From Beauty Expert to Boss Lady
Not everyone can pass through the school of hard knocks and emerge victorious, but the impeccable Angelica Prather did just that. She went from being a beauty expert and salon owner to entrepreneur and business coach, championing Black women along the way. As the Founder and CEO of ‘Charge Your Worth Academy™’, she is a towering figure in the African American community today.
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Angelica remains transparent about her journey and recalls each setback with pride. For instance, she tried opening her own hair salon twice in New York, but it didn’t work out even once. “This painful time of failure was the roadmap to my success. While that time I felt hopeless, in hindsight I realize it’s the best lesson I have ever learned in my entrepreneurship journey. I needed time to develop my skills, and I needed to mature to handle the responsibility and sacrifice it takes to be a salon owner,” she says.
Angelica enrolled herself in business classes, financial classes and continued to work in salons to learn more about the business structure so that when the time was right, she would be more knowledgeable and better equipped to actually open and build a profitable hair salon, which she did. This allowed her to be a successful hairstylist, salon owner, and businesswoman for over 17 years and earn 6 figures.
When Angelica started her entrepreneur journey in her early 20s, she realized the discrimination in funding Black owned businesses when even with good credit and no debts, she was often turned down for business loans. The story repeated itself during the pandemic and Angelica was quick to notice that black hairstylists and beauty professional businesses were closing faster and facing a lack of income.
With a lot of prayer and consideration, Angelica and her husband decided it was time for her to retire from being a full-time salon owner and hair stylist and answer the call to help the community. And thus, was born – Charge Your Worth Academy, an online educational academy for Black beauty professionals and minority service-based business owners to learn financial principles, business structures, branding and marketing.
Charge Your Worth Academy™ is a curriculum structure and helps driven beauty professionals transform their business and go from being overworked and not making profit to a full-time recurring revenue through a 6-month group coaching program. Angelica and her husband Terrence Prather created this Academy to help their community and bridge the marketplace. Their main mission is to provide resources, tools, and education to close the income gap.
Before deciding to retire, Angelica and Terrence also launched a hair care product line named after Angelica’s deceased mother – Robyn Laurél, with their first collection being called Pure Legacy. The professional grade products are made in USA and are cruelty free, paraben free and color safe. Their hair products are also sulfate free, SD alcohol free and sodium chloride free. They are designed to infuse your hair with the vitamins and minerals your hair needs to hydrate and restore its health. Some of their main ingredients comprise Provitamin B5, Argan oil and Vitamin A, C, E.
“We wanted to create a simplistic hair care product line by offering our products in kits. One of our main goals is to honor my mother who started a career path in the beauty industry but passed away at the age of 31. Our motto for Robyn Laurél & Co products is – “your hair is an extension of you, and I am an extension of my mother and this is what Pure Legacy is about,” says Angelica, who’s certainly done her mother proud.
As a young girl who lost her parents at the tender age of 10, Angelica found inspiration in her grandmother and mom. “My grandmother believed in my dreams and her faith motivated me even when I didn’t want to keep going. On the other hand, my mother spent her 31 years on this earth loving and supporting people, she was a great example of being selfless. She would always tell me I’m a representation of her but most of all I’m a representation of God. That stuck with me and became my life motto,” remembers Angelica.
Sensitive, smart, and fueled by passion, it didn’t take long for Angelica to turn every failure into success. In addition to empowering beauty professionals, she is also a thriving income strategist and motivational speaker today.
Speaking about what motivates her, she says, “leaving a legacy for my children and family, and truly helping other African American families win financially. I want to leave an imprint on all those who have come into my life. When I see my students enrolled in Charge Your Worth Academy™ I get excited because their income has increased and they are no more working 10-12 hrs a day, it drives me to keep going.”
Angelica adds that the love and support of her husband is also a motivation for her: “I don’t credit all my success to just hard work. I have a village of people that truly support my dreams. My husband, family and best friends are my greatest supporters. My faith in God too opened doors by bringing the right people in my life.”
A born leader, Angelica has inspired innumerous young Black women to break their shackles and find financial reward. “When you create more leaders, you are creating change in the world. All you need is someone to believe in you, motivate you and activate your inner gifts,” she says.
Yet, Angelica found her calling without any guidance in the rat race of New York. “Most of my success is accredited to real life trial and error, mistakes and failures. In my early years I thought the rat race was the way to success and happiness. After experiencing the burnout, I made a huge decision to relocate to California and start my entrepreneur journey there as it affords a better work play balance. I believe you don’t have to sacrifice being a good wife and mother by having a career. You can manage it all if you find a healthy balance and manage what success means to you at each stage of life.”
Not one to rest on her laurels, unstoppable Angelica dreams of opening the Robyn Laurél Salon Suites throughout the USA and infuse the Charge Your Worth Academy™ educational center. Another goal is to launch her and Terrence’s non profit called The Norma Jean Foundation which supports minority single parents with funding to put their children in extracurricular activity or trade programs. “This will help young kids from getting in trouble with the law and give them hope to achieve more in life. We are both products of single parents and without a loving family to help us identify our gifts and talents, we don’t know where we would be. We just want to do our part and give back,” says the admirable Angelica Prather.
