Vicky Tsai May Be In A New Chapter, But She's Still Busier Than Ever

In TZR’s franchise Scare-Free Sundays, industry leaders discuss the all-too-common weekend anxiety (aka Sunday Scaries) that can rob one of the relaxation and rest they so desperately need to properly take on the week ahead. Here, we sit down with Vicky Tsai, founder of Tatcha, for her tips on how to keep work stress at bay.

Vicky Tsai isn’t great at sitting still. A true entrepreneur, the beauty expert and founder of skin care brand Tatcha — inspired by the rituals of the Japanese geisha — always has something in the works ... or several things, as it happens. In fact, even five years after selling the label to mega giant Unilever, Tsai says she’s busier than ever, continuing to advise on Tatcha as well as work on the brand’s philanthropic partnership with Room To Read, an organization she’s been championing since Tatcha’s early days.

Tsai recalls reading the memoir of John Wood, Room To Read’s founder, titled Leaving Microsoft to Change the World back in the early aughts, just after she left her own corporate job. “He had launched Microsoft in China and then found his life's purpose with helping kids get educated,” she says. “Now, almost 25 years later, their work has benefited over 40 million children. So they're one of the leading organizations globally with a big, audacious goal of ending illiteracy in our lifetime.”

Inspired, Tsai joined the fight to end global illiteracy, partnering with the organization on the Beautiful Faces, Beautiful Futures program, which has been embedding in Tatcha’s ethos from day one. For the past 15 years, a portion of every Tatcha purchase supports Room to Read’s goal in funding schools and providing books for children around the world. “We’re now crossing 10 million days of school, and as Tatcha grows, all of this grows because it's built into our DNA,” says Tsai. “It's not a marketing expense, it's part of our cost of goods sold. So we’re celebrating 10 million, but I'm looking forward to 10 million more, a hundred million more. We got to keep going.”

And so will Tsai. Although the weight of serving as CEO of a multi-million-dollar beauty empire is no longer a factor, a different set of challenges and pressures have set in. In addition to her work on Tatcha and Room To Read, she also mentors aspiring beauty entrepreneurs and is a full-time mom for her 15-year-old daughter. While the stress of this new chapter feels different, it’s still stress nonetheless. But, after two decades of growing a global beauty brand, Tsai has learned a thing or two about managing work-related anxiety and keeping her mental health in check.

Ahead, the entrepreneur shares her tips on her new normal and how she practices true self-care while also trying to take care of everyone else around her.

Talk to me about your current day-to-day? How much is dedicated to Tatcha and how much is dedicated to Room To Read, would you say?

Ten years ago, Tatcha was still young and my child was very young, so everything was focused about building and growing. Now I'm really fortunate to have leaders and teams running the day-to-day. So my focus is really just on being really clear on my personal purpose and using my time and my resources efficiently to give back, because time is still limited. I have a teenager at home. I'm still busy. I still probably work 50 hours a week, just not on one thing. Now it's on three or four things.

So, yeah, it's different. I'm not building an organization anymore. What I'm trying to do is use those resources to help as many people as I can in the most efficient way I can. Sometimes it's investing in other startups, usually ones led by women of color. We're mentoring them. And I think at any given time, I probably have about three dozen mentees. Then, I’m trying to support Tatcha and its continued growth supporting Room to Read, and then supporting my daughter who's going to turn 15.

Do you take days off? What do those look like for you?

I don't take entire days because there's no day off as a mom, to be honest. But I do take moments, and I find, for me, that's even more important. Skin care is my version of a meditative practice. The Zen monk, Ito-san, who we've been lucky enough to study with all this time, said meditation isn't just sitting there being like, ‘Mmmm,” which I'm bad at. He said meditation is a way of life.

So, he taught me walking meditation, eating meditation, sleeping meditation. I've also learned that you can make anything a meditative practice. So my skin care ritual only takes me two minutes either side of the day, but I tend to slow it down and try to be really intentional about what I think about during those moments as a way to come back to myself, come back to the moment. So I do that.

In the middle of the day, I always exercise. I'm finding at this point in my life, that's the best thing I can do for my mental health. I'm 46, so I have to worry about things like bone density, perimenopause, all the fun stuff. So exercise is like attacking many birds with one stone.

[There’s also] shinrin yoku, which is forest bathing. There's a lot of science on the benefit of that. So whenever I can, I just try to get out and walk. We're lucky that we can find trees and everybody can do that. And then I have various gratitude practices that I try to keep in place, whether it's a moment of expressed gratitude or prayers for other people when I go to sleep at night. So, yeah, those are sort of my little rituals, if you will.

What about weekends? What do those look like?

Saturday morning is always for family breakfast. My daughter trains in kickboxing, or Muay Thai, so I normally join her for an hour. Then, I take her riding. Equine therapy and its benefits are very, very, very real. Also, I love watching her shovel poop because there's value to that. We're normally around horses for the afternoon. Also, I've gotten really into Thai massage. It's like yoga, but you have to do it for me.

I won't spend money on nice purses or nice things like that. I don't have a lot of need for things, but my investment in both time and resources goes to either helping other people find their purpose or just trying to take care of my body. I did mortgage my health during the time when I was CEO. Now I'm 46, I've got to pay the piper. It's time to get to work.

Are there any hard and fast rules you stick to when you’re not in work mode?

I actually did something much more drastic. I quit social media in 2020 and I haven't come back. I just deactivated everything. I changed my phone number and my email so that only people who I want to be in touch with are in touch with me. And those people know that I'm, for the most part, not connected to my phone. So I don't live a digital life for the most part.

Wow. What effect has that had on you over the years?

I'm so much more present, and maybe that's why I don't need to spend weekends in the traditional way because my concept of work and leisure is different. I feel like I could work at any time and be productive. I could take moments of restfulness at any time and be productive because I'm not wasting time doing stuff that drains my energy.

How does stress show up for you and how do you combat that?

I am not good at emoting, which is not good. That's not a flex. And I'm working on it. So, for me, stress comes through my body and through my skin. And that's why I started Tatcha in the first place because of my dermatitis. Still, to this day, if I am stressed out, I'll get hives. And I used to resent them because they're so itchy and awful and they spread to the point that I can't sleep at night. Then, I started to think about it as my body trying to take care of me by giving me a warning signal that there's something that I'm not addressing. I noticed, for example, if I get a hive across my throat, it's because I'm not saying something that needs to be said.

I could fight it, I could ignore it for weeks, and it just will get worse and worse and worse. Finally, I'll say, ‘OK, what am I not saying that needs to be said?’ And I'll say it out loud to whoever needs to hear it and it goes away the next day.

If you know you have a busy week ahead of you, how do you mentally prepare for that?

So my age, it's called the sandwich generation, where you've got kids to take care of and you've got your older generation. My parents are still independent and doing OK, but they’re in their 70s. So, there's a lot to consider. There's always more than I can handle on any day of the week, whether it's for my family or for work.

So, I use the four quadrant rule for to-do lists. It's from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The top left quadrant is for [the most] important tasks, which means I have to get them done today. Top right quadrant is for slightly less urgent things — if you're going to do anything else, do this today. Bottom left is for important things that should get done, but it doesn’t have to be today. And then there's other. So, instead of one to-do list, I have four. And I'm pretty disciplined about only doing the top left quadrant on any day, and I am trying to do less. Which means saying yes to less, which used to be really, really, really hard for me. Now it gets a lot easier. ‘No’ is a full sentence.