Why Natural Born Challenger Bethenny Frankel Swears by Her Killer Instincts

Bethenny Frankel has never been afraid to get her hands dirty. In fact, she’s actively sought out the opportunity, going back to one of her first gigs as an erstwhile club promoter: She’d throw house parties as a teenager, work at a bakery to help foot the bill and make an extra buck by charging admission. And years later, she continued that DIY-style hustle on The Real Housewives of New York. Counter to the primped and pampered mold of her ladies-who-lunch castmates, Frankel percolated a business in her one-bedroom apartment and shilled her low-calorie Skinnygirl Cocktails at every turn during early seasons of the Bravo series. She even drove a car shrink-wrapped in her budding company’s logo while her haughty co-stars shook their heads and clutched their Gucci. These days, presiding over an empire that counts 120-plus consumer products across booze, candy, hair care, coffee, clothing and more, Frankel is still rolling up her sleeves. She calls it being “in the grit.” [kickout id="4"] The grit involves efforts both sweeping and small. (The devil is in the details, as the saying goes, and so is Frankel, who weighs in on everything from the consistency of her snack bars to the grommets on her knit tops.) Her to-do list of late included hawking her Skinnygirl jeans line on HSN (she’ll be on the channel once a month, starting in March, after her first appearance in October moved every piece of product), helping to rework the packaging on her protein shakes (“It needed to pop,” she says) and leading disaster-relief efforts via her B Strong initiative in places like Puerto Rico, Texas and Guatemala. She’s juggled those tasks while keeping up a consistent dialogue with her diverse fan following (3.5 million combined on Twitter and Instagram) and guest judging on ABC’s Shark Tank, where she recently offered to appear with her dogs, Biggie and Smalls, on packaging for a new pet product. (Contestants ended up flubbing the deals, with one pair of inventors trying to slash the profit on her proposed investment, earning only a dressing down from Frankel, who said, “I don’t want to be partners with somebody who doesn’t know my value. You really should be taking this deal with me. I’m really good at marketing, beyond belief. I have incredible ideas and an army of women.”) The serial entrepreneur and challenger brand creator, who sold her flagship tequila drink in 2011 to Beam Global (now Beam Suntory) for a reported $100 million, often says she’s “building the plane while flying it.” “I see a void that can be filled,” she tells Adweek, “and I go with my gut. I don’t look at what everyone else is doing. Then I wouldn’t be able to have my own original thoughts.” While she leans heavily into her instincts, there’s nothing haphazard about her approach, says Jack Gross, CEO of One Jeanswear Group, her apparel partner. “She’s taking risks, but they’re calculated—she’s not shooting from the hip,” Gross says. “She moves fast, and yet her decisions are thoughtful. She wants to make sure she hits the target.” [kickout id="3" label="video"] The New York native, whose degree from NYU is in communications and psychology, not business, nurtured her brand by exercising “quick-twitch muscles” and assembling a curated group of advisers and collaborators who do the same, says Jarrod Moses, founder, president and CEO of United Entertainment Group, who works closely with her. “She comes from the school of hard knocks and common sense,” Moses says. “She draws on her personality and perseverance.” In less than a decade, Frankel went from having an $8,000 bank balance to becoming a multimillionaire mogul with a thriving charitable organization. She owns 100 percent of her privately held brand, aside from the Beam portfolio, and has taken it into products ranging from deli meat and microwave popcorn to body scrubs and bomber jackets. She and her partners provided Adweek with a peek into some of the high-water marks along her professional journey. The anti-housewife On paper, Frankel—a natural-food chef who had at various times imported pashmina shawls and waited tables to make ends meet—didn’t fit the bill in 2008 for then-nascent nighttime soap The Real Housewives of New York. She was single with no kids (though she is now a single parent of 8-year-old daughter Bryn, from her marriage to Jason Hoppy), and didn’t breathe the same rarified air as the socialites in the cast. Plus, she’d already been on an unscripted show (she finished as runner-up on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart), which turned off some Bravo execs who were looking for TV novices, says Frances Berwick, NBCUniversal’s president of lifestyle networks. “But she gave us a different story to tell and a relatable point of view,” Berwick says of the outspoken, take-no-prisoners Frankel. “And she’s obviously very charismatic.” [kickout id="2"] Bravo’s Andy Cohen would later dub her “the Greek chorus” of the series, where she took full advantage of the face time to promote her gluten-free Bethenny Bakes sweet treats until hatching her next concept, Skinnygirl Margarita, as a waistline-watching alternative to the popular libation. “She had less interest in being a TV star,” Moses says, “and more in parlaying the platform into a successful business.” Frankel, perhaps inherently knowing what would make for good TV and even better brand optics, has provided plenty of camera-friendly moments during her multiple seasons. For instance, she had Beam send male models to hand-deliver Skinnygirl party invitations to the Housewives (those celebrity-studded soirees became show fodder as well), and dressed her co-stars in curve-hugging Skinnygirl jeans. She's also added some edge to the show, often making sparks fly. In a confrontation in the 2018 season of RHONY, castmate Tinsley Mortimer exclaims, "You're not letting me finish!" to which Frankel, about to raise a glass of wine to her lips, calmly replies, "I don't need you to finish." Or Google "Bethenny Frankel gif" and you'll find a host of results, including one in which she's quoted as saying, "I'd rather eat glass than talk about this." The network, without committing to any product placement, has found many of Frankel’s business exploits, along with her smack talking, irresistible. “We’re capturing her real life and showing the complete picture, which is incredibly inspiring and aspirational,” Berwick says. “Do I love it when a brand is front and center? No. We have to be mindful that it only works when it’s interesting and entertaining. We don’t want to turn the audience off if they think it’s unnecessary.” Frankel earned only $7,250 for the first season but kept full control of