything. I
am justin Bieber now because of the Chanelle content. One hundred and fifty million plus views on the Chanelle content. Do you understand that on Bravo you got a million a million people watch something one hundred and fifty million. I am literally walking the street being stopped at Chanel. It's endless, it is an abyss, is infinite, it goes on. And I did them a favor. I could have gone to the dark side because my fans were ready to rip each other's limbs off and beat each other with
them over the Chanelle's story. They were so mad and they wanted to go storm the castle of Chanel. I talked them off the ledge and they didn't storm the castle. Instead, I chose humor. I didn't choose violence. I chose humor. So, Chanel, I'm waiting for my edible arrangement because I took everybody over to the funny side and now we're all having a great time. And the few people that are freaking trying to find the ants at the Chanell picnic, they're the ones who are getting mad.
Is it enough? Stop it? Like?
Okay, first of all, it's my account. Second of all, it's enough of what of being funny? Of satirical content? That doesn't matter. But when the few people get mad, the other people love to come in and beat the shit out of them, and they get into knock down, drag out fights, and we get where we get. We're the trolls trolling the trolls. We get more worked up and want to do more Chanel content just to piss
off the Chanel trolls. So it's a circular reference. Also, Chanelle, how is their CMO not doing anything?
Lean into it?
Make it something like I can't even believe that you're not just being part of the joke.
Help some people.
Take some people into your store, give them some free Chanel bags. Cost like fifty dollars to make a Chanel bag. Maximum maximum They used to be in twenty four carra gold. But now I walk by the store and I see Steve Madden and he's knocking off Chanell and Arimez every which way. But Sunday I'm gonna start wearing only Steve Steve Madden Chanelle's shoes. Now like it's it's it's called like warfare. Now like it's full on. I mean it's it's like I would never have promoted someone whose entire
lifeblood is to just knock off. But now it's called like all thats are off. Shameless shameless shameless copying of Aaron Mes and Chanelle. You know why, cause you make an exclusive club. You make it that people can't buy watches, can't buy bags, can't go into luxury stores.
What Like it's like the VIP section how to get into a luxury store? Are we okay?
You walk into a watch store for exhibition only, for exhibition only, You're not a lot to walk into a watch store. Luke Colmbs did a whole thing on walking in and asking for a rollox. So like, godd funny, you should ask like he's walking into a rolex store asking for a rolex. What is he supposed to go in there and ask for a vibrator? Like, what the fuck?
That's what it is. It's a rolex store. Insane.
We never talked about that, Harrison Bucker in his commencement speech, which I've been thinking about a lot, and it comes up a lot. And I think the interesting thing is not that anyone criticizing being a homemaker, being a wife making that choice. It's criticizing the sentiment that that's the most important job and that that should be shoved down people's throats what they're supposed to feel and think, particularly after graduating from school.
And I think that.
I'd be remiss if I didn't say to you that I think that there's a power in having your own skill, set, your own money.
Not think I know anything can happen.
What happens someone passes away, you're in a relationship with athlete, They get hurt, like you didn't know how to do the finances.
You know you need earning power. You never know what's going to happen.
Someone could go broke, someone could get ill, something could happen. God for there is a medical situation in a family, you need money for a rainy dam, and shit does happen. So as a woman, it's pretty critical that you have your own thing. You don't have to choose to be working in the grind every single day. This is not
a prescription or a punishment. It's just saying, like, why would you not want to have some identity that's your own, some skill set, some marketable skill that you know, or some industry you know, or a nest egg or anything, just to have some freedom. There's no way that someone could know exactly how it's going to go for the next twenty years with another person.
You just can't know.
You think it's great, but the sixty percent of divorces aren't because everything seemed, you know, great. It's because everything seemed great and then life got in the way. People grew and people evolved and things happened and people were presented with different opportunities and it's not that easy.