When I began my journey as a spiritual entrepreneur and looked to start a spiritual business, I began with the vision to bring forward the next level of spiritual gifts in my students. I wanted to help them deeply heal while also helping them become coaches and healers who confidently use their gifts to get results for their clients and their businesses.
This is a complete guide to everything I’ve learned as a successful entrepreneur with a thriving spiritual business. All the mindsets I shifted, the habits I adopted, and the critical steps I took to start my business.
When I got started, the first thing I noticed about programs directed at spiritual entrepreneurs is that many programs claim to show people how to start a spiritual business but just teach business mindset strategies that are often inappropriate or irrelevant to the spiritual entrepreneur.
I also noticed the amazing spiritual programs that contain little practice or support in developing a successful offer or how to confidently get your spiritual gifts into the world.
Knowing the challenges I experienced when I started my spiritual business, I was determined to help bridge the gap between these two extremes so that others didn’t have to forge their path—alone.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a predictable pattern of mindsets and habits in those who get those results and those who don’t when they start a spiritual business.
How do they do it?
What differentiates a spiritual entrepreneur who “makes it” from one who hasn’t, yet? Those who are successful adopt these habits and mindsets and take these critical steps.
1. Know That Only You Can Save Yourself
As a spiritual business leader, you are responsible for becoming the hero of your own story. It’s not anyone’s job to save you. It’s yours.
Suppose you have the belief that you need to be rescued or find yourself stuck in the victim mindset, again and again. In that case, it’s critical that you learn to recognize it and take accountability for it.
It is not serving you. And, it certainly won’t serve your clients or business to blame others and play the victim.
2. Ask for Help
On their path to success, every entrepreneur needs a community of support—even, and maybe especially, spiritual entrepreneurs.
Once you get past being a victim and “needing” help, you can ask for help and support in a more empowered way. This can look like seeking further training, working with a coach, or even asking the people around you for assistance so you can focus more on your goals (childcare, help with cleaning, meal prep, and more.)
This can also look like asking for accountability from someone.
3. Be Your Own Coach
Starting a business is one of the fastest routes to spiritual and personal growth. It will expose long-hidden self-limiting beliefs and negative patterns that will hold your business and clients back. Successful entrepreneurs recognize and transcend them.
- Do you use overwhelm to avoid moving forward?
- Do you spread yourself too thin?
- Does self-judgment paralyze you?
- Do you procrastinate because you’re afraid of failure? Success?
You must know what habits and thoughts lead to self-sabotage to catch them in action, coach yourself through them, and keep your spiritual business moving forward.
4. Do the Work
Successful spiritual businesses are led by those who’ve done their work.
You can avoid your spiritual work in myriad ways: fighting with your partner, constant money problems, and unhappiness at work.
I had students say things like, “I need to resolve the issues with my husband, so I don’t have time to go to class,” but then we end up working on the exact block they are up against in the next class.
People sometimes think they must have their normal life in order before they can do spiritual work. Actually, it’s the other way around. Doing the spiritual work is what resolves normal life issues.
That is how it works.
Ninety percent of my success has come from doing my inner work and investing in my healing journey. About 10% of the success of Shaman School is grounded in method, strategy, and marketing.
You can master all the marketing advice you want, but it won’t matter if you haven’t spotted your permission blocks and learned to stop holding yourself back.
You are worth investing in yourself. Find someone doing what you want to do and learn from them. Join their group or program. Since they are there, they can teach you how to do it. This is the fastest way to success.
It might seem like a lot of money, but it is nothing compared to the time and money of figuring it out on your own or never doing it at all. By investing in something that helps you instead of covering up pain or self-doubt, you undo centuries of generational patterns and patriarchal beliefs.
Sometimes, people want a magic pill to fix it all. But that isn’t how spiritual business leaders get results.
You must do the work. Even though doing the work is challenging at times, it is also a joyous, rewarding investment in yourself.
5. Ask for What You Want When You Start a Spiritual Business
Ask for what you want out of your business and not just what you think is likely to happen.
When I do this, I don’t just visualize it until it becomes true. I mean you must know what you want. Permit yourself to have a clear picture, and give yourself permission to want things that might feel uncomfortable initially, like money or free time.
