Matt runs a boutique email performance agency. He helps entrepreneurs make sure their emails actually land in inboxes instead of spam. It sounds dry. But oh so important.

Most first-time creators don’t think about deliverability until they have a problem. They build an audience, they send emails, and suddenly half their emails are landing in promotions or they’re getting spam complaints they don’t understand. By then, the damage is harder to undo.

Matt is the person you call when that happens. I’ve called him. When we were moving our list from ActiveCampaign over to Kit and connecting it with Substack, when we needed to understand what was actually happening with our email health, and that’s when I reached out.

What makes Matt different is that he can explain something genuinely technical and boring and make it clear. He doesn’t overcomplicate it. He doesn’t hide behind jargon. He just says: here’s what’s happening, here’s why it matters, here’s what you do about it.

What We Talked About

We went deep on how email performance actually works. Not the copywriting part. Not the psychology. The mechanics. The infrastructure. The stuff that determines whether your best email ever written lands where people can see it or disappears into the void.

We talked about:

• Why your sender reputation matters more than most people realize

• What happens when you import a list incorrectly (and how to catch it)

• How to keep your email health strong as you scale

• What to look for if your deliverability starts dropping

• Why the platforms you choose (ActiveCampaign, Kit, Substack, whatever) have different capabilities for protecting that health

The conversation was technical. But it was also practical. Matt has built his entire business around the reality that most founders and creators don’t know this stuff exists until they need it.

Why You Should Listen

If you’re building an audience and you send email, this is relevant. Not because you need to become an email infrastructure expert. But because you need to understand the baseline. You need to know when something’s off before it becomes a crisis.

Matt also has a gift for making complex things sound simple. That’s rare. And if you ever hit a deliverability wall, you’ll want to know who to call.

He’s building at deliverabilitynow.com. Subscribe to his newsletter. It’s good.

For context, Billy is the guy who supported the creation our messaging foundation for Sacred Business Flow back when we were too close to it to see it ourselves. Author of Simple Marketing for Smart People. Creator of the Five Lightbulbs framework, which we still apply almost daily. He just launched a new Substack called Fractal Faith, and the conversation we had with him went somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

Most marketing conversations stay in tactics. This one started in tactics for about six minutes and then went somewhere I rarely hear marketers willing to go.

Billy uses a metaphor early on about fish, water, and what we’ve all been swimming in without realizing. I’d heard him use the metaphor before, but the way he applied it to the entire marketing industry stopped me. Where he takes it from there is the part I want you to hear from him directly.

He also names a single question, near the end, that he says will tell you whether your marketing is crossing a line or not. One question. He gives it to you in a simple sentence you can sit with for yourself.

Carolina said something in this conversation I had almost forgotten about her. She confessed she rejected marketing entirely for the first three years of her previous business. Why she changed her mind, and what she heard from Billy that supported her own growth, is a pretty nice moment in the episode.

And there’s a story Billy tells about leaving his energy industry job at twenty-nine, expecting his side business to take off. What actually happened next, and the phrase he uses to describe that in-between place, is worth pressing play for if you are feeling stalled out right now.

Another fun surprise connection was hearing about ’s influence on Billy’s journey, after just having him on the show a few weeks ago.

The whole thing runs about fifty-five minutes.

If you’ve ever caught yourself avoiding marketing because something about it felt off, or you’ve quietly wondered whether there’s a way to do this work without giving up your dignity or theirs, this is the conversation for you.

For more from billy, check out his new substack at Fractal Faith and marketingisanargument.com

Phil (& Carolina)

Fractal Faith

I used to find reality puzzling. Christianity was the missing piece.

By Billy Broas

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into Sacred Business Stories with and !

We sat down with last week. About twenty-five minutes came through in the replay. The first fifteen didn’t. Substack swallowed the opening. Honestly, I was pretty gutted, and I sat with the recording for a few days wondering whether to share the replay at all.

Then I caught myself.

This was a conversation about beginning before you’re ready and shipping the imperfect thing. And I was about to scrap it because the recording wasn’t perfect lol.

Honestly, Leo’s been someone I’ve considered a friend for years now. So here it is.

Imperfect, missing the opening, but still some great food for thought, as Leo is one of the wisest dudes I know. I listen to what this guy has to say, and you should too.

A few things from this conversation I think are worth drawing attention to:

There’s a moment where Leo names a particular trap AI is setting for ambitious people, and and interesting framing. He calls Claude his “best cheerleader.” Why he frames that as a problem is the part you should check out.

Carolina asked him about fear and resistance. He answered with a sewing project he’s been working on for years. (Yes, sewing.) Where he took that, and how he tied it back to his own Substack, was also a great moment worth watching.

And toward the end, he answered a question about growth in a way you might not quite expect from someone who’s built the audience he has. The line started with “growth is a loaded topic for a lot of people.”

The whole thing runs about twenty-seven minutes.

If you’ve ever caught yourself opening twelve tabs because Claude told you all twelve ideas were brilliant, this one’s for you.

Phil (& Carolina)

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into Sacred Business Stories with and !

The Zen of Doing

A book in progress, on doing hard things with ease, by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.

By Leo Babauta

She writes a Substack called Robots Ate My Homework. Half Armenian, half Romanian. Film studies in London, two master’s degrees, a decade in B2B content marketing, a content agency built with her husband, and now one of the most interesting voices on AI on Substack.

Her tagline says it. AI with brains, taste, and an unreasonable amount of depth.

And then, somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, she turned a question back on me.

I don’t want to set it up too much. The full exchange is on the feed and it’s worth hearing in her voice. What I’ll say is this. The question pulled at a habit I’d already been quietly questioning. The moment that followed left Carolina and me looking at each other across the call. The line that closed it landed in one short phrase I haven’t been able to put down since.

That’s one of three or four moments in this conversation that really made me go “woah”.

Among the others.

She doesn’t write tutorials. Her brain, in her own words, is 99% on the creative side, and her code “fights back” when she vibe-codes. So when AI shows up and the rest of the field is racing to explain it, she’s doing something else entirely. She lets the trend sit. Watches what people say about it for a week or two. Then connects it to a book or a film or a note she jotted down on a different day. The newsletter that comes out of that process sits on three pillars I think most people writing about AI right now are missing. I won’t spoil them. They’re worth hearing her name.

She also said the thing substack writers don’t usually like to admit on a podcast.

She started Substack as an outreach engine. The first posts were about her product. Then something shifted and she stopped pitching. When I asked her how she made the call, her answer was a single sentence and one of the cleaner reframes of “strategy” I’ve heard in a while. Carolina caught it before I did.

And on connection, which is the thing most people on Substack are quietly anxious about, her advice was almost embarrassingly simple. The kind of simple you only earn after ten years.

The conversation runs about thirty minutes.

If any of the above is making you curious, watch the the full episode above. Mia’s publication is Robots Ate My Homework. Both worth your time.

And if you’re wondering what her question was, you’ll have to listen.

ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK

AI systems that sharpen your mind, your work, and your taste without turning you into another robot in the circus. Yes, the robots ate your homework, but they kept the good parts.

By Mia Kiraki 🎭

What he wanted was simple. He didn’t want to keep spending his life on work he hated.

The hard part was that his real estate brokerage had just become the first business he’d ever built that made more money than his big-law job would have. He had something to prove with it. And now, recovering from brain surgery, he was thinking hard about everything he didn’t actually want to spend his life doing.

“I’m not doing this anymore.”

Those were the words. Shocking, in his telling, because of the family he now had to feed. But clarity arrives fast when you’ve just been that close to the edge.

What came next is the part most people already know in some form, because Brian is the founder of Copyblogger. He built three seven-figure no-employee businesses in three years, combined them into what became an eight-figure software and hosting company, did $70 million in sales between 2007 and 2017, and sold in 2018. Then, at an age when most of his peers were talking about retirement, he started a Substack called Further, built for the generation that employers start pushing out the door somewhere between 58 and 62.

So we had him on Sacred Business Stories this week to trace the arc. The part most people don’t hear is what happened before the wins.

He’d quit law in 1998. His first business failed. It was an email newsletter company, which, as he pointed out, is roughly the same thing everyone on Substack is doing in 2026. He just got there 28 years too early and didn’t understand how to sell anything. He thought you monetized content with advertising. The dot-com crash ended it for him, and in his words, that was a mercy killing.

Then he read one line in Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

“The Internet is the greatest direct marketing medium the world has ever seen.”

That was the sentence that reset his path. He taught himself copywriting and studied direct response going back to the 1920s. By the time he launched Copyblogger in 2006, he was treating the internet as a relationship game rather than a publishing one.

Two things stood out in the conversation.

The first was a quote that’s stuck with me since we recorded.

Apply that anywhere you like. AI, Substack, the dopamine feed on whatever platform ate your morning. The useful question is what side of you a given tool tends to amplify.

The second was about values-based marketing. Brian made the point that values aren’t automatically good. Greed is a value. Figures like have audiences because they’re marketing with precision to the values of those audiences, and it’s been okay on the internet for a long time, in his words, to be awful. Which means writers who sit on their message because they’re worried about being disliked are making the problem worse. They leave the space empty. Somebody fills it. Usually not someone you’d want doing the filling.

His advice to anyone hesitating was unfussy.

“If you try to create generic content because you’re afraid to say anything that matters, you will not succeed.”

The shift Brian made after the brain surgery is worth naming clearly. He stopped building from an energy of having something to prove. He started building something he actually cared about. The irony, as he put it, is that the decade after that shift is the one that produced the $70 million.

Which reframes a belief a lot of people carry into their work. The idea that purpose and practicality pull in opposite directions. Brian’s experience says they pull in the same one. The decade he made his most purpose-aligned decisions was also the decade he made the most money.

You can find Brian writing at news.further.net.

Further: Live Long and Prosper

Stop hoping for some mythical "golden years" retirement. Start building a location-independent business at midlife that lets you live anywhere and maximize your freedom and happiness... right now, in your prime.

By Brian Clark

He speaks mostly to 45 to 70 year olds who aren’t ready to retire and aren’t going to be allowed to coast much longer either. Gen X, in his framing, is the canary in the coal mine for what happens next.

Check out the fully replay. He doesn’t waste the hour.

That instinct to translate complexity into something a real person can actually use has followed her ever since. It’s in the way she practiced medicine. It’s in the patient eBooks she made long before “content creation” was a thing. And it’s in The Habit Healers, her Substack publication that crossed 50,000 Facebook followers in just two months and keeps growing because it does something most health writing doesn’t: it starts from where people actually are, not from where we assume they should be.

This conversation with Laurie was honest in the best way. She didn’t pretend her path wasn’t messy. She talked about the soul-crushing side of military medicine, about the fear that lives inside every pivot, and about how a patient who started with two push-ups on a kitchen counter now does 60 in a row. That last one I loved. Because that’s exactly what this show is about.

Show Notes

[00:00] — Welcome & Who Is Dr. Laurie Marbas

Laurie is a board-certified physician with an MD and MBA who has been writing and creating content online for over a decade. She founded The Habit Healers to bring metabolic health science into everyday language, paired with small, actionable protocols people can actually follow. She started on Substack in January 2025 and has grown quickly by applying the same thinking she used to survive medical school: break it down, explain it clearly, and make it fun.

[00:02] — Growing Up Without a Map

Laurie grew up in a home without health insurance, with parents who didn’t finish high school. When her four-year-old sister got sick and had a surgery that changed her life, Laurie decided at age ten that she wanted to be part of that. Nobody handed her a roadmap. Her stepdad hadn’t finished school. Her mom had her at 19. What she had instead was the decision that those facts weren’t reasons to stop.

• She learned early that when people said “you can’t be a doctor,” she didn’t compute it. She moved on.

• Her grandmother was one of the adults who reflected a different possibility back to her

• The gap between what people around her had done and what she wanted to do became fuel. She just kept going.

[00:04] — Drawing Cartoons Through Medical School

Starting medical school with children aged five, three, and ten months old, Laurie had to find a faster way to learn. Rote memorization wasn’t going to work. So she started sketching out complex medical concepts in cartoon form, as a memory tool. Friends noticed. She started making them for others. By the time she graduated, she and her co-authors had published six books in a series called Visual Mnemonics. The skill she developed to survive school, breaking down complicated ideas into something simple enough to draw, became the skill that runs her entire practice and publication today.

• She later created patient eBooks to replace the confusion people left appointments with

• The cartoon logic carried forward: clear, visual, honest

• “I made my way through medical school drawing cartoons. Take it for what it’s worth.”

