DeKonstructing The Kardashian's Finances (w/ MJ Corey)

This week Haley is joined by author, psychotherapist, and content creator MJ Corey (@kardashian_kolloquium) to break down Kardashian finances, track the rise of their empire, and debunk what the public misunderstands about the family. Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones is a Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us at @sonypodcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Haley Sacks?

  Okay, we all love to romanticize being your own boss, but even when you have a team, you still end up being the bookkeeper, the marketing department, and the person rearranging appointments at 11:00 PM. And that work isn't just annoying, it is expensive. And it's especially taxing for businesses that run on appointments. So if you own a business that takes bookings, this one's for you. Gloss Genius is the system that runs the operations for you behind the scenes. Scheduling, payments, admin, handled automatically. Payment processing is a flat rate with zero hidden fees. And check out rebook's clients on the spot. Clients can book in seconds too, so there's no login or separate app necessary. So you actually get more appointments. 125,000

• 0:45Haley Sacks?

  businesses already trust Gloss Genius to earn them more and save them time. Want to try it out for yourself? Go to glossgenius.com and use code FINANCIAL for 50% off your first two months of a premium plan.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  The other day I was going through my desk and I found a journal right from when I graduated, and it had pen and paper, how much I spent each day. At this time, I think I was making around $40,000 and excess cash flow was pretty tight. So I had to watch every penny. I think about how far we've come with technology and advancements to help us with this stuff. We don't need a journal with pen and paper anymore. The answers are out there. And Monarch is one of those answers. Monarch is literally, it's like having a financial advisor in your pocket. So you can use AI to help see what you're spending. Monarch will help you have full visibility in your accounts. It will help you see your trends. It will help you set goals, map out big purchases, see if

• 1:44Speaker 01

  you're actually on track to where you wanted to be. You can ask Monarch's AI assistant anything about your finances. Like, hey, how much should I spend on travel last summer? Can I afford this vacation without touching my savings? You can spot things you wouldn't think about before, like, oh, hey, has my spending gone up or just inflation? I was using pen and paper. Now you can use tools, like a full financial advisor in your pocket, and that's called Monarch. So what you want to do is you want to go to monarch.com, use code TRADING. The first year of Monarch Core is half off at just 50 bucks. That's 50% off your first year. Just go to monarch.com with code trading.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Basically, Kris Jenner co-founded a literal church, and the Kardashians invest 10% of their income every year, which basically allows them to create a self-contained circuit of money flow because churches are not taxed.

• 2:42Haley Sacks?

  This is Financial Tea. What's up, sippers? Welcome back to the Financial Tea. This is, of course, the podcast where I teach you how to build wealth with a side of market drama, money scandals, and financial pop culture. And that is what we are really leaning into today because we are going to talk to MJ Corey, who is a psychotherapist, but also the author of Deconstructing the Kardashians. She is the woman behind the popular social account Kardashian Colloquium, and really one of my favorite cultural critics. So I'm really excited to have you, MJ. Welcome to the Financial Tea.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. That was a great intro.

• 3:27Haley Sacks?

  Thank you so much. Well, I mean, you are an illustrious lady. And we're so happy to have you here because, you know, we sort of do the same thing where we use the Kardashians. I use them all the time to get people interested in finances. You use them to get people interested in academia. And you're such an expert on them. So I'm excited to really deep dive and find out all the juicy, dirty secrets about their financial lives.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Let's get into it.

• 3:50Haley Sacks?

  But first, let's get into the MDJ Market Report. What's up, sippers? Our first story is about our girl Jennifer Aniston, otherwise known as Rachel from Friends. That girl has been parading her taut 50-year-old body on a yacht all over Mallorca. She's on it with Courteney Cox, Pedro Pascal, Jason Bateman, and drumroll, please, her inspirational speaker slash hypnotist boyfriend, Jim Curtis. And, you know, my financial brain obviously started going when I saw these pics. And I'm thinking like, okay, you know, a yacht is 500K a week. And, you know, for Jennifer,

• 4:34Haley Sacks?

  that's nothing. She's worth $320 million, but like Jim is not, you know, like he might lay that good pipe, but the man is really worth only a million dollars. And yeah, I said only because compared to 320 mil, it does feel like only. So what do you do when you have a girlfriend who wants to go on that fancy ass yacht? Like, you're certainly not doing a 50/50 split. And so I just wanted to talk about this in case you are in an income gap relationship as well, because the key here is to split everything proportionally, not equal. So like, don't pay half and half, pay by percentage. And by the way, 76.6% of couples with a wealth gap already do this. So

• 5:17Haley Sacks?

  you probably know this already, but just like, don't match dollar for dollar because then you're just going to go broke trying to impress the other person. Our second story I'm obsessed with, and it is about love and money too, but really a lot of money, frankly. So meet Che T. Wong. He's the chairman of SK Group, which is basically the tech giant making the chips that power Nvidia, which is like basically powering the AI revolution. So back in 1988, he married Ro So Young, who's the daughter, stay with me, of South Korea's sitting president. So she's like a society girl, you know, she's an it girl. Fast forward 34 years, and he asked for a divorce because men are pigs.

• 6:00Haley Sacks?

