Life Uncut - Shoe Gate 2026 - "Bethenny Frankel Is a Weirdo" And We’re Questioning The Expectations Of Influencers

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Hey Lifers! Have we been scammed by Meta? Britt is trying to learn Italian but she’s faced some hurdles! We talk about Meta ad scams and the great bot clear out of 2026. Laura shares a story about… how do we encapsulate this?? a reformer Pilates machine, a spread eagle and someone who shouldn’t have been there to see it. We also talk about a new phase of parenting that Laura has entered: her kids have worked out how to play Matt and Laura off against each other. How do you get back on the same page when your kids have found the gap? Shoe Gate 2026. An influencer fight that none of us should care about as much as we do. Here's the timeline: Female founder Lexi Ioannou (daughter of Real Housewives' Dina Manzo) sent a pair of shoes from her brand Nou to Bethenny Frankel. Bethenny wore them multiple times but never tagged the brand. However, when a follower directly asked where the shoes were from, Bethenny linked an affiliate dupe instead. Lexi posted a now-viral callout video. Bethenny said that she did this because the shoes were sold out and that would annoy her followers, and that Lexi has played the ‘short game’ and has some business lessons to learn. We unpack both sides: the value of celebrity endorsement even without a tag, whether the exchange is ‘fair’, whether the affiliate link is the villain, and what it means when a small female-founded brand watches their product get replaced with a paid link.  TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Britt's in Italy and may have been scammed by a language app 9:16 Laura's nanny situation and the thing she shouldn’t have seen 16:00 New parenting phase: the kids are playing mum and dad off against each other 25:19 Shoe Gate 2026: Bethenny Frankel, Lexi Ioannou and the affiliate dupe 49:46 Suck and sweet of the week You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit  Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford & Lachy Pugsley Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. I think I've been scammed. Is it too early to just like jump straight into my life? My life problems? No, I think you should start right there. What happened? So I don't know if it's a scam scam or a mini scam or if it's not a scam at all and it's just a real technical error. So what do the young kids say? I C Y M I. In case you missed it, I live in Italy. Laura, you look so confused. Because I was like, what? I Y K Y K. I C Y M I. I am 40 years old when I realized that that's what that stood for. Oh, really? Well, Laura, in case you missed it. No, I am. I'm over in Italy and I'm living with Ben over here. It's great. But I am still trying

to learn Italian. And Laura, you've spoken about it before. Keisha, I think you have too. I think you might've bought your little sensor lights from there, but like how easy it is to get sucked into ads on Instagram. Kind of slowed down on it, but I'm a real meta whore. Like if I get a good ad, you better believe I'm buying it. Like so long as like, if you target me, right, I'll buy whatever. I've got things I never thought I needed. Actually. Yeah, no, we're not going into that i've got a new foot scrub obviously your instagram spies on you right like we all know that zuckerberg spies on us so it knows that i'm traveling around and doing my italian travels so it just served me with like hey do you happen to be in italy and want to learn italian i was like

oh my god i do that's me and so i clicked on this link to sign up to this italian course like and it seems like a proper and I think it is it seems like a proper language school kind of thing and so I signed well I signed up straight from I didn't go to the an external website you know when you just like click the link and it takes you there and like it's like oh 40% off give me all your credit card details right now and so I did it I signed up and I did it all logged in and it took me to the app and I did like a day's I started my Italian lessons and I did like a day's worth of courses and then I went to go in the next day and it just locked me out and I was like that's weird so I logged back in and it's like sorry that account doesn't exist you don't exist and it

just doesn't let me in and then I went to my bank and it's taken my money and I'm like what the have I been duped by a fake meta ad scam like all I got to learn was like buongiorno and then they fucking kicked me out surely you can just reset your account I've tried and I contacted them And what happened? It said, me no English. No, they just didn't get back to me. They've just left me on read, basically. I've been scammed through a meta ad because this exact same thing happened.

You know how the algorithm knows you better than your best friends. It knew I was doing home reno stuff. And so I got served this. I spoke about this on the podcast because I got a couple messages. I didn't name it, though. It was like Casa Vista. And it was this AI that told me you could basically upload a picture of your room and then you could do all these different things and you got to visualize what it would look like yeah

and I was like amazing so I downloaded it and you put your card details in and I'm the type of person who doesn't check my bank account that regularly like maybe once a week and by the time I checked they'd taken like 118 dollars there were all these really random amounts but they'd taken it day after day after day and I contacted them and I was like you guys are scammers and essentially thankfully to my bank. My bank were able to recover the money, but I had a few people message me on the podcast and because I must've joked about it and said that I got scammed by this particular reno app and heaps of them got scammed too. And Meta should be doing better. They should know that that's not a legitimate business. I really enjoyed the Meta should be better little rhyme that you

did there. I got really annoyed because I was like, how are you guys not like you're making money off of these scam companies and you don't give a shit that all of us are getting our money taken from us keisha did you get a response when you called them out and said you guys are scammers were they like you got us yet to hear back from zuckerberg i think like i mean you guys have all seen there's been lots of people talking about it recently the great bot clear out of this year so like all of the influencers when i say the influencers like literally everyone but also me everyone's just like had this following crash in the last little bit like i think it was kim kardashian dropped like seven million followers old gal over here dropped a thousand followers