[00:08] — Joy

When Carolina asked Laurie about the relationship between joy and healing, this conversation opened up. Laurie described joy as what happens when you’re deeply in your work, when flow comes easily and curiosity pulls you forward. The true joy, she said, is watching someone understand something they didn’t understand before. Seeing a comment where someone changed something because of what she wrote.

• “It’s the doctoring through words, in a sense, but it’s more than that because you’re touching lives you can’t see in a clinic”

• She described ripple effects from her writing, one reader teaching something to another, who then came back to tell her months later

• She’s not trying to reach 50,000 people at once. She’s trying to reach one person well, and trusting that the ripple goes somewhere she can’t track

[00:12] — Identity Shift

Laurie was active duty Air Force after medical school. She found herself in a system where she had little control, doing work that was hollowing her out. She called it soul-crushing. She made the decision to leave. The military is stable, predictable, and safe. She watched colleagues stay because the alternative was terrifying. She chose the terror instead.

• That pivot required accepting uncertainty, something she keeps returning to as a pattern

• Her husband’s question has followed her through every transition: “Are you still enjoying what you’re doing?”

• She described creative identity as something you keep choosing. When the old path stops fitting, you choose again.

[00:20] — Tinkering, Testing, and Growing 50,000 Facebook Followers in Two Months

Laurie sees every platform as a variable worth testing. She grew a dormant Facebook page from around 9,000 followers to over 50,000 in roughly two months by treating it as a funnel into Substack. The entry point is a free seven-day mini course. From there, readers move into her paid School community where she shows up live weekly. The structure is clear: free content, Substack list, paid community. Three layers. No guessing where someone is supposed to go.

• “Facebook has 2.8 billion users. Substack has 35 to 40 million. If you can figure out how to funnel from there, you open something up.”

• She resurrected a stale page she’d largely ignored; it had been sitting at the same number for ten years

• The move was building qualified traffic. Content that attracts the wrong reader is just noise with more followers attached.

[00:26] — Radical Acceptance and the Nervous System

This was the section of the conversation that Carolina connected to most directly. Laurie described how she learned to stop letting her past dictate her present, and how that shift changed things. She wasn’t dismissive about hard things. She said clearly: her home growing up was not ideal. She had people in her life who balanced that out. But she made a decision at some point to stop holding her story as an identity she lived inside.

• “I honor your past, but you cannot let it continue to dictate your future”

• She wears a ring inscribed with “this too shall pass.” The good times. The bad times. All of it moves through.

• Real regulation, she said, is being present enough to notice the story you’re telling yourself before it runs away with you

[00:28] — How Tiny Habits Build the Confidence to Change

One of the most grounded moments in the conversation was a real patient story. Someone who had never exercised in her life. Laurie gave her one instruction: two push-ups on the kitchen counter. Two months later, that patient was doing 60. She showed Laurie her arms on a video call. “I challenge anyone to go do 60 push-ups and not find that challenging,” Laurie said. Starting small is the actual path to the bigger thing.

• Small wins create the proof of capability that people who have never had it genuinely need

• The CAN framework she uses: is the habit Clear, is it Actionable today without extra gear, is it Nourishing for you right now?

• What was nourishing at 35 may not be nourishing at 55. The habit has to fit the actual life.

[00:41] — Reps, Detachment, and Why Content Succeeds

Laurie published something on Substack every day for the first six months. Not because it was perfect. Because 180 reps in six months is what weekly publishing takes three years to match. She was very direct: you can’t be emotionally devastated every time something doesn’t land. You put everything into it, publish it, and then let it go. She had a useful image for this: stand outside, look up at the sky, and register how small the post actually is in the context of the universe. Then keep going.

• The articles that convert, she’s found, are the ones written for a specific reader with a specific problem. Not the ones optimized for conversion.

• “That energy follows through with your words.” Writing to help and writing to sell feel different to the reader.

• She pulls reader feedback into new posts. Testimonials, outcome stories, successes they’ve shared with her all become content, with permission.

Key Quotes

“It’s the doctoring through words, in a sense. But you’re touching lives I can’t see 50,000 people in a day, but I can send out a post.” — Dr. Laurie Marbas

“The moment you believe you deserve it and you start taking action, you shift. You start seeing opportunities. And you enjoy it, but you don’t hold on to it either.” — Dr. Laurie Marbas

“Those are the ones that convert. Those are the ones that people share. You’re walking in with a different intention and you get a different outcome.” — Dr. Laurie Marbas

Resources Mentioned

• Atomic Habits by James Clear (Laurie interviewed James Clear approximately seven to eight years ago)

• Visual Mnemonics series — six textbooks co-authored by Dr. Marbas during medical school, designed to help medical students retain complex information through visual learning

• Zen Habits (blog by Leo Babauta) — referenced in context of early blogging strategy and the value of volume and consistency in building an audience

• Russell Brunson’s funnel frameworks — mentioned as an influence on Laurie’s multi-platform approach to moving audiences toward Substack

• The CAN Framework — Dr. Marbas’s original tool for evaluating whether a habit is right for someone right now: Clear (is it specific?), Actionable today (no extra setup required), Nourishing (is it right for where you are in life?)

Where to Find Dr. Laurie Marbas

Laurie’s Substack publication, The Habit Healers, is the best place to start. She recommends searching for the article “The First Habit I Prescribe as a Doctor” to get a feel for her philosophy. The publication uses a newspaper-style layout, with the most-read articles visible on the left side. She publishes four times a week across metabolic health, behavior change, and healing habits, all translated from clinical science into things you can actually do today.

The Habit Healers

There’s no shortage of health advice. What’s missing is translation. Here, research becomes clear protocols and tiny actions you can implement immediately. Need a place to start? Begin with One Tiny Healing Habit on Substack.

By Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

A Note From Our Community

This is what Sacred Business Stories is for. The version with three kids and no one in your family who’d done it before. The version where you leave the military because the safety stopped feeling like safety. The version where 2,000 YouTube videos exist before anything looks like momentum.

Laurie reminded me of something I believe deeply: the habits that heal your body are often the same ones that lead to your most meaningful work. Small, clear, nourishing action. Repeated. With some willingness to release attachment to the outcome.

If anything in this conversation landed for you, specifically the part about knowing you have something real to give and still finding it hard to move, I’d love to talk.

We hold Integration Calls for exactly this. It’s a real conversation about what you’re building, what’s stopping it, and whether there’s a fit between where you are and how we work.

→ Book an Integration Call

Thank You

Thank you , , , , , and to many others who joined us live for this conversation.

We’re in this together.

P.S. All previous Sacred Business Stories episodes and Substack posts are archived on our publication. If someone shared this with you and you want to stay connected, subscribe below. It’s free to start.

Subscribe now

Sacred Business Stories | Weekly Substack Live Recap | Guest: , Somatic Therapist, Writer & Founder of Danza Medicina

Morena Cardoso has spent the last decade leading immersive movement laboratories across 15 countries under the banner of Danza Medicina, working with the female body, ancestral healing, and what she calls “the old ways.” She’s built a following on Instagram. She’s written a book. She’s completed a master’s in clinical psychology. And at the peak of her visibility, she stopped. Completely.

Not a little break. Not a social media detox weekend. She canceled her entire agenda, went offline, and disappeared for a year and a half while the internet kept moving without her. What she came back with, and why she left in the first place, is the kind of story that makes you put your phone down.

For anyone building a business that’s supposed to feel like them, this conversation is worth sitting with. Morena brought a high level of honesty to the show. Extremely non-performative. She told us where she struggled, where she’s still figuring it out, and why she’s grateful for every year that makes her a little less interested in rushing.

Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome & Introduction

• Morena Cardoso is a somatic therapist, writer, and founder of Danza Medicina, a movement-based healing practice she’s led across 15 countries

• Sacred Business Stories was created to give people permission to restart from where they are, not from where they think they should be

• Phil opens by asking Morena to share the behind-the-scenes story, the part people don’t see when they encounter her work today

[01:50] A Body That Felt Everything and Didn’t Know What to Do with It

• Morena’s path began with lifelong hypersensitivity. She felt the world in her body before she had language for it

• She started in hotel management, realized quickly it wasn’t hers, and followed a pull toward yoga and body-based practice

• A trip to India changed the direction. She started meeting people who were living a way she hadn’t seen modeled anywhere in her upbringing

• Her first real driver wasn’t helping others. It was surviving, and making sure she could take care of herself and her son without asking permission from anyone

[05:00] Building Danza Medicina: What She Was Actually Looking For

• She didn’t set out to build a program. She wanted to create something that didn’t exist yet because she needed it herself

• “I want to create sacred spaces for us because I was urging to receive it.” That line explains everything about how the best work gets built

• She traveled to meet the grandmothers, the abuelas holding ancient wisdom, before she started teaching anything

• Returning to Brazil, she had to reckon with her own identity as a white, middle-class woman working in spaces adjacent to indigenous and ancestral traditions. She went back to school instead of around it

[08:00] What Authenticity Actually Looks Like in Practice

• Morena was born spontaneous and learned, over time, to shut that down. Business was a process of unlearning the domestication

• The shift came through humbleness, not performance. She wasn’t trying to be right or recognized. She just noticed she wasn’t alone in what she was feeling

• “I started naming it. And they could say, oh, I feel the same. And I was like, oh really.” That recognition is what built connection before anything else

• She watches for the moment she starts controlling results rather than creating from truth. That’s her signal to step back and ask why she’s doing it again

[10:30] The Sabbatical: What Made Her Stop

• At the height of her work, 100,000 followers, events across 10 countries, Morena canceled everything and went dark for 18 months

• The decision wasn’t strategic. She went through a spiritual ritual after losing four pregnancies in a row. Medicine had no explanation. Something in her body did

• She spent two months camping on her land, making fire, praying, and sitting with the grief as a doorway rather than something to manage away

• The answer she received was simple: go back to taking care of yourself. You’re not that important. Stop nourishing others before you nourish yourself

• She describes it as an ego death. The persona she’d built over years had to come apart so she could find out who was underneath it

[18:00] Fear, the Calling, and How to Tell the Difference

• She had very real fears about money. Her family didn’t come from wealth. Not working meant not knowing if the bills would get paid

• She draws a clear line between the calling and the mind. The mind offers reasons. The calling doesn’t negotiate

• “When you hear that deep calling inside, everything goes in a proper way. Not necessarily a good way. But in a proper way. We learn what we have to learn.”

• Her advice for anyone trying to hear their own signal through the noise: stop. Not metaphorically. Stop. “We’re so afraid of stopping. We live in this performative life all the time.”

• She shared that she took the Harmony Map assessment during this conversation and said it surfaced answers she hadn’t expected, along with new questions worth sitting with

[22:30] Coming Back

• A year and a half later, her baby was 40 days old. She looked at her husband and said she was ready

• Her first post was a photo of herself with a nine-month belly and a mask. The caption, translated from Portuguese: “For reborn, we need to learn how to die.”

• It received 15,000 likes. Her words: “Oh shit. They’re still there.”

• Not everyone stayed. Some people had grown attached to the old version of Morena and didn’t follow the new one. New people came. The ones who’d been there for ten years grew with her

• Coming back with a psychology master’s degree, a new baby, a changed voice, and a changed Instagram algorithm, she had to learn again from something close to zero. She calls it “a little bit analogical.” It was harder than starting

[33:00] The Fire vs. The Big Log

• There’s a stage of building a business that runs on excitement. It creates fast, burns hot, needs constant fuel. That’s the small kindling

• There’s another stage that requires putting the big log on. It’s slower. Less exciting. Sometimes tedious. But it burns long enough to build something real

• Morena, at 40, says she no longer has the energy for perpetual intensity. She’s building the biggest project of her life right now, and most days it doesn’t feel electric. It feels like work

• “I am now mature enough to hold space for that.” That sentence is worth writing down

• Phil connects this to his own practice with the Harmony Map, now on its 13th iteration in a year. Not 13 reinventions. 13 deepenings of the same thing

[40:00] The Project in Bahia and What Comes Next

• Morena is building a physical center in Bahia, Brazil: a research space, a dance space, and an art residency on 22 hectares of Atlantic forest with 1 kilometer of clean river, shared with three close friends

• It’s the first time in her life she’s building something material. She doesn’t hide the dream. She talks about it openly because she believes that’s part of how it becomes real

• She continues to lead international Danza Medicina labs for those who want the full embodied experience. In her words: “I can speak well, but honestly I do much better when I’m silent and just holding space.”

