Family Business with Kris Jenner

I had been sort of to Calibras's before, but I thought I was going to drive up a long, long driveway into some fabulous, huge mansion, and instead we drive up it's a crowded neighborhood. Houses are close together. They do have some acreage around them, but it's such a neighborhood and I thought, gosh, you would live in pure privacy. But you have neighbors, and you can see your neighbors houses, and despite all your notoriety and your popularity, you are

right there in a lovely neighborhood, knowing your neighbors. Your neighbors know you, they know what goes on, and you seem to coexist very perfectly. I know, I was really happy. Oh good. You know, we've lived here in this neighborhood since and so it's really hard to I've thought many times and had other opportunities to move here and buy there, and on and on, and you know, at the end of the day, this is where I'm most comfortable. And

I'm also surrounded by all my kids. So Chloe's next to all six, well five of them, five out of six. I got lucky. The other, uh, the other little duckling, Kendall. She's still in the city, but she came out here the other day and said, Mom, I'm thinking about it. So you never know what you're gonna get. But most of us live here, and it's it's been one of the most rewarding just experiences of my life living near

my kids. So and then I brought my mom out from you know, San Diego and moved her up here, so we're all together as a family. Well, let's go back to two thousand and seven, when you were fifty two years old in your second marriage, you have six kids, and you come up with the idea that you're large and beautiful family would make great reality TV and you we're right, you had a good idea. Were you just a bold woman or had you've been thinking about this

a long time? You know, exposing your entire family through the eyes of the entire country as a pretty bold move. I couldn't do it. My daughter is way too private and no amount of persuading could ever persuade her. Well, you know, it's interesting because at the time in my life, it was really trying to figure out life and how I was going to live the rest of my life and support my kids. And Courtney and I had just

opened up a children's clothing store. The other girls opened up a woman's boutique next door, and we were having the time of our lives, working side by side, living in hidden hills and in Calabasas and just trying to

figure it out. And everybody had always said to me over the years, you know, especially in recent years from that time around the early two thousand, to you guys would make the best reality show, because I'm sure they were watching other reality shows and you know, getting similar vibes. And one day a casting director named Dina Kats came over to the house, and she's the casting director for Dancing with the Stars and other big TV shows, and she said, this is the craziest night I've ever had.

She goes, you guys really need to talk to Ryan Seacrest because he's looking for some reality TV and this is a show waiting to happen. And you know, it was chaos in the house. All the kids were there and things were happening, and probably two or three celebrity friends probably stopped by. And I had come from this really big life in Beverly Hills before I got married for the second time, so I knew everybody, and I had all these relationships and I was well connected, but

I didn't obviously have a TV show. So she set up a meeting with one of his executives, met with him, that met with Ryan, and then before I knew it, like thirty days went by and we were filming a TV show. It happened really really fast, and it was, you know, trying to sell what the premise of the show was. They weren't really interested in a show about Bruce or myself Bruce Jenner at the time, or myself.

They were interested in the girls and um, you know, and what that might look like because it was a younger network. In my mind, you know, that's probably those are my words, but I felt like they were very relevant for what was going on. Ryan was more interested in the girls, right that you got that right? So those five beauties, Now, what did you think having five beautiful girls? What ages were they? Then? Kendall and Kylie were nine and ten, so they were in school, and

so my thinking was listening. My motivation to do this was really about we could maybe make this into something really fun, work together as a family, and we could pay the bills. And I said to Courtney, you know, this is great because we have this store, this children's store that's so much fun. And that was our passion at the time. And my mother had had a children's store for about forty five years in Lajoya, so that's what I knew, and that's what I grew up with.

So I thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to sell more T shirts. We're gonna have customers coming in from everywhere to buy kids clothes and and then go to the girl's shop. And that was really my thinking at that very moment. But yeah, Kendall and Kylie were kids at school and I thought, well, they can film if they want to when they come home from school and after they do their homework and the other girls. There's so much going on constantly that you know there'll be

plenty to film and to talk about. And you keep all of this. And do you know when they were all born? And within their do you know the birthdays of all the grandchildren? You know? I'm lucky. I know eleven grandchildren's names. Um, I could get pretty close. I could get pretty close. But I do know my kids names in their birthdays. Thank god, I'm not getting who knows in a couple of years. My memory is wild. Oh no, your your memory is pretty fantasts I was

testing you at lunch. You remembered everything. You know everything. It's just it's incredible because that many, that many children, and that many grandchildren. And I was doing my math before I called you today. And thank goodness, I was only fourteen when you were born, because otherwise I would feel like I was your mom. No, we are spirits. It would have been pretty impossible to be your mom. I didn't get my period till I was fourteen, so

