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Spend any time on social media, and its only a matter of time before one genre of content starts hitting your timeline: Someone telling you they make a fortune by doing something that sounds absurdly easy. (And that you can, too.) Maybe they (kind of) show you how to design and sell your own sweatshirts or notebooks, a venture that supposedly earns them five figures a month. Or maybe they tell you about how they started a $100,000 business with no inventory. Whatever the enticing story is, the ending is usually the same: they offer to teach you how to do the same. And who would say no to easy money? Get-rich-quick how-tos have existed foreverand more recently, side hustles have become a hallmark of American existence. According to SurveyMonkeys 2025 Workplace Culture and Trends survey, 72% of U.S. workers either already have a side gig or are considering picking one up. That might explain why the past few years have flooded platforms like Instagram and TikTok with get-rich-quick guides, many of which seem to carry nearly identical talking points. These social media solopreneurs supposedly make incredible money by working only two to three hours a day, and theyre generous enough to share their wisdom with you. But how is anyone supposed to separate the legitimate techniques from the scams and the flops? Enter: the side hustle reviewer. A TRY GUY FOR SIDE GIGS The stated purpose of side-hustle review accounts is simple: they test out money-making schemes so you dont have to. The people behind them are basically business guinea pigs who flip phones on Facebook marketplace and design T shirts that are print-on-demand (in which a third party creates the shirts the side hustlers design after a customer makes the purchase) on platforms like Redbubble and Shopifyall to see if they can actually make a buck. Other side hustles could include posting product videos on Amazon, or starting a newsletter. Often, theyll break down how much money they made, and sometimes, theyll even walk you through the fine print of the trade. This might sound altruistic on its face, and it can be. But in a way, its also its own kind of side hustleone that, like all the others, comes with its own business incentives. Few people know this better than Ryan, the 40-year-old tech worker behind Side Hustle Review. (He keeps his surname private to protect his full-time job.) Thanks to his 229,500 followers on TikTok and 473,000 on Instagram, Ryan says that sometimes, side-hustle platforms approach him with a simple offer: if he promotes their ecosystem, theyll give him a cut of every paid sign-up he generates. Unfortunately, he adds, many of these platforms take would-be hustlers money without ever actually making money for them. In light of these offers, Ryan openly admits he could start an evil arc, exploiting viewer trust for personal gain by endorsing bogus money-making platforms. I’m not saying I would, he says, but the fact that that could happen makes me go, I do have something very precious here. Thats why he always turns these offers down. Its not just sketchy courses, either. When asked to name the weirdest side hustle hes ever tried, Ryan dished on one he actually hasnt tried: selling images of his feet. (Although hes never uploaded a foot photo himself, he has received emails from less-than-ethical platforms asking him to share an affiliate link with his users in exchange for a cut of their sign-up fees.) [Users] pay the money to post their feet pictures thinking they’re going to make the money back, and they never do, he says. At the same time, some of the ideas floating around on the internet are totally legitimate. SEPARATING WHEAT FROM CHAFF The demand for the kind of service Ryan and other side-hustle reviewers provide is clearly there. The internet is rife with online courses and guides that claim to explain how to set up various businesses in exchange for a few hundred (or thousand) dollars. Ryan says he receives 80 to 90 DMs per day from viewers who want him to review this or that course, which is part of why hes begun work on a site called review.courses. He hopes the site could grow into a sort of Yelp! for side hustles, where users can post their own reviews. As Ryan points out, the price tags some courses carry are incredibly high, especially for a product with no real regulatory body. Some can range from $5,000 to $8,000. When you go to buy a $2,000 laptop, how many reviews do you watch? Ryan asks. Ten, 15, 20 before you make your purchase? None of this exists for courses that teach you how to operate an online side hustle, and the ones that tend to go viral the fastest offer people what they most want: easy money. Some of these courses are complete cash grabs, Ryan saysthey could be extremely vague, AI-generated, or copied straight from a guide the creator themselves previously purchased from someone else. Once you buy the thing, it’s trash course, trash content. WHEN SIDE HUSTLE REVIEWING BECOMES THE SIDE HUSTLE With the right strategy, Ryan says, you can make good money by creating, say, a print-on-demand T-shirt empire. Same goes for dropshipping, where you sell products without any actual inventory by purchasing the items from a third party after someone hits Place Order. When asked which side hustles viability actually surprised him, Ryan called out user-generated content: brand-related media created by social media users instead of the companies themselves. This could include product review videos, including Amazon on-site videos (product videos that anyone can post onto product pages in exchange for a cut of the commission if a customer makes a purchase after watching). Ryan was also pleasantly shocked by how easily he found success creating a newsletter, a scheme hed thought for sure must be a scam. I get a 40% open rate, he says with audible surprise. I guess people do want more emails. And yet, it turns out that reviewing side hustles is more profitable than the hustles themselves. While Ryan cited $5,000 in gross revenue from testing in 2024, he made $35,000 from Side Hustle Review. That said, 90% of the latter income came from sponsorships, a revenue stream hes since ended to preserve editorial independence and trust. I find every sponsor comes to me with desired sales outcomes, he says, which really easily pushes me into becoming more of a salesperson. Given the direction corporate America has taken side hustles seem bound for continued expansion, and their growing popularity is an ever-present sign that many workers, mistrustful of large companies, are bracing for a big shift. While some side hustlers are hedging their bets against an uncertain economy, others might be working to compensate for the bite inflation has taken out of their pockets. And the rest, Ryan figures, probably just want some disposable income. Regardless of the reason, he says, I think were all feeling a bit of a squeeze.