• To connect with her work: find her on Instagram and follow Danza Medicina

Key Quotes

“I want to create something that doesn’t exist because I need it. I need to be with women, I need to dance, I need to make fire and sing around the fire.” — Morena Cardoso

“To be reborn, we need to learn how to die.” — Morena Cardoso (the caption on her return post after 18 months offline)

“When you hear that deep calling inside, everything goes in a proper way. Not necessarily a good way. But in a proper way.” — Morena Cardoso

Resources Mentioned

• Danza Medicina — Morena’s immersive movement practice (Instagram: @danzamedicina)

• The Business Harmony Map — the 10-minute assessment Morena mentioned taking before this conversation; it maps nine internal patterns and shows you where your business energy is most out of balance

• Sacred Business Flow — the work Phil and Carolina do with purpose-driven professionals who are ready to build something aligned and lasting

Where to Find Morena Cardoso

• Instagram: Search Danza Medicina

• Upcoming work: International Danza Medicina labs in 2026 (limited due to focus on the Bahia land project)

• The big project: A healing, research, and art residency center in Bahia, Brazil, on 22 hectares of Atlantic forest

A Note Before You Go

Morena mentioned something during this conversation that I want to sit with you for a moment.

She took the Business Harmony Map before we spoke. She said it surprised her how many answers came up just from answering the questions. And then, just as fast, new questions rose.

That’s what the Harmony Map is designed to do. Not give you a label to screenshot. Not push you toward anything. Just help you see the pattern that’s been quietly running your decisions, so you can start designing around who you actually are, not who you think you’re supposed to be.

If you’ve been in business for years and still feel like something invisible is slowing you down, that’s worth looking at. Eight minutes. Easy.

Take the Business Harmony Map here →

Thank You

To , , , , and many others who joined us live and to those catching the replay, thank you for being here.

A special thank you to Morena for her honesty. For sharing not just the success, but the losses, the silence, the fear, and the slow work of coming back to herself. That kind of openness is rare. It’s also, as this episode makes clear, exactly what connection is built on.

P.S. Every episode of Sacred Business Stories is available in our archive. If this one resonated, you might enjoy this one with . There’s a lot of honest conversation about what it actually looks like to build this way.

What’s Next: We’re back next week with another Substack Live conversation with . Subscribe if you’re not already, and you’ll get it in your inbox the moment it’s live.

Until then.

Phil

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What if it isn’t?

You read it back, you hear nothing from the outside world, and you decide to wait a little longer until it’s better, until you’re clearer, until the timing is right.

When first spoke honestly in a bible study group, the man who went next said something he’d never said to anyone. Mac didn’t cause that by being inspiring. He caused it by going first, and he understood precisely why. He built Porn Free Millennial from inside the situation it addresses, a Substack publication and podcast about recovery from pornography addiction, before the divorce was final, before his own story was over, before anyone was reading. He stopped for two years. Then he started again. He publishes it every Monday from his RV, alongside a corporate job he hasn’t left. The light, he says, is a great disinfectant. Once you get it into the light, it starts a process. Things start moving to where you can’t just be in the same place anymore.

He realized in that room that sharing his story might just open up somebody. That if he went first, the person sitting next to him might say something he’d never said before. When you’re teaching something or sharing about yourself, he said, it calls you to elevate how you live your life. You can’t keep talking about something you’re not living into. What that looked like when five people were listening and the numbers said stop is what this conversation is about.

Show Notes

[Segment 1] — The Platform and Why It’s Named That

• Porn Free Millennial addresses a topic most people won’t name publicly. Mac chose the name deliberately and doesn’t soften it.

• His framing is honest from the start: this is his subject, his wound, and he offers it as a service.

• The directness of the platform name sets the tone for the whole body of work.

[Segment 2] — Where It Started: Age 10 Forward

• Mac’s story began at age 10 and ran through marriage and into divorce. He is specific about the timeline.

• He was caught, not confessional, six months into his marriage and handled the moment badly. He’s honest about that.

• The secret didn’t break the marriage on its own. Managing the gap between who he appeared to be and what he was doing created the damage.

• Mac describes having a public identity built on trustworthiness while carrying “this separate self I wasn’t too proud about.”

[Segment 3] — Built It, Stopped, Then Started Again

• Mac created Porn Free Millennial in 2021 while still married and nearly two years sober. He stopped before he launched it publicly.

• A relapse after a cross-country move cut him off from his therapist, his bible study group, and his closest friends at once. Rebuilding those structures in a new city took longer than the gap they left.

• He didn’t actually start publishing and podcasting until May 2023, after the divorce. The platform sat dormant for nearly two years.

• The lesson isn’t about willpower. It’s about structure: the support system that makes the work possible is not optional, and it doesn’t travel automatically when you do.

[Segment 4] — The Bible Study Moment That Changed Everything

• Mac shared something vulnerable in a group bible study. The man who spoke after him immediately shared something he’d never said out loud before.

• Mac recognized the pattern: going first creates permission. When one person stops managing their image, the people around them become capable of something they weren’t capable of before.

• This moment became the operating principle of Porn Free Millennial: the platform exists because going first is contagious.

• Mac’s words: “I shared something really deep. And what I noticed was, it was like the next guy after me shared something really private and something that they were struggling with. I think that was one of the first times I really realized, wow. If I shared something about my story, that might just open up somebody.”

[Segment 5] — The Fear of Talking to No One

• Mac’s first article got 20 to 30 reads. His first podcast episode got 5 downloads on day one.

• The fear wasn’t that people would judge what he was saying. It was that nobody would hear it at all.

• One friend reached out privately after listening. Mac decided that one person was worth more than any number the platform wasn’t giving him.

• Carolina named the pattern: a reader will sit with someone’s work for a year in silence, then write to say something changed. The silence wasn’t indifference. It was process.

The question Mac eventually stopped asking: What if no one is listening?

[Segment 6] — How to Build Through Collaboration

• Mac’s approach: interact with someone’s work before you ask for anything. Leave comments, engage with their posts, let them see your name before you reach out directly.

• His most effective collaborations came from unexpected intersections, a film professor, a medieval art historian, an AI specialist, not from chasing people in the same niche.

• Starting with a collaborative article is lower friction than a podcast invite. It builds trust and gives both people a finished piece of work before committing to a longer format.

• The worst someone can say is no. Mac is direct about this. Most people never ask because they haven’t made peace with that outcome.

[Segment 7] — The Growth Move He Didn’t Plan

• A single Substack Note featuring a Duncan Trussell quote brought roughly 90 new subscribers. Mac did not predict this.

• Substack Notes, not long-form essays, drove his biggest single growth moment on the platform.

• The practical point: stay consistently visible in small ways and stop trying to engineer what spreads.

• His Monday newsletter, consistent and unremarkable in ambition, proved more valuable over time than any single spike.

[Segment 8] — What He Offers Now

• Mac publishes a weekly newsletter every Monday, runs a bi-weekly podcast trending toward weekly, and writes Porn Free Poetry, one poem per month.

• He offers one-on-one coaching starting with a free Zoom discovery call, available through his Substack about page.

• He has an accountability software partnership with Ever Accountable, with a 20% discount linked on his about page.

• Mac runs all of this alongside a corporate day job from his RV. He hasn’t quit to pursue the platform. He’s building it while the day job is still there.

• His words on why consistency holds: “When you’re teaching somebody something or sharing stuff about yourself, I think that calls you to elevate how you live your life. Because I don’t wanna be talking about something if I’m not living into it.”

Key Quotes

“People would see Mac. You’d look at me and be like, oh, hey. That’s Mac. He’s trustworthy. He tells the truth. He’s honest. He has integrity[...] But at the same time, I had this separate self that I wasn’t too proud about.”

Mac Dohm

“I shared something really deep. And what I noticed was, it was like the next guy after me shared something really private and something that they were struggling with. I think that was one of the first times I really realized, wow. If I shared something about my story, that might just open up somebody.”

Mac Dohm

“When you’re teaching somebody something or if you’re sharing stuff about yourself, I think that calls you to elevate how you live your life. Because I don’t wanna be talking about something if I’m not living into it.”

Mac Dohm

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Porn Free Radio: podcast hosted by Matt Dobshutz, one of the original voices in the porn-free recovery space. Mac credits this show with starting his recovery.

Ever Accountable: accountability and content-filtering software. 20% discount available on Mac’s Substack about page.

Porn Free Millennial Episode 50: Mac’s interview with Matt Dobshutz, cited as one of his best episodes.

Substack Notes: the short-form posting feature Mac used to generate his single largest subscriber growth event.

Duncan Trussell: comedian and podcaster. A Trussell quote shared as a Substack Note produced Mac’s biggest single growth moment on the platform.

Where to Find Mac Dohm

Mac built Porn Free Millennial from inside the exact situation it addresses, before he was ready, before his own story was over, and before the numbers gave him any reason to keep going. If you’ve been sitting on something that feels too personal to publish, he’s worth your time. Here’s where to find his work.

Substack: Porn Free Millennial (weekly newsletter, bi-weekly podcast, Porn Free Poetry series, Reflections)

Porn Free Millennial

My goal is to share my relationship with porn and why I decided to remove it from my life. If you've ever had the thought or have taken action before to quit porn, subscribe to receive tips and encouragement to help you on your journey!

By Mac

Mac said that teaching something calls him to live into it. He can’t talk about what he’s not doing. That’s not a standard accountability trick. It’s a specific consequence of going public with the thing you’re still working on.

This conversation left me with one question. What would you have to live into if you published what you’ve been holding back? Not what would change for your audience. What would have to change for you.

Mac’s through-line was that what costs you most to keep hidden is often what someone else needs to hear first. If this conversation named something for you, the Harmony Map can tell you what pattern is underneath it. Ten minutes. Free.

Take The Harmony Map

That’s the confession made on Sacred Business Stories this week. And if you’ve ever found yourself knowing exactly what you should do next while watching yourself not do it, this conversation was for meant for you.

Kevin built CopyChief into a powerhouse community over 11 years. Live events with 300 people flying in from Australia and Asia. Legendary industry names jamming on stage at after-parties. A coaching program that actually worked. By any external measure, he’d made it.

Then he walked away from all of it.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Here’s the conventional wisdom: build the thing, scale the thing, optimize the thing, repeat. Success is a straight line from hustle to growth to more growth.

Kevin’s experience tells a different story.

Somewhere around year seven, the business that used to feel like play started feeling like obligation. His emails had to go through five people before he could send them. He was banned from pushing any buttons in his own software. The guy who built his success on spontaneous connection couldn’t wake up with an idea and share it anymore.

“It started to feel a bit like a machine,” he said. The purity was gone.

This isn’t just Kevin’s story. It’s the story of every creator who followed the playbook perfectly and ended up trapped inside their own success.

The Middle Passage Framework

Kevin discovered a concept from psychologist Dr. James Hollis called the Middle Passage. It works like this:

Your first adulthood is built on one reference point: your childhood. You either try to live up to what you experienced or do the exact opposite. You create roles, chase significance, build identities. This is natural.

Then one day you wake up having achieved everything you set out to achieve, and something whispers: “Is this it?”

That’s not a crisis. That’s an invitation.

Hollis calls it the transition to second adulthood. And the hard part? There’s no workbook. No 90-day calendar with little exercises. No roadmap telling you what the other side looks like.

You just have to let go of any expectation for what life might have waiting for you.

For Kevin, this meant ending a 25-year marriage, closing his business, and sitting in the uncertainty while everyone around him assumed some crime had been committed.

The Real Shift

Carolina asked Kevin a question that stopped the conversation for a minute: “How do you deal with both the spark of inspiration and the need for consistency?”

His answer: “I need to be close to the thing I’m writing about and feeling.”

This is the opposite of what most business advice tells you. Step back. Get out of the weeds. Be the visionary floating in the hot air balloon while your integrator handles the details.

Kevin tried it. He hired brilliant integrators. It never worked.

Because some of us aren’t wired to be separated from our work. We need to feel it in order to create it. And pretending otherwise just delays the inevitable burnout.

The real insight came from Carolina:

“You’re not going to figure it out with your mind. You’re going to figure it out as you walk.”

Kevin wanted that line embroidered on a pillow.

He’s sitting on five completed interviews for his new channel. He knows exactly what he should do. He has a decade of experience telling other people to just start and see what happens.

And he still hasn’t promoted it to his list.

