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Inspiration May 8, 2019
For almost every decision international award-winning celebrity hairstylist Tara Smith has made, her friends and family thought she was a little crazy. But you can’t make it to the top without taking a few wild risks.
At the young age of 24, she was already running hair departments on the set of major films and TV shows. She was working on sets such as “The Three Musketeers” and “Death Proof” by Quentin Tarantino. Most recently, she designed all the wigs for Patricia Arquette for Hulu’s “The Act.”
In a bold move, she decided to take a break to pursue and develop her own hair care line that was true to her values and core beliefs and it paid off. Tara has now established her own vegan hair care line that retails online and also in-store with Blue Mercury. She is also about to launch on QVC UK.
Her rise is largely due in part to the fact that she visualized every goal she reached. For a lot of people, it’s about seeing it to believe it, but Smith only saw her success if she believed in it beforehand.
She created vision boards and believed in each achievement until her dreams came true. She used to imagine her haircare products in every single person’s bag, which is what she believes contributed to her successful brand.
“Some people are of the belief that you need to see it to believe it,” Smith said. “There are more than two types of people but, as an analogy, you’ve either got the rolling stone or the steady eddy. The steady eddy says, ‘I need to see it to believe it.’ There is nothing wrong with them; they’re amazing. Or you have the rolling stone, which is more like myself who says, ‘I’ll believe it, then I’ll see it’ and that has been my whole life.”
“I believe I’ll one day be standing on a movie set. I believed it. I visualized it.
It’s not about it happening right there. It will happen in its divine timing.” Overall, patience has been a big lesson.
Smith, also an ENTITY mentor, sat with us to speak about the importance of vegan haircare and how she rose up the ladder.
ENTITY: What is the importance of vegan hair care?
TS: I saw my grandmother with psoriasis and flakey skin on her hands. And the actors I was working with were coming in with issues on their head, I realized these products are carcinogenic. We now have an epidemic where 1 in 5 people get dementia, 1 in 2 women get cancer and 1 in 3 men get cancer. I’m not saying that’s through shampoo, but I am saying is that it’s a contributing factor. If you eat too much of the wrong food, you’re going to swell up or you’re going to get fat and the body will become acidic.
So, you have to do things in moderation because what I’m trying to push out into the world is trying to get people to wake up and be conscious. Eighty percent of women color their hair. I’m 46 years of age, I have a little grey hair, I color it. But then I counteract it by washing my hair with a really healthy product that actually works, which is my own brand. My most important tagline is what you put on your body is as important as what you put in it. The skin is the largest organ of the body and a lot of us forget that there is skin on our head – this is head care, not hair care. You have to take care of your head. On an energetic level, we all have chakras, that is your crown chakra. Your head is your crown so whether you shave your head or have long or short hair, you need to put good products on there and what I mean by good, I mean by plant-based ingredients.
ENTITY: What made you want to go into hair care after being such a highly regarded hair stylist?
TS: Hair is something that just comes organically to me, and I just have this gift from God with my fingers. I’m great with doing that, and I just feel I have a purpose on this planet. It’s not only making people feel good or creating characters and doing movies. I feel so so passionate about building a conscious hair care brand that becomes a health care brand. So people are not going to be getting cancer in the way they are and we’re not going to have these statistics about dementia, and I think that’s one of the reasons I recently joined the board of GiveLove.
ENTITY: How does your hair care line give back to the environment?
TS: The environment is hugely important to us all and, here at Tara Smith, we are completely plant-based. We use only natural ingredients and our bottles biodegrade within five years.
Not only that, but I have also taken the decision to give back to certain good causes that I take an active involvement in such as the Give Love initiative. Also, for six years I fulfilled the role of Good Will ambassador for Shine on Sierra Leone.
When you’re buying shampoo, we’ll give back to GiveLove which will support more toilets being put in. People have more cellphones in Sub-Saharan Africa than they do toilets. GiveLove doesn’t just work in Africa, they are in seven countries around the world. However, they take human fecal matter and put it in the soil for fertilizer and it’s the best fertilizer you can think of. It doesn’t smell. In the states, it’s called biofeed and that biofeed is human fecal matter. In my products, I have highly potent plant botanicals in my products so that relationship is the yin and yang.
ENTITY: Your success comes so much from your own perseverance, staying true to yourself and believing in yourself.
TS: I run marathons and Natalie Imbruglia asked me to run a marathon with her, so we both ran the London Marathon. We did not train together but it kept me focused. I try to look at my journey like a marathon. At the end of the day, I believe I will have a very successful global brand and my legacy will last. I was the first brand in Blue Mercury to be vegan. Now, two of the brands are turning their products vegan. I’m not bummed by it, I applaud it. For me, I look at my life like a marathon. I’m going over the finish line. When you are on the 21st mile, you realize ‘I can’t do this,’ but then you break through. It’s that perseverance. There is a saying that you have the most talented people in the world but they don’t persevere. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
ENTITY: What advice would you have for young women trying to build their careers?
TS: Observe what the people are saying, but you don’t have to believe it. Just observe it. Then, get interested in why you’re having the reaction you’re having. Sit with that feeling and try to observe why it’s coming from within yourself. Then, if you realize it’s fear, just shake it off because fear is false evidence appearing real. That’s what it is. That’s all it is.
When Smith’s closed ones tried to convince her to stay in her hometown of Leicester, England and to not pursue a career in working on film sets, she reminded herself that she doesn’t “need anyone to dim my light that I’m trying to keep bright.”
Smith’s journey was very dependent on trusting her own gut. During every turn, she knew to take a chance on herself. By investing in herself, she was able to prove that she was on the right path and attain the dreams she was told were impossible.
