We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erika Denae J. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erika below.

Erika, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Beata Beatus Co. started as an idea for an encouraging T-shirt line when I came back from living abroad in Spain. During my time in Murcia, Spain, I had the chance to spend a lot of time with myself and learned that there were a lot of creative ideas and visions that I wanted to develop.

While in Spain, I started an after school singing group with some of the young female students and it was there where my love developed in curating spaces and activities for youths in the arts, at the same time I was in a space where I was encouraging myself and healing from a lot of things in my life and there were also ideas to put encouraging words on tees.

When I returned to Pittsburgh, I remember meeting up with a friend and telling her that I had an idea to launch a T-shirt line with the name Beata Beatus meaning blessed in Latin. I wanted to encourage young people to live out blessed lives, and eventually create content and programs and so I intentionally created the tagline, Wear It – Live It.

After sharing the idea with my friend, she recommended a pitch competition and long story short, I competed and won. I then used the percentage of the funds to become a fiduciary group under a nonprofit in Pittsburgh and gained more funding where I continued to create encouraging merch and created and facilitated the summer program HICAP -Healing Intensive Creative Arts Program -and collaborated with other nonprofits in my neighborhood.

HICAP was the first step that I had taken in my entrepreneurial journey of program development and tying in my passion for the arts, integrative health, and education.

From there the development of Beata Beatus Co. has been an evolving process from T-shirts, to programming, to socio-emotional and educational supporting products like our activity journals, and we are now exploring the arts in music and how it supports literacy with students with our merch now used as a tool to market and support our products and services.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a Pittsburgh bred, multi-hyphenate, singer-songwriter, producer, creative writer, and entrepreneur who loves to encourage people with my gifts. I am the owner of Beata Beatus Co., a benefit company where we believe that everyone has the potential to thrive, and live blessed lives. We’ve set ourselves apart because we’re committed to providing products and services that help our community reach their full potential by being intentional and integrating parts that most companies compartmentalize. Our products and services are designed to promote positive socio-emotional and educational development.

As a visionary by default, I got involved in the entrepreneurial industry and created Beata Beatus Co. by following my creativity and my exposure to creative direction really began to flourish when I independently released my debut EP ‘Rx Melodies’ (Prescription Melodies) in Dec of 2022, blending Neo-soul, Jazz and spoken word along with prescription conversations; introspective insights into the music.

My company began officially in 2020 and it was then, where my skill sets were developed to plan and execute a vision that combined creative concept strategy, advert creation, art direction, site design and the list goes on and on for the entrepreneur who is starting out. My creativity, love for attention to detail and organization has led to success in curating innovative concepts that meet a need.

Across the portfolio of my work, I have formatted and authored “The Encouragement Guide: An Activity Journal to Build Healthy Self-Esteem & Confidence for girls”. Having spent a year abroad, teaching English and science, and working within the non-profit and youth development sphere, I’ve witnessed young girls needing support in building their self-esteem.

The Encouragement Guide is published and offered through Beata Beatus Co.’s READ sector-Readiness and Engagement in Academic Deeds-to target and support healthy socio-emotional and literacy development in young girls and is evolving to target all students.

Additional teaching guides and services are provided along with our activity journals where we can facilitate theme focused workshops and we plan to expand services that couple music with literacy to support literacy in students.

As it pertains to my brand, passion and purpose continues to drive my combination of music and writing as tools to create experiences and curate spaces for education, healing, and encouragement.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

First and foremost, as a Christian entrepreneur, the most impactful book that has influenced my thinking and philosophy has been the Bible. I absolutely love Proverbs 31 where it describes a woman who is basically an entrepreneur in that time. It simply shows how working hard, being generous and giving back is unstoppable when paired with properly preparing for what you want by faith, believing that, and putting your relationship with God first.

Of course, it sounds simple, and there are challenges however the Proverbs 31 woman description always encourages me when I feel I need encouragement or question if I am doing enough. I recommend all women entrepreneurs read it and truly sit with it.

There are a few other books that I have read that have truly shaped my entrepreneurial thinking, and I’m so glad that the word thinking is used in the question because having the right mindset is the most important thing you need when building a vision from the ground up. It’s not easy, takes patience, and tons of perseverance. “Balance” by Touré Roberts is a great book that helps meet stay grounded while also reminding me to push towards healthy growth with my goals. His podcast “The Called” is also amazing for the modern entrepreneur. “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss has shown me how to be more confident in knowing what I want, my worth and properly negotiating that with people. “10x Rule” by Grant Cardone was a book that I honestly didn’t finish all the way through because of the writing style but the content was truly eye opening and showed me that it’s important to always think bigger and execute at a high level with no fear; thinking bigger is a key ingredient to success.

I also love “More Than Enough” by Elaine Welteroth and “Think, Learn, Succeed” by Dr. Caroline Leaf. I think it’s important to have a sense of understanding of who you are, from personal introspective work to your culture. When you have this, it can support you with navigating your why and who you are doing it for. These books have reminded me that at the core, what I am doing is leaving a piece of my vision behind to support a need for youths, and that I am leaving a legacy.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My resilience was tested ironically when I incorporated Beata Beatus Co. Prior to February 2020, Beata Beatus was operating as a fiduciary group under a nonprofit organization in Pittsburgh. I was gaining success, funding and was excited to form an entity to continue the services that began in 2018 working with youth and supporting my community with socio-emotional health and the arts, however right after February 2022 when Beata Beatus Co. became an entity, Covid had hit a month later. All my plans that I had for the next year were completely thwarted by the pandemic as everything progressively began to shut down.

I showed resilience in a way like so many others have, which was through pivoting, offering online engagement, and paying attention to the various needs at that time. During 2020, I remember holding ‘Healing Conversations’, a space to exercise healthy release and support our mental health. I also did abundance bag giveaways where we filled our tote bags with our merch, encouraging cards, and other self-care items from other small business owners for teens.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.beatabeatus.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatabeatusco/

Image Credits
Photographed by Elise Michaux