UPDATE: David Weintraub Engaged, Plus New Business with Tana Mongeau
It wasn’t so long ago, just 10 years or so, when some of the biggest stars in the world were
Ivy Griffith
It wasn’t so long ago, just 10 years or so, when some of the biggest stars in the world were reality stars. Everyone had at least one reality star or family they kept up with. The real-time drama and relatable, unscripted glimpse into the life of people whose lives are drastically different from ours but who share the core concepts of humanity, it was a revolution in American entertainment. For a long time, it seemed as though the era of the reality star had dawned and it would span decades. But then, a video-sharing platform called Vine shut down and its stars migrated—and something new and incredible was born.
The world of the superstar influencer is a relatively new phenomenon. While some influencers have been working the grind for years now, in the past few years and especially the home-bound year of 2020, people have embraced influencers like never before. Now, they’re replacing reality stars and changing the profile of who we expect our stars to be, and who we spend our time watching.
CELEB sat down with David Weintraub, who’s responsible for launching the career of countless reality stars and Hollywood staples such as Ray J, Scott Disick, the cast of “The Real Housewives of Orange County and Beverly Hills,” and rappers like Too Short, The Dogg Pound, Birdman and E-40 and more. Weintraub recently teamed up with influencer superstar Tana Mongeau—managed by his company, DWE Talent—and Tara Elektra’s Unruly Agency to help influencers build a brand that will launch their career into the stratosphere. Using Weintraub’s history of success, Elektra’s experience and intuition on monetization, and Mongeau’s intimate knowledge of how to successfully create an influencer brand, they’re moving entertainment forward, one influencer at a time.
“This partnership is about combining all our resources, professional expertise, and mentorship to assist talent in creating a real career online that can be monetized,” Elektra says.
“We are the dream team in influencer management. I’m going to teach everyone how to catapult their careers to the next level.”Mongeau says.
Teaming Up with Tana
Mongeau signed with DWE back in 2019, an interesting move for an agency that had thus far focused on reality TV stars. In the past, Weintraub’s company has signed Brandi Glanville, Randy and Tori Spelling, Shanna Moakler, Crystal Hefner, Farrah Abraham, Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, Courtney Stodden, Kendra Wilkinson, Adrienne Maloof, Dr. Terry Dubrow and Elizabeth Vargas, currently the breakout star of The Real Housewives of Orange County and more. So when Mongeau signed on with DWE, it was a signal that Weintraub was ready to meet the changing landscape of entertainment and embrace the future.
Weintraub explains his experience and what led to this new path for DWE; “I was a talent agent at William Morris and UTA for many years. And I was a Motion Picture Talent Agent. While I was there, I wound up signing some of the big first reality stars like Paris [Hilton] and Nicole [Richie], the kids from “The Hills” and “Laguna Beach,” the Osbournes. And I just started to come up with different TV show ideas and concepts. After awhile, I decided to form my own talent management company. And since then, we’ve done over 500 hours of our own creations of reality shows.” Weintraub was also the star of two of major reality shows, A&E’s “Sons of Hollywood,” which aired 22 episodes; and REELZChannel No.1 hit show “Hollywood Hillbillies,” which aired more than 50 episodes and is now on Pluto TV.
Weintraub continues, “Now we’ve segued into the influencer business by signing Tana. We’re a full-service management, production, PR branding company. And we’ve now decided to open up a division of Unruly that Tana is going to run with one of the founders Tara Elektra and myself to oversee a lot of these young talents that want to follow in Tana’s footsteps. So we’re opening this new agency division and we’ll manage these upcoming influencers and help guide them and teach them all of the ways to brand themselves and help them catapult careers into mainstream and digital platforms.”
Tana Mongeau is one of the influencer world’s biggest stars. The 22-year-old has made her career on digital platforms by creating videos that are entertaining and sometimes outrageous. The Las Vegas native either married Jake Paul in 2019 or didn’t, depending on who you ask, and has become a successful OnlyFans content creator, earning over $3 million one month.
Influencers Are Replacing Reality Stars
Weintraub mentions there is somewhat of an acknowledgement in the entertainment industry that the rise of the influencer has changed things. While reality stars still do and always will have their place in people’s hearts, influencers are even more accessible and relatable. People feel like they know their favorite influencers. When they’re seeing new content from them at any hour of the day, produced right in their own homes, with their closest friends, it’s easy to feel connected. So with the rise of influencers, what happens next?
