We recently connected with Sartteka Nefer and have shared our conversation below.
Sartteka, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
People always say, “do what you love, love what you do.” Even though I have worked a fair share of jobs that I didn’t “love” exactly, I always wanted to set up my life so that I could do what I love and still survive in high-priced California. That drive, is how I came up with my businesses. I have started a few businesses over the years, a t-shirt design company, a lingerie photography studio… but those that are currently active include: Asha Nia, a wholistic healing company, whose name means Life’s Purpose, I came up with this idea because when I was going through a tough time in my life I moved to Denver, Colorado where I found comfort in nature all around me. I was able to slow down for a little while and focus on healing my spirit-heart. I started making and selling soaps, herbal baths, gemstones and making sleep & dream pillows. Originally, I named the business Crowning Akasha but my sister did the numerology and it wasn’t vibing, so I thought long and hard on what Akasha was for me and it was clear that it was my life’s purpose to help others find healing. I wanted to create a one stop shop for magical and spiritual healing, I have always imagined it being a brick and mortar new age store where many of the items are hand crafted.
P.H.A.T.C.R.O.P.S. is my regenerative agriculture baby, she is going to be a 501c3 within the next 2 years. The name means Providing Healthier Alternatives to Communities Reclaiming Our People’s Sustainability. It was the fusion of my Master’s project and what I was working on for a training with a environmental group. The whole mission is to teach folks to grow food in whatever circumstances (small space, lower financial status, etc) we discuss environmental justice, food justice and sustainability. We teach workshops and help people install gardens in their backyards. But ultimately we want to create a regenerative food forest in SouthEast San Diego, an area that is a food desert and food swamp and is mostly inhabited by Black and Brown folks.
My birth work business, Nefer Het Ankh, which means Beautiful Temple of Life, was created when I decided to get more into birth work, I was a certified Doula and started learning about childbirth education and lactation education, I started taking different trainings and adding more tools to my birth work toolbox. I actually had a dream that prompted me to draw the logo and the name came from my Kemetic name.
I have a prepping business that does CPR trainings, preparedness, survival, rescue, defense trainings and workshops. We teach folks about prepping foods, medical supplies, etc. and advocate training all family members, disaster trainings, and building family and community-wide prep groups to prepare for worse-case SHTF situations I like to call the “Zombie Apocalypse.” This company is called Resilience Building Knowledge because that is what we do, we develop and build resilience knowledge within our communities.
For me, each of these came about because they were things I loved doing and loved doing them so much I talked about them all the time. In many instances, people started to ask me to make them a sleep pillow or to teach them how to put together a bug-out bag or about food forests. I previously worked in education, I was an assistant teacher with a substitute credential, and I loved teaching and loved being the teacher that I always wished I had as a youth, someone understanding and caring but also someone to get students interested in learning and encouraging them to think and ask questions. The worst thing for me as a teacher was the education system was always shutting me down for correcting mis-information and engaging students in intellectual conversation about history or for my political t-shirts that say things like “Schools Not Prisons” and “End Gang Enhancements.” I couldn’t stay in a place where I was tokenized for diversity and asked to talk to students about things like sun-down towns but not mention anything about current events like police murdering innocent Black folks in the streets and in their homes. When COVID shut down the school systems, I took it as a sign that I could bet it all on me, I could still teach but I would teach the way I know and love to, the way that is intersectional and wholistic, the way that merges the principles of pedagogy and praxis beautifully from an anti-racist, Black, Queer, Feminist perspective. Now, with each of my current businesses, I can honor my authentic self and always teach and operate from these spaces. This, is what is most exciting about what I currently do.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a mother, I was born and raised here in Sunny San Diego. I attended Grossmont Community College where I studied Psychology with an emphasis on Human Sexuality and Child Development. I transferred to San Diego State University with my major in Psychology and minors in LGBT Studies and Women’s Studies. While doing my undergrad, I was a McNair Scholar and spent much of my time doing research in Human Sexuality and Psychology and later focused on relationship violence. I did an internship with San Diego Family Justice Center, Dress for Success Program, and License to Freedom. After my graduation, I moved to Denver for a bit, where I did internships at Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Gender Identity Center of Colorado. I was accepted into San Diego State University’s Women’s Studies Master’s Program and moved back to San Diego. I worked as an Associate and credentialed substitute teacher for about three years after my MA and started to study birth work in my spare time. I became a certified doula with For the Village and began supporting families during their prenatal period, birth, and postpartum. I have a passion for learning and believe in holistic, traditional healing, so I decided to add to my toolbox by taking certification training programs such as Grandma’s Hands Herbal Postpartum Healing from the Black southern perspective, The Nafsa Project School traditional Moroccan postpartum healing, Milk Magic Educators from Nurturely and a Childbirth Education from Birthing From Within. I became a Climate Ambassador for Environmental Justice and started an organization called P.H.A.T.C.R.O.P.S. an acronym for