Name: Life Lessons With Tina Knowles
Uploaded: 2026-10-14
Duration: 18 min 34 s

In the late 1980s, Tina Knowles owned a successful Houston hair salon. Since then, she has built a prominent, multifaceted career spanning entrepreneurship, fashion, beauty, creative direction, and philanthropy. She is also the author of Matriarch, a bestselling memoir. Knowles joins us to share the life and business lessons she has gleaned from decades spent identifying opportunity, serving customers, and helping shape some of the most influential brands in modern global culture.

Tina Knowles, American Businesswoman and Author
Sheryl Estrada, Senior Writer, Finance, Fortune

Life Lessons With Tina Knowles

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Good morning everyone. Ms. Tina Knowles. It is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. So, uh, let's dive into our conversation. We, there's a lot we wanna learn from you. So Miss Tina, you serve as vice chairwoman of Sacred, working alongside your daughter Beyonce Knowles Carter. Since launching in 2024, you've taken off. I'll tell you some stats. Last year, its debut at Ulta Beauty was the most successful prestige hair care launch in the retailer's history. Sacred has won 89 beauty industry awards and recently the brand expanded its retail presence beyond the US into the UK. Can you tell us what's behind the vision of sacred and the momentum? Well, the vision for it was, I'll just tell you a quick story. I had a hair salon. Um, and back in those times there were, there was a product I don't know if you guys are familiar with Joyo, it's one of my favorite products, uh, because they actually ground up human hair and put it in the product, so your hair is made of protein, right, so it would just suck it in and just make the hair strong, but what I didn't find was the oils and the balance of that if you had color treated hair. Had damaged hair if you just had healthy hair but you want to keep it healthy um and so I would mix up these butters and hot olive oil treatments and all the stuff sought in my salon just to give people treatments to balance it so we had to do two different types of treatments so the dream has always been to create a product that had everything that you need in it in one product and one step. And um and Beyonce had that dream as well because I was doing all those things to her hair like yeah torturing them and they worked in the hair salon and so it's been a long time coming uh we do so much research and development uh she decided to fund the product herself because we were gonna get some investors and they were like you guys spend too much money on research and development and testing. Um, we test and test and test and we test in 3 countries to do it, it, it encompasses every hair texture and it penetrates, um, there's a thing called molecular weight. I don't wanna bore y'all with it, but it's, it's how big the pore is in your hair and if something is too big and it just lays on top to make the hair feel good, it's not doing anything to penetrate. So that I was just adamant about that and um just to come up with solutions to problems for hair care. So it's been a blast. I mean it's my favorite thing. We were just in London, you were talking about that and we went to all these salons and one salon we just popped up on them, rolled up on them as a kid. No, they didn't know we were coming. They said no y'all can't come in here. Go away but we we stayed and we kinda took over the salon and um that's what sacred is it's like really really organic and our customers have done. The marketing for us because it's, you know, it's really real, the quality product, yes. So at Sacred you have women leading across all leadership levels. How do you approach finding the right talent that aligns with your vision? Well, we have the best CEO, uh, Grace, and, uh, she is amazing at finding good people, you know, that, that's a big part of being the, the best CEO is being able to find these people, and she's found the best team that's just. Small but mighty and very dedicated they love the product they believe in the product and so it's not work for us it really is it's like a passion it's a passion project, yeah. You mentioned your salon in Houston, so I wanna go back to that. Uh, you were a businesswoman, uh, and you found kind of a niche or market and a way that other salons weren't serving women, but can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah, I used to go to a hair salon. And they had the best skills like they were amazing, but I would go in there and I would be in there for like 4 or 5 hours because it would be all this gossip and it would be, you know, selling dinners and you know and it was just so much stuff going on that was entertaining for some women, but for me I had stuff to do so I was like I wanna get in here and get out of here so I, my approach to business has always been. Find a need that's that's not being fulfilled or or it's not enough of that to go around and so that you start your business based on something that nobody else offers and so that's what we did we set up a salon catering to professional women we guarantee that you got in and out that you were waited on within the 1st 15 minutes and if you did you weren't satisfied you got your money back. And let me tell you, when you have a bunch of hair stylists and they have to work for free, they learn very quickly people in and out. So and