Brooke Shields, Actress, NYT Bestselling Author, and Founder, Commence
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
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TechTranscript
00:00Thank you, Allie, and thank all of you for being here in Brooke, especially thanks to you for being here and getting miked in the bathroom.
00:05I live downtown and I always forget how long it takes.
00:10Yeah. I was born in the city and you'd think I'd learn.
00:14Always the traffic gets you. So thrilled you're here. You have had quite the year.
00:20So in 2021, you founded an online community called Beginning Is Now.
00:24Now that's morphed into Commence and you launched a haircare line this year.
00:27So tell me about it. Why was launching this line so important to you?
00:31So it's like any startup, you sort of have to learn how to pivot.
00:35And we went through a few different machinations because it started off with it just being a community because I wanted the dialogue to start with women.
00:44I was really dismayed that at 54, 55, I'm 59 now, but I was I started to really come into my own just as a woman.
00:55And my kids were pretty cooked and they were leaving. And, you know, I'd sort of come to this sort of revelation that I liked myself and that I had a lot more to do.
01:06Yeah. And I felt stronger and prettier. And I wasn't I didn't compare myself to other people.
01:12There was this sort of just buoyancy that I had. I always said I felt like the Macy's Day Parade Thanksgiving when you're just being like blown up and you feel like you're at the gas station.
01:22That was the way I used to be. Now I'm just a good flying, you know, whatever, balloon.
01:28But there was this feeling of, wow, I'm ready to start my life now because so much of my biological journey had been put in front of me.
01:38And you had deadlines that all of a sudden. And I was so dismayed that the marketing, marketing, beauty, what I was getting, the message I was getting back was you've had a good run.
01:49You know, you're you're good. Yeah, you're good. And so why don't you just take, you know, go.
01:54I listen. I want to learn to play Mahjong. I really do. But that was the message I was getting, which was like, why don't you just go go start a reading club or something?
02:02And and it was this dismissive sort of once your ovaries didn't work, you somehow lost value.
02:09And it made me very upset. So I thought, OK, I can't be the only one feeling this way.
02:15Why am I not allowed to feel beautiful and sexy? And, you know, these are wrinkles, but they come from smiling.
02:22You know, yeah, I'm going to do peels and do whatever I can to sort of feel my best, but I'm also going to work out and eat well, like all those things.
02:30And so I started this company, this community called Beginning Is Now during COVID.
02:36And we amassed an audience so quickly of like minded women who who said they were in this place of confidence in their life, but they weren't being it wasn't being supported by the beauty industry or by just the way we talk about everything is anti aging.
02:53And then we started talking about menopause and everybody thought, oh, that's revelatory.
02:58And then we came we went to we're just menopause. And so it was I said, why are we the hot girl at the bar or we're in Depends?
03:07Like, yeah, it's like that or dentures. It's like I was like, wait a minute.
03:12There's a bracket in here that's sexy and beautiful and strong and accomplished and and and financially, hopefully at least secure and independent.
03:23And and we've done we've worked at companies, we've left jobs, started jobs, raised families, and we just grew.
03:30And very quickly, I realized that they did want to buy something.
03:35And I kept saying, I don't want to monetize you or this feeling or community, right?
03:41I want us to stay a community, but I want to understand really what your challenges are.
03:46And it started the conversation started around hair changes, scalp changes, beauty changes.
03:55I don't like the word dry. And that's the word we keep getting associated with after a certain age.
04:01And so I there were all these little little things that I said, you know, maybe we do need to go into beauty.
04:08I resisted it. And then I realized if I was very specific, if the whole company was geared towards keeping the conversation with the community open,
04:17we would do these zooms with 50 women all over the world.
04:22And when you saw such a swath of of women, diversity and and socioeconomically and just the way their lives looked.
04:32But the through line was this sentiment about feeling powerful and confident and wanting but wanting solutions to problems that they were facing without them being anti-aging.
04:45You know, that makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that I find so interesting about you is that you've been the face of products forever without much input into what's actually.
04:55Oh, never. No. This is the first time. And how does it feel to take back that power and how much do you have power over this?
