On with Kara Swisher - ON LIVE: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend on Entrepreneurship, Politics and Dogs

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Musician, producer and EGOT-winner John Legend and model, TV personality and cookbook author Chrissy Teigan are not just a celebrity couple. They are also entrepreneurs, business partners and passionate surrogates for Democratic politics. Kara spoke with the couple for a live taping of On at Cannes Lions in June about how they’ve built/collaborated on their respective business ventures and what it takes to curate successful brands that work with, not against, their outspoken personalities and political activism. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and reason through hard problems better than any model before. You can discover how Claude can transform your business at anthropic.com slash Claude. Hi everyone, it's Cara. So there's been some news. We prepared the episode that you're about to hear well before President Joe Biden announced that he is officially stepping out of the race for president and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. Obviously, this is a huge political

development that has turned an already tumultuous campaign over once again. I am starting to believe, as Elon Musk has said, that we're living in a simulation. So make sure to look for a special bonus episode in your feed tomorrow, which we're going to tape on Monday. I'll be talking to top thinkers and getting their reactions to this historic announcement and find out what it means for the race. And on Thursday, we'll be back with another special episode on the 2024 election. We'll be looking ahead and trying to suss out how it will all play out at the DNC convention in August and in November in the general election. Of course, we can't leave out former President Donald Trump. We'll be talking about him too. I can't tell you who my guest is

just yet, but believe me, you'll want to hear the episode. For now, sit back and enjoy my conversation with John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, a little amuse-bouche amid this crazy political turmoil. It's a really great conversation about entrepreneurship and activism and how the two of them build successful businesses while also being outspoken political activists. It's not an easy feat in 2024, and it'm Kara Swisher. Celebrities launching brands is not a new thing, and some of them do entrepreneurship better than others. My guests today belong to the last group. I'm talking about John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.

Legend is, of course, the singer-songwriter, producer, and actor, an EGOT winner. Teigen is a model-turned-cookbook author and TV personality. Together, they have four kids, just like I do, a bunch of pets, and a number of successful companies. John has a skincare brand, Loved 01, and a wine label, LVE Wine. Chrissy has a cooking-slash-foodware site called Cravings, and again, because of all the animals, they've launched Kismet, a pet lifestyle brand, dog food and merch and stuff like that. I spoke to the duo at a live event last month on June 17th at Con Lions about why they chose these businesses and how they think about their brands and

marketing, including the decision to integrate their kids in their campaigns. Sharenting, as my son likes to call it. They're also very engaged in politics, democratic politics, very anti-Donald Trump. You might remember Chrissy Teigen posted an explicit diss of Trump on Twitter back in 2019. She called him a pussy-ass bitch, which he didn't like. Last year, after complaining that Twitter was captive of the woke crowd and censored everything, it was revealed in a congressional hearing that the Trump White House pressed ex-then-Twitter to take the post down. Of course, now it's in the congressional record, so I guess that backfired. Chrissy's another celebrity who has quit Twitter, and we get into

that. My conversation with Chrissy and John was also just ahead of Chrissy's visit to the White House, where she hosted a Q&A session with Vice President Kamala Harris about reproductive rights. So we talked about how that and how their political activism impacts their brands. There's a lot there. It was a great conversation, and I'm happy to share it with you. Full disclosure, John Legend is on the board of Vox Media, which I partner with on this podcast. Well, hi, everybody. So we have a lot to talk about. I'm so thrilled to be here.

I have interviewed John before, but I've never met you. I know. I know. So this is very exciting. So there's a lot we're going to talk about. We're going to talk a lot about your business. I'm a business reporter. And a little bit about brand.

I may question you about AI a little bit, if you have any thoughts. And then politics, because you guys are both activists, indeed, and really engaged, especially reproductive rights and voting and incarceration. So we have a lot to go through. So you guys are in a lot of businesses. People think of you as maybe celebrities or in-house, but you're business and entrepreneurs. So let's talk a little bit about what entrepreneurship is like right now. You're in skincare, wine, culinary, and now pets, correct? So dog food. Covering it all. Covering it all. So talk about the idea of, you know, a lot of celebrities are in to lots of

products and there's more and more entrepreneurship in that regard because of the changing economics. So Chrissy, why don't you start talking about how you look at what you do as a business? I think that, well, Cravings is a natural extension from what we were already doing in the first place. I get to work from home, basically. We do have an office with a kitchen and John's studio is upstairs. But for the most part, I was always in our home kitchen cooking a lot. And I wanted to share those experiences. And it started off as a small little blog. Back when I had first met John, I was maybe 20 years old.

