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

NeMeia , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Both of my parents were in the Army, but when my mother had me, she left to pursue a career in healthcare. She went to school & worked at times, while also raising 4 girls. My father continued his career in the military until he retired at the age of 38. After retiring, he went to college; obtained his undergraduate, graduate, & doctoral degrees; & has started several businesses. No matter what, my parents have always kept going & instilled a positive work ethic in their kids. All of us pride ourselves in leaving a positive stamp on anywhere we work, & I have to thank them for that. We work in healthcare, pharmaceutical sales, & law enforcement, while also balancing lives as small business owners, wives, mothers, & giving back to the community. We’re determined to pass the strong foundation we received from our parents to our children & future grandchildren.

Watching them made me know I could obtain my graduate degree in Psychology while working full-time & being a mom & wife. Even though things got stressful at times, I was able to manage with the encouragement of my family & being raised to see the end result of being in grind mode. I show my kids daily that they can achieve anything but have to work hard to achieve it.

Between my father’s entrepreneurship & mother’s urge to take care of yourself while navigating through life, I was motivated to open Intentional & show others the importance of self-care. We work hard, but we play harder. That made it important for me to create a business targeting self-care practices. Additionally, living all over the world & traveling as a family have given me my love for traveling & experiencing new cultures. It’s become a major part of my self-care plan; I try to vacation at least for a few days each quarter to rest & reset.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

After graduating with a B.A. in Sociology from UNC, I got into the behavioral health field as a suggestion from a friend. Once I started, I was fascinated by it. I was not aware that there were so many different presentations for behavioral health diagnoses & so many ways to treat each symptom. I began working with children in the schools & doing groups after school. It opened my eyes to how different things are now than what they were when I was growing up. Behavioral health was so taboo, but we are bringing more awareness to the seriousness of it now. With an infant, this career allowed me to see various stages my son might go through when he reached elementary school. It definitely prepared me for recognizing the signs that he had ADHD in kindergarten & how to best manage it.

I went on to continue in the field doing case management, mobile crisis, youth treatment court for adolescents with criminal charges & who used substances, & intensive in-home services with all age groups. That opened my eyes more to what was offered (& not offered) in North Carolina for therapeutic services. I was able to advocate for my son to receive the most appropriate medication to help him focus in school. Because I saw the importance of behavioral health care & learned some coping skills, I started journaling to manage my stress & work through issues I noticed I had. Journaling really helped me reflect on my life experiences, manage my emotions better, & release anything I went through during that day. I’ve counted 19 journals that I’ve written in over the last 13 years, & I can definitely see my progress as I’ve aged & matured.

I completed my Masters in Psychology 2 years ago during the COVID pandemic. I was working from home full-time, assisting my daughter with going to 1st grade online, & completing my degree. After that, I had too much free time on my hands, & I wanted to start a business. My husband suggested doing something with journals & planners since he noticed them being a part of my nightly routine for years (I journal, meditate, & plan my day every night before bed). So, I got to work compiling a list of tools & characteristics from my old journals & planners that were “must-haves” for me. I could never find a journal or planner that had everything in one place. Each of them was missing something, so I’d have to use multiple tools to manage my life. I figured that would also be a problem for other journal & planner lovers, so I wanted to create a more efficient & economical solution.

Intentional Journals & Planners are for everyone! We currently have journals for adults, but we’ll be developing one that is more appropriate for youth in 2024. They include daily positive affirmations, free-writing space, a section for lessons of the day, another section to express gratitude, goal-planning for the following day, & a writing prompt every few days to vary up the flow…for all 365 days of the year! It allows you to unpack any negative aspects of your day while ending on a positive note. With 365 pages, you are able to have one place to journal, express gratitude, & goal-plan all year long.

We also have 3 planners: one for adults, two for teens, & one for younger kids. The adult planner includes a vision board, monthly & annual goals with space for planning, a monthly budget, days broken down into 30-minute slots, a self-care task for the week & focus for the month, & a monthly recap to track your progress towards goals. I find that writing things down helps me more, especially when I couple it with my phone’s calendar & reminders. Those tools keep me on track with my busy schedule, & the self-care task pushes me to take care of myself in spite of being so busy.

The young adult planners come in male & female versions. They have grade trackers for each quarter, an important contacts list, an important event reminder for each class, a space for weekend tasks & goal-planning for the following week, & positive affirmations each week. My son had a hard time staying organized when he was in school, & it was stressful helping him to remain organized while managing my own schedule. Having a planner is a great way to help our younger generation to practice developing organizational & time management skills. It’s better to begin a positive habit young than to have to learn it as we’re older & busier.

The kid planner is tailored to our younger crowd to help them stay organized. Not all schools provide an agenda or planner for children to keep track of their homework assignments, so we created one just in case. It includes space for each class assignments throughout the week. My daughter loved having it last year to help remember her homework assignments, & it helped me to stay on top of anything important she needed to do.

I have come to value self-care, especially going through the COVID pandemic. I used to think of self-care as only resting, getting my hair & nails done, & getting massages. Intentional has allowed me to see that it’s much more complex than that, & there are different categories of self-care we have to cater to. The pandemic & social distancing pushed me to find other ways to take care of myself mentally, physically, financially, & socially. Along with our products, we offer daily information or tips on social media, a Self-Care Saturday task to complete, a weekly blog on our website, & a 31 Day Self-Care Challenge quarterly that raffles a self-care basket off to participants. If we don’t prioritize taking care of ourselves, no one else will either. Remember: you can’t pour from an empty cup!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Starting a business can be exciting, scary, & stressful. I’ve always been one to love a challenge, so starting Intentional put me to the test. I started a substance abuse treatment facility years ago, & I found it was too much to manage. Between my partners & I working full-time & having too many competitors & red tape to go through to maintain the business, we disbanded about a year after opening. Needless to say, I was skeptical about trying to start a business again. I’d lost a lot of money the first time around & did not want to go through that again. This time, I knew it would be different because I was flying solo. I’d have to be more accountable & do everything on my own, but I also had to stay focused because there was no one else to pick up the slack or drop the ball.

During the startup process, I had to maintain my household but also use money to begin selling products. I also would go from sitting at a computer for 40+ hours per week right into sitting at a computer to design products & start my website for hours on end. I’m not tech savvy, so Google & YouTube became my friends for resources. I attended workshops to learn more about the fundamentals of owning a business. Building the website was the most challenging, but with a little guidance & research, I was able to get the basics together. Selling products has its high & low demand times, so remaining encouraged & continuing to build my business have shown my resiliency. There have been times that I haven’t sold anything in months & others that I sold quite a few. Believing in my vision & being passionate about prioritizing self-care have been my motivators to continue on this small business journey.

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

When I first started, finding a publisher that was economical & would give me a decent profit was difficult. Most publishers charge small rates when you buy in bulk (500+), & I was not in a position to do that financially & did not have the storage space for hundreds of products. I found a local publisher that prints on demand, & I was able to price my products at a decent price to turn a profit. Over time, I felt I deserved to gain more than what I was paying the publisher & have a faster shipping time, so I did my research to determine what the best approach was.

It took several months & emails to find a publisher who would give me a reasonable price for production, deliver high quality printing, & that I could negotiate on the amount of products I can buy in bulk. It somewhat halted me being able to sell journals until this process was completed, but it was worth it. They quickly printed the amount I could store at home & not break my bank account. Eventually I’ll move to them producing all of my products, but I want to see the demand increase first.

Contact Info:

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