05:02I have all the power, which is an amazing thing to say. And when you are a smaller company and we work directly with the chemists,
05:14we are not bound to the rules that when you're with a huge, huge company, if you're backed by a PNG or something like that,
05:22they have minimums that you can use with regards to actives, actives in their products.
05:29So, you know, and too much of a good thing isn't always good. I mean, we saw that with recent companies, especially with hair.
05:36And so I work very closely with the formulator and, for instance, with the instant shampoo.
05:41And I said, also, I don't want to all of a sudden proliferate this this thought with a million skews.
05:47Like I don't want it to be more complicated. I want it to be streamlined. And I use a lot of different things.
05:53I, you know, I've got one eye cream for this and one eye for that.
05:56And I don't have it's a it's a mess in my cabinet, but I'm always searching.
06:01So I wanted this to be clear and solution based.
06:05And so we made sure that all of our actives are, you know, at a three or four or five, perhaps.
06:12Whereas a company that's very, very big can say, oh, put a point.
06:17Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, percent of hyaluronic acid in that product.
06:21And we can just put it on the label and it nobody knows the percentage.
06:26So I wanted to start with an instant shampoo because if I get like a good blowout, like I just like this.
06:32Yeah, I want it to last. I plan not to wash my hair for at least four days.
06:38And yet I want to be able to clean my scalp without drying my scalp.
06:43So we formulated an instant shampoo, which is a rice powder.
06:47All of our products are formula of plant based.
06:50But I said you have to have a moisturizing component.
06:54Hyaluronic acid is a molecule in and of itself that is too large for your pores on your scalp to absorb.
07:03Your skin can, but so we needed to find, and it's impeded by a hair, you know, the follicle.
07:09So we found a way to quaternize it and bring it down to its smallest form.
07:15One that is acceptable to a, to your scalp.
07:19And we encapsulated it. So I always think of it like little M&Ms, but they're like little army.
07:24They're doing like an army crawl. And they, they call it, it's funny, in the lab they call it a smart product.
07:30Because what it does is the rice powder absorbs the extra sebum and sweat and everything.
07:37And then the hyaluronic acid actually delivers moisture to where your scalp is dry.
07:43So that was the first product that we came up with. And I just wanted to do one product.
07:47I wanted to do a hero product and that was it.
07:50And that proved a bit difficult with minimums and with the lab.
07:55So we ended up starting with just three products.
07:59That's amazing. And you clearly researched it a lot.
08:02I'm obsessed with this stuff. You go to the lab and all you have to do is be interested.
08:08And they love talking to you. Our lab is in New Jersey. We're all entirely in the U.S.
08:13The only thing, full disclosure, is the packaging is from China.
08:18We can't afford to do it here yet. And it's all recyclable except for the spring on the pump.
08:24Full disclosure. You have to be like, you know, they ask you all these questions.
08:29Are you green? We are as much as possible doing it all the right way.
08:34Okay. Full disclosure.
08:37But also, you know, what's hard is I don't want to now just be a hair care company.
08:42Right. You want to keep that community?
08:44It's a balance. I can't abandon the community. The community is why we're here.
08:48The community informs us. You know, skin care, I think there's a glut to it.
08:54I think there's so much of it. It terrifies me. I don't know if I'll ever go into it.
09:00You know, color cosmetics is its own world. That's not where my motivation is.
09:06My motivation is eyebrows. You know, I've been talked about my eyebrows for my entire life.
09:13And they tear. So there are certain organic offshoots that we can.
09:19The goal is not, in my mind, when I hear lifestyle, it has become a very often used term.
09:31And I think it's confusing. And I don't want to fall into that trying to be everything to everybody.
09:39So it's a delicate balance. It's much harder. You know, it's easier to be one and then sort of have the other.
09:45But to start as a community and morph into, or not morph into, but grow into selling anything, product, anything,
09:55you have to be really, really, really careful.
09:57That makes a lot of sense.
09:58We just brought a new board member who was the president of Victoria's Secret.
10:05So he is now left there and he's on our board.
10:08And so I'm bringing in top beauty people, but also top people in community building and strategy and marketing.
10:16And Brooke, speaking of community, I know there's a lot of powerful women in this room.
10:19I know I've chatted with a lot of people who have watched your documentary.