in a day yeah drop any i didn't drop any either mine are all real i just spat everywhere sorry it's because of that time when i paid for all those thousands of followers i mean i think anyone who's had like legacy accounts like the longer you've had your account for the more likely it is that you would have bots following you and a lot of people who paid for like can pay for um likes and comments obviously guys i've never paid for likes and comments but that's why a hundred people just send you claps they're like clap clap clap eggplant fire love heart single love heart single love heart you can tell like i mean if you go onto an influencers page and all of the comments are emojis and 90 of them don't actually have profile

photos because what happens is like you can pay for likes and comments through different websites websites and they're real accounts like they're set up by people in other countries but they're syndicated accounts so they might have like one person and then they create like a hundred sort of like what they call like additional accounts off the same email addresses or whatever so it's like they can just log in log out of all these accounts and go and do like like like like hot hot hot follow follow follow like thumbs up and it's just anyway they're the accounts that they've been cleaning out but they're also been cleaning out like all your phishing scams and all like your fake meta and all of you're like, there are businesses that are set up, which are like

mirror businesses. So we had one pop up recently for Tony May and someone sent it to us and they were running meta ads. And when you went on the website, it was a full blown website that looked similar to Tony May, nowhere near as good, but like it looked kind of, if you'd never been on our website before, you might have been fooled in thinking it was the Tony May website. It had all of our products listed on there. It had like our about pages, it had stripped and ripped everything out of our website and copied it over except every single piece of jewelry was on sale and so someone who didn't know might have just thought we were running a sale anyway someone sent it to me and was like hey I almost bought from this and then I thought these prices are

too good to be true is this really your store and I was like of course it's not my store like there's even spelling errors like if you look closely you can see it's not right but I understand how some people purchase impulsively and then they don't actually check where it is or what it is that they're purchasing from so they were doing a massive clean out of those types of businesses as well it's very likely there are loads of meta scams these days so if you don't get any access to it how do you say bad luck in italian well i don't know non molto bene put it that way so i guess it's non molto bene but do you know this is the second time i have been scammed with language-based things. So when Sherry, my sister and I, we moved to South America for six

months, many, many moons ago. And when we got there, we enrolled in a language school. We were going to immerse ourselves. Like it was not just like a language app. It was a school. You stayed with like a host family and you turned up to this school every day and you spent eight hours a day there. And the idea was in a month, you did speak fluently. Like it was so intense because we knew we were going to spend six months to a year there. So we were like, let's just like lock in at the start, learn this app. I mean, learn this language and then like the rest of the year will be easier for us. And so we get to this host family and it's just this old non-on. She was pretty strict actually in hindsight. We didn't love our time there, but it was really a really expensive school

because it was so intense. Anyway, we turned up and this was the very start of our time in South America. And we were new little babies to that part of the world. And we turned up to the school and it was like chained up like with big chains at the doors and I was like this is weird and I was like maybe we're at the wrong place or the wrong entrance we walked around the building and whatever else and we're looking in and it was completely like empty and basically ransacked anyway turns out that like the owners or something had this huge fight scammed each other one took all the money out of the bank cleared out the language school and just left and then there was no they were bankrupt so they just took everyone else's money and didn't tell them

so we had paid up front for this language school and they just took all of our money and then we were stuck with this nonna that we couldn't speak to and we prepaid for the month with her as well it was an actual disaster so that's two language-based scams that and i still can't speak any language fucked you know what they say brit fool me once fool britney a million times well i mean that doesn't sound great i have my own little story of something that wasn't that great that happened this week. For the last kind of like four months now, since January, we hired a nanny who's come and she doesn't live in a house or anything like that, but she comes to our house on a Monday to Thursday and she helps with Poppy. So she comes at like 7.30 in the morning and she

leaves at 5.30 in the afternoon. And she helps us with everything that we need in order for me to still be able to go to work, for Matt to be able to go to work. And so that we didn't have to put Poppy in daycare. It just kind of worked out as a better option for us this time. And I am so deeply grateful I know how unrelatable it is and that you know we're very fortunate to be able to have and to be able to afford to have someone come to the house and it's also one of those weird things right because like if you have like a babysitter that comes frequently or a nanny like they become part of your family they see all parts of your family you bicker in front of them you parent in front of them like you live your normal life and they're just with you in the

house and kind of, they become part of your family. So in my brain, I'm like, hang on, is Matt seeing the nanny? I'm like, where's this going? That's absolutely not what happened. Don't run with that story. She's divine, lovely. And she's also married. So the other day I still work from home quite a bit. So like, you know, we're all at home, we're all doing our own thing, but like, we're all kind of in each other's space. And the other day we were filming some content, like Matt needed me to stay back. We were filming content at home. It was for a job. We're actually filming an ad for Aldi, which is not part of the story, but very funny. So we're filming this ad for Aldi.

Okay. I needed to do a costume change and I had to get dressed into a different shirt and pants. So it looked like it was a different day. And we have like a Pilates reformer machine right in our house. This is very important to the story. Okay. It used to be in Poppy's bedroom.

