Kim Kardashian: The Power of Influence | 2023 TIME100 Summit

[Applause] what a treat to get to be here with all of you what a dream to get to be here with you I think it is Hawaii in a minute she needs no introduction right but this is Kim Kardashian the founder of skims which is I should note one of this year's time 100 most influential companies she's also a mom of one two three four yep the hardest job I only have two so here's his double is hard but also the the most meaningful absolutely that's 100 Kim thank you for joining us thank you so one of the things let's start on business and one of the things that I think is so remarkable about skims is it 3.2 billion dollar company four years old what you've done in terms of your business success has been especially accelerated in just the past few years and in that same time frame you've said I've chosen myself and I kept thinking about that what does that mean and how do you think it correlates to all of this success right now I remember that interview that I did um and I said I chose myself because I chose to put myself first for once and just choose my happiness and I felt like I was putting so many other people and their happiness in front of my own and it just dawned on me like why am I so concerned to make everyone else happy and not myself and when you just choose to do that it doesn't mean that you disregard everyone else and their feelings but it means that you just um you know for once at least in my life I have so many family members so many kids there's just a lot of people around that I like to make happy there's a lot of a lot yeah and um when you choose to do that it just kind of re-shifts or it re-shifted my perspective and allowed me to just focus on me my babies my business and what really makes me happy so with skims a lot of people thought this industry is done we know what works it's hard to break into you were as I understand it dying your own shapewear in the is this true yes in the sink with tea bags yeah and then you said let's just do this yeah let's just make it why do you think because you've said this is the most confident that I've been in any project yeah why did this work I think because it was filling the gap of something that didn't exist in the marketplace for me I was just looking for a solution to the fact that I love to wear shapewear and there wasn't a color tone that fit my skin tone let alone most of my friends and there was either a super light nude um which was a more pale color and then the color black yeah there was really nothing in between that's right and so I would take coffee and tea bags and I'd put them in the sink or the bathtub and put my shapewear by the way I actually the other day found and I would cut them all up because they're either you know too long yeah just that the cuts weren't right and I found all of my original ones I always kept them and it was just so funny to look back and see you know what I would try to do and and because it didn't exist I wanted to create that and find better materials better colors and we launched with um a pretty wide arrangement of nude tones and we grew from there you also have a more recent Venture in Sky partners and co-founding private Equity Firm I was thinking a lot about sort of how you do business and observing it from the outside do you trust your gut absolutely over the data over what other people say Kim you should do this we should do this absolutely um and I like to be in business I think there's two things I like to do things that I will feel very confident in that I obviously feel like I know what I'm doing I want to learn and surround myself with people that will support you in a way where you trust them so much in the area that they're going to run the business in and you give them that control and they trust you in the area that you really know and the businesses that I have now have a complete equal respect and Trust in each other to run and do our thing and it could be okay you handle the employees and the whole the way the business is run in distribution and I will handle marketing campaigns Fabrics fits and if you just trust each other like that it absolutely can be magic equal respect and Trust yes and I do have I think as you get a little bit older and you learn a lot along the way I think one of the most important things and there was a time when I didn't have this luxury of choosing who I was in business with yeah but if you're at a place and you take your time you realize that you absolutely do not want to be in business with people you don't want to spend holidays with and that you don't like sounds really simple but I didn't have that opportunity for so much of my career of choosing who I really wanted to be in business with or what deals I did or having the opportunity to really get to know them and I just find that to be again that goes back to the respect and the trust so your dad you've said that a lot of your work ethic because I've heard you only sleep about five and a half hours a night if that a lot of it now now a lot of it comes from your dad and you lost him when you were 22. yes he died from cancer just two-month battle with cancer he was a lawyer and your dream was to follow in his footsteps we were talking about this backstage my dad too lawyer died when I was young four months in the hospital so I I understand that and wanting to make them so proud is his memory and what he wanted for you and what you learned from him a driving force now in your criminal justice work absolutely but I know that he would probably get such a kick out of this because he wouldn't have expected it at all we talked so much about me going to law school and he always said he would help give us an allowance if we stayed in school and um I couldn't couldn't do it I was like I'm on my own I don't care I'm not gonna go to I didn't uh finish school and then now that the opportunity came about all these years later it's so much more meaningful to me um I was telling you earlier I'm like my retention might not be there as is I think it's there as if I was in my you know 20s when we would go to college but I live it every single day and everything that I'm learning I can apply it and I'm just so grateful for the experience didn't he tell