I could not be physically your mom. Goodness, but you are. You are a role model to so many other mothers. My mother would have loved you, because she was also a mother of six, and she balanced and juggled and did everything with a job. She was a teacher, but she went to work every day. She taught sixth grade, and she was as good as you are at balancing

the various personalities of the kids. Because all your children are so different from one another that I've seen so far, and those differences show up very very strongly on your show. What do you think, Well, they're so different. They all have you know, they have this this common denominator if you will, that obviously we're all from the same family, and they most of them have children, so they have

similar lifestyles. And you're the common denominator because there are two days, right, But you're the common denominator, and you're very balanced nature as as it appears anyway, both on the show and and in real life, you seem to

have that. You're like the anchor. I think I'm just really very organized when I was a young mom, you know, I think that's what attracted me so much to you, seriously, and that's why you were such an inspiration to me for decades, because it gave me great pleasure to have everything in order. And I'm I love celebrating everything. And I think when you have a lot of kids and you have all these wonderful memories and you have things that you celebrate, and you know, the holidays, and I

just made everything, especially when they were little. I loved making everything really special. That gave me great pleasure. I mean to go by a Halloween decoration from you, and I mean I had one year I had, like in two thousand or two thousand and two or three, I remember decorating my whole front yard and crows because you

came out with crows for Halloween. And I thought, oh, I'm having the happiest day of my life because I'm you know, and I think your kids see that energy and that sense of you know, juata vie that you can create in your family, and it just gave me so much happiness that I had so many kids and

it was so much fun. And you just no matter what's going on and what you have to overcome, any kind of adversity, any kind of problems or anything else, you deal with that, but you also show this side that you want everything to be okay and you want your kids to grow up with these great lessons that you can teach them in life. Well, a lot of that comes out on your show so much. And and I enjoyed very much the first episode, Oh good of your new show. I watched the the entire thing, and

I really did enjoy it. And I especially enjoyed you have wonderful cameraman to those beautiful drone shots and the and the wonderful editing. It's it's a very very good show. And audience, I just want you to know it's it was the most watched show ever on Hulu, right that crazy when I they called me to tell me, and I was literally I was so proud and so excited, and so you know, we've done this for so many years.

We were at E four almost fifteen years, twenty seasons, and when we started this new chapter, I was so excited about doing something. I mean, who doesn't want to work for Disney. I mean I was pinching myself. I thought, this is the greatest thing ever to have a new chapter and do something new. And I was happy that it was streaming, and I was happy that, you know, we kind of said, well, we're not going to do this anymore, and then we went never mind, Yes we

are because we love doing it so much. It gets you together, it keeps you together, and there's a thread that is so strong that's not going to snap anytime soon. And that's pretty remarkable. That's a remarkable feat for a mom. When we started filming again and we were filming for Hulu, and I had a moment. We had about a year off and I had a moment when I thought, Okay, are we as anybody gonna still want to be watching us?

And then all of a sudden, that got closer and closer to when we were going to begin filming, and we were getting more excited and I was getting a little anxious. And then all of a sudden, I said to myself, wait a second, Kylie's pregnant. Courtney doesn't even know it yet, she's getting engaged. And I went down the list of all the things that were happening naturally in our family, and you really just can't make this

stuff up. It's not like you could create these moments that are life changing things that are going on and create something that's not real. So that made me really happy that we had so much to share. When I wrote a little essay about Kim for Time magazine when she was awarded the Time one hundred of Yes distinction. I wrote that you were the modern day Brady Bunch. And I think that that with social media, has made you the most popular family in the whole wide world,

and the most watched family and the most admired. Also the most talked about and the most watched. I mean, it's crazy. So you have a standard that you must hold up any flaws in that theory of mine, that you are going to keep that demeanor. I mean, this is this is hard. Do you ever say, oh my gosh, I can't do it? Does anybody say that? Not yet? I think the last go round with our last network, at the end of that, Courtney was a little burnout. You know. She was the first to say, I'm tired.

