The Exchanges

Q Very good. I'm excited to have you. So there's a lot of different things we talk about here. Here's what I want to talk about first. The deal with Bill Gates. What was that image licensing company and why did Bill buy it?

A Well, it's all about supply and demand. So Bill Gates had been buying up a lot of stock licensing companies. One of them was a flagship company by the name of Outline, which was all into celebrity stuff. And I had figured out and how to, um, sort of corner the market in the area of architecture and interior photography. What I did not know when I started that is that as sort of a side product, we would be getting a lot of celebrity homes because Duh, the best architects work for celebrities, and the best interior designers, duh, work for celebrities. So next thing I have Madonna's house, and I have Francis Ford Coppola, Simon Baker, Terry Hatcher, and a celebrity story after celebrity story, and because my background is as a photo editor from Elle magazine in Germany, I knew exactly what to do, and suddenly, you know, we became the industry leader licensing these celebrity stories into 76 countries, and Uh, the Bill Gates company Corbis was trying to find new revenue streams. And so they said, well, we want to add that to our celebrity, uh, licensing business. And I said, you can't have it unless you buy it. And then they said, we want it. And I said, I'm not cheap. And I said, we don't expect you to be. And then they paid me a whole bunch of money for it.

AI assessment note: “Corbis was trying to find new revenue streams. And so they said, well, we want”

Q And so what, what was the, what's the total volume? How many of them, uh, happy woman, happy world have you sold so far?

A Um, I want to say right now with, um, you know, it, it's only been in, in the low thousands, uh, but with the book, so when you, yeah, something around that, but with a book, you know, there's a real reality check when you go out and you learn what it takes to publish a book. So you have a choice. You're either going to spend a fortune in a bestseller campaign and you go to one of the people that know what they're doing, or, um, You are going to use that book as a vehicle and as a business card for other opportunities. And so for me, the book really was designed as much as I would have loved to, uh, uh, to have a New York Times bestseller with it or an Amazon bestseller at least. But, you know, I felt that is a little bit dishonest, to be honest with you. I wanted to, you know, I didn't want to manipulate this.

AI assessment note: “it's only been in, in the low thousands”