What a fun workday ahead of me, and what a joy to witness wins like that.

I was flooding with gratitude. I looked outside the window and the only thing I could say was thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thanks, life, for so much.

I sent a message to , expressing my joy and gratitude for having him as my partner in this adventure.

Then I felt like writing this.

This is for you if you feel discouraged, frustrated, so fearful that you will never get there. That your work life drains your energy and always has. That you know there is more but you just feel lost about how to get there.

This is also for you if you do what you love but your financial goals never really stabilized to support what you need for an abundant life for you and your family.

It is possible, but don’t give up. Don’t trade what is in your heart for anything. Don’t let fear and disappointment make you believe this is not for you.

It is.

I thought I was a lost case. I thought I would never fully love my work. That this was the reality of most people, anyway.

Don’t believe that.

If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would be doing what I do now, I would have never guessed.

But if I look back and reassess what brought me here?

I would say resilience.

Never giving up, and following all the signs that I could possibly perceive that my heart was always right. Never allowing my thoughts of fear and frustration to dictate how my life would unfold. Instead, I used them as fuel to discover different ways of consciously creating what I wanted and allowing life to surprise me.

Being around people who believed in the same thing I did was huge. It was a way of reminding myself: some people are doing it, so I can too. I am not crazy, I am not alone.

What kept me moving wasn’t only resilience in the hard moments. There was always an excitement about where I was going. Gratitude for where I am, yes, but always a pull toward something bigger than what I currently believed I could have.

And instead of pushing that away, I learned to make it safe. To build enough capacity in my system to hold the desire without making myself wrong for not having it yet. To let it exist with kindness and care, not force it down in the name of staying peaceful where I was.

This is actually the work we do in Radiant Flow, our embodiment community within Sacred Business Flow. Building that capacity so the desire doesn’t have to be suppressed or desperately chased.

It can just guide.

The other part was action. Challenging the beliefs my body held as absolute truth. And often, taking a step before I could fully see the ground. There is a saying: you take the step and the universe gives you the ground.

It’s true. And it’s terrifying.

But it’s how I found my way into something I could never have planned.

Now, I meet my inner child in my workdays. Playfulness, curiosity, wonder. Those are not exceptions to my days, they are mostly alive in my everyday life. Those are no longer feelings I feel only when I’m traveling or on vacation.

They are part of a normal Wednesday when my agenda is full of calls and mostly a whole day in front of the computer.

Uniting joy and money. That hasn’t been an achievement I unlocked. It’s been a gift. One I had to make myself available to receive.

I don’t need to be miserable making money or broke doing what I love.

I can love what I do and make money at the same time. This is my game and I create the rules.

So do you.

The answer is in your heart. Your mind will challenge you, until it jumps on board, because the feeling is so strong you can’t deny it.

Looking back now, I can see that every wall I hit was actually building something. The things that worked and the things that didn’t were all moving me in the same direction, because I never let the desire to experience more of my essence die.

So when you say “that didn’t work,” I want to invite you to pause there. Didn’t it? Or did it just not give you the result you were measuring for in that moment?

If you have a clear intention of where you’re going, nothing is wasted. The failed launch, the client who said no, the thing you built that nobody bought. All of it was building capacity, sharpening something, preparing you for what’s coming.

But there is one condition. You have to stay in it. You can’t land on “it didn’t work” and go quiet. You need to decide that you will believe this is for you too.

It doesn’t matter how long it will take.

As long as you’re moving, as long as your heart is still in it, it’s all serving you.

I am so pleased I never gave up. I would do everything again just to be where I am now. And I know deep in my heart, it keeps getting better and better.

Aliveness, joy, fun, enthusiasm, and money-making can walk together.

With love,

Carolina

Who We are Celebrating This Week:

This week we had the honor of getting to know a little more, and her beautiful project to create a space that supports women in reconnecting with their joy.

Michele’s approach is unique. She meets you exactly where you are, and there is no one-size-fits-all recipe. Through experimentation and embodiment, she guides her group in a safe space to reconnect with joy.

Why does this matter?