  And he publicly revealed that he had a child out of wedlock. And so then they went to court, and at first the court tried to hand Ro 45 mil, claiming that Che's billion-dollar stock portfolio, because he built this big chip business, was his own separate personal property. But Ro fought back and basically told the court like, hey, so I actually spent 34 years raising our three kids, running our home, leveraging my family's social capital, because don't forget, I am the president's daughter, to back this business while he built this empire. And the coolest thing ever is that the high court listened. And they issued an earth-shattering ruling that declared that

• 6:42Haley Sacks?

  non-financial labor, like childcare, domestic work, and social backing is a direct contribution to a company's valuation. And it basically ruled that executive success doesn't just happen in a vacuum. It relies on an invisible home infrastructure. This is definitely revolutionary in the court, but obviously economists and Mrs. Dow Joneses have been making this argument for years, because we all know that women and girls perform 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work every single day. And if that work were paid, it would be worth at least $10.8 trillion annually, making it one of the largest sectors of the global economy. And UN Women estimate that women still

• 7:26Haley Sacks?

  perform nearly three times more unpaid care work than men worldwide. So I think it completely makes sense that the court ordered him to pay her $644 million in cold, hard cash. And if this sounds familiar, it's because we've seen this spouse as a co-founder dynamic play out before. I was thinking immediately when I read this story about Mackenzie Scott, which like, there's always the loser men online who are like, why'd she get so much of Jeff's money? She's just Jeff Bezos's ex-wife. But like, in reality, she was Amazon's employee number one. Like, she literally drove that Chevy across the country while Jeff, all like five foot four of

• 8:06Haley Sacks?

  him, wrote the original business plan for Amazon in the passenger seat next to her. She handled the initial bookkeeping, she wrote the employee paychecks, and she negotiated their very first fright contracts out of a garage. So when they divorced, her $38 billion stake in Amazon wasn't a payout. Like, I hate when people say that. It was really her equity as an operational co-founder. But I just feel like the main takeaway here is that unpaid labor isn't worthless. Obviously, we know that, but it is underpriced. And I just love that courts are recognizing that those contributions create real economic value, and in some cases are worth $644 million. So I'm

• 8:48Haley Sacks?

  really excited for her. Our last story, I don't know, guys, we're in like this crazy IPO boom, and I just want to talk about it because you guys know I don't believe in buying IPOs, but there's a lot coming to the market. Reformation is the next one, and they're doing a roadshow. And when you do an IPO roadshow, it's basically where companies are pitching themselves to investors before going public. And so the fashion brand recreated that Margot Robbie bubble bath scene from The Big Short. So instead of a banker clicking through a PowerPoint to, you know, get these investors' attention, they literally have a model lounging in a tub, explaining Reformation's sexy math, while executives are like pitching revenue growth and how they're going to use AI to build the business. And I mean, it's smart, right? Like,

• 9:32Haley Sacks?

  it definitely got investors' attention, but it just got me thinking a little bit bigger about where we're at right now with investing, because it feels like getting investors' attention has become almost as important as getting their money and the fundamentals of the business, which obviously I really don't believe in. Like, if you're going to invest in a company, do it because the numbers make sense, not because they have a cool video. But every IPO is definitely selling more than a business. It sells a vision. I just think that like, that excitement can turn easily into hype. We saw it with SpaceX. Investors were piling in on the story. They loved Elon. They saw the future of the world. And that sent the stock soaring. But then the

• 10:15Haley Sacks?

  shares have fallen nearly 50% from their highs, once they actually shifted back to the fundamentals of SpaceX, which is like, it's not doing that great. And this is exact same cycle as the dot com bubble, and it's the same cycle as the SPAC boom. And I know maybe you're not investing in IPOs. I hopefully you're doing index funds, but when we invest in anything, we're looking at revenue and profits and execution. And yes, every company has a story, and you can, you know, gloss it up and tie it in a bow. But from our side, if you want to be a successful investor, you need to know the difference between buying the vision and overpaying for the hype. And that is really important in 2026, because, you know, people are getting really obsessed with marketing.

• 10:57Haley Sacks?

  It's too much. They're even marketing stocks. Okay, I hope you love this episode, sippers. Don't forget to rate and subscribe and review. It really helps the show. And I'll see you next week. Stay rich.

• 11:11Haley Sacks?

  Before we start, I wanted to just start with a rapid fire questions we ask every guest. What are your best and worst purchases of the week? And how much did each cost?

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Probably best purchases involve my other life as a psychotherapist. I'm working on expanding my business, so I'm getting licensed in more states. So I'm licensed in New York, Nevada, and Massachusetts, and I'm expanding to Oregon and Arizona. And so every application for reciprocity costs about 20 to 40 bucks. And I've just been kind of making those applications, I think is an investment in my future.

• 11:44Haley Sacks?

  I love that. What's your worst purchase of the week?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Worst purchase, I'm obsessed with these dark chocolate covered pretzels from the Unreal brand. This is not a plug.

• 11:55Haley Sacks?

  Oh, they're so good.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  But I keep buying them. So I bought like four and they're seven bucks each. And I'm just like, what am I doing? And I'm like, just clearing them like one bag a day.

• 12:06Haley Sacks?

  And then you know what? You're going to wake up one day and forget they exist.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yes, that's how it works.

• 12:09Haley Sacks?

  Yes, it is always how it works. You get the hyper fixation. And then my next rapid fire question is what is the craziest financial move the Kardashians have ever made?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Oh, probably the California community church.

• 12:20Haley Sacks?

  Yes.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Which you did a video about that I quote in my book.

• 12:23Haley Sacks?

  Okay, amazing.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:24Haley Sacks?

  So do you want to explain that a little?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so how the Kardashians, basically Kris Jenner co-founded a literal church. And the Kardashians invest 10% of their income every year, which basically allows them to create a self-contained circuit of money flow because churches are not taxed. It's just wild. And it happened a long time ago. It was uncovered whenever you made that video, actually. But every now and then, really ever since it entered the TikTok discourse, it comes up. Like people will comment like, have you ever written about the church? Like, it's just, it's so weird.

• 12:54Haley Sacks?

  And by the way, that video gets shadow banned a lot. If I talk about that, it will get shadow banned.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 13:00Haley Sacks?

  And there are people who I know who know the Kardashians, who then they asked me to take it down.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't like that one.

• 13:06Haley Sacks?

  They really don't like that one. And it's a storefront in a strip mall. And what's interesting is that they don't even go to that church.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Haley Sacks?

  So they're not even pretending like that is where they worship. It really is just a tax front.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yes, totally.

• 13:19Haley Sacks?

  Very interesting. I agree.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:20Haley Sacks?

