From homelessness and addiction to pills to becoming 1st Black woman to own a postal franchise

In 2021, Takisha Clark was listed alongside Elon Musk and others on Yahoo Finance’s Top 10 entrepreneurs. This was thanks to her postal service business, Capital Postal and Mail Services, which has been making waves in the U.S.

Clark started her postal business five years ago at a shopping plaza in North Long Beach, offering services such as packing, mailbox rental, shipping and printing. Last year, the company acquired a license as an official package courier for USPS, DHL and FedEx.

According to Clark, she was inspired to start Capital Postal because she had always wanted to work in the postal industry. It was difficult for her to get a job in the sector so instead of waiting to get employed in one of the postal companies, she decided to establish her own postal service company.

What is more, Clark is the first Black woman to own a postal franchise. She sold her first franchise the first year she launched her company. Recently, a client showed interest in opening a branch in Nevada. “It actually feels great. My goal is to transform my mom-and-pop small business into a corporate company,” she told Long Beach Business Journal.

Clark ventured into entrepreneurship when she was 22 years old. She was running a childcare business in Victorville in the early 2000s and bought three houses. However, she went into depression after the death of her sister in an accident.

“It took a toll on me,” she recalled. “I couldn’t continue to work at the time, so I took some time off. It hit me so hard that I ended up becoming addicted to pills for a whole year. I couldn’t function.”

Following the death of her sister, Clark couldn’t go back to run her daycare business. She also sold her three houses and eventually became homeless. However, Clark knew she had to find a way out of her current hopelessness because she owed it to her deceased sister. She went back to school, made new friends, and through that, she began to feel a part of society again.

She also took up a job as a receptionist in 2010 working for Shields for Families, a national nonprofit that helps victims of child and drug abuse. She was promoted to run a program aiding families struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

Clark in 2013 started a side gig working in credit repair and later opened a franchised location through Liberty Tax after learning the details about accounting. “After I started my Liberty Tax, things just started looking up for me,” Clark said.

However, the business did not last long because of the pandemic which forced her to close the business. She turned her attention to the mail and packaging industry.

Her postal business owns three in-house delivery vans, has five employees, and offers mailboxes on-site for rent, she told Long Beach Business Journal in 2021.