Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Benita Akadie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Benita , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Thank you so much to the CanvasRebel team for having me. To be honest, I’m understanding more and more that there is nothing that can be done about the past and that the biggest way to impact the future is to take control of the present. I’m a mom now and sole provider of my household so I can absolutely see how going to esthetics school and starting a business from the ground up might have been easier when I was younger and didn’t have the added responsibility of having a child. However, having my son drives and focuses me like nothing else ever has. I did not have the confidence and resilience that I do now when I was 18. While I have wanted to pursue a career in skincare and esthetics ever since I was fresh out of high school, I’m appreciative of the ability to gain discipline and values prior to this endeavor.

Benita , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I had wanted to be an esthetician ever since I 2011. I always knew I wanted to work for myself and I was always mixing products and ingredients together growing to apply to my own skin. I watched my mom do the same thing. Because it was not a “noble: career in my parents’ eyes, I worked in other areas of customer service and healthcare. I had my first and only boy in 2019 but the pregnancy was very traumatic for my skin. I had never experienced acne or any sort of skin ailments up until that point in my life. I never wore makeup as a point of pride in my skin and here I found myself in desperate need of it with very little makeup application skills. During the pandemic, I decided that I would just create my own skincare instead of buying makeup. I had the childish idea that it would be easier and cheaper than purchasing makeup. That was one of the biggest fallacies of my life. Learning the science of skin and subsequently the purpose of skincare ingredients was a giant learning curve. I had gracious family and friends who let me try my products on them. My earlier products looked more like salad dressings than skincare. After a year of trial and error and expenses, I almost gave up and rejoined the workforce. Ironically the universe decided that was not the path for me and I was in a tragic head on collision with a semi that left me with a broken femur. My efforts to rejoin the workforce were immediately placed on hold. In an effort to prevent myself from falling into a depression during my recovery, I restarted my journey into skin care. Learning all of the chemistry of it was the most frustrating part for me but I had nothing but time on my hands as. I healed my leg and learned to walk again. Eventually, I found a perfect set of formulas to treat my oily, acne skin. I sent my products to my friends who loved them. to this day even if I wanted to stop manufacturing skincare, I couldn’t. I have too many people who refuse to use anything else because of how well Formulaire Skincare agrees with their skin. It was that decision that led me to finally decide to get my license in esthetics. It was a very logical decision for me and I had the support of my friends turned family. My knowledge is such that I practically taught the theory half of my esthetics program. I was constantly correcting inconsistencies in the textbooks or that the teacher taught. You could search all over North Carolina and you would be hard off to find a facials with my range and depth of knowledge in skin anatomy and in ingredient function. I now own Formulaire Beauty Lab as well. While I love returning clients, my main goal is to help transform my clients’ skin and arm them with the knowledge they need to be able to maintain their results at home without a complicated skincare routine. The beauty world markets to consumers’ insecurities and that has never sat well with me. I understand the goal is to keep them returning but the satisfaction with Formulaire Beauty Lab is enabling my clientele to be able to see past the marketing tactics and know what works for them rather then dumping their hard earned money at ineffective products. When it comes to skin, its always quality over quantity. Healthy skin is both beautiful and achievable. Loving your skin at the start of the process only makes the journey that much sweeter. My Skin Boot Camps are the Rolls Royce of skincare treatments in the Raleigh Durham area. I offer low maintenance beauty services as well. Lash and brow lifts, tints, waxing. However, you cannot compete with a facial from Formulaire Beauty Lab. A lot of my current clientele are other estheticians in the area. Im the professionals’ professional esthetician. That was not a small or easy feat to accomplish. I am incredibly proud of the fact that I did not give up. Although at times the journey did not look like I would ever reach a landing point, this is just the beginning of a long prosperous career in skincare. Formulaire has big goals and projects in the works.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2021 I was in a head on collision with a semi. He crossed the center line hoping to avoid rear ending the car in front of him that had suddenly slammed on their brakes. I was crushed. Both physically and emotionally. I had been on the verge of applying to esthetician school at the time but I had let my mother and others who were not looking out for my best interest discourage me from doing so. I had listened to their advice and applied for and gotten a position at a large area hospital in their cardiology department as I was a healthcare worker at the time. The only I had saved up for tuition and expenses while I was in school ended up taking care of my son and I while I recovered from surgery to repair a broken femur as a result of my collision. It was also a big sign to me that I was headed down the wrong path. While I had to learn to walk again, I also had to learn to parent as a single mom with one leg fully out of commission and refocus on my purpose. At the moment of impact, all I could think was that had I died in the collision, my son who was also present but thankfully unhurt, would have had lost a mother who had never been able to accomplish her dreams and had left him with absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t have even lived life for myself at that time and I would have died trying to please a group of people who were absent in my dire moment of need. There would be nothing of value to say about me at my funeral. That was not the legacy I wanted to leave him. That lit a fire in me I did not know existed. I understood almost immediately then; while still trapped in the smoking vehicle,  as I do with even more clarity now that I survived because I had more work to do. I got a second chance to rewrite my life and I do not take it for granted. Maktub. It means “it is written” in arabic. I was spared so I could fulfill the path I created for myself.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lot of what we consider “lessons learned” are just our own personal facts of life based on patterns that we’ve noticed. I have had to unlearn doubt. I doubted myself in absolutely everything I did. I needed someone else’s approval and opinion before I would make any decisions. It was crippling. And if the advice did not play out in reality the way I thought it would, I would blame myself for not listening to my own gut. This way of thinking caused me to do a lot of what I refer to as “going upstream” or swimming against the current. Mel Robbins taught me that the RAS; the web of nerves surrounding your brain, are a filter for the 3 years worth of data your brain processes a day. The important and repetitive things make it through the filter and stick and everything else gets forgotten a short time later. It’s like getting a red Cadillac and all of a sudden you see red Cadillacs on the road everywhere whereas you never noticed them before. The more I doubted myself and worried ver making the wrong decisions and failing, the more I see myself failing and not actualizing my visions. So now my energy is focused on progression no matter what that looks like. Slow client moments in business give me time to focus on and grow my marketing skills. When my marketing is getting people to my website but not converting, that is an opportunity to refresh my service menu and web descriptions to make it clearer for clients to know exactly what they’re getting and what makes me the best in the game.  When I am so busy that I am having trouble balancing it all, that gives me the opportunity to perfect my protocols and learn new ways in which I can help my clients lengthen the salon results at home. I started out in the skincare game formulating and manufacturing my own skincare in 2020. That’s where the name Formulaire comes from. So not only can I provide my clients with custom services in the treatment room, they can also continue to experience professional treatments at home with my skincare products as well. None of those things would be possible if I had not unlearned the self doubt and devaluing myself by constantly seeking the approval of others. I’m understanding and practicing more floating downstream rather than fighting against the current upstream.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vagaro.com/alfajaesalon/booknow
• Instagram: https://instagram.com.thecarolinaesthetician
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/formulairebeautylab

Image Credits
Photo Credits: Shanita Dixon