Shark Tank's Daymond John Says Kim Kardashian 'Works Hard' Amid Backlash

Shark Tank star Daymond John praised the Kardashians work ethic and said they would do well on the reality series.

John, 53, cheered on family matriarch Kris Jenner and daughter Kim Kardashian as "real operators" who "work hard."

The FUBU founder stars on Shark Tank, a show where budding entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of investors with the hopes they will give them money to propel their companies to success.

He spoke of how focused Jenner was about building a strong business foundation for her children during the early seasons of their reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians so they would have something to fall back on when their 15 minutes of fame was up.

"I think Kim is amazing. I worked with girls in their earlier years and I still, talk to Chris from time to time and they've done amazing, one hundred percent," he told David Yontef on his Behind the Velvet Rope podcast.

"They're real operators of their businesses. They work hard and they have a long map, but they also look at directly was in front of them."

John added: "I remember Kris' initial thing about three years into the show was like, 'my hope is that each one of my kids maybe has one or two businesses after all these lights go down'.

"And that was about 13 or 14 years ago, that Kris and I had that conversation."

John's comments follow the backlash Kardashian faced earlier this year when she slammed women in business saying it seemed that no one wanted to work hard enough to achieve success.

"Get your f***ing a** up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days," she said controversially during an interview with Variety alongside her mom, and sisters Kourtney and Khloé.

But more recently, the reality star revealed she felt she had to work harder than the "average person just to get a little bit of respect." She made the comments in the most recent episode of the family's Hulu show, The Kardashians.

Kardashian, 41, and her sister Khloé, 38, went on a trip to Miami where they went out for a special dinner with friends for her SKIMS shapewear brand. After the dinner, they went back to their hotel room to get ready to go out for a "girl's night" that Khloé was really excited for.

But the group was held up with Kim who was focused on work. They partied and danced around her, as she approved photos for social media.

"Those were the images from the dinner and inside ... you have approval of all the images inside our SKIMS pop up. I don't trust anybody else to tell me when I look good," she was seen saying to her staff.

When she found later that Khloé had complained about delaying her, she retorted, "B***h, you'll thank me later because I'm editing all our photos to delete all the bad ones and they have to go to print tonight."

"I'll tell you if Malika looks bad I'll delete it even if I look amazing so no one else is going to look at 10 people in a photo, but I do."

Kardashian admitted in a confessional that she was trying to make the most of her time in Miami by not wasting any opportunities to improve her business or social media presence. A producer then said to her, "it seems like you have a hard time relaxing."

Kardashian admitted to having a "hard time relaxing, there's so much that has to be done, especially when I'm away from my kids."

"I'm definitely like a workaholic, it's probably a problem," Kim added.

But the Kardashian opened up on why she works so hard.

"I always felt like I had to work a little bit harder than the average person just to get a little bit of respect," Kim said.

"And once you start working and once you start seeing the results and proving yourself, how do you stop?

"I've always wanted people to see who I really am and I'm not going to stop until I prove every single person wrong."