Kim Kardashian Failed the Bar Exam. Here's Why That Matters.

Kim Kardashian told 350 million followers she failed the bar exam.

And then she said she's using the failure "as fuel."

I know. It's Kim Kardashian. You might have already rolled your eyes and started scrolling. But stay with me, because there's something here worth paying attention to.

The Easy Path She Didn't Take

Kim Kardashian is a self-made billionaire.

Yes, self-made. Say what you want about how she got famous, but she built SKIMS, KKW Beauty, and a media empire through business acumen, not inheritance. Forbes put her on the billionaire list. The money is real.

She never has to work another day in her life. She never has to learn anything new. She never has to put herself in a position where she might publicly fail.

She could sit on her rump eating bonbons for the next fifty years and still have more money than most of us will ever see.

But that's not what she's doing.

Instead, she's studying to become a lawyer. Not for the money. Not for the fame. Not because she needs another line on her CV. She's doing it because it matters to her. Because she wants to help people wrongly convicted. Because she wants to understand the system well enough to change it.

And she's doing it the hard way. Not through a traditional law school (which would have been easier with her resources), but through California's Law Office Study Program, which requires four years of apprenticeship and has a notoriously brutal pass rate.

She failed the baby bar exam. Twice. Then she passed. Now she's working toward the full bar.

In public. In front of 350 million people.

Why This Matters

We love to talk about normalising failure. It's a corporate buzzword at this point. "Fail fast." "Embrace failure." "Failure is feedback."

But how many of us actually do it? How many of us admit our failures publicly, in real time, when we don't have to?

Most of us hide our failures. We wait until we've succeeded to share the "journey." We curate our stories so the struggles look like stepping stones rather than face plants. We only admit we failed once we've already won.

Kim didn't wait. She told people she failed while she was still failing. While the outcome was still uncertain. While there was a real possibility she might never pass.

That's what real vulnerability looks like.

The Reinvention No One Asked For

Here's what gets me: no one asked Kim Kardashian to reinvent herself.

She was already successful. Already famous. Already rich. She had every excuse to coast.

But she didn't. She looked at her life and decided there was more she wanted to do. More she wanted to be. And she was willing to be a beginner again to get there.

Do you know how hard it is to be a beginner when you're already at the top of something else?

When you're successful, you get used to competence. You get used to being the expert, the one with the answers, the one people look to. Starting over in a new field means giving that up. It means being bad at something. It means asking dumb questions and not knowing what you don't know.

Most successful people avoid this discomfort like the plague. They stick to what they know. They hire experts instead of becoming one. They protect their ego by never putting it at risk.

Kim walked straight into the discomfort. And she did it publicly, which meant her failures would be public too.

That takes real guts. I for one am in awe.

Courage Is a Practice

We tend to think of courage as a trait. You either have it or you don't. Some people are brave and some people aren't.

But that's not how it works. Courage is a practice. It's a muscle you build by doing scary things, over and over, even when you don't feel brave.

Kim Kardashian has been practising courage for years. Every new business. Every public pivot. Every time she put herself out there in a new way.

The bar exam is just the latest iteration.

And here's what I notice: the more you practice courage, the more natural it becomes. Not easy. Natural. You get used to the feeling of fear and you learn to move forward anyway.

People who seem fearless aren't actually fearless. They've just done scary things so many times that fear no longer stops them.

Leaving Nothing on the Table

There's a phrase that stuck with me when I thought about Kim's approach to life: leaving nothing on the table.

What does it mean to leave nothing on the table?

It means trying the thing you're scared to try. It means not waiting until you're "ready." It means pursuing the goal that might embarrass you if you fail. It means not getting to the end of your life and wondering "what if."

Kim Kardashian, at 44, with four kids, with a billion dollars, with everything she could ever need, is still reaching for more. Not more money. More growth. More impact. More of herself.

She's not coasting. She's not settling. She's not protecting herself from failure by refusing to try.

She's leaving nothing on the table.

The Uncomfortable Question

So here's the uncomfortable question I had to ask myself:

What am I not trying because I'm afraid to fail publicly?

What goal have I shelved because it might embarrass me? What reinvention have I avoided because I don't want to be a beginner again? What's the thing I would do if I knew no one would judge me for failing?

Because here's the truth: people will judge you either way. They'll judge you for trying and failing. They'll judge you for succeeding. They'll judge you for not trying at all.

You can't control the judgment. But you can control whether you leave it all on the table.

The Real Flex

We think the flex is success. 

But the real flex is being willing to fail in public. Being willing to be a beginner when you could rest on your laurels. Being willing to want more from life even when you already have everything.

Kim Kardashian just showed 350 million people that she's human. That she struggles. That she fails. And that she keeps going anyway.

She's normalising courage. She's normalising reinvention. She's normalising failure as part of the process rather than the end of the story.

And she's showing us what it looks like to leave nothing on the table in this game of life.

Respect. 🦩