Kris Jenner is part mom part entrepreneur and it’s amazing.
The New York Times Magazine published an extremely entertaining profile of Kardashian mother/manager, Kris Jenner today. Writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner spent a day on set of Keeping Up With the Kardashians at the Jenner mansion in Calabasas, California. Brodesser gave an interesting inside look at how Kris Jenner started essentially from the bottom and hustled her way to the top of Hollywood.
Love her or hate her Kris Jenner is a role model for anyone trying to make it in the entertainment industry. Brodesser-Akner points out how Bruce Jenner became her first project that she molded from struggling businessman to a wealthy entrepreneur.
But they were broke. Bruce had a fledgling business doing motivational speeches, and Kris thought that if she took charge, he could be successful. She put together press kits and contacted speakers’ bureaus. “It was a mix of blood, sweat and tears, enthusiasm, determination and just never sleeping and getting the word out there,” she said. The phone began to ring. On the other end of the line were Coca-Cola and Visa.
This is how she transformed Bruce Jenner’s struggling business.
Bruce became her first project. She set him up to market his motivational speech, “Finding the Champion Within,” to a wider audience, and she also helped him create a series of workout videos, sold via infomercial, called “Super Fit With Bruce and Kris Jenner.” In the infomercial, he coaches Kris as she walks on a very short treadmill. The success of Bruce’s speaking business was just the first time that Kris realized the pool of talent she had right there in her own home, as well as their potential for financial security.
Years later, Kris Jenner decided to transform her family from a group of nobodies to multimillionaires.
In 2007, Kris marched into Ryan Seacrest’s office to discuss an idea for a reality show based on her family. She couldn’t help thinking how her large brood — six children, who, when the show made its debut, ranged in age from 7 to 26 — could have mass appeal.
Seacrest sent a producer to their house to shoot a short reel at a family barbecue that would help him decide if the idea had potential. “On the way home,” Seacrest told me, the producer called and said: “ ‘We have a show. This is going to be amazing.’ Watch the tape, and you know, you see the craziness that is their family.”
Since then Kris Jenner has marketed her family in every way shape and form. From teeth whiteners, to diet pills, to clothing lines.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re always looking for more or that we’re greedy,” Kris said. “There’s a lot of people that have great ideas and dreams and whatnot, but unless you’re willing to work really, really hard, and work for what you want, it’s never going to happen. And that’s what’s so great about the girls. It’s all about their work ethic.”
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Source: New York Times Magazine s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