When asked what we want, we often divert to altruism, like peace on earth things. This makes sense, and you deserve to ask what you want. What do you want for you and the life you want to live?
Being able to ask for what we want is how we get free. The more liberated we are, the more free others can be.
6. Lean into Abundance & Take the Risk
When I started my spiritual business, I could provide for my basic needs. I had a job that paid my rent and fed me. It also allowed me a little flexibility so I could take clients, work on my business, and invest in growing myself.
Trying to start a spiritual business and Shaman School with the pressure of having it pay all my bills and feed me was too much pressure, which caused me to bring in desperate energy, and then I didn’t see success. We do our best work when our basic needs are met, not by forcing ourselves into spontaneously manifesting.
Eventually, you will leap from your job to a full-time spiritual entrepreneur when you’ve worked the belief pathways and trust yourself. At some point, you’ll be ready to take the risk to hold yourself to your own goals, but it’s hard to start that way unless you have a bit saved up to support you.
Don’t make decisions to avoid judgment or rejection. It will always be present, whether you do anything or not, even if you keep yourself hidden. If you are avoiding judgment, you are also avoiding expression, and expression is what you came here to do.
7. Set a Clear Vision as a Spiritual Entrepreneur
Vision guides all the successful spiritual entrepreneurs I know. Vision for their clients. Vision for their business. Vision for change.
When you clearly define these, you’ll easily attract the exact clients you can’t wait to work with and ensure your work as a spiritual entrepreneur is successful, and, most importantly, enjoyable!
Vision for Your Clients
To clarify your offer, you must first answer the question, “What problem do I help my clients solve?”
This isn’t about how you work or all you can do as a healer. This should give you a clear picture of how your clients’ lives will improve after working with you.
For example, some things people experience from working with me are awakening magic gifts and self-trust, increasing awareness, and bigger, louder dreams.
But that isn’t the tangible problem I solve.
I help healers grow their gifts and confidence to step into the next level of spiritual leadership. Either by creating a business, creating a new offer in their work, or bringing their teachings to help their community or place of work.
I know the pain points of a developing healer well because I used to be one. I was kept up at night by fears and self-doubts, wondering if I was even worthy of doing this.
This is why I created Shaman School. So, I could help healers deepen their spiritual understanding, grow their gifts, learn how to apply them, and get their offers out there.
I help my students do the work they came here to do, do the work they LOVE, and end the game of playing small or trying to be someone they are not.
So, ask yourself, “What problems keep my ideal clients up at night, and how can I solve them?”
This question is central to creating a clear vision for your clients.
Vision for Your Spiritual Business
When I did my MA in transformational leadership through CIIS, we spent much time exploring spiritual entrepreneurship.
We often explored the question, “How does your business solve a social issue?”
Without knowing the answer, you’ll constantly wonder if you are in business for the right reasons. That’s not a fun or successful place to be as an entrepreneur.
Some further questions that will help you are:
- What problems do you see in your industry at large?
- What societal problem does your program work to change?
For example, the vision for my business is to equalize healers.
So many amazing healers are frozen because they think they aren’t supposed to be one, or that spiritual gifts are either given or not.
I see spiritual workers putting down other spiritual workers to maintain a hierarchy, as though we can rank our gifts and decide which ones of us are better than others.
Well, guess what? No one is better.
We each have different paths and different things to teach.
Some of us are more developed, skilled, or experienced, but there is no point where you reach being True. Truth is constantly changing and moving.
Spiritual gifts are a part of human capacity. They can be taught just like any skill.
There is also the belief that being a healer, medicine person, or shaman means we must drop everything and leave our life behind. What ends up happening is that we keep trying to leave our lives for the spiritual world, but meanwhile, life keeps moving along while we’ve tapped out.
Right alongside that, we have a belief that spiritual work isn’t valuable. Many people believe it is better to invest in business strategies and systems.
But both beliefs are missing the point. We must bring the spiritual into business, improving businesses and a better overall system.
Instead of keeping things separate, we want to include the spiritual with everything else.
My vision for Holton Healing Arts and Shaman School is to help more people grow their gifts and fully integrate them into their lives as a regular part of interacting with the world.
What societal problems will your business solve?
Vision for Change
The most important thing you can do for your spiritual business is to have a vision for change.