What This Means for You

If you recognize yourself in Kevin’s hesitation, here’s what he said to try:

Pull out a pad and paper. Get away from devices. Write out the things you actually love doing in your business. Then think about how you could emphasize those and shed the rest.

Simple. Not easy.

John Carlton once told Kevin:

“There’s no promise you’ll come back from burnout.”

That warning lands differently for anyone who’s been grinding for years, running launch after launch, building something that somewhere along the way stopped being theirs.

The Declaration

Kevin made a public commitment during the conversation: before his 56th birthday on February 23rd, he’ll release his first episode of Paid to Create on Substack.

I put it on my calendar.

August 18th, 2026, he’s coming back to show us what he built in six months.

If he’s saying any of the same things then, in his words, “I’ll not only be much skinnier because I won’t be eating anymore. I’ll be really annoyed with myself.”

We’re holding him to it.

Where to Find Kevin

Kevin’s been quietly building on Substack and he’s about to go loud. Here’s where to follow along:

Paid to Create — His new channel interviewing creative business founders about the calling, the craft, and the commerce. First episode drops before February 23rd. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it:

Paid To Create

Kevin Rogers's (founder of Copy Chief) new home for deep dives on how D2C products get from you

By Kevin Rogers

Men in the Middle Show — The podcast he co-hosts with Joe DeRoma about navigating the Middle Passage. They recently interviewed Dr. James Hollis himself, the psychologist who wrote the book on second-adulthood transitions. If anything Kevin shared today resonated, start here:

Man in the Middle Show

This newsletter compliments the Man in the Middle Show with Kevin & Joe where we have no BS conversations about men living in midlife.

By Kevin Rogers

Kevin spent 11 years creating one of the most generous communities in direct response marketing. He’s one of those rare people who made his career by genuinely helping others succeed first. Whatever he builds next, it’ll be worth watching.

One Question Worth Asking

Kevin’s story reveals something that rarely gets said out loud: the gap between knowing and doing isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a pattern problem.

If you’re stuck in that same loop, wondering why you can’t seem to do the thing you know you should do, maybe it’s time to get curious about what’s actually happening underneath.

The Business Harmony Map takes 5 minutes and shows you which of the 9 fundamental frequencies is creating your sticking point. It won’t tell you what to do. It’ll show you what’s getting in the way of you doing what you already know.

Take the Harmony Map →

Because Kevin was right about one thing: you can’t think your way to the answer.

You find out who you are by walking.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into this episode of Sacred Business Stories with and !

Subscribe now

This is part of our Sacred Business Stories series — weekly conversations with people who are building businesses that align with their deepest truth, not just their training.

In this episode, we sat down with , a midwife and founder of Wisebody, who is building a healthcare practice for women who know they deserve better and are ready to trust their bodies again — without abandoning medical support.

Jane’s story is going to land especially deeply if you’ve ever felt “too sensitive” for the way your industry does things.

When the system becomes a source of injury

Jane didn’t leave healthcare because she stopped caring.
She’s leaving it in the traditional sense because she cared too much to keep pretending 15-minute visits were enough.

Day after day, she would sit with women whose bodies were clearly speaking:

• Tears that showed up before words

• Symptoms that didn’t fit neat boxes

• A quiet sense that something deeper was trying to be heard

There’s a word for what happens when your job asks you to ignore that kind of truth over and over:

Moral injury — the pain of participating in something you don’t fully believe in.

Jane realized she could no longer treat her work, her values, and her body as separate projects. Something had to change.

Trusting the wise body (hers and theirs)

A thread that runs through everything Jane shared:

The body isn’t the enemy. It’s the conversation.

Instead of fighting symptoms, she started asking:

• What is this pain trying to protect?

• What is this fatigue saying about the pace of your life?

• What happens when you’re actually heard, not rushed?

That’s where Wisebody came from — a space where:

• Spirituality is welcome

• Medical training is respected

• And a woman’s own body wisdom is central, not an afterthought

This is the same move so many of our people are making in their own fields:
refusing to leave parts of themselves at the door just to stay employable.

You can’t build a new way alone

Even after leaving the system, Jane tried to build her new practice by herself.

Her honesty here was striking: she talked about how lonely and confusing it was to try to create an entirely new kind of care structure while unlearning the old rules.

She reached a point where she realized:

• Strategy alone wasn’t enough

• She didn’t just need “more information”

• She needed support while she implemented a truer vision

That’s a pattern we see in almost every sacred business:

• Deep training? ✅

• Real skill? ✅

• Willingness to serve? ✅

• Actual support for the transition? ❌

Sacred work asks a lot of your nervous system. Trying to do it as a one-person ecosystem is often the invisible bottleneck.

A question for you

Jane sees health as part of our transformation path — your body as a guide on the journey you’re meant to walk.

Swap “health” for “business” and it’s the same:

Your business is not separate from your life.
Your patterns are not separate from your results.
Everything is connected.

So here’s the question I’d invite you to sit with after listening:

Where is your body already telling you that the way you work isn’t quite right anymore?

And a second one, if you’re honest enough to hear it:

What kind of support would actually make it possible to build the business you keep thinking about?

Listen to the full conversation

You’ll hear us explore:

• Leaving a system that doesn’t fit (without burning everything down)

• How to work with your body instead of overriding it for “productivity”

• The difference between burnout and moral injury

• Why trying to DIY a sacred business usually stops working at a certain level

If this is where you are right now…

If you’re in that in-between place — no longer able to do things the old way, not yet supported in the new way — that’s exactly who we created our Serve & Receive private partnership for.

It’s a 12-month container where we:

• Map the pattern that’s been running your business (using the Harmony Map)

• Design a business around who you actually are now

• Walk with you through the first year of implementation so you don’t disappear when it gets confronting

👉 Book a Serve & Receive conversation

No pressure, no hard sell. Just an honest look at what’s going on under the surface and whether this kind of support is the right next step.

With love,
Phil & Carolina

We brought Bob on Sacred Business Stories for this special author spotlight because we kept bumping into his ideas with our own clients. The ones who struggle hardest with sales are almost never missing skill. They’re missing permission, the internal kind, to receive what they’ve earned. Bob has spent decades naming that exact problem. Here’s what he said.

Show Notes

[00:00] How This Conversation Happened

We found Bob on our subscriber list. He’d been reading Sacred Business Stories for over a year without saying a word. That’s the kind of person he is: paying attention, showing up, no fanfare. Carolina and Phil share how the conversation came together and why Bob’s framework fits our community like a glove.

[02:12] The Core Idea: Value Before Profit

Bob breaks down the difference between price and value. Price is a number. Value is what the buyer actually experiences. His example: an accountant charges $1,000 but saves you $5,000 in taxes, hours of your life, and the peace of mind that it was done right. She gave more in value than she took in payment. You’re thrilled. She’s profitable. Both parties walk away better off. That’s the first law, and it’s the one most people get backwards.

[07:06] The Five Laws

Law of Value: give more in value than you take in payment, including the experience, the empathy, the attention, not just the deliverable.

Law of Compensation: your income scales with how many people you serve and how well.

Law of Influence: place other people’s interests first, not as self-sacrifice, but because that’s how trust gets built. As Bob puts it: “nobody’s going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet.”

Law of Authenticity: your most valuable gift is yourself, but Bob pushes back on the modern hijacking of that word. Authenticity isn’t “no boundaries.” It’s acting congruently with your value system.

Law of Receptivity: giving and receiving aren’t opposites. They’re breathing out and breathing in.

[14:08] The Receiving Block Most Entrepreneurs Won’t Name

Bob called out the unconscious anti-prosperity programming most of us absorbed before we were old enough to question it. Society, media, school, family, all of it installed the belief that making money from something you love is somehow wrong. He calls self-sabotage what it is: an inability to receive what you’ve earned. His advice? Make a deliberate study of prosperity. Read the teachers who help you make the unconscious conscious: Randy Gage, David Nagel, Ken Honda, Sharon Lecter, Bob Proctor, and others who specialize in dismantling these blocks.

[16:44] “Does It Make Money?” Is a Great Question. Just Not the First One.

We asked about the tension between purpose and profit. Bob didn’t soften it. Don’t start with “will it make money.” Start with “does it serve? Is there a market?” If yes, then ask the money question. If it won’t make money, you’ve got a hobby. Hobbies are fine. They’re just not a business.

Then he flipped the frame: “Where was it that we learned that having fun and making money are dichotomous? We learned that from society.” Carolina added her research into the Portuguese word for work, trabalho, which comes from tripalium, an instrument of torture. That landed in the room.

[23:01] Selling Is Giving. Literally.

The Old English root of “sell” is sellan: to give. When you’re in a sales conversation, you’re giving time, attention, counsel, empathy, and value. A pitch is something you do to someone. A sales conversation is something you do for someone. Bob’s take on people who say “I hate selling”: “They don’t hate selling. They hate what they think selling is.”

[25:14] Promoting Yourself Without Losing Yourself

Phil asked Bob about feeling overly self-promotional. Bob’s answer: if you’re consistently giving value, your audience would be glad you told them about your product. The key is tying every promotion to how it benefits the other person. That’s not spin. That’s service with a clear invitation.

[27:08] When Giving Doesn’t Seem to Be “Working”

The question so many of our people carry: what do you do when you’ve been giving for years and it hasn’t come back? Bob broke it into two causes. The first, covering 95% of cases: you’re providing value as you see it, not as the market sees it. Value always lives in the eyes of the beholder. The second, covering the remaining 5%: you’re not letting yourself receive. You’re not asking for the order. And asking for the order isn’t a necessary evil. It’s an act of service, because you’re inviting someone to act on something they already told you they want. Bob added something that hit: “The chances are they actually need you more than you need them. They are one customer. But to them, you are that one solution.”

[33:17] Take Action the Same Day

In the book, Pinder tells Joe he must apply each lesson within 24 hours. Phil connected this to what we call co-creation: you learn something, you act on it, you receive feedback, and then you adjust. Bob confirmed that an idea without action is just entertainment for the mind. A go-giver is also a go-getter. Just not a go-taker.

[36:06] Michael Singer and the Highest Use of a Life

Bob shared a quote from Michael Singer’s Living Untethered that he keeps taped to his computer: “The highest thing you could do with your life is to make it so that every moment that passes before you is better off because it did.” He reads it every day. It gave Phil goosebumps. It gave us something to sit with long after the recording stopped.

Key Quotes

“Shifting your focus from getting to giving is really where it all begins.” - Bob Burg

“They don’t hate selling. They hate what they think selling is.” - Bob Burg

“The highest thing you could do with your life is to make it so that every moment that passes before you is better off because it did.” - Michael Singer

Resources Mentioned

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann (1.5M+ copies sold, 30+ languages)

Living Untethered by Michael Singer

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

Prosperity teachers: Randy Gage, David Nagel, Sharon Lecter, Lisa Peterson, Ellen Rogan, Ken Honda, Derek Kinney, Bob Proctor

Where to Find Bob

Visit burg.com to subscribe to his Substack column The Daily Impact, read free chapters from any of his books, and explore his work.’

Bob Burg's Daily Impact

Each weekday receive a brief message designed to inspire you throughout your day and add value to your journey toward professional success and personal fulfillment.

What This Means for You

Everything Bob described, the receiving block, the value misalignment, the guilt around charging, the inability to ask for the order, these aren’t random struggles. They’re patterns. And they connect directly to why you might know exactly what to do in your business but still can’t seem to do it consistently.

The Business Harmony Map measures 9 frequencies across three dimensions of your life and business and shows you the one pattern creating the bottleneck.

If you’ve taken the assessment and want to understand what your results mean for your next move, book a free Integration Call with Phil and Carolina. We’ll look at your specific frequencies together, talk about what’s working and what’s not, and tell you honestly what we think would help, whether that’s us or not.

Book Your Integration Call

Thank you to Bob for his time and his generosity, and to everyone who joined live or caught this on replay.

P.S. The full archive of Sacred Business Stories lives right here on Substack. If this one stuck with you, send it to someone who needs to hear that giving and receiving were never at war with each other.

Subscribe now

Thank you , , , , , and many others for joining us for this special edition of Sacred Business Stories with and !

Get more from Phil Powis ❤️⚡️ in the Substack app

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You need 300 people who’ve actually talked to you.

has spent 15 years testing this idea across multiple six-figure launches, an e-commerce exit, and 45 countries traveled with a laptop. Her take: 30,000 passive followers who occasionally skim your content are worth less than 300 people who actually know your name.

