The Rundown Take
You Are Enough: Candas Nichole on Building a Business, a Brand, and a Legacy From Scratch
On this edition of U Talk Winning At The Game Of Life, Devin and Larry Frank Jr. sat down with St. Louis-raised, Atlanta-based multi-hyphenate Candas Nichole — master cosmetologist, singer, hand-sculpted shot-glass artist, and founder of the natural hair and skin line Afro Essentials — for a wide-ranging talk on turning raw creative instinct into a real business.
Key Takeaways
- Nichole traces her path from doing hair for church ladies in the sixth grade to styling for film, television, and music videos in Atlanta, before launching Afro Essentials after noticing postpartum hair struggles in herself and her daughter.
- Her second venture — hand-molded, hand-painted clay shot glasses and cups, custom-made from customer photos, sold at by Candas Nicole dot com — grew out of frustration with a maker who botched her own custom order.
- Caller Jamal Davis, a fan of black-owned hair care, floats becoming an investor live on air; Nichole and Devin agree to follow up off-air.
- A hard truth for the room: several well-known "natural" hair brands started black-owned, then got sold to commercial companies that quietly swapped in cheaper ingredients.
- Friday's show brings back Brett Romberg; next Tuesday's Winning At The Game Of Life features a real estate guest.
From Barbie Dolls to a Business
Nichole walked through an origin story that started with doing her dolls' hair as a kid who never quite fit in, through a music fraternity at Alabama A&M, a move to Atlanta to chase songwriting, and years doing hair and makeup for entertainment clients. The shift to product development came from necessity — she and her newborn daughter were both losing hair postpartum, and existing shelf products weren't cutting it, so she started mixing formulas at 2 a.m. between nursing sessions. That kitchen-table experimenting became Afro Essentials: sulfate-free, plant-based shampoo, a detangling conditioner, skin care, and a body cream built around what she calls "the Integrity of the hair" rather than chasing the lace-front trend.
Don't Let Friends and Family Discount You
The most pointed exchange of the night was about support — or the lack of it — from people closest to a small business owner. Nichole didn't hold back on people who expect a "friends and family" discount while paying full price everywhere else.
"It doesn't matter if we're friends or if we're blood or if we're any of this — you get your money up front, and don't feel bad because they didn't feel bad when they came to you and had the audacity to treat you like you're the swap meet."
She traced the same undervaluing to the wider hair-care industry, where black-owned brands get bought out and their formulas quietly cheapened, leaving loyal customers confused about why a product they loved stopped working the same way.
Honor Your Cycles, Then Get Back to It
Asked how she juggles hair, skin care, music, jewelry, and clay art at once, Nichole credited working from purpose rather than force — and being willing to name a wall when she hits one, take a nap, and come back rather than burning out. Her closing advice to young women watching: know yourself, be confident before you try to sell anything, and understand that your following will find you if the work is honest. The night wrapped with plugs for the November 11 U Talk Hurricane Bash in Duluth and a reminder that the show exists in part to give entrepreneurs like Nichole a stage.