This is you know, really draining on my personal life and this and that. But I think that we all saw that, and we all saw how she came back and she's better than ever. And you know what's interesting, kind of a fun fact when I think about it, I it really blows my mind is when we started

filming in two thousand seven, there was barely Twitter. I remember Ryan Seacrest calling up Kim and going, you know, or he actually he called me and he said, make sure you tell him about this little thing called Twitter. She needs to start tweeting. And I was like, what, She's not a bird, She's not gonna do what. So it was funny because there was no Instagram, there was

no Snapchat, there was no TikTok. So we kind of grew along with the social media audience, who I think became at a very early stage sort of emotionally invested in what we were doing. And they kind of everybody liked either one of us or the other, so they got kind of into that. And I think because there's so many of us, that's what makes it so successful. Yeah, well it's a multiplier effect. I mean, you have altogether,

you have an extraordinary number of followers all together. You far exceed the most popular of all instagrammers, re alto the great soccer player. But your daughter, I guess it's Kylie. Kylie's the followed female on the Internet in the world and she has I mean hundreds of millions of followers worldwide and a cosmetics brand that youngsters from my granddaughter's age eleven all the way up to me. What's so great about the girls, and the thing I'm the proudest

of is their hearts. They're just really great human beings and they're so kind and they would give you the shirt off their back. They would help anybody in need. Their their wonderful people, and they have great work ethic, and they're honest, and they are the best mothers. And my son is the greatest dad in the world. And I just I'm so proud of that. I'm proud of I'm proud of who they are and what they all

did together to get to where we are today. It's not like we just woke up and said, oh, you know, we want to be famous and do this and that it's really it was really there was more of a purpose in working, which is we needed to set you know, said it before we needed to pay the bills, and that was really exciting that we found something that worked and that clicked with everybody. But then along the way

to be able to do it with each other. If one of us was doing this and had this notoriety and this success in various ways, it would be a ride for that person. But the fact that we do it all together at the same time is so rewarding for us. You're all building sustainable businesses that do have a long lifespan because the girls, first of all, are so young, they have years and years to go with

their individual brands. And I'm somewhat of a brand expert at this point, and I can see how how strong these brands are and how you are continually building on those brands, sensible products to the brands that people will find exciting or desirable or whatever. Like a young woman like Kendall to embrace a tequila brand, for example, eight one eight tequila hand crafted from Jalisco, Mexico. I've tasted it. It's delicious tequila. She takes it one step further, and

that's what I love about the girls. Like in Jalisco, where they make the tequila, they're left with the agave plants and everything they used to make the tequila with. They take the discarded materials and make it into these bricks and they helped build homes for the people in that community. So all the fibers from the agaves or

they were making these bricks. It's fascinating. And so Kendall did a whole video on it and interviewed the people down there, and she got really involved in the community. And that's what I think is so great. Instead of just you know it was and about slapping your name on something, Kendall has to get into the fiber. What's happening with all the things that she does, from her modeling to everything else. But I was really fascinated that you could even do that with plant material. Oh sure,

it's it's phenomenon was really cool. And then we have Kim who's making fantastic undergarments Skims Skims. I love the name. I love the name Skims say. It's very it's very clever to take the s an edit to the Kim I know her names in the middle she's so proud

of Yeah, yeah, it's so great. And also her fragrances and what I also like very much about her her undergarments is that she puts them in the ads on every size body, which is so so I mean, that is admirable because it's not just the skinny size six, short girls, on tall girls. You can see that they work on everybody. I think that's so great because she I think I told you this story once, but you know, Kim has wanted to do a shapewear line for ten years.

I mean, she's just always talked about during her own shapewear. And I'll never forget the time I showed up her and Kendall were doing a red carpet and can years ago, and I had to go to the hotel because they put you down in a special hotel the day of that you're walking a red carpet because the traffic is

so crazy. So these girls are up in this room on whatever floor, and I walk in to get Kim, thinking she's going to be ready, and she's bending over a bathtub that's full of hot water and about a gazillion tea bags and she's dying shapewear that she had cut up into various shapes and sizes and pieces and getting these certain skin tones just the way she wanted them with the tea bags. And then everything was, you know, getting laid out to dry, and I said, what are

you doing? She goes, I'm making my own shape wear. And this was years and years ago, so changing them skin colors. Yeah, So now she has this range, this very inclusive range of beautiful skin tones for anybody to match, and all these different shapes and sizes so anybody can fit her product. And that's what I love so much about. It's just like good American and the genes that Chloe has. It's I think size zero too. It goes up and

up and up, and anybody can find something. So I just I'm thrilled that the girls have built these businesses in these brands and made them so inclusive and easy to fit. Can I ask, are they competitive? You know what they're not. You will see Chloe doing a Skims ad.