Providing Healthier Alternatives to Communities Reclaiming Our People’s Sustainability. I took a permaculture design certification program as well where I learned much more about regenerative agriculture. I created a spiritual-based home business, Asha Nia, where I handcraft gemstone jewelry and other spiritual tools as well as an organization called Resilience Building Knowledge which focuses on safety, rescue and defense training. One goal of PHATCROPS is to establish local food forests in communities living under food apartheid and to continue to educate folks on the significance of growing their own food and collective permaculture. Asha Nia would love to have a brick and mortar to showcase the jewelry and spiritual crafts we make with enough room for a yoga class. I will continue to work with For the Village while also building up my birth work business Nefer Het Ankh which translates to Beautiful House of Life, where I offer full-spectrum doula services, childbirth education, and lactation education classes as well as some traditional, birth and postpartum practices such as the Moroccan Hamam. I am currently in the process of fundraising and crowdfunding for Midwifery School.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
3 out of 4 of my businesses began as side hustles. Asha Nia, which came about because I wanted a more holistic place to find tools, crafts and books about metaphysical stuff and spirituality and while there are many “magick shops” or metaphysical book stores, I always felt like these stores catered more toward a single focus, in the “magick shops” they mostly carried books, tools and statuary of figures from certain backgrounds, more aligned with Wicca, Paganism and Shamanism, with the occasional Kemetic statue of Maat or Auset (Isis) for those who practiced goddess worship. I followed the Wiccan faith mostly as a teen but rarely saw myself in the covens represented in my town. I always wanted more African goddess statuary and more books on African spiritual systems but rarely found them. The alternative to the magick shops where I found mainly Wiccan focused, white-centered religious and spiritual items, was the Botanica which carried a lot of Santeria focused items, but more so the Saints (in there white images) and too few images of the Orisha that were honored and associated with the specific saints. This, I believe was due to the anti-Blackness around the world that caused Euro-centered systems to demonize traditional African spirituality and discredit the religious and cultural practices of African and Indigenous peoples. I told myself at the creation of Asha Nia, that spiritual enlightenment would be the focus and that I would always honor that whatever it looked like for different peoples, but that I would strive to center everything on the most marginalized peoples, honoring the practices and beliefs of all of my foremothers, from my father’s African ancestry to my mother’s Indigenous and N. European ancestry. At first, I started off making gemstone pillows for my children and then natural soaps and bath/body products and later added jewelry to my bag, learning to make mala necklaces while in Colorado. Eventually, my small side hustle became an entire business, with me adding more products and vending at local community events like First Saturday’s at the Community Spot. I have a small internet following and do sales and raffles on my social media from time to time and set up a website as well as an Etsy account but have been so busy with other work that I cannot upkeep it. My organization Resilience Building Knowledge and PHATCROPS both also began as small side hustles, really they began much like Asha Nia as a way for me to fulfill a need for myself, for my own hobbies and after hearing people ask me to replicate my products for them or to make them available for purchase I decided I could make a few extra when I was feeling crafty and sell them. While prepping for my family I discovered paracording and began making and selling paracord knife bracelets and survival preps. Trying to survive in a capitalist country challenges folks to stay on their toes and to think outside the box of how to bring in additional income. As each of these businesses grew and I began adding in teaching aspects to each of them, they took form into what they are today. I am not able to work each of them full time at the moment and as I am able to invest more money and time into each of them, hopefully I will be able to make them more sustainable and more profitable and then hire some folks with vision to help me keep them running at capacity. Each of them fills a need in my community, a place where we needed access in order to facilitate our individual and collective healing.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
For those who haven’t read my previous story, let me just give this background context, I used to work in the sex industry, both as an exotic dancer and as an escort. When I decided to start my company Asha Nia, I was still hustling and had just finished my BA. I held a few legal jobs in order to pay taxes, have an income I could prove and to look legit, but the majority of my income came from my hustle so this was how I invested in the start up. I also, shared my vision with a few clients who invested or purchased some malas from me. I purchased a lot of books that teach specific crafting techniques so I could build upon the business. As each of my ideas for the other 3 businesses came to fruition I started to purchase books or pay for trainings so that I could have the skills once I stopped hustling that way it wouldn’t be as difficult of a transition for me. Now that I no longer have extra money coming in quickly, I have to separate money that I get from selling items or providing services that fall within any of the businesses and use part of the money to pay bills and living expenses and part of it goes to an envelope for re-investing into the business. I have also had times when one of my businesses was doing better than another and I invested in myself. I once got a grant for one of my businesses which I took a small amount out of and gave it as a capacity building grant for one of my other businesses.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: phatcrops; ashaniasd; ttekanefer
- Facebook: Sartteka am ab Nefer; Asha Nia; Resilience Building Knowledge; Phatcrops