We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stacey Bryant a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Stacey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Great question! Let me start by telling you the name of our organization. We are “Hello Beautiful Outreach Ministries”.
I’ve always had to heart for encouraging and empowering girls and women. Wait, let me be very specific, I’ve always had a heart to empower and encourage black girls and women.

I ran and denied this calling for a long time. See, I was raised in church and involved in may ministries during my childhood and young adult life, voluntarily…but mostly involuntarily, thanks to my parents! LOL. I had a lot of women pouring into my life as a young person, not really realizing the incredible impact that they would have on my life journey. My mother trusted other women to pour into me and for that I’m thankful and so grateful. It taught me the importance of extended family. Because of what these women did it nurtured the seed that God had planted in me for this type of ministry work.

I had my “wilderness season”, where I ran from what God was calling me to do, honestly, for a while, I wasn’t running, I simply refused to do it! When I attempted to do it, it was half-hearted, half-hearted because I tried to do it MY way. Of course, I failed,,,not once, but twice! After that I was done….I planted myself in what I call my “wilderness season”. It was a dark time for me, a spiritually dark time, and for a minute I was okay with it. Okay with it until God had enough of me and my shenanigans. He showed me what my end would be and it scared me. I thought to myself, “Oh I’m not damning myself to hell after all the good ministry work I’d done in the past, I worked too hard to be sending myself to hell”. In that moment I promised God that if he allowed me to see another Sunday, I’m getting up and going to church and that I would do the work as He instructs me to do. In his faithfulness, he spared me and I’m still here today.

I fully accepted my call into youth ministry for girls. God gave me so much! I knew going in that I wanted to encourage, inspire, empower, and equip these young ladies by using “life words”. Words that speak life…now in that season, God gave me the name “Queendom Living”. I wanted to girls to see, know and understand what that looked like biblically in a life applicable way. Encouraging them to see themselves as God see them, as his royal daughters. We are royalty. I mean, that’s what 1 Peter 2:9 says….

Working in the school offices of the Cincinnati Public School system allowed me to encounter many young black girls. I really didn’t expect to have many interactions with students because I wasn’t a teacher, I was the school secretary. Kids are in and out of the office for various reasons, but not to have impactful moments with the secretary. That is until one day in 2011 a young lady was walking towards the office, she look frustrated, I didn’t know her name, so when I buzzed her into the office, I said, “hey pretty girl”. She had the prettiest, smooth dark skin, as she was approaching the office door, it was my immediate thought, so I called her just that, “pretty girl”. She lit up and the light in her eyes danced. In that moment whatever she was upset about went away or at least made it a little easier for her. Once she left the office, I could hear God saying, “See what your words did for her?” Right then I decided that I would address each young lady that walked into the office “pretty girl”. As time went on, girls would just pop in to see me! The school secretary! The more they stopped in, the more they would share their stories with me and it gave me the opportunity to pour into them. Just as the ladies did for me at my church home.

Fast forward to 2019, I’m working in a different high school. To build positive relationships with the women who looked like me, I was intentional on meeting them with a smile and saying, “Hello Beautiful”. Later on the girl students in the building was asking for a “girls club” where they can talk about girl issues. So I was approached by a co-worker for assistance, we can up with a plan, it was approved. We needed a name, God reminded me of that moment with my first encounter with a female student and how I had been greeting the black women at work, “Hello Beautiful” was the name of our club. We met a few times that school year. I was so excited about the work. One day I was sharing what I was doing with the girls with my dear friend who happen to by my hair stylist and she expressed that she would like for her niece to be involved. I told her it was just for the girls at school. I said, hmmm, Tonya you may be on to something, maybe this needs to be bigger and outside of the schools. We started kicking around ideas and agreed to pray on it together….then….COVID.

COVID was most certainly a devasting time for us all. I also believe it was a time that God put us in a position to press “pause”, to slow down and reflect, seek, and take action on the things we may have been running from, avoiding, or putting on the back-burner. In was in that season that I sincerely said to God, “you planted all this stuff inside of me, plans of affirming, curriculum, programming, and ideas. You’ve given me so much love to pure into my own daughter, that sometimes, even she feels like she’s drowning in it! What am I supposed to do with it? She’s the only kid I have and sometimes my expressions of love is too much for her, how am I going to release it?” He told me to start a ministry for girls and young adult women. I then said to him, “How do you want me to do it and who do I invite to the table? Because I tried this my way before and failed. I don’t want to fail again, so Lord, how do you want me to do this?” I asked, he answered. He gave me very specific instructions and I followed them. No, it did not always make sense…but I trusted him and did his way. Now I’m like, “Lord what are we going to name this ministry?” He said, “I gave you a name, Hello Beautiful.” I was like, “but that was the name of the club I did in school? Ok, Hello Beautiful it is.” Now, I had to figure out how to differentiate what I was doing in the public school system to what I’d be doing for the kingdom.

