Transcript of The Talent Manager: 'Gen Z Doesn't Know Brad Pitt—But They Know Every TikToker' | Ep. 293 with Devain Doolaramani Founder of Friends In Reality

So Devane, and great to have you on the show. I've been seeing what you've been doing with the creator economy or creator space, mixing with brands, business. I mean, I guess this is the future we're in. And it's super fascinating to me that a celebrity defined before used to be like an actor, actress, recording artist, which was like 0. 01%, It was so hard to break in. And then now, I feel like a celebrity is... If I started TikTok five years ago, and now I have millions of followers, which is, I think, it's insane. It almost democratized the ability to have more people become the celebrity. So how do you see this celebrity term changing and how people see what they would call celebrity?

Yeah, 100 %. I think four or five years ago, when I was starting my company, there were still traditional talent. All the big agencies, the CAAs, WMUCTs of the world were still representing the traditional talent, the actresses, the actors, the people on the red carpet, its hosts. Now you look at the roster of a lot of these bigger agencies and what does it consist of a lot of digital talent. I think digital talent has become the future. They are the new celebrities. We get on calls with VC investors. We get on calls with operators, with people who have had successful edits. All kids now, they're not looking for the Scarlett Johanssons of the world. They don't know who that is. They know who someone like Rick Monk is. They know someone like Charlie D'Amelio. They know someone like Addison Re. That just shows the new generation sees these people as celebrities versus back in the day where we looked up to the Tom Cruises of the world, the Hugh Jackmans. Those were the traditional celebrities. But I think the word celebrity has just changed because celebrities to the younger generation, these kids are the streamers, TikTokers, YouTubers.

I think the traditional celebrities, they still exist, obviously. They're still the Jacob Alorties of the world and people in that nature who are still popping off the musicians, actresses, actors. But I think overall, there's a new niche of celebrities. I think that that stems from digital creators, influencers, people online that have They've been able to build a huge following.

This digital talent, from what I've seen before, is many times they would monetize through brand deals, through ads, through sponsorships. But it seems like now they've awakened to the fact that they can create a brand, a product. I think we've seen this with some very successful people before. How are you looking at the landscape of bridging the gap between the creator with the huge following or just any dedicated fan group to now having their own brand or product?

I think people in their heads believe that, Oh, you need to have 10 million followers, 20 million followers to build a brand, to build something successful. But in reality, you just need a core audience that's going to buy into you, someone that watches your content every day, that religiously follows you, that knows everything about your life. You release a product at that point, and you're going to get a plethora of sales. You look at successful brand launches, Emma Chamberlain with their Chamberlain coffee. They're crushing it, or at least it seems like. Danny Austin with Divi hair care. But all of them release products that they use in their daily life, and they release products that are of good quality in nature that means something to them. If you're able to do that, then you're going to be very successful with your brand launch. For one of my clients right now, Barouh Monk, we're working on a beauty brand for her, and The product is going to be something that she uses every day. That's going to be the hero of Skew and how we roll it out and how we build a story around it.

But I think if you are a creator, you don't need a massive audience. You just need a core community and you need to sell a product that you personally use every day and that helps you in your daily life and make it better.

I like that where it's not just you're selling something to sell it, you're selling something that you genuinely use and people trust you. When they see it and they see this, trust is interesting. A few years Years ago, there was a gathering of retailers. It was the owners of Toys R Us, Build a Bear. They told me that when they would use traditional celebrities like actors, the trust level actually has become very low. When they plug in someone who's a creator, the trust level is very high because people think that the creator is genuine, where somebody acting is playing someone that they're not. Do you see this trust level playing a massive actor in the ability to sell something that is their own?

Yeah, I think it really depends. There are two ways to look at it. Trust is built on core community and how you treat your fans. Obviously, if you have a celebrity or an actor or actress not respecting their fans, not engaging with their fans. Their fans aren't going to support them in turn. It's just how emotional psychology works. I think if a creator is responding to their comments, engaging with their fans, actually showing appreciation for their fans, their fans are going to want to reciprocate that. So I think there are celebrities out there that obviously spend time with their fans, get back to their fans, do as much as possible for their fans, and show that appreciation, and they're able to move products like WALFI or even more than digital talent or creators. But when it comes to trust, I think it's a process. You have to build it over time. It can't be built overnight.

Man, you make me think of Jason Derulo for some... He comes to mind. I feel like She's really crossed over to doing a lot with fans. Brook Monk, I mean, has done a phenomenal job. Her numbers are just insane. It's insane. It seems like she's very, very connected. I was watching a few videos, and I was reading the comments before this interview because I wanted to really understand how she's doing things. I can see that she has a very deep connection to the fans. Why did you wait to the time right now to launch that product? Was this by chance Or do you think that creators or digital talent, they should wait a certain time before they launch something?

Yeah, I don't think it was a waiting game for us on our side of when we wanted to launch it. I think it was about perfecting a product that exists on the market that she uses every day. We've been developing this product for two years. If we could have, we would have launched this product ages ago. But it's really about building a quality product that's going to last a long time and actually hold shelf space in the market for a while. I think the biggest thing that we wanted to do is make sure that the consumers actually enjoy the packaging experience, actually enjoy the product. They're able to use it. The quality is good. We're going through all the checks to make sure the branding is good, to make sure the story is there. It's like when you're a consumer, you want to buy into our product and the story behind it, you don't just want another product on the shelf. I think for us, it's been we put our heart and soul into this brand for the last two years, Brooks bootstrapping the whole brand. It's no outside funding. It's her brand and it's her vision and it's her...