  You talk so much about this moral line of the Kardashians for profit.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:25Haley Sacks?

  Something that I, in researching this interview, that I found so interesting was, you know, right now, when we think about them, we think about their success with Skims and Kylie Beauty and Lemmy. And it all seems sort of above board. But what we forgot about is that when they started, it was the beginning of this influencer marketing moment, and they were shelling insane things. Like Kim literally promoted a morning sickness pill and did no, speaking about the side effects or any like ad disclosures on it. They had a credit card. I mean, they had a makeup line before all their makeup lines.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  They had a fake tan.

• 14:09Haley Sacks?

  Their fake tan. So can we talk a little bit about, yeah, like sort of the beginning of how they made money on being Kardashians?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  What's so interesting is a book that I sourced a lot in my research was actually a piece of Kardashian IP. Their fake sort of memoir coffee table book, Kardashian Confidential, which came out in 2010. And in that book, there's a little sentence that says something like, "We are making the most of this moment that we have of getting attention and we don't apologize for it. We're going to use it to leverage business." They said that's what smart business women do as early as 2010. Like they had really just hit the scene at that point. So they made their intentions very known, that they understand that attention could be converted into capital. And around that time, I think is when Kris Jenner was also shilling crystals on like QVC. And one thing that's interesting to think about with the Kardashians and like their kind of trajectory is

• 15:01Speaker 02

  they were shilling weird products for other people when they were hitting the scene and they were ready to do that. But then over time, they wanted full ownership, top down.

• 15:08Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, which is like where we're at now.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:10Haley Sacks?

  And what I also think is really interesting about how they monetize is that they take their most intimate family milestones and they sell them.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:19Haley Sacks?

  And so I wanted to talk a little bit about like that as a template for other celebs to follow.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  The Kardashians know how to commodify nostalgia. And nostalgia is like a drug. Like psychologically, if you look at it, nostalgia is really meaningful to us and it's a powerful emotion. And so the Kardashians do make the most of literally any childhood memory, family home videos. They layer them into the shows, into episodes. And I have a few theories about this. Beyond the emotional pull that it has, it can lend products a sense of credibility. So I quote an art critic named John Berger in my book, who says that "We see products that have an idea of cultural lessons half learnt and we think that they have some kind of greater meaning." So like beyond family memories and personal experiences,

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Kim Kardashian putting out a perfume that's in the shape of like a

• 16:11Haley Sacks?

  A body.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  A body. It looks like a Grecian statue. It, we know vaguely, there's something historical about that and kind of like meaningful. And there's, it's like an artifact. And so they lend those kind of layers of meaning to their own products. But then getting back to the idea of the personal, the sex tape was like seed capital for the family. Like, it's as personal as it gets. And that is like seed capital, is this really where the wealth began.

• 16:36Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, that's so true.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:38Haley Sacks?

  So they've just been using that blueprint over and over again.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yes, yep, exactly.

• 16:42Haley Sacks?

  You know, you have such a fascinating background and skillset, but it might not be the most conventional or expected path. So I just wanted, you know, we have sort of jumped in because I have so much I want to talk about. But let's just first explain what it is that you do for my listeners, just because I want them to like understand.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. So I'm a psychotherapist, but I was always a writer as well. So basically, let me back up. I went to Columbia University for nonfiction writing first. And I was like, I'll write this book I want to write and it'll be fine. And it just didn't happen. I had brutal workshops. It was not going well. It was a story that was way too close to me. I wasn't ready to write it. And so then I was like, what do I do? And I always knew that I wanted to be a psychotherapist. I just figured it would be a midlife career shift from being a writer. But I thought, you know what? I don't really have a plan for myself as a writer. I'll go back to school and become a therapist. So I stayed at Columbia and I got my degree in counseling psychology, also from Columbia University. But while I was doing that, I did need an outlet.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  So in 2018, a friend put on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I was very late to the show. I was one of those people that did think reality TV was junk food. Like I wasn't interested in it. And I was so struck by the show and how uncanny that it made me feel. Like I felt this uncanny valley feeling.

• 17:57Haley Sacks?

  What do you mean by that?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  It's the feeling that people get when they see a robot that's too human-like. And so it's like the collapse of something really like fake and artificial technology. And then what feels real and human. And it's like this weird feeling. And Keeping Up with the Kardashians gave me an uncanny valley feeling. So I called my sister, who was a media studies major at Smith, and I said, "This show is weird. Like, it's really, really staged, but then there's these weirdly, really weird, like real moments where like, when Kim cries, it sometimes seems really real. And it just gave me this weird feeling." And my sister said, "Yeah, you should be reading French theory. That's what the postmodernists write about." And so I started to document my self-study of postmodern theory and media theory on Instagram.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  I made memes and kind of was just like collapsing the Kardashians with this theory. And I really found that the theory made the Kardashians easier for me to understand. But the Kardashians made this historically, you know, very difficult to understand theory, easier to understand. So that kind of blew up. And then suddenly my writing career picked up and I was able to really like explore these ideas through my work and maintain my practice.

• 19:03Haley Sacks?

  So you see the Kardashians as a way of talking about society as a whole and you write out that in your book. So will you tell us a bit more about that philosophy? I really want to focus on the money side of it.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Okay, the money side. Well, what I always say is, because I get criticized a lot for doing this work and for having the Kardashians as subjects, but I think that they are

• 19:23Haley Sacks?

  Which by the way, we do, like I said, we do the same thing. Like exactly what you're saying about it made both sides easier to understand. Like using celebrity makes it easier to learn about finance. Using finance makes it easier to learn about celebrity. Like it's, I think it's so powerful.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  It is, it is. These things should not be inaccessible to us.

• 19:38Haley Sacks?