Category:
E-Commerce
Block recently made headlines when CEO Jack Dorsey announced it was reducing its workforce and replacing some roles with AI agents. But it wasnt the first organization to do this. And it wont be the last. And in the middle of that announcementand the LinkedIn hot takesthere are real managers trying to figure out what to say to their teams. That’s the part people want to hearand need. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/i-169-Ashley-Herd.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/i-11-Ashley-Herd.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cem\u003EThe Manager Method\u003C\/em\u003E","dek":"Want practical leadership development training that actually sticks? Visit managermethod.com to learn more and order Ashley Herds book, \u003Cem\u003EThe Manager Method\u003C\/em\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/managermethod.com","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91478992,"imageMobileId":91478994,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}} Your Team Is Already ScaredAnd They’re Watching You If your organization has made any moves toward AI in the last yearand most haveyour team is likely on edge. They’ve watched colleagues get laid off. They’ve heard the buzzwords: efficiency, optimization, doing more with less. And now they’re reading the same headlines you are. What they’re experiencing often has a name: survivor’s guilt. It’s the uncomfortable feeling of still having your job when someone else doesn’t. And it sits right alongside a louder fear: Am I next? Managers don’t have to have all the answers. But you do have to be intentional about the signals youre sending. If you talk excitedly about AI tools in front of a team that just watched three colleagues lose their jobs, you’re not leading your teamyou’re alarming them. And if you’re avoiding the conversation entirely, your team is filling that silence with side conversationsand their own assumptions. The most important thing you can do right now isn’t just to adopt the right tools. It’s to have the right conversations. Get the Language Right Here’s something to remember: AI agents arent teammates. They don’t have a bad week. They don’t need feedback, recognition, or a one-on-one. Theyre toolssophisticated, powerful, often incredibly useful toolsbut, nonetheless, tools. The way managers talk about AI in front of their teams matters more than most realize. “Our AI handles that” sends a different signal than “we use this tool to handle that.” The first suggests a colleague. The second is honest about what it actually is. This isn’t just semantics. When managers blur the line between human and AI contribution, your teams internalize it. They wonder what their own work is worth, and if you see them the same way you see a toolas something to be optimized or replaced when something faster comes along. Words shape culture. Choosing them on purpose is leadership. The Prompt Is the New SkillBut Not for the Reason You Think Most of the conversation about artificial intelligence at work focuses on speed: Generate faster. Produce more. Be more productive. But speed without judgment isn’t leadership. It’s just output. The managers who will actually lead well in an AI-enabled environment aren’t the ones who learn to prompt fastest. They’re the ones who pause long enough to ask: What do I actually need here? What context matters? What would a thoughtful answer actually look likeand would I know it if I saw it? Then they turn to their team and ask the same thing: What are you trying with AI, and what would you like to try? That’s the Pause-Consider-Act framework applied to AI. Pause before you generate. Consider what you actually need, what your team actually needs and thinks, and what a good outcome looks like. Then actusing tools intentionally, not just reflexively. A bad prompt gets you a fast, mediocre result you still have to fix. A thoughtful prompt gets you something genuinely useful. The difference isn’t the toolits the intention behind it. Better, Not Just Faster The real risk for managers is using AI to look more productive without actually leading better. Generating a performance review in 45 seconds isn’t leadership. It might save you timeand time mattersbut if you’ve outsourced the thinking to a tool without adding your own judgment, context, and knowledge of that specific person, you’ve just produced a faster mediocre review. Your team member deserves better than that . . . and so do you. The same goes for feedback, for communication, for how you respond to your team. AI can help you structure your thinking, sharpen your language, and get a first draft on the page. But the relationship and judgment are still yours. AI used well makes you a more thoughtful leader. AI used as a shortcut makes you a less present one. What to Actually Do This Week If you’re a manager navigating this right now, here’s where to start: Have the honest conversation. You don’t need all the answers. You need to acknowledge what your team is feelingthe uncertainty, the worry, the questions about what this all means for them. Be clear about the difference between tools and teammatesin how you talk, plan, give credit. Your team should never wonder if you see them as interchangeable with software. Use AI to prepare, not to replace. Use it to think through a difficult conversation before you have it. Use it to draft, then add what only you know. Use it to get unstucknot to get out of the work. The managers who lead well through this moment won’t be the ones who adopted AI fastest. They’ll be the ones who stayed human on purposewho used the tools without losing the judgment and leadership that no agent can replicate. That’s still the job. And it still matters. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/i-169-Ashley-Herd.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.astcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/i-11-Ashley-Herd.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"\u003Cem\u003EThe Manager Method\u003C\/em\u003E","dek":"Want practical leadership development training that actually sticks? Visit managermethod.com to learn more and order Ashley Herds book, \u003Cem\u003EThe Manager Method\u003C\/em\u003E.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/managermethod.com","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91478992,"imageMobileId":91478994,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