you not to be a lawyer he did he did he well he did say he's gonna be a lawyer he did warn me how stressful it is and said I know you you're not going to want to go through this so figure out something else to do but I will say I did learn my work ethic from my dad yeah but I learned so much more from my mom than I ever give her credit for and that I ever I you know so give Chris credit right yes I I don't know is it a thing like you kind of give this is like I'm not even trying to be funny but you kind of give the dead parent a lot of questions it's so true my my mom said the same thing to me we did this video for CNN all about my dad and she's like I love it poppy but you know I was there till here I was there too about me yeah I get it I'm I'm sorry Mom you know if you watch this I feel like we've always given my dad so much credit what what did she teach you well deserving but she I mean the one thing is she taught us how to um have a home how to make a home and all of my I mean I'm she's the most nostalgic sentimental person so she kept everything from when we were growing up I could find a tooth I could find locks of hair I could find she has these chests that she saved for us with baby books and so I do that with all of my kids and I write each one of my kids a letter like a four or five Page Letter every year on their birthday um that I'll give them when they're 21 and um you know about what we did through the whole year and what their favorite shows are and what they like to eat and who their friends is for every child I definitely feel like I'm underperforming yeah next year it's a lot we'll do it so so she taught us how to be really good mom how to make a home I don't I I love being a homemaker and I love working and I don't know often that we talk about both so I'm really glad that you said that so let's dig into your criminal justice work I mean we will all remember when you you did so much work from month to months behind the scenes but then we all saw you at the White House and the photo with President Trump and securing the release of Alice Marie Johnson five years ago serving a life sentence in prison for a non-violent drug offense I don't believe that was five years almost exactly five years ago in June did that change the entire trajectory of your life absolutely it just changed I had no connection to the justice system I knew I didn't know anyone that had really spent time I mean maybe a friend of my dad's and he worked on the case and I was able to experience that the trial but as far as like a close friend of mine or someone that I knew a family member I never experienced it so as I got to um figure out how to help someone and how to make a difference and and get them out I had no I was just genuinely naive to all of the issues with our system and then I got a little bit overwhelmed because there's bail Reformation I mean there's you can there's so many things wrong with our system and um but once I saw that I was able to make a difference I couldn't stop there and I realized there were so many other people like thousands the women yeah that I helped you've talked about Alice's your experience with Alice saying that you were meant to be on this journey together you're pretty close to becoming a lawyer how close I I'm probably going to take the bar February 25. you passed a baby bar which is harder yeah so the baby bar has like a 16 pass rate wow I mean it took me a few tries you know okay you did it uh and then I have another one I think it's like a 36 pass rate so you got this I hope so about a year yeah about a year you just went to prison California about a week ago and you've said I have to help as many people as I can these people are thrown away and put in prison and no one cares it struck me thinking about our conversation this morning that you are always in the spotlight and yet you care most about people who are never in the spotlight you care most about people that we as as a society have thrown away and I wonder why that is I think experience maybe just life experiences positive negative becoming a mom you know life changes you I you know I think you get to a point where you have experiences that just change you and when I met Alice and I felt like it was a fairly easy experience for me when I know it shouldn't be to help get someone out it takes 10 20 years to do what I did in six months and I didn't realize the fight at that time to me that was a few phone calls and that really struck me that you know however it was done it was done I'm so grateful but like that that the system that process has to change I think you're selling yourself short though because van Jones one of your biggest cheerleaders a good friend of ours at CNN told me this about you there is nobody like him she is in a category of her own she takes every case so seriously she'll have read the file with more care than the attorneys she will know the case backwards and forwards in every meeting do you think this will be your life's most meaningful work ahead I hope so I hope so I always joke with my mom who's my manager I say Kim K is retiring and I'm just going to be an attorney Kim yes um so I was like so you can go help my siblings are you so you can still have like what about my ten percent um so I'm giving her the heads up are you would you ever consider a life without the cameras yeah absolutely I do feel like I have a um there's a lot that's always on TV and a lot that's always out there but I think my friends and my family know we really cherish a lot of our private times and um I would be just as happy being an attorney full-time and doing that um the journey just really opened up my eyes to so much that I just it gets overwhelming because there's so much to be done and I just um you know I brought my sister Chloe to a prison for the first time last week and that was really eye-opening for her and I just um I would totally spend more time doing that cameras No cameras I am I don't think you know we know your success stories with Alice Marie Johnson for example but what not everyone knows is that you've also had efforts where you haven't been able to help that person get off death row you were the last phone call for One inmate who was being executed I mean I remember seeing you in