In my opinion, this is the medicine for everything. Someone operating in joy is generous. They think about community, about support. Someone operating in joy sees the world as a playground and will do everything they can to contribute to making this planet a better place.

I love this: if you don’t know where to start, start with yourself. Work on reconnecting with what brings you joy and aliveness. That’s my path too, and it changed my relationship with life, affecting my health, my work, and everything else.

Things I’d Like to Share

on Sacred Business Stories

Sam is a huge inspiration to me. I use his example with clients all the time. I call him the master of connection and here’s why.

He is genuinely interested in other people. He loves to support creators on Substack, and he does it with a wide open heart. What does he get from that? I’m sure his own joy of being such a generous human being. But he also receives real support, deep friendships, and has experienced major growth in his publication over the last year.

If you want to understand what real connection looks like in practice, pay close attention to what Sam is doing.

Slow AI is not about learning to prompt better. It’s about learning how to relate to AI in a way that supports your thinking and makes you smarter every time you sit down with it.

Memorable Quote

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop - Confucius

New Here?

This essay was originally published on sacredbusiness.com on May 18, 2026. You can find the canonical version, along with related essays on sacred business and nervous system work, there.

Most people building a business only ever know the first one.

If you’re building online, you have to be seen so the right people can find you. There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe for that, and there are many ways to go about it. But in every way, visibility challenges us differently.

In last week’s Radiant Flow class, we tried to experience visibility from neutrality. Because like everything in life, we give a charge to things based on our own experience.

Visibility, on its own, is neither good nor bad, just like money. It carries the meaning you give it.

But it lands differently in each of us depending on how we perceive it. And based on that, we either take action, or we don’t.

Two ways of seeing visibility

From a business perspective, visibility is your ability to be seen so people know you exist and can solve a problem they have.

From a spiritual perspective, visibility is a natural quality of your soul.

Your soul didn’t come here to hide. It came to make the light visible through you, through your body, through everything you create. That is visibility in its purest form.

So what is being visible, if not the act of coming home to yourself and letting someone witness it?

Being visible isn’t performance. It can be executed from that space. But when you find your music within, you want others to experience it. It doesn’t come from forcing or needing. It comes from the desire to experience yourself naturally without protection, without defenses.

The problem: these two perspectives rarely meet

“If I want a business, I need to…” - and there’s a long list of things you should do.

That’s why many gifted people never fully build one. They refuse to play the game of performance that successful people seem to be playing.

But what if you could have a successful business and still operate from the feeling-home energy of visibility? What if you could be consistent, disciplined, and build something real without needing, forcing, or proving?

Visibility doesn’t change when it hits the business world. It gets challenged. By the charge in the field. By all the “you must,” “you should,” “that’s how you do it” advice out there.

You, as a creator, get to choose: do you want to experience visibility as performance, or as a natural quality of your being?

A Sacred Business is where both versions finally meet

Where being found by the right people and feeling at home in yourself aren’t two separate things. They’re the same movement.

You are not committed to posting on social media three times a day. You are committed to your own light. And that changes everything.

Hiding isn’t the answer either

Hiding carries the same exhausting energy as performance. In both, you’re not flowing - you’re protecting yourself.

In hiding, you protect your light from being experienced by many. In performance, you protect it too by being seen only through the lens you think the world will accept.

Both drain you.

What we truly want is to come home to ourselves. To open our hearts and serve. To help others from that space.

I’m learning that being seen, for me, is allowing more of my light to shine. And when I do that, something unexpected happens . I see that light more clearly in others, too. That feels like ease. Openness. Aliveness.

Your business deserves that version of you.

And your soul deserves a business that serves as a container for your light to be seen.

With love,

Carolina

Who We are Celebrating This Week:

and his upcoming book, the Wellbeing Equation

Things I’d Like to Share

Conversation with founder of Second Callings

Eva built her business from the heart, and now she helps others find their second calling. It takes courage to step fully into that and I love being around happy people building fun, profitable businesses that make them feel whole in their expression.

One thing Eva said stayed with me:

You can start a brand new business and still have the old pattern running underneath it. A new dream, same old energy in charge.

The real work isn’t just naming the pattern - it’s going deeper than the label. That’s exactly what she helps her people do.