If you aren’t clear on it yet, then get support! You can’t skip this step; it is worth investing in finding your purpose and aligning it with your vision.
Follow your excitement and what inspires you. What do you want to learn more about? Pursuing these things will awaken that vision.
Know your “why?” for doing what you do and learn to embody it.
Your “why” supports your clients in the best way while attracting the right people to your business.
Knowing this makes the company sustainable because it will stay focused on a vision outside of itself.
And it will make you grow your business fast because you will be focused on something that motivates and inspires you.
Your work isn’t about you. It is about that vision that you carry.
8. Play the Long Game
Imagine the risk of your life staying precisely the same.
When we picture the ideal vision of what we want…let’s say it is a retreat and wellness center, our mind comes in and tries to fill in the gaps of how to get it by making a to-do list. This becomes overwhelming and feels impossible, so we do nothing.
Use vision as a motivator and a beacon. At the same time, focus on the easiest, most achievable steps to move your spiritual business forward. Your vision may take a few years, but that few years is way better than never.
We are stuck in the consumption-consumer mindset that things are supposed to happen immediately. While we can get major shifts quickly, we also need to value slow healing and progress. If we don’t believe miracles can happen in a one-day workshop, then play the long game and invest in gradual, incremental progress.
9. Heal Your Relationship with Money
Spiritual entrepreneurs who launch successful businesses have healed their relationship with money and shifted their mindset around five critical money blocks.
They discover a new relationship with money that helps them let go of statements and mindsets like these:
- “I don’t like taking from people.”
- “I just want to help.”
- “I’m not doing it for the money.”
- “But this is important work; why should people not have access to it because they don’t have money?”
- “If you charge, you aren’t a real healer.”
At one time or another, I’ve had to confront and shift these mindsets.
I have worked hard to heal those money wounds and step into my wholeness.
In Shaman School, I’ll want to walk you through the paradigm-shifting journey I went on that changed my money belief and debunk five central money beliefs that keep spiritual practitioners stuck.
The truth is being broke doesn’t make you more spiritual.
I lived for a long time thinking having money was a problem for spiritual entrepreneurs.
Although having money is not the measure of success or happiness in the world, many healers, holistic practitioners, and even teachers still feel bad charging for their services because, ultimately, they want to help.
The trouble is, helping for no exchange often isn’t helping.
Because of greed, most people with integrity and compassion have turned away from money. We see the terrible things people do when they have money, and we blame it on the money.
We see a system that uses money as slanted or rigged, so we withdraw from it even more.
Including more compassionate and caring people within the money system is the only way to bring it back into balance.
Spiritual folks and healers are deserving of money!
When offering spiritual services, having the right offer and pricing for you and your work is essential.
This allows us to work with the right people so that we can be challenged and enjoy our work.
It creates an agreement between you and your clients and ensures that you are taken care of so you can deliver your best sessions.
Let’s walk through some common internal money objections that keep spiritual entrepreneurs from success.
Money Belief 1: Spiritual entrepreneurs who have high prices deprive people who really need it!
No. It doesn’t at all.
There are many available resources out there at a variety of price points.
Believing that charging what you are worth denies people access to spiritual knowledge is like believing that high-end restaurants cause people to starve.
People who can’t afford expensive restaurants will eat somewhere else.
You aren’t depriving anyone of spiritual knowledge.
What you are doing is showing yourself that not everyone gets to have access to you.
That’s self-care.
Money Belief 2: But I don’t want to be like the greedy businesses that hurt people or the earth.
This money block that spiritual entrepreneurs is an easy one to shift.
Then don’t.
Instead, create a business that helps people or benefits the planet.
If you are clear about what you do and honest about your motivations, you won’t care what others think.
You can trust yourself to maintain your integrity.
Money Belief 3: I was given a gift and would never charge people for my wisdom.
Spiritual business leaders are often afraid to charge money because they are afraid to be responsible for their results.
It’s not entirely true that you are responsible for your results.
Your client is responsible for theirs. Your job is to help and guide them because you have more experience than they do.
But it may feel like you are more accountable if you charge more.
It might feel more daunting, but having more responsibility isn’t bad.
The involvement of money in your agreement creates more motivation and commitment for you and your clients.
