Betches Media CEO and Founder Aleen Dreksler on Building a Digital Hub for Women With Comedy and Community

[Music] Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's Weekly Podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Cynthia Littleton, Co-Editor and Chief of Variety. Today my guest is Aileen Drexler, founder and CEO of Betches Media. This is a by-the-boot straps digital business built around comedy and community for women. The origin story of Betches offers a fascinating look at the Wild West of digital media from about 15 years ago. Drexler traces the company's growth from starting out on a couch when she was in college to now being part of a larger digital ecosystem since its acquisition in 2023 by the UK's LBG media. This episode as a bonus includes a separate conversation that was held last month at the South by Southwest Festival to celebrate Variety's 10 Creators to Watchlist. My great colleague, Solomé Highly, moderated a session with the Busy Creators who are driving the future of media. It's an interesting contrast to hear their stories of building successful media brands in contrast to Drexler's experience. Aileen Drexler, CEO and founder of Betches Media. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Aileen, I know you have built a very strong business through the social media world. I'm probably dating myself, but I have spent a lot of time on your website consuming your content, your video cover quite a range, you have everything from entertainment to sports to pop culture to health. You've built out quite a business in a relatively short time. Tell me, I want to talk about your origin story, but first set the table for us in terms of the key areas of focus for Betches Media and what you see are your growth drivers. The way that I think about Betches, it's truly a brand that defines your persona or that little voice within that wants to say the funny thing that we're all thinking. We always say just call your inner betch and it really expands all ages. My mom is a betch, a big betch. So Betches though, from a business perspective, we are an entertainment company for women. We specifically specialize in humor and we reach one and two women in the United States. That said, we also have Betches UK and like you said, we cross many different verticals, specifically like pop culture. We have news and activism and sports, sports for women, not only women's sports and dating, relationships, lifestyle, all of that, for young women and always and it's always got to be funny. That is the crux of what we do. We do it in many different formats. Social first is the play. Even though like you mentioned our website, we started in 2011 as a blog. This is when speaking of context, Facebook, wall to walls was our social media of choice and BBMs was how we communicated through BBM. It feels like we're talking horse and buggy days. It really does. But they were good times. They were great times. But Betches, like I said, it is brand first, it is social first is voice first and we are celebrating our 15th year this year. I started it in college on the couch with my two closest friends. They weren't just my college friends. They were my friends since we were 10 years old. We truly are like sisters and we created the content from day one to be in one voice and that voice is the brand. We often call it our fourth co-founder. She, like I said, the batch is that inner voice in your head that wants to say the thing that everyone's thinking out. The line that you think of when you're driving away from the meeting, that you say, "Oh, if I'd only dropped that one, it would have changed the tone." And the one that you call your friend and say, "And that is the key to what Betches the brand really represents is it's your funny best friend in the group chat. The one that we'll say the thing with you." And that is what we represent for people. That is what the brand is. The reason why I get up every day is really to make women laugh and to feel see and understood and all of our thoughts that we're thinking throughout the day, whether it is the latest pop culture of what's going on in Bravo, what's going on in the White House or really what's going on in your dating life. When I think about that time period, low those many years ago, I was talking to somebody else who talked about, "Hey, don't discount the importance of mommy bloggers." I remember when mommy bloggers were like proto-creators of today. And I remember when things like Broad City came out. And it felt so like, this is the humor that we talk about in our private moments. And Betches seems to capture a lot of that sort of sass and ensousions. That is why we started Betches. It was a complete response to our dissatisfaction with what existed for young women. I mean, I was 21 years old. I was in a sorority which I felt allergic to the culture of. And I'm with my best friends on a couch. We look like complete, you know, what everybody looks like when they sit on a couch with their best friends. In swathons. In swathons. In the three of us, we're getting emails from our sorority telling us how we need to dress to show up to this fret party. Subtext perfect. We're getting pinged on whatever blogs are out there about how everything needs to be perfect, how you need to look XYZ for this guy. Meanwhile, I have to say like, my, I am, I've always been an entertainment person at heart. Before we started Betches, we