An inspiring read this week: I Lost Myself Building the Thing I Dreamed Of — by

A raw, vulnerable piece for anyone who feels uninspired, disconnected, or a little lost inside the version of themselves they worked so hard to become.

Sage Marinelli

I Lost Myself Building the Thing I Dreamed Of

This might be the most vulnerable I’ve ever been online, but I thought sharing it might inspire someone else who feels uninspired, disconnected, or a little lost in the version of themselves they worked so hard to become…

Read more

12 days ago · 12 likes · 10 comments · Sage Marinelli

New Here?

This essay was originally published on sacredbusiness.com on May 18, 2026. You can find the canonical version, along with related essays on sacred business and nervous system work, there.

There’s a call we host every month that we’ve barely talked about here in our newsletter. Starting today, that changes.

It’s called Wonder Questions. Over 200 of you are in the Sacred Business Network at this point, and a group of us shows up live for it every month. It’s an hour long. We pick a passage from a teacher we’re sitting with. Carolina or I read it. Then we open a few questions that don’t have right answers. People share what’s actually alive for them in their business and their life. We listen. We respond. An hour later you've seen something about your business or yourself that you couldn't see when you first joined the Zoom.

Once a month from here on out, I’ll be sharing what came up on the call. Not what individual people said. That stays in the room. But the teaching we sat with, a few thoughts from Carolina, and a few from me.

So here’s what happened this month.

We read from a book called Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland. The passage was about pendulums.

A pendulum is what happens when a big group of people get worked up about the same thing at the same frequency. Think sports games, social media, the news, a political fight. Once enough people are feeding the same emotion at the same frequency, that energy starts to behave like its own thing. It pulls more people in. And it feeds on whatever attention you give it, including the attention you give by being against it.

The person who can’t stop hate-scrolling and the person who can’t stop telling everyone how bad social media is are stuck in the same pendulum. Energy is energy. The pendulum doesn’t care which side of the argument you’re on.

The way out is what Zeland calls disengagement. Disengagement is more subtle than it sounds. You don’t have to leave the situation. Your external behavior can stay the same. What changes is on the inside. You feel the pull and you don’t latch on.

This concept has been one of the more useful things I’ve read over the years for how I approach my own business.

After so many conversations with people building heart-led businesses, I see the same rollercoaster everywhere. You get into a high state. Vision work, a great coaching call, a moment of real clarity. You feel like you are on the top of the mountain. The next day you crash. A week later you’re doubting the whole thing. Then you’re back up. Then back down again. That’s the same pendulum, just one you set in motion yourself.

Carolina shared on the call that freedom doesn’t sit on either side of the pendulum. It sits in the middle, in what she calls neutrality. You’re there with people, warm and paying attention, and you’re just not getting swept away by the river.

She told a story to make it real. A few years back she was in the middle of a divorce, had moved countries, was Airbnb-hopping with her kids, and had just lost a big chunk of her money. Her mom came to visit. Carolina was bracing for sympathy. Her mom took one look at her and said, this situation is so bad, all we can do is celebrate. Let’s go drink a beer. They went and got a beer. They laughed about it. The pendulum broke right there.

For me, the practice has shown up most around sales. I used to tighten up the second a sales conversation got real. Now when I notice that pull, I get up from my desk and put on music. I dance for 30 seconds to a minute. It looks ridiculous if you saw it. It also works. My body remembers it has a choice.

That’s what the call kept circling back to. You don’t have to fight what’s pulling on you, and you don’t have to withdraw from things. The work is simpler than that. Remember what isn’t yours, and choose what frequency you actually want to be in.

This kind of conversation is why we built the Network. There are plenty of places online to talk about funnels and pricing and Substack growth. There aren’t many where you can sit with people who already understand what it means to build a business from the inside out, and explore the actual questions that change how you show up in the work.

If you want to be in the room for the next one, we just put up a new page for the Network. You can see a bit more about the types of folks that show up for these calls, read what they are actually like, and decide if it’s a fit.

Join the Sacred Business Network →

See you on the next one.

