Formerly homeless Worcester barber uses his own rags-to-riches story to inspire others

WORCESTER — Princepe "Prince" Virtuez could have started his barber shop anywhere, but the Worcester resident decided to put down roots in his old neighborhood of Main South.

In fact, the Palace Elite Barber Spa, located at 1067 Main St., overlooks where Virtuez used to sleep.

The building, known as Bike Alley, has an adjoining parking lot where he would spend the night after running away from foster care.

“This used to be my bed,” said Virtuez pointing to the lot, who at the time was between 14 and 15 years old. “Not a grown man who couldn’t get his life together, but a child who didn’t know where to go.”

When the time came to choose a location for his business and Virtuez heard there was space at the Bike Alley, so named for having formerly been a bicycle shop, he asked his real estate agent to look into it.

In returning to his roots, Virtuez wanted to challenge a long-standing belief in communities like Main South that success only comes to those who are able to get out. “That's the Worcester culture,” he said. “That you have to leave here to come up — I wanted to defeat that.”

In doing so, he hoped he could become an inspiration to others in his community seeing that opportunities for success are not always outside Worcester, but in themselves, he said.

"Coming from nothing"

Virtuez spent the first part of his childhood in foster care, then as an adult was in and out of prison in a self-perpetuating cycle. “I’d go to prison, and when I was released, I’d be homeless, go back to doing the same things because of that, then back to prison,” he explained.

During his last stint, serving an eight-year sentence, Virtuez began taking a variety of career training classes. “I wanted to give myself all the opportunities I could,” he said. He studied horticulture, welding, culinary arts and barbering.

He enjoyed many of them, but “a lot of those things I couldn’t do forever — barbering was the one that fit me the most.”

Classes were one thing, but breaking the cycle and making a career out of it was another.

“The issue was how do I make it happen, cause every time I got out of jail I’d be homeless,” he explained.

Upon getting out of prison in 2018, he approached a friend who owned a barbershop in Webster. Virtuez was given a job and a place to live, and from there he began to work his way up.

“I was staying in the basement,” he recalled. The basement was unfinished, with all that implies — water leaks, vermin and no windows. After a year, he had saved enough to purchase his own tools, a car and rent an apartment nearby.

In January of 2023, Virtuez opened Palace Elite Barber Spa on Main Street.

“I live, eat, sleep and breathe (my business),” he said. “Been 9 to 9 for five years straight.”

He now boasts a clientele that includes city leadership such as the mayor.

The community connection

Aside from working for himself, it was important to Virtuez that his career path let him work closely with and serve his community.

"Barbering for me was the only thing that I could think of that would not only help me change my life but help me motivate others to change theirs," he said.

A strong social media presence is also required for a business to differentiate itself in Worcester and keep up with the pulse of the local community, he said, to the point that every small business owner needs to become a minor content creator.

“There’s rarely a unique business here. Anything you choose to do, there are probably 15 of those already flourishing so you have to be consistent with marketing and community relations,” he said.

Marketing is more than just posting pictures of a product, Virtuez warned. The posts alone are not enough. It also takes timing and regularity.

“Make three or four a day and pay attention to which post at what time gets the most reactions,” he explained.

For Virtuez, there’s no such thing as a lunch or dinner break, with the former a time for editing posts and the latter for checking analytics, views and posting.

True to his goal, what sets Palace Elite Barber Spa is the community connection, said Virtuez, building up from the individual to the neighborhood level.

"When I stepped in, the first thing I noticed was that it was very clean," recalls Ben Nwosu, 15, of Worcester.

The Worcester Academy student started coming to Palace Elite late last year on the recommendation of a friend when his old barber closed and quickly saw that the language as well as the shop was clean. Which meant he had also found a barber for his father.

"Sometimes, I'd be going to barbershops in like a bad area and they'll be cursing a lot and playing explicit music and that would drive my dad away," he said. "It's basically a family-friendly barbershop which I'd been looking for my dad.

"(Virtuez) is always happy to have a conversation with you and it's really chill," said Nwosu. "He's just a stand-up guy in general and the cuts are always nice."

In addition to hosting bingo nights and free hair cut days for children, Palace Elite has doctors from UMass Chan visit for monthly health care checks. The shop is a participant in the recently revived Barbershop Health Network, which offers services such as blood pressure and glucose screening to Worcester residents through local barbershops, as a way to reach those who might not regularly see a doctor.

Taking the national stage

Virtuez has not stopped at the neighborhood community — in the last five years he has become a force in the national barbershop scene, attending conventions where he gives talks and hosts conferences.

“Every month, I’m somewhere,” he said.

He spoke to the Telegram from Augusta, Maine, where he was teaching a class, but he's never gone from Palace Elite for long and just like he did when first opening, always returns to Main Street.

“I came back to Main South to show everybody that the kid who was homeless and a jailbird succeeded,” he said. “I want to change what Worcester’s about.”

From May 4 to 6, Virtuez plans to attend the CT Barber Expo at Mohegan Sun casino, the biggest barber event in the world.

"Any prestigious person in the hair industry will be there," he said.

May 4, he is up for a Barber Grammy for Positive Influencer of the Year through his work on social media.

"I’m all about coming from nothing and inspiring people and social media is the way for that," he said.

Though his competition includes celebrity barbers who style hair for actors and pop stars, Virtuez refuses to be intimidated.

"I could bring a Grammy home to Worcester. Would be the first barber from Massachusetts to do that. I want to put it right there," he said, pointing at a shelf by the center barber chair.

Virtuez is on Instagram as Prince_the_fit_barber. Vote for him in the Grammys before April 17 at www.ctbarberexp.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester barber uses his own rags-to-riches story to inspire others