On a hot April night, Bodyarmor, the sports drink company that Coca-Cola acquired in 2021 in a $5.6 billion deal, was throwing a huge party in downtown Manhattan to celebrate its relaunch. Plenty of MBA types in brown lace-ups and untucked shirts clutched vodka sodas in Hall des Lumires, the cavernous bank-turned-event-space across from City Hall. They were eyeing the young women in short skirts and high heels whoalong with star-studded guest lists and goodie bags so heavy they threaten to breakare the lifeblood of these corporate soirees. By the dance floor, where an energetic DJ pumped his fist in the air playing remixes of Whitney Houstons I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) and Doechiis viral TikTok hit Anxiety, two trios of women collided and traded air kisses. Have you seen any famous people? a blonde in one group asked a blonde in the other group. Only Kyle, she said, motioning to the DJ, a fortysomething so blond, angular, and handsome he could be the villain in an 1980s teen movie. But Kyle is not the new Diplo, Tiësto, or Skrillex. In fact, hes not even a full-time DJ. Kyle Cooke is one of the stars of Bravos long-running reality TV show Summer House, which follows a group of young New Yorkers sharing a Hamptons mansion, drinking and dating their way through the East End social scene. NBC Universal released data last June that the ninth season of the show was on track to be its most-watched yet, averaging 2.2 million viewers across all platforms, with ratings up 31% on Peacock, the networks official streaming platform. But Summer House isnt Cookes full-time job either. Both the show and the DJ set support his core enterprise: He is the founder and CEO of Loverboy, a canned-cocktail company he started before season three began filming. Loverboy launched in 2018, bootstrapped by Cooke as a line of sparkling hard teas, and has since branched out into an array of spritzes and cocktails, with as many as 30 full-time employees and an office in Manhattan. In 2019, the company raised roughly $1.25 million in a pre-seed friends-and-family round, $25,000 of which came from Spencer Slaine of Slaine Holdings, which has current investments in Goodles and Olipop and a past investment in Poppi, which sold to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion in 2025. Slaine met Cooke when he owned Hardings, a restaurant in the Flatiron district that Cooke lived next to and frequented. They became friends, and he was on the email when Cooke began looking for investors. Slaine was (and is) a Bravo fan, and he was familiar with Skinnygirl. The Bravo aspect to me was the X-Factor along with Kyle himself, says Slaine, whose aunt, Elyse Slaine, was on Season 12 of The Real Housewives of New York City. It was the category, the timing, and that Kyle has an entrepreneurial background that made it worth the gamble. Slaine says that being an angel investor in Loverboy has already paid off. We got in at a very low valuation, which was his first raise. When he did a subsequent raise with CircleUp, that assigned an astronomical valuationit was 30X the valuation at the pre-seed roundbecause he hasnt had to raise a lot of money and has been smart with utilizing debt and getting profitable very quickly, says Slaine. I think it was the fastest investment that went to profitability because of not having to spend money on marketing and keeping a lean team. In April 2022, the company raised $3.5 million in that Series A funding round led by CircleUp. Cooke says the company has done over $50 million in sales since 2020and he says hes achieved it without spending a penny on traditional marketing or advertising thanks to his nearly 10 years on reality TV, more than half a million followers on Instagram, direct outreach to the fans via events like BravoConand, yes, DJ gigs. Cooke is just one of a long line of Bravolebrities-turned-founders who have launched companies on their respective shows that have become major brands. The network has become a new QVC for a specific kind of ambitious entrepreneur who knows how to leverage an opportunity. Stephanie Dade, senior vice president of global content and integration at brand integration firm BENlabs, has worked on many campaigns with Bravo over the years and describes the Bravo team as fantastic partners who are willing to customize integrations to ensure they resonate with both talent and fans. With several caveats about the product category and amount of exposure, she says it costs most brands in the high six figures to get on one of the shows. Bravolebrities, as theyre called, have a chance to get the same integration for free, though they dont get to dictate how, or even if, their product makes the final edit. Erin Lichy, one of the stars of the 2023 reboot of Real Housewives of New York City, says she raised $2.5 million for her mezcal brand, Mezcalum. She tells Inc. that she has seen her sales double year over year since appearing on the show. Melissa Gorga, one of the longtime stars of Real Housewives of New Jersey, recently launched a sprinkle cookie business, Lets Sprinkle by MG, and says she sold more than $1 million worth of cookies in its first six months. When Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix, stars of Vanderpump Rules, opened the sandwich shop Something About Her in West Hollywood in May 2024, they saw instant write-ups in The New York Times and lines down the block. Meredith Marks, who appears on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, reports that her namesake caviar line, launched in August 2023 and featured on multiple episodes of the show, grew by over 1,000% between the 2024 holiday season and the year before. But perhaps one of the buzziest launches in recent memory comes from Paige DeSorbo, who joined Summer House alongside Kyle Cooke in season three and has become a breakout star with a hit podcast, Giggly Squad, alongside former Summer House costar and comedian Hannah Berner. (Giggly Squad, of course, comes from the moment on the show when Cooke chides DeSorbo and Berner for side-chatting while hes talking about wedding planning during a tense group dinner.) DeSorbo has 1.6 million followers on Instagram and is known for her chic and simple style and funny confessionals. Like any good Bravolebrity, DeSorbo understood the power of the Bravo edit. She realized that after the first season she was on the show, Bravo had given her what she describes as the lazy girl edit, which meant spending copious amounts of screen time bed-rotting on her phone. Why not monetize? Last June, DeSorbo launched Daphne, a direct-to-consumer pajama and loungewear brand, with Chris Kim, founder and CEO of Concept Brands, Daphnes brand incubator. The 12 different styles sold out in just a couple of days. (Currently, products include the Hannah Tee $68, the Bubbly Slip Dress $120, and the Golden Night Sweatshirt $98.) On November 4, to coincide with DeSorbos birthday, the brand dropped new items, including a robe ($120) secretly embroidered with Sorry, I cant tonight, so you can see it only when the collar is popped. The Gigglers, as he fans are known, are already obsessed. Still, DeSorbo was nervous about her first big solo project. Anytime you launch something, you still feel like youre a little kid and youre throwing a birthday party and youre like, But what if no one shows up? she says. It exploded exactly the way