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Founder's Story
The Talent Manager: 'Gen Z Doesn't Know Brad Pitt—But They Know Every TikToker' | Ep. 293 with Devain Doolaramani Founder of Friends In Reality
00:15:09
In this episode of Founder’s Story, we sit down with Devane, founder of Friends In Reality and a Business Insider Top TikTok Power Player, to unpack how the definition of “celebrity” has fundamentally changed. From managing Forbes Top Creators to building creator-led brands from the ground up, Devane explains why trust, community, and product authenticity now outperform fame alone—and how creators are quietly becoming the most powerful businesses on the internet.
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- [00:01]
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- [02:04]
Podcast Host
So Devane and great to have you on the show. I've been seeing what you've been doing with the creator economy or creator space, mixing with brands business. I mean I guess this is the future we're in and it's super fascinating to me that a celebrity defined before used to be like an actor, actress, recording artist which was like.01% right. It was so hard to break in and then now I feel like a celebrity is If I started TikTok five years ago and now I have millions of followers, which is, I think is insane. It almost democratized the ability to have more people become, quote, unquote, the celebrity. So how do you see, you know, this celebrity term changing and how people see what they would call celebrity?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, 100, I think like four or five years ago when I was starting my company, there were still traditional talent. All the big agencies, the CAAS, WMU CT's of the world were still representing the traditional talent, the actresses, the actors, the people on the red carpets, hosts. And now you look at roster of a lot of these bigger agencies and what does it consist of? A lot of digital talent. It's, I think digital talent has become the future. They are the new celebrities. We, we get on calls with VC investors, we get on calls with operators, with people who have had successful edits and you know, like all their kids now they're not looking for like the Scarlett Johansson of the world. They don't know who that is. They know who someone like Brick Monk is. They know someone who Charlie, like someone like Charlie d'. Amelio. They know someone like Addison Ray. And you know, that just shows the new generation sees these people as celebrities versus back in the day where we looked up to like the Tom Cruises of the world at the Hugh Jackman's, you know, and those were the traditional celebrities. But I think celebrities nowadays, the, the word celebrity has just changed because celebrities to the younger generation, these kids are the streamers, tick tockers, youtubers, you know, and I think the traditional celebrities, they still exist. Obviously there's still the Jacob Elordis of the world and people in that nature who are still popping off the musicians, actresses, actors. But I think overall there's a new sort of niche of celebrities and I think that come, that stems from digital creators, influencers, people online that have been able to build a huge following.
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Podcast Host
So this digital talent for from what I've seen before is many times they would monetize through brand deals, through ads, through sponsorships. But it seems like now they've awakened to the fact that they can become, they can create a brand, a product. Right. I think, you know, we've seen this with, with some very successful people before. How do, how are you looking at the landscape of, of bridging the gap between the creator with the huge following or just any, you know, dedicated fan group to now having their own, their own brand or product?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
I think now I think people in their heads believe that, oh, you need to have 10 million followers, 20 million followers to build a brand, to build something Something successful. But in, in reality it's, you just need a core audience that's going to buy into you. Someone who's gonna, that watches your content every day, that religiously follows you, that knows everything about your life. You know, you release a product at that point and you're going to get a plethora of sales. You look at successful brand launches. Chamberlain, Emma Chamberlain with their Chamberlain coffee, they're crushing it, or at least it seems like Danny Austin with Divi Hair Care. But you know, all of them release products that they use in their daily life and they release products that are of good quality in nature that means something to them. And if you're able to do that, then you're going to be very successful with your brand launch. So for one of my clients right now, Brooke Monk, we're working on a beauty brand for her and the product is going to be something that she uses every day. You know, so that's going to be the hero sku and how we roll it out and how we build a story around it. But I think if you are a creator, you don't need a massive audience, you just need a core community and you need to sell a product that you personally use every day and that helps you in your daily life and make it better.