And then I probably started a blog around 22 or so when we were finding ourselves at home more and really enjoying being at home. I loved cooking for date nights for us, but I was still new to the cooking world. I never went to culinary school or anything, but I really enjoyed the companionship and the camaraderie and the community that cooking created. It was one of those blogs where, you know, that people actually make fun of where you're telling such a story and then you get down to the recipe. But I really loved what it created because I was at, I grew up as a child of the internet. AOL chat rooms and message boards

were how I got through learning so much about my body, learning about other people because I moved a lot growing up as well. So for me, that was like my family and it was always the same people, no matter where I moved, they always stayed the same. So I always loved that connection to other people. I wanted to have a really good background in cooking before I ever did a cookbook.

So Frances Lamb, my editor from Clarkson Potter, had reached out probably five years before I accepted a book proposal, just because I didn't want to do it before I was ready. And then from then we spiraled into three cookbooks, and then now a business cravings where we get to sell CPG goods. And we're in so many different retailers that I grew up going to. I still go to Bristol Farms, Ralph's, Gelson's, Albertson's, Safeway. And learning about that world has been really interesting and really dynamic and fun for me because it's such a different world than what my friends are in, which is a lot of my friends are in the beauty scape or they're selling to Sephora, they're selling to Ulta, you, a friend as well. Your friend, John. Your friend, John. Talk about being an entrepreneur because people don't think of that. They think just singer, whatever, but you obviously you've done a million things.

I always tell people the first act of entrepreneurship was becoming a singer, songwriter, and artist because so much of becoming a successful singer, songwriter is driven by your ability to be a good entrepreneur. Your business is you, your business is your creativity, but ultimately that's where I first got my start as an entrepreneur. My first job out of school was as a management consultant. I worked at Boston Consulting for a few years. But my side hustle was trying to get my music career off the ground. And that was always an entrepreneurial venture. I was selling the CDs out of my own trunk and going to ship them myself and building my business and trying to get a record deal and all those things. But music was the thing I was the most passionate about.

And the thing that made me want to be an entrepreneur, it was the thing that made me say, I have something I want to offer the world and I want to go out there and fight for it. And so that's what I did. And then, you know, as we become more successful in our businesses, we get opportunity to be, you know, spokespeople for brands. Right, well, that was it, just spokesmodels, essentially. Yeah, and I think that, for a long time, that was what most celebrities did

when it came to interacting with consumer brands. And then after a while, I think a lot of us started to realize, well, we're creating all this value for these other companies. Why don't we create something that we own? Right, well, I think like you, exactly. But how do you get the credibility and trust, Chrissy? Because one of the things is people pulling out on their own, everyone was sort of part of a big system and a machine, essentially.

And I know probably each of us has moved away from that. And I think my motivating factor is what do I need you for, essentially? How do you get trust when you're doing that? I guess longevity. I mean, doing it for long enough in the public eye and doing it in front of people. I mean, I've been on social media for so, so long now. People have seen that we have a natural love for animals, for dogs.

Now we have cats. I'll actually tell you, we have two cats now. John doesn't even know this. I don't know about the second cat. John doesn't know that we have two hairless cats now. I go to Europe for a week. He's been, you've been gone for like two weeks, so. Too bad.