10:23Last year, the subject of a two-part Hulu documentary titled Pretty Baby.
10:27Looking at how you were treated and sexualized as a child in the toxic culture that perpetuates misogyny.
10:32Now, a week after the election, how are you thinking about misogyny?
10:37What? I'm sorry, did you?
10:38Yes. How are you thinking about the role misogyny has played in this political cycle?
10:44And what's on your mind now going into a second Trump term here as women?
10:48I mean, listen, you know, I'm also a part of the problem. I perpetuated it.
10:53You know, that's how I made a living. I was the one in the jeans.
10:57I was the one in the, it paid the bills. My mom had, we could pay our rent.
11:01It's, so I'm in a, it's a slightly precarious place with it.
11:06And now I'm a mother of two daughters and my whole career gave me a life, you know?
11:13And so those are the things that I grapple with, you know, in therapy and, and, and all of that.
11:19And the only, so my personal approach to it is to write books about things like postpartum depression.
11:25It's to stand up for what I, what I believe and I want for my children.
11:29I am really, truly, slightly terrified. And it almost doesn't have, it's, it's almost, it's almost not about politics.
11:38It's, you know, it's, that was charming. Excuse me.
11:42It's almost not about, it's, it's, it's this belief, this internal fear that I have for my daughters,
11:49that they are losing, they are losing their agency.
11:53You know, the whole, part of the whole film was about finding your agency.
11:57About, listen, sex sells, right? Okay. It's always going to.
12:02How do we, how do we reconcile that?
12:05How do we stick up for what we need while still, we all want to feel beautiful.
12:11We want to be gazed upon and thought of as attractive.
12:15So it's, we're in a difficult position, you know?
12:18And I think if we can find a way to do it without anger, it's going to be important.
12:22But there's a lot of fear.
12:23And I fear for my, for my daughters, although they have a stronger voice than I ever did at their age.
12:30So.
12:31The Gen Z's is really good at that too.
12:33They are. I think they have to be careful too.
12:35I think you can swing so far in one direction that you alienate and you lose sight of how to make actual strong moves.
12:44And, and that, that help, help the community and help, help women and help.
12:50You know, I mean, it's interesting.
12:51We have a very, very close friend of my husband's, a person he works with who is now a trans woman.
13:01And the person was a male and is 70 something.
13:05And, and, and she is now getting hate from the trans community because she's not a pretty woman.
13:16And she's not putting in what other women or other trans are feeling is the right amount of money and time and effort into her appearance.
13:25And it's a fascinating conversation that I've had to have with her because I've said, you know, now you kind of understand what, what we've been dealing with and how are you going to handle it?
13:35And so I think we just need to keep the conversation really open and, and empathetic and, and just try to keep all of the, the vitriol and the anger out of it because that's not who we are either.
13:51It has to come from a place of confidence and pride and resolution that we, and faith in, in, in who we are.
14:01That makes a lot of sense.
14:02And I know we only have a few minutes left, but you have a new book coming out.
14:04I didn't even answer the question.
14:05No, no.
14:06And I, and I want to, I want to come back to this.
14:08So you have a new book coming out.
14:09Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old.
14:11As that's been coming, which is a great title, by the way.
14:15So any advice you have for, we have a ton of incredibly powerful women in this room.
14:21We've one minute left.
14:22Any quick advice you could give to them on how to survive this, this next four years and anything you've learned from your book?
14:28Well, the book came from a guy that was flirting with me, and then he found out my age because I said it as if it's not easy to Google.
14:35But he, and he went, oh, you shouldn't have told me that.
14:38And I, and I, like my eyes turned into like pinwheels.
14:42And it, what, what I realized was it ruined a fantasy that he had of something of me in the past.
14:48And I realize that that's what women are also dealing with.
14:52I'm never one to give advice because I'm not an expert in anything.
14:57But what I, what I will say is that rooms like this, conversations like this, real shared information and, and, and coming together and growing like this is going to be, I believe, where our power is.
15:12Because we're formidable alone and we're really formidable together.
15:17Yeah, that's fabulous advice.
15:19Well, thank you so much for being here.
15:21Thank all of you for listening.
15:22I appreciate it.