By Mia Kelley

If you’ve walked the Fayetteville farmer’s market, perused Pearl’s Books on the square, or shopped at Whole Foods Market on College, there’s a chance you’ve seen Professor Whitney King’s handmade candles. The carefully formed works are a testament to not only King’s perseverance as a business owner and teacher, but also proof that mistakes are what lead to leaps of growth. 

“You don’t have to always do it right the first time…just because you’ve messed up doesn’t mean it’s over,” King said.

While King has now taught in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media for over three years, she didn’t always have aspirations to teach or even be in Journalism. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, she was first motivated to be a petroleum engineer, but quickly realized that she desired a different path, one with less intense academic requirements and demands.

“I signed up for a community college in Texas, and eventually decided I wasn’t going to go. And so my GPA was a 0.7 about the time when I left there,” she said.

For three years following her exit from community college, King struggled to find where she felt home was in Houston, and what her motivations were that were going to dictate a future that she would enjoy living.

At the age of 21, she abruptly decided a change of location would change her circumstances, and traveled across state lines to Arkansas to give a different path a try. 

“I made the decision at like, four in the morning, packed up my car and left at seven, and came to my grandparents’ house in Melbourne, Arkansas, population 2000,” she said.

From there, she attended small community college Ozarka, and eventually Arkansas State, getting her bachelor’s in Strategic Communication with a minor in Marketing. With persuasion from a University of Arkansas SJSM faculty member, Renette McCargo, King drove up to tour Fayetteville, fell in love, and proceeded to get her masters in Film Studies with an emphasis in Documentary Film from the UA

With two degrees under her belt, King was ready to tackle the post-grad world doing freelance filmmaking, until unwanted memories from her past became far too unbearable to ignore, developing into post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

 “It was kind of stopping my life at that point…I would have episodes where I would kind of disassociate and panic and hyperventilate,” she said.

It was in this period of the professor and entrepreneur’s life–one of the  darkest–that she was led to her passion. In the midst of a PTSD episode, she discovered that the only thing that would calm her body was to sit and watch the flame of a candle, unwaveringly.

“I would sit, run a hot bath, get into it, light a candle, and watch it, and [the episode] would stop.” 

Being surrounded by candles so consistently led her to become interested in making some of her own, partly out of curiosity, and partly to be more cost-efficient. 

“I didn’t understand why candles were so expensive, and I was making like $1300 a month as a grad assistant, so I couldn’t afford a $50 candle, right?” 

She started reading article upon article, along with watching countless videos on YouTube to improve her methods in candle-making, until her first ‘gig’ landed in her lap, when one of her friends she had met through filmmaking invited her to a black-owned business event.

“I was like, I don’t have a business. They said, ‘It’s fine, just come to this event!’” , she said. “And I made $2,000 in the first four hours, and the news interviewed me.”

Her incredible success at this event leveled up her love for her new hobby, and she realized her opportunity to start a business. 

“I thought, let’s do this. And my wife was like, ‘Go for it, ’” King said.

She calls her business Candles by Whitney; she wanted people to remember her and the 24-karat gold flakes that sit on top. King says that she also wanted to be known for her prices. 

“I’m using the same materials that the $80 candles are using, but my most expensive candle is $29,” she said. “I want everyone to have access to a nice candle without that price tag.”

From that first event, King started entering herself into more showcases, and eventually the Fayetteville farmers’ market, where she was discovered by Whole Foods grocers. 

“They walked up to me and asked me my story. I told them, they smelled my stuff, and they said they want me in the store,” she said.

In the midst of her business success, King accepted a position at the University of Arkansas in the SJSM department, teaching an array of classes in Journalism.

 “I never wanted to be a teacher… but someone said, ‘I think you’d be good at this,’ so I went for it,” she said. 

Her main priority, though, was that she would have time to pour into her business- a factor that was ensured when she went through with the job. King has been teaching in the SJSM department since 2022, all the while working on building her products and marketing tactics to produce even more sales for her business. 

“My work week is about 90 hours …but it doesn’t really feel like work to me,” she said.

Her business has grown to support a website, being sold in grocers such as Ozark Natural Foods and Whole Foods, as well as in her stands at Bentonville and Fayetteville farmers markets. Candles by Whitney is not going anywhere anytime soon, King affirmed, and she’s always looking for ways to get her story and motivation behind her products out there. 

Other than selling sweet and cozy scents alike, the entrepreneur says it’s more about the themes of peace that coexist with candles and their relationship to mental health and wellness. Her passion for using her experiences in struggling with mental health is channeled into each candle (as Candles by Whitney’s only employee), and used to accompany her advocacy for mental health awareness and drug abuse recovery. 

“Mental health is not a luxury or an option. It’s not something you can ignore, and everyone should have access to health care in that realm,” King said.

For one, she wants students and future entrepreneurs to know that it’s never too late to start working toward a dream, and that mistakes should be appreciated just as much as the successes. In terms of advice towards young small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, King says to avoid talking predominantly to the “top dogs.” 

“Talk to the people that have done the groundwork, that have messed up already, and they’ll show you the way,” she said.

Lastly, in looking back at her own past and the paths she’d taken, the professor says she tries to spread the message to her students that they don’t have to have it all figured out, that they don’t have to be perfect at every moment in their academic, personal, or career aspects of their lives. And, even if they feel that they are falling short, there’s always time to take a step forward and try anyway. 

“Just because you’re in this phase right now doesn’t dictate what you do or who you become in the future,” King said.