we hoped it would. If youre going to go on a Bravo show in 2025, you better have a strategy, and you better know how to launch a productand fastbecause the seasons come and the seasons go, and much like QVC, once your time on camera is done, its possible your sales are too. In 2006, when The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo, the show was not an initial success. But the format slowly caught on with viewers who quickly became addicted to watching women of a certain age living their authentic and often chaotic lives in front of the camera. Overseen by network executive and executive producer Andy Cohen, Real Housewives became a phenomenon with the launch of multiple cities in the franchise: New York and Atlanta in 2008, New Jersey in 2009 with its Zeitgeist-defining table flip, and Beverly Hills in 2010. Today, with the franchise nearly 20 years old, there are more than 10 Real Housewives showsand their millennial spin-offs, such as Vanderpump Rules, Summer House, and Southern Charm. Bravo has been entirely remade in the Housewives image, with most of its shows now in whats called the docu-follow format. On each of these shows, cameras and canny producers follow groups of friends, family, or coworkers as they go about their daily lives and chronicle not just their interpersonal squabbles but their marriages, divorces, and, crucially, their business launches, which would fast become one of the staple narratives of Housewives shows and their spin-offs. In the beginning, launching a business was not a reason to sign up for a Bravo show. Jill Zarin, a founding member of Real Housewives of New York City, which premiered in 2008, had different intentions: To be famous, she says matter-of-factly and without shame from her Florida home office, where an old, framed copy of an amNewYork newspaper featuring the RHONY ladies from season two hangs on the wall. That all changed thanks to one woman: Zarins friend Bethenny Frankel. While the Housewives were originally meant to showcase married mothers of means, Frankel was a fledgling reality star, fresh off a second-place finish on the poorly rated Martha Stewart edition of The Apprentice, unmarried, and struggling to make it as a natural-food chef. Her zingy one-liners and position as the underdog who was the voice of reason amid a group of wannabe socialites made her an instant fan favorite. I went on the show single-handedly and exclusively for business, Frankel told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. I knew it was a risk and I had the most to lose, because I already had a platform. When I went on the show, no one was going on for business, no one had done anything. Bethenny Frankel has spoken to the press about signing her contract for the first season of The Real Housewives of New York, for which she earned $7,250 for the entire season. She refused to sign the profit-sharing clause in the contract, which she likes to call the Bethenny clause. A Bravo spokesperson says that they do not comment on talent contracts. When asked about the clause, Kyle Cooke says, The way it reads is you owe them a percentage of your take-home. So if you have a book that generates $1 million in sales and your take is $250,000, then Bravo might want 10% of that. But is Bravo chasing down talent for $25,000 checks? No. Ultimately, if my business isnt profitable, theres no discussion. And most beverage companies are losing money until the day theyre bought. During her first season, Frankel started ordering what she called a skinny girl margarita, a low-sugar, low-calorie version of the classic cocktail. By the shows third season in 2010, she had bottled it, branded it, and was hawking Skinnygirl in stores. In 2011, Frankel sold the company to Beam Global for an undisclosed amount, estimated by some to exceed $100 million. The same year, she was on the cover of Forbes with the headline The New Celebrity Money Makers. (In 2023, Frankel spoke with Vanity Fair, calling for a union of Housewives and posted a TikTok calling for a reality reckoning. Among other accusations against production, the article details racism endured behind the scenes, with some incidents involving Eboni Williams, the first Black cast member on RHONY. In February 2024, former RHONY cast member Leah McSweeney filed a federal lawsuit against Bravo Media, Andy Cohen, and others behind the show, alleging a rotted workplace culture that preyed on cast weakness and employed psychological warfare against McSweeney. As of 2026, the lawsuit remains ongoing.) I think everyone was a little jealous of Bethenny, Zarin says of cast members witnessing Frankels successalthough she says she never was. But the rush to cash in on the shows had demonstrably mixed results, showing that for any founder, building in public carries risks. RHONY castmate Ramona Singer, famous for her love of pinot grigio, slapped her name on a bottle, but online reviews were mixed and some complained the wine was impossible to find. Shereé Whitfield of Real Housewives of Atlanta first attempted to launch her fashion line, She by Shereé, with a fashion viewing even after rejecting the lines clothing samples the day before the event. As Dwight Eubanks, a hairdresser who was friends with several of the RHOA ladies, famously said, A fashion show with no fashions. How dreadful! (A revamped She by Shereé was made available to consumers nearly a decade later, but it was dogged by comparisons to the fast-fashion brand Shien.) The path of least resistance for less entrepreneurial Bravolebs is the traditional influencer route. Lindsay Hubbard, who started Summer House with Cooke, left her career as a publicist after season five for a lucrative career as a full-time reality television personality. Ive determined I dont really want to start a product. I watch my friends do it, and its a heavy grind. Hubbard, who has more than 750,000 Instagram followers, has been appearing in commercials for Hellmans Mayo and State Farm. Im not willing to lose my hair and sleep one hour a night to start my own product from the ground up. In 2015, when Kyle Cooke answered an open casting call for the show that would become Summer House, he says he signed on 50% for shits and giggles, but he also had a tactical reason. I never watched a single episode of any Bravo show, he says. But I did know Bethenny Frankel by name. Cooke would help producers find the rest of the initial cast, including Carl Radke, whom he had met a few summers before at a Hamptons hot spot, Surf Lodge, when Radke dared Cooke to pour a 6-liter bottle of rosé with one hand.