Now I’m planning, calling and texting the people he told me to reach out too. They all said “Yes!” Moving to register the name with the state. Did the search, all was well. At first we were, “Hello Beautiful of Greater Cincinnati”. Hmmm….that name didn’t feel life giving. But, I wanted to secure the Hello Beautiful part for sure. I prayed about the name some more, and in my pray time God said to me “the work you’ll be doing is ministry work, reaching out to girls and young women “Outside” of the four walls of a church building.” I’m thinking, so it’s outreach ministry…OK…Lord…Got it!

We are “Hello Beautiful Outreach Ministries”. We are a faith-based nonprofit enrichment program for Black girls and young women; “Where the Heart of the matter is the Matter of Her Heart”.

Stacey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Stacey Bryant, proud founder and CEO of Hello Beautiful Outreach Ministries. We are a faith-based enrichment program for Black girls and young women, ages 5-25.

I am most proud the Hello Beautiful family for protecting the vision and the mission of our organization. We are so proud of the safe and sacred space we are creating for our daughters to come to be encouraged, supported, and affirmed in their life journey. It’s not easy for young people these days. Of all races. But our focus is on our black daughters. They need to see us in the forefront of their lives, not the rear view mirror of life. We black women are not an after thought. We are here and we belong here in the forefront of society and most importantly for our black babies.

What sets us apart from others, I believe is that we are in fact a “non-profit organization” whose focus is the black female community only. There are other enrichment programs and mentoring programs out here doing amazing work to help guide young people in their school and career journeys, which is great. But Hello Beautiful’s calling is to the “heart”. Our daughters come to us to talk about what happened in school, at home, at church, with her siblings or friends. We are here to help them navigate and cultivate a positive relationships. That starts with “heart work”. Our pillars are: Self-Love, Self-Care, and Self=Preservation with a focus on their, spiritual, emotional, and social well-being. We want our daughters to be whole when we release them into the world. So as they grow up, they are confident in themselves and in the relationships they have developed.

The outcomes we hope for them is that they can grow up to be a “boss” or be a young boss right now! But because of the heart work that is being done, she doesn’t have to be a bully, mean or insure when she encounters other women. Especially women who looks like her. I’ve experienced working with and for “black boss women”, they were some of the meanest bullies I’ve ever met. These are grown women still behaving like children. I prayed about it, and God revealed to me that at some point in their lives someone fractured or broke her heart and no one took the time or created the space for her heart healing journey. I just believe that if we can get our daughters at a young age, our program starts at age 5, if we can get to them early, maybe enough good will be poured in, received and grows and she will have no reason to be a “mean girl/woman bully” in an attempt to find security and wholeness. But be a light, a bright light to all who she encounters.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

The advice I would give on managing a team and maintaining high morale. First for us, I refer to our team as a “family”. I’m really intentional on using “family words”,ie; Sis, daughter, auntie and so forth when I refer to our members. To me this plants the seed of family and eventually it takes root.

In order to maintain morale I usually let my sisters know how much I appreciate them in word and action. Hello Beautiful would not work if they were not showing up. Mind you, ALL of this is VOLUNTARY for each of us. No one is getting financial compensation for what we are doing. We love the work, we love our daughters, we love each other and we keep showing up. We literally take care of one another. I believe it adds to our morale.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

My favorite marketing story has to be when we had our end of season awards celebration. We gave each of our daughters the opportunity to express why they feel being a part of Hello Beautiful was important. Some of the responses we received were, “my confidence has grown, I feel safe when I come and share what I’m going through, I like the crafts we do and playing with my friends, I feel like I inherited a bunch a aunties since I’ve been here”.

For me that’s marketing…they keep coming back!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hboministries.org
• Facebook: Hello Beautiful Outreach Ministries
• Other: IG name: hellobeautifulomincLinktree: @hellobeautifulominc

  X: @hello_beauinc