And so for a long time, like the past six months, it's been in her room and I've been kind of trying to navigate doing a Pilates workout around her nap time, which now is impossible because she has like three structured sleeps a day and the only free time I have is when she's asleep so if she's asleep and the Pilates machine is in her bedroom I haven't been able to do anything anyway how dare she how dare she nap in the studio she's doing her hip thrusts she's doing her one loaded spring push-outs or she used to I don't know I think when babies are really little you can kind of make noise around them and they don't wake up but she's hit that age where like it needs to be perfect conditions blacked out room white noise machine on door closed like

I can't just like pop in there and do a workout anyway I finally convinced Matt that we should get rid of the side table in our bedroom we should move the bed over and I should put the Pilates machine in the bedroom there's not a lot of room in our room but I've done it okay the Pilates machine is in the bedroom so I don't know if anyone else experiences this if you have exercise equipment at home I'm not particularly diligent with like having any structure around it I try but every so often I just see it and I'm like I'm gonna get on and just like do a push-up and I'll do like one single squat or like one single push-up just because it's there right I do that just because I can there's also science behind that like you can accumulate it actually works

like you can accumulate your exercise throughout the day so I okay do I do this all the time I might just do like 10 random squats all right because it's just there and it like reminds me that I should do it I'm really not that's the problem I wish I was anyway I was in the middle of filming this piece of Audi content and I was like I've got to go and get changed so I run upstairs and like everyone's downstairs our nanny's downstairs with Poppy and it's all fine so I run upstairs doors open get changed I'm in my g-string and nothing else and I'm facing the balcony which is like I'm facing away from like the door and like the entrance to my bedroom and I was like I'm just gonna get on and do like one of those one leg on the carriage and the other

leg on the bed and just do like a split like so I know the one imagine like a spread eagle Pilates spread eagle with a g-string with a why not why not I think we're about to find out why not why not okay so I'm in the midst I'm at the deepest part of the spread eagle and I hear what sounds like a very frantic footsteps behind me and I turn around only to realize that actually our nanny was not in fact downstairs she was in poppy's bedroom which looks straight into my bedroom and all she could see was me in a g-string nothing else spread eagle on the fucking pilates machine she was trying to get out of there as quickly and as silently as possible and i turned around and i don't know whether i locked eyes with the top of her head so i'd already like passed the point where

she would have seen me and this is the first time i've spoken about it we just pretended like it didn't happen I walked downstairs she looked at me like I've just done something that I should admit to and I looked at her like I knew something and I was like I am let's just I've never mentioned it you should have sat in that and owned it you should have been like hey sorry about that whole nude pilates thing no I just don't even know how you explain it because I don't know why I did it she was gonna be like what shit circus have I entered I think she was I honestly don't know what came over me and made me think that standing on the Pilates machine in my undies.

The desire for good inner thighs. If this makes you feel better, Laura, I actually. I don't know why I did it. I do a lot of nude Pilates. There is something really liberating about being naked on a Pilates machine. And I don't know what it is. I don't know if like I'm walking to the shower and I clock it and I'm like, hey, maybe I'll snap some out before I get into the shower.

But I don't mind a nude Pilates. What kind of an OnlyFans are you guys running? I also don't know. The other thing is I'm convinced she doesn't listen to the podcast or if she does, she's never, ever admitted to it. So I do feel like there's some sort of safety with you guys that she's never going to know that I know that she saw. She already knows.

She saw you. She doesn't know that I know because I only saw the top of her head. So she thinks I don't know. Dude, it's weird for you to let her think that you don't know. I know she saw everything. Me, bent over in a G-string doing a fucking, like, spread eagle. What was I doing? I know the position.

Close your legs. I know what you're talking about. And it was not with good form, let me tell you that. Anyway, I do feel like I should at least ask her if she saw. If she can spot you next time. She can say, put an extra spring on, hold the core in, tie the spine. Anyway, so that's what happened to me. Nothing else very exciting has been happening.

You know you're going to have to give her a pay rise now. You can't expect your staff to look at that. You can't. She should be paying me. Maybe I get a refund. Well, look, something else I wanted to ask you guys about. Now, this is kind of a bit of a parenting conundrum, and I throw this out into the Life Uncut ether.

Like, you know, if you guys come to the right space for Brit and I. Yeah, we can answer your questions. Hit me. We are parenting experts. No, I'm throwing this out because, like, in terms of you guys, the listeners, our brains trust, we have a lot of Life Uncut parents, and I want to know if this is something that you are experiencing if you have your own children okay so we have hit this very unique phase of parenting at the moment with Marley and Lola

where they purposely try and pit Matt and I against each other so if they don't get their way from one of us instead of like accepting that no is a no no is a complete sentence Marley May she will take that no and she will go and ask dad for the exact same thing but she'll do it in a way that's like really sweet and she knows is going to get her outcome that she wanted and then she'll come back and be like well dad said yes at me but I have no control over it it happens both ways I'm doing my best to try and like parent whatever monster I've created in this situation but it's happening so frequently at the moment that now almost everything that the kids ask us we have to go and just double check whether the other parent has said no to it because it's like they've

learned that this is the way that they get they've learned that this is how they destabilize us it used to be us against the children and now i don't know where we stand i think that this is completely normal it's like a rite of passage every child is going to work out how to manipulate the world like that's what they need to do to survive it's like you need to know how to get your way and play each other off against each other but i think i mean we all did this i've spoken a few times over the years on the podcast about like my main manipulation with my parents was i remember going to my mom to ask to get my belly button pierced and she said no she was like absolutely not you're not old enough so I just went to dad and I was like hey dad mom said yes

can you take me and he was like sure sweetheart so he took me to get my belly pierced and that was like to this day we still talk about that moment because my mom was like you little bitch but this is what my parents said to me they need to understand that it doesn't matter what the other parent says you go off what the first parent says and in fact they are the one doing something wrong by going behind your back and doubling down with another parent like they need to understand that they're doing it wrong in the first place. I don't think that's the lesson. I think the lesson is that if you have two bosses,

