The Spectrum

Business

Entrepreneurs Want to Spread Positivity

By Christian Richardson

Spectrum staff

Nia Imani Wellman, 21, designed a mobile app that’s all about hair. R’chelle Ayanna Boyce, 24, designs clothes imprinted with Christian messages and scripture. Every item in the apparel line that Ty’leib Redd, 18, launched is imprinted with “fly,” which stands for “first love yourself.”

These young entrepreneurs said they are trying to do more than just make money by selling a product. They also are hoping people who become their customers will be motivated and uplifted by their stories of overcoming personal hardship.

“If you’re going to ask me if I’m gay don’t sugar coat it,” said Wellman, who created the Hair Days app for women of color with natural hair and has been criticized by her relatives and peers for not being a heterosexual. She will be a senior at Virginia’s Hampton University in fall 2018.

“I’m a lesbian,” she continued, “and that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Rather than let the criticism drag her down, she focuses on what she finds beautiful in herself and on teaching other people to do the same.

Boyce and Redd share Wellman’s belief that focusing on the positive is a good thing. It took a lot, Boyce said, to get through the grief of her parents’ deaths. Her mother died when Boyce was 10 years old and her father when she was 21. Her parents raised her in a black Baptist church in Manhattan. The T-shirts and baseball caps from her Prevail clothing line are imprinted with religious and other encouraging slogans.

An encounter with a homeless man on the 2 subway train planted the seed for her business.

“Normally, I don’t give homeless people money because you never know what’s real or not,” said Boyce, a teacher’s assistant at a charter school. “But God told me to give him something and I was obedient. When I gave him something, he started shouting and speaking life into me: ‘Oh, my God, you’re an overcomer. I see greatness in your future’ … Later that day I started envisioning colors … ”

They included the yellow, orange, royal blue, red, green and purple on the subway car she designed to be Prevail’s logo. “What stood out from what the homeless man said,” she said, was the word “overcomer.”

She considers herself to be an overcomer. So does, Ty’Leib Redd. In May 2018, he had a non-cancerous tumor removed from his left kidney during eight hours of surgery. “It was causing me to have high blood pressure, pass out at times and have really bad headaches. I couldn’t even move,” he said.

Today, his health is fine. Through his Young Fly (first love yourself) Fashion line of T-shirts and baseball caps, he hopes to motivate others—and to fund part of his upcoming college education. His shirts have such slogans as “Nerd Today/CEO Tomorrow” and “Work Hard/Dream.”

“Yes, there may be obstacles,” Redd said. “But you have to keep pushing.”