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sub-argument: How to understand the term “self-made”?”
“Someone who built a company or established a fortune on her own, rather than inheriting some or all of it” (Forbes). This is how the Forbes defines the word “self-made”, it looks easy to understand, but if you look at the following case, you might doubt about this simple definition. In 2018, Kylie Jenner was nominated “the youngest self-made billionaire” by Forbes. At the beginning, I believe that some of you would feel confused about this nomination. When I read this news I felt like there are question marks floating over my head, and my two eyebrows push each other — a puzzled look stuck to my face until I finished reading the report. Her family was globally famous, with that fame the Jenner-Kardashian family has built an empire of wealth. However, if you get to know Kylie’s story of building an empire of cosmetics, you’ll understand why she’s the right person on the list of Forbes. Kylie Jenner already had millions of fans on social medias, before she found her cosmetic company. This can be seen as the accumulation of customers at the early stage. Kylie was not satisfied with her lips so she used lip liners to make her lips look bigger, her lips size got more attentions with the covers of the gossip magazines. Later, #Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge# became popular among the teenagers on social medias, this is another boost of the attention on her lips. “She used some $250,000 of her earnings from modeling gigs to pay an outside company to produce the first 15,000 lip kits.”(Forbes). Posting the coming-soon lip kits on Instagram is the easiest way for her to advertise, as simple as you post your photos of your vacation on Instagram. As expected, once the kits put on sale, they were sold out in one minute. What a marketing genius. Logically, this is the process of accumulating customer resources, building brand image with her lips, using people’s curiosity and enthusiasm from her fans for product marketing, which is a low-cost advertisement, and the final step is to launch her products. Kylie definitely got advice from her mother, but the money to produce the lip kits was hers, and from the beginning to the end this process goes on with her name, Kylie Jenner.
1.2 Scene
When you read this definition of “self-made”, you might imagine that there’s a person comes from a not wealthy family, lives in an ordinary community, goes to a normal public school that is not far from the block, then he goes to a public university, or a college, neither of the options would bother his family with the issue of tuitions. He starts to have part-time job and save money monthly. Years later he decides to do business, with the money he saved for years, he buys some products and trades with people. With his luck and intellect of doing business, he founds a company and it expands, year by year he becomes a self-made entrepreneur and becomes a member of the bourgeoisie. Yes this can be the classic scenario of an inspirational movie.
Yifei Chen-Nonfiction writing 