Welcome To Our Adventure
Photo by Love in Kansas
By Courtney Stemler
May 28, 2023
Hi there! We’re The Beacon, and we love to help people celebrate!
We are an owner team of four. Courtney Stemler and Shelby Irick are sisters, and their husbands, Chris Stemler and Nic Irick, are along for the ride. We each work together to organize, facilitate, and improve with each event that we help host. Each of us has strengths that we enhance and areas that the others help improve upon. It takes a lot of communication, encouragement, commitment and understanding to work together as a team.
We purchased The Beacon, formerly The Kansas Insurance Department, and even more formerly Topeka Woman’s Club, in November 2020. We partially opened in August 2021, and we were fully open in February 2022. We have fully renovated the building, with regular improvements and updates. As if we weren’t already busy, we’ve also added two little girls - one to the Irick family, and one to the Stemler family - during renovation and opening. The Stemlers’ son got to learn all kinds of new skills during renovation!
Throughout the renovation and opening process, we learned more about ourselves and each other, and we’ve also learned a lot about running a business and helping facilitate events. For instance, Courtney doesn’t always leave detailed enough instructions, and Shelby breaks a lot of dishes while cleaning them. Nic often needs safety refreshers, and Chris can enable him too much. Ultimately, our hope is that our kids fix all of those things!
We each have responsibilities outside of the Beacon as well. Shelby used to work full-time in graphic design and marketing. Courtney taught fourth grade until becoming a full-time-mom. Chris is a financial wholesaler, and Nic is also in finance, with a background in sales and construction. Each of these backgrounds gives us a different perspective and skillset, helping us work together to be a well-rounded team. We also all juggle our kids full-time, so prioritizing and scheduling is key!
We really enjoy owning and running The Beacon, and we hope everyone that comes through our doors has a great experience. Every client has a story, just like the building, and we hope we get to participate in as many stories as our community will enable us to.