Tracee Ellis Ross talks Pattern Beauty, advocacy, and joy with Samira Nasr

JEFF BERMAN: Hi folks, Jeff Berman here.

We at Masters of Scale were fortunate to have actress, activist, advocate, and Pattern Beauty Founder & co-CEO Tracee Ellis Ross at our Summit event this fall. She’s joined on stage by Samira Nasr, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar.

In this episode, you’ll hear the conversation these two brilliant minds recorded live at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco.

They’re also dear friends, which has been important in unlocking some key insights during this conversation.

What you’re about to hear reveals how Tracee is scaling her joy-driven business, and how the support of people who love you can help unlock new perspectives and opportunities in your career.

[THEME MUSIC]

TRACEE ELLIS ROSS: It’s really wonderful to be here. I love this kind of conversation in this world of entrepreneurship and business-building and also how we make the world a better place. Samira and I, just a little background information, have been best friends for 30 years.

Genuine best friends, and each other’s barnacles, as we call it. You are getting the privilege of seeing something that has never been done before. We have never sat on a stage together and had a conversation. Our relationship is a private one, so we will give you a public version of a conversation, but just wanted to orient you in the reality of our connection.

Copy LinkWhy Tracee Ellis Ross created Pattern Beauty

SAMIRA NASR: Thank you. Thank you for setting us up like that. And okay, so I want to start, I want to jump right in because we have a limited amount of time, and I want to start with a quote that I read. This is you speaking, obviously. You said the premise of marketing is often you have a problem, and you need this product in order to fix your problem.

When you’re talking about Black people, Black beauty, Black hair, starting with this idea that there’s a problem is problematic. So I was thinking a lot about that. And I was thinking about your trajectory. You launched Pattern in 2019, not because you saw our hair as a problem, but because you saw the market as a problem.

Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got executives to see the value of your proposition.

ELLIS ROSS: So my company is called Pattern Beauty. We are a beauty company, and at the moment, we are hair care focused. That’s why I purposefully called the company Pattern Beauty and not Pattern Hair because I had an expansive view of what I might dream of doing beyond hair. Right now, we are hair, but just for clarity, the journey came out of my own personal journey, my personal relationship with my hair. I could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair, but the most important factor there was that I didn’t see myself mirrored back culturally, not in the beauty industry and just not in the world. I definitely was mirrored back within my family, but I wasn’t seeing it in the world.

And so I came to entrepreneurship and business building from a perspective of being a consumer, which was incredibly helpful. I didn’t decide to become an entrepreneur because I wanted to make money. I came because I was a consumer who wasn’t seeing what I wanted. Some of it was that I saw an industry that was based on marketing that, to me, was based on something that never made sense.

I’m a consumer of beauty, I’m a consumer of pretty things, I can even go to the market and spend too much money. I’m a person who can go to the 99 cent store and buy something for 100. I always looked at it as when I feel good, I want to buy things, and I never understood why marketing was based on this idea that we have to make you feel bad in order to buy something. I felt it was contrary, so I progressed through my journey as I started to build Pattern. It was even more problematic because in a culture of beauty and a society that is not set up for people of color to succeed, let alone be mirrored back and seen as beautiful, and for our authentic beauty to be celebrated.

That equation was problematic but also not smart business. So, in my own personal journey with Pattern, the beginning for me was, I will tell you what I originally set out to do and how the language has evolved as I have become a much smarter business person. I started out by saying I wanted to make products that worked.

There were so many products on the shelves, and I was like, but they don’t work for the people that I want to sell to. Textured hair that wants to wear its hair in the way it grows out of its head. By the way, one of the ways Samira and I met is because of our hair. True statement. I literally used to find other people with hair like mine and be like, what products do you use?

Have you found anything that works? Like that was sort of how we would lean in. And, so in the beginning, it was just I want products that work. I had spent all these years of my life, 10 years, from when I had the idea to the company being born. But then all the years before that, discovering myself and my own journey around my hair.

And I was like, I just want products that work. I kept thinking as I was growing up, wouldn’t it be neat if there were like a whole line of products that all worked together and you wouldn’t have to go and buy one from each different company? And wouldn’t it be amazing if they also all looked pretty on the counter, and wouldn’t it be amazing if the brush didn’t break when you used it in your hair?