&nbs; Kyle said to me, Do you know Bethenny Frankel? And I was like, Yeah, I mean Skinnygirl. And hes like, Exactly, this is a platform, Radke recalls. So his whole sales pitch was like, Its not all about fucking chicks and getting drunk. Theres something more here that could lend itself to a business or a personal brand. Cooke has a dual reputation on Summer House. On one hand, he comes across as a party boy who always wants to send it, in his parlance. At 43, he is the oldest member of his reality clique, and the show continues to portray him as a man-child who refuses to settle down. But Cooke is also a workaholic entrepreneur who puts Loverboy before everything on screen, including, at times, his relationship with Amanda Batula, whom he began dating in the first season, and who served as the first creative director of Loverboy, leading its branding and marketing. Its that all-work side of Cooke that comes out when you visit Loverboy HQ in Manhattans Financial district. It is one of those chic New York setups where the elevator opens directly into the space: one side opens to the Loverboy offices, and the other opens directly onto a living space. Theyre mirror opposites and on the same floor. Cooke works at a standing desk, kitted out with expensive speakers so he can sample new music while going over spreadsheets. He talks in numbers and acronyms, like someone with an MBA. (His came from Babson in 2011.) At the office, even when taking his dogs, Reese and Ryder, for a walk around the neighborhood, hes the definition of locked in. Cooke had a formative experience selling Cutco Knives door-to-door in his native New Hampshire and says he offloaded $10,000 worth of knives in the first month. His entrepreneurial career began while he was a polysci major at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, when he took on a University Painters franchise, finding house-painting jobs and subcontracting them out. He recalls making $250,000 in revenue his first year, and says he was named the companys rookie of the year. When my friends went on spring break, he says, I went to New Hampshire and did a home show. When Summer Housestarted, Cooke was consulting for the mens shorts startup Birddogs, managing an Airbnb property, and running an app he created, Fenix, that matched customers with nutritionists for one-on-one coaching. Fenix was featured in the first couple of seasons of the show, but its hard to make an app stand out on television. Theres nothing people can hold in front of the camera; theres no product for people to see. What teeny little soundbites made it into season one and season two were so convoluted that people thought I had a fitness app. And Im like, No, no, its nutrition. Abs are made in the kitchen, Cooke says. The development of the Loverboy hard tea brand was more organic to the reality television process. In the first season of the show, housemate and co-star Lindsay Hubbard worked in PR and had contacts in the food and beverage space. Her contact at Boston Beerwhich owns Samuel Adams, the hard iced tea brand Twisted Tea, and the hard seltzer brand Trulyhooked them up with free product for the exposure. Cooke noticed that fans were much more interested in the booze than in his nutrition app. Everybody was asking what we were drinking, he says. What kind of rosé is that? Whered you get your margarita maker? What the hell are these Twisted Teas? Still nutrition-minded, Cooke felt bad recommending certain products because he thought of them as unhealthy. His idea was to make a similar product with no added sugar and all-natural ingredients. It also helped that fans had already come to know Cooke by the time Loverboy was introduced in the shows third season. If you come on a show, and youre just fucking slinging a product right away or just doing constant adsits just like, so this is why you did the show? he says. You need three or five years in between for people not to be rubbed the wrong way. But even after warming up the audience, product launches still arent always easy. And as with everything in business, timing is everything. The schedule of reality television adds a layer of difficulty for a founder looking to launch a product. The typical Bravo show airs once a year and may have as many as 20 episodes per season, followed by two to three episodes of a reunion special. The whole process can start over again right as the reunion wraps. Though shows may film for only two to six months, being a Bravolebrity ends up being a year-round job, because as the show is airing, the stars are at their most visible, doing press, appearing on Bravos late-night show Watch What Happens Live, and responding to the lovers and haters across social media comments. It also takes about six months after filming for editing and postproduction, so getting a product on the show and then having it available for fans to purchase eight to 10 months later can be difficult. In April 2018, as Summer Houses second season was airing, Cooke got down to honing his idea for what kind of beverage he wanted to launch, ruling out rosé and hard seltzer and settling on sparkling hard tea. Timing-wise, for me to formulate, do the artwork with the help of Amanda and an agency, trademark the name, and get samples in cans, it was literally do or die. Typically, that takes four to six months. I essentially did it in 10 weeks, he says. He did all of this with $100,000 of his own money and before the show had even been renewed for a third season. It was my money on the line. I had to make that bet, he says. When the show was renewed, the timing was ideal. I got enough of the work done so I wouldnt miss the filming window, but there was still work to be done to capture it, Cooke says. That included a scene with Cooke and Batula, looking like Laverne and Shirley, testing their drink formulations at a plant in New Jersey; getting the drink in cans so his friends on the show could taste it, and a fateful fundraising launch (more on this later) at the end of the season. These scenes are essential for viewers, whose affinity for the brands seems to intensify as they see the amount of work their favorite reality stars are putting into them. While Cooke nailed getting the brand on the show, he flubbed the second part: getting Loverboy in stores just as the season aired. It took longer than expected to figure out the intricacies of the alcohol distribution system and import the actual alcohol for the product from the Netherlands because the base that beverages like his were using at the time wasnt up to Cookes low-sugar, low-calorie standards. While season three aired and people are learning about Loverboy, they still couldnt find it, he says. The absence turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Not only did the company capture potential buyers information on their website, but the delay also allowed them to film a soft launch for Loverboy in New York City for the shows fourth season. By the time that was airing, the country was deep in the pandemic with nothing to do but sit inside, drink alcohol, watch reality TV, and drink the alcohol that was on reality TV. Loverboy became a runaway success. With a few more years under his belt, Cooke has gotten savvier with timing, focusing on new products, new