Everybody loves Tracee. Now, everyone also loves her thoughtfully curated haircare brand Pattern, a labor of affection that Ellis Ross oversees from end-to-end. This will likely come as a surprise since she is already bonafide star in Hollywood—she’s also a component of a growing cohort of celebrity-driven brands that many may perceive as ones with famous faces lended to them only for the marketability of all of it. But that’s not her story…in any respect.

“I’m not a star brand person,” Ellis Ross tell ESSENCE in a Zoom interview while in her automotive. She was running from one appointment to the subsequent, likely related to certainly one of her many duties she juggles. “I got here into this as a consumer, and once I began Pattern, the celebrity brand thing was not even a trend.”

Although Ellis Ross officially began Pattern in 2019, she’d been laying the inspiration for it over the course of a decade.

“I launched into being a founder and a CEO as a consumer who saw a giant gap available in the market,” she tells ESSENCE. “And it took me ten years to get the corporate off the bottom. By the point I discovered my partners, regardless that I’m the bulk owner of the corporate, by the point I discovered my partners, I already had gotten a retail partner. I’d already pitched and convinced Ulta that we were the brand they needed. So, that is my baby, versus an organization that I put my name on.”

She shared that certainly one of the things critically essential to her on the ideation stage was formulating products that may be effective and really delivered on their promise.

“I spent a lot time within the trenches of my hair and in retail trying to seek out things that worked, regardless that they wrote on the bottle that it was alleged to be for my hair, but they weren’t,” she tells ESSENCE. “We even pushed our launch because I wasn’t blissful with the leave-in conditioner.”

That’s not the case now, because the brand spans from shampoos, conditioners and masks to heat styling protectants and even a specially crafted blow dryer for textured hair types. Pattern has also expanded to being carried in retailers all over the world including UK-based drug store chain Boots, Sephora and Amazon. And that last company within the list is one she’s partnered with to assist support other committed business owners with their very own growth journey.

Earlier this month, she was a distinguished speaker on the retail behemoth’s sellers conference Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. There, the ever-candid multi-hyphenate pulled the curtain back on her journey as a business owner and small business seller in Amazon’s store while also offering some sage advice.

“Just stay the course,” she offers the audience in her final remarks on the conference. “Remember there’s information within the no’s. Let yourself take disappointment and the hit, but don’t take it personally.”

She adds: “There are a whole lot of reasons people will provide you with that your idea just isn’t an excellent one. But you simply need one person to imagine in you.”