On this week’s Sacred Business Stories, she explained why most people fail at audience building. It’s not a strategy problem. It’s a visibility problem. And fixing it is simpler than you think.

The Real Reason You’re Not Growing

Jo runs strategy calls with aspiring entrepreneurs. She keeps seeing the same pattern.

“What’s blown me away is how much creativity and talent people have,” she told us. One client had 20 published books on Amazon. Solid work. Real effort. But the books weren’t selling.

Jo asked the obvious question: Who’s your audience?

Silence.

“That seems to be the sticking point. I’ve got this creativity and talent to build stuff, create stuff, launch products. But I stop when I have to go and actually build an audience.”

Creating products feels safe. You can do it alone, in private. Telling people about them? Being visible? That’s where people freeze.

Here’s what Jo said next that stopped me:

“I think people feel that they have to reveal themselves in some way in order to do that.”

That’s the real barrier. Not strategy. Not tactics. The fear of being seen.

The 300 vs. 30,000 Rule

Jo’s been in online business since 2010. She watched Facebook go from a place where you could actually talk to people to a content farm where engagement means nothing.

Her take:

“You could have 30,000 people on your list. If you haven’t engaged with them, if you’re not connected with them, it’s 30,000 people who are just maybe reading your stuff every now and again.”

Compare that to 300 people you’ve actually talked to. Responded to. Connected with.

“That is so much more valuable than 10,000 people who you never speak to and who just occasionally watch a video.”

I shared my own experience to back this up. My first online business generated multiple six figures consistently for years. The most I ever had on my email list? Fewer than 1,000 subscribers. Never broke that number. The difference wasn’t scale. It was clarity. Every person on that list knew exactly why they were there. The relationship was strong.

The math isn’t about reach. It’s about depth.

The 30-Day Challenge That Actually Works

Most people sit around wondering what brilliant insight to post. What amazing note will make people subscribe?

Jo’s challenge flips that completely.

For 30 days, don’t post your own content at all. Instead:

Find people whose work resonates with you. Comment on their posts. Restack notes you find interesting and add why it mattered to you. Share other people’s stuff. Respond to comments on your own page like a human being, not a content machine.

“If you did that a couple of times a day for the next 30 days, you would start to increase that engagement and that relationship building without a shadow of a doubt.”

This isn’t theory. It’s how Facebook worked in 2010 when Jo built her first audience. It’s how Substack works now. The platforms that let you actually connect with people are the ones worth your time.

One more thing: don’t use AI to respond to comments. “You can tell it a mile off,” Jo said. “Don’t do it.”

Nobody’s Watching Your First Videos (Use That)

Jo shared a stat: around 935,000 videos get uploaded to TikTok every hour.

Her point? When you’re starting out, nobody’s watching. That’s not a problem. That’s freedom.

“Those first videos you do, nobody’s watching. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. Just do it.”

She found a content creator named who’s now everywhere in the UK, doing street interviews, promoting his book. She went back and found his videos from four or five years ago.

“They were terrible. Absolutely terrible. He was falling over his words. Talking about really boring stuff.”

But he did two-minute videos every single day. For years. By the time anyone noticed, he was good. Now he’s got ads in tube stations.

Nobody saw him practice. They only see him now.

The Ego Trap for Experienced People

Jo’s been doing this for 15 years. She’s had six-figure launches, sold an e-commerce business, built and rebuilt multiple times. And she still struggles with this:

“I can’t look like a beginner again.”

New platform. New rules. New skills to learn. Her ego says she needs to show up as the expert. That keeps her from being transparent about what she’s still figuring out.

The shift came when she realized something: people don’t want to learn from untouchable experts anyway.

“I think people want to learn from people who are like them. They want to relate. They want to feel that you’re going to trip up.”

Someone once told her: “Jo, I learned just as much from the things you get wrong as I do from the things you get right.”

She shared a story about one of her first webinars. Seventy people showed up. Great success. Then she couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. She’s fumbling, shaking, and finally admits on camera: “I’m ever so sorry, guys, but I can’t figure out how to turn this webinar off.”

Someone came on and helped her. She thought it was over. Turned to her husband and swore. Then the comments started rolling in: “We’re still here, Jo.”

She’d been sharing her mistakes all along. That’s why people trusted her.

One Goal. Everything Else Feeds It.

Jo still uses Facebook. But not to grow her Facebook page.

“My goal is to increase my Substack subscribers. That’s my goal. Facebook feeds that goal.”

She sees people spread thin across five platforms, trying to grow all of them at once. They post everywhere, respond nowhere, and wonder why nothing’s working.

Pick one goal. Let every other platform serve that goal. You won’t get overwhelmed. You’ll stay aligned. And you’ll actually make progress.

The One Thing You Must Do

Jo’s final point was urgent enough that she interrupted the wrap-up to say it.

“If your goal is to monetize, please build that email subscriber database. It’s so important.”

Platforms change. Facebook in 2010 felt like Substack feels now. Eventually the marketers descend. The algorithms shift. The magic fades.

But if you have an email list of people who actually want to hear from you? They’ll come with you when everything else changes.

“Whatever you do, please build that email database.”

About Jo

Jo Barnes runs The 50 Plus Nomad Club on Substack. Her motto is “Adventure never retires.”

At 53, she’s currently backpacking through Brazil, heading to the Amazon, then Colombia and Central America. She’s also running a new e-commerce business and recently launched travel challenge cards on Amazon.

If you want a practical picture of what building on Substack actually looks like, she recommends her post on how to make $2,600 a month in your first year. It follows a fictional character named Jane through 12 months of realistic growth: 47 followers by month three, a $9 PDF launch, small workshops, layered income. No hype. Just math.

Find her at club.the50plusnomad.com or search “The 50 Plus Nomad” on Substack.

What Jo’s Insight Means for You

Jo kept returning to one idea: most people don’t fail because they lack strategy. They fail because they won’t be visible. They won’t engage. They won’t start while they’re still uncertain.

The 300 people who matter aren’t going to find you while you’re hiding. They find you when you show up, talk to them, and keep showing up even when you’re still figuring it out.

Resources Mentioned

Books: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

People: , Frank Kern, , Jeff Walker, , James Clear

Thank You

Thank you , , , , , and many others who joined us live with and ! And thank you, Jo, for sharing so openly.

P.S. All previous Sacred Business Stories episodes are in our archive. Each one covers what actually happened behind someone’s business, not just the highlight reel.

Subscribe if you want next week’s conversation in your inbox. We do this every week because watching others figure it out, including the stumbles, helps you figure out your next move.

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If you read this and felt something click, your results will show you exactly where that pattern lives. 8 minutes.

Take the Harmony Map Assessment →

This isn’t a regular episode of our show. It’s an Author’s Spotlight to support the launch of his new book, The Road Less Triggered, and to share his work with as many people as we can.

Kelly is a clinical psychologist, author, and coach who’s been featured on The Five Love Languages and Today Show. But what grabbed our attention wasn’t his resume. It was his core insight: connection doesn’t break down between people. It breaks down within them.

That idea is really imporant in how we think about relationships, and the way we show up when things get hard. Which is why we wanted this conversation to happen.

Show Notes

[00:00] Why We Brought Kelly Back

We don’t do this often. But when someone’s work directly applies to everything we teach about sacred business, we make exceptions. Kelly’s framework for staying open-hearted during conflict is too practical to keep to ourselves.

[03:00] The Core Problem: Wanting Connection While in Protection Mode

Most of us spend most of our time wanting to connect while simultaneously protecting ourselves. It’s a form of self-sabotage we don’t know we’re doing. Kelly calls it the grind of trying to connect when our impulse is actually to protect.

When you close off and switch into protection mode, you lose access to creativity, communication, empathy, patience, and forgiveness. All the things you need most.

[07:00] The New Year’s Resolution That Actually Stuck

End of 2020. COVID year. Kelly blew up his business partnership, damaged his closest friendship, got so triggered one afternoon he went on a frustrated bike ride and broke his arm in two places.

Then he found a quote from Michael Singer: “Do not let anything in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”

That hit harder than the asphalt road had. He made a resolution going into 2021: moment to moment, notice his heart closing and try to keep it open.

The word “try” was important. He knew this would be hard.

[10:00] The Peaceful Pivot Process (3 Parts, 9 Steps)

Kelly spent five years developing what Michael Singer couldn’t teach him how to do. The result is a framework for turning triggers into togetherness:

Part One: Get Calm

• Sense your conflict coming using your body

• Disrupt your defensiveness (watch your urges instead of wielding them)

• Cultivate calmness before attempting connection

Part Two: Get Free

• Get familiar with what’s hurting in that moment

• Trace the story of that hurt throughout your life

• Learn to feel it instead of defending it

Part Three: Get Connected

• Show up and express yourself

• Stay curious instead of critical

• Give yourself compassion so you can express it to others

[12:00] The 80% Earlier Warning System

Here’s the research that caught our attention: your body gives you 80% earlier warning that your heart is about to close than your thoughts or behaviors do.

Kelly calls it interoception. Your sixth sense. You use it all the time without realizing it. When someone asks how badly you need to go to the bathroom, you use interoception. Your consciousness travels to an organ, does an assessment, reports back.

You can harness that same superpower to notice when your heart is closing before you’ve already closed it.

Everyone feels it differently. Some people feel it in the center of their chest. Others a little to the left, the right, down in the sternum, or in the gut. But it’s always somewhere between your waist and your temples.

No one has ever said their toes cramped when their heart started to close.

[19:00] The Mexico Story

One year after starting his open-heartedness practice, Kelly’s family came back from a chaotic Christmas trip to Mexico. Machine guns. COVID restrictions. People extorting cash just to get back into the country.

His daughter looked at him and said: “That must be why every time something went wrong, I looked at you and felt safe.”

Kelly realized the practice wasn’t just changing him. It was changing the people around him even when they weren’t doing anything.

A soothed nervous system soothes nervous systems. A calm soul calms souls. An open heart opens hearts.

[26:00] You Only Control You (And That’s the Point)

The part of us that wants to change the other person will feel deep injustice at this. But the wisest part knows we can only control ourselves.

When you’re part of a pattern and you change your part, the pattern changes. Family systems theory shows this clearly. When one part of a system changes, the other parts first resist, then adapt.

You are the environment in which your people live and move and exist. When that environment becomes calmer and safer, it influences how they show up.

[31:00] Start in the Empty Parking Lot

Kelly’s driver’s ed teacher used to say: “When I’m done with you, you’ll be able to drive on LSD.” He meant Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. But they didn’t start there. They started in an empty parking lot at the community college.

Same principle applies here. Start with the small disappointments. The weather you didn’t want. The traffic jam. The cancelled plans.

Kelly’s son tested positive for COVID on Christmas Day. They had to cancel the family gathering. Then his wife tested positive on New Year’s. More cancelled plans.

These disappointments became training ground. If you can’t keep your heart open to small frustrations, how will you handle the really big ones?

[34:00] A Book That’s Actually Fun to Read

Kelly wrote a novel within the non-fiction. At the end of each chapter, you follow two fictional characters through a coaching session where they work through the exercises.

His wife cried reading chapter six. That’s when he knew it worked.

The book is built around the three-part process with nine steps total. But instead of dry descriptions in a box at the end of each chapter, you get story.

[42:00] Building in Public

Kelly brought each chapter to his Substack community during development. Monthly calls where they told him what worked, what didn’t translate, what was too complicated.

His Substack is on its third name since 2023. That evolution reflects how much his understanding deepened as he built this in front of real people.

[45:00] His Biggest Hope

By the time someone finishes the first chapter, Kelly wants them to have a new lens they can’t take off. Just to walk around noticing: my heart closed there. And there. Opportunities for transformation are everywhere.

The ambitious version: he wants this book in as many hands as possible because our big human experiment is at a critical point. We’re going to have to take responsibility for showing up with open hearts if we want to miss the tipping point.

The longest longitudinal experiment in human history out of Harvard has shown definitively that above every other factor, our sense of togetherness with our people determines our happiness.

And here’s the kicker: how many times has being triggered resulted in more togetherness in all of human history?

Zero.

Key Quotes

“Connection doesn’t break down between people. It breaks down within people.”

“A soothed nervous system soothes nervous systems. A calm soul calms souls.”

“How many times have we ended up more together as a result of being triggered in all of human history? Zero.”