were writing a TV show. It was called The Apartment. And it was describing exactly what we're talking about. We're watching SNL. I am obsessed with TV and film and good writing. Really good comedy writing. The three of us, we have the same sense of humor. It's very observant. And we always like to talk about what, like, and this is how we've stayed in front of culture or defined culture because we're always looking at what everybody's talking about. And then we'll comment on that thing. We'll comment, why is everybody talking about this? And let's make fun of that. And let's make fun of ourselves in the process. And so now we really represent young women, especially in the United States. But we have been the OG creators and I didn't even realize that until I really took a good look back at. We had the social team in-house creating sketches back to, like, 2016. And we have had incredible creators that have come through our doors. We now become, have Netflix specials, are on TV shows, are an influencer, and whether they've left and doing their own thing and we're supporting their endeavors. For them, like, some pages of Sorbo and Hannah Burner, they've been through the Betches doors for a bit. So that's been the exciting thing of being at the forefront. I think of entertainment and this creator economy is seeing, like, all of the, how entertainment and how social media has shifted the entire landscape. And for us, because we've been brand first, we are able to ride the wave and shift with our audience shifts. How do you primarily monetize? Because you do have a lot of original content. I see the sketches. How do you pay for it all? It's through advertising, primarily advertising. I mean, we have ticket sales and we have some merch and things like that. But it's primarily advertising. We have, for a few years now, have been real consultive marketing partners to our clients in how to reach and speak to young women because we know how many, many brands do not. And the reason why many brands come to us and clients come to us is because, yes, we have that voice of a creator. We have that trust and loyalty, but we also have the scale of a media company, like a real media business. So we have both scale and trust. And then we also have strategy and quick turn content. People come to us like in a week or like we want to do this, we got it. Seven figures. We can make this like incredible content turn around in a few days because we are a content studio. And that's what we do for our audience. And that's also what we do for our clients. And the opportunity for us for the next, say, 18, 24 months, like I said, we're working more closely with creators, creating and producing content, whether it's in-house jointly in terms of IP or working as a platform for them. One of our creators that's been with us since day one, not day one, but for 10 years, Jared and Fred, we've produced two Netflix specials with him already. Our second one is coming out in September. Is that also licensing revenue like that? Is that also, I would imagine that's a growing source of income. That's also one of our bigger opportunities. The second, I would say, big opportunity for us is sports, namely sports for women. And it's exciting because it's incredible to see that we have a responsibility there as a media brand for women. We see that, especially for female athletes, that the higher their profile gets, the bigger women's sports becomes. And as a media and entertainment company and owner of that entertainment company, I feel that responsibility to showcase their personalities and make their personalities sing, make them bigger. So we are working in-house to create opportunities for that. And it's just, it's been really, really exciting. But also on the other side of it all is women as fans have been long ignored. Or naked for granted. I was just doing, we have a big relationship with the NFL, big partnership with the NFL. They came to us to reach women fans almost nearly 50% of their fanbase, about 47% of their audience's women. I just did an internal type of ERG talk to the women at the NFL and it was so amazing to see the women as fans are such a big opportunity. What's your baseline? What's your monthly active user base or your social followers base? Give us a baseline of what your audience is right now. We have about 650 million monthly views across the whole business. So that's across YouTube, YouTube, shorts, Instagram, all of the things. So people are watching, people are really engaged. The thing that's though most important to me, views, shmuz, it's really about the engagement. Now everybody's catching on, like Instagram changed its dire algorithm to be all of that engagement. I have the only metrics I've cared about since day one because it's aligned to the same thesis of if real people are liking it, if real people are doing more than like it, they're sharing, that means they'll come back. They love it for a reason. Repeat business. Exactly. It's repeat business and it means you have something. And so right now my engagement rate is one of the highest in across all women's media and now the key metric for me is the DMs is what are people sending to each other in their DMs? What share percentage of all of our engagement, so it's not just engagement rates, but share percentage. So that's where we're looking in terms of what's going where the industry, where I think the industry is going to go. The