You will see Kim promoting Kylie's Kylie Cosmetics. You will see they're so supportive of one another, and that makes me so happy because they love and they love giving each other business advice or you know, weighing in on different things that maybe one has done and the other hasn't tackled yet. It's really nice. It's like a built in focus group. Now, you're beautiful offices that you have out there in California? Do you go to the office pretty much every day? I go several times a week.

I don't go every single Like today, I was going to go to the office and I ended up staying home because we had a house guest and I had things to do here. And a lot going on this afternoon, So I get over there because it's really close to my house, but I don't go every single day. Well,

I've seen I've seen pictures of it. I haven't visited your offices yet, but it looks so impressive and again, clean and friendly, beautiful atmosphere in which to collaborate, to talk to, to confer with all these various businesses, and that you keep them all top of mind again is an admirable fee. But you really, you really are a momager, aren't you? Well? I try, you know. I think that I wear a lot of different hats, for sure, and

I think that my favorite hat is mom. But what I've realized when I do have the opportunity to take a few days off or just to settle down or be on a vacation, which is almost never, but if I have some time off, I realize how much I miss it when I get back into it, and I'm like, Okay, this is where I get my energy. This is how I I feel like I shine. Is when I'm working and trying to navigate through something and trying to troubleshoot something. I feel like for every problem, I can find some

sort of a solution. So I'm a real solution based person and I love trying to figure things out and I can point and shoot. You know, I'm really good at saying, Okay, let's do this, this, this, and this, and then figuring out how to get it done. What I did? Did you shoot down that ultimately succeeded? Is there something to remember saying no to something that finally became a big blockbuster? You know what? It's so funny. I had this conversation with somebody the other day. I

think it was Emma Greed from Skims. She works with us on a Good American and she said, remember the time when somebody wanted to work with Rob in the back end of it. I think it was Tender the dating app. And I was like, oh no, he no, hell no, no dating app. You know this is before my dating app. What are you talking about? I had no idea. Then we were talking about it yesterday and we were laughing, and I said, oh, my gosh, you know how funny Barry Diller has made many billions of

dollars off of those dating apps. Isn't that crazy that I just I didn't get it at the time, So, you know, Mama doesn't always know best, but I try. I try. You have businesses with actual products, yeah, and you've done very very well. What about Push? I don't

really know. Posh Phush is a lifestyle platform where Courtney has really developed this following of people who really want to get to the bottom of all the amazing products that she showcases, and she partners with other brands to shine a big, bright light on things that are good for the planet and that are a lifestyle of eating healthy or vegan or gluten free. She is she loves products that are safe for the environment, and she focuses

in showcases the greatest stuff. It's almost like when I read everything she talks about and everything she highlights and showcases, or she has a collab with. She did a collaboration with vital Protein the call gen powder that you put in a drink, and they did so well with that.

And then she'll suddenly do something with a light mask for you know, sort of an anti aging kind of light mask that I love to put on because she tells me it's going to make me a hundred years younger if I keep doing it, So I do it, and look, she just you're so cute. She comes up with some of the greatest partnerships and focuses on showcasing

them on her push website. So that's been really fun and just she has retreats that they'll do that are sponsored by huge, big blue chip brands, and just focusing on bringing the awareness of all of this stuff to the forefront. So, you know, I've been doing a lot of reading about you and your family, and I just wanted to touch back. You married, and how old were you when you married? Robert Kardashian twenty two. I met

him when I was seventeen, almost eighteen. I met him at the del Mar race track and I was there with some friends. I wasn't old enough to place a bet, so I had to stand over to the side of the you know, people at the betting window. My friends were betting, and I would give them my three dollars and they would place a bet for me. He came up to me and introduced himself, and that's how we met. So he sort of picked you off, he did at the race track where I didn't belong betting betting at

the race track. I thought you were a cool girl. Yeah, we dated and eventually got engaged and got married when I was twenty two, and I got pregnant on our honeymoon, and I had Courtney nine months, two weeks and two days later. And I know that because all the Armenian ladies were probably counting, so I was no. I promised I got pregnant on my honeymoon. You know, those are the days that I'm very old fashioned and right. You want to be very proper, right then with that big

