Started from the bottom now she’s here! Kris Jenner opened up about how she built her empire and created a successful career for her ex Caitlyn Jenner during Janet Mock’s “Never Before” podcast.
The 61-year-old momager revealed that she learned how to succeed in business from her first husband, Robert Kardashian Sr., and his high-profile friends. “I married Robert Kardashian when I was 22 years old. 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,” Jenner said in an excerpt from the conversation published in Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter on Tuesday, August 8. “I was watching my husband be the biggest kick-ass attorney that I’d ever seen. I was so proud of him doing that. I learned a lot along the way.”
She didn’t officially try her hand at managing until after she split from Kardashian and met Caitlyn Jenner (formerly known as Bruce) in 1990. “Then, when I met and married Bruce Jenner, I became his manager instantly because he didn’t have a lot going on. I saw this incredible potential, and he wasn’t doing anything,” she said. “Nobody was booking him for speeches. Nobody was sending him out on the road. I thought, ‘Wow. You should be this incredible public speaker.’ I just figured it out to that point.”
The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star needed to put food on the table for her kids, so she figured out how capitalize on Caitlyn’s Olympic gold medals. “I told my assistant, Lisa, ‘OK, listen. We have the greatest guy here. He really knows his craft. He is really good at what he does, but he doesn’t have anybody doing anything for him. He doesn’t have a lot going on. He has $200 in the bank. What are we going to do?’” she said. “Because the kids have to eat. We have to get it together.”
Kris got to work putting together press clippings about the former decathlete. “I think I spent my last dime, I’m not even kidding, making these beautiful, glossy press-kit folders and took every great article that had ever been in Sports Illustrated and any really beautiful magazine and I started making copies,” she revealed. “We put together 7,000 press kits, and we mailed them to every speakers’ bureau in the United States. Then we sat back, and we waited for the phone to ring.”
She added that she didn’t care that Caitlyn was nearly broke. “I fell in love with him, 150 percent. I’ve always looked at things like, ‘We’re just going to figure this out,’” she recalled. “I don’t stop and think about, What’s the plan here? I just went for it. I realized after we got married and I had a limited amount of money, and I said, ‘We’re going to move into this house. We’re going to work hard.’”
The couple announced they were splitting in October 2013, and Kris filed for divorce the following year, citing irreconcilable differences.
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