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

Alright, Tiera thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

I spent two years teaching 6th grade math in Baltimore. During that time I met my amazing husband who has been an educator for 10+ years. After teaching, I spent 9 years as a consultant meeting with educators and providing strategic guidance to the highest leaders of various school districts across the country. Consequently, the educational system is a common topic of discussion in my household. If I could change the educational system, I would change the curriculum to ensure students are learning truly meaningful skills and graduate with an actionable career path and exposure to many career options. I would teach meaningful topics that prepare students for “real life” such as entrepreneurship (how to start a business), basic tax instruction (how to do your taxes), and a variety of vocational options with real-life internships that lead to job offers upon graduation. I believe making these changes would prepare our students to enter college or the workforce with a real opportunity for economic advancement.

Tiera, 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 am the proud owner of a company called Yorktown Spice. We make Crab Sauce.  Many people ask me how I started this business, so this is my story. I’m from Maryland. Eating crabs and dipping them in crab sauce has been a family tradition my entire life. It is the only way I know how to eat Maryland crabs. In fact, I thought everyone ate crabs that way! One Mother’s Day, I was eating crabs with my mother in law and she tasted my sauce. To my delight she exclaimed, “you should bottle this!” My mother in law is from Jamaica, so she did not grow up eating Maryland crabs and she had definitely never tried crab sauce. The fact that she enjoyed it so much and had faith in my ability to bottle the sauce gave me the encouragement I needed to consider it. Time passed, I became a mother and did not make much progress (or any) on the business. While pregnant with my second child during the COVID 19 pandemic, my mother-in-law nudged me gently and sent me information about an organization called Score. She wanted me to participate in a pitch competition, but I was not ready for that. However, I did sign up to meet with a business mentor through the organization and started Yorktown Spice shortly thereafter.

I am an entrepreneur at heart, so I was excited just to have a new project to pursue. Launching Yorktown Spice and bottling Crab Sauce became my passion project. It still is! I am most proud that I have seen much early success. My biggest challenge is that I still work a day job and have very little time to grow the business as quickly as I would like. This is especially true since I am also a wife and mother to two young children. Nonetheless, I am now confident that I have created a product that customers really enjoy and am 100% committed to the success of the business. My favorite moments are watching the reactions of customers as they taste free samples at Farmer’s markets. I actually just posteda recording of some of those reactions on our Instagram and Facebook pages. I want customers to know that our sauce is delicious and it is made with love. Currently, I personally make all of the bottles in small batches! I am so thrilled to introduce Crab Sauce to the world and hope you will give it a try.

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?

I have two memorable sales moments. The first is receiving acceptance to sell my product in the Makers of Maryland shop. It is a lovely shop that is home to the products of over 50 local Maryland-based makers. Prior to joining, I saw the shop on Instagram and remember thinking how it would be amazing to be part of the shop. When the application opened, I was accepted and it felt like a dream come true! Crab Sauce was the number one selling product during the opening month! Seeing customers purchase my product was invigorating.

The second memory is being approached for my first wholesale order by the Baltimore Visitor Center. This was exciting because it was my first wholesale order and they reached out to me first after finding me on the Made in Baltimore website. Now, our product is in 5 stores and I couldn’t be more proud of my company’s success.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

For most of my life I have been a perfectionist. I was not perfect, but I absolutely strived to be. One lesson that I have learned is not to let “great” get in the way of “good.” While building this business, I spent so much time trying to make things perfect that I made very little progress. Once I learned that not everything needs to be perfect and that things can be improved with time, I have been able to move more quickly and not inhibit progress.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yorktownspice.com
• Instagram: @yorktown_spice
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/yorktownspice
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tierachin

Image Credits
Terrie Johnson Photography