  No.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And they are kind of inaccessible unless there's a bridge. And that's the thing. I think the Kardashians are this metaphor for America. I think that they are, I like to say, a prompt and a prism. So they can be a prompt to deep dive anything. The Kardashians have done anything you can think of under the sun. They've done it. They've touched it in some way. So Kim Kardashian dressing up as Marilyn Monroe, it can just be an excuse to learn more about Marilyn Monroe. But it can also be a metaphor for the ways that original items, like Kim wearing the original dress, become commodified and exploited through fast fashion. Like it can be a metaphor for how America itself really functions business-wise.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  So I also say what I do is no different than looking at WWE, the Disney franchise, the Las Vegas Strip, because it's all the same economics, really. It is storytelling, turning information into commodity at a massive scale. So that's kind of my, my take on the Kardashians.

• 20:37Haley Sacks?

  I love that.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:38Haley Sacks?

  What do you think the Kardashian tells us about how society thinks about money?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 20:43Haley Sacks?

  Because they really like put it on a pedestal. Like even when you think about early Kylie, specifically like King Kylie era, it was, she almost flaunted her wealth like she was a rapper. She was the youngest female billionaire in the history of the world. And I think, you know, post the robbery, it became a lot less blingy, but it still is. I mean, even Kendall, who's maybe the least ostentatious of them, is always wearing the row, which despite not having logos, is like thousands and thousands of dollars for a t-shirt.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:13Haley Sacks?

  You know?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yes. So I think the Kardashians are really selling us an American dream story.

• 21:19Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, they are. I agree with that.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Kim makes a lot out of her Armenian immigrant sort of ancestry and family story.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  The action's on the court. And as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 22:30Haley Sacks?

  Speaking beyond celebrity, what do you think their role in the rise of influencer has been? You know, did their show sort of carve out that path in certain ways? Because this is now such a huge, huge economy. Obviously, I make money as an influencer, and this didn't exist before them.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yes, this is the new economy. So the Kardashians hit the scene in 2007, and it's still a reality TV culture. And product placement was a thing. And talking about, you know, different, making ads for people in that kind of way was a thing. There was an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians that shows the girls modeling bikinis for Girls Gone Wild for a new swimsuit line. And that's kind of like early influencer-ing, kind of, you know? Like, they're making a storyline around this person that they're partnering with and his product. But I would say the best example of the Kardashians as these original influencers is with Kim's wedding to Kris Humphries, the Kim K fairy tale wedding. It was branded.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  There was a whole, a big episode built around it to bring the public into this, you know, ritual process, which I, I talk a lot about the theory and media theory around that in my book. That has its origins in the Kennedy funeral and royal family weddings. But what was different about it was that everything for that wedding was basically donated, like the flowers, the dress, and like...

• 23:53Haley Sacks?

  That wedding cost $10 million.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:57Haley Sacks?

  $6 million out of pocket, but then $4 million offset by promotional deals.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:03Haley Sacks?

  And then they made 15 to 18 million from the TV and photo rights.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:10Haley Sacks?

  So that's crazy.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:13Haley Sacks?

  There were three custom Vera Wayne gowns, estimated at 25K each, a 10-tier wedding cake for 20K. The invitations were 250K. She wore $2.5 million worth of diamonds, and the marriage lasted 72 days.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yes, it all culminates to that. And the headlines around all of this, the, we talk a lot about famous for being famous, but if you really break down the definition of it, it's actually all notoriety in response to even the shock of numbers like that. Like, that made headlines, the millions that went into this wedding, and then that made Kim more famous. And so there was an investment in risk.

• 24:50Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Actually, they, they put money into that wedding, and then it was subsidized by people that knew that there would be interest in the wedding later.

• 24:57Haley Sacks?

  But also, it was this other idea, again, of like, taking something that in our culture is intimate and sacred and this family milestone and bastardizing it for profit?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:09Haley Sacks?

  Because it's like, even when you watch that episode, she clearly knows before she walks down the aisle that she should not be marrying this guy.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:15Haley Sacks?

  They're fighting, she doesn't like him.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:18Haley Sacks?

  You know, Kris is like, "Yeah, you don't have to." But it's like, of course she does have to, you know? And it's, they don't care. It's all about getting that bag ultimately.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. That, the model of that wedding really was like, I would say, the birth of the influencer economy in a way, because it showed us how it could work. It showed us how these partnerships can work, and that life experiences can be subsidized in exchange for promotion.

• 25:39Haley Sacks?

  I think it's clear that they've had a huge effect on the normalization of plastic surgery and culture, too. I mean, they've all talked about their surgeries, or they haven't, but we see the before and afters, and it's pretty obvious.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:53Haley Sacks?

  So, you know, how much do you think that they spend on their bodies each year? Or even, like, I always think about that, if I was a Kardashian, like, how often would I be at the surgeon? Like, what sort of tweaks would I be getting? Like, what do you think about their relationship to plastic surgery, too?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  That is such an interesting question, because I actually find myself pondering it. The Kardashians and what the discourse they instigate around plastic surgery is really huge for them and for all of us. It's like this weird synergy they have with the public, like, the public's curious, they turn their bodies into spectacles, literally on their bodies, they're telling stories around sexuality and race and class, and like, we are watching and we are metabolizing it and then talking about it. So that is what has only made them more and more significant. Like, when I look at my content, the, the videos or analyses I do around plastic surgery, people are interested. If it comes down to like sex, race, plastic surgery, like, those are the things that really grab people.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  And the lips, you know, case study, the Kylie lip kind of thing. She did this thing that a theorist named Edward Bernays, who I cite a lot in my book, talks about, which is sort of like engineering consent. Like, there was all this mystique and myst, like, what was going on with these lips? Like, she just went through puberty, now suddenly she's got these big lips. So where did they come from? How did it happen? What does it mean? And so our eyes were on the lips, our minds were on the lips, and then she announces this lip kit. But then we're also learning that there's been this advent of injectables. Now suddenly, there's been new approval, regulatory approval of injectables that can do this to your lips. So we simultaneously know we can get lips like Kylie and feel surgically optimized, but really, it's like as easy as getting them injected, it's cheaper than surgery.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  But then there's also the lip kit, and we can buy the lip kit from Kylie Jenner. So it's like this weird thing that, that was like a really interesting, perfect storm that led to Kylie's just boom in, in the world. But as far as how much money they personally are sinking into their surgeries, it's like, I bet Kylie could have free lips for the rest of her life if she just says, you know, the rest of the person's name who did them.