How many times have you signed up for something free or inexpensive, then didn’t participate or fully apply yourself?
How many times have you signed up for something expensive and bailed anyway?
Probably not so much.
If you are more invested in seeing results, you are more motivated to show up, do the work, and learn.
This principle is also true of your client. In this way, a financial exchange is a service to them and their motivation to make change.
Without it, there is little to no accountability.
Plus, your client gets to experience the joy of what it feels like to invest in themselves.
Not just the business, not just their family, but they are worthy of investing in them as a person. That’s quite a gift.
When we offer services for free or less than we feel is equal, we can quickly enter a zone of resentment.
Resentment is most certainly not something you want to bring into your healing or coaching sessions.
How will you help them if you are mad or frustrated about doing something you don’t want to or feeling slighted by the unbalanced energy exchange?
You can lie to yourself and convince yourself it is a service, and it is the right thing to do, and aren’t you wonderful for helping other people? But it doesn’t make the resentment disappear, and this resentment eventually leads to burnout.
This is not a good place to do healing work from.
I reached more people and made a more significant impact once I started accepting payment for my spiritual work.
Money Belief 4: Receiving money is taking from someone
Money is also gratitude.
I remember when I started as a spiritual healer. I kept offering free sessions to get more practice. Yet, people didn’t sign up.
When I asked for something in return, they happily signed up.
When I deny someone the opportunity to express gratitude by offering financial exchange, I deny their thanks.
Denying clients this opportunity means two things:
- I haven’t closed the loop of giving and receiving, and our relationship is now unbalanced.
- I haven’t accepted their gratitude, which means I am less likely to give something for them to be grateful for.
Money Belief 5: If I charge more, I will lose customers
Getting past this belief requires a move from scarcity to a profound amount of trust.
When you offer multiple options for people, they usually opt for the lowest price unless they are already deep into the work.
You might end up with more clients when you charge less, but you’ll work more and make less.
At lower price points, you won’t be able to do the transformative work that makes the most significant impact, and your clients won’t be available to receive it. It keeps both of you stuck.
So, you must be clear about your offer and stick to it, even if it means you might hear more no’s. When you hear the yes, it will be the best fit.
Let go of your expectations and listen to what Spirit is telling you.
When spiritual entrepreneurs finally heal these critical money blocks, that’s when they are ready to embrace their wealth as a healer and coach.
The truth is that listening to Spirit means letting go of how you thought things would look—even around money.
I wanted to be a spiritual guide. Now I am.
I’ve spent most of my life fully immersed in spiritual training.
My spiritual teachings are profound and real. They will help you walk through shadow work, deeply heal, and get your offer out there! And now, they include business and money.
I remember a year ago saying to Spirit, “Please, please don’t send me down that path where I make it about money or business. Please don’t make me like one of THOSE people.”
But of course, this is what I’m supposed to do. My relationship with money is one of the things I was brought here to heal within myself.
I remember catching up with a friend who also did deep-level spiritual training. I know he wanted to look like the spiritual guide we all imagine ourselves to be.
But I was impressed because he listened to Spirit, even if it didn’t look like what he thought. He offers weight loss coaching.
Many think that weight loss is a less-than-glamorous niche when they start a spiritual business. But here’s the thing. I know his work and his ability to go deep with his clients.
And they get results, not just with weight but in other areas of their life.
He might have kept trying to present himself as this ideal guide if he wasn’t available to listen. Instead, he listened. He gets to deliver his work, earn a solid income, and help people.
Life is always guiding you around the wheel.
It will keep beckoning you to move to the other side. If you’ve been chasing money and you are stressed and burned out and ready for a more spiritual approach, chances are, your life is beckoning you to show up in your divine feminine and become the spiritual person you used to judge.
If you are spiritual and have always avoided the mainstream, life will guide you to embrace it. This is wholeness. This is healing when you aren’t afraid to become something you used to judge.
The best thing you can do to heal your relationship with money and shift those money blocks is to be honest about what you’re afraid of.
This is where the healing happens.
When it comes to calling in money for your business, it’s not that you magnetically attract clients.
It’s not that you magically attract money.
Resources, wealth, and connections are already all around you. It’s not a matter of magnetizing, but opening the door.