Resources Mentioned

• The Road Less Triggered by Dr. Kelly Flanagan (March 2025)

• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

• roadlesstriggered.com — Pre-order and get the first chapter immediately plus a 90-minute masterclass

• Harvard’s longitudinal study on happiness and togetherness

Where to Find Dr. Kelly

Substack:

Thank You

Thank you , , , , , and many others who joined us live and shared this conversation. Special thanks to Dr. Kelly for being generous with his time, his work, and his willingness to come back twice.

P.S. Want to explore past editions? You can check them out here.

What’s Next: Subscribe to get new episodes and essays delivered directly to you.

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This week he shared what happened. Turns out his ChatGPT success in December 2022 came after a music label at 18, seven years of curation, and a ghostwriting gig in Berlin. The viral post was in many ways the result of a decade of practice.

Show Notes

[00:00] - Why He Keeps His Personal Brand Impersonal

His siblings don’t know what he does. He doesn’t find backstory relevant to daily content. This conversation is an exception.

[04:35] - Video Games to Content Creation

At nine, Ruben got obsessed with Guild Wars character builds. He wrote French blogs, realized the English forum had more readers, taught himself the language through Arctic Monkeys and comedy clips. The pattern: experiment, figure out what works, teach.

[09:00] - The ChatGPT Post

November 30, 2022. Berlin coworking space. He tested ChatGPT, spent a week reading academic papers, translated jargon like “few-shot prompting” into plain language, posted on LinkedIn. One million views in one post. 100K followers in three months. Then he went full-time.

[14:30] - The “Go All In” Myth

If you can’t build something while employed, you probably can’t build it without a paycheck either. Financial pressure makes you desperate. He overlapped a fintech job, ghostwriting, and personal content before making the leap.

[20:45] - What “Master AI Before It Masters You” Means

Not fear-mongering about replacement. The real problem: average output is now free and instant. A $1,000 article from 2021 looks like “just some words” today. The only path forward is taste so specific it can’t be replicated for free.

[26:00] - Engineers Are Breaking Down

Since Claude Code’s Opus 4.5 release, thousands of engineers are posting on Twitter asking what they’re even for. They can build anything in hours. Problem: they don’t know what to build. The excuse is gone. What remains: do you have taste?

[30:00] - Play Like a Kid

Every cover on his newsletter features a child. Pick one task. Use one AI. Don’t obsess over tools. Get small wins first. We’re monkeys who need rewards.

[34:00] - AI Forces Us to Be More Human

When Excel files and basic writing become automated, we go deeper. In the 1900s, 90% of Americans worked in food production. They couldn’t conceive of refrigeration, let alone the internet. Freed from survival labor, humans built things nobody predicted. Same pattern now.

[40:00] - “I Am Just a Text File”

He spent two hours answering Claude’s questions about his opinions, boundaries, writing style. Result: a markdown file, 1,000 lines, that captures his taste. Upload it anywhere, and AI writes like him. His grandchildren could talk to digital grandpa.

[43:00] - Animating His Grandmother

His mom lost her mother at 12. A handful of black-and-white photos. Ruben colorized them, created two-second animations. Sent one. His mom called crying. Her mother was moving.

[49:00] - Substack Must Stay Protected

On LinkedIn, maybe half his comments are AI-generated now. He compares giving everyone AI tools to handing a rifle to a monkey. Paid access and ID verification are coming. He’s not against it.

Two Quotes

“The more you forget about making money, the more money you make. Real traction doesn’t happen when you focus on the money.”

What You Can Do Today

1. Build your taste file. Spend an hour answering questions about your opinions, boundaries, what you’d never say, how you’d phrase things. Save it as a document. Upload it to your AI projects.

2. Pick one AI task and play. Not the perfect tool. Not comprehensive mastery. One thing. Approach it like a nine-year-old with a video game.

Resources Mentioned

• Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech (Ruben watches it yearly)

• Claude Code with Opus 4.5

• Cursor ($20B AI coding company)

Where to Find Ruben

Substack newsletter, twice weekly, Wednesday and Sunday. 100 breakdowns per year. Most is free.

How to AI

Stop reading about AI. Start mastering the "How". I share step-by-step tutorials, copy & paste prompts that work with real-life examples. Subscribe to two free articles a week.

By Ruben Hassid

One Thing I’m Still Thinking About

Ruben said his grandchildren could have real conversations with digital grandpa someday. Then he paused and said he doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Neither do I.

What about you?

How This Was Made

This recap was built by uploading the show transcript as well as rambling my own thoughts via Wisprflow into a Claude custom project, containing our voice guidelines, then edited through four rounds: structure, skeptic audit, linguistic cleanup, and open-ending. The conversation took 56 minutes. The recap took longer. Thanks to for the tips on skepticism, and liguistics :)

Ruben’s right. Taste takes time even when AI does the typing.

She plants a lemon tree.

This week on Sacred Business Stories, we sat down with , a Substack Bestseller, Penguin author, and international speaker who turned rejection into reinvention. At 41, with no network, no personal brand, and recruiters who couldn’t see her value, Veronica made a decision that changed everything:

“If people can’t see my value, then I have to show it to the world.”

Three years later, she runs what she calls a “Frankenstein business”: four published books, a 13,000+ subscriber community, digital courses, coaching programs, and speaking gigs across the globe. All built from scratch. All built in public.

But here’s what I really appreciated about Veronica that I learned from this conversation. Veronica doesn’t wait until she has clarity to take action. She takes action to find clarity. That shift alone might be worth the price of admission.

Every week, we write about getting clear, getting visible, and getting paid. Inner patterns and outer strategy. Join 25,000+ creators & entrepreneurs:

Subscribe now

Show Notes

[00:00] The Origin Story

Veronica spent 15 years climbing the corporate ladder at companies like Apple and Estee Lauder. She thought that was her path. Then the pandemic happened, and she found herself locked out of Hong Kong for over a year with her young daughters (ages 3 and 5) while her husband stayed behind with their dog.

In Australia, she hit a wall. No one valued her experience. No network. No credibility.

[06:00] The Lemon Tree Philosophy

The name isn’t just clever branding. It’s the core of everything Veronica teaches.

“When life gives you lemons, not if, but when, use the seeds not just to make lemonade, but to plant your lemon tree.”

Her first book, The Lemon Tree Mindset, came from documenting her own corporate-to-solopreneur transition. She turned her chaos into a framework others could follow. That’s the power of building in public.

[08:00] Being Your Own Boss Doesn’t Make You a Good One

This hit home. Veronica shared a recent post where she reflected on how solopreneurs often treat themselves worse than the worst corporate boss they ever had.

Working while sick. Showing up when they’re having a terrible day. No self-compassion. No boundaries.

Her insight: being your own boss is about setting frameworks and protecting your time. Nobody else will do that for you.

[12:00] Clarity Comes From Doing, Not Thinking

Most people want to find clarity before they start. Veronica flips this entirely.

“You find clarity by doing things. You start writing and very often you have these mental chaos and ideas start to become something or nothing. But doing helps you find clarity.”

She didn’t have a niche when she started. She just wrote. First on LinkedIn. Then Medium. Then pitching podcasts. The shape of her business emerged through action, not planning.

[16:00] Fear Is a Feature, Not a Bug

Veronica intentionally puts herself in situations that scare her. Every year since starting, she’s done something she’s never done before: live sessions, launching in Spanish (her native language, which gave her more imposter syndrome than English), digital courses, bigger stages.

Her reframe: Instead of asking “what’s the worst that could happen,” she asks “what’s the best that could happen.”

If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re probably just playing in your comfort zone.

[23:00] The Multilingual Business Challenge

This got interesting. Veronica speaks six languages and now runs her Substack in both English and Spanish. She’s noticed more creators asking how to write across multiple languages.

But here’s the twist: she found more imposter syndrome in her native language than in English. “In my own language, it’s like, oh, this is not okay.” In English, she could afford mistakes as a foreigner.

Carolina related. She’s writing in Portuguese now and says it feels like discovering a different version of herself.

[28:00] Authentic Connection in the AI Era

Polished content used to signal success. Now everyone can make polished content. So what actually differentiates you?

Being human. Being real. Sharing the mess.

Veronica flew to Singapore for a book launch that was, in her words, “a bloody disaster.” Less than 10 people showed up. They didn’t even have book copies. She could have pretended it didn’t happen. Instead, she wrote about it.

The response? People thanked her for being real. It made the whole thing achievable and human.

[36:00] Two Tactical Strategies That Actually Work

When we asked for something practical, Veronica delivered:

Collaboration. Find someone to collaborate with. Guest posts, live sessions, interviews, panel discussions. She runs collaboration days where her premium members share what’s working, pitch ideas, and partner up. This alone has driven massive growth.

Public Speaking. Even if it’s not your main thing, becoming comfortable with your voice opens new possibilities. Webinars, masterclasses, cohorts, corporate workshops. She filmed her digital course on an iPhone at home. Not polished. Just real.

Key Quotes

“When life gives you lemons, not if, but when, use the seeds not just to make lemonade, but to plant your lemon tree.”

“You find clarity by doing things. Very often people want to find clarity first and then do things. What I have found is that you often find clarity by doing things.”

“We are not a newsletter. We are not a writing business. We’re a people business.”

Resources Mentioned

The Lemon Tree Mindset by Veronica Llorca-Smith (Amazon Bestseller, Finalist in 2024 International Book Awards)

The Anti-Procrastinator by Veronica Llorca-Smith (Penguin)

Where to Find Veronica

Substack (English): The Lemon Tree Mindset

Substack (Spanish): El Limonero

Website: veronicallorcasmith.com

LinkedIn: Veronica Llorca-Smith

Veronica invites you to not just read her content, but get involved. Join the chat. Show up for live sessions. Her premium community runs regular collaboration masterminds where members share what’s working in 2026 and pitch partnership ideas.

The Lemon Tree Mindset 🌳🍋

I help you turn your hobby into a creative business. Strategies to grow your community, monetize your creativity and build a lifestyle business. Substack Bestseller | Penguin Author | Public Speaker

By Veronica Llorca-Smith

Ready to Transform Your Patterns into Breakthrough Results?

Here’s what we’ve found working with hundreds of entrepreneurs: the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it isn’t a strategy problem. It’s a pattern problem.

The same patterns that show up in your personal life, the ones that keep you stuck in analysis mode or avoiding visibility, those show up in your business too. Everything is connected.

That’s why we created The Sacred Business Harmony Map. It identifies which of the 9 Frequencies is blocking your growth and shows you exactly what to work on first.

If you’d like to explore working together, book your free Integration Call. We’ll walk through your results, connect the dots between your inner patterns and outer challenges, and show you what working with us could look like.

Because your breakthrough isn’t just about business success. It’s about becoming who you’re meant to be through the vehicle of your work.

Book Your Integration Call Here →

Thank You

Thank you , , , , and many others who joined us live from around the world: São Paulo, Hong Kong, and everywhere in between.

And to Veronica, thank you for sharing not just the wins but the challenges, the doubts, and the messy middle. That’s what makes this real.

P.S. Missed previous episodes? All our Sacred Business Stories recaps are available here. We invite you to explore.

What’s Next: Hit the subscribe button if you haven’t already. Every week we bring you conversations with entrepreneurs who are building businesses that honor both their values and their vision for life.

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spent 17 years abroad, built a career with the U.S. government, and studied everything from Kabbalah to tantra to somatic work. Then she moved back to Brazil and had to start from scratch. Nobody knew who she was. And the first time she walked into a yoga studio to teach, people complained about her behind her back.

This conversation cuts through the polished version of the entrepreneur story. Paola shares what it actually looks like to build community one person at a time, why comparing yourself to people who invest thousands in Instagram ads is a recipe for suffering, and the moment she stood in front of her class and told them they could leave if they didn’t like her style. What happened next surprised everyone, including her.

Show Notes

[00:00] Welcome and Introduction

Phil and Carolina introduce Paola Yaelli, founder of Alma Flow, a movement integrating spirituality and well-being. Paola teaches yoga and leads mentorships combining ancient wisdom with modern tools.

[03:00] From Journalism to Yoga: An Accidental Business

Paola shares how her business grew from life experience rather than a business plan. She studied journalism, worked on cruise ships in Europe, lived in Israel studying Kabbalah, then moved to the United States where her yoga practice began. While working 13 years with the American government in education, she kept building certifications on the side without knowing it was becoming a business.

[07:00] The Spiritual Tools Get Real

The spiritual practices that felt easy during a stable career suddenly got tested when Paola returned to Brazil in 2022 with only one income stream and a community that didn’t know her. She describes the practice of “certainty beyond logic” that keeps her moving forward.