idea that women are just sitting on the couch along with their boyfriends or husbands is so outmoded. So the batch's opportunity there is being that place for where women can consume sports entertainment, right? Sports media because it comes down to the thesis that women watch sports differently than men, but where are they consuming that? And so that's where we're also going. Let me ask you, Alene, going back to 2011 days, when you started this venture with your friends, you're in college, when did it coalesce in your minds that this is a business? When did you have that realization that this could grow into more than maybe what you envisioned at the start? I can't speak for my co-founders, but for me, we created this as this just fun thing. We started it as a blog anonymously. I was pre-med. I wanted to go to medical school. I wanted to be a reconstructive plastic surgeon, very specifically. I shadowed many doctors. I've done. I did it. All the shadowing of surgeries. But when I started batches, I did it instead of studying for an immunology quiz. Specifically, I remember because I had this spark, this feeling like we're doing something. And this is funny. We had somebody post this on another friend's Facebook wall and it went viral and viral, not in the sense of today's virality where it's truly algorithmic. It was viral because people were posting it, copying the link and posting it on their friends' walls, saying, "Is this you?" Because it was anonymous. They were accusing their friends in places that I have never traveled to. And at that moment, it was really like that's when it hit me. I was like, "Whoa." This is something. So, again, instead of going to med school or doing any of that, I instead, with my co-founders, I wrote a book proposal, sold it to Simon & Schuster. So that summer after college, we wrote a book and published a book. It became a New York Times bestseller. And it was just kind of this snowball effect of like tiny moments of validation that I never really looked back. We never took on any capital. Like we bootstrap the business completely up until the point where we sold the business. We were acquired in 2023. So that was an exciting moment. Also a validation that was probably my biggest one in the journey of 13 years up until that point. And who were you acquired by? Lad Bible Group. They're one of the largest social first media businesses in the UK. So we are now their US growth engine. Because we were profitable, I really didn't want to sell for the sake of selling. I really wanted to find a home for Betches with a company head and a CEO that had really a like vision for me, which was building an entertainment company of the future for young people and young women as it batches the brand. So now my remit as it expands is to continue to see that vision out, build batches, but also build this entertainment company for young people in the US. So I'm also now in terms of opportunities looking into M&A and identifying brands that match that ethos and creators and people to create joint IP with across all platforms. Are you seeing benefits now that you're plugging into a larger network of creators and content? We were able to launch Betches UK and really connect with our UK fans because the sense of humor in women in the UK is very good and it really aligns with us and I've always wanted to be a global company and that allowed me to do that. Was there a deal? Was there a partnership with the brand? Was there like a breakthrough moment where you realized we can do this? We can bring in revenue here. We made money through our book deals at first so that like floated us for a bit and then I was like, Hey guys, we need to start making money. This isn't a hobby anymore. We really need to make this. If we're going to make this, we got to make this. So we brought on like a third party agency to help us like sell ads on our website and then one day we had interest in our Instagram and that was really early days, early days and that was like a wild west, wild, wild west and we were like, Yeah, let's monetize our Instagram. So we were very, very early on in the branded content world, probably one of the first and Bumble was one of our first partners and you know, I recently spoke to their chief brand officer at that time. She's like, You guys were one of the reasons why we got as big as we got in those in those early days. You were the exact like through way to that audience to our consumers and I'm so proud of that. Yeah, I just miss be so gratifying. It was, it was, it's incredible and that is how it kind of started. It was just learning the ropes. There was a point where early, early on we got an RFP and my co-founder, Gerrana and I had to Google what an RFP was and we stayed up all night trying to fill it out. It was for ABC and we did not win it, but it was a learning curve. It was a learning opportunity and it really like, it's really stems from my drive to to win. Like my parents are immigrants. They came here from the Soviet Union. I was born within the year that they came here. I am deeply, deeply ambitious, deeply creative and those two combined like drives me to be here to this day. So for somebody who's initially set her sights on being in the medical world, did the strategy of running a business? Did that come natural to you? Was that a learning curve for you? And do you enjoy the business part of running Betchus Media? I love it. I love