We went from a Pinterest board to building a full-fledged brand. I think that process takes time. It's like getting samples from the factory, it's trying out the products, making sure the adjustments are there, making sure it's better than other products on the market. It's definitely a timely process, and I think it's taken the two years, two years plus, because we want to take a very good product to market, if not perfect product in her eyes.

I know exactly what you're talking about, because I formulated products from 2012 for about 10 years. We sold Health and Beauty online, starting with Amazon, then e-commerce, but I formulated a lot of my own products. There is so much that goes into... People don't realize how much. Like you're saying, it's two years. It's a lot that goes into it. Obviously, you want everything to be perfect. It's beyond the product. Like you said, the label, the packaging, the bottle. There's so many components that go into this. But I got to say, it was one of the most fun and gratifying things I ever did when it comes out. It's so exciting. I know you're getting ready to launch soon. How has this process been now that you're ready to go?

Yeah, no, it's been incredible, but you're still dealing with ongoing issues. There's always going to be supply chain management. It's revolving problems. They're fun problems, and they're good to solve and tackle. But I think if you're building a brand and you're scaling at a velocity, we hope to, it's going to be building a core internal team, really structuring it right and building it in a very good way where it's not rushed and we're building a core team that can help scale it bigger and better and take it eventually, hopefully international or starting in the US. But the goal is to get the product to the world. I think that process takes time and you have to build the right team around it and you have to make sure you're going through the right check. Super pumped to finally get it out. It's been two plus years in the works, but I think along with getting it out, we're going to be heads down really working to build more products, to bring more products to the market. We want to keep the consumer happy at the end of the day because they're the ones supporting the brand and the product.

What's your story? How did you get into... You said four or five years ago when you You started this company and you're working with Brook and all these rock stars. How did you get into this?

It's been a long process, but I grew up in New York, went to Horsemen out there for high school, and then moved over to Hong Kong. Lived there for two years, and went to British International School, and that's when my creative genes picked up. Started growing Instagram accounts, selling ads on them back in the day. Then I went into the digital space in college. I working and managing Musically accounts before TikTok acquired Musically and doing all the sound. I was blowing up the music and sounds and trends on Musically at the time. I was interning at Sony, and I was like, The music landscape is growing, and these creators are a part of that. They're helping blow up these songs, generate UGC content, build trends around them. So ended up doing about 200 music campaigns, did campaigns for a lot of the big records on TikTok that we know now, and ended up scaling them from zero to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of UGC videos, and built the careers or helped build the careers of a lot of artists on the back end. Simultaneously, I was like, That brought me into the creator space, and no one at the time was pursuing these digital talent.

Everything was still traditional. I was like, There's a big white space here. Why don't I start working with people? That led me to Brooklyn. She just had turned 17 years old, I think, or 18 or something along that. We've been working together for five years now, and I've been working with her since and signed a ton of other talent since. So manage a roster of about 40 creators now across the board and really just help them build businesses. At the end of the day, a creator I see as a business and how do you scale that business to build product around it, to eventually want to invest in ventures and get equity and be on advisory and cap tables. It's really looking outside of traditional influencing and the traditional platforms. For someone like Book, we've been able to build a huge LinkedIn following for her, and she's got such a genius mind. She's been able to build such a big following. She wanted to share the back-end analytics insights and advice that she's learned from building on social media to an audience that would intake it. For me, it's really like, how do you expand beyond the traditional bounds of social media, too, and build real businesses for these people?

You're the genius I think people always see the person in the front, but they don't always know the genius behind a lot of talent, a lot of people, a lot of energy goes into the process of not just posting something, but someone like yourself who really understands Social media is so hard. It's like algorithms change and this changes and everything you're doing changes. Linkedin is an interesting one. Linkedin is a very interesting. What do you see for LinkedIn? I'm starting to see a lot of people moving into to LinkedIn, and I wonder, what is the benefit to them?

Yeah, I just think that a lot of people in our generation, when we went to college, the first thing you learn in your business one-on-one class is go make a LinkedIn. I think social media garners a lot of audience, but I could count on my fingers how many 40, 50 plus year olds I know have TikTok and are scrolling. I think it's a way to connect to the people that are at companies, that are at corporations, and really have good talks with them. We, Brooklyn and I, have met countless incredible people, founders, people at companies, heads of marketing, etc. Through LinkedIn. We've talked to people with eight, nine-figure exits. It's been such a great way to network and meet people with such good hearts, but also such great stories and founder stories themselves.

If you want to get in touch with you, maybe there's a creator there, a digital talent that needs to be helped with their management, or there's a brand that wants to get in touch with you, how can they do so?

Yeah, honestly, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think that's the easiest way to go about it. My email is on there as well. I think it's just a great central platform.

There you go. Linkedin is the new TikTok. No, I'm only kidding. But no, this has been great, man. I learned a lot today. Thank you for sharing all that. I can't wait till the new brand comes out with brook. I always enjoy trying new skincare products. I know it sounds odd, but it's actually like... I always wanted to... No lie. You know the funny thing is, 10 years ago, I started making content about me talking about skincare, and I was like, It just feels weird. If only I had kept going. If only I had kept going. But no, this has been amazing. You could have been my manager. But no, this has been great. I had a really good time, and I learned a lot. And congratulations on all the success, man. It's super inspiring. And thank you for joining us today on Founder Story.

Likewise. Appreciate the time.