• 27:58Haley Sacks?

  I mean, and Kris mentioned Steve Levine for her, for her facelift, who now you can't get on. I have a friend who got her neck done with him when she was, like, a few, 10 years ago.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:07Haley Sacks?

  When he was just starting, and it was like, you know, not that much, and now her neck is worth, you know, neck sat just because of the Kris Jenner effect.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And so that's what's interesting to me. So the way I look at the Kardashians and this like trajectory of scale, think about that, they're a little bit open about lips. When they were, obviously, the rest of them, the older adult sisters doing everything that they could do, but they thought they're, they're transparent about lips. Now we're in this moment culturally where more open conversations are happening about bigger and more intrusive interventions, like facelifts, like full facelift product placement is happening when she drops Steven Levine's name. So I'm, of course, curious, like, so did she pay for that surgery? That was like a really embedded brilliant moment of product placement, and yeah, everyone wants to work with him, like, and so I don't know. Like, I think that if they drop a name, they're probably getting it for free, is my guess.

• 28:59Haley Sacks?

  So, you know, when we first saw them, they didn't have the plastic surgery, they didn't have the good outfits, they didn't have the glam.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:07Haley Sacks?

  And now they've officially crossed into the billionaire class. We see them on Jeff Bezos's yacht and at the wedding, and they have these billion-dollar companies. And so it's harder to play the relatable girl next door role that they started with. So how do you think that they're pivoting their media strategy to sort of maintain their audience while also being so disconnected from the average person's financial reality?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  I think we can kind of, again, it goes back to like, looking at this trajectory. I know I keep saying that. One thing I learned while studying the Kardashians and their kind of like narrative production patterns is that they will kind of like theme their, their output to whatever's kind of really alive in, in the culture at that time. And whether this is intentional, it's planned, or it's a conversation they're having with us, that I can't speak on for sure. I would guess it's sort of like, again, like, they see what's working, so they do more of it. And so when they hit the scene, I found that there was a theme, most of season one of Keeping Up with the Kardashians is sex.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  It's Girls Gone Wild, Playboy shoot, a lot of like, they hire an adult entertainer to babysit the Jenner sisters, and they realize that she's an adult entertainer and kick her out, like, a lot of like sex industry stuff. And then in the 2010s, Kim is with Kanye, and we're kind of in the post-Obama era, but then now Trump is coming in. Studies show that at that time, identity politics really like blew up, and headlines with identity cues were getting more clicks. That's around the same time Kim was doing her cultural appropriation, kind of image production, and wearing braids and really stimulating discourse around that. And then if you look at the 2020s, at that time, class consciousness was really booming,

• 30:54Speaker 02

  and people were really angry, people were inside, people were frustrated with the economy. And that's when the Kardashians did a lot of conspicuous consumption. And so it was just, they kind of theme it to what we're engaging with. And so now they're part of the billionaire class. I don't know that they are even trying to... Connect to us the way they did back in 2007. I think their understanding is that media is really like even more fractured and their job is to dole out little like nuggets that we can kind of take and then have discourse about. Like we're in an interactive media landscape where our job is to react and like do a take and then put that out there. So if they can like, kind of like create a ripple effect online for all of us to

• 31:38Speaker 02

  participate in, that was a bad metaphor, that works for them and up there, it upholds it because they're, they're in, their SKIMS is doing its thing. It's, it's, it's doing quite well. It's working. I guess actually the Paris robbery, we can use this example. When I was at the Paris robbery, I was flown there to talk on a documentary about what happened to Kim. So I got to be in the courtroom when she testified against the men that robbed her. It was a very planned media event. Uh, she comes in dripping in diamonds, as we know, it was an amazing photo op. She did a great job in the courtroom. Inside the courtroom, she kept saying like, I'm here because I want to be a lawyer and this feels like a way to kind of actualize that. She, she did a really good job and testified for like four hours. So inside the courtroom, she's kind of speaking to

• 32:20Speaker 02

  this, trying to manifest this like idea of herself as this courtroom lawyerly woman. Outside the courtroom, that was the day that the All's Fair, uh, trailer dropped, that TV show where she plays a lawyer in a Ryan Murphy show. So there was a lot of like classic Kardashian narrative layering, like about this idea of Kim as a lawyer. You would think, and maybe back in 2016, 10 years ago, that would have worked. It would have been like, whoa, Kim went into the courtroom dripping in diamonds. Like she did that and it would be more shocking. Or certainly in the sixties, it would have been a Life magazine cover, that photo op of her waving, wearing the diamonds. What everyone was talking about that week, I mean, it made a few headlines

• 33:01Speaker 02

  and people were like, wow, she did that, the diamonds. But really, it was Kris Jenner's facelift. She debuted her new face around that time and that was working. That was the discourse. People were making videos. They were analyzing it. They were curious which surgeon did it. At that point, no one knew. Um, they were offended that a woman of her age could look like that. I will say, seeing it in person, it was like a really quite a spectacle, but like that worked. We seized that. So I would guess they're okay with that. They put a lot of work into the diamond thing and the imagery and they needed to do it. But okay, well Kris Jenner's face went viral. Like that's fine. They just need to be alive on the algorithms, one way or another. And they know how to kind of like throw us things to maintain that.

• 33:41Haley Sacks?

  Like with every other step in their media journey, there was a step after it.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:46Haley Sacks?