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Podcast Host
I like that where it's, it's not just you're selling something to sell it, you're selling something that you genuinely use and people trust you. And when they see it and when they see this, trust is interesting. A few years ago I was at a, there was a gathering of retailers. It was the owners of Toys r us, Bill DeBear. And they, they told me that when they would use traditional celebrities like actors, the trust level actually has become very low. When they plug in someone who's like a creator, the trust level is very high because people think that the creator is genuine. Where an somebody acting is, is playing someone that they're not. So do you see this trust level playing a massive factor in the ability to sell something that is their own?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, I think, I think it really depends. There are two ways to look at it. Trust is built on core community and how you treat your fans. And like obviously if you have a celebrity or an actor, actors not respecting their fans, not engaging with their fans, their fans aren't going to support them in turn. It's just how emotional psychology works. I think if a creator is comment, is responding to their comments, engaging with their fans, actually showing appreciation for their fans, their fans are going to want to reciprocate that. So I think there are celebrities out there that obviously spend time with their fans, give back to their fans, do as much as possible for their fans, and show that appreciation, and they're able to move product like Wildfire, even more than digital talent or creators. But when it comes to trust, I think, like, it's. It's a process. You have to build it over time. It can't be built overnight, you know.
- [07:54]
Podcast Host
Man, you make me think of, like, Jason Derulo for some. He comes to mind. I feel like he's. He's really crossed over to doing a lot with fans. Brooke Monk, I mean, has done a phenomenal job in. Her numbers are just insane. Like, it's insane. It seems like she's very, very connected. I was watching a few videos and, and I was reading the comments before this interview because I wanted to really understand, like, how she's doing things. I can see that she has a very deep connection to the fans. Why did you wait to the time right now to launch that product? Was this by chance or do you think that creators or digital talent, they. They should wait a certain time before they launch something?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, I don't think it was a waiting game for us on our side of when we wanted to launch it. I think it was about perfecting a product that exists on the market that she uses every day. So we've been developing this product for two years. If we, if we could have, we would have launched this product ages ago, you know, but it's really about building a quality product that's going to last a long time and actually hold shelf space in the market for a while. And I, I think the biggest thing that we wanted to do is make sure that the consumers actually enjoy the packaging experience, actually enjoy the product. They're able to use it. The quality is good. You know, we're going through all the checks to make sure the branding's good, make sure the story is there. You know, it's like when you're a consumer, you want to buy into our product and the story behind it. You don't just want another product on the.
- [09:23]
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- [09:40]
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- [10:09]
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- [11:07]
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- [11:37]
Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
I think for us it's been we put our heart and soul into this brand for the last two years. Brooks Bootstrapping the whole brand. It's no outside funding. It's. It's her brand and you know, it's her vision and it's her. We, we went from a Pinterest board to building a full fledged brand. You know, and I think that that process takes time. It's like going to the, like getting samples from the factories, trying out the products, making sure the adjustments are there, making sure it's better than other other products on the market. So it's, it's definitely a timely process and I think it's taken the two years, two years plus because we want to, we want to take a very good product to market if not perfect product.
- [12:13]
Podcast Host
In her eyes, I know exactly what you're talking about? Because I formulated products from 2012 for about 10 years. We sold health and beauty online, starting with Amazon, then E Commerce. But I formulated a lot of my own products and there is so much that goes into. People don't realize like how much like you're saying it's two years, it's a lot that goes into it. And obviously you want everything to be perfect and you know, it's beyond the product. Like you said, the label, the packaging, the bottle, like there's so many components that go into it. But I got to say it was one of the most fun and gratifying things I ever did. When it comes out, it's so exciting. And I know you're, you're getting ready to launch soon. So how has, how has this process been now that you're ready to go?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, no, it's, it's been incredible. But you know, you're still dealing with ongoing issues. There's always going to be supply chain management. You know, it's like, it's, it's revolving problems. They're fun problems and they're, they're good to solve and tackle. But I don't, I think if, if you're building a brand and you're scaling at a velocity we hope to, it's, it's going to be like building a core internal team, like really, really structuring it.
- [13:24]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [13:24]
Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
You know, and building it in a very good way where it's not rushed. And we're building a core team that can help scale it bigger and better and take it eventually, hopefully international or starting in the US but the goal is to get the product to the world, you know, and I think that process takes time and you have to build the right team around it and you have to make sure you're going through the right check. So super pumped to finally get it out. You know, it's been two, two plus years in the works, but I think along with getting it out, I wanna, we're gonna be heads down really working to, to build more products, to build, bring more products to the market. You know, like, we want to keep the consumer happy at the end of the day because they're the ones supporting the brand and the product.
