david: this is my kitchen table and filing system. over much of the past three decades, i have been an investor. then i started interviewing. i learned from doing interviews

how leaders make it to the top. >> i did no due diligence. you don't feel inadequate now? one of the most recognized names is kim kardashian. recently she decided to get into my business. i had a chance to interview jay and kim about their private refund. why did it take you so long to join the private equity world?

kim: i've had a long-standing relationship with jay who came from the carlyle group. i was close to doing some deals. about 10 years we have conversations. i was privy to all those conversations so. we finally have the conversation we should get into business together. it's been a fascinating process. david: the name of your firm is skyy partners. it is usually sky. yours is skky. how did you come up with that name? kim: we had to have a little influence. j simmons, i thought the s and

kk, kim kardashian. it worked out. david: you've been exposed to the private equity world for a time. what is your view of the private equity investment community? the most honest people you've ever met? kim: very nice people. [laughter] a lot of my friends growing up, they are in this space now. i am on a group chat where i'm being asked all the time about different companies, mostly tech, that they invested, if they are good companies, about non-zooms with all the founders, to hear their pitches, as if i work with them already. i felt it would be a good next

step to do it together. david: how did you meet and how did you get into private equity? jay: thanks for having us. i started my investing career 20 years ago. i spent all of my time trying to back consumer brands. david: you also have a clothing company which is called skims. you have a skincare beauty products company. kim: skin by kim.

david: did you need help coming up with that name? probably not. those are big businesses. how much time do you have for something like this? kim: i feel like in life you have to do things that challenge you and help you grow and evolve this is a space that after spending time with jay and with the knowledge i have learned starting businesses, taking investments from firms and having great relationships and being on the other side, seeing relationships not work out if you do not know what the right investment person and team i really felt like we could set ourselves apart by really being that person that has been the

founder, that believes in the founder, that wants to really help the company grow and thrive and really support them because i have been there and seeing relationships work and not work. it was just something that i was really interested in and that i was willing to cut back on other things. david: ok, when you ask people to do meetings do they say no or is it hard to get a meeting with investors or not that hard? jay: the answer is no and i'm grateful for that. it is largely because i believe that what kim and i are building is unlike anything else being built in this space. it is a very intentional combination of complementary skill sets that other firms do not have. david: right now the private equity world it's tough to get financing for deals.

are you going to do buyouts that require financing or growth capital deals which don't need as much or any? jay: our strategy is consistent with what i have done in the past which was not reliant on leverage. it's about great execution on value, not the marginal leverage. in sinstances when they can use a little bit, it's about getting behind the right ideas. david: when the deal comes along i presume you are on the investment committee, is it a one-person veto if you don't like the deal? how does that work? kim: we have not run into that issue. we respect each other's opinion and trust each other culturally we have the same vision of what brands we think can grow and that we think can help make an

impact. we both really believe that our team being included in decisions is important and we want everyone to have a voice. david: what is it you are most looking forward to about private equity? coming to conferences like this, is that what you're looking forward to? kim: i am most looking forward to my relationships with the founders. i am really fascinated to hear their back story. i am a storyteller. i am so excited just to have the opportunity to help them win and i love hearing people's stories and hearing what the magic sauce is behind their company and why they wanted to start the company and what their vision is and hope i can help. i've always felt doubt and i've

always just taken that as motivation to have me focus more and work harder. i felt like i had more to prove. ♪ david: you can be called one of the first influencers or maybe the first of the influencers. did you know what an influencer

would lead to? kim: no, i really didn't. i knew social media was interesting in a way where when i got on i used it as a free focus group when i had questions about launching my first product ever which was a fragrance and i needed opinions and i went to twitter. twitter was the first real platform besides myspace which at that time an influencer was not in the mindset. same with twitter really for a while. it was a way to communicate with a fan base but i did use it as a free focus group that i thought was fascinating and i felt like the customer became more invested in the fragrance i was launching because they hold a part of it and i thought that was interesting. i did not quite realize what a tool social media would be for business.

david: you've built several businesses. people would say she cannot build a fragrance business or a clothing business because she does not have a background but they turned out successful so did people not think you could do it, urge you to make it more successful or were you nervous they were right and you could not build the businesses? kim: i definitely took the doubt as motivation. i still do always feel insecure about it. confident in the brand and wanting a brand, the whole process of it. i always have those healthy nerves when you are launching something on a product launch day, that i've always felt the doubt and i've always just taken that as motivation to have me focus more and work harder and felt like i had more to prove.

david: no one can build or run a business by themselves so you have to hire people and get people around you for your businesses. how do you select who you are going to hire and do you ever have to fire anyone and say you are good but not good enough? kim: i have a great team and a small team. firing is really difficult for me so i always have someone else do it. it's really hard for me unless it's someone who works in my household and i have a personal relationship. i would give them the respect to do that, but i have a small team. when we started skims, my business, everything that i do starts with a selective team, even from my business manager. everyone is just someone that i have taken time to get to know.

i trust and a good community relationship with in my office and house staff everywhere is the most important thing. david: you test the products yourself whether it's a beauty product or something you always tested? kim: everything, yes, yes. i'm so involved. to this day i am still our model, which we have like a group of fit models and i will know the collection that i did not fit for, i'm very specific on how things fit. and i pick the fabrics that come up with the marketing. so with my beauty brand i do every last thing from packaging design to helping with the fonts and, you know, every campaign, every photographer, every formula of every product i have to be involved 100%. david: many people would say in one family you cannot have too many talented business people.

you seem to have a lots so is there a competition between you and your sisters? or you are so friendly there is no competition? kim: you know, kylie and i are in the beauty business and we do not compete read we have totally different brands and demographics, so i would say we do not compete in that way. if anything, we would motivate each other and we work privately and do not really communicate about what we are launching. if we're really excited we will share the process but it's really rare that we do that now. we don't compete like that, we just focus and do our own thing. david: your mother has been involved with your career and your mother is involved with your sisters careers as well, so is she a superstar business manager?