flavors, variety packs, and other goodies. We try to time it so the innovation would be talked about and enjoyed by friends the summer before it launches, he says, describing the origins of Loverboys nonalcoholic products and Flowerboy, his new low-dose THC drink thats derived from hemp rather than cannabis. That luxury for longvity, with these moves spanning years rather than months, is something nearly unique to Bravo. You do have a better platform coming out [a show like Real Housewives] with which to market yourself as compared with other shows like Survivor, where when the next season shows up, and nobody knows your name anymore, says Kelly Goldsmith, a marketing professor at Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. (And she should know, having done a stint of her own on Survivor.) Despite building an enormous social platform over the five years Paige DeSorbo has been on Summer House, she has always been wary of launching a product. She says shes been approached by all sorts of brands, but nothing clicked. It just didnt feel right in my gut to launch any type of product if I didnt feel a hundred percent connected to it, she says. I think before I knew the phrase personal brand, I felt that in my bones, and I just didnt feel like I had a strong enough personal brand until recently, until the past two years. DeSorbo and her costars Batula and Ciara Miller became known as the bed bugs for the amount of time they spend hanging out horizontally in the A/C as the Hamptons heat rages outside. She finally settled on the pajama line, Daphne, which feels like a natural brand extension. When talking to all these Bravolebs, they say the number-one thing that matters for the brand is authenticity. They should know, because that is the No. 1 factor in being great at reality TV. Bravo fans are savvy, and they can spot a fakebe it a person or a productfrom miles away. Siva K. Balasubramanian, Harold L. Stuart endowed chair in business at Illinois Tech, who has been studying product placement since the late 80s, says audiences respond best when attributes of the product and the celebrity selling it are aligned, the way DeSorbos love for bed, comfort, and fashion are represented with upscale pajamas. When you see that mix, that is what I would call a combustible combination, which is almost going to guarantee success with your product launch. I see Bravo Network is very attractively positioned for launching these niche products where the fit is high, he says. This is a perfect time to note that Bravo fans are, in a word, nuts. They are especially devoted to these people theyve been watching on screen for years, and they feel more like friends to these reality stars than they do to other celebrities. While interviewing Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member Melissa Gorga in front of her Ridgewood, New Jersey, boutique, Envy, a bus pulled up with a dozen Bravoholics, as theyre called in the fandom. It was a group of friends who met at BravoCon, the semiannual fan event in Las Vegas, which is like ComicCon for those who find people fighting on television somehow soothing. They were having a reunion in New Jersey not only to meet up but also to visit the places theyd seen on the show in real life. Gorga dutifully posed for pictures, showing them the best lighting in the shop. She answered questions and posed for even more pictures. When she asked which other places they were visiting, one fan said, We just went by your house. Look! and showed her a photo on her phone of Gorgas front door. The fans for Housewives, everyone says, are like no other, Gorga says. They really are intense, and they really are invested. About 75% of the Bravo audience are female, according to the company, and the other 30% are probably gay men. (That is a joke, but just barely.) From an entertainment [channel] perspective, its the most upscale, also educated audience, says David Kaplan, executive vice president of content analytics for NBC Entertainment, Sports, and Peacock. A majority of the audience has college or advanced degrees and makes over $100,000 a year, according to Kaplan. Those same analytics show theyre also exceptionally loyal, devoting more days to watching Bravo than other media brands; those who watch Bravo shows on NBCs streaming platform Peacock, which airs all Bravo shows the next day, tend not to watch just one Bravo show, but many. They just have a greater likelihood to invest in the brand, Kaplan says, and then they have a frequency of viewing and a habit effectively to sort of watch it more consistently than they do other media brands. Bravo fans also have other great features for founders looking to launch a business on the platform. According to Bravos internal research, its viewers tend to be the first in their friend groups to try new products and are the ones whose recommendations people trust most. There are lots of advertising options a brand can buy, except word of mouth, which Bravo fans are giving out to their friends for free. At 2023 BravoCon, the channel tracked the impact of Bravolebrity brands: 100% of attendees reported seeing a Bravolebrity brand at the conference, which makes sense, considering there was an entire room in a Vegas convention center set aside as the Bravo Bazaar, where the stars scheduled meet-and-greets for anyone who showed up to buy a three-wick candle, for instance. Among the more than 25,000 superfans expected to generate nearly $14 million in ticket sales for the event, 78% purchased a product from a Bravolebrity. Its not just superfans who swipe their credit cards. Bravo says 28% of all viewerscasual fans and completists alikereport that theyve bought a product a Bravolebrity has championed on screen. Rebecca Minkoff, the clothing and accessories designer who launched her namesake handbag line in 2005, joined the second season of the RHONY reboot in 2024 and almost immediately saw a surge in media interest. Even before the show started airing, the media was interested in a way that they hadnt been in a while, Minkoff says, noting an Elle magazine feature that coincided with the 20th anniversary of her brand. She says that after the show aired on Tuesday nights, traffic to her website would triple, and it would remain doubled for both Wednesday and Thursday. There was also an uptick in the caliber of customers. Our full price sales started going even higher, and our margin was better because of it, she says, noting that the Housewives viewers flocking to the site were buying bags full price instead of waiting for them to go on sale. Minkoff also leveraged her time on the show to advance other business deals she had in place. She had been approached by Universal Pictures, a member of the NBCUniversal family like Bravo, to design bags for the movie Wicked. She says she had secured the project before being cast on Housewives. Still, she was able to show off the final product on the