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Podcast Host
So, so what's your story? How did you get into, you know, you said four or five years ago when you started this company and you're working with Brooke and, and all these rock stars, how did you get into this?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, so it's been a, it's been a long process, but I grew up in New York Went to Horsemen out there for high school and then moved over to Hong Kong, lived there for two years and went to British International School. And that's sort of when my creative genes picked up. Started growing Instagram accounts, selling ads on them back in the day. And then I went into sort of the digital space in college. I was like working and managing musically accounts before TED Talk, acquired musically and doing all the sound. Like I was blowing up the music and sounds and trends musically at the time. And I was interning at Sony and I, I was like, the music landscape is growing and these creators are a part of that. They're helping blow up these songs, generate UGC content, build trends around them. So ended up doing about 200 music campaigns, did campaigns for a lot of the big records on TikTok that we know now, and ended up scaling them from zero to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of UGC videos and built the careers or helped build the careers of a lot of artists on the back end. And simultaneously I was like that. That brought me into the creator space. And no one at the time was pursuing these digital talent. Everything was still traditional. And I was like, there's a big white space here. Why don't I start working with people? And that led me to Brooke, when she just turned. Had turned 17 years old, I think, or 18 or something along that we've been working together together for five years now. And I've been working with her since and signed a ton of other talents and so manage a roster of about 40 creators now across the board and really just help them build businesses. You know, at the end of the day, a creator I see is a business and how do you scale that business to build product around it, to eventually want to invest in ventures and get equity and be on advisory and cap tables? You know, it's. It's really looking outside of traditional influencing and the traditional platforms. You know, for someone like Brooke, we've been able to build a huge LinkedIn following for her. And she's got such a genius mind. She's been able to build such a big following. So she wanted to share the backend analytics, insights and advice that she's learned from building on social media to an audience that would intake it, you know, so for me, it's really like, how do you expand beyond the traditional bounds of social media too and build real businesses for these people?
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Podcast Host
So you're, you're like the genius behind. I think people always see the person in the front, but they don't always know the genius behind a Lot of talent, a lot of people, a lot of energy goes into the process of like not just posting something, but someone like yourself who, who really understands Social media is so hard. So it's like algorithms change and this changes and everything you're doing changes. And LinkedIn is an interesting one. LinkedIn is a very interesting. Do you, what do you see for LinkedIn? Like, I'm, I'm starting to see a lot of people moving into LinkedIn and I wonder what is the benefit to them?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, I, I just think that a lot of people in our generation, when we went to college, the first thing you learn in like your Business 101 classes go make a LinkedIn, you know, so I think social media garners a lot of audience, but it's not, they're not. I, I could count on my fingers how many 40, 50 plus year olds I know have TikTok and are scrolling, you know, So I think it's a way to connect to the people that are at companies that are at corporations and really have good talks with them. We've, Brooke and I have met countless incredible people, founders, people at companies, head to marketing etc through LinkedIn. We've talked to people with eight, nine figure exits. You know, it's, it's been such a great way to network and meet people with such good hearts but also such great stories and founder stories themselves, you.
- [18:09]
Podcast Host
Know, so, so if you want to get in touch with you, maybe there's a creator out there, a digital talent that needs to be helped with their management or there's a brand that wants to get in touch with you. How can they do so?
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Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Yeah, honestly, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think that's, that's the easiest way to go about it. My email is on there as well, so I think it's just a great central platform.
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Podcast Host
There you go. LinkedIn's the new TikTok now. I'm only kidding. But now. This has been great, man. I learned a lot today. Thank you for sharing all that. I can't wait till your new, the new brand comes out with Brooke. I always enjoy trying new skincare products. I know it sounds odd, but it's actually like I always wanted to. No lie. You know the funny thing is 10 years ago I started making content about me talking about skincare and I was like, it just feels weird. If only I had kept going. If only I had kept going. But no, man, this has been amazing. You could have been my manager. But no, this has been great. I had a really good time, man. I learned a lot and congratulations on all the success man. Super inspiring and thank you for joining us today on Founder Story.
- [19:16]
Guest Expert / Digital Talent Manager
Likewise. Appreciate the time.
- [19:23]
Grainger Announcer
If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [19:53]
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