tears so shaken because of that what is that like to feel when you can put all your weight behind something and you still lose them it's such an I don't even know the word for it but it's just um it's like a really emotional experience um I have a girlfriend Lala who works in prisons and cases that she was trying to help with didn't go her way and she would come out and in tears and you know just trying to explain how to like not emotionally be so overtaken by it but imagine someone being executed that you've spent months on the phone with All the Time video calls you hear their story and or a lot of time you don't hear their story and you just see what they did and of course you would be judgmental I was so judgmental at the beginning of my journey you were and I was like okay non-violent that's maybe drug offenses I can do that anything with violence I just can't ever support that until I started to go to prisons and sit down with these men and women and hear their stories and the awful things that have happened to them even in those moments that you feel like the most rational charge should be self-defense and it's just not that easy and it just it wasn't like that and you just start to really have empathy and compassion for these people and so with that Brandon Bernard case that you're speaking of who he was executed um it was really important for him to for to allow me to tell his story and I think that my role in all of this is to storytell and to explain people's stories and their histories and I really think people would understand and you know president Trump did understand once he started to hear these stories instead of just seeing their cases and he went in being so pro-death penalty and really hard on crime to opening up his heart and realizing that so many people are inside that don't deserve to be in a completely rehabilitated themselves and he passed a bill the first step act and I think almost 30 000 people have been let out because of the storytelling of one woman that changed his mind so I think storytelling and I think that's what my role is is to like really explain what people have been through to hopefully change the bigger picture have you talked let me talked to President Biden about this um we have reached out he has not done any commutations um there's actually van and I were talking about a situation of a guy who got out and they're actually trying to put them back in so fair to say you'd like a meeting in the Oval Office I would love one I would love one well he's running again if you haven't heard an announce this morning I heard to the victims families you know there are victim families who say no they don't support the work you're doing what do you say to them um I completely understand that as well and I my empathy and belief in Rehabilitation doesn't take away my compassion for what they've gone through as a family and I do want and the people that I'm helping feel the same exact way and we've had conversations about that so I completely understand when someone reaches out because the families do reach out sometimes and I completely empathize with them as well so they're not wrong and that everyone has their own Journey um and I think I just have to focus on what I think is the right thing and I will always believe that people are deserving of Second Chances human rights attorney Jessica Jackson who you've been apprenticing for and helping you on this journey calls you a triple threat she says she gets the comms in the mark you haven't heard this she gets the comms and the marketing she gets the legal issues she gets the human issues of each case she gets involved in when you're a lawyer in a year you're going to be a triple threat I hope so you know I just I just want to like keep my head down get as much work done as possible get as many people out as possible and it's more like I also think that people assume that if you're working on cases that you're not you don't really believe in like any type of punishment and you're not hard on crime and that's really not the case either you know I think that there are a lot of people that are deserving to be there and need but there's also I believe that there just needs to be a completely different system before we wrap up I do want to ask you about a case um going on right now that we followed very closely at CNN that my colleague bring Jean grass has followed and I saw you tweeted about it yesterday this is the case out of Oklahoma Richard glossop yes and um you tweeted yesterday asking for the pardon board to Grant him clemency he will be executed if nothing changes May 18th and you tweeted we cannot execute another man especially for a crime he didn't commit why do you believe he deserves a full pardon he is up hearing tomorrow yeah his hearings tomorrow um you know I think that there was hardly any evidence that linked him if none you know to his case and I think that I personally don't believe in the death penalty and I think that everyone deserves at least to have their case fully examined before they're about to be executed it's just really that simple and I just don't feel like he's got an affair um chance the Attorney General by the way in the state said as much and that he should get a new trial the appeals court denied that so I see the clock it says zero we're out of time we're gonna um let's end where we started and that is choosing yourself you have said my 40s are about being team me too 40s are the best so far so good I've got almost a year in the books I agree any advice for folks on team me just oh my God I have so much advice and I'm blanking um I mean I think it's just really simple like I live my life just trying to be a good person be do right by other people you know be kind to everyone and focus on yourself sometimes you need to give yourself a little bit more Love sometimes other people need a little bit more love and there's just enough to go around you're giving it to a lot of people I admire you a lot I think all of us do Kim thanks very very much thank you thank you

Channel: TIME

Views: 292,053

Keywords: kim kardashian, kim k, skims, power of influence, celebrity, keeping up with the kardashians, influencer

Id: ye-7JDaEifM

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023