To start your money-healing journey and open that door, ask yourself, “What are five positive, life-giving reasons you want to attract money right now?”
10. Stand Out as a Spiritual Entrepreneur
People are yearning for your spiritual gifts and for you to start a spiritual business. The key to attracting them is learning to stand out as a spiritual entrepreneur so they can find you.
You know that thing that happens when you get into something new, and suddenly, it feels like everyone is already doing it?
Comparing yourself to others can be hard to overcome in your spiritual business.
You might get consumed by thoughts like:
- “This has already been done,”
- “Where do I fit in,”
- “There can’t be enough!
First, this is very normal.
Going into these places is necessary for us to find our distinction. This experience is a massive part of the individuation process.
Individuation is also significant in bringing your work forward into the world.
You can get clarity on who you are and what you’re here to do WHILE putting your work out there.
Instead of bypassing or allowing these fears to keep you frozen, I invite you to go into those questions and use them to connect to the clients you have always wanted!
I have compiled five helpful ways to help your spiritual business stand out. Read on and learn how to overcome comparison, clarify your offer, and attract the right clients.
In your journal, ask and re-ask these questions regularly:
- “Why am I a good guide for my clients? Not compared to others but for MY clients.”
- “What do my clients see in me that makes me different?”
- “What are my values?”
Lead with what you do instead of how you do it
Your gifts are more about the experience people have from being in your presence than they are about your specific skills and capacities.
What do people receive from being in your presence? It might be joy, inspiration, new perspectives, or acceptance.
When we’re getting started offering our work, a common mistake is to lead with our tools.
For example, you might lead as an energy worker, a Reiki practitioner, or a medium.
That isn’t your offer. Those are your tools. A general contractor doesn’t lead with “I use a hammer, a circular saw, and locally sourced materials,” and neither should you.
Determine how you will bring value into someone’s life and lead with that.
Another tip is to share your own life experience!
People don’t care about quotes from other people and stats about how energy medicine works.
What they DO care about are stories about when you were struggling with the same problem as them and how you got through it.
Be specific
Your work and your spiritual business aren’t about you.
It’s about what you can do for others.
- What solution do you provide for their life?
- What are they longing for?
- What is the result they want?
That’s what your offer is.
Remember, you aren’t going to be everything to everyone. Nor should you.
If we remember, we each have a unique role in helping specific people with specific things for a specific amount of time; it takes the pressure away from having to be it all or needing to compete with others.
People are attracted to you for who you are and what you offer.
While there is the inner energetic work with calling in, receiving, and giving back, the entry point that calls people to you is your offer and being who you are.
Let go of previous expectations of yourself
Let go of the role you thought you might have.
We constantly grow and evolve, and things sometimes end up differently than we thought.
We must let go of the life we thought we would have to make room for the life we are meant for.
Don’t look!
The temptation to drop into comparing yourself to other spiritual business owners is very real.
We want to see what others are doing and what is working.But with each glance, we further divert our inner authority.
If you are watching other spiritual entrepreneurs who inspire you, great. If they don’t, stop watching them.
The same is true of potential clients.
If you know people who have expressed they like you or want to work with you but who haven’t opened the door to receive your work (which you can feel energetically), stop trying to cater to them.
It’s not worth your energy.
Even if you know that you could help them, let it go. They must come to you.
So next time you start doing something, and it feels like everyone else is doing it, remember that isn’t true. Your gifts and the value you bring to your clients’ lives are unique to you.
When you find yourself going down the rabbit hole of comparison, drop back into these five things.
Use the experience as an opportunity to connect to the people here for you, instead of changing how you do things to chase what appears to be working for others.
You are your unique medicine, and you are here for a reason.
Concluding Thoughts on Successful Spiritual Entrepreneurs & How to Start a Spiritual Business
Growing a spiritual business is possible. It happens one habit, mindset, and critical step at a time. Deep inside, you know you’ve been called to this sacred work.
I know from starting my own business that the effort is worth the reward of witnessing the lives my work has changed and growing into a life I love living.
Inside my Shaman School, you can explore and grow your spiritual gifts while developing the habits and mindset shifts to thrive as a spiritual entrepreneur. There, you can also learn the exact steps to start a successful spiritual business.
Learn more and apply to Holton Healing Arts Shaman School.