Danielle Gonzalez's List: Bethenny Frankel Research

• her no-holds-barred personality, trademark snark and business prowess have made her one of Hollywood's richest and most beloved reality stars.
• Frankel tapped into her inner drive to break free of her volatile childhood and personal demons
• Frankel was building her healthy-foods empire, which includes best-selling cookbooks, supplements and a recipe for a low-calorie margarita. Frankel's Skinnygirl Margarita made her a multimillionaire
• After moving seven times in 10 years, Frankel's unstable home life with her mother and stepfather leads to Frankel's own issues, particularly with food. "I was owned by dieting," she tells PEOPLE. "I hated myself. I was completely obsessed and consumed."

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• Meghan Casserly,
• 5/18/2011
• Can Bethenny Crack A Billion?
• It’s 7 a.m. and Bethenny Frankel is hard at work.
• her mix of burning ambition, self-effacing humor and painful vulnerability
• Since 2005 Frankel has become the most well-known entrepreneur on television by making her business everyone’s business.
• With millions of fans cheering she’s gotten married, given birth and built her Skinnygirl brand of consumer products on camera.
• her daddy issues (ugly), her food struggles (on the mend) and her postbaby sex life (“kind of a rusty tricycle for a while”).
• Her books–Naturally Thin, Skinnygirl Dish and A Place of Yes–are bestsellers.
• the real goal for Frankel, 40, is to turn Skinnygirl into a billion-dollar business.
• Six years ago Frankel was filing losses on her 1040 form.
• Frankel is one of a new cast of entrepreneurial celebrities who are rich and famous but have something most stars can only fantasize about: ownership.
• disarmingly direct as always.
• Fans love Frankel not just because she tells it like it is and swears like a pirate but also because she’s an ambitious woman struggling to balance her business, her family and her past on 5-inch Brian Atwood pumps.
• Frankel struggled through professional stress (Skinnygirl Cocktails hit big manufacturing and distribution problems) and personal angst (Frankel nearly snapped after deciding at the last minute to join the cast of Skating With the Stars).
• Her bio, if you’re not already a fan, reads like a social worker’s case file: a home life punctuated by multiple divorces, allegations of childhood neglect, 13 different schools, two cross-country moves.
• Frankel grew up on New York’s Long Island, the child of a top-ranked horse trainer (his Empire Maker won the Belmont Stakes in 2003) and a racetrack groupie.
• “I had my first drink when I was 7 years old; I was betting at the track by 8,” Frankel recalls. “My father never called me on my birthday. He never congratulated me or told me he was proud,” she says, tearing up.
• Somehow she made it through NYU, where she graduated with a degree in communications and psychology.
• Frankel ran to L.A. in 1992 with aspirations of becoming an actress. Instead, she landed gigs playing nanny to a teenage Paris Hilton (when Paris wasn’t playing with her ferrets, they went to the mall) and personal assistant to power couple Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer.
• Instability bred ambition.
• The connections helped boot up Frankel’s first entrepreneurial outburst–In Any Event, a party planning company operated out of a $750-a-month rental in Beverly Hills. “I didn’t know what I was doing; I was broke. I was eating cartons of takeout rice two meals a day,” she recalls. The business fizzled.
• By 2003 Frankel was in the business of baking cookies for the health-conscious in New York City when she first heard about NBC’s The Apprentice. Denied once (“devastating”), she and her cookies were cast two years later on the series’ first spinoff, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Even then Frankel knew the value of camera time and used it to pump her brand of baked goods, BethennyBakes. (The company went bust in 2006, but Frankel salvaged an endorsement deal with Pepperidge Farm as spokesman for its then new low-calorie line.)
• so began The Real Housewives of New York. Frankel made the most of it. Cameras followed her to catering events and supermarket giveaways, peddling her baked goods
• She’d begun to develop the Skinnygirl Margarita, and it increasingly found its way in front of Bravo’s lens.
• Skinnygirl Shapewear is a licensing deal with Dreamwear, the New York City lingerie producer that also holds licenses for the trademarks of Marilyn Monroe and Playboy. The agreement for her Lazy Lingerie line was inked last October and makes its QVC debut in August.
• Up next? An online personal-training service, a fourth book and a skin-care line called Skinnygirl Face & Body.
• “I’m creating a line that will market and sell my alcohol brand,” she says.
• savvy cross-promoting.
• Then it will be on to soft drinks, sauces and maybe a children’s clothing line. Frankel is also discussing an apparel deal with a major retailer to create a “store within a store” that can showcase all of what Skinnygirl has to offer.
• says Douglas Lane, an analyst covering consumer goods at Jefferies & Co
• She’s created a marketable brand in a number of favorable sectors all seeing global growth. Even if she can capture just crumbs of each category she can create a very successful business.”

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