And wouldn’t it be neat if you could like refill them? Wouldn’t it be amazing if like when you were in the shower, the conditioner wouldn’t slip out of your hands because you could hold it? There were all these things that I was dreaming of before I knew that I could be an entrepreneur. Then we got to the point where the other piece of it was around marketing.

What it has evolved to is my mission of the brand. I’m trying to talk quickly. I see that clock moving because I can talk about this stuff forever. What it evolved to was, Pattern Beauty exceeds the needs of the curly, coily, and tight textured community. I will just unpack that a little bit for you because it’s incredibly important to me to explain.

Copy LinkCelebrating Black beauty through joy

I don’t believe that hair has a gender or a race. However, textured hair, curly, coily, and tight textures, have specific needs that other hair types do not. A lot of moisture, clumping, slip, and hydration. The products are specifically designed and built for the effectiveness of curly, coily, and tight textured hair.

However, anyone can use our products. If you are a person who needs a lot of hydration, Pattern’s for you. And I wanted to be a company that serviced this massive community, these vast amounts of people, in a way that we were there for you in every moment of your journey every day.

Every moment. We were a company that could support you. We were a brand and products that could support you in that. The other half of it and the evolution of what I do. I originally called it, I want to create a paradigm shift in how people are marketed to, and specifically how Black people are marketed to, is that we are centered around the celebration of Black beauty.

So those two things for me and our mission are inextricably tied in that we make products that are for the curly, coily, and tight textured community, but our content, our hiring, and what we make is centered around the celebration of Black beauty. There has been for eons a history of time that I have had to see myself mirrored back, not in me.

So marketing for products that I use doesn’t have people that look like me. I feel like anybody can see somebody that does look like Samira and I, and other variations of Blackness, and also figure out that the products we’re making work for them. So we are centered around the celebration of Black beauty, and we make products that exceed the needs of the curly, coily, tight texture community.

Next question.

Copy LinkWhy the concept of joy is critical for Tracee Ellis Ross

NASR: That brings me to my next question. Because there’s a lot of joy in what you do and your approach, and I’m hoping you can talk to us a little bit about why that is so essential and why it is so essential for you to focus Pattern Beauty around this idea of joy.

ELLIS ROSS: The first place it starts is my mama.

So y’all know me as Tracee Ellis Ross. That’s how it was introduced. I was born Tracee Joy Silverstein, and my real middle name is Joy. My mother said, that’s the way I came out. It is my natural state. I will tell you that the magnitude of joy that I hold in my body is also met with the other end of the spectrum.

I have learned to hold both. I’m an actor, I can hold both ends, but my true nature is joy. A quick little cute story. My mom, when I became an actor and joined SAG, I became Tracee Ellis Ross and I put Ellis in because it’s my father’s name, and I wanted him to have a claim to me when I was up on a screen. He’s Robert Ellis Silberstein.

So I’m Tracee Ellis Ross, but my mom was like, ah, you just threw away the joy. I was like, no mom, I just really wanted dad’s name and she said, no, no Tracee, it’s okay. You’ve embodied it. So it is my true state. It is also, I believe, one of my superpowers, and it is, to me, at the core of everything I do.

I have a larger mission outside of Pattern. My mission with Pattern is to dispel the myth that Black hair care is a niche market. My mission as a human being is to join the chorus of people who are making the world safer and more just for everybody to be comfortable in their skin and be who they are.

That being said, the core of Pattern is, and one of our taglines is, juicy and joyful. I believe that hair can be juicy and joyful. I believe you can live a juicy and joyful life. I believe you can have juicy, enjoyable friendships. I really think that that to me is what holds the larger container for marketing that is based on celebrating who we are and not.

Leaning into the problem. There’s this thing that people talk about as an entrepreneur and as a founder of what is your promise? To me, the promise is around celebrating and empowering who people are as opposed to shaming them into buying the thing that you want them to buy.

Can I ask you a question now?

NASR: Yeah, you can ask me a question.