it all. I know I sound crazy. I do love it all because it's all just a challenge to figure out. It did not come easy to me at all. It did not. I like messed up a hundred times. It didn't come easy. It was tough. I think doing it with my two closest friends who we felt like, you know, you could really say anything to each other was helpful because we really honest with each other, especially around comedy. Like you have to be really honest to iterate a joke. Like you cannot be offended. You have to be like, no, that's terrible. Make this better. And you have to have that thick skin to make it both in comedy and in business. So it was really learned by doing there. Very few women entrepreneurs doing it the way that we were doing it. In fact, I spent some time speaking to male entrepreneurs who told us we should do it this way. We should do it that way. And I often made it a point to do the opposite of what they told me. And I love that you are guided by great instincts. Clearly, I can tell from this conversation. That's what we have as women is our instincts. Like we are deeply connected to what brought like that inner voice that that are gut. I think that's what our superpowers are. And I think that I'm still guided by like my instinct for what's funny. Like everybody has a different sense of humor. I'm guided by who I think is going to be a good talent or not. It's all instinctual. There's no there's no right or wrong. It's a vision. And you have to be really locked into it to know to make decisions. Otherwise, you're just paralyzed by decision making. Like you have to have that strong connection to your own vision and your instinct. What should we be looking out for for batches in the coming year? So what's on your horizon? Hopefully some scripted shows. That's ambitious. I think you're going to see some scripted. I think we're going to be deeply more into sports. And I think you're going to see us really going deep with funny, funny female creators, comedians, the like. And I'm really excited to make a big, big splash there. Listeners, I can see it on an alien space. She is revved up and ready to go. And I just kudos to you for seeing that moment. So from the humble beginnings in college to this quite this digital media. Yeah. I just want to add like before we close, just that one of the last validators for me after selling the business is that it is one of the only growing media companies right now. Like we've doubled our revenue in the last two years. To me is another mask. of alladator of looking at us against this contracting media space. I know we have something that's going to keep going, especially as we go deep with our clients. The more we know our audience, you through instinct and data, the more we're going to continue to grow and create just like the most incredible content. I'm excited for you to see it more. Repeat business. Exactly. And so right now, my engagement rate is one of the highest in across all women's media. The key metric for me is the DMs is what are people sending to each other in their DMs? What share percentage of all of our engagement? So it's not just engagement rates, but share percentage. So that's where we're looking in terms of what's going where the industry where I think the industry is going to go. That's great intel. Well, Aileen, this has been a really enjoyable conversation. I love talking to entrepreneurs and you are clearly a born one. Thank you. Thank you so much. And now here's varieties 10 creators to watch panel held March 14th in Austin, Texas as part of the South by Southwest festival. My name is Salome Hi Lou. I'm a reporter at variety. Thank you all so much for being here today. I'm really excited to introduce you to our first ever list of 10 creators to watch. It's my pleasure to introduce you to five of the 10 people on our list. Join me in welcoming Sabrina Briar, Julian Shapiro Barnum, Nina Lay, Breemarales, and Vinnie Thomas. Would you each just go down the line and introduce yourselves a bit? Hi, I'm Sabrina. I do sketch comedy primarily online. I basically am always posting in that context in a character. And I live in New York. So I'm often called like the girl who runs around New York and makes videos. And they often focus on female friendship. And they're definitely comedy driven by kind of getting to a little more emotional vibes. And that's me. Thank you. I know. Thank you. Hi, I'm Julian. I'm a comedian and interviewer and I have a couple shows I have online. I've won called recess therapy where I interview kids in parks and playgrounds. I have another one called celebrity substitute where we have celebrities teach a public elementary schools for a day. And then this summer I'm launching YouTube's first late night show. So I do a lot of fun stuff. Meena. Thank you. Hi, I'm Meena. I'm a video essayist primarily on YouTube. So I do like long format 40-ish minute videos about culture, fashion, film. I'm also a writer so I've been having some success on substack. But yeah, breathe. Hi, I'm breathe. I host a show called Are You Okay, where I interview funny comedians and celebs asking them really dumb questions to figure out if they're okay or not. And I'm also a baby content creator myself doing whatever I want to do. That's it. Hello, I'm Vinnie. I do stuff on the internet as well. My post videos on Instagram that are usually character focused. A lot of them are animals, sometimes aliens, sometimes