That's what happens. But we have always been pet people. We've always been pet parents. So this felt fun and easy and perfectly fitted into our life. I've never wanted to do anything that felt like I was having to sell something. To be honest, I'm really good at selling things that are not my own. Like cravings for me, like I want people to know that I love everything and we really love everything that we're putting out. We make everything ourselves. We are testing those products

ourselves. And I'm so heavily involved in the company. And I will say it's kind of the hardest thing for me to push because it is my own. Because I need people to know that I didn't just do this as another celebrity brand, right? Of course, we're inundated with so many different celebrity tequilas and celebrity alcohols and celebrity, you know, probiotic drinks. And that world is so flooded that I sort of become really insecure in my own self and really thinking like, are people going to believe that this is really my whole heart, my everything? So I actually find everything else to promote being very easy that I love. She's so authentic about celebrating things that she's excited about and she doesn't do it for money. Like she'll just like pump up a small business that she really thinks is cool. And so

I think people get that from her and that's how she builds trust too, because it's just authentic. She celebrates the things that she really cares about. When there is the inundation, what happens in that environment? I think everyone can sniff it out in a heartbeat. I'm a comment crawler, as they call it too. For better or for worse. Yeah, it's for worse.

But I do think we have a very wise consumer now that really sees right through people that are doing things just for the money grab of it. And if it comes out of nowhere, that's never really a good look. And I don't really feel like any of our things have come out of nowhere. So when you think about moving into dog food, for example, Kismet dog food, right? You have never worked on anything together. Is that correct? Well, we work on everything together. No, I get the children. I was saying the children for sure. But well, also even, you know, cravings, everything we collaborate on together. So we always like I have a cookie mix that we develop for cravings. But this is the first time we've officially... We usually do unpaid work for each other.

Yes, we usually do unpaid work for each other. We met working together. Yes, also unpaid. But this is the first time we've founded something together. And we were approached by one of my best friends. I actually worked with him at BCG. We were roommates. And he had just been researching the opportunity space when it came to pet care and dog food,

particularly, and how as a trend and as a market, it was growing so rapidly. And a lot of it's because people are having dogs in lieu of having kids, at least for a while. And particularly during the pandemic, when we started the business. Not us. We went hard with both. Oh, yes, we did both. And particularly during the pandemic, when we started the business. Not us. We went hard with both. Oh, yes, we did both. But yeah. So baby food is next. But a lot of it's just becoming more and more of a market that was attractive. And then people

have known that we've been dog people for a long time, and we're food people. And it just made sense for us to do it. And part of it was about the team. Whenever we decide to go into a partnership with someone, we want to make sure the team is top-notch, just excellent at what they do, really smart, really has great values that we feel like connect with our values, and then we feel like we can go into business with them. So how do you work? What's the dynamics of working together?

What strengths do you bring? And when you disagree? Do you have a team that runs it? I seem like a combative person, but we often agree, honestly, in the direction of things. And also we put our trust behind the team that we have a lot too. Like we have things to say, certainly. But for me at Cravings, I put my full trust in everyone I hire, whether it's graphic design, marketing, CEO, anything. I hire them because I think that they're the best and they can teach me so much. And I do feel like the team that we have at Kismet is people that are smarter than me in every different way.

I might have good creative ideas and things like that. And we can collaborate on fun, creative things to do social media wise. And I think that's where I flourish. Do you, when you want it, when you navigate bringing your family, especially your children into it, talk about navigating that, because I just had a massive argument with my 19 year old. We each have four kids, which is interesting. One doesn't mind social media. The other is like, if you put me on it, I will kill you. Yes. And he's very tall. So I'm nervous about that. He's not going to kill me. But I think about it a lot, like, because I involve them a lot in some of the shows and things like that. But talk about that, because it's a push-pull, correct? You've talked very honestly about your family.

I think every family is different. We have celebrity friends who won't post their kids at all. And we respect that choice for them. But we feel comfortable posting our kids. And so far, they're comfortable with us doing that. But I feel like when they get older, they may decide, you know, leave me out of it. And that's absolutely fine, too. Yeah, again, we do have friends that don't even understand why we would be so open with it. I almost think of it as, you know, they were kind of born into the spotlight

and it's kind of, they have this responsibility to kind of grow up in it a bit too. Especially since we are so in the public eye, hiding them would be very difficult for us because for me, my whole brand is around like relatability. And I think when I became a parent was when I gained the most community in like, in understanding other parenting, other parents and parents understanding our life a bit more, especially going through the reproductive IVF process and that bonded us. And for me, it didn't feel natural or real to share so much of that process and then to not share this beautiful outcome that we had and this adventure in parenthood. We, of course, always want to keep them safe.