Phil

Who We are Celebrating This Week:

Gary writes for midlife people who feel a pull toward something more. His Substack is about reshaping your life to fit who you are now, not who you had to be to get through your thirties. Practical, grounded, and worth a read if you're in that stretch.

Gary runs the Life Design Collective. He’s our latest member to join the Sacred Business Network, and we are so glad to have him in the fold.

The Life Design Collective Substack

Here you find my musings on what it takes to design the life you want and deserve to live. We ALL have it in us to design our lives and I'm confident this space will support you in that pursuit

By Gary Allen

Things I’d Like to Share

Most conversations with doctors stay clinical. isn't most doctors. This episode of In Full-Light stayed clinical for about six minutes and then went somewhere I rarely hear physicians willing to go.

Here’s what had to say about it:

Most marketing conversations chase the sexy stuff. isn't most marketers. He spends his days on the unsexy infrastructure that decides whether any of the sexy stuff actually reaches a human.

Here’s what had to say about it:

Here’s what had to say about it:

Memorable Quote

Vadim Zeland — “Pendulums are not malevolent in themselves. They simply need energy. They do not care if they devour you in the process.”

New Here?

This essay was originally published on sacredbusiness.com on May 18, 2026. You can find the canonical version, along with related essays on sacred business and nervous system work, there.

Almost without exception, that’s the work that hasn’t taken shape yet. They know what they want to be doing in the world. They’ve known for years. The work is alive in them. What hasn’t settled is the form. The offer keeps changing shape. The pricing won’t sit right. The messaging won’t quite hold. They’ve launched versions and pulled them back. They’ve started and restarted.

If you’re reading this, some version of this is probably you too. You’ve been working on the same thing for two, three, five years. You can feel exactly who it’s for and what it would do for them. And the form keeps moving on you.

This used to look like substantive work to me. People refining their offer. Reconsidering their pricing. Rewriting their messaging. The kind of thing that should obviously make it better.

Over time, I started seeing it differently.

The endless refining of the offer is part of the pattern. The pricing reconsideration is part of the pattern. The messaging that won’t quite land is part of the pattern. They look like substantive work, which is what makes them so hard to see. You think you’re making progress. You’re actually running a loop.

The work that means the most to you has the highest stakes. Higher stakes means more protection. The protection comes from a layer underneath your conscious mind. The part of you that’s spent decades figuring out how to keep you safe. And that part has decided in some way that fully stepping into this work is dangerous.

Your wiring doesn’t have a reference point for being seen doing the work. That’s what registers as the threat.

So you protect yourself from the very thing you most want. Not by avoiding it directly. By staying in the version of the work that never quite gets solidified. The offer that needs one more pass. The pricing that needs one more think. The messaging that needs one more iteration.

You’re not lazy. You don’t lack commitment. You’re not undisciplined. The push-harder advice that’s everywhere in this space made you tired in the first place. Whatever’s keeping this work from landing has a different shape than character flaws.

The thing you’re calling stuckness has a structure. It’s a pattern. And patterns have reasons for existing.

The reason your particular pattern exists has nothing to do with your character. It has to do with what your body learned was safe a long time before you got here.

One of the women in our community said it like this: “It’s so hardwired in my head. How do I undo that wiring?”

That’s the right question.

Most of the work you’ve done so far, the therapy, the retreats, the courses, the years of inner work, has been good for naming the wiring. It’s been less good at undoing it. Naming and undoing are different jobs that use different parts of the brain.

I had to learn this the hard way watching people try strategy after strategy that didn’t take them where they wanted to go. The strategies were in many cases good. What was in the way was something else.

I’m going to be writing about this for the next several weeks. About the five specific patterns I see most often in people who’ve done years of inner work and still struggle to put their body of work out there. About what those patterns cost. About what actually shifts them, which isn’t what most of us were taught.

If you’ve been in this loop for a while, you’ll probably recognize yourself somewhere in the next few essays. That recognition is useful. It’s also the starting point for a different way of thinking about growing your business. Recognition by itself wont fully take you where you want to go. But something else will.

I’ll get to that.

For now, the thing worth sitting with is this. What you have to offer isn’t stalled out because you haven’t refined it enough, or you lack required experience. It’s held up because what’s in the way of it is wired in so strongly that its hard to see anything beyond that way of being.

