Founder's Story
ADHD, Adversity, and Ambition: How Tracy Holland Built a $450M Beauty Empire | S2 Ep. 154
30 Nov 2024
Chapter 1: What inspired Tracy Holland's entrepreneurial journey?
Hi, everyone. This is Kate Hancock. And today I have Tracy Holland. Hi, Tracy. Hi there. Good morning. Good morning. I'm so excited for you to be here, Tracy. Everyone, Tracy is a founder, CEO, an entrepreneur, who is an authority in beauty and wellness with a global track record of incubating and launching brands. Now she's behind...
the Orlando Pita Hair Care, new ones by Salma Hayek, Bliss, and a lot of big brands. Also, she was the Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017. Oh my God, Tracy, welcome. Thank you. So tell me, what was your journey like to get where you are, Tracy?
Well, I mean, I think if entrepreneurs were out there and called to be an entrepreneur, it's a blessing and a curse. Right? So... I think there are no accidents in life. And in my case, I was an entrepreneur from a young age. I'm the oldest of four girls. My parents are both PhD. My father's a nuclear physicist. My mother's a child psychologist.
Both of them prided themselves on strong academic careers and hard work. And both of them prized really the accreditation of a great school, but also, you know, getting a job and a 401k and a pension and working for a company and going from kind of the ranks and going up to manager and then director. And that just was never in my DNA. So I did not fit in with my family from the
who now in hindsight, I think I probably had ADHD, but I didn't know that that was not something people talked about. Yeah, for sure.
So I was always, they were having a difficult time getting me to focus and to do well in school. And at some point my mom put me into a special ed class in sixth grade and said, you know, you have learning disabilities in math and you need a lot of support. And Um, weirdly math is one of my strongest areas.
I couldn't be successful in business without having great math acumen, but I have a great math acumen around making money, margin, forecasting, Revit, Ashflow planning. If you ask me algebra, or if you ask me geometry, it'd be a complete F. But math is actually one of my strongest suits. But in school, they put me in special ed.
I was the only kid in the class, not in a wheelchair, actually, at that time. And they put rubber things on my pencil so I could hold my pencil appropriately. And honestly, I just thought maybe I'm not that smart. And maybe I won't be successful in school. My parents seemed smart, but maybe I just didn't get blessed with that. And looked for ways to figure out how to make money.
I mean, that was from 12. I remember starting my first pie business. My father bought me a horse. And so I would give horseback riding lessons for money. I would host, you know, community. I'd host things in my backyard and invite the neighbors and charge money to watch performances. I was just always very mindset oriented toward making money. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How does ADHD affect Tracy's perspective?
To do what? Right. I mean, her nose is perfect and it's perfect for her face. So it's not even me as a mom saying your nose is perfect. I think it would be weird to change her nose for any reason. But she turned and said, look, I have this like slight, you know, bump here and I looked at her and she was kind of smiling and I said, are you serious right now? Are you just saying that to get me?
And she said, no, I'm serious, mom. This is really, this thing really bothers me. And I would like to get it done. And I recognize that you may not give me the money to do it, but at some point I'm going to have it done. And I said, what would give you even the indication that there's something here on your nose that you would need to remove?
And she goes, well, my nose just isn't perfectly straight. And so I've really noticed it bothers me. thought, God, that's so weird. I mean, it's just like, it's so kind of left field. I mean, if it's just the strangest, like little micro nuance and the fact that she's even noticing it is odd.
And then I watched that movie and I thought, Oh my God, you know, there are the suicide rates and this deformity, like they're, they're The complex and the perspective that they have watching these TikTok videos and how they're seeing themselves. The whole thing just gave me pause.
So I don't find it a coincidence that that conversation took place a week and a half ago and then I watched this movie. So now I'm on a mission. Got to fix this to the extent that we can. And by fixing it, I mean having the conversation, removing the shame, putting the conversation on the table and talking about it every single day openly as much as we can with our kids. Absolutely.
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Because. It's shocking to me that this little girl at age 12, in sixth grade, would even have an understanding of what a nose job is. Right?
Yeah. I remember my eldest, when he was, I think he was 15, I have a skincare business, and he asked me, Mom, how can I lighten this spot or something? I was like... wow, does it bother you? Because he's more tan. He gets really dark. Like, does it bother you with your color? But I think that's over. But that's kind of like questioning myself. Like, what are these kids watching?
And who is really their ideal person to look like? Yeah. Right? Yeah. It is scary. It's crazy. So I feel like It sounds like there are some really smart folks out there who are working on this issue. And I think in the next decade, this is going to become one of the biggest topics that we're facing because I don't think yet we quite understand the implications of what all this means.
Yeah. What can we do? What is the conversation like more deeper into what we know now?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Tracy face in her education?
from where they are and doubling the size of their business in the six months that I'm working with them. So that's exciting. Yeah. It's a bit of a, um, rollercoaster fasting, fast tracking for young women or these, incredible women entrepreneurs who want to grow their business. I'm working with them to do that. That's so inspiring.
We're recording it and we're bringing it to everyone who wants to watch it so that people can tune in and listen and, you know, figure out tips and figure out ways to think differently about how they're growing their own business. I love it. I appreciate it. It's so nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.