And we only post things that are going to put them in a great light. Everyone's always like, post their tantrums. Like, are they perfect kids? I'm like, by no means are they perfect kids. Yeah. Don't post their tantrums to look at and be embarrassed by of course um because they're not you know they're our oldest ones are old enough to speak up and say something but for the most part they're loving they they love being on there um they love getting to be a part of our brands

like with loved one john skin caroline they love getting to be a part of those campaigns and seeing themselves in cvs or or whatever and and they love seeing themselves in the things that I do at Cravings. That's exciting and fun to them, but if there's any point where they are done with it, that is completely fine. Yeah, my son calls me a sharant, which is... Well, you know, and there's a lot of parents that feel very comfortable sharing their kids,

and then there's plenty that don't, and I think every parent just has to figure out what's right for their family when you think about relatability you're trying to be the genuine person you are that's not something it's very hard to avoid i'm going to get into because one of the things that has a negative side too when you really are the person you are you can the brand. But before that, when you think about, I want to get into that because you both are active politically too. And obviously they just, of course, found out a lot of stuff about your tweets, which is interesting, which you were right about, which is interesting with Trump. He's back, by the way. Just FYI. Oh, no.

Oh, no. So talk about, when you think about love, you've loved a one cravings, kismet, your wine, you've also wine. Is it a cohesive brand or do you keep them separate? There's a lot of collaboration. So I have a management team that works with me as an artist and as a public person. And then each of those companies have their own organizations that run the actual company. But there's so much collaboration between my management team and our creative team at my management team and each of the brands. So there's a lot of sharing. sharing. I do a weekly call on Friday where like my whole team interacts with each other. So they know what my schedule is, when I'm going to appear on a talk show, when I'm going to do this. And so,

and, uh, my social team kind of coordinates what the posts are going to be. So there's a lot of collaboration and then creatively, um, my team that creates my touring, uh, creative, creative, and the album covers, they're also involved in creating the branding stuff for the, for all the brands we work on. So it's very, it's very innovative. How do you look at that? Do you coordinate in together? Do you? Yes, our teams work heavily together, but I will say he has much more well-oiled machine because he has so many different things going on. And I think his brands lend themselves more to integration mine are kept a little bit separate but we try to do you know a ton of things with his wine brand

I love I won't say I love cooking with your wine but like to be able to pair relationships is really nice but for the most part my teams are kept much more separate. I would say my cravings team is my cravings team. I have great people, of course, at WME and 3Arts that are my absolute world in coordinating everything together and balancing those things and balancing those brands. Because there's so many different endorsement deals and brand partnerships that come your way that can be very conflicting often. your way that can be very conflicting often. And for example, like if I have a KFC deal, I can't be glamorizing like, you know, a Big Mac that same week by just casually doing it. So actually it's my social teams that have to work really closely with Jebby and me and 3Arts in those partnerships because those overlaps can be very detrimental to these brand partnerships. You got to play air traffic control sometimes.

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That's anthropic.com slash Claude. So when you're thinking about the creative process, you're talking about the creative process and a brand process, are there parallels in the entertainment work and when you're doing that, the creative and the branding process? the creativity comes from me and I'm creating the product. Um, and that's what I do. Like 80, 90% of my time is still devoted to making music, being on the road. Um, these last two weeks I've been out singing and not focused on brand activities and all these other things. But when it comes to the creative process for the actual product, we have product experts. We have, you know, for a loved one, we have dermatologists and scientists who are creating the product. And then we're working on the creative of how to present the product to the world and testing it and doing all these other things. But the actual product creation is done by people who are experts at that. And then when it comes to the wine, I partner with Jean-Charles Boisset, who's been

making wine since he was growing up in Burgundy and is an expert at winemaking, knows how to get the best grapes and all of that stuff. And then we collaborate more on the final process of blending, tasting, and then marketing it out to the world. So I think for me, music, I'm really responsible for the product and then also how to present it creatively to the world. So I think for me, music, I'm really responsible for the product and then also how to present it creatively to the world. And then these other products, there are other people responsible for the products, but I help creatively present it to the world. When you think about that, the creative process versus the actual brand, who have you looked up to? Are there brands you're like, that was good?