Copy LinkInside Tracee Ellis Ross & Samira Nasr’s friendship

ELLIS ROSS: I have the more public version of a job. Samira, as an editor in chief, obviously is public, but I’m an actor. So this is not Samira’s favorite place, sitting and being asked questions, but I’m gonna do this anyway. There’s a phrase that I think we’ve all heard throughout our lives that was obviously written by a man: behind every great man is a great woman.

I’m not going to lie, it makes me want to barf. The question I have is, what does it take? And who holds the success of any human? I want to bring that up because there is something incredibly special about 30 years of friendship. I will also say, Samira has a beautiful adopted child, Lex, a little man who’s not so little anymore.

But we are both single women, and our friendship group is what anchors us. Samira and I have had the absolute honor and blessing of 30 years of holding each other, holding space for each other, being there in the private moments, not the public moments. That allows me to go out and be this huge human that I am out in the world, to do some of the scariest things and for them to not feel scary; to have a sounding board and to have somebody who can love me when I can’t love myself. Somebody who can see the biggest part of me when I feel like the smallest part of me.

So my question is, from your point of view, what has our friendship allowed and made space for in your career? And then I want to answer it too.

NASR: Our friendship, you have held space for me and you’ve held dreams for me that I never would have dared to hold for myself.

Case in point is my current job. If you told me one day you’re going to be the editor in chief of a luxury media brand, I would have been like, okay, but it’s something you always saw for me and you would always talk to me about it. I would always change the subject because that’s what I like to do.

And I think our friendship has anchored me. I think you’ve held space for me to see things that I could not see for myself. I think ultimately, and I imagine that a lot of you feel this way also, these roles are very isolating and they’re lonely. It’s challenging sometimes to be the first to do something or to imagine something that hasn’t existed before.

So our friendship has been that safe place where I could go back because there is no blueprint. Right. And we could talk through certain things like, what do you think is a sounding board? There’s never shame. There’s never like, you don’t know that, it’s sort of like, huh, let’s figure that out together.

That’s what it continues to be for me.

ELLIS ROSS: Yeah. Samira Nasr is the first Black editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. She’s setting an example of what a fashion magazine can be by expanding the definition of what is cover-worthy, whose stories are worthy of being told. I have always believed that Samira should be an editor in chief. I will just quickly say, I wrote a letter, cold to Anna Wintour.

NASR: She did. She did.

ELLIS ROSS: I did. The Glamour Magazine editor in chief position opened up. We all heard about it publicly, and I got my fingers moving and just randomly sent an email to Anna Wintour and told her that Samira Nasr should be the editor in chief of Glamour Magazine.

NASR: I didn’t get the job but she actually wrote a letter.

ELLIS ROSS: Full-on wrote a letter. Unsolicited. No one asked me to. I will also tell you that it is a lonely job in whatever position you’re in. If you’re an entrepreneur and you are that person. If you’re the editor in chief, if you are a CEO.

Ultimately, the decisions come down to you. I don’t mind that. I am okay with that. But there are moments of trepidation and fear. Who do you go to? You can’t always go to your colleagues. They’re not the appropriate people to go to. If there are hiring issues, HR issues, whatever those things are that are happening, who do you go to?

I think it’s a really important part of business that a lot of people don’t talk about. There were a couple of moments when I was so frustrated with what was happening in marketing, and we ended up in the same place every Christmas with a campaign that I was not comfortable with. I was just exasperated with not knowing how to communicate what I wanted. I called Samira and I was like, okay, do you have five minutes? She was like, yeah, okay, listen. I need to just walk you through what’s happening. I need to walk you through what’s going on. Can I just say it all? Do you have time for me to say it all? Yes. And I walked her through. She was like, oh, you need a 360 digital meeting. And I was like, yes, I do.

I need a 360 digital meeting. Thank you, Samira. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Hi, can we schedule a 360 digital meeting, please?

That’s how it works. And there are these places where, and part of the thing, as an entrepreneur, you’re learning. I’m new, and one of the things I love is that growth curve. I have language, and I know things now that I did not know then. Some of it comes from being open to knowing I don’t know everything. And who do you ask?

Who are those people who you trust, how they operate in their lives? You trust the integrity with which they do things. You trust their decision-making process, how they reason things out. That, to me, has been the biggest learning curve, is making sure that the correct people are around you to find those spaces of safety.