political stuff. I started out on Twitter, but now that that's ashes, I post a lot on threads. Yeah. I want to talk a bit about how you guys started your careers and also like what your relationship to more traditional media is. Because it used to be that everyone big on social got famous by accident and that is still happening. But also these platforms are old enough now and you all are young enough that you might have been strategizing this as a way to break into film and television. And there's also creators for whom this is the destination. You don't necessarily need a TV show anymore to have a successful career, creating content that people see and making real money. So talk to me a bit about what your relationships to those mediums are. Are you trying to break into something else? Are you already where you want to be? Lovely question, by the way. So I've been performing and creating since I was little. That's always been the dream. I've always wanted to be an actress and I when I graduated college, I went right into like a month after graduating. I was I started as an assistant to a talent manager. And my honestly like at those days my goal was like, okay, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to get staff on a show and then I'm going to go surprise I can act. Can I be in it? So that was my plan, honestly. And I so I did the assistant think about five years of a writer's assistant on a network show, writer's PA. I've nannied for a showrunner. I've like done the whole running around the city thing and I honestly this was not in the cards. You know, I was planning on being like an elderly assistant and like kind of just you know, finding my way in at some point. And then I started posting in 2020, but I was not a breakout 2020 person. I started just on Instagram where it was pre-reels. So there was no like right literally. It's like I love dying. It's like if you're I'm not sure if you're old enough for pre-reels, but he's like, okay, catching this right. But so I and so it was like about a year of like a thousand views on a video and just kind of building that muscle. And then one day I threw something on TikTok, which was so foreign to me and so and I would ask my Gen Z sister like, what the hell is going on over here? And didn't understand it at all, but I kind of just found my way in had like a mini viral video. And then once that happened, I was so ready to try to become a content creator that this second I had that viral moment. I really was like I must catch lightning in a bottle. No, no, I, quick and dirty. I went to kind of similar. I went to school for theater. I said acting and playwriting and I've always just wanted to work in the traditional entertainment industry. And then in COVID when I like couldn't do theater, I started making videos and found a place online. And for the longest time, I think my goal was to use it as the stepping stone. I think it was always the way to like get to this big lofty goal. But I would say really in the past year and a half, I feel like the internet is catching up with the traditional entertainment space in a really exciting way. And like I like I pitched a TV show in 2020. Two, three, Grayson was that whatever. It didn't go. And that was like heartbreaking then. And now I don't know if I like I'm launching a new show on digital. I am really investing in digital because like there are so many gatekeepers and so many barriers of entry. And I it's much more interesting and engaging to self-produce and build my own team and be creative on my own with the people that I want to make with. Then kind of feel like on the flip side kind of I was feeling like I was begging to be let in. So anyway, yeah, I've like really bought into digital and it's a very exciting time to be here. I want to echo those sentiments. Also because I did have like almost like an overnight success, which was like a little bit different, but I was so grateful for. I like these two got into acting. I went to an acting conservatory, which was not a terrible not a terrible mistake, but I was working at a stationary store in the West Village before I became a content creator. And I was let go during the pandemic. They actually just closed the store without telling me. And my coworker was like, "Hey, Queen, like don't come to work today." I was like, "Why?" And they're like, "It's closed." So I was like, "Okay, I guess we'll move back home to Maryland. Did that. And I was just on YouTube like every day because I was like, "There's nothing for me to do. I'm like waiting for my unemployment checks to come in." And I fell into this like film commentary space on YouTube. And I was like, "Hey, like I love watching these things. I love talking about these things." Like why not try? I've always had this reverence for Hollywood, for Verreita, but over the last, unpaid, over the last couple years. It's like, I've seen the traditional and digital start to bridge between each other. And I'm like, I think traditional, there were a lot of date keepers, but now they're like, we actually are very interested in digital. We want to create things with digital. And I'm like, "I still love digital." So I think it's a really exciting time to be on these platforms. My way into this was like a little bit different. I went to school for journalism. I was like, "I'm gonna be that bitch on the ground. I'm gonna go undercover, to other countries." trees, I'm going to do