you can be like Molly May and I'll go to one of you. If I don't get the answer I want, I go to the other. Keisha does it all the time. We had like a really considered conversation about it with the kids and I was like if one parent gives a no, it is a no and you are not allowed to go and ask the other parent. And we did have a chat about this. The problem is is that like every child reacts

to disciplining differently and to different styles of disciplining. so like me having that conversation was like that was enough for Lola Lola was like yes I will never do that again and so she catches herself out and Molly was like right I have to be sneakier I have to be better more manipulative oh I don't I don't want to use that because I feel guilty saying that obviously she's not manipulative she's seven years old but like she understands how to play each parent off to get what she wants at the end of the day I feel like like Brie said every child yeah it's normal it's not it's not her like that is manipulation but it's not you're not using it it's like i guess it's not conscious in a like she is seven but there's nothing wrong with saying

she's learning manipulation because that's what it is like she's she's learning the soft spots of each parent and how to get what she wants which is a form of manipulation and i don't think we have to say oh my god what a what a manipulative child it's not that but they are learning the way of the world like every single child goes through it she's a business ceo in the making yeah i I think manipulation just sounds harsh. I think it's more so that she's like, you know what? If you don't like the answer you get, you try, try again. Try, try, try again.

Do you know the only thing that I think is actually a problem, and I'm sorry that I'm outing my mum with this, but I had a mobile phone for two years without my dad knowing because my dad didn't let me. I was 15 and I had two jobs and I still went to school and mum was like, she needs a fucking mobile phone. And so because dad said no, I went to mum. Mum agreed with me.

I had one in secret for two years before he found out see that I mean obviously that's a tricky one to unpack because I know the dynamics of your family and I know that obviously your mom and your dad probably weren't in a great space in terms of their relationship yeah they hated each other so like cool but I think the tricky thing is is when you obviously like Matt and I want to parent in the same way and like us against the kids and like we want to stay we want to stay on the same page with things and so it's this continual it's just exhausting it's a continual checking in and I feel like parenting always clicks into this new phase of like oh god now what do we have to learn oh god now what are we facing together and this has just been something

that's come up in the past couple of weeks I'm really noticing yeah I don't even know how else to describe it it's not their fault as the kids I feel like it's as parents we have kind of missed the mark on something and we're trying to figure it out and get back together in terms of like getting back on the same page, if that makes sense. I think that that is such a normal part of relationships with kids as well is like, I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody listening right now who hasn't at some point heard a conversation with their parents about being on the same team with parenting and disciplining. And even if one parent doesn't necessarily agree, you disagree in private. Like you don't have that fight in front of the kids on like, yes,

they can do it. No, they can't. Like the, I don't know, maybe that was the way I was brought up. My mum and dad always said that even when they had these differing ideas of parenting or punishment or whatever it was that they were talking about, it was never done in front of the kids. Does that happen a lot with parenting though? Like, I mean, I have no experience whatsoever. Do you disagree on a lot or is it that like, obviously your values are the same, but when it comes down to the micro things, you know, you might agree to parent on the macro things,

but is it common to have things that you actually don't see eye to eye on? Not very often for us. Like I think Matt and I are very much on the same page, but it comes down to things that like, it's like a rule that might change. So for example, we have rules in the morning that make our morning run smoothly and that's like no games, no playing until the kids have done X, Y, Z that we need them to do. And that's because every morning was descending into chaos because every morning would end up with everyone just yelling orders from all different parts of that.

Put your shoes on, brush your hair. Why haven't you brushed your teeth? Brush your teeth, brush your, you know, it was like the same thing over and over and over. it just felt like it was always high energy and what we have learned is is that it's very hard to switch from being like games play fun fun fun to then giving instructions so instead we're trying to like make sure that the mornings follow very calm very simple path of like get yourself organized then we can have fun and sometimes Matt forgets and he'll be flipping a kid upside down

in the air and they don't have their shoes on haven't brushed their hair and I'm like you're not following the rules that we've set for each other or like I will forget something and I will like change the rules so I think it's more so it's not so much that we're not on the same page it's like when one person just kind of deviates from what is the plan that it makes it frustrating for the other parent because then one parent becomes the boring parent that is the one having to implement the rules and the other one is doing split squats on the reformer machine with the nanny no and I would say it's usually I mean correct me if I'm wrong I'd say it's usually the mum that ends up being like that disciplinarian and the dad usually ends up getting to be like the

fun parent that like don't tell mum and breaks the rules and things like that because I guess the mum is the one that is usually structured and trying to get out the door and knows what needs to be done that day and I also think that maybe it changes day to day like pick your battles what hill do you want to die on that day so maybe where there's usually a rule that you would enforce some days when that battle's been too hard you're like fuck it like today is not worth the fight yeah look I mean I don't have any answers for this I genuinely am asking these questions because I would love to know other parents who are listening to this if you are or have been through a similar phase of this I guess like navigating parenting with kids that are not

pitting you against each other but you know what I mean like they're kind of like realize that if they don't get what they want from one parent that will use the other parent to like get whatever it that they desire. Smart girl. I want to talk to you guys about something very funny that is happening over in America at the moment. And I don't mean it in the political landscape, but there is like an influencer fight that's gone down in the past week that is living absolutely rent free in all of our heads. I don't know if we should be caring about it as much as we do, but here we are. We've decided to unpack it in depth. I don't know if we could call it Shoe Gate. Can we give it like a colloquial name? It's Shoe Gate. It's Bethany Frankel Shoe Gate.