show in a scene where Minkoff invited castmate Sai de Silva and her daughter, a Wicked fan, to her studio to check out the bags she designed specifically for the hit movie. The bags, available only on her site and at Bloomingdales, sold out in a week. Minkoff left the show after one season. From a business standpoint, it was a good idea, she says, noting her brand awareness was up 20 per cent year-over-year as of June 2025. Established entrepreneurs might be wary about mixing business with Bravo. Crystal Kung Minkoff appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills from 2021 to 2024. (According to Rebecca, Crystals husband might be a distant cousin.) On the show, she appears to be the consummate housewife, focused mostly on family, friends, and home. Still, she also started the organic coconut water brand Real Coco with her brothe and a childhood best friend over a decade ago. So it was perhaps a shock to fans when she mentioned on the season 13 reunion that Real Coco was a $100 million company; it was almost unheard of for a Bravolebrity to not mention their business, even though the brand was sold at Costco and Walmart, and was expanding into Smart & Final as the reunion aired. Hopefully by the end of 2024 to 2025, well be in all big-box stores, she told Andy Cohen. Kung Minkoff also spoke to Inc. about her concerns with putting her brand in the reality spotlight. I know that Housewives reaches a massive audience, but you have to be careful about how much you want to expose. And it was important for me to build my brand as a person on the show first, she says. So it was a really specific approach, a deliberate approach, and you have to protect your integrity and long-term value. Melissa Gorga, a star of Real Housewives of New Jersey, is married to Joe Gorga, the brother of breakout star Teresa Giudice, and was recruited for the show in 2010 ahead of its third season. A trained teacher, she signed up thinking it would be fun, without considering the business implications at all. Quickly, fans started asking what she was wearing on the show. She would send them links to the boutiques where she bought it. Finally, she thought, Why am I sending them everywhere else? Let them buy from me. So thats what pushed me to go ahead and open up my own boutique, because I might as well pick what I want to wear and let people buy from me. In 2015, she launched Envy by Melissa Gorga in Montclair, New Jersey, four years into her tenure on the show, after she had given up her dreams of being a singer and her kids were older. The store moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 2022 and a second location was opened in Huntington, New York, in March 2024. She has 13 employees across both locations and says the business has shown double-digit growth over the past three years. Revenue in the Huntington store grew 80% its first year. Gorga says half of her sales come in-store and half online. After starting the business with a partner, Gorga made a six-figure investment to buy out the partner, she says, and she self-funds it today. There was one point when I had to pull out of my own bank account to cover some of the bills for a couple of months, she says about the businesss early years. Gorga recently launched a new business, Lets Sprinkle by MG, a line of sprinkle cookies. The concept references one of the first salvos in her never-ending feud with her sister-in-law Giudice. She came to my house on Christmas Day. She brought me sprinkle cookies, Giudice told her friends on Gorgas first season of the show back in 2011. I said to her, Melissa, nobody touched the cookies you brought. I threw them in the garbage. This, strangely, has become one of the defining moments in their decade-long struggle, which ended with Gorga and Giudice becoming entirely estranged. After years of not speaking, Gorga and Giudice reconciled in late 2025, and their families spent the holidays together. Yes, Giudice tried the sprinkle cookies and deemed them delicious. Personal drama also makes sure the business gets on the show. At a Loverboy event featured on season three, Cooke planned not only to ask friends and friends-of-friends to invest in his business, but also to ask his future father-in-law for permission to marry his girlfriend, Amanda Batula. The kicker is that the event took place after Batulas father had learned that Cooke had made out with another woman in a club. (Hey, this is Bravo after alltheres gonna be drama.) In retrospect, that was not planned. I mean, I knew I would have to have that talk there. And it was a Loverboy event, Cooke says. But having multiple things happen at a critical moment for your company, having multiple things happening on a personal level with you and other cast members, is kind of mission-critical to getting those critical business scenes included. Without other cast involved, without personal story involved, theyre not going to include some random work scene. Loverboy became something of a family enterprise, with Cooke bringing in Batula to help with product design, packaging, and branding, alongside an agency (Batula and Cooke would marry at the end of season six). He also brought on his best friend, Carl Radke, who invested $15,000 in the company and served as VP of sales. Loverboys work drama became core to the Summer House storyline. But for Cooke, the drama would soon become less personal and more financial. As Loverboy hit its stride and fans connected during and after the pandemic, the brands revenue in 2022 jumped to $16.3 million, Cooke told Inc. in an interview. But in 2023, it dropped suddenly to $9 million, and the company failed to turn a profit. The drop-off was mostly due to problems with their distributors, Cooke says. The stress came through on season six of the show. As Cooke was negotiating a potential prenup with Batula, who also holds equity in the company, he revealed on air that he was $4 million in debt from a small-business loan and that, that month, he faced $200,000 in legal fees. (Loverboy has been involved in two legal disputes, one with the owner of a now-closed East Village bar, who claimed trademark infringement over the name, and another with a beverage wholesaler over a contract dispute. The first was settled out of court, and the second was eventually dismissed.) As Loverboy switched from six packs to variety packs and reduced the number of products it sold, the company spent two years working to correct the problem. We can solve for the consumer thanks to the show, thanks to social media, thanks to email, text, all that stuff, thanks to direct to consumer, but to solve for wholesale and retail takes real resources that I think we underestimated, he said. There are so many directions Loverboy can take, says investor Spencer Slaine, who remains confident about his early position. But based on the amount hes raised and how he protects investors even with any kind of obstacle or issue