We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Neysa Garcia-muhammmad. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Neysa below.

Neysa , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission is to bridge the gap between business, wellness, and the Black feminine experience. This unique perspective is one that isn’t talked about enough. In the coaching and personal development space, there is a lot of conversation about the law of attraction or on the more practical side…habit stacking and bio-hacking. Everyone has an opinion about how to be the most productive, successful, and happy.

As a Black woman, I have a unique background because many of my challenges are systemic. I found myself filtering what I was learning about my healing and professional development journey through the perspective of my own experience.

When I was studying to earn my Trauma of Money Practitioner Certificate, that was the first time that I saw a program with a deep level of diversity. That word doesn’t even really illustrate what I experienced. For the first time I was learning in an environment that wasn’t white centered. Imagine the irony as it was founded by Chantal Chapman. She made sure that there was equity and inclusion at every level in the way she built the program. It was a beautiful model for me to see. I knew from then on that as I began coaching about abundance, money mindset, and spirituality…I had to approach it from a lens that centered Black women.

With each step forward in my own education, learning more about meditation and hypnosis…all I can think is how much WE need this work. Black women are often told to just be everything. I mean, Chaka Khan said it best, “I’m every woman”. We take on that strength and it can get us really far, but what happens when we’re performing to prove that we’re worthy? What if our success is one big justification for existing or deservingness of love?

We hear so much about hustle culture, but this is way deeper than that. This is a lifetime and many lifetimes over the generations of overcoming. It’s taking a toll on our health, our relationships, and it holds us back from what we’re really capable of – which is living abundantly in a way that is authentic to who we are…before society told us who THEY think we are. If Black Girl Magic is about our excellence…then Blk Grl Energy is about our alignment.

That’s my mission.

Neysa , 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 Neysa and I’m based in Los Angeles California. I’m an Abundance Coach, I host the Blk Grl Energy Podcast, and I co-operate a production company with my partner, Tabari. My career unfolded in front of me as I took one scary leap of faith after another.

During the pandemic, I was forced to take a pause and ask myself “Is this the path that I want to be on?” At the time, I was working in the tech industry as a product manager. I looked at my boss and his boss and his boss… I thought “Do I want to be that person? Do I want their career?” The answer was no. I was tired of hiding who I really was – a creative, a sensitive, empathic being, and someone who had more to give. So, we put together a plan for my exit. I had been a hobbyist photographer for 10 years at that point and I thought that would be a great place to start.

I reached out to an old acquaintance of mine who had just opened a restaurant and asked if he wanted free photos. He said yes. My partner and I were recently married and they offered to come along and support me on the shoot.

We had a great time working together and something clicked. We thought “We can really do this”. So, what was my dream, expanded to our dream. Tabari was making short films and comedic shorts with his friends and he wanted a path to a career with more storytelling. It just made sense. That restaurant was Little Bear and they went on to being one of our best clients. Now, we’ve been building Ginger and Carrot Productions as a creative duo for 3 years and going strong.

During the second year of business, I fell in love with personal development. I started having more clients that only needed strategy and I found myself coaching throughout our time together. At the top of 2024, I decided to take on coaching clients and just help people get through whatever was keeping them stuck. I’m a huge personal finance nerd, but entrepreneurship opened up a different perspective on money for me. I learned how emotional and spiritual our connection to money really is. I started reading books like Happy Money by Ken Honda and The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist. I launched my podcast originally as Keep It In The Group Chat to explore conversations about money and our stories about how we feel about it and later transitioned to Blk Grl Energy.

With each step forward, I followed where the breadcrumbs lead. In Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, she describes ideas as energetic entities that want to come into the world. They find someone and ask them to bring them in. We can choose to say yes or no…or ignore the call all together. If we say no, they’ll find someone else and ask them. You might have experienced that in the form of an old idea of yours being expressed through some other person or company years later. This resonated with me so much because that’s been my career in a nutshell.

I feel this sort of tapping on my shoulder and when I can, when it’s aligned…I answer the call.

In my coaching practice, I work with people who inspire me, who have achieved a great deal and are looking to tackle their next big move. My clients are expansive people, very spiritual, and self motivated. In so many ways, they don’t need my help, but they choose to inquire anyways because they understand the power of team. They prefer to be supported instead of trying to prove that they can do it all alone. Our work together isn’t about a particular framework, or strategy. Their beliefs, fear, blocks, assumptions are the basis of the work we do together. We work on unraveling anything that gets in their way together.

In my production company, we’re still taking on a lot of restaurant clients and interesting brands that have an inspiring story to tell. We always say “We just like to work with good people who give a sh*t”. For us, it’s less about the niche and more about the quality of the relationships that we have in our lives personally and professionally.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

I chose this question because I got into entrepreneurship to be transparent every step of the way. In 2023, we had our lowest sales year to date. We had to let go our team of contractors, and start freelancing outside of the business. It was devastating. This all happened the year that we moved to Los Angeles. We did all the “right things”. We lined up clients, leads, we had savings, downsized…and still it wasn’t quite enough to sustain us. So, we did what we had to do to get through it.

At first, I felt like a failure. I thought “How can I not make a videography business work in the city built for storytelling?”. After many sessions of coaching, therapy, and late night calls with friends…I woke up to the truth. What I was going through was normal. It was our second year in business, we didn’t know anyone in town (at the time), there was a massive strike and layoff industry wide, and that had a huge ripple affect in our local economy.

I self blamed for anything that didn’t go as expected and lost confidence. Then, I stopped pitching because I couldn’t handle the rejection. Everything came to a screeching halt. Eventually, I had realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere being this hard on myself. My transformation had to start with love. I had to say, “It’s okay that I don’t know what to do” …”it’s okay that things are uncertain” …”It’s okay that the road isn’t all as paved as I thought it would be”. Slowly, things started to pick up again, I started my newsletter, and we reconnected with our community. Our community is really what got us through that time. Knowing that we weren’t alone, that there is always an opportunity to meet someone new, try something new, read something new.

I had to take my own advice and tap into my own abundance thinking. I have no regrets about this time because there’s a gift in every dark period. My gift was the connection I fostered with myself. I started meditating daily, moving my body daily, and focusing on my wellness. I completed my Trauma of Money Practitioner certificate during this period and Ginger and Carrot Productions got really clear on our messaging and branding. Down turns are tough, but they’re a great time to refine and get better. We took everything we learned and applied it with every client that walks through our door.

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

The biggest lesson I had to learn is that there isn’t a “way of doing things”. Everyone is making it up as they go along. I used to hate that because I’m such a rule follower. I learned to love structure and order because that’s what I was rewarded for as a kid growing up. The authentic version of myself, however, is much more free flowing than that. Once I learned to embrace that and to fall in love with the unknown…I began to see it for what it really was – the space where anything is possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://calendly.com/neysacreates
• Instagram: @gingerandcarrotprod
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ginger-and-carrot-productions
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Neysagarciamuhammad
• Other: Blk Grl Energy Podcast – https://open.spotify.com/show/7yHA1IKRgopaQ7Ca2Bco5O

  Newsletter – https://sacred-money.kit.com/community

  Ginger and Carrot Productions – https://www.gingerandcarrot.com/