[09:00] Fear As Fuel

Paola explains how fear doesn’t stop her. It enforces her. She wakes at 5am to practice yoga and somatic work before teaching five classes. The key: feel the emotions like waves in the ocean. Don’t deny them. Process them. Then you can hear where to go next.

[14:00] The Playlist Ultimatum

The story that captures everything. Paola was teaching at a traditional franchise yoga studio where everything was supposed to be standard. But she couldn’t help being herself. She started doing somatic work during practice. She asked students to scream. She played different music. People started whispering. They complained to management.

She was terrified of the rejection. But she walked into the next class and stood in front of everyone. She said: “If you don’t like my music or my style, there are plenty of other teachers here. You don’t have to stay.”

She thought the room would clear out. Instead, the people who stayed became her strongest community. Now they ask her: “Where is the scream practice? We need to scream today.”

[18:00] The Cost of Fitting In

Carolina shares how this moment moved her so much she talked about it with her own students. The lesson: you cannot be magnetic to the right people until you’re willing to be rejected by the wrong ones. If you keep trying to adapt to everyone’s boxes, you suffocate yourself. And a suffocating person cannot attract.

[22:00] The 1000-Day Rule and Honest Timelines

Phil addresses the mythology of overnight success. He’s been building online businesses for a decade with schools that had thousands of students. That created traction that carried over. The comparison game is rigged when you can’t see what’s happening below the surface. A successful entrepreneur they interviewed talks about the 1000-day rule: if you haven’t given your business a thousand days, you probably haven’t given it enough time.

[28:00] The Vessel Must Expand

Paola introduces the Kabbalah concept of the vessel. If you’re not where you want to be, your vessel hasn’t expanded enough to receive it yet. Like winning the lottery without knowing how to manage money. You’d spend it all. Sometimes the work isn’t strategy. It’s expanding your capacity to hold what you’re calling in.

[36:00] Building Community Before Scaling

Paola describes her approach to connection: community comes before scale. People want to be seen. They want genuine attention. One person who feels truly seen tells a friend. That friend brings another friend. Now she shows up to teach yoga at the mall and 55 to 60 people appear because the community is real.

[46:00] Contentment Creates Opportunity

The best opportunities come from relaxed contentment, not desperate hustle. Paola shares how sitting in a coffee shop in LA, feeling good about her routine, led to an unexpected invitation to join an app project. It wasn’t what she expected, but it was what her vessel could hold at the time.

Key Quotes

“Fear doesn’t stop me. Fear enforces me. It gives me the attention.” — Paolla Yaelli

“If you’re not in the place that you want to be, it’s because your vessel is not expanded enough.” — Paolla Yaelli

“We open a business in six months. We want to be a super visionary success person. It’s different. It takes time.” — Paolla Iyeli

Resources Mentioned

Kabbalah wisdom and astrology

The 10% sharing principle (giving 10% to expand your vessel)

The 1000-day rule for building a business

Where to Find Paola

Substack: Search for

Instagram: @paoliayeli

Alma Flow WhatsApp Community

Your Turn

Paola’s story reveals something most business advice won’t tell you: the gap between knowing what to do and doing it isn’t a strategy problem. It’s often an identity problem. Her lowest moment of potential rejection became the doorway to her strongest community.

If you’re wondering why your business isn’t moving forward, consider: Is it a strategy issue? Or is it your vessel, to borrow Paolla’s language? Are you still trying to fit into boxes that were never made for you?

Your business is always inviting you to become someone new. The question is whether you’re willing to use it as the container for both your evolution and your financial freedom.

If you’d like to explore this for yourself, our Business Harmony Map assessment helps you identify which of the 9 Fundamental Frequencies is most seeking balance in your life and business. Your lowest frequency isn’t a weakness to fix. It’s a doorway to transformation.

Take the free assessment at https://harmony.sacredbusinessflow.com and we’ll show you exactly where your patterns are creating your challenges.

Thank You

Thanks to Paola for her honest sharing. Thanks to everyone who joined us live. And thanks to this community for continuing to show up.

P.S. Paola mentioned that many people don’t appreciate the spiritual tools they have until they’re forced to use them. The same is true for your business challenges. They’re not obstacles. They’re invitations to become who you’re meant to be. Everything is connected.

What’s Next

This recap is from Sacred Business Stories, our weekly live conversation. Previous episodes are available in our archive. Subscribe to get notified when new episodes drop.

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Then she hit 40. And something stopped working.

What happened next is the kind of story that makes perfect sense in retrospect and no sense whatsoever in the moment. She signed up for two astrology courses at once (the teacher said no, she pushed back). Six months later, she had paying clients. Today she’s a Jungian psychotherapist, tarot reader, and astrologer working with clients in four languages across the globe. This conversation is about what it takes to actually make that kind of shift, and why the discomfort you’re feeling might be exactly the signal you’ve been waiting for.

Show Notes

[00:00] The Moment Everything Changed

• Leticia describes what Jung called “metanoia,” the crisis that hits around age 40 when the old version of you simply stops working

• Despite significant success in communications and television, she felt an undeniable pull toward something new

• She pushed her teacher to let her take basic and advanced astrology courses simultaneously, unable to wait a year

[07:00] Identity Death and Resurrection

• Jung’s concept of personas: the masks we wear become prisons when we glue ourselves to a single identity

• When Leticia announced her career change to her newsletter subscribers, many thought she’d lost her mind

• Several clients from her old business followed her into this new chapter and remain clients today

[13:00] The Fear Map You Actually Need

• Fear isn’t the opposite of where you want to go. It’s the moat you have to cross to get there

• Four zones: Comfort → Fear → Learning → Growth. No shortcuts exist

• When you recognize fear as part of the path, you can almost welcome it: “Oh my God, I’m fearful now. So it means I’m on the good path.”

[20:00] Reframing the F-Word

• Fear and excitement produce nearly identical physical sensations

• The word we choose shapes the experience. “Excitement” moves differently through the body than “terror”

• Being an immigrant and being an entrepreneur share the same muscle: learning to draw strength from discomfort

[25:00] Connection Without Performance

• Leticia made “lots of mistakes” trying to figure out how to connect authentically online

• Her breakthrough: creating a 15-video series analyzing “Women Who Run With the Wolves.” That content still brings clients today

• The more you sound like yourself, the more the right people find you. When they unfollow, you’re getting closer to your real audience

[31:00] Mistakes as Marketing

• Recording from Italy means wine bottle trucks interrupt videos. She stopped editing those moments out

• Making errors in public is becoming a quality signal in an AI-smoothed world

• Being different just means being yourself, and astrology shows this even identical twins live vastly different lives

[36:00] Advice for 2026: Slow Down

• “If you’re not seeing beauty in your day, it’s because you’re walking too fast”

• Our culture is so future-focused we’ve lost the present, which is, after all, already a gift

• Routine itself is a ritual. Build more rituals into your business life

Key Quotes

“Angels are not going to come and say, now you are ready and let’s do it. Never. It’s not going to happen.” – Leticia Torgo

“The more you are yourself, the better. First, because it’s not going to hurt you. And then because it’s going to be real.” – Leticia Torgo

Resources Mentioned

• Carl Jung’s concept of metanoia (midlife crisis)

• “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by

• The Knight in Rusty Armor by Robert Fisher (the book about the man who can’t remove his armor)

• Paulo Coelho’s works

• Jung’s theory of personas and the ascendant/rising sign in astrology

Where to Find Leticia

Google “Leticia Torgo” and you’ll find everything. She offers:

• YouTube: Two channels, Pixie Arcana (Tarot) and her main channel (mixed topics)

• Substack: Two publications, one for tarot/psychology and one for astrology

• Instagram: Regular posts in Portuguese

• Consultations: Available in Portuguese, English, French, and Italian

And yes, a reading makes a better gift than an object. She said it, we didn’t argue.

Devaneios da Let

Quando você entende o símbolo, a vida fala com você.

Por Letícia Tórgo

Something Shifted?

If this conversation sparked something, you might be ready to look at your own business through a different lens.

The Business Harmony Map measures 9 frequencies that show where your inner patterns become outer challenges. Your lowest frequency isn’t a weakness. It’s a doorway.

Take the free assessment and see what’s actually been blocking you: https://harmony.sacredbusinessflow.com

Thank you for being here. To our live viewers who caught this in real time, you know the magic of these unpolished conversations. To everyone listening on replay, welcome to the community.

P.S. Missed previous episodes? You can find all our Sacred Business Stories here.

P.P.S. Not subscribed yet? Hit that button. We send weekly conversations with entrepreneurs building businesses that actually mean something.

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Want to go deeper?

Here’s how we can help you get clear, get visible, and get clients:

1. Take the Harmony Map Assessment (Free): Find out which pattern is blocking your clarity, visibility, or ability to get the right clients. 8 minutes. You’ll see exactly what’s been in the way, and why strategy alone hasn’t fixed it.

2. Read the Sacred Business Manifesto (Free): The full philosophy behind how we work, why inner patterns create outer business challenges, and what it means to build from both sides.

His subconscious had figured out what his conscious mind refused to accept. The topic wasn’t aligned with who he was becoming. The business that looked perfect on paper was slowly making him miserable. This realization became the doorway to everything that came next.

Today, Jari runs Write Build Scale alongside and , teaching creators how to grow on Substack, build digital products, and create sustainable income through their writing. But what makes his story worth telling isn’t the success. It’s the honest reckoning about what it actually takes to build something real.

Show Notes

[00:00] - The “Unemployable” Advantage

• Jari always had the itch to build something for himself, even though he thought business meant million-dollar loans and factories

• After multiple full-time jobs at startups, he realized he was wired differently: even great environments made him miserable when he didn’t control his own schedule

• Discovered Medium by accident and started writing about self-improvement and productivity

• Met Sinem on Medium, turned on the Partner Program, and suddenly the online business became real

[06:00] - When Success Stops Feeling Like Success

• After four to five years running a profitable productivity business, boredom set in

• Started asking the hard question: “How did I become the productivity guy when this isn’t what I’m meant to do?”

• Recognized self-sabotage patterns appearing in clever, subconscious ways

• The pivot to Write Build Scale came from following what actually energized him: business building itself

[10:00] - The Alignment Principle

• Kicking against a rock for 18 months because the work wasn’t connected to core values

• Even a “successful” business can break you if it’s not aligned with who you are

• Sometimes you have to go through misalignment to know what alignment actually feels like

• The hard path often teaches exactly what you needed to learn

[13:00] - The Partnership Question

• Jari, Philip, and Sinem knew each other for years before forming a business together

• Monthly mastermind calls built a foundation of trust before any formal collaboration

• Regular check-ins where everyone can voice struggles or concerns prevent things from building up

• Within the team, each person maintains independence in their creative work

[17:00] - Fear as a Navigation Tool

• Fear, resistance, and imposter syndrome are natural for content creators because you’re sharing yourself, not just a product

• At every new stage of business, there’s a new level of “Can I really do this?”

• If you’re completely comfortable all the time, you’re probably missing out on growth

• The first Substack Live was nerve-wracking. Now it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the week.

[24:00] - Collaboration Without the Tactics

• Moving from Medium (where content could just get selected) to Substack required a completely new muscle: reaching out to people

• The rule: only collaborate with people who would be fun to meet in real life

• If someone causes stress or brings negative energy, the collaboration ends regardless of their audience size

• Connection that starts from genuine human interest often leads to the best business outcomes

[33:00] - AI and the Coming Rebalancing

• AI-generated comments are easy to spot and immediately kill the impulse to connect deeper

• If everyone uses AI for content and comments, what’s even the point of social platforms?

• We’re in the “terrible twos” of AI use, still figuring out where the balance point lives

• In-person community and real human connection will become more valuable, not less

[38:00] - The Universal Block

• The biggest pattern Jari sees across creators: the feeling of not being good enough

• This shows up differently for different people: not knowing enough, not being consistent, not believing people will pay

• The execution gap isn’t a strategy problem. It’s a pattern problem.

• That’s why their programs pair information with three months of group coaching

Watch On Youtube

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Key Quotes

“Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.” - Jari Roomer

“If I would just be super comfortable the whole time, I know that I’m probably missing out on some cool things and a lot of growth.” - Jari Roomer

“We only work with people that we truly feel it’s a pleasure to work with. Even if there’s creators with big audience sizes, but they’re a hassle to work with, we don’t work with them anymore.” - Jari Roomer

Resources Mentioned

• publication on Substack

• The Four-Hour Workweek by

• Medium Partner Program

Where to Find Jari

Check out the publication here on Substack. Whether you’re focused on growing subscribers or launching digital products, they’ve organized content by stage so you can find what’s most useful for where you are right now.