it. And then I like reality, tecton, and I was like, okay, I'll do it in a way. I did an externship at CNN, and they were like, do you want to work here? And I was like, no, I don't know why, but no. And then I did another externship at now this, the company that owns a show that I host. And I was like, all right, this feels good, it's young, it's on, it's digital first, but it's journalism, that's like felt like a nice, I don't know, it felt new, and it felt like it was pushing boundaries. And I loved that. And I covered the election. I covered true crime, random, the person with the most tattoos in the world, like I did everything. And then the, you know, media landscape kind of changed, and we pivoted into social shows, and they were like, do you want to host? And I was like, I mean, I can, whatever. And then I was like, actually, yeah, I'll totally try. The year was 2020. I was living in Chicago, I was doing improv. I was working at the aquarium. I was comfortable with where my life was. I thought I would, I thought I would age gracefully into the kind of person who like taught people how to do improv. And then, you know, the pandemic, everything shut down. I started posting videos online because that just kind of every comedian in Chicago was doing that because that's how we would perform, right? I mean, you can't go out and do stuff. So you're just posting videos for each other. And it felt very local at the time. But ultimately, everyone can see the internet. So like, as I was posting those videos, I was getting attention from people in more traditional media circles. One of whom was Billy Eichner, who asked me if I wanted to audition for his gay rom com bros. I did. I was cast as gay Twitter, which number three, just being kind of this brutal little twink. Ultimately, I was cut out of the movie. But the guy who co-directed that next stroller ended up putting me in some of his other work going forward. So I developed a lot of these other relationships within like traditional entertainment because I had assembled this huge body of work online that became this kind of like portfolio. And sometimes I still do improv. Yeah. I want to expand on something that you touched on Bree about the audience coming to you and also to talk a bit about your production timeline on a format like this. So I'm curious a bit about your relationships to your audiences and how much you're letting, you know, what they're telling you they want influence your content. Like at the same time, you know, your personalities are your product. Yeah, I think you and maybe you guys will resonate. I feel like over time, you kind of maybe sort of go from like, I want to try this, try that. And then you and it's like that algorithm is like a monster that eats consistency. And like at once, you know, I'm typically outside in kind of an extra outfit. And I'm talking directly to the camera and I'm getting right into some interpersonal situation. And once in a while, I stray slightly, but for the most part, the alga's like, girl, what are you doing? You can't do that. We want this for you. That's what we're used to. And so at a certain point, I think I, but I actually think that's like healthy for me personally in what I do because I think it's good. I think it is like exercise. It's like there's the certain digital muscle I have where I'm delivering in a sitcom way, like same but different. You know what to expect kind of material that and I think a lot of the intricacies and what I find so interesting about it is is the audience response. They're always in the comments. It's often like a situation where I maybe agree with one character and they're like, we hate her. Like we agree with the other one. Or sometimes I'm doing something that I think is just purely pretty funny. But then you'll have like these kids, like these jenzy kids being like, this really spoke to me because I felt really excluded. And maybe this is how I'm going to handle it next time. And when it comes to the heart stuff and the things that I want to do in different ways, you know, I write, I write scripts, I audition, I find the other ways to, you know, kind of I think of that as like that's the platform that that gives me it's like the engine that I keep running. But I definitely have other aspirations that I'm it's almost a little bit like day job. And then the other dream job things around it. Yeah. I will say I totally agree with the pressure. I don't agree with the pressure. Like the algorithm will, when you start, there won't really be a question of what should I do next because the internet will dictate to you, oh, you should do this thing next. I do think at the beginning I was a little resentful of that. And so I would really like, if I like I had a video, the first one that blew up was like me as an alien interviewing earth to be whatever. That one did really well. And I was like, everyone said, oh, make more earth videos. And I said, absolutely not. So I'm pivoting to other things, you know, Betty Boop lipstick smeared on her face or like, you know, me as a grasshopper. And then those don't do as well. So I do think it is a battle of like, you know, it's like a catch 22 of like when you post the same thing or like something similar more regularly, you'll get more of a following. And maybe once you do get more of that, that's when you pivot into like more enthusiastically, making the weird stuff that you really want to make. Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah, I mean, I think that the algorithm, it's all encompassing like everyone's aware of it, whether you're a viewer or a creator yourself. But I think the pitfall is like, if you just chase the algorithm constantly and you're like, how like every single video I'm making has to be like something that's trending because I think to build any kind of longevity and like build like a relationship with your audience, you have to have some kind of consistency. And so people are going to be like that. I don't like or they're like, I don't like the Betty Boop thing because you're you're not Betty Boop to me. And that's not going to do well because it has to be aligned with what you do. And I think for me, it's it's a bit easier because like YouTube is my dominant platform. And so people don't expect a YouTube video every single day. I don't know at least my audience doesn't. But I'm able to sort of like glean what do I want to participate on? Like what kind of conversations do I want to have? And also like trying to find a way to really sink my teeth and my my print on it because it's like 40 minutes. And I can't just talk about Timothy Shilamay not liking ballet for 40 minutes. It's a balance. Yeah. Because I feel like anytime that you go to algorithm chasing and then it be and it really feels inauthentic, that's never going to do well. So it's like this balance of staying within the sort of parameters of what they expect and what your brand is. But also making sure you're not being like robot about it because that's never going to work. And that's a good point because there definitely are people and you'll see them sometimes, they will have gone dead behind the eyes. Do you know because they know what they have to do and they'll get up there and they'll do it. But the light is gone. Or like the Dorito brands that like comment on every tick to talk about something. Yeah. We love it queen and it's like what are you doing here? Who called you? A hair product once commented on my video of me dropping my phone in the toilet. I like love you, Mika. But I was like, what are you doing here? They were like LOL crazy and I was like, yeah girl. Welcome to my page. I did an impression of a termite once and raid raid the past raid the pesticide brand raid commented like mama or diva or something underneath. And I was like, you're raid. You're killing insects. What you mean work at diva? What are we? You know, that would have worked on me and I would have bought raid. So on that note about the algorithm, I also want to talk a bit about your metrics metrics for success and how you know that, you know, a project or your career as a whole are going the direction that you want it to, you know, in TV and film. There's ratings and box office numbers. But also, I think a lot of the traditional industry is like struggling because those metrics don't aren't what they used to be and people are coming to find that traditional content in different avenue. Like how do you measure and know like for your teams that you're being successful at a given moment in time? I love like an inclination that someone is consistently watching. So if I said I like fell on my ass yesterday in an episode, I probably had some of that. Or today, they'll be like, oh, like are you still bruised or something? You know what I mean? Or they'll be like, wow, she was so short next to X anybody ever. And now they look kind of the same height. This person must be five foot foot like those are not great examples. But it shows that they like are consistent watcher. And another thing is when someone that I even if we're like friends or not will come up to me and be like, I love your show. Something about like a face behind the the person on Instagram is always like, oh, that's sick. Like I love to hear that because it's like more than just a female viewer in her 20s in her 20s. It's like a person with a face who is like, you can see them in in IRL and be like, that's really, really cool. Those are mine. I'm stressed about these metrics. I don't, I try not to get of them too much mind. Let me talk about that. I have a new recess there, it'll be in April for five years and we've posted two to three times a week every week for five years of original interviews and that's a lot. And it has ebbed and flowed. There was a year where there was not a single video that got under two million views, which was an awesome year. That's not happening right now. When I've launched new shows that are completely new pages, it is like when we started celebrity substitute, like no one was really watching it and especially like this is not a YouTube panel. Usually I've been like on a YouTube thing. Like YouTube, it's really hard to launch new stuff on. Like, oh my god, like we were not getting a lot of great organic engagement across any of the platforms and now we're like a year plus in. We're about to start filming the third season of it and like people are just starting to kind of click with it. I've been training myself to not think too deeply about it until I in my heart feel like it's working or not working. And if it's not working, I do pivot and I have pivoted, but I think it's dangerous to do it to my heart. You've just zoom out. It's like I'm sure I think I bet like all of us like when we first went viral, it's like a drug. It's such a first of all, it's a crazy feeling. Your brain can't