her brand. (In what has become known as the “Bethenny clause,” she refused to sign a section of the contract—standard in the industry, says Bravo—that would have given the network a stake in her business in return for hyping it on the series.) Frankel—who reportedly now earns $1 million a season—called Housewives “a wonderful commercial” that could’ve just as easily been a tree in the forest if she hadn’t aligned with strong partners and executed on her ideas. [kickout id="1" label="housewives red"] A non-category Before Skinnygirl, there was little supply or demand in premixed cocktails in the U.S. market. Frankel, in looking for her own signature drink, had started playing with the recipe for a stripped-down margarita. As part of her field research, she ordered the cocktails from tony New York bars and restaurants and “brought them home in Evian bottles,” to analyze the ingredients, she says. Frankel began telling bartenders how to make her “skinny” version of the drink, coining the name and birthing a trend. Though there were plenty of naysayers (“Everyone discouraged me,” she says), she launched the product with a small partner in 2009. Fueled by Housewives exposure and digital chatter, Skinnygirl became one of the fastest-selling spirits brands in the country by 2010, attracting lucrative buyout offers. Frankel had identified a white space, a move she’s mastered in other industries, and paired it with real-time listening with her fans and followers. “She doesn’t have to be an expert in a particular category,” says Elliot Franco, CEO of longtime Skinnygirl partner Dreamwear. “She’s an expert in the consumer she’s servicing.” Frankel developed something that’s referred to in the business as “a badge brand,” according to Beam execs. That means fans identify with it so strongly that they become evangelists, spreading the word to their social circles. It helped that Skinnygirl was “a first mover” in creating a guilt-free, ready-to-serve cocktail for women, says Beam Suntory marketing director Rashidi Hodari. In Skinnygirl’s wake, the segment “exploded a few years ago. While many brands have come and gone, Skinnygirl Cocktails remains the category leader,” he says, “exceeding our expectations.” The best assets In an already packed and fiercely competitive apparel market, Gross, of One Jeanswear, was not looking for another celebrity brand (“It feels passé,” he says). He met with Frankel as a favor to a friend, but within 15 minutes he was ready to get into business with her. “She wasn’t trying to license the name and get a quick check,” he says. “She wanted to build a strong foundation that would be sustainable.” Her “energy and passion,” along with her spot-on fashion sense and fervent fan base, helped tip the scales. “And she’s a marketing machine,” he says. “I had a feeling that, unlike some other celebrities, she would actually do what she promised.” Frankel, who describes the line as “Garanimals” for adults because pieces easily match to make outfits, says she wanted to give women of all sizes and shapes a stylish, confidence-boosting fix—with emphasis on shaping the bum—and an emotional uplift from an empathetic gal pal. “Just like in cocktails, it had been a male-dominated business with jeans designed by men and marketed by men,” Frankel says. “There weren’t any female-empowerment figures in denim.” To put her stamp on the products, Frankel went through her wardrobe, pointing out certain fabrics, stitching, colors, embellishments and details she liked so the design team could incorporate them into the line. As for her involvement, “I get texts at all hours of the day and night,” Gross says, who notes that Frankel also regularly turns up at the showroom for fittings and makes numerous personal appearances at department stores. “When I have a question, her answer might come in 30 seconds.” The clothing had to be affordable and inclusive, taking into account women’s busy lives filled with duties like picking up and dropping off kids, traveling, working and dating. “I wanted functionality,” she says, “and something that made women look and feel good. And I wanted to speak to the psychology of this purchase that I didn’t think was being addressed.” Where she plans to go with One Jeanswear—deepening the relationship by expanding the offerings—shows how she’s thinking about her business overall these days. In short, more laser focus, less volume. The immediate future may be more defined by what she doesn’t do. She’s turned down offers to write an instructional business book—“I wouldn’t know how,” she claims—and bats back “nine out of 10” concepts for brand extensions, she says. “Is it innovative and groundbreaking, is it a game changer, does it help people, does it make a lot of money?” she says of the questions she’ll ask. “I’m thinking of ideas all the time, but that doesn’t mean I should do them or that the world needs them. Right now, I’m filtering out, and I’d rather do fewer things really well.” One recent idea to make the cut: getting airlines to consider the health risk that airborne allergens pose to passengers. It’s an issue of acute interest to Frankel, who suffered a near-fatal reaction last December in Massachusetts after eating soup that—unbeknownst to her—contained seafood, triggering her rare fish allergy. "I ask airlines @UnitedAirlines @AmericanAir @Delta @JetBlue @SouthwestAir @VirginAmerica etc. stop serving airborne allergens. I’ll stay on this until you do," she tweeted on Jan. 4. And though she takes the topic ultra seriously, Frankel is not above having a little fun with how some people are perceiving her because of her crusade. In an Instagram Story last month, she posted an incognito selfie in which she's obscured by a big hat, sunglasses and a thick scarf. The caption: "This is how I travel on planes now so no one can see who the pain in the ass w the allergy [is]... #fishallergybitch." That cutting sense of humor may not work for most brands, but her bracing candor is part of what Frankel's fans love about her—and what inspires them to buy her products. She has said she admires moguls like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg, and Moses sees her in the same league with merchandising and branding kingpins like Michael Jordan and Martha Stewart, with a valuable social media presence. "She's accessible, relatable and aspirational," Moses says. "She's able to carry an audience from viewership to actionable engagement. That sets her apart."

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Why Natural Born Challenger Bethenny Frankel Swears by Her Killer Instincts

Let's just say following the pack has never been her thing

T.L. Stanley

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T.L. Stanley