how does she manage to keep all the children happy and have them each have their own career in businesses and still be so close to them? kim: she is the smartest woman i know and she was a housewife when she was married to my dad and she raised the four of us. then when she married my stepdad she became his agent and manager and got her license and figured it out. really helped that and it bled into wanting to help her children when the time was right, when our career started so i ask her how she manages six kids and we all have very similar lives, but i find it really interesting that a lot of people call her to want to get her to be there manager and her heart is with her children. i think it is a different kind of love and motivation but she has helped us all figure it out.

we come to her for every ounce of advice and she has been great at managing all us, but she is also great at being the best mom and even may be a manager would push for one decision, she will push for a mom decision first david: your father passed away at a young age of cancer, he was a well-known lawyer. did that motivate you to want to become a lawyer yourself? kim: absolutely. just seeing him every day would get up, be on his way to work, drop us off at school, we would see him go to work, come home for dinner. i saw how hard he worked and i saw his work ethic that really drove me and especially his law studies really inspired me. he passed away when i was 22 so i was in college and we talked

about my path in college when he was really realistic. i did not like school and he said i just do not think you want to do this full time. i really want you to think about this. but if you stay in school i will help with your apartment and it was like a trade-off that he would help. i wanted to be independent and i wanted to not go down that journey at that time and -- but i do think he would absolutely be proud of me but the fact that i'm doing it now, he would be the best study buddy and help me study. david: to be a lawyer you don't have to go to law school. abraham lincoln never went to

school but he passed the bar exam and you're going to take another one at some point in time is that right? kim: in two years i'll take the next one. since i passed the first one i could practice under someone. but to be a lawyer on my own i have to pass the second bar, so constitutional law is kicking my butt and that is what i'm studying currently. and it is extremely time-consuming but so worth it. ♪

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david: so as you become well-known i think you have more twitter followers than probably almost anybody in the world you have something like 350 million instagram followers, is that the right number? kim: 359 million. david: i have zero, i'm afraid to be on instagram because i would not have any followers. when you go to a restaurant or out in the public, can you ever be not bothered by people who want to take your picture, want a selfie, want an autograph? kim: depending on where you go you have to know where to go. you can get away with that sometimes but you have to understand in public that is what comes along with the territory. i love to travel the world. if i go to japan no one will ask. their culture is different.

different places all over the world just have different beliefs and cultures where it's not as important for them to ask for photos, so it is fun to travel and get away sometimes from that but i also know that that comes with the territory as well. david: how do you convince your children not every mother is as famous as you because they see that you are well-known? how do you convince her children not every mother is that way and they have to live life different than the one you're living? kim: i think that they do understand that every family is different, even within my sisters, other sisters have different rules, snacks they can eat, snacks we can eat. we talk about different families and different rules. i think that they grew up seeing

a lot and whether they were at their dad's big events or filming with me and seeing stuff, they just have known and we have been open and honest about our lives and how big it is and how different it is and let's be positive and think of all the good, positive things and try to give them amazing experiences, but they are so normal and well grounded that i am so happy that they have a group of cousins that can relate and we all live in the same community and they ride bikes to each other's houses and scooters. they are the most normal well-adjusted kids and it just makes me so happy. as a mom you just feel like you are doing something right when your kids are happy. david: when you were a little girl the age of your children, could everyone pronounce the name kardashian?

now it is a well-known name but i imagine people pronounced it incorrectly, did you correct them? was everyone pronouncing it correctly? kim: no, i remember i would laugh with my dad about this during the o.j. simpson trial when reporters would say his name, they would get it wrong and say different versions of it and my dad told me a story that when armenians came to america they took off the i-a-n, so they are armenian. our last name would be kardash and he would say never take the i-a-n off your name. now it seems really simple. david: you and your mother and your sisters and family became famous initially i think with the tv show called "keeping up with the kardashians." is that what it's called? kim: yes. david: when you were approached

about that did you roll your eyes and say i don't want to do a reality show or did you say we are going to be famous because of this? who came to you with the idea that all of you want to do it unanimously or did you say maybe not? kim: i remember being at my best friend's house, 1989 and "the real world" launched. i looked at my best friends and said i have to be on a reality show. i go that's what i want to do when i grow up. and she said when we are 18 we will make an audition tape for "the real world" and she goes i don't want to be on but i will be your manager and her dad as a manager. we laugh now at our conversation. the show came about because kathy lee gifford is one of my mom's closest friends and when she would stay with us she would just laugh and say you are a reality show. what you're talking about fighting about, how you live your life, this has to be a reality show.

we called ryan seacrest, got connected to him. met with that network and our show was on the air. i think we were a filler show for a show that fell out of production and they needed something quickly. we just started filming. we thought we would be on for one season or two seasons and we did 20 seasons of keeping up with the kardashians, 10 spinoffs, and now filming season number four of the kardashians which is basically the same thing just on streaming. david: when i was nine years old i wanted to be a major-league baseball player. that did not work out. usually when you want something when you're young, it doesn't work out but i guess it worked out for you and your sisters. kim: they did not want to do it but i talked them into it. i said this would be the best promotion for clothing stores. we should consider this and that got them hooked.

david: it worked out. kim: it did. ♪ - super excited to open up my diploma from southern new hampshire university. ♪ ♪ - i'm nervous, i'm excited. ♪ ♪ - [man] okay, let's see it. let's see it. - oh my gosh. - jesus suarez, i did it and it's here. (group cheers) ♪ ♪ - [narrator] next term starts soon. visit snhu.edu. visit snhu.edu.

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