Yes, we can. Shoe gate of 2026. So there is an influencer on Instagram called Lexi Iwano. Now she's 30 years old. She's the daughter of Real Housewives of New Jersey, Dina Manzo. I don't know Dina Manzo. I'll be honest now. I don't watch those Real Housewives.

She has gotten into an Instagram fight with none other than Bethany Frankel. Now Bethany Frankel, she's a huge influencer as well. She's got 4 million followers on Instagram, three and a half on TikTok. She's also a Real Housewife. so Lexi to set this up Lexi has a shoe brand she's a female founder it is named after her last name so the shoe brand is named new so the reason this drama is kicking off now is Lexi sent a pair of shoes to Bethany a year ago and now Bethany has worn the shoes multiple times in different stories and posts and events but she's never tagged her and Lexi said that's fine she's like I get it at

least you're wearing them. So what's happened is Bethany has done like a lip syncing video and off the back of this video, someone has commented and said, oh my God, where are the shoes from? So people are loving the shoes. Bethany's then shared that video to her stories and instead of tagging the shoes, she has tagged an affiliate link to a dupe pair of shoes. And what she has said is you can get this look here. Off the back of this video, Lexi has absolutely kicked off and posted her own very viral reel have a listen bethany frinkle is a weirdo i sent her a pair of shoes from new almost a year ago because i look up to her female entrepreneur bravo universe like me and she's been on shark tank she didn't tag us after wearing the shoes

multiple times online which okay that happens but then today she posted a video that's going viral and a bunch of people are asking where the shoes are and instead of linking them she linked a dupe and with an affiliate link i guess she's got to get that bag in some sort of way um so she got the shoes for free from a woman founded brand mine and then she made money sending her followers somewhere else anyway bethany you're a weirdo um and for all the people asking, her shoes are new. So this is obviously blown up across socials. It's blown up across Instagram. It's blown up across TikTok. And I have never been as invested in something so petty in all my life, but here we are. Now there's a couple of ways in which I think we can unpack

this. And one thing that I think is really interesting is the whole concept of this affiliate link, the dupe that she's been sending her audience. Firstly, I couldn't find the link itself like it didn't actually show you where the shoes were what the dupe quote-unquote was oh but Laura I saw it because I follow Bethany and I saw this happen in real time so I couldn't find were they actually a dupe or were they just a similar pair of shoes because I think I mean for example Emco Beauty prides themselves on being a dupe and they honestly call themselves that right because they're a dupe of whatever other product so everyone purchasing it knows there's a difference doing something just being a copy of a product and something being a self-proclaimed dupe it was

in my view the same shoe with a pearl attached that you know how the shoes that so for anyone listening they were like a stiletto style of heel they were black and they had kind of white trim that almost covered most of the toes and it met in the middle kind of like a bow minus the bow on top cute little peep toe shoes yes peep toe thank you oh my gosh remember peep toes from back in the day what a flashback so it was like that but it had a pearl on the top but then doesn't that make it a different shoe well if you wanted them to look like it any cool you could have ripped the pearl off I suppose but it was like I think it was Bloomingdale's because I was very invested in this and my Saturday night was absolutely wild guys I was like what is this drama going down okay

so the thing about this is for anyone who doesn't know so Bethany Frankel makes millions of dollars from her affiliate links and her affiliate programs there's a couple of them one of her affiliate program links that she used is ShopMy. It's estimated that she makes about $400,000 a month through that affiliate program. Another affiliate program, which is a really popular one that people use is called Amazon Affiliate Program. And that is estimated that she has made millions of dollars through her Amazon Affiliate Program. Now affiliates work in a couple of ways for anyone who's not familiar with them. Brands can sign up to things like Commission Factory is a big one in Australia. And it means that the brands generate a link for the influencers to use.

or if you have your own affiliate program, you can go on to the backend and you can see what brands have their own, maybe a brand does like a 20% commission, a 5% commission, a 10% commission, and you can curate your recommended products based on brands that, you know, give a kickback when you recommend those products. So this is all kicked off online. And I think one of the things that has left me feeling like I'm not really sure what side of the fence I sit on is how much so her name is boho chicken it's that's the instagram handle that she posted it to she's the founder of new shoes the fact that she leans so heavily into this like i'm a female founded business and i sent them to bethany because she's also just a female founder

and like i feel very hard done by part of me was like you sent them to bethany frankel because she has combined four five six seven eight million followers across both social platforms you know how incredibly powerful it is if she was to wear the products of which you've sent her? And the shoes that you've sent her are worth $600. Yes. Her posting and doing a tag to a business story set would cost in the estimate of around $30,000. That's how much it would cost to pay her for guaranteed tagging and story set promotion. And that's a guess, like it could be more than that, but that with her level of following, that's how much I would think a story set would cost. so I think to expect that you're going to get tagged from what is essentially her business

for the exchange of a $600 pair of shoes to me seems like a slightly unreasonable request albeit like yes Bethany should support other small businesses and everything else that I think like having a photo of her wearing the shoes in the first place and being able to cross promote that on your own social media platform I think that there is inherent value in that and I almost think it's a bit down and dirty to go down the route of being like this call out culture from a business. That's so interesting. I get what you're saying, but I disagree in this sense, in this situation. I agree that when you are sending a product to somebody as big as someone as Bethany Frankel, there is no guarantee that

