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

Ryeshia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When I first started my business it was just myself and my husband volunteered to help where he could. As time went on, I was able to see areas he was really strong in that I wasn’t. I asked him did he have time to be more involved in the business and he obliged. He is now my social media manager, video editor, videographer, photographer, creative director, and chief operations officer. Later on, a friend of mine volunteered to be my social media manager as well. At first I put her in charge of running my Facebook, but she excelled in finding local vendor events and potential partnership/collaboration opportunities, so now she is in charge of that as well as engaging in Facebook groups. Now that I have a team and trying to recruit one other person for my graphic design, I am working on shaping myself to become a dynamic leader and create a strong culture. I can say that I am blessed to have such talented individuals on my team and have good relationships with both. This year, my goals are to develop them to the point that if they want to take their talents elsewhere and be successful they can. My hopes are they stay with me though lol.

Ryeshia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Ryeshia Brockington and I am the owner and founder of StirTEAse. I manufacture handcrafted honey tea stirrers. My inspiration actually came from a trip to TJ Maxx where they had some by the counter. I thought to myself what a neat idea it was and wanted to make some for myself. It started off as something for personal use, but then I got the idea to share them with others. After some tweaking and putting my own spin on it, I was ready to make my debut! I did some test groups first and on Black Friday 2021 I did a “soft launch”. Fast forward to now, and StirTEAse is still alive and thriving in 12 states and 2 countries! Perhaps its due to the uniqueness and convenience of the products and genuine care I have for my TEAsers (customers). I pride myself in being a caring person and a self care advocate and that care goes into the products and experience I provide to my TEAsers. I believe that everyone deserves to practice self care and shouldn’t have to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to do so. Instead, you should be able to grab a cup of tea, a delicious honey tea stirrer, and journal or just relax for a few minutes.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

My funding story is pretty unique. I actually used affirm to gather initial capital needed for supplies. All my supplies I got from Amazon and put it on Affirm. Since then, I have been a big advocate for Affirm especially if you’re a product based business that makes the products. I also used my own money as well but it wasn’t much because my startup costs were pretty low.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I am not a naturally assertive person but I had to change that character trait once I became a business owner. I recall I outsourced a huge project that was a very important part of my branding and I didn’t receive the deliverables until way past the time frame that it should have taken. At first I was showing grace business owner to business owner, then I didn’t want to seem pushy, but finally I had to become assertive. That was a pivotal point experience for me because I realized that being in business sometimes requires us to do things that may be out of our comfort zone but is very necessary.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stirtease.com
• Instagram: @rye_brockington
• Facebook: Ryeshia Brockington
• Other: www.linktree.com/stirtease

Image Credits
Mitchell Junious and Davaris Brockington