Write • Build • Scale

Learn how to write online, build your audience, and scale your income.

By Sinem Günel

Want to go deeper?

Here’s how we can help you get clear, get visible, and get clients:

1. Take the Harmony Map Assessment (Free): Find out which pattern is blocking your clarity, visibility, or ability to get the right clients. 8 minutes. You’ll see exactly what’s been in the way, and why strategy alone hasn’t fixed it.

2. Read the Sacred Business Manifesto (Free): The full philosophy behind how we work, why inner patterns create outer business challenges, and what it means to build from both sides.

Some people teach what they know. Others live what they teach. Coppola spent years in the first camp before making the jump to the second.

He was Phil’s first coach, back when Marc was running events and masterminds for entrepreneurs chasing freedom. But something shifted. The man who once taught others how to build businesses decided to stop talking and start building. Not another course. Not another coaching program. An 88-acre permaculture farm outside Montreal where people can touch, taste, and experience what living differently actually looks like.

This conversation cuts through the usual entrepreneur playbook. Marc doesn’t have a funnel to sell you into. He’s not promoting anything. He’s too busy learning how to be a handyman, build houses, and grow food. That’s the story.

[00:00] The Long Winding Road

Marc knew he was an entrepreneur at 18, but not for the reasons you’d expect. He hated traffic. Hated the idea of everyone leaving at 9 and coming home at 5. So he bought into a failing indoor skate park with $15,000 monthly rent while still in school.

Most people would call that insane. Marc agrees. But it worked. Over three years, he learned more about business on the ground than he ever did in finance and accounting classes. The real world felt more empowering than textbooks. It made him solution-oriented in ways school never could.

[05:40] The Documentary Phase

After getting bought out at 21, Marc traveled and watched a documentary a week. He didn’t want formal schooling to steal his education. That habit changed everything. He started seeing patterns. Systems. The bigger picture of how things connect.

Those documentaries planted seeds that wouldn’t bloom for years. But they shaped how he thinks about business, community, and what it means to build something real.

[12:15] From Teaching to Living

Marc built Superhero Academy, ran masterminds, hosted events. He was good at it. But something felt off. He was teaching people how to live differently while living the same corporate-adjacent lifestyle himself.

“I started asking myself, am I actually living this or am I just teaching it?” The gap between what he knew and what he was actually doing became unbearable. So he bought land and started building Valhalla Farms.

[25:30] Be Both Batman AND Bruce Wayne

Here’s where Marc drops the framework that explains his whole approach:

Most entrepreneurs hide behind their business. They’re Batman in the mask but won’t show you Bruce Wayne. Or they’re Bruce Wayne trying to seem relatable but never actually deliver the Batman-level results.

Marc’s insight? Your customers need both. They need to see the person living the dream (Batman) and the human building it (Bruce Wayne). They’re not buying your products. They’re buying access to the life you represent.

At Valhalla Farms, people don’t just buy eggs or honey. They’re buying proximity to someone who actually made the jump. Someone who isn’t just talking about regenerative agriculture or alternative living. Someone who’s doing it.

[36:45] The Infrastructure Before the Audience

During COVID, Valhalla Farms exploded. They were the only place people could go. An essential service. The community ballooned overnight.

But Marc wasn’t ready. Not enough infrastructure. Too many people showing up with questions and enthusiasm. So he did something most entrepreneurs would never do: he stopped promoting. Stopped telling people to come. Walked away from growth because the foundation wasn’t ready.

“I realized we literally did not have enough infrastructure to deal with that many people showing up.”

Most people would’ve just taken the money and figured it out later. Marc chose patience over profit. Spent the next five years building: greenhouse, coffee shop, washing station, deck, outdoor kitchen, house. Piece by piece. The right way.

[42:10] Three Pieces of Advice

Someone asked Marc what he’d tell entrepreneurs trying to build something meaningful. His answer wasn’t about strategy or tactics:

First, understand your story. Really understand it. Not the version you tell at networking events. The real one. The one that actually drives you.

Second, live your story. Don’t just teach it. Don’t just talk about it. Actually do the thing. Show people it’s possible by being the proof.

Third, have someone else help you rewrite your story. You’re too close to see it clearly. You need outside eyes to help you articulate what you’re actually building.

Key Quotes

“The truth was that being in the real world, actually going out there and realizing it and doing it felt so much more empowering. It felt so much more real.”

“We’re Bruce Wayne in our mind, but to them, we’re Batman. Because we’re living the dream that they have.”

Where to Find Marc

Marc’s on Instagram and YouTube, though he’s not actively building community digitally right now. He’s learning how to build houses, grow food, and scale patience. The Valhalla Movement podcast will relaunch at some point, but for now, he’s doing the work that matters most.

If you’re in Montreal, you can visit Valhalla Farms, pick up a shovel, or buy eggs, honey, and garlic. The infrastructure is being built for larger entrepreneurial retreats and events, but that’s down the road.

What This Means for Your Business

Most of us are teaching things we haven’t fully lived yet. We’re sharing the strategy before we’ve proven the system. We’re Batman without ever showing Bruce Wayne, or Bruce Wayne without ever delivering Batman.

Marc’s story asks a harder question: What if your breakthrough isn’t about better marketing or a new funnel? What if it’s about closing the gap between what you teach and what you live?

Your business isn’t just a revenue stream. It’s a mirror. It reflects who you are and who you’re becoming. The question isn’t whether you can teach it. The question is whether you’re willing to live it.

P.S. If you’re building a business that requires you to become someone new, the Sacred Business Harmony Map can help you identify exactly where your breakthrough is waiting. Then, Book your Integration Call to explore what’s actually blocking your growth.

That moment of reckoning led him to Peru, to plant medicine, and to a decade-long exploration of what he’d been missing: the feminine side of success. The intuition. The flow. The creativity. Phil spent the next seven years off social media entirely, diving deep into practices most entrepreneurs dismiss as “too woo” or impractical. What he discovered changed everything about how he approaches performance, business, and life itself.

In this episode of Sacred Business Stories, Phil shares what happens when you realize your greatest strength has become your biggest limitation. And how integrating the parts of yourself you’ve been ignoring might be the only path to sustainable success.

Show Notes

[00:03:30] The Work-Hard Mentality That Almost Broke Him

Phil grew up as an athlete in Quebec, Canada, with one core belief: he could work harder than anyone else. When he transitioned to entrepreneurship in his early 20s, he brought that same mindset with him.

• Built a successful personal development company by age 28 using pure masculine energy: discipline, structure, effort, and push

• Started waking up every morning with crippling anxiety and the thought “there’s so much to do today, how am I going to handle all this?”

• Recognized the price of his approach: sacrificing his own health, sanity, and well-being for external success

• This was 2013-2014, before mental health conversations were as mainstream as today

[00:05:00] The Plant Medicine Realization

A series of plant medicine journeys revealed what Phil had been missing. He’d learned to build success using only one type of energy.

• Realized he’d been operating solely from masculine energy while completely ignoring the feminine side: intuition, flow, and creativity

• Understood that sustainable success requires balancing both energies, not choosing one over the other

• Made the decision to spend serious time learning “the other side” he’d been neglecting

• This began a decade-long journey of integration that continues today

[00:05:45] Going Deep in Peru

Phil didn’t just dabble in this work. He committed fully, spending extended time in the Sacred Valley and other parts of Peru.

• Used Cusco as a jumping-off point for deeper spiritual work in the region

• Humbled himself to learn practices and ways of being that were completely foreign to his athlete mindset

• Recognized that life invites (or forces) us to cultivate whichever side we’re lacking so we can become more balanced

• Spent years off social media (seven to eight years) to focus on this internal work without distraction

[00:15:00] The Masculine/Feminine Balance in Business

Phil explains how this isn’t just spiritual theory. It directly impacts how you show up in your business and life.

• Masculine energy: discipline, structure, systems, pushing forward, making things happen

• Feminine energy: intuition, receptivity, allowing, flow states, creative expression

• Most entrepreneurs default to one or the other, creating either burnout or lack of results

• True peak performance comes from knowing when to push and when to allow

[00:30:00] Being “Too Spiritual” for Business People

Phil wrestled with a common challenge: how to bridge the gap between high performance and deep spirituality without alienating either audience.

• Traditional business world sees spiritual practices as impractical or “woo-woo”

• Spiritual communities sometimes view business success and money as “low consciousness”

• The real work is integration: bringing both worlds together in a practical way

• His approach: use spiritual principles to enhance performance, not escape from it

[00:44:00] Why He’s Coming Back to Social Media (Via Substack)

After nearly eight years off all social platforms, Phil is considering a return. But not to the places you’d expect.

• Tried Instagram but his brain literally won’t let him stay on the platform

• Discovering Substack feels different: calmer, more intentional, less posturing

• Values long-form content and genuine community over algorithmic manipulation

• Committing to “doubling down” on Substack rather than traditional social media

[00:47:00] Finding Your “Ojai” (The Right Platform for You)

Phil shares a powerful metaphor about trying different California cities before finding Ojai, the small mountain town that felt right.

• Went to San Diego: “This is not it”

• Tried LA: “Definitely not it”

• Checked out Santa Barbara: “Hopefully it’s it... no, it’s not it”

• Finally found Ojai and knew immediately: “Yes, this is it”

• Same process with social platforms: Instagram no, Facebook no, TikTok definitely not... but Substack? “It actually feels good”

Key Quotes

“I had learned to build success solely using masculine energy: discipline, effort, pushing myself, structure. And there’s a whole other side to this equation, the feminine side. Intuition, flow, creativity. And right now I’m completely out of balance.” - Phil Drolet

“I started to wake up every morning with this ball of anxiety in my stomach. Like literally from the moment I would open my eyes, just anxiety and this feeling of ‘oh shit, there’s so much to do today. How am I going to handle all this? It’s going too fast. It’s too much, but I can’t stop.’” - Phil Drolet

Where to Find Phil Drolet

Phil is just beginning his journey on Substack. Follow him here to be part of his community from day one as he shares insights on balancing high performance with spiritual depth.

Phil Drolet

Triathlon World Champ. Spiritual performance coach. Writer. Explorer of truth, love & the human potential. Here to live fully & help others do the same.

The Pattern Behind Phil’s Breakthrough

Here’s what strikes me most about Phil’s story: his greatest strength became his greatest limitation.

The work-hard mentality that got him to success was the same pattern keeping him trapped in anxiety. The masculine energy that built his business was suffocating the other half of himself.

This is exactly what we see in the Business Harmony Map. Phil was operating at high frequency in Discipline (his masculine drive and structure). But his lowest frequencies? Likely Faith if I had to guess (trusting the process instead of forcing it) and Simplicity (knowing when to stop pushing).

Your breakthrough isn’t in doing more of what you’re already good at. It’s in developing what you’ve been avoiding.

Phil avoided flow for years because discipline was working. Until it wasn’t. He avoided intuition because structure felt safer. Until it became a prison.

The 9 Frequencies aren’t separate skills you master one at a time. They’re interconnected parts of a whole system. When one area drops too low, everything else suffers. When you strengthen your lowest frequency, everything else rises with it.

Want to discover which frequency is holding your entire business back?

Take the Business Harmony Map assessment. It reveals your breakthrough frequency in under 10 minutes. Not your strength. Your doorway to transformation.

The same place Phil was stuck might be where you’re stuck right now.

Take the Business Harmony Map →

Your lowest score isn’t a weakness to fix. It’s the pattern your business has been asking you to address all along.

Thank You

To everyone who joined us live on Substack: , , , , and so many others who showed up in real time. Your presence made this conversation what it was. There’s something different about going live together versus just publishing content into the void.

Carolina and I do these every week, and honestly, if a week goes by without one of these conversations, something feels missing. These aren’t just interviews. They’re the highlight of our week.

Special gratitude to Phil for being vulnerable enough to share his story. When leaders admit they were wrong about how success works, it gives everyone else permission to stop pretending.

And if you’re reading this now but couldn’t make it live? Join us next time. The energy is different when we’re all together. You’ll get an alert in the app when we go live again.

P.S.

This conversation is available as both audio and video for all Sacred Business Stories subscribers. We create detailed recaps like this one for every episode because we believe the insights deserve more than a quick listen and forget.

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