we served wine and we just, we, we networked for the businesses, uh, introduced people and did an arm of philanthropy. It was a diff very different environment for a salon, but it worked really well and, and you probably bring a lot of those learnings into sacred absolutely OK. Um, so Messina, you've spent a lot of your life helping others express who they are, and you recently decided to publish a memoir that's very revealing of your life and, and your family. It's called Matriarch. Great, um, and, and then it resulted in you becoming a bestselling author at age 71. What were the learnings from that book, uh, And the process of writing that book that stayed most with you. Well, the book was really me. Coming into myself, uh, fully at 60 I got at 59 I got divorced and I remember thinking oh my God, my life is over like I'm so you know old and it's crazy how we get ourselves in the. Thinking that you know life is over and um but I found myself after that I started going back to museums I picked up my art books I I started doing me and making myself a priority and not hiding because I spent a lot of my life trying not to embarrass my kids that's a that's a real big feat I always. I was all, you know, I always said I, I'm not gonna do anything to embarrass them, um, and so therefore I hid a lot and, um, and I didn't take credit for a lot of the work that I did as a woman we just do it because it needs to be done, but at. 5960 something clicked and I'm like Tina you gotta live because you know you are still young enough and it's funny because at 70 that was another milestone and ironically I was going through a second divorce. And uh it's something about those divorces that make you uh you know take a look at yourself and um and I started writing a memoir and I said it's time because in my you know with my family people create whatever narrative they feel like every day especially with social media and I'm constantly reading the craziest stuff about myself. And I wanted to set the record straight so I started writing never knowing that I would go to the depths that I did and that I could be so vulnerable and so open uh but I did as you start writing it's kind of like therapy so it's therapy for me. There's um a verse in in the book that really resonated with me. Uh, you wrote, we all have this power to be matriarchs, to be a woman of sacred practice of nurturing, guiding, protecting, foreseeing, and remembering. Can you tell us what that means um in terms of your legacy? I know that your mom played a major role in your life and and and uh taught you how to be the woman that you are today so can you talk a little? Yeah, I think that you know I talk to women all the time. I was on a. Playing last night ironically with uh with someone and she was like well I just don't know if I'm gonna be a good mother like I'm really worried about it I didn't have a great mother to model for me and um you know and I shared that same thing with her because we all have the power to nurture it's a decision that you make um that you are going to be a good mother that you're gonna read the books to give you the information you know I took my kids to therapy at. At very young and in a black community that's like back then especially was a no no but I took them because I wanted them to be close I wanted them to be confident and it was the best thing I could've done so you don't have to follow any rules and you don't have to be the mother that you know. You weren't fortunate enough to have a great mom you don't have to be that you can be whatever you wanna be and um so that's what I'm saying we all have the power to nurture we all have the power to instill great things in our kids and value them and prioritize them it's a decision that you make. I wanted to ask you um how you have this this great business sensibility. And uh sometimes it's hard to find that confidence. Where did you find that confidence to know I have a good idea, I have a lot to say, and I'm, I'm gonna, gonna do it. Um, back with my salon again, everything in my life is, is divine intervention from God, I believe, because, uh, every. Career change has come because, not because of, but Something goes on in my life that makes me have to step it up and um and I was in a marriage and at that time before I opened my salon I was like I really gotta get my stuff together because I've been out of the job market for 5 years and I gotta create a business to be able to take care of my kids and take care of myself. I'll never be dependent again. And that's how my salon was born, uh, out of necessity, but I've always had since I was a kid I realized even in writing that book that I was always a little entrepreneur because my girlfriend and I used to sell. Uh, 4 pieces of sandwiches at school we used to sell popcorn balls and candy apples and things to make money for like Christmas and I always had this good business sense. I just didn't have the confidence, but when I opened my salon, it was just good common sense and it was good nurturing of my clients. They became like my community and uh I just always have vision. I always have vision, sometimes more vision than. It's probably good for me because. Because my ideas are popping into my head constantly. And I think it's important that you have the ability to translate that vision into a reality and, and you've done that. Um, I wanna talk about also you're multi-talented, you're a fabulous designer. Where