  But to me, once you reach the billionaire class, that's sort of it. You can't come back from that. So what do you think is next? Like, how do you reinvent from that?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  It would be interesting if they kind of did some sort of like makeover to a more like overt altruism, which they did when they were on the up and up. They were like, um, you know, talking about being, you know, super devout Christians and the idea of like donating their, their money and that they were donating their money to their church. But, but they were kind of doing that now, not so much. They have made it in the way they, they, they always wanted to. I think what I write in my book, and I really came to realize this while I was doing my book research, it's very likely they're going to create an archive, like a living archive, like, like out in California, the Getty Villa, the Hearst Castle, these like, um, physical spaces where, um, important, rich people lived that can

• 34:38Speaker 02

  hold their art or the things they, they collected through their lives.

• 34:41Haley Sacks?

  With Kris Jenner, she's obviously the architect of this empire.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:45Haley Sacks?

  What happens, do you think, to the financial viability and like structural integrity of the Kardashian machine when she eventually retires or steps down? Like who becomes the CEO?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Surely they're going to narrativize the kind of succession process eventually when it gets closer. Like I, I'm sure there's plans behind the scenes that we aren't aware of yet, but eventually that will become a storyline. Um, everyone thinks Kim's like the heir apparent, um, because Kim is the, has the most visible like consolidation of power, um, in the world. But some people I've just like chatted with, like anecdotally have been like, I could see it being Khloe. Khloe's really close to Kris. They've done like a lot of like storyline building around like a sort of big eaty, little eaty thing with the two of them, like in the town.

• 35:27Haley Sacks?

  I could see being Khloe too.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's dynamic. Like she's, yeah, I could see it. We'll see though.

• 35:33Haley Sacks?

  I like that.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:34Haley Sacks?

  In regards to the Paris robbery, how do you think that sort of shaped how they present in a rich way in the culture?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they tamped it down for a while. And what I found interesting, especially hearing Kim testify about it, um, and that was a very well-written testimony. My whole argument is that the Kardashians are some of the best storytellers of our time. Um, she told the story of, I used to feel very free. I did enjoy nice things. And after this experience, I stopped going out. I was afraid of going out at night and I had to hide all my nice things and I needed to take bodyguards with me everywhere. And to this day, I'm never, you know, people enter, come to my home and they've got to go through a TSA like process. And I, they, they did, um, pull back a little bit. And I think what, what struck me is like, at that time, people were still trying to feel power over the Kardashians by saying that they

• 36:24Speaker 02

  weren't that relevant or they weren't that big. And I don't think you can, um, claim that when someone would be, was a target at that level. Like it's quite, quite queenly to have to have guards at your door. And that's where Kim landed in the culture. So it was kind of like her arrival, um, where people had to kind of accept like, okay, Kim Kardashian is a world icon.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  The action's on the court and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21+ begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 37:47Haley Sacks?

  What I think about a lot too is like, they are so good at getting us to buy things in their image. You know, like if Kendall started a fast fashion, minimal fashion line where it's just like a black t-shirt and like capris and like a mule, I would buy it because it's like, I want to look, I'll never look like Kendall. Like it's like, she's got a lot that I never will have, but it's like, you want to get as close to that as possible. We buy things to be closer to their image. Um, and so what do you think about that with SKIMS? Cause it's like, sort of the most, what we want the most is their body. And it started with this idea of shapewear that's going to give you their curves.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  So like one thing I talk a lot about in my book is this Marshall McLuhan, who's a media theorist, this idea of the medium is the message. So his whole thing is like, you don't want to just pay attention to what's on TV. You want to pay attention to the TV, to the screen, to the technology itself that's delivering you, your, your, your soap opera, whatever. And so I argue that with the Kardashians, the medium is the message because we're very focused on like, that wedding was really crazy and expensive, or Kris Jenner got plastic surgery done, but we need to really pay attention to the fact that what we're obsessed with is their bodies. So their bodies are the mediums. And so for one of the most successful Kardashian products to be a brand that compresses the body and shapes the body in whatever way you want it to be shaped, it's so true to the fundamental Kardashian message in

• 39:11Speaker 02

  essence.

• 39:12Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  I think Kim's butt, I argue, is like her Mickey Mouse ears or her Coke bottle. Like we know her by her butt. That is her logo. And so it just makes sense. Like SKIMS, um, sells that, that, that dream to people.

• 39:25Haley Sacks?

  But you know, I think that we're going to see as influencers become even more successful, they're going to have to be even more billion dollar brands. Like I, Alex Earl's will be a billionaire.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:35Haley Sacks?

  You know, so I think there's going to be a lot more companies going public, basically that are based on one person.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:41Haley Sacks?

  Because that's how consumer culture is moving and SKIMS is an example of that. Although obviously now they have like so many different people in the ad campaigns and stuff. It's like at the core, it's Kim. So I'm just wondering if the Kardashian brand does become sort of beholden to shareholders and a board of directors. And like when you are a public company, you have to release your financials. How do you think that restricts or sort of changes the way they operate in the media?

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Well, it's so funny you ask that because I had a conversation with a journalist. It was actually overall a pretty unpleasant conversation, so I haven't posted about it. Um, but someone I was talking to once. Said, I don't think SKIMS will ever go public because Kim would want that ownership. And I thought, oh, my God, I I've been so certain that they're gonna go public because Kim keeps comparing her, you know, SKIMS to Nike and Apple, but I think that's correct. I don't think they'll go public for that reason.

• 40:35Haley Sacks?

  But also, right now, companies IPO because they need cash flow. And I think that SKIMS is so cash flow positive that they don't need it.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that could be. That makes sense.

• 40:44Haley Sacks?

  But also, it's another example of them being totally fine making money in the most nefarious ways.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  They got voted like a rating of zero for transparency.

• 40:52Haley Sacks?

  They don't care.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, by some some like watchdog. They don't care. But I I think.

• 40:58Haley Sacks?

