Today we’d like to introduce you to Angel Wright.
Hi Angel, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I’m truly a GeorgiaLina girl! My mama is from Savannah, Georgia, and my father is from a small town in South Carolina called Levi. Although my father was in my life, he was not in the home in which I was raised by my mother. I come from very humble beginnings mixed with a lot of poverty and a little abuse. However, I have always known there was more in this world for me, and I learned early that education was my “way out.”
Although I was the first of my grandmother’s children and grandchildren to graduate from a four-year college/university, I never doubted that I would attend college and graduate. After earning a B.S. in Education and an M.Ed. in Counseling & Psychology, I worked in education in different capacities for 17 years in state, federal, and international arenas until I decided to follow God’s leading to resign from my career and follow Him.
Following Him led me to full-time entrepreneurship, and in August 2018, Speak Up Sis® was created. The rest, as I like to say, is history being made.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Walking away from the very thing I believed delivered me from poverty to embrace the unknown which could very well lead me back into poverty is most definitely a challenge.
I have been a full-time entrepreneur for four years, and it has not been a smooth road. Like Robert Frost said in his timeless poem titled “The Road Not Taken,” I found myself at a crossroad in my life as I was beginning to understand my purpose on this earth, and “I took the one [road] less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” This less traveled road has been riddled with struggles, but it has been worth every step.
The first struggle I faced was not external. I had to overcome limiting beliefs and a lack and scarcity mindset. Prior to leaving my career in education and advocacy, I worked with a coach who helped me to see and understand myself in a way that I had never seen me. I worked through a few fears that I didn’t know took up residence in my heart. I also struggled with a need to be validated by others and a compulsion to compare myself to others.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that having few finances and resources were far smaller bumps in the road than the massive potholes in my thinking. Once my thoughts caught up with my work ethic, I realized nothing could stop me except me.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Speak Up Sis, LLC was born out of my own need for community and conversation. When I resigned from my career, life started life-ing, and I was not sure that I had made the right decision. While I was still traditionally employed, I wrote a book and a bible study workbook, and I started a business called Speak with Chic, LLC where I made hand-made, statement earrings from repurposed material.
It was my way of empowering women to stop, notice and speak to each other. When a woman sees another woman with an eclectic statement piece, it is really difficult for her not to stop the woman to compliment her or ask her a question about the piece. Something as simple as, “Sis, those earrings are gorgeous” can shift the trajectory of someone’s day. I did not know at that time earrings made in my garage would turn into an entire empowerment empire.
The creative in me wanted to somehow merge creativity, conversation, and community to help women build resilience, heal and grow. I held the first Speak Up Sis® Experience on September 9, 2018, in Graniteville, SC, and it was a great success. Eventually, I changed the company name from Speak with Chic to Speak Up Sis. In the past four years, it has grown into an empowerment media company where we create spaces to help women acknowledge, own, embrace and share their stories to inspire the stories of others. Speak Up Sis® is founded on the belief that sharing your story brings about healing to you and others and that authentic conversations build resiliency.
The Speak Up Sis® brand is most known for sharing transparent, vulnerable, and honest stories. We are different from other companies that are similar to us because we are intentional about creating spaces in the places that are often overlooked, and we search out stories from the people who find it difficult to get anyone to listen to them. The thing that makes me the proudest of my brand is at its very core, Speak Up Sis® is a call to action. Even our name encourages, empowers, affirms, and permits women to open their mouths and share the words of their testimonies.
Speak Up Sis, LLC is here to help you embrace the story of your life or rewrite it, if necessary. I invite you to learn more about the work we do and visit us online at www.speakupsis.com. We have a subscription-based, women-only community named Krysàlis. It is designed to provide women with information, resources, support, and community within a protective environment.
Within Krysàlis, we offer Speak Up Sis® Workshops on everything from family and relationships, finances and travel, and much more. As a Life Strategist and Life Story Coach, I also offer one-on-one strategy and coaching sessions to help women transform their lives into what they deserve and desire.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
While on this entrepreneurial journey, I have learned to stop running. Once I realized that I take myself everywhere I go, I decided to stand still, take accountability for my decisions and actions, and to do the hard work of my own heart work.
I don’t know if this is the “most important” lesson I’ve learned along my life journey, but it has helped me to have consistent and constant growth at this point in my life as an entrepreneur.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.speakupsis.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/speakupsisllc
- Facebook: Facebook.com/speakupsis
- Twitter: Twitter.com/speakupsis
- Youtube: Youtube.com/speakupsis
- Other: Anchor.fm/speakupsis
Image Credits
DK Turner Photography, The Brand Room, Inc., and Angel C. Wright
