Who Has Kris Jenner Managed, Besides the People She’s Biologically Related To?
It’s still astounding to us that Kris Jenner was able to sell America on her family, and yet she’s proven to be a manager worthy of respect and, tbh, fear. We understand why she’d need a personal assistant, or why it’s easy to believe she’d start managing Kanye West and Travis Scott (although, according to Kylie Jenner, it’s not happening). She’s singlehandedly made the Kardashian-Jenner names into a worldwide business conglomerate and Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, and Kylie, into the closest things we have to royals. And with that statement, there’s only one curiousity that lingers ominously: “Does Kris Jenner manage anyone she’s like, not related to?”
This has always irked us, and now that we’re looking back, it feels like Kris has always embraced her roles as mother and manager with an equally strong vice grip, hence the “momager” title. Yet we’re now starting to wonder if it’s possible for Kris to manage someone outside of her kin, and if so, how did that work out for her? We did a bit of digging into her career, and the answer is a little bit cringe-worthy.
To backpedal, her first foray into managing wasn’t for a Kardashian — it was for a Jenner.
Here’s the deal, Robert Kardashian was down to divorce Kris under the condition that she wasn’t allowed any money. That meant that upon marrying then-Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner) after her divorce was finalized, the couple was broke. Bruce had $200 left in the bank and the couple had a boatload of kids between them. They had to make money somehow.
The only role Kris was familiar with was “housewife,” but Bruce, he was an Olympian. As a profession, being an Olympian is all about one minute of glory, four years of training; wash, rinse, and repeat. However, with the Olympian title, Kris saw something to be capitalized. She decided to manage her husband’s career, putting all her efforts into creating dazzling media kits and sending them out to anyone who was anyone.
“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 shared on Lenny Letter. “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.”
Ring it did. Bruce was suddenly lined up with deals from Coca Cola and Visa. He was making motivational speeches around the country and together they put out a workout infomercial, “Super Fit With Bruce and Kris Jenner” (which, you know, lol). Clearly Kris had found her calling, and lucky for her she had given birth to six other little business opportunities. In 2007, she decided to utilize them for her greatest project of all: Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The rest, as they say, is heavily Instagrammed history.
Yet while being the ultimate momager was a wonderful upgrade, that still begs the question of whether Kris could manage outside her inner circle. Well…
Enter BG5, a girl group looking to be adopted by a momager.
…wait, who? What? We’ll understand if that name doesn’t sound at all familiar. The most shining example of star power within this quintet was Mandy Jiroux, Miley Cyrus‘ friend and co-star on The Miley and Mandy Show. Regardless, circa 2010 BG5 was looking to make it big as the next Pussycat Dolls, and Kris was eager to jump on board. “She was like, ‘I would love to help you girls, I would love to co-manage,'” Mandy shared with heat world. “I also had another manager who was really into the music world as well so Kris helped us in other ways. It was so cool to be part of that Kardashian clan.”
Yes, it was a brief and beautiful minute that BG5 was in the hands of Mama Kris, although before long, she seemingly parted ways with the project. Keeping it in the family, BG5 was lazily passed off to Rob Kardashian and then descended quickly into obscurity. Ironically enough, if you look at the first comment on the music video for “Scratch,” it’s clear that there’s only one reason the band even got as much recognition as they did: “Kris brought me here.”
So does the BG5 failure mean Kris can’t manage anyone outside her family?
No! It just sort of lends itself to the idea that Kris works best when she’s passionate about her project, and even with all the, um, complicated relationships she has her kids, her family is her No.1 priority. And now that each one of them is raking in millions and she’s picking up her 10% here and there, there isn’t much of an incentive to look for clients outside of family tree. Besides, we’re willing to believe that running the KarJenner empire is exhausting enough to oversee without dealing with in-laws and outsiders.