BERMAN: More with Tracee and Samira in just a minute.

[AD BREAK]

BERMAN: Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can see this conversation and more from our 2024 Summit on the Masters of Scale YouTube channel.

Copy LinkThe lesson Tracee’s glad she didn’t know before starting Pattern

NASR: I have another question for you. Yes. Okay. I would like to know, I mean, I’d love to hear this from all of you, but I’m asking her the question, but I would love for you all to think about this as well. What is one lesson that you’ve learned in the last five years that you’re glad you didn’t know before you embarked on this journey?

ELLIS ROSS: Yeah. I never had a doubt, and I think this is the answer that I never had for the moment. This is the answer. I never had a doubt part of being an actor and as I’ve built Pattern, has been knowing that my idea was valid and worthy, the same way you go into an audition. Like I know I deserve this role.

I don’t know if I’ll get it.

I have now built a multi-million dollar company. Thank you. We have 11 retail partners. We had seven SKUs, we now have over 57 SKUs, we have three tools that plug into the wall. I have 49 designated employees, and then multiple other shared employees and people we work with. I did not know then the stakes that now exist. And I have to remind myself of those stakes because they are important. There are now other people’s livelihoods involved. There are now larger choices on the table, and maintaining the optionality of how do I stay true to my mission of joining a chorus of people trying to make the world a better place, basically, and a safer place with more.

Resources, with more abundance, with more people accountable to me, with me being responsible for more. I’m glad I didn’t know that then. I’ve always been comfortable with a high-stakes life, but those stakes change how decisions are made. I don’t know that I would have, I think I would have been the same person. I think I would have had the same dream.

I think I would have gone about the same things.

This is totally personal, but it’s totally true. If you had told me at 25 that I was not going to be married at 52 with like four kids, I would have been like, and it doesn’t matter, right? So it’s just a larger example of another thing of, the dreams I had as a young girl, number one, I really wish culturally that we would do better at supporting young girls.

Young children in dreaming in different ways. So many of the people that are here, so many of the people around you, so many of the people that you’re speaking that are speaking have jobs and have figured out spaces in the world that you’re not taught to dream of, right? So, I want to be a fireman or a policeman what?

I want to dream of my wedding. Like, dream of your life. Dream of how you want to make, what do you want to contribute? What do you want people to feel when you leave the room? If you’re going to build a company, what do you want people to feel? What do you want people to take away from that other than buying something?

What experience do you want them to have? What feeling do you want them to get? What do you want them to be validated in knowing about themselves because you did this or you sold them that? And so I think had I, had I known some of those things, I wonder if I would have been more empowered to have an even different kind of boldness.

What do you think about, for you? Like, is there a job, what do you think you’ve learned from where you’ve been that you wish you had known or you would have done something different? I don’t know if it’s that I would have done

NASR: Anything differently, but I do, and I, this is something I’ve always held, but I have such a deeper appreciation for, so I don’t know if it really answers your question, but it’s the value of people, and I think it comes from a place of being othered, right. And wanting to create a space of belonging. And I think that the value of people in achieving any kind of meaningful success and having a good day is that you have to carry that value and, and like respect for people and what they bring to the work.

I think I’ve learned a lot about that.

ELLIS ROSS: We have 14 seconds. Oh. I think one, one of the things that I have learned at 52, next week 52, whatever. No, no, no. It’s just like at this point, no, no.

NASR: We celebrate them. We celebrate them.

ELLIS ROSS: I feel like at a certain point you’re like, no, no. We celebrate them. I’m 50ish.

And I did not know this as a child, the world is run by people. So as a kid, it was the White House. It was Nike. It was, you know what I mean? It wasn’t, the White House wasn’t made up of people. But so the learning of that really does change your relationship to everything you do. Yep.

This was fun. Thank you. I love you. I love you. I love you so much. This was super fun. I have so many more.

NASR: All so much. Thank you. What a treat. Thank you.

ELLIS ROSS: Love you.

BERMAN: Thanks to Tracee and Samira for giving us a window into their careers and friendship at the Masters of Scale Summit.

I’m Jeff Berman, thanks for listening.