Marnita Sandifer doesn't mince words about what it takes to be successful.
     "There are a lot of sacrifices you need to make," Sandifer told a group of sophomore and junior girls recently at the Ursuline College Women in Math and Science Day.  The title of her talk was, "Deferred gratification: It is important for long-term success."
     Co-owner of AJ's Millennium Spa in Beachwood, with a doctorate in chemistry and her own line of skin-care products, Sandifer has come a long way from when she graduated near the bottom of her class in 1980 from Collinwood High School. 

    "I had a very low interest in learning back then.  I was fortunate enough that my family found me one of those 'good jobs' where you do your 30 years and retire.  But within the first week, I realized this was not for me,"  she said.
     Short on skills, she felt she had no choice but to keep showing up for work, until GE laid her off about a year later.  She decided to try a couple classes at Cuyahoga Community College.
     "They were '09' (remedial classes, but I did well.  It was good for me, but I still didn't know what I wanted,"  she said.
     Then GE called her back to work, but she said no.  She calls that her first sacrifice.
     "I had become angry, and said no one would ever lay me off agian.  So even though I was broke, I didn't go back," she said.
                    Good at Math
     She continued taking classes, learning by trial and error that she was good in math.  She tried accounting, then computer science.  Finally she discovered chemistry.
"There was something about chemistry that intrigued me, and I got one A after another," she said.
     She never expected to earn a four-year degree, but she was able to transfer to Baldwin-Wallace College as a junior. 
     "There I was, from Collinwood, the only black woman in my chemistry classes,  I learned a lot culturally," Sandifer said.
     To make ends meet, she worked part-time jobs, turning down offers of full-time positions for a slight raise.
     "That is the second sacrifice.  It's important not to sell out for a dollar," she said.
     One of her jobs was tutoring in the Tri-C learning lab.  Her supervisor helped her garner a full scholarship and a teaching fellowship for Case Western Reserve University graduate school.  She earned her doctorate, and by then she knew she wanted to do something in the beauty industry.

    "My education gave me a foundation.  I just had to find a path to make something that belonged to me," she said.
             'Nothing comes easy'
     Sandifer was hired as an assistant professor of chemistry in Flint, Mich., with permission to set up a cosmetic lab.  But, she needed to know more about akin chemistry, so she also began an internship as an adjunct professor with a dermatologist at CWRU. 
     She traveled back and forth between the two states, putting in more hours and miles than she could count.
     "The whole idea of sacrificing your time, it works but it takes a while until you get there.  You have to put in the work and have the determination.  It's the only way I know how to get some of the things you want you of life," she said.  "Nothing comes easy."
Then she smiled when she told about the next unexpected step in her life.  Two things happened about the same time.  She got a pedicure, and stopped in a small grocery store in Cleveland where she me the owner.  After years of deferring her social life, she was surprised when it turned into a relationship. 
     "He was flirting, and he was serious, but I was not looking anywhere but straight.  Within a year we were married," Sandifer said.
She told her new husband, A.J., that she wanted to quit her professorship and go to nail school.
     "I said I could do something in this industry, and he supported me.  I went from making $70,000 a year to $7 an hour," she said.  "It was another sacrifice.  I had to go back to ground zero to get where I wanted."
    She earned her license to do manicures and pedicures.
                   

 Then, on advice, she went to Beachwood Place to look for a job in a salon.  Mario's hired her.
                    Her own line
     While she worked as a nail technician, she continued to go to school, earning an aesthetician's license.  She also continued to work on formulas for her own MarLiz skin care line, which debuted in 2002.
     To prove she could build clientele without to the Mario's name, she added working at Sundance Studios, in Brunswick creating a facial department.  On her off days, she sold her MarLiz products out of there Cleveland home, where she had made the first floor into a spa.
     Then, finally, she and AJ were ready to go out on their own, and created AJ Millennium Spa in the Corporate Park of Beachwood, on Richmond Road.
     In addition to courteous service and ambiance, they offer a full line of facials, manicures, massages and other beauty services.  Now, 15 months later, they have more than 4,500 clients. 
     "We've had clients, both men and women, who have seen dermatologists for adult acne or dry skin with no success.  After a couple months, they walk out feeling like a new person," Sandifer said.
     All the sacrifices have honed Sandifer into a serene, yet still determined woman.  She continues to work long hours, seven days a week, but has her goal in sight-- a training institute, where she can teach other to use her products.
     "I'm 43, and in my last phase, but I'm going to make this happen.  MarLiz will be a signature line in spas," she said.
     "Mathematics is a system you can use to apply to whatever you want to do in life.  If you have problem solving skills, you can go far."