Armenian family, you bet. So how does it feel when you're girls are going out and getting pregnant with right men who are not there or not. Their husbands have evolved, haven't you, I guess so, you know, I get more and more understanding, and I get what this generation and I have so many generations now in my family. I guess there's such a big age difference. You're embracing what's

happening in the world. You have to, you know. I think I've been through so many things in my life that hindsight is very important in my life because I learned so much along the way that I knew nothing about before. And I think that I'm very I do. I embrace what is in front of me, and I think that I am easy once I under stand it. You know, it's like with the girls, they could throw anything at me, and I'm here for them. They know that there's nothing that I would judge, not at all.

I mean, you just I just never would. The last thing I want to talk about it in terms of product is safely. Oh my safely cleaning products means so much to me. I mean, when I visited your home, you have an impeccably clean home, sparkling clean. That means so much coming from you. And by the way, everybody, it doesn't smell like anything but home. There's no irritating fragrance. There's no obvious any smells anywhere. It just smells like

a beautiful, clean environment. And that I guess is safely. Well, it's safely. And we had a fragrance called Rise and it came in this beautiful it comes in this beautiful green packaging and yesterday, funny that you should ask, we came out with a new fragrance in this beautiful, serene baby baby lavender and some of it's just cream packaging and it's called Calm and it has a light light lavender scent. It's the most beautiful scent and the most

beautiful packaging. I actually got a call from Chloe this morning and she said, Mom, I'm into the calm packaging And I said, okay, but its way. She goes, this is what I can get. She goes, this is my aesthetic. I said, okay, Chloe, it's on its way. So it's really when you say it. When you say it has a scent, is that infused into the product. And it's all plant based. It doesn't have anything bad and it like parabins and all these other things. But it's really fantastic.

It works like nobody's business. I mean, that's what I'm so impressed with. We sell it at Walmart exclusively right now, we have it on get safely dot com, and then you can get it at Walmart stores across the country and it's doing really really well there and I'm so proud and happy about it. But I'm really happy that the packaging is wonderful. But it really works, and that's

what I've I've used so many products. When Courtney first started doing Push a few years ago, she was using some products that she didn't have the mom poush but in her home, you know, she was trying to teach me about plant based products and how to be better for the environment and the planet. And so I was trying to get on her bandwagon. And I went over to her house and it just never quite smelled as

clean as I wanted my house to smell. So when she went on vacation, I went over there with my friend, these two friends and one of her housekeepers was there, and we cleaned her entire house with products she would have been so angry about. It was so funny and I thought, oh, she'll never smell it. It just made me feel better to clean her house. I don't know why I felt like I needed to do that, but I did. It sounds like me, yeah, right, we're so.

I'm like a lunatic when it comes to stuff like that. So I was over there with my gloves on and scrubbing floors and I really was. It's like my favorite thing to do. And when I finished a week later, when she came home, she still smelled a really strong,

ammonious smell of what I was using. Now, when I think about that and I think about what we're making was safely, it's there's such a difference, but it's a product that really works so I wanted something that worked like that but didn't smell like that, so we nailed it. Congratulations on that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. You are an extraordinary human being to be able to embrace all that into and it does not stress, doesn't show on

your face. One ioted idea, well, listen, Chris has such a lovely face that doesn't show doesn't show stress whatsoever. And I'm sure sometimes you feel stressed, of course, but look you look, you look daily, but you cope with it better than anybody I've met in the last few years. Really, and truly, you're amazing. Thank you, and I cannot wait

to see what evolves with the new program. I cannot wait to see what evolves with all your myriad businesses, because this is really the dynasty of not just the decade, but of maybe the beginning of the new century. I mean, it's just incredible what you're doing, and I admire it tremendously. And I could continue with this talk forever and ever and ever, but I think we've touched on on so much and I think there's lots more to talk about, and maybe in a few months we can have another

conversation here for that, Martha. You know that, and thank you so much for having me on your show and this podcast. It's been And you look amazingly beautiful. You had one of the most beautiful dresses at the met Ball this year in two you looked amazed than and I was looking through all the two pictures that I didn't go to the ball, but I was looking through the pictures that the New York Times published, and you stood out more than pretty much anybody that means the world,

that means the world. I had a ball, and I really did time with my kids. Well great and again congratulations and we'll talk against so thank you