  And actually, we don't even associate them with a charity. Like, it's like when you think about other celebrities or rich people, you can easily trace back what their impact is. I guess, Kim, it is the prison stuff. But that's not like giving money as much as she's just giving her impact.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  It's a storyline and it's an archetype and it's, yes, totally for sure. And actually, to your point, though, about how that's such an interesting tension, like the influencer economy has scaled in a way where some a corporation can be a person.

• 41:24Haley Sacks?

  No, it will be. I'm saying like you're gonna see it with Alex Earl. I also read that the Kardashians have hundreds of trademarks. What do you think that tells us about their wealth building and like how they sort of plot for future earnings? And where do you see their empires going?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Love that question. So, one thing I came across, because my book looks at the history of American media, and I look at different American icons that Kim has referenced. So that includes OJ, it includes Marilyn Monroe, I Love Lucy, just a lot of them. Most American icons have been trademarked in some way, and the smartest ones that had the capacity to trademark for themselves. So this is quite cynical, but during the OJ trial, OJ put a trademark out on his name on tons of potential products during the trial.

• 42:13Haley Sacks?

  That's crazy.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so a lot of these like, big reference point for the Kardashians have stories around trademarking and trademarking at the right time and the right things. The Kardashian, Kris Jenner, I just remembered this today, preparing for our conversation, Kris Jenner trademarked Momager in 2015. The fact that they have trademarked so much, planning for the future, tells us that part of their strategy is flexibility, knowing that opportunities may come up later that are not available now, but they need to be ready for. And that tells us something about their playbook, I think.

• 42:46Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:47Haley Sacks?

  So how do you think about that in terms of like, no, women couldn't get credit cards till 1974? We couldn't have our own businesses till the 80s, like, and now, at the, you know, forefront of American culture, are these women business, like?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:01Haley Sacks?

  People?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  No, for sure. That is like the quandary, I think, they pose to us when people are like, I don't like how they make me feel. I don't like the Kardashians. People feel like it's really like the moral high ground to hate the Kardashians. But then there are some people that are like, yeah, I feel that way, but they are really good businesswomen. Or, but it is kind of cruel. Like, we've never, we've never seen a collective of women in the 21st century accumulate this much power.

• 43:28Haley Sacks?

  No.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  It's, it's just, it's, it's something we have to acknowledge.

• 43:31Haley Sacks?

  And also, you have to acknowledge that my, people might have more money than them. But when you look at billionaires, they want to buy media. They want to buy newspapers. They try so hard to control their narratives, even if you think about Jeff Bezos with the Met Gala, because what is more powerful than money is having a platform and having people listen to you.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:51Haley Sacks?

  And the Kardashians have both. So in a way, they're like, bigger than like, a, you know, a Sam Altman or somebody who has so much money, but the media hates them.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they're shaping, they have the power to control legacy, to some extent, more power than someone that's not doing that kind of thinking and narrativizing. And I argue that the Bezos's are looking at the Kardashian playbook for this kind of image.

• 44:15Haley Sacks?

  Oh, she's trying. Lauren's trying, but it's just so unsuccessful.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but it shows.

• 44:20Haley Sacks?

  I don't know if it would ever be successful.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  But it shows the value of that playbook, that people are, these huge billionaires, the elite are referring to basically what it means to be an influencer and how to do it successfully to like, shape images on top of their tech, on top of their wealth. And so, yeah, I think the woman factor, I always say, the Kardashians are not going to lead women to true liberation in, you know, a radical way. But they are the ultimate definition of what women empowerment means. Empowerment is different than liberation, but they are very empowered. And I think there are some people that find them to be empowering. And I get that. I do get that.

• 44:53Haley Sacks?

  Speaking about the next generation, I'm like, very put off by Northwest. She's obviously making a ton of money. I talk a lot about custodial Roth IRAs and how you could put your children on payroll, and then you're able to open what's basically a Roth IRA for them. And if you put, that right now, it is a 2026, the limit is $7,500 a year. They've earned income, you can put that into that account. And if you let it grow from zero to 18, and then you never touch it again after 18, by the time they're 60, it'll be like, you know, tens of billions of tax-free dollars.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 45:32Haley Sacks?

  Tax-free.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  You really are making the public aware of important information.

• 45:37Haley Sacks?

  But, you know, they're so interesting, because it's like, their kids could basically have been on the payroll from the beginning, like Northwest, like their, the births are filmed. So it's like, you know, Jay-Z and Beyonce had Blue Ivy, she had Blue Ivy cry on a song at two days old. She could be paid for that and have a custodial Roth IRA.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:53Haley Sacks?

  So I guess I'm wondering, what you, what do you think the next generation of Kardashians will hold? What do you think of them? And like, how do you think that that will shape the culture? Because it's like, is the interest in the kids from the people who are already interested in the Kardashians? Or are they getting new fans through the kids? Like, do, you know, if you're Gen Alpha, are you like, Northwest is cool? Or are you like, that girl's cooked? And like, I want it, you know, there's something else that I care about. And do I only care about her because she's Kim's daughter?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's always been a human interest to see how the kids of cultural icons turn out and what's going on with them. Because if you look at the Kennedys, like, my grandparents looked up to the Kennedys, I write about this in my book as well. My mom was interested in JFK Junior and.

• 46:40Haley Sacks?

  Carol Bessette.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, that was like, you know, a boomer thing. And so I think that that intergenerational kind of like play works on people. But especially now, I do think, because as a culture, there's so much anxiety about money, we are looking at the nepo babies in a different way. Like, I think that, like, I've just noticed it, that people are just very aware of.

• 47:01Haley Sacks?

  No, it's very disparaging to nepo babies. But in the same way, there's an obsession with generational wealth.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:06Haley Sacks?

  So like, from a financial literacy side, everyone wants to know how to set their kids up. But then also, if they find out that if you have generational wealth, they immediately write you off.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, I think there's a thing of like, is this a good nepo baby or a bad one? And like, what's their level of talent? And so that discourse.

• 47:21Haley Sacks?

  Would you let your kid do that? Like Northwest with her piercings? Like, what do you make of that?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so I think.