they're going to tag you and that is fine. And by all accounts, Lexi understands that and she was okay with that. My issue here is that you've then taken that product, never given credit for and chosen to give credit for a similar brand that you get a kickback for. I think this could have been avoided if she said, hey, guys, this is the shoe and at least tagged the brand. You can also get this dupe here. And then if she really wanted to tag her affiliate link, sure. But to just completely disregard Lexi like the product didn't exist when it was a specific

question, where are your shoes from? That is your opportunity. like you have made a choice to promote that shoe even though you weren't getting paid for it I think it's really low and disrespectful to not at least tag the brand and the expectation wasn't there from Lexi like she was like cool you didn't post it whatever but to actively then go and not name it and name someone else to a direct question I think is really shitty I think that there's a level of disrespect there however Bethany Frankel did come out and she did her own TikTok response to this And to be fair, like, I don't think anyone expects, because Bethany Frankel's kind of like positioned herself as like a real truth teller, right?

Like she's, I don't want to say she's a bit of a bitch, but she can be a bit of a bitch. She gives no fucks. I follow her because she is so sassy. She is so blunt. She calls a spade a spade and sometimes it's a bit savage. She, after all of this drama blew up, she then posted a fit check of her entire outfit. And the caption is, apparently I can't get content out fast enough these days. hashtag outfit of the day hashtag you're welcome so what Keisha is referring to this fit check

this is why I'm not sure how I feel so the very first thing was posted with an affiliate link that said you can get a similar look she's come out and said the reason why she posted that is because the shoes were completely sold out on you right but then she's also on the same day it's the same outfit it's clearly taken at the same time she has done a fit check where she's tagged the sunglasses brand every single part of her outfit is tagged and she takes off her shoe and she goes I think these are new I think it's how it's said like it's it's definitely sassy it makes you question whether or not it was filmed before as she has said it was or whether it was filmed after the backlash had started I think when I looked at the videos I think I saw that there was seven

hours difference between Bethany's two posts seven hours between the posting doesn't mean there were seven hours between the filming of that content. Yes and it actually does kind of look like it's a similar time of day because I did also look for what the light was like because she's outside so if it was filmed seven hours later I mean it's possible that it was like during the day and so it just still looked bright but if it had gone into the evening then it would have been obvious that she'd done it in response. So we don't know whether she actually filmed this outfit where she gave the shoes credit or not. I guess the only reason why I sort of sit a little bit within the gray of this one with bethany frankel is because we will never know whether

or not she had filmed this fit check and had every intention of sharing it we'll never know we'll never know and also people like her have entire teams around them right like i mean we saw it with trini woodall when trini woodall came in and interviewed with us recently she's got you know millions of followers she came with an entourage of people who were managing her social media the whole time i would dare say someone like bethany frankel is not sitting in her car uploading her fit checks. Like she has someone doing that for her. And it's very, very likely that that person has been instructed to post affiliate links where possible. They may have gone on check, seen that those shoes are sold out and just linked something that was similar.

I don't want to completely say like that she is blameless in this, but I think putting the entire blame and being like, this was a really like deceitful and intentional act to undermine a small business to try and gouge as much money out of her affiliate program as possible. I'm saying that that might also not be the case hence the massive pylon may be unwarranted let's blame the assistant always we do but again i think it kind of all comes back to what you said brit i think it's about the fact that she didn't tag the brand but she actually tagged something that was you know a rip-off of the brand that she was getting bank from promoting and even if she had already pre-recorded it and it wasn't in response, you've still sent the bulk of your followers that

are going to buy that shoe. They've still gone and bought it from the affiliate link. You've made a conscious choice to post that link first, even if you were going to tag them later. But I don't love Bethany's response. So I want you to have a listen to her TikTok video she did, which I think is quite scathing. So I don't usually respond to things like this, but I think there's a business lesson here. I wore a pair of shoes yesterday. I did a fit check with them. It was in the queue for later. And in the moment, my team took a picture of me at an event and the shoes were sold out. So they linked something similar because the audience gets frustrated when they can't buy something immediately. Why would I wear it and talk about it if they can't

buy it? And we do this all the time. Magazines do this all the time. This female owner decided to post a scathing video of me, her body, her choice. I have stated multiple times, you send me something. I have no obligation to link, like, use, wear, buy, tag. I can do whatever I want. The business lesson is that there are other lovely things on this person's site and there are about a hundred brands that will watch this video that will message her to tell her how much product. I move how many sprinkle cookies for Melissa Gorga, how many dresses for Rami Brooke, how many pairs of jeans for guests. Okay. I move a lot of product because I don't bullshit. So playing the short game and whining and being a crybaby about something that didn't go your way

in business means you're not a real business person and you have a lot to learn because I would have worn all of the shoes on your site and you would have sold thousands of pairs and made hundreds of thousands of dollars. So my account, my body, my choice. Once you send those shoes into my house, my shoes, you're welcome. Do you know what I think to this? I agree. I think her response is like completely on the nose and I don't think it's going to win her any friends. The reason why I'm not sure about it entirely is because I do think that new shoes are very, very aware. Like this is a daughter of a housewife as well. She is very aware of the currency of which sending Bethany Frankel a pair of shoes is. She knows how much that's worth. She knows how much it is worth

Bethany Frankel wearing them. She also knows how much it would be worth for her to tag a link to this. She could, as a business, very easily have created an affiliate link for Bethany to use, but instead she sent a free pair of shoes and expected a monetary return for that. That is, I'm talking thousands of times the return of what one pair of free shoes is. Is that fair? I don't know. Like, I do think that there should be some generosity from influencers when it comes to small businesses, but I don't look at new shoes as being an entirely small business.