even conceptualize that many people looking at something in your face. I feel like you get so zoomed in on it. And then over time, you're like, first of all mental health, not this, this is not it. And also you like, you just realize that you're going to think something's not going to do well and then it does or vice versa. And there's so much inconsistency and there's so much like ebbing and flowing that at a certain point you kind of go, all right, let me kind of like take my energy away from like the scanning of these metrics and let me just put the energy elsewhere and just kind of keep going. And then I feel like once you do that, you kind of like now I feel like when I go more viral than usual, I kind of I'm like, all right, right, it's like it's like dating. It's like just don't think about it, you know, I don't, I don't look at the numbers because I feel like it's none of my business. Sure. So I've tried before and like the breakdown and everything is I can't get into it. And maybe I should, I probably should more, but I'd like I once noticed the breakdown of like women versus men following me and it's like so many more women and I like fixated on that for a while. And I was like, huh, I wonder how I could and it was like my whole days thinking about how to bring men to my little Instagram page. And I was like, actually, I don't, I don't want them. I don't want them there. I love my girls. It's none of my business, the breakdown. You guys were talking about Doritos and Raid and Amika showing up in your comments. And I was, you know, when I scroll on TikTok, it's interesting when you see a creator doing a brand deal. And sometimes it feels really organic. And then sometimes you see in the comments, someone is like, Sabrina, I don't think Doritos makes sense for you and your brand. So when you, you know, how do you decide what brand deals to take? How do you decide what's authentic for your brand? Yeah, when I first started working with Raid back in the day. How would you hold the word for them? It would be horrible to work with them. Oh, anyone's in the radio? Never mind, never mind. Great. Spawn. I do feel like, I don't know, in my experience, I do feel it's like sometimes there are those outliers where my manager was like, so they called and I'm like, and I'm so also because I do comedy and it's, I'm pretty commercial. I'm pretty clean. So you can kind of like do that about a lot, but the reality of what I do is it's comedy, but it delves into fashion, New York, beauty, you know, lifestyle. It kind of like touches on those things, you know, through the fiction. And so I do feel like I've been, I've been lucky where that's, so what I just named is that's so many brands. And so, you know, I think, I think for me, there was a little bit more of a, in the beginning, you sort of get scared about doing too many deals because you think your audience is going to get mad at you, but they don't care anymore because they get it. They get it now. But yeah, I feel like, I don't know, my experience is I've been, I've been pretty lucky with sort of putting something specific out there and then kind of receiving that same energy from people who align. Oh, oh, are we going to race? 5, 6, 7, 8. Yeah, I've also been really lucky with brands. I feel like similar to you, like a lot of lifestyle, fashion, beauty brands that are not as controversial. There have been a couple of times where I've had to say no because I just don't support this. I know that like also my audience doesn't support it. It's like so not aligned. And I've seen people like my peers, they'll fold for every single brand deal. And I think, I understand it because it's like a life changing amount of money. But I think you have to think of your career, like long term and not just short term. And it's like, if you don't so trust with your audience, then your career is going to be like two years. And those brand deals, like they must be paying out for the rest of your life if I'm going to do one of those. So I think that just having like the strength to be like, I'm thinking about long term, I know this is not going to be right for me right now. And that's fine. And like success, be get success, money, be gets money. I have to have like turned stuff down because I do think and fairly all of our audiences expect to some like ethical line not to be crossed, which is totally normal and right. So there are certain things that I just simply won't do. Like I was good. McDonald's wanted me to do something and I they weren't paying if they paid me a million dollars. I would do it. But I there's a price. There's a price. I would do a McDonald's thing. But yeah, I think it's just down to you being judicious about the choices you make. And and look, the more an issue are sometimes the more exciting the collaboration is something you maybe didn't expect. I have like 60 more questions for you guys, but we're hitting our time. Thank you all for being here. This was such an interesting conversation. Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice. We love to hear from listeners. Please go to variety.com and sign up for the free weekly strictly business newsletter. And don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of strictly business. If a baby is giggling in the back seat, they're probably happy. If a baby is crying in the back seat, they're probably hungry. 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