• 47:25Haley Sacks?

  How she's playing with her image?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I think they are able to provide that fodder, because we have that preexisting interest and that predisposition. I was surprised to see that North seemed unprepared for an interview with a streamer that she did at some point. I'm very careful in how I talk about the kids. But I do think the kids are going to be keeping, again, that kind of network approach to media that the family has always had. They can keep it alive in terms of doing short-form videos and doing the TikTok dances and streaming, like, the kids can do that. But I don't think anyone's going to be central to culture, the way the Kardashians were at the peak of the Instagram era, just because the algorithms have evolved. And so I don't know that they're

• 48:07Speaker 02

  gonna get new fans. I think that it's more that they're going to be accepted as a dynasty.

• 48:13Haley Sacks?

  They're grandfathered in.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:14Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, but it's, you're right, that it's like, they're part of history, but it's not like they're doing anything. It's so remarkable.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Someone might do something weird. There might be like, a thing that happens. Someone might marry someone, like something.

• 48:23Haley Sacks?

  I think we're gonna see some rehab.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  There could be. I mean, I think that's, that's like what people are intrigued by. So there's things like that, I think, that, that just the bigger the family, the more possibility there is for multiple storylines.

• 48:33Haley Sacks?

  So, we talked a lot about the Kardashian brand. Let's talk a little bit about yours before we wrap up. A lot of TikTok is, you know, about reactions or low level analysis, but you go really deep. So how did you decide that that was your brand? And how do you make money off of this platform? Because I know you say you don't monetize your videos, but, you know, you got this book deal. And how do you supplement your private practice?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, I do like to go deep, which is what makes the short-form video pretty exhausting. I really don't enjoy it. I I'm grateful to TikTok. I'm grateful to my audience for.

• 49:07Haley Sacks?

  No, it's so hard.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:08Haley Sacks?

  They also, people don't understand how hard it is to get it into a minute, which is all that you want to watch. But like, to actually, like, have a hook and then make it really simple, like, it is so hard.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:19Haley Sacks?

  And you do such a great job of it.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. I work hard and I will do what I have to do for the sake of my work. And so I will do it. But I'm not actually like, that comfortable in front of cameras. I'm not comfortable with a social media game, but I will do what has to be done, because I'm a writer and I want to do it for my writing. And that's how it works now. And so, I never monetize my videos. I don't make hardly anything from Substack. But there's like, you know, I have a paid subscription thing for Substack.

• 49:45Haley Sacks?

  How much do you make?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I make like, $3,000 a year on Substack. I used to make more like 10, but then I stopped posting regularly. And so you got to post regularly and, and, you know, respect your audience. And really, the money I've made from this entire project was the book deal and the book, or the writing opportunities I've gotten from it. And there's some publications that pay very well. There's some that don't pay well at all. And I've worked with a few, you know, a range of them. And this really has been more of like, a symbolic step towards getting where I want to be as a writer and having opportunities and freedom to write more about what I want to write about. So I really enjoyed applying the philosophy to the Kardashians. I'm passionate about postmodern theory and French theory and media theory.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And I had a very generous advance. I had a very, a unique advance for a first-time author. And I'm very lucky. I don't want to say.

• 50:34Haley Sacks?

  You say six figures?

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, in my book, my, I'm proud of this flex. My book went to auctions. So most of the big five.

• 50:39Haley Sacks?

  How many, how many houses were?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Four.

• 50:42Haley Sacks?

  Four?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:43Haley Sacks?

  And now with the IP from the book, is there other opportunity to like, sell it for like, a TV? Like, what are, you know?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, those conversations are happening. So we'll see. I mean, I think TV is like, unpredictable. Film and TV, it's a whole different animal, but those conversations are happening. And I have ideas for my next book. And it's gonna be, you know, hopefully scratching a similar itch that my work has been scratching for people, but beyond the Kardashians.

• 51:06Haley Sacks?

  Well, for our final question, MJ, what do you think people most frequently misunderstand about the Kardashians?

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Probably that they are a metaphor for America, and that they're like, highly valuable for understanding how our country works.

• 51:21Haley Sacks?

  Love it.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:22Haley Sacks?

  Well, thank you so much.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 51:24Haley Sacks?

  Oh, wait, I have one more question. What do you think about her alliance with Trump?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Unsurprising. She and Trump follow a play, a similar playbook. Yeah.

• 51:32Haley Sacks?

  Okay, great. When we have you back. Great, we'll end on that.

• 51:38Haley Sacks?

  Okay, sippers, that is a wrap on our deep dive with MJ Corey. Huge thanks to MJ, who yes, has the same name as the Kardashian grandma who just died, R.I.P. for coming on Financial Tea and just shifting how we look at pop culture and attention and wealth and making something like the Kardashians feel so elevated. I really appreciate it. I feel like I learned so much from her. And as she deconstructed so brilliantly today, analyzing the Kardashians is not superficial. It's actually a masterclass in modern economics. And when you think about it, they use cable TV as the ultimate top of funnel marketing tool and then have pulled off this amazing pivot by stopping their spawn con deals and

• 52:21Haley Sacks?

  basically taking control of their own cultural power and building these billion dollar juggernauts that they own, like Skims and Kylie cosmetics. And when you actually look at the numbers behind this empire, the scale is insane. Like Kylie Jenner proved the model when her deal with Cody valued Kylie cosmetics at 1.2 billion. Then Kim basically took that into the stratosphere when she turned Skims into this retail powerhouse that just hit a $5 billion valuation. And in her jump into high finance with her private equity firm, Sky Partners, Kim alone is now sitting on an estimated net worth approaching $2 billion. So love them or hate them, the Kardashians have definitely transitioned from influencers to investors and they are moving markets.

• 53:05Haley Sacks?

  And so we got to talk about them. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to rate and subscribe and review. It really helps the show. And email us at money@mississnowjones if you have any questions or you have ideas or we want to hear from you. Stay rich.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.