I do also think that someone who lives within the world of the housewives knows how outrage marketing works and knows that by calling Bethany Frankel a weirdo, by using the very emotive language that she's used in the reel that she created, pulling on the triggers of female founded business and really positioning the hardship of the missed opportunity that she's experienced by not having her link it and linking the affiliate program. What she's done is she's used this outrage to create mass awareness. If you go onto new shoes now, no longer does it say that the shoes are sold out. They are all available for pre-order. She's completely restructured the website so that everything and all the positioning and the marketing is about

this pair of shoes that has up until this point been sold out. I do think that she's really used this outrage opportunity to garner and to gain as much mass marketing and critical marketing around the products as possible. And something about that feels icky to me. Like I don't like marketing that comes off the back of outrage and comes off the back of trying to incite a pile on, even if you think that you are in the right, even if you think that an influencer hasn't fulfilled their contractual obligation. I think that there's something a little bit yuck about outrage and pile on culture. I mean, in this sense, I think it's different. I don't think that that was her intention. She didn't go out there to try and cause a mass pile on and cancel

Bethany Frankel. She's got a hundred thousand followers. Bethany has 8 million. The power imbalance is loud and clear. I think what she has done, and maybe she needs to give Bethany some credit. Bethany has said, you know, if you're a smart businesswoman, you'd know. I think she's just capitalized on the opportunity she probably didn't realize how much traction this would have she didn't think that there'd be an australian podcast that's unpacking shoegate 2026 you know like it's gone astronomically viral i think she's capitalized on an opportunity she's like oh hang on maybe i can actually move some shoes here i think she genuinely was devastated at what bethany frankel did and i think if we put ourselves in that position laws imagine if you had sent tony

made to somebody, they'd said yes, right? Somebody with a huge amount of following that could literally change your business. Imagine you sent them that and then someone's like, oh my God, love that necklace. Where's it from? And they put up a story with a link to another brand that is basically the exact same necklace. You would be ropeable and everybody should be ropeable. So I just think that she's capitalizing on the opportunity that she didn't necessarily know she was going to create. Of course, she knew there'd be a conversation around it. But I think some of these viral moments happen quite organically without people knowing how viral they're going to go. I think this just all comes back to like the fact that there is a real negative

perception on influencers and the fact that they're given all this free stuff and like they're not grateful for it. But where I also do see a problem and to be fair, I actually don't think that this is Lexi's problem. I think that there is with small businesses in particular, there is not quite the understanding of what the exchange is we saw like a a makeup artist influence a debate go on in australia a couple of weeks ago where the makeup artist reached out and said i would like to do your makeup the person said if you would like me to post about it like i will charge you a thousand dollars to do my makeup and there was a lot of debate about like who was in the wrong here who was in the wrong for expecting a monetary exchange even though there was an

exchange of services happening. And I think that a lot of people are starting to, and I only have kind of insight into this because I've been in media for 10 years and, you know, I've worked alongside you guys for six years and now I've started doing Instagram stuff as well. It is an exchange. And so I think if businesses are sending out product with the expectation of something in return, that's where things are going to get muddy. Again, I think the biggest issue with this is the affiliate link I don't think Lexi had a problem with the fact she didn't tag the shoes until she tagged something and also I don't know if Lexi designed those shoes but there would be a part of you that was irate about the fact that something you had created that you had put your

intellectual property into that was your art this pair of shoes had then been remade by a you know a stockist as big as Bloomingdale's and then Bethany was directing people to that instead of something that you would put your kind of like art into? I don't want anyone to think that I think that Bethany posting an affiliate link is a reasonable thing. Like I think we can all objectively say that that's where she went wrong in this. But I guess what I want to get across and what I hope I'm getting across in this is that as a business, there is an immense amount of value just having a photo of a huge celebrity like Bethany Frankel wearing your products. And so if New Shoes was able to get a screen grab of one of the other so-called many times

that Bethany has worn these shoes and use it on their social media or use it in their marketing collateral, that has so much weight and that has so much advertising potential. Yes, it's not as big and it doesn't have as much weight as Bethany directly tagging or directly sharing, but I also don't think that the exchange of a $600 pair of shoes is entitled to the enormous hundreds of thousands of dollars as she said I don't think it equates and so I really do still think that yes even though it hasn't been shared properly or to the expectation of what the brand had having a photo of her wearing the shoes is an exchange and that also can't be overlooked because it is enormous being able to say this celebrity wore my shoes and I say

this off the back of like you guys know recently I was talking about how Sydney Sweeney was wearing a Tony May ring. Sydney Sweeney does not have to tag Tony May. Also she paid for it. And she's not doing an affiliate link. But let me tell you, me talking about Sydney Sweeney, buying a Tony May ring, me talking and sharing that Sydney Sweeney did it. We sold seven finery pieces in the space of five days. That's unheard of for us. Like finery are our solar goal pieces. They're all like around $5,000 each. And that was like from all brand new customers that we had never, ever, ever touch with so this is like a really high-end product do you get that response when I post you is it similar in case you're 20 new customers and maybe that's why I see it a little bit in like

