Whatever you think of the Kardashians, they pulled off the type of career path and goals top MBA programs want to see in your goals essay. Then they became the perfect warning about what happens when you imitate instead.
Visionary MBA goals name a trend you are positioned to see before it is obvious, then build on it. The vantage point has to be yours, drawn from what you have lived and watched. The Kardashians did exactly that in 2007, and millions of look-alikes have emerged since.
What did the Kardashians see before everyone else?
Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiered in 2007, the same year the first iPhone shipped. Nobody was filming their morning face yet. People at concerts still watched the concert.
Reality TV already existed. The Osbournes had come and gone. The Kardashians made a more specific bet. Audiences would watch a good-looking family cry over a diamond earring lost in the ocean off Bora Bora. The makeup going on before the gym. The family squabbles. A sneak peek into somebody’s everyday life still felt like invading their privacy, and that feeling was the product.
They saw how big the appetite for everyday intimacy was before the market priced it, and they moved at the last moment the trend was still invisible. Two years later everyone had a camera in their pocket, everyone was broadcasting their breakfast, and the window closed behind them. By then Kris Jenner had already converted the attention into companies. Kylie Cosmetics sold a majority stake to Coty for roughly $600 million. Kim’s Skims reached a $5 billion valuation following an investment round in late 2025. Spot the trend and pitch it before it is obvious. Then describe why you are positioned to make this vision a reality. Admissions committees at top MBAs are looking for this type of vision from entrepreneurs.
Find Your Kardashian Superpower
The trend behind your visionary goal has to come from what you have actually lived, at work and outside it.
When you watch a young mechanic consumed by social media between repairs, betting on a team in a country he has never visited, what does that tell you? Now put that observation next to what you learned advising a retail or travel client as a consultant. Somewhere in the overlap is a trend that is just forming, and you are one of very few people positioned to see it.
Your superpower may also look like the Kardashians’. Maybe you can hold an audience, and the path is becoming the private-equity voice people actually watch on YouTube. Maybe it is more traditional, investing and operations paired with an instinct for what your employees are worth. Spotting the trend is half of it. The other half is knowing which of your strengths you would bet on. Superpowers are a short list of skills and passions that come automatically to you. Adjacent skills are the ones you have to work at.
Your admissions officer could not have told you where to look. It is your vantage point, not theirs. And like Kardashian audiences in 2007, admissions officers often do not know what they are wowed by until they see it. Nobody knew they wanted to watch tears over an uninsured diamond earring. No one knew that the Kardashians would be so appealing, but at least one person in that family did value their superpowers.
Should you brainstorm from MBA essay examples?
The trend the Kardashians set has curdled into a rush to be a look-alike. The same “natural look” makeup, the ponytail, the athleisure with some bling, the same food habits, even the same filler work. An entire economy of people trying to stand out by looking identical.
Applicants do the same thing with sample essays. Clients tell me all the time that they started by reading essays that worked, hunting for ideas in what other people have done. I understand wanting direction. But brainstorming how you will change the world is the one stage where you have to let yourself think first. Instead, the reach goes to what has already worked for someone else. Your admissions officer has read that sample essay too, along with a few hundred applications this cycle quietly modeled on it. This is the look-alike Kardashian, and you don’t stand out.
Draft from what only you have seen
Skip the sample essays for one sitting. Write down what you have experienced that most people in the applicant pool have not. The mechanic with the betting app counts. So does whatever your version of him is. Then ask what those observations let you see forming that a stranger could not, and build your goal there.
This blog is not intended to give you the perfect goal. Like the MBA itself, the intention is to expose you to cases and a framework so you can find your own. Breaking down business models and explaining them simply is one of my superpowers. Innovative ones are everywhere, including in unscripted TV. The Kardashians are just the case I picked.
MBA.AI is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Kardashian or Jenner families, Skims, Kylie Cosmetics, Coty, or any brand mentioned. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. This post is commentary and reflects the author’s opinions.