00:00With $50 and some business cards and an idea, I was able to make Beauty Bakery into a multi-million
00:07dollar business.
00:07To go from food stamps to that is to be self-made.
00:11I didn't have a network.
00:13I come from a place where a lot of people don't have that education, they don't have
00:20that knowledge.
00:21It's not like I could call up L'Oreal and ask how to become their competitor.
00:25I didn't care about the inaccessibility of all of the answers.
00:31I just cared about making this dream come true.
00:33My name is Kashmir Nicole.
00:36I am Beauty Bakery's president, CEO, founder, and creative director, so I wear a lot of
00:44hats and I'm momma too.
00:45A lot of people are in love with Beauty Bakery and the story, but the story is my life from
00:50breast cancer at 27, a double mastectomy, reconstruction surgery.
00:56The times that we didn't have money or didn't have food or didn't have a car.
01:01The times that I had to leave a job because I knew I couldn't give what they needed.
01:06Just looking back over everything and saying, wow, now I understand why everything had to
01:12happen that way.
01:20I knew I wanted to pursue something that would allow me to give my daughter a quality
01:26life.
01:27Giving my two week notice to my former employer was like, wow, like I can do this.
01:33This is me from food stamps and section eight and every government assistant program that
01:39there was like, this is me being that independent that I can leave the job and go and work for
01:45myself.
01:46This is incredible.
01:47And now that I am the employer, I try my best to be understanding.
01:52The best advice I've ever been given in life would be from one of my very close friends.
01:58And she said to me one day, Kashmir, things don't happen to you.
02:03They happen for you.
02:04And oh my God, that life was so healing, it almost brings tears to my eyes right now.
02:15For me, the most challenging thing about working for someone else prior to working for Beauty
02:20Bakery was the fact that I was a mother.
02:23How do I give this job a commitment and how do I give my daughter 100% of myself?
02:30It just, there was an imbalance.
02:32As I was building the brand, I would find that I would be up until the wee hours of the
02:37morning,
02:37that I could work on Beauty Bakery for 14, 16 hours, and nothing would stop me except
02:42needing food, water, and sleep.
02:46I love makeup because I think it's one of the most incredible ways to be able to express
02:50yourself.
02:51I do consider makeup to have to be self-care worthy.
02:54The way that I make my makeup self-care worthy is when I don't continue to add on more and
03:00more and more and more products.
03:01So what I like to do is put on a simple face, something that I'm confident in, something
03:05that I know how to do for sure.
03:07My hardest moment professionally has been accepting that while I spearheaded this entire concept
03:14for Beauty Bakery and it's taken off and it's so great that actually behind the scenes there's
03:21still a lot that I have to learn and work on.
03:25I get frustrated because there's only a limited amount of time that I have to learn that, learn
03:31it well, and be able to execute on it.
03:33And so juggling that, knowing that I'm missing something, knowing how bad I need it or how bad
03:39the company needs it is really hard.
03:41So I just try not to think about it and just work, work, work, work, work, and try and
03:45like master that thing.