Jen Atkin from Way is one of my dearest friends and gives me so much mentorship. I mean, she has been through pretty much everything that I've gone through, but so much more as well. She is such an idol to me because she has built something from the ground up. Watching her build something and create a team and create a brand that I really looked up to, whether it was, you know, the PR boxes she was sending out or who she was working with to manufacture those products. The way she has created her brand and had this complete, clear point of view since the very beginning is a really beautiful thing for me to see. And I also get to see and hear about all the hardships of business because I think,

obviously, on social media, it looks like everyone starts something and then they sell it for a billion dollars and everything just seems really easy peasy and great. And you get down on yourself. I still think of our business as a small business. We have under 20 employees still. I'm still obviously very connected to it, but it's really important for me to see those hardships. So I know that I'm not the only one going through them. And I often want to share them online. And the only reason I don't is because I don't want my team to be like, are we in trouble or something?

Would you mind sharing one here? Any hardships? Yeah. Tell me what's difficult for you. Well, of course, when you have a celebrity, when you're a name and you're attached to your own thing, anything you say or do can completely tank the company or take it down for who knows, God knows how long. But I mean, obviously, there are so many different issues that can happen when you are entirely responsible and your name is on the company. This isn't just something that I could ever sell.

And I would imagine it like standing on its own. For me, this is a company that's always going to have me behind it, always have my name attached to it. So, and of course, being so outspoken politically is really difficult. There have been times when the grocery stores, who are these, you know, these grocery stores, we think of them every day. We're at them all the time, but they're not used to the world of celebrity partnerships so much. I mean, you know, uh, well outspoken celebrities. Yes, exactly. I know. Well, like, um, we could say like, who does the salad dressings? They're like, Paul Newman's not going to get in any trouble anymore. Um, but if we, if, uh, they've been like saturated with phone calls before, because, reasons that because I spoke up about something, whether it was abortion or reproductive health care or standing up for women's rights, it could be anything.

And then these grocery stores that are not used to getting any kind of negativity, really, they feel the tiniest bit, which I get all day. I get like any anyone in the public eye gets so much all day. Like anyone in the public eye gets so much all day. So we're so used to it. But all of a sudden, you know, this small, this not small, this grocery store is getting maybe 10 or 15 comments on a post where they typically get one or two that are all negative about the person they're carrying. And it puts a lot of fear in them. So talk about that experience because you were really in the, in the light with Trump. Yeah. Trump went back and forth. How did you, did you, didn't back away though? Although you did go off. I did not. No, I didn't back away from it because I felt like I was right. And, and I, I always have appreciated people that stood up for something more than the people that kept it

very neutral. You know, there's people now, Olivia Rodrigo, we use as an example, who was selling, not selling, she was giving out Plan B or birth control, or Plan B, was it? At her concerts, you know, Taylor Swift doing Miss Americana, talking about her, what she wanted to be able to say in politics and her whole team was like, no, no, no, no, don't say anything. I gain so much respect for people like that. There's beauty influencers that are speaking out about, you know, the conflict in the Middle East right now. And they're at risk of losing everything, but they do it. I've always felt like that was more important to me. So for this election cycle, you are still both going to be active.

Yeah, we're going to be active. We're both supporting Biden. We're going to the White House on the way home from here. Yeah, Christy's going to go to the White House and interview Vice President Harris on Thursday. So when you do that, the topics, you're going to—you are particularly focusing on reproductive rights right now. You were doing mass incarceration. I'm lucky, though. With my company, honestly, they appreciate an outspoken person. That's why they started following me from the beginning.

They know what they got into by having any kind of relationship with me. And honestly, it's the times that I've been quiet that I feel the most separated from them. I think people fell in love with Chrissy because she was authentic and honest. And I feel like that's who she is. And that's what people love about her. And that's what people hate about her too. The people that hate her are going to hate her. And that's just, you know, we, we know that's who, that's what we've signed up for by speaking out on issues that are controversial. And, um, I've spoken up for reproductive rights too, because I think men should speak up about it as well because it affects us too.

