Life Lessons With Tina Knowles

Good morning, everyone. Miss Tina Knowles. It is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. So let's dive into our conversation. There's a lot we want to learn from you. So Miss Tina, you serve as Vice Chairwoman of Sacred, working alongside your daughter, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, who's launching in 2024, Taken Off. I'll tell you some stats. Last year its debut at Ulta Beauty was the most successful prestige hair care launch in the retailer's history. Sacred has won 89 beauty industry awards and recently the brand expanded its retail presence beyond the US into the UK. Can you tell us what's behind the vision of Sacred and the momentum? Well, the vision for it was, I'll just tell you a quick story. story I had a hair salon and back in those times there were there was a product I don't know if you guys are familiar with Joico it's one of my favorite products because they actually ground up human hair and put it in the product so your hair is made of protein right so it would just suck it in and just make the hair strong but what I didn't find was the oils and balance of that if you had color treated hair, if you had damaged hair, if you just had healthy hair but you wanted to keep it healthy, and so I would mix up these butters and hot olive oil treatments and all this stuff, saw it in my salon just to give people treatments to balance it, so we had to do two different types of treatments, so the dream has always been to create a product that had everything that you need in it in one product and one step and um and Beyonce had that dream as well because I was doing all those things to her hair like she was yeah torturing them and they worked in the hair salon so it's been a long time coming we do so much research and development uh she decided to fund the product herself because we were going to get some investors and they were like you guys spend too much money on research development and tested. We test and test and test. We've tested three countries. It encompasses every hair texture and it penetrates. There's a thing called molecular weight. I don't want to bore y'all with it, but it's how big the pore is in your hair. And if something is too big and it just lays on top to make the hair feel good, it's not doing anything to so that was I was just adamant about that right and just to come up with solutions to problems for hair care so it's been a blast I mean it's my favorite thing we were just in London you were talking about that and we went to all these salons and one salon we just popped up on them rolled up on them as they didn't know you were coming no they didn't know we were coming they said no y'all can't come in here go away but we we stayed and we kind of took over the salon Wow. And that's what Sacred is. It's like really, really organic. And our customers have done the marketing for us because it's, you know, it's really real quality. Yes. So at Sacred, you have women leading across all leadership levels. Yes. How do you approach finding the right talent that aligns with your vision? Well, we have the best CEO, Grace, and she is amazing at finding good people. You know, that's a big part of being the best CEO is being able to find these people. And she's found the best team that's just small but mighty and very dedicated. They love the product. They believe in the product. And so it's not work for us. It really is a passion project. Yeah, you mentioned your salon in Houston, so I want to go back to that. You were a businesswoman and you found kind of a niche or a market and a way that other salons weren't serving women, but can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, you know, I used to go to a hair salon and they had the best skills, like they were amazing, but I would go in there and I would be in there for like four or five hours because it would be all this gossip and it would be you know selling dinners and you know and it was just so much stuff going on that was entertaining for some women but for me I had stuff to do so I was like I want to get in here and get out of here so my approach to business has always been find a need that's that's not being fulfilled or or it's not enough of that to go around and so that you start your business based on something that nobody else offers and so that's what we did we set up a salon catering to professional women we guaranteed that you got in and out that you were waited on within the first 15 minutes and if you didn't you weren't satisfied you got your money back and let me tell you when you have a bunch of hairstylists and they have to work for free they learn very quickly that's right in and out so and we served wine and we just we networked for the businesses, introduced people, and did an arm of philanthropy. It was a very different environment for a salon, but it worked really well. And you probably bring a lot of those learnings into sacred. Absolutely. So, Messina, you've spent a lot of your life helping others express who they are. And you recently decided to publish a memoir that's very revealing of your life and your family. it's called matriarchy. And then it resulted in you becoming a best-selling author at age 71. What were the learnings from that book and the process of writing that book that stayed most with you? Well, the book was really me coming into myself fully. At 60, I got, at 59, I got divorced and I remember thinking oh my god my life is over like I'm so you know old and it's crazy how we get ourselves into thinking that you know life is over and um but I found myself after that I started going back to museums I picked up my art books I I started doing me and making myself a priority and not hiding because I spent a lot of my life trying not to embarrass my kids that's that's a real big feat. I always, I was all, you know, I always said I'm not going to do anything to embarrass them. And so therefore I hid a lot and, and I didn't take credit for a lot of the work that I did as a woman. We just do it because it needs to be done. But at 59, 60, something clicked and I'm like Tina you got to live because you know you are still young enough and it's funny because at 70 that was another milestone and ironically I was going through a second divorce and it's something about those divorces that make you uh you know take a look at yourself and um and I started writing a memoir and I said it's time because in my you know with my family people create whatever narrative they feel like every day especially with social media and I'm constantly reading the craziest stuff about myself and I wanted to set the record straight so I started writing never knowing that I would go to the depths that I did and that I could be so vulnerable and so open uh but I did as you start writing it's kind of like therapy so it's therapy for me There's a person in the book that really resonated with me You wrote we all have this power to be matriarchs to be a woman of sacred practice of nurturing guiding Protecting foreseeing and remembering. Can you tell us what that means in terms of your legacy? I know your mom played a major role in your life Taught you how to be the woman that you are today Yeah, I think that, you know, I talk to women all the time. I was on a plane last night ironically with someone, and she was like, well, I just don't know if I'm going to be a good mother. Like, I'm really worried about it. I didn't have a great mother to model for me. And, you know, and I shared that same thing with her because we all have the power to nurture. It's a decision that you make that you are going