Quick Links

• She Created Kim Kardashian As We Know Her Today

• She Built Her Family's Empire On Her Family

• She Made Sure She Got An Entertainment Empire Of Her Own

• She Gets Ten Percent On Everything Her Kids Do, And All Her Kids Are Millionaires

• She Produces The Family Reality Show

• She's Cool With Product Placements And Has Been For Years

• She Told Every Kid That They're The Favorite

• She Married The Right People

• She Knows How To Befriend Notorious People, Even Before She Had Kids

• She Managed Caitlyn Jenner's Career First

• She Makes Sure Big Kardashian Events Are Talked About On A Platform She Can Control

• She's Open About Her Changes

• She Helped Bring Her Youngest Two Children Into Stardom During A Time Where Audiences Didn't Care Much

• She Makes People Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements Before Letting Them Into Her House

• She Doesn't Contradict People Who Say The Kardashian Family's Success Is Thanks To Her

Okay, when people say that we need to talk about the Kardashians, that's not entirely true. The Kardashians are always talked about so we don't really need to talk about them anymore. That being said, they always end up coming up for one reason or another. It can be argued that they're always coming up because people like us are always writing about them. While that's a part of the issue here, the biggest issue is that this family knows how to command and demand attention. This isn't because of their vast set of talents or anything, it's because commanding and demanding attention is their biggest talent, and no one is as good at leveraging the family's influence than Kris Jenner, the matriarch.

This brings us to one very basic question: how did Kris Jenner, a woman who started off the wife of a lawyer, end up the queen of an entertainment empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least? The answer is just as simple as the question: she's the matriarch of a family where every single one of her children is notoriously famous in their own right, and she gets a piece of everything they do. She's great at taking the family missteps and turning them into the lynchpins of the empire, starting from the moment her daughter Kim's adult movie leaked online and continuing with the way she has her hand in everyone else's careers, both past, and present. Here are fifteen ways that Kris Jenner has managed to keep her family in the spotlight and turn "fifteen minutes of fame into thirty."

She Created Kim Kardashian As We Know Her Today

Before Kim Kardashian was the incredibly famous and business savvy woman we know her as today, she was just part of Paris Hilton's entourage as her personal assistant. Then her tape with Ray J was leaked and a star was born. It's impossible to fathom now, but there was a point where Ray J was more famous than Kim Kardashian.

While a tape like that getting leaked is never ideal, it's definitely the first building block of the Kardashian empire. Ray J was never able to capitalize on the fame of that tape in the same way that Kim did, and I'm pretty sure that's because he didn't have Kris Jenner as a momager. Kris used that tape to turn Kim into the world's new reality TV show darling and Ray J was relegated to VH1 reality TV shows and a song entitled "I Hit It First" which is all about how he was with Kim first. Kris basically birthed Kim twice, first to bring her into the world and second to bring her into the world.

She Built Her Family's Empire On Her Family

While Kim is the person who the Kardashian brand was built on first, the person who built that brand brick by brick was Kris Jenner. She manages the careers of all six of her children, which is interesting because it's not like all the Kardashian kids are doing the same thing.

On the one hand, you have Kendall, who's a legitimate supermodel in her own right now, and on the other, you've got Rob, who sells socks. While it seems like these guys are just famous for being famous, that couldn't really be further from the truth now. All of them are doing something with their time and efforts that aren't just lounging around on social media. That being said, even if they were doing that, this is the family that turned lounging around on social media into not just an art form, but a real way to make money, so we have Kris Jenner to thank for that.

She Made Sure She Got An Entertainment Empire Of Her Own

Kris Jenner didn't just let her kids earn all the money, she made it a point to carve herself a piece of the empire as well. She had a short-lived talk show for awhile, but that wasn't what really solidified her as who she is today. She worked hard to establish herself as the best momager the world could ever ask for, and she also made sure that the world knows that everything her kids have is because she managed them well.

While we don't talk as much about her personal life as we do her children, primarily because the lives of her children are so dramatic, she's also gained a massive following and her personal life regularly makes the news. That being said, she's not known for having a messy personal life. She built her own presence in Hollywood precisely by not being messy while surrounded by messy people.