And obviously I've spoken up about politics, spoken up about Trump, and it invites, you know. John speaks up a lot more. I just recently found out, are you on X still? No. Okay, Threads. You're on Threads then. Threads, yeah. I had no idea that you were even on it. Well, no one has any idea. I do feel like you're talking to on threads then. Threads. I had no idea that you were even on it. Well, no one has any idea.

I do feel like you're talking to the abyss on threads. Unfortunately. I know. It's getting better. That'll get you in trouble though, trust me. So you're off of, what social media do you use now? And then we're going to get questions from the audience. I just, I only use Instagram.

Only use Instagram. You're not going back to X, correct? Never. No, I'll never go back to X. X, I can't believe it's X. And I, you know what my therapist actually says? That's the least of the problems over there, but go ahead. My therapist says that that online time was almost a euphoric feeling for me. It was so fun and I felt so connected to it. And it was just the wild west. It was really fun and joyful. It was funny. As time went on,

it became much more serious. And then my therapist actually says, I'm kind of still chasing that high of that euphoria that I felt where I felt such connection to everybody. And I always want it. I do feel like I found a little bit of that on Instagram. TikTok, I don't feel quite up on all the trends enough all the time. We feel too old for TikTok. I feel too old. That's the good way to put it. I feel too old for TikTok. Instagram feels good. And honestly, I can't manage all of those at once, but I just actually, for the very first time, hired a social media team for the first time in my whole career. So that's only been like a month

old or so, and they help a lot. And for you, is there any negative to being so politically active from your perspective? I mean, Target, you had a beef with Target, and then you went back on. But do you ever, is that part of your consideration for either of you, John? John is so much better at it than me. I think it's full of negatives, but John has it. Well, I think everybody just knows what they're getting with me. I think it's full of negatives, but John, John, I think everybody just knows what they're getting with me. Like I still work with brands. They know I'm political and they, they, they know that, I mean, it's just baked in. And so, um, I stand for what I stand for and it's

been pretty clear and pretty consistent for quite a long time. And, um, I know there are fans that probably don't like it. Um, you know, I'm on national TV every week, and I'm sure there's some people who won't vote for my team on The Voice because they don't agree with my politics. But I'm fine with it. And like I said, I think people that do love you, they love you because you're honest and you're authentic and you're being yourself and they respect your values.

And you can't win everybody. You don't need to win everybody, though. Yeah, I'm much more okay with, yeah, of course, they're going to hate you either way. So you might as well be okay sleeping at night. Yeah. You know, I drive myself crazy. Social media is my entire life pretty much. I'm consumed by it aside from the kids and family. And so I am left with a feeling of emptiness. If I don't say something or if I don't speak out for what's right, it really affects me deeply. Whereas with some people, they're able to turn it off and turn it on. It's so, so much, it's so ingrained in me that it's, that it's really hard to separate it. So now I'm slowly learning that getting to speak up and getting to be in that

position where I feel comfortable speaking up and knowing that people are going to be so upset about it either one way or another. I feel better as long as I let that out personally. So you're ready for Trump too? Oh, beyond. Okay. Pussy ass bitch. It's a sequel. Can we just honor that moment, the pussy ass bitch moment?

It was in the congressional reading. It was in the congressional reading now it's amazing it was in the congressional record yeah uh by the way just just recently people don't know he did try to get it taken off of twitter even though i denied it that was that was that was the testimony was that you know the whole point was oh how are the liberals getting uh twitter to do this and that and then it came out that trump was trying to get that taken off of Twitter. And so- Maxwell, remember? Just hearing those words read. Yes. Yeah. It was so beautiful. On C-SPAN.

Yeah. Wow. He's so gorgeous. He's a thin-skinned man. Great, great career high. Okay. So it's actually great. But I'm also, it's also kind of scary because you're like, oh, he's aware of me. And what could really happen because of that awareness, right? Right.

Because we obviously know he's unhinged. Could he actually come after you in other ways? It's a weird feeling. I mean, and that's one of the reasons people should make sure he doesn't get within a mile of the White House again. The fact that you have to worry about that. Yeah, there's quite a few. I've interviewed quite a few people recently. The choice is very clear to me.