Weintraub explains, “The new social media super influencer is catapulting way beyond any kind of reality star because the numbers are so much bigger. The money that you can make is 50 times bigger than any reality star. And it can happen in a much more immediate manner. This is a business that’s based a lot on numbers of followers and views. And if you can increase your views and increase your demand for more content, you can monetize it almost immediately.”
When asked what the future of a career in influencing would look like, Weintraub explains, “I think that this is a period of time where you can have a good 10, 15, 20 year career. Because if you keep adapting and changing your content to match where the market is going, and you make the right alliances with content creators and other influencers to expand your reach, you can continue to grow. And that can catapult you into crossing over into mainstream film, television, music, owning your own product company, whatever that may be. So you have the ability to really do it. And obviously there’s a lot of people out there that paved the way like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton and people like that. This is the next evolution of being a celebrity that becomes a celebrity based on people being interested in their lives or their look or their personality. And now you are in complete control of distributing your own content. You don’t need a big network or a big bank or a big studio to help you you can do it yourself. But you need guidance.”
What Tana Hopes to Accomplish
Mongeau hopes to provide that guidance. In collaboration with Weintraub’s DWE and Tara Elektra’s Unruly, Mongeau is creating Tana’s Angel Agency. TAA will provide growing influencers with the mentorship they need to grow their brand and see success.
Weintraub shares their hopes for the future of the collaboration; “Tana is a mega social media influencer; she’s gotten over a billion views on YouTube, she’s the second highest earner on OnlyFans, she has her own way of doing her content that a lot of people want to follow in her footsteps. And now taking over running her businesses in conjunction with her and Unruly, we just felt like this was the right person to spread the message of if you want to learn how to do it, we can teach you.”
Weintraub continues, ” So we are sort of at the forefront of a lot of people that really want to break out to the next level. And this team is kind of like the A team of doing it, because we all have our own different areas that we specialize in. Unruly is really good at the monetization of content. I’m really good at the big picture of the deal-making, and Tana can teach you how to make the right kind of content and how to present yourself to catapult your celebrity status and your influence status into the next level.”
And Weintraub says they’ve had nearly 100,000 applicants since announcing the launch of TAA. But it takes more than just a desire to hit it big. Weintraub says you have to have the right combination of the It Factor. “you have to have the right style, the right look, the right personality, the right kind of ability to also take direction and understand that this is not something that happens overnight. You have to be influenced by people that can show you the way into making your material work for online, the digital world that we live in today. Your content has to be short, quick and to the point and also be entertaining and factual. So we want to help guide talent that understands how to absorb this takeaway from us. And we can all work together to catapult them to the next level.”
“We are so grateful for everyone who submitted,” Elektra says. “I’m so excited to be partnering with Tana Mongeau and David Weintraub. Our mission is to mentor and point women in the right direction to build their careers while utilizing social media and digital platforms. We are making their dreams come true by having a team of professionals and all the resources they might need to be successful in this business.”
Mongeau has long wished to participate in a mentorship program and put power back in the hands of the creators. US Weekly shares, “‘Throughout my career I’ve been taken advantage of more times than I can count. I am starting TAA to teach people how to not make the mistakes I made early on in my career,’ she said in a statement. ‘I understand more creators are born every day and we’re in a creator culture.’”
No one understands the culture better than Mongeau, and the promise of her skill combined with Elektra’s passion and knowledge and Weintraub’s keen experience promises to make them the leaders of tomorrow’s influencer careers.
If you think you have what it takes to join the winning team, sign up here.
David’s Big News
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While all of this is going on, Weintraub has been up to something big in his own life. On June 17th, PageSix announced that Weintraub was engaged to girlfriend and singer Hailey Hoffman. The pair met in Malibu, California, and have been dating for three years. In Weintraub style, he popped the question in the upscale Esparanza Resort in Cabo San Lucas.
Per PageSix, “… he presented her with a 3.5-carat emerald-cut diamond ring. The pair celebrated with a private fireworks show and performance from a Mariachi band after Hoffman said ‘yes.’
‘She is my dream girl and the love of my life,’ Weintraub told Page Six in a statement. ‘I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her.’”
And Hoffman is just as crazy about Weintraub; Per PageSix, “‘I am so excited to marry David and become the stepmommy to Stevie Rose,’ Hoffman added. ‘He is my best friend, my partner through life and my rock. … I fall in love with him more and more every day, and he holds the keys to my heart.’”
Hoffman is a recent graduate from Pepperdine University.
CELEB wishes the happy couple well and sends our congratulations!