21-year-old Kylie Jenner is now the youngest self-made billionaire

At the tender age of 21 most people are barely liquid, still live at home and probably have zero assets to their name, but not Kylie Jenner. The 21-year-old beauty entrepreneur has just been crowned by Forbes as the youngest ever self-made billionaire thanks to the beauty brand she founded, Kylie Cosmetics, just four years ago in 2015.

That’s right, in less than five years, Jenner has built a business which is so profitable and successful she is now in the billionaires club and has even managed to knock the previous youngest self-made billionaire, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, out of the number one spot (per Forbes, Zuckerberg was 23 we he made it into the billion dollar club).

Forbes estimates Jenner’s cosmetics company is “worth at least US$900 million” which combined with the money Jenner has already made from the business, has made the mother-of-one a billionaire.

“I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future,” Jenner told Forbes. “But [the recognition] feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.”

How did she do it? Jenner has been business savvy from the beginning, she owns 100 per cent of the business and until last year, when she signed an exclusive deal with huge US beauty chain Ulta, the business was online only with the occasional pop-up store, so costs were kept to a minimum.

Indeed Forbes says the business is “just seven full-time and five part-time employees [with] manufacturing and packaging outsourced to Seed Beauty, a private-label producer in nearby Oxnard, California. Sales and fulfilment are handled by online merchant Shopify.” And of course her mum, Kris Jenner, is in charge of “finance and PR in exchange for the 10 per cent management fee she siphons from all her kids.”

Social media has driven much of the brand’s extraordinary success which Jenner already had a huge presence on prior to launching the brand. “It’s the power of social media,” Jenner told Forbes. “I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything.”

As for how she’s celebrating hitting billionaire status at just 21, it sounds like she’ll be celebrating with more hard work. “I see [the brand] going very far. I work really hard,” Jenner told Forbes. Although, surely she’ll make time for at least one celebratory selfie to share with her fans on social media first?

This article originally appeared at Vogue.com.au

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