did that stem from? Well, my mom was a designer and a seamstress and her mom was a designer and a seamstress and it goes back on, um. You know, I found out if you read the book you'll you'll see that I found out that my great grandmother, my great great grandmother who were enslaved, they were seamstresses that was their skill so they passed it down and my also my nephew Johnny who was my best friend. My gay nephew Johnny, who was the best designer, if he was born in another place or time, he could've been. You know I don't know any Oscar de la Renta, but, um, but he and I were best friends and we made all of our clothes and we were, we might have been the poorest kids but we're the sharpest kids all the time. Yeah, you're neat. Um, I wanna go to the present. OK, so today you're building a business. You're helping others build something of their own. Through Sacred and the Bay Good Fund and your work with the Waco Theater, what do you want the next generation to learn? What do you want to be possible for them? Well, I want them to live to their best ability um to be courageous and one thing you know I realized about myself is that. I've changed careers like 5 times and I'm always fearless because I feel like I'm just gonna get in there and I'm gonna try my best and if it doesn't work out I'll go do something else um and I tell young people that all the time just give it 100% it's gonna work and if it doesn't then you've had that experience and you'll use that experience for your next endeavor yeah but um so I want them to know that that keeping. You know just being a good person is important having a really great work ethic and never feeling entitled to anything, yeah, what are you looking forward to next? What are you excited about building? Um You know I had this dream always that I could do full time philanthropy but it hadn't worked out that way uh because I work in you know I work at Sacred um I work at Parkwood which is my daughter's uh company and. But philanthropy is really my passion right now, so I have a charity and I'm the chairperson for Be Good, my daughter's charity, so that is my dream in the next couple of years because I'm 72. It's not like I'm gonna be around and, you know, forever, but I want to transition in the full-time, uh, philanthropy. What is it about philanthropy especially that. Makes you want to do more and more oh God because it's, you know, it's the joy that I get from making a difference. I mean it sounds corny, but it's the honest to God truth it's like the best joy to know that you made a difference and that when I leave this world that there will be some um. You know, remnants of of the good that I did, it's really, really important to me. The theater, um, the Vision Performing Arts Center, is that something that actress Marla Gibbs? Yes, it's amazing um we had a little in Waco Waco stands for where art can occur and that's my charity. And what we do is um my ex-husband and I started together and he was an actor, he's an actor and he did the theater part. And I did the mentoring of kids because I'm really good with kids and so I um we started off with 26 girls from underserved communities and we exposed them to everything from the from the arts to the museums to etiquette to travel we traveled to Vegas because that's what we can afford and um they get to stay in a hotel one night and order room service and. They just learn life skills that are gonna take them far and we try to give them dreams to go to school or to do something constructive when they get out that's one aspect of it, but we had a 100 seat theater and we used that theater to teach the kids to have meetings, uh, to for them to have passion days. It was sort of a community theater even though it was in, uh, North Hollywood. And our kids are out in South Central, but um Marla Gibbs, I don't know if you guys know her, she was An actress very big in sitcoms, she had this dream and she bought the Vision Theater which is in Lemur Park, and she put all of her money into it that and a and a speakeasy, and this was at the time that Lemur Park was like jazz and theater and arts and it was just a really cool area and then the riots came and the. Became a depression and she wound up losing the building so I've always been fascinated by that beautiful theater uh but it was really in disarray and the city took on maybe about 20 years ago they started on they put $40 million into this beautiful state of the art and it's a real big piece of history and so her dreams for it we're we're planning on following her lead on that and. Making a community center and having the arts there and so I'm really really excited about it. That's amazing yeah um we're almost out of time. Want to know if you have one last piece of advice for the women here we've all gathered together this week. Well, this group doesn't seem like they need a lot of advice. Around here but um just to be authentically yourself that's my mantra for myself and to live your life you know to the fullest every day because you just never know you know I had breast cancer last year and um thank God you know it was early stages but it brought a whole new perspective. Into my vision of, you know, what I want for my life and, and how valuable every single day is. So yeah, appreciate every moment, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, Ms. Tina, it was an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, thank you guys.