Years pass quickly when you’re stuck.

That’s what I want to write about.

If this moves something in you, the next few essays will probably keep doing that. I’m not suggesting that you take any new actions yet. Just notice what gets stirred up. The recognition is the start.

Phil

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Who We are Celebrating This Week:

Josh Woll has been part of our community for a long time, and we’re celebrating him big right now. He’s about to head to Machu Picchu for a retreat, then jetting straight from Peru to Rio de Janeiro for a VIP In-Person experience with us. What a run. Honestly Josh, that’s the kind of trip most people put on a vision board for ten years and never take. You’re just doing it man!

He’s the first of our community members to come for a VIP experience here in Brazil, and we’re excited to host him. He’s also a brilliant cinematographer and photographer, and he’ll be capturing some of the time on camera with us, and helping us out with some photos. We are overdue for a refresh!

Josh runs The Sober Creative. For 22 years, drinking was just part of who he was. Five years ago he committed publicly to a year without alcohol and told people. He removed the exit. The work he’d been trying to do his whole career started happening. Not despite sobriety. Because of it.

That’s what we’re really celebrating. Josh built a life he doesn’t want to escape from, and now he’s out living it. Peru one week, Rio the next, the camera on his shoulder, the work he loves in his hands. That’s the whole point.

If you’ve been quietly wondering about your own relationship with alcohol and could use some support, take a look at what he’s built.

Visit The Sober Creative →

The Sober Creative

The Sober Creative shows how removing alcohol restores the energy, clarity, and capacity that gets buried under incomplete recovery—with practical strategies and real stories from people who've made the shift.

By Josh Woll

Things I’d Like to Share

Most marketing conversations stay in tactics. isn’t most marketers. This one started in tactics for about six minutes and then went somewhere I rarely hear marketers willing to go.

Here’s what had to say about it:

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

Here’s what had to say about it:

Here’s what and had to say about it:

Here’s what had to say about it:

Memorable Quote

Anaïs Nin — "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

New Here?

How do I get more subscribers on Substack?

You’ve been publishing consistently. Growth was promising at first. It’s flattened in a way that doesn’t match the effort. You’re starting to wonder if the standard advice is missing something.

All three of them framed it as a discovery problem. As though some specific tactic or notes strategy would surface the people who haven’t yet found them.

That’s the wrong frame.

Your readers aren’t undiscovered. They’re already gathered. They’re gathered around someone whose work looks very similar to yours in many ways. Maybe someone who has spent five years writing about almost-the-same-thing. Someone who runs a publication your ideal subscriber already opens every week consistently.

Growth on Substack comes down to two questions.

Whose audience already overlaps yours?

Does that creator believe your work is worth pointing to?

Most writers approach growth a little bit like extraction.

How do I get attention from someone who has more of it than I do?

How do I shortcut my way into someone else’s audience?

The premise is wrong.

Substack is built on trust and introduction. Every meaningful growth lever on the platform is some version of one writer pointing another writer’s audience toward someone they trust.

Recommendations. Restacks. Cross-posts. Notes attribution. Live conversations.

Earning an introduction is harder than extracting attention. The standard is higher and the timeline can be longer, although it doesn’t have to be. But once you’ve cleared that bar, the leverage is enormous, because every introduction arrives with the host’s accumulated trust riding on top.

Here’s what I see actually working with the people I work with on this.

How to ask for a recommendation

Most writers treat the recommendations system as a favor to extract. A small ask, easily granted, low cost.

The math says this is still one of the highest-leverage growth levers on Substack right now. It is. There’s nothing wrong with asking directly for one.

When we were first building our Substack, I wanted our first 50 recommendations and I went after them agressively. I made it a game. I sent a lot of asks. For each writer, I named specifically what I loved about their work and mentioned I’d noticed them engaging with my notes. The asks were direct.

What makes an ask like that land is specificity. Generic asks get ignored. Specific ones get accepted because they signal that you’ve actually read the writer’s work, that you’re paying attention, that the recommendation isn’t just a transaction.