to be a good mother, that you're going to read the books to give you the information you know I took my kids to therapy at at very young and in a black community that's like back then especially was a no-no but I took them because I wanted them to be close I wanted them to be confident and it was the best thing I could have done so you don't have to follow any rules and you don't have to be the mother that you know if you weren't fortunate enough to have a great mom you don't have to be that you can be whatever you want to be and so that's what I'm saying we all have the power to nurture we all have the power to instill great things in our kids and value them and prioritize them it's a decision that you make I wanted to ask you how you have this this great business sensibility and sometimes it's hard to find that confidence where did you find that confidence to know I have a good idea I have a lot to say and I'm gonna um back with my salon again everything in my life is divine intervention from God I believe because uh every career change has come because not because of but something goes on in my life that makes me have to step it up and um and I was in a marriage and at that time, before I opened my salon, I was like, I really got to get my stuff together because I've been out of the job market for five years and I got to create a business to be able to take care of my kids and take care of myself. I'll never be dependent again. And that's how my salon was born out of necessity. But I've always had since I was a kid, I realized even in writing that book that I was always a little entrepreneur because my girlfriend and I used to sell four pieces of sandwiches at school. We used to sell popcorn balls and candy apples and things to make money for like Christmas. And I always had this good business sense. I just didn't have the confidence. But when I opened my salon, it was just good common sense and it was good nurturing of my clients. They became like my community. And I just always have vision. I always have vision. and sometimes more vision than is probably good for me because my ideas are popping into my head constantly. And I think it's important that you have the ability to translate that vision into a reality, and you've done that. I want to talk about also you're multi-talented. You're a fabulous designer. Where did that stem from? Well, my mom was a designer and a seamstress, and her mom was a designer and a seamstress, and it goes back on um you know i found out if you read the book you'll you'll see that i found out that my great-grandmother my great-great-grandmother who were enslaved they were seamstresses that was their skill so they passed it down and my also my nephew john who was my best friend my gay nephew john who was the best designer if he was born in another place or time He could have been, you know, I don't know, any, Oscar de la Renta. But he and I were best friends, and we made all of our clothes, and we might have been the poorest kids, but we were the sharpest kids all the time. That's right. Yeah. I want to go to the present. Okay, so today you're building a business. You're helping others build something of their own. Through Sacred and the Bay Good Fund and your work with the Waco Theater, What do you want the next generation to learn? What do you want to be possible for them? Well, I want them to live to their best ability, to be courageous. And one thing, you know, I realized about myself is that I've changed careers like five times. And I'm always fearless because I feel like I'm just going to get in there and I'm going to try my best. And if it doesn't work out, I'll go do something else. and I tell young people that all the time just give it 1000% it's going to work and if it doesn't then you've had that experience and you'll use that experience for your next endeavor so I want them to know that keeping just being a good person is important having a really great work ethic and never feeling entitled to anything what are you looking forward to next, what are you excited about building um you know I had this dream always that I could do full-time philanthropy but it hadn't worked out that way uh because I work in you know I work at Sacred um I work at Parkwood which is my daughter's uh company and but philanthropy is really my passion right now so I have a charity and I'm the chairperson for Be Good my daughter's charity so that is my dream in the next couple years because I'm 72 it's not like I'm gonna be around and you know forever but I want to transition into full time philanthropy what is it about philanthropy especially that makes you want to do more and more oh god because it's you know it's the joy that I get from making a difference I mean it sounds corny but it's the honest to god truth it's like the best joy to know that you made a difference, and that when I leave this world, that there will be some, you know, remnants of the good that I do. It's really, really important. The theater, the Vision Performing Arts Center, is that something that actress Marla Gibbs? Yes, yes, it's amazing. We had a little in Waco, Waco stands for where art can occur, and that's my charity, and what we do is my ex-husband and I started together and he was an actor he's an actor and he did the theater part and I did the mentoring of kids so I'm really good with kids and so I um we started off with 26 girls from underserved communities and we exposed them to everything from from the arts to museums to etiquette to travel we traveled to Vegas because that's what we can afford and um they get to stay a hotel one night and order room service and they just learn life skills that are going to take them far and we try to give them dreams to go to school or to do something constructive when they get out that's one aspect of it but we had a hundred seat theater and we use that theater to secure to have meetings um to for them to have passion days it was sort of a community theater even though it was in North Hollywood. And our kids are out in South Central. But Marla Gibbs, I don't know if you guys know her, she was an actress very big in sitcoms. She had this dream, and she bought the Vision Theater, which is in Leimert Park. And she put all of her money into it, that and a speakeasy. And this was at the time that Leimert Park was like jazz and theater and arts, and it was just a really cool area. And then the riots came and it became a depression and she wound up losing the building. So I've always been fascinated by that beautiful theater, but it was really in disarray. And the city took on, maybe about 20 years ago, they started on and they put 40 million dollars into this beautiful state of the art. And it's a real big piece of history. And so her dreams for it, We're planning on following her lead on that and making a community center and having the arts there. And so I'm really, really excited about it. That's amazing. Yeah. We're almost out of time. Okay. Wanted to know if you have one last piece of advice for the women here who've all gathered together this week. Well, this group doesn't seem like they need a lot of advice around here. But just to be authentic with yourself, that's my mantra for myself, and to live your life to the fullest every day because you just never know. I had breast cancer last year, and thank God it was the early stages, but it brought a whole new perspective into my vision of what I want for my life and how valuable every single day is. so appreciate every moment yeah absolutely well miss tina it was an absolute pleasure talking to you thank you so much for being here thank you thank you