I guess I'm a little bit pessimistic about this whole thing because I'm like you know that it's valuable that she's worn these shoes and you would have already benefited from that even though she didn't tag it and so I guess that's why I'm a little bit like I've seen the power of like celebrity endorsement even if that celebrity doesn't go I'm wearing xyz like you still have a photo of them using it you're still able to promo that that's still an exchange which I think is to the value of those shoes yeah but I wonder and I know that yeah we're going down some more rabbit holes that we probably don't know the answer to but I do wonder are there any photos of Bethany wearing the shoes on news site and I say that because Bethany might also not let people

use those pictures for advertising purposes even organically if she's not being paid and it seems like she's a bit of a vulture and a savage in that sense so it could be that she has said i'm not giving you consent to go and use those photos because that's again paid advertising like we don't know the depths of that well dual leap is suing for 15 exactly this week samsung exactly you can't oh that's a bit different they put it on their packaging that is like samsung that was fucking wild. Maybe she got given a TV. Putting Dua Lipa on your packaging because she was once upon a time on a TV as an endorsement is the most wild thing I've seen this week. That's way crazier than shoegang. Love to know what you guys think. As you know, we love a poll. Do you think Bethany

is in the wrong for having seven hour window and posting an affiliate link first before she posted the brand? Or do you think Lexi is in the wrong for having two higher expectations? It is time the second suite what is your highlight and your low light of the week my suck of the week is probably the same as my suite of the week so bear with me my suck of the week is that we had I say we like I'm involved Ben's team football team Genoa played the last home game of the season which is a really big thing like your last home game of the season is a they go on to the pitch and it's a big celebration no matter what because your year's wrapping up and it was a really big game they were playing AC Milan which if anyone knows football like I knew AC Milan before I even

knew football it's like one of the biggest teams so my suck is that they lost the match but my sweet is the fact that I got to go I got to be a part of it I got to be here for like a big moment in the team and in Ben's life and I just have always missed those things and there was a really cool moment where I was on the pitch with Ben after once the game's over and you get to like take photos and everyone mingles with the other families and stuff and there was a moment where I was like wow like I'm standing on a pitch that these two huge football teams just played against and I married one of them and look at him he's a tall hunk and I get to be here with him and it was like the suck and the sweet were the same thing at the same time and so it was just it was

a really surreal really cool beautiful moment so that's my my suck and my sweet oh do you know what after all of the moments that you have missed because you guys haven't been able to be together and I know that that's been one of the really big things that you have I guess it's been so hard as you're like yeah these huge life milestones happen and we have to watch on from different fucking countries yeah I'm so glad that you got to be there for it like I really am and I know how much it means to you it's also cool how seamless this transition to us being able to do this from abroad has been totally I guess that's because we've done 1000 episodes in seven news. We can finish each other's sentences. It's like, I know what you're going to say before you

know what you're going to say. What's yours? My suck for the week. It's kid related and I feel like it's not very exciting, but Poppy has been sick for probably more of her life than what she's actually been well in the most like basic way. Like she's just constantly got a cold. I feel like we're at that part of like where little babies are just picking up like disgusting germ after germ, after germ, after germ. And she's had this like post viral cough. You guys might remember I spoke about how we had to take her to the hospital because she had this like choking hazard incident sorry she's just had this post-viral cough for so long now so it sucked she's so happy but at the same time she's like constantly black lung so but she's also just come off the back of

her teething and she's cut two teeth and then my sweet for the week is it's actually something that's happening and maybe I'll talk about it in the next weeks it hasn't happened yet but it's booked in. And so that makes me really excited. Matt and I have never, ever, ever been away together since having children without the children. Like we've never gone away for a weekend or had like more than a night away. Actually, I don't even think we've had a night away from the kids. One of us has always been with the kids or a kid has always come. We have booked in to have two nights away without any children, which is obscene. Oh, fuck. You're going to make another kid, aren't you? I bet you're going to make another kid. Trying to find

someone who will willingly take three children and watch you do reformer pilates in a g-string i think it's gonna be easy i think this is a you problem she is a godsend so yeah we're going away for a weekend away we're going away for a friday night and a saturday night coming back on the sunday and brit do you reckon that they're going to spend half the time they're just scrolling through photos of the kids talking about how much they miss yes and i also think they'll come back pregnant that's what i reckon i'm like i promise you disaster i have no intention of having baby number four I have begged Matt for a vasectomy I don't think you've had any intention for any of them they just happen it's just it's just you look at each other two months time and I'm like

hey guys I just got something to tell you do you know what how boring if I was to be like I'm having another baby everyone would be like fuck we're over it Laura totally no we wouldn't fresh content everyone's like yuck why I love that I've been thinking this whole time just to finish this off I've been looking at you thinking, what is different about you? Something's not right in my head. And it's because you have shoes. You've got weird black shoes on that you never wear. And I'm like, it looks so weird to me.

Like I can't see those toes. They're not spread eagle on the floor. They're not on the lounge. They're not on the microphone. I hate to disappoint you, Britt, but it's that time of year again where it's getting cold in Australia where I wear weird little slip-ons and you offend me about my weird little slip-ons. Little elf shoes.

My little elf shoes. I love this era. All right, that is it from us. keep your ask uncuts coming into the podcast the life uncut podcast just put ask uncut at the top you'll always be anonymous and we have our youtube please go and hit subscribe we've got all the videos on there it's definitely a different experience to go and watch it and you can go and watch it with your partner and do the ask uncuts together and you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because we love