She Gets Ten Percent On Everything Her Kids Do, And All Her Kids Are Millionaires

Kris Jenner supports her kids in everything, but that doesn't mean that her kids aren't also supporting her. She gets ten percent of everything the kids do, and considering all six of her children are millionaires and moguls in their own right, she's making a pretty penny off of every single one of them. She also makes it a point to get her kids to try different things.

For example, all five Kardashian daughters have tried their hand at music. For those of you who value your time and love yourself, you didn't do what I did and listen to Kim's single "Jam" because it is really not very good. Kendall and Kylie also got into the YA fiction business and wrote a book together called Rebels: City Of Indra: The Story Of Lex and Livia. To be fair to the book, it didn't deserve all of the scathing reviews it got, but it did deserve most of them.

She Produces The Family Reality Show

The Kardashians are a unique family because they don't just monetize their businesses, they've monetized their day-to-day lives. Compared to other celebrities, we know so much about the Kardashians, or to be more accurate, we have a huge window into what the family wants us to see about their lives.

Kris Jenner is the executive producer of her show and also one of the stars, so she has unprecedented influence over her show and what she's willing to show people. The show actually films for ten to twelve hours a day and while some things are clearly planned to call attention to certain things that are in the news, a lot of the time this family is just hanging out in front of the camera. Essentially, every Kardashian sibling is getting paid from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, either from their various shows or their financial enterprises. Now that's making money.

She's Cool With Product Placements And Has Been For Years

Ever since the Kardashians became really famous, they've been known for hawking different products on their social media sites. Each sister has their own set of products and a lot of other influencers on different social media sites are taking a page out of their book. Kris is all about this, even doing it herself from time to time.

The family was shilling QuickTrim for awhile before the family came under fire for making promises about the product that wasn't true, but they were also doing commercials for a ton of different brands. Nowadays, they just keep it to social media, but even then they got into trouble for not clearly labeling their posts that were advertisements. Posts like that earn the family hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, and Kris gets a piece of all of it.

She Told Every Kid That They're The Favorite

Kris Jenner clearly loves her kids, but she has no problem playing the favouritism card when she wants to. She's told every kid that they were the favorite before, which is something that even the kids have admitted to. However, it's pretty clear to see who her actual favorite kids are.

We've been watching her behavior for years and we have a good idea who the golden children and the scapegoats are in the family. We're pretty sure the favorites are Kim and Kylie for their ability to make money and their penchant for staying in the spotlight. Towards the middle would be Khloe and Kendall, who live further away and don't seem as dependent on Kris for things but still are successful in their own right. Towards the bottom of the list is Rob and Kourtney, who tend to butt heads with her a lot.

She Married The Right People

Kim isn't the only Kardashian who knew the right people to marry. Long before Kim's wedding to Kris Humphries dominated the news, Kris was just a young flight attendant looking to get married and start a family, and in 1978, she married Robert Kardashian, with whom she had four very famous children. They divorced in 1989, only for Kris to marry longtime boyfriend Bruce Jenner in 2003.

Robert Kardashian passed suddenly that same year at the age of 59 after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer after less than eight weeks. Kris and Bruce (now Caitlyn) had been together long before that, though, since they have Kendall and Kylie during their 20+ year long relationship. More recently, she dated longtime younger boyfriend Corey Gamble and Nigerian billionaire Christopher Cunningham, and both of those relationships attracted a lot of attention.

She Knows How To Befriend Notorious People, Even Before She Had Kids

Kris Jenner doesn't just know how to marry advantageously, she socializes advantageously as well. When she was married to Robert Kardashian, she got very close to his friend OJ Simpson and his wife Nicole Brown. The Kardashian kids called OJ "Uncle Juice" and he lived with them for awhile when his marriage was in trouble. It's this friendship that's at the root of one of the biggest rumours surrounding Kris Jenner.

There's been a rumour going around for a long time that Kris Jenner was having an affair with OJ Simpson while she was married to Robert Kardashian. That rumor got started by her former fiance Cesar Sanudo, but it doesn't hold a lot of weight. The bigger and more solid rumour concerns Khloe Kardashian's paternity. While Robert Kardashian loved all of his children the same and refused to go for a DNA test, multiple sources have claimed that Khloe's father is a totally different man from Kardashian, Simpson, or Sanudo.

