For Brooke Shields, Start is greater than only a hair care brand. It’s a latest starting with beauty.

At WWD’s annual Beauty Inc CEO Summit in Miami, Shields sat down with Beauty Inc editor in chief Jenny B. High quality to debate her relationship with beauty, starting Start, constructing a community and the similarities between entrepreneurship and the entertainment industry.

“My relationship with beauty was all the time either work related or vanity,” she said. “It’s only been on this era of my life that I began to appreciate that it appears like self care and a privilege.” 

It seems her customers and followers felt the identical way. Prior to constructing Start, a hair care line formulated for girls 40-plus, Shields began Starting Is Now, a content platform for that very same age group, which is being rebranded to Start, as well. With the platform, Shields has built a community of a million women who’re excited to interact with one another and welcome this latest stage of life.

“After we began Starting Is Now, it was a vision to have the opportunity to say to women on this age bracket, ‘You possibly can live feeling your best. You possibly can actually live feeling such as you’ve done an excellent job. You’ve done a lot, and there’s more for you on the market,’ not in an offended way but in a celebratory way,” she said. 

With the platform and its community, Shields learned that many ladies felt the identical way she did. They desired to have fun and embrace their age, and so they wanted their beauty products to do the identical. 

“Women over 40 have already done lots of things and their lives are so complex. They’ve done a lot, and it’s their time. I discovered myself in that position,” Shields said. “There was a lot white space with reference to hair care, specifically for girls over 40 but not within the geriatric realm or the medicinal realm.”

In keeping with Shields, the number-one query women had on the platform was around methods to take care of their hair. While she initially got down to get answers to those questions, she quickly learned that her followers wanted her to really launch products — enter the Start line.

“What we did was we decided to essentially take heed to our community,” she said, adding that every one future products shall be driven by this community feedback. “They inform me as to what they need, and I proceed to take heed to them.” 

With this in mind, Shields expects Start to grow beyond hair care, based on her customer’s needs.

Together with her recently released Netflix rom-com “Mother of the Bride,” it could seem Shields doesn’t have time to even be a beauty entrepreneur, but she would argue otherwise. 

“I’ve spent a lot of my life working for other people,” she said, adding that Start was a possibility to do something for herself. “This began as an emotional desire to have a conversation that quickly became an actual company.”

While the industries could seem totally different, Shields said entrepreneurship and entertainment are literally quite similar.

“There’s so many more similarities than I ever thought. A part of it’s, you’re only as strong because the team around you,” she said. “I spotted I needed to surround myself [with] the experts in the sector.” 

Perhaps, much like an audition, Shields said in each entrepreneurship and entertainment, sometimes you might have to listen to the word “no,” but that doesn’t mean you accept it — Shields said this was particularly essential to recollect within the midst of fundraising for Start. 

“It was eye opening to me since you get so many more ‘nos’ than you do get ‘yeses’ and that’s very much like entertainment,” she said.

Nevertheless, for Shields, the business side of things feels just a little less personal.

“You audition for something and also you don’t get it, it’s a private affront, but that is business,” she said. “You have got to have trust but you furthermore mght need to have perseverance…trust within the team that you simply’ve placed around you, commitment to a vision that you understand is the appropriate vision.”

It’s this vision, her deep connection together with her Start community and embracing this era of her life that can lead Shields and the brand forward.

“I’ve given my power and what I’m to so many alternative people over time and this time frame for me appears like a celebration of myself and what I’ve completed,” she said. “Spending time appreciating what I even have and what I’m individually is a large gift, and I need other women to feel that way. I don’t need to feel guilty for wanting to look beautiful. I used to wish to look beautiful for other people. Now, I need to look my best but for me.”