The genius of Kris Jenner

Keeping up with the mastermind

Hi Friends :)

Back with Kris Jenner. You’d be surprised by how smart she actually is. The Kardashians are not an accidental success.

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Issue 3

Learning by osmosis

I follow my intuition. I’ve spent a lot of time around really powerful people who happened to be successful, and they were very positive influences in my life— great mentors. I married Robert Kardashian when I was 22 years old. He taught me so much about business and dealing with people—all these years later they are some of my greatest tools. Everybody that I was surrounded by for two decades was at the top of their game in the entertainment business: the head of every studio, the best attorneys in the world, the people that were running the most incredible industries. I was watching my husband be the biggest kick-ass attorney that I’d ever seen. I was so proud of him for doing that. I learned a lot along the way.

When knowledge finds a channel

In 1991, she and Bruce had eight kids between them, and Bruce had just $200 in the bank.

Our first job was making a living. We went to work rebuilding Bruce’s career, with me as his manager. Suddenly, I went from being a housewife to having a job. It wasn’t just any job, either: I had to buckle down and figure out a way to make a life for Bruce and me. I had walked away from any substantial money from Robert, and although Bruce was doing motivational speeches and product endorsements, I could see that his work wasn’t going to be enough to keep our life afloat. He didn’t have a lot going on. I saw this incredible potential, and he wasn’t doing anything. Nobody was booking him for speeches. Nobody was sending him out on the road. I knew we had to tell his story to a world that had forgotten it. We took Bruce’s gold medal out of his sock drawer and dusted it off and framed it in his office, and that became our motivation. We wanted to be champions again. “We’re going to take the moment that you shined brightest in your life and make sure no one will forget it,” I told Bruce. “There should be Bruce Jenner clothing, Bruce Jenner exercise products, Bruce Jenner endorsement deals, Bruce Jenner vitamin supplements,” I said. “We’ll build this house one speech and one endorsement at a time.” Bruce didn’t have a press kit, a business card, or even a piece of stationery with his name on it. He didn’t really have an office or a proper business system set up to support what should have been a thriving enterprise. There was no internet that I used or knew about. I had a cell phone the size of a brick and a typewriter and an old-fashioned Rolodex thing on a spindle…I had a friend take photos, and I had another woman I know make a sizzle reel that we could use as an intro to his speech. I spent my last dime making these beautiful, glossy press-kit folders. We put together 7,000 press kits, and we mailed them to every speaker’s bureau in the United States. Then we sat back, and we waited for the phone to ring. And it did.

Many have been famous. Few have made a fortune.

My job is to take my family’s 15 minutes of fame and turn it into 30. I started to look at our careers like pieces on a chessboard. Every day, I woke up and walked into my office and asked myself, 'What move do you need to make today?' It was very calculated. My business decisions and strategies were very intentional, definite, and planned to the nth degree.

Shadowing the Kardashians

Kris understands the value of learning by osmosis. This comes up again and again in her conversations in different forms.

I learned a lot in my life by paying attention and listening to how people around me worked. And I think that given the opportunity, somebody (personal assistants, stylists … ) could really learn a lot just being around me and the girls because it’s really nonstop, 24/7 brainstorming and creativity and just trying to get organized and really pack a lot into a day — being there nonstop with all engines blazing.

Cold Calling

At 21, Kendall Jenner had long wanted to be Victoria’s Secret angel. The problem: Kris had no experience with the world of high fashion modeling. Still, she somehow found the number of Russell James, the lingerie brand’s photographer of choice, and cold-called him when Kendall was still a teenager. ‘I was so scared.’ I told him ‘You don’t know who she is, but she’s beautiful.’ James agreed to drop by their home for a visit shortly thereafter and Jenner got her daughter to change into her “cutest party dress,” a pair of platform shoes, and then casually walk down the stairs when the two adults were talking. Or there was that time her youngest daughter Kylie Jenner really wanted to start a beauty company and begged her mother to help her out. The older Jenner wound up cold calling people that she had found on Google. Eventually, Jenner found a manufacturer they liked and convinced them to set up a fulfillment center nearby so they could “keep it tight in that little circle.”

We don’t have writers

First of all, maybe our show is so successful because we don’t have writers. We don’t have scripts. We don’t have storylines that we preconceive before we start filming. We do have a big meeting at the beginning of a season and say, “What is everybody doing?” Because we all have about five full-time jobs apiece. So I think the beauty is that there are so many of us and there are so many things going on that we don’t have to sit and think, Oh, what would be interesting? I mean, you can’t make up Lamar getting traded and Kourtney giving birth and the kids getting married—you can’t write that stuff. Or Khloé going to jail.

Timing the market and winging it

The family dynamic is what would make this a special show, and it is what we need to focus on. There was so much media coverage swirling around Kim then, both positive and negative, that we knew that we had to act fast and take advantage of the moment. Timing is everything in entertainment and pop culture. Passion can be as powerful as preparation. Other than the informal pilot that I shot, I had never done anything remotely like a reality TV show before. But I knew that if we could come up with a format, we would have ourselves a TV show. And it would be a hit. I thought about the show in terms much bigger than just the girls. I thought this could definitely be a family show because anytime you do a show with that many personalities, you are bound to have both the funny and the dramatic elements that can appeal to more people.

The possibility to make this into something so much more than a TV show

First, the show, which was the vehicle for everything that would follow. We never took a break after filming the first season; we just continued filming the second season immediately. And then a third. And a fourth. I knew we were onto something big. And I loved the business side of all of this. That’s what drove me, that’s what excited me: the possibility to make this into something so much more than a TV show. Every time we renewed for another season, I would think to myself: How can I take these fifteen minutes of fame and turn them into thirty? How can I get paid to do what I love? I felt like I had a responsibility to not only turn out a really good show season after season but to use the show for a springboard for something permanent, something lasting for the kids. I was, after all, now the manager of my kids. I was responsible for their futures. I took my job very seriously. So while I was producing that television series, I also had to find some time to think about what would come next. Throughout my personal life, I’ve had to be the mom, the wife, and the daughter. Now I had to be the manager, the businesswoman, the television host, and the leader of the pack. I was the one that my family was looking to, asking, “Okay, Mom, what’s next?” I had to be so on top of it all because I didn’t want to let anybody down. I had spent my entire life taking care of my family, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste this amazing opportunity. I felt that if the girls were going to work this hard and show me that they could be this responsible and this devoted to something, then why not let them try their hands at whole new levels in the business world? Every six months, Kim and I would sit down and ask each other, “Okay, what are our goals?

Work Ethic

Entertainment Tonight and The Insider taped at 5:00 a.m. A car picked me up at around 3:15 in the morning and drove me, in the dark, to Paramount’s Radcliffe studios in the San Fernando Valley. By the time I arrived at the studio, it was about 3:45 a.m. and I would go into hair and makeup and be on set by 5:00. When I drove home after taping it was only 8:00 a.m. I was already in hair and makeup and I was able to walk right onto the set of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which of course was being filmed in my house. I did that for nine months. It was a real test of my energy, my dedication, my passion, and my work ethic. And I pulled it off.

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The next issue comes on 24th Oct - We go into the intellectual software of Anand Mahindra. CEOs of conglomerates are barely interesting as interview subjects, but Anand is an exception. I’ve been reading a ton about him. Excited to share it with you in 2 weeks.

- Abhishek