She Managed Caitlyn Jenner's Career First

Before Kris was momager to the stars, she was managing her former husband's career. Before Caitlyn Jenner became an entertainment and reality star in her own right (and before Caitlyn Jenner was essentially born before our eyes), she'd shot to fame as Bruce Jenner, the Olympic superstar. With the newfound fame came the need for a manager, and that's what his wife was throughout their marriage. This relationship actually continued after the two broke up and around the time Bruce came out, but before he was revealed to the world as Caitlyn.

The relationship between Caitlyn and Kris is definitely a complicated one, but when the relationship ended, it wasn't because of Caitlyn's gender, it was just because the two had grown apart. There's been some drama since the divorce which makes everything more complicated, but the manager side of things seems drama free.

She Makes Sure Big Kardashian Events Are Talked About On A Platform She Can Control

Whenever something really big happens in the Kardashian world, we can speculate about it all we want, but in order to hear about it from them, we need to tune into the show, and Kris knows this. She makes it a point to not comment on the big events in the family, pointing everyone to the next episode of the show instead.

For example, Kourtney announced her pregnancies on the show and the episodes where she did that all had bloated view counts. Kim talked about her marriage to Kris Humphries falling apart on the show and only on the show, so the entire marriage from the wedding to the divorce was documented for the show. Kylie even used the show to address rumours about her lip fillers. This is no accident: Kris makes it a point to make sure the show is the first place people go to for information, and that's part of the reason why they're famous.

She's Open About Her Changes

Unlike other celebrities that are really cagey about the work they've had done, Kris Jenner is remarkably open about the procedures she's had, and even why she's gotten them done. She's gone on record as saying that people look better when they've had surgery, which is an opinion of hers that we'll leave unexamined.

Kris Jenner basically hasn't aged a day since she entered the spotlight with her family, and she credits that entirely to the less invasive procedures she's had done. According to her, her eyes, nose, and mouth are still her own, but she's done some work to her cheeks and chin. She actually did her chin because Kim said she was getting a bit of a gobble. As for the next generation, most of the Kardashian siblings have been rumoured to have had some work done on almost every body part at this point. Some famous examples of them have been Kylie's lips and (allegedly) Kim's derriere.

She Helped Bring Her Youngest Two Children Into Stardom During A Time Where Audiences Didn't Care Much

When the Kardashians first rose to fame, the focus was mostly on the older three girls, which makes sense considering Kylie and Kendall were just kids. There was a point where the show was starting to flag in the ratings and people just weren't as interested in the family, and even Kris thought their stretched out time in the sun was over. Then her children started having children and she was inspired to keep going.

Around the same time the older girls were procreating and starting their families, Kylie and Kendall were about to become adults and people still weren't interested in them. That was when Kris got them their gig at America's Next Top Model, where she herself was the star and a guest judge. Now, Kylie rivals older sister Kim in fame and moneymaking power and Kendall is a legitimate supermodel. That ensures that the Kardashian name keeps its notoriety for years to come.

She Makes People Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements Before Letting Them Into Her House

Because so much of what comes out about the Kardashian family is controlled, it makes sense that Kris takes legal action to make sure that their real privacy is maintained. That's why she makes sure that everyone who enters her home signs non-disclosure agreements before they can come in. Kris is known to keep a stack of them by her front door.

This was at the center of a legal dispute between the Kardashian family and Rob's ex-fiance Angela White, also known as Black Chyna. The drama between this couple and the rest of the family could take hours to get through so we won't rehash it here, but Chyna evidently revealed things about her time with the family that violated the NDA. Chyna's legally safe from legal repercussions, especially considering her treatment at the hands of Rob, but it's a good reminder not to mess with a Kardashian legal agreement.

She Doesn't Contradict People Who Say The Kardashian Family's Success Is Thanks To Her

Many people have said that the Kardashian family's success has more to do with Kris Jenner being savvy than it does the rest of the family. After all, if it weren't for Kris, the Kardashians would just be another socialite family. While Kris does celebrate the accomplishments of her children, she definitely doesn't dispute her own influence on them.

She calls herself a momager all the time and even tags her posts relating to her children that way. She knows that her family's success comes on the back of her kids, but it was built with everything she did before her kids were even born. Now, we've got a family that's constantly being put in commercials and mobile video games worth millions of dollars, showing up on our newsfeeds and is generally everywhere, and the world knows it's mostly thanks to the family's matriarch. That's a claim to fame no money can buy.