The people I work with who get recommended without much friction tend to do three things alongside the ask. They comment thoughtfully on the writer’s work for a stretch without an angle. They publish essays that are unmistakably theirs and unmistakably good. And when they reference that writer’s work in their own, they do so with the kind of specificity that makes it obvious they actually read it.

All of that makes the ask easier. By the time you bring it up, the writer already has familiarity with your work, so it doesn’t feel like a request from a stranger.

How to get noticed by writers you admire

Substack Notes has a feature most growth-focused creators underuse. When a writer shapes a thought you’re having, you can credit them by tagging them in a Note, in real time, in front of their audience.

It’s very simple to do. Write a note that opens with a real observation. Attribute the seed of it to someone you admire, and a specific thing they shared that sparked a thought in you. The mention surfaces in their notifications. Some will like it or reply. A smaller number will restack the note to their own audience, which puts your name in front of their readers.

Use caution here: It only works if the feeling is real. If it reads as performance, and on a platform built around taste, this isn’t going to work in your favor. When the credit is honest and specific, it becomes one of the lowest-friction ways to enter the awareness of someone you’d otherwise have to chase for months, likely with minimal results.

Substack Live works even if no one watches live

A client of mine has built a regular Substack Live practice over the last few months. Two conversations a month, mostly with other writers in adjacent fields. She started doing them as a way to make her work visible without the weight of constantly producing essays.

Her subscriber count is up about 25% over that stretch. One Live attendee commissioned her for paid creative work directly out of one of the conversations.

The format is simple. You invite a guest whose work you admire. You go live. The session surfaces in both audiences’ feeds. Your guest’s followers see your name next to someone they already trust. Some of them subscribe.

The live audience itself almost doesn’t matter. The byproducts matter. The recording views that you benefit from months later. The cross-pollination. The relationship you’ve now formalized with a writer whose audience overlaps with yours.

The only real cost is the hour and the willingness to be on camera. That second part is doing more strategic work than most people on Substack realize right now. Love it or hate it, AI lets anyone produce a polished essay a day if they are motivated to. What it can’t replicate is a real person on camera, in real conversation, in front of another writer’s audience. The discomfort of being visible is exactly what keeps most people out, and exactly what makes the move pay off for the ones who go through that resistance.

Write something with another writer’s audience in mind.

This one is probably the hardest. Most will skip it.

Pick one writer whose audience overlaps yours. Then write something with their readers in mind from the first sentence.

It might answer a question their readers keep asking, if you have been observing their comments. Or take one of their ideas and carry it one step further than they have. The form doesn’t matter so much. What matters is the fit. When the writer reads it, sharing should feel natural and like an obvious next step. A favor to their readers, not to you.

Most writers send their work to other writers and hope it gets shared. It rarely does. When a writer shares something with their readers, they’re putting their own taste on the line. Generic work makes their taste look weak. They only share work that they would feel can stand up next to their own in service of their audience.

The principle underneath

Substack growth at the level most thoughtful writers care about isn’t actually a tactical problem, as much as we would all love to just have a simple step by step blueprint to follow.

Honestly, the tactics are easy. You can find them listed for free in a hundred different posts. The bottleneck is whether you’ve done the deeper work that makes the tactics work in your favor.

A writer with a clear voice, a real point of view, and a body of work that rewards careful reading doesn’t need a growth hack. They need to be one degree closer to the writer who has already gathered the readers who would love their work.

And that is work worth doing. Becoming someone worth pointing to for a fresh perspective, or unique viewpoint.

This will get you one degree closer, and the rest will start to take care of itself quite organically.

Most of the people I work with on this came in through someone else's recommendation, or through one of our Sacred Business Stories episodes. The ones who end up getting the best results build their own audience the same way. With a lot of attention on being worth pointing to, rather than looking for shortcuts.

Being worth pointing to is mostly perspective. Publishing consistently is the first step, but the work many writers skip is developing a point of view you can truly own. That perspective gets built through the doing, with a mindset of paying attention and being thoughtful as you go.

Phil

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Who We are Celebrating This Week:

Veronica is an author, an Ironman finisher, and a past guest on Sacred