hes faced, its going to be a profitable investment for people who came in when I did. There are others that make me anxious, but for some reason with Loverboy Im not. Carl Radke, who worked at Loverboy as VP of sales from 2020 to 2022, knows plenty about how being on a reality show can make his professional life difficult. In the first season of Summer House, Radke sold orthodontic products and drove his company car to the Hamptons house with Cooke. When his boss saw the trailer for the first season and recognized the car, he fired Radke immediately, the day after the shows premiere party. At the time, Radke was drinking heavily, as was apparent on the show. His hard partying ways seemed to mesh well with working at an alcohol brand and doing countless fan meet-and-greets, often with Cooke. However, when Cooke mentioned on camera that Radke had shown up to work events drunk and on cocaine, it made Radke look unprofessional. By season eight, Radke eventually found his way to sobriety, and his storyline that season revolved around his sudden proposal to his girlfriend, castmate Lindsy Hubbard, and his decision to pursue entrepreneurship. But when he pitched his business idea to Hubbard on cameraa sports bar that sells only non-alcoholic drinksher reaction, and fans, bordered on ridicule. Sorry, Im gonna have to say no to that one, she told Radke on camera. Working in the hospitality industry my entire life, representing every single lounge, bar, club, hotel, restaurant. . . . I dont want that for our future family. Whats funny is that kind of moment did help me go back to the drawing board and actually develop [a business plan]. Its not a sports bar, Radke tells Inc. We need to build a brand and a community. We need to build something. Theres more meaning behind this. Its not just nonalcoholic drinks. The concept he emerged with is Soft Bar, a coffee shop and nonalcoholic drinks space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that opened in September 2025. One of the soft openings just before Labor Day was attended by the cast of Summer House, and may be a part of the upcoming 10th season. With an initial investment of $100,000 of his own money, Radke brought on business partner Brian McNamee, a founder of Inc. 5000 marketing agency Resolute Digital, which he sold in 2017. Radke says the pair has so far raised about $1 million via their personal networks to open their first physical space, with more locations to come. When Radke introduced the brand on-air in season nine, he began receiving inquiries from people interested in investing. That led him to search for Republic, a capital-raising crowdfunding platform that has helped companies such as Robinhood and Steeped Coffee raise funds. They eventually raised just shy of $130,000 from about 200 investors. This seemed like a really great way to offer, I think a really unique business opportunity, Radke says. But at a smaller scale, you can get in for $250. Cooke had a similar experience with investment-curious fans. During the shows most recent season, he got into an argument with Craig Conover, a star of Bravos Southern Charm, who was then the boyfriend of DeSorbo. Conover had recently invested in a competing alcohol brand, Spritz Society, whose founders include influencers Ben Soffer, Claudia Oshry, and Jackie Oshry. During a fight at a group dinner, castmate Ciara Miller asked if Loverboy was taking on new investors. He answered that any of them could get in for $25,000. After the episode aired, Cooke got dozens of DMs from people willing to write a check. He followed up on one of those offers, which came from a fan who is a successful investor. The day after our interview, Cooke flew down to Charleston to meet with him, and he ended up investing $1 million in Loverboy and another $500,000 in Flowerboy, the brands THC-infused line of social sodas. For all of the impact that Bravo can bring to business, there comes a moment in the Bravolebritys journey when you need to prepare to leave the spotlight, or be ready for the spotlight to leave you. Erin Lichy of RHONY has an interesting way of looking at being a reality star: that exposure to the business should be minimized. Dont rely too heavily on the platform for your business. Use the platform for yourself, she says. I see too often that, especially Housewives, align themselves so closely, as if their business is dependent on Bravo. And its just, to me, kind of crazy. As for the Summer House cast, driving three hours in traffic to the end of Long Island to share a room with 10 of your friends and coworkers starts to lose its luster in your thirties as partying at Surf Lodge gives way to babies, relationships, and brand building. Paige DeSorbo says that anyone who goes onto a reality show should do it with an end goal in mind. Hers was to have a fashion brand, which she accomplished with Daphne. I felt like I gave what I could give for the past seven years, she says, freshly back from a jaunt to Capri. Summer House, DeSorbo says, is about going and partying on the weekends, and nobody really wants to watch me lie in bed Saturday and Sunday, and thats really what I want to do. So I was like, Im going to spare everyone. DeSorbo teased the launch of her loungewear brand, Daphne, on June 3 and announced she was leaving Summer House two days later to focus on her brand. When Daphne went up for sale the following week, all items sold out within a couple of days. In November, sensing a generational shift in its cast, Bravo announced a spin-off, In the City, starring Kyle Cooke, Amanda Batula, and Lindsay Hubbard. Radke and Hubbard have since broken their engagement, and Hubbard now has a child with someone else. She announced the pregnancy in an Instagram collaboration with the pregnancy-testing product Clearblue, timing it perfectly with her announcement on the show. And just two weeks before the season 10 premiere on February 3, another Bravo bombshell: Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula posted to an Instagram story that they were separating after four years of marriage. Cooke says Batula is retaining equity in Loverboy, though he declines to say how much. He tells Inc., Once we split, I formalized her equity because we had been working on a level of trust. If anything, this separation has helped clearly define her equity. Cooke, meanwhile, has hit the road boosting his DJ appearances, with his Let Him Cooke Tour ending in late March at the Marquee in Las Vegas, where the Bravo fans are sure to be bouncing, and the Loverboy will be flowing. By Brian Moylan Brian Moylan is the author of New York Times bestseller The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Housewives. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, Gawker 1.0, Time, Cosmopolitan, Town & Country, and many other outlets. This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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