I don't feel like it should even be close. We'll be back in a minute. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees. And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing,

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It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. So, quick question from the audience. What's up next in terms of products you might launch this year? No more.

No more. What would you like to launch? Well, with Cravings-wise, I would like to be able to be in different aisles. I think right now we're in the baking aisle, which is really fun. But I do, I hate adding more stuff to the world unless it really is different and unique and better in a way. I feel like we did that with our baking mixes. You know, we're obviously competing with brands that are selling for $2.99 and they're going

to be the go-to ones for a lot of people. But it's really fun to be able to get people to try something that is really actually so much tastier, better for them, something you would be excited to show off to your friends. I love doing that. I would love to get into the sauce world, of course, but I do feel like Carbone and Rao's are doing it amazingly, and I don't feel the need really to do another basic pasta sauce when somebody else is doing it so well. So if we were ever to get into that world, it would have to be something different and delicious and amazing. I would love to get into biscuits. See, now you're going. Now you're going. Yeah. You're now all over the frigging supermarket. There's so many fun things to do. So what about you? Not really new products. I've got new music coming. And I'm always creating.

I'm working on two Broadway shows as well. And then the businesses that we have going, we're going to keep going with and do some amazing things with them. And the last question, how do you think about product promotion strategy? That's kind of a large question, but what is the most important things

for people to keep in mind? Well, you want it to be engaging, creative, and reflective of our personalities, I think most importantly. And so a lot of what we end up doing with our teams is making sure it really sounds like our voice. I've just learned so much, honestly, because coming from the world of being so perpetually online, I always was really big on hard launches, really big, amazing launches that got so much attention, that'd be so great. Then you realize, oh, we're making maybe like 80,000 that day. And then there's nothing left for like the next two, three months of this rollout.

So now learning that, you know, to have to space that out and a big launch is great. Yes, but to keep it up and to keep up that momentum is really so much more important. Launch is great, yes, but to keep it up and to keep up that momentum is really so much more important. So I'm not so big on the big, hard, incredible, amazing viral launches as I was. And now it's about thinking about like the entirety of the year. And it's really about trust, bottom line. Everything we do, we want people to trust that we put a lot of heart and thought and care into making it really great and making it the best value that they could get, something that's really good at an affordable price. And I think everything we do, we focus on doing that and then building trust with people. So they keep coming back.

So it's not just about the launch, but it's about coming back and getting the second box or coming back and getting the second bag of dog food or the second bottle of body wash or whatever it is, like keep coming back because you actually are becoming loyal to the brand because you care. You know they care about what they put into it. We never want to trick people. That's what I always say. I'm not trying to trick anyone into getting one thing

and then, oh, we got them. No, we want them to love it. So we're a little bit over time, but just very one last question. Obviously the big topic in tech and media right now is AI. Do you think about that at all with music or you with your, obviously, robots can't cook quite yet. They model, though. What?

There's a lot of pretty model robots out there. Yeah. So just very briefly, do you think about that right now? There's not a lot of talk about it here. Oh, it's out there. I mean, I think a lot of songwriters are using it as a co-writing tool probably already and if they aren't now they probably will i haven't used it yet really i've tried just for fun but i haven't actually made any songs that i put out that were co-written with ai

but i think that's going to happen if it's not already happening plenty what about you? I put this whole interview into chat GPT and I've just been saying things from that. I really, for me, it's actually a good thing. It keeps you really creative online and keeps like the memes and everything flowing. And it's really funny. But for the music industry, I imagine it's very problematic and insane or acting anything like that for me. No, it's more of like a fun thing on my end. So I get kind of excited about it. But I will say we've been to so many talks about it, and it is really disheartening to hear about. It's scary. It's scary for your kids growing up in a world of AI, not knowing what's real. Obviously, being so on social, seeing that

people really fall for anything nowadays, too, is really scary. But when it comes to my work life, I don't feel like cooking can really be replicated or that love that goes into a recipe. So I'm lucky with that. Right. Well, anyway, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yochum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, and Gabriella Bielo.

Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Kate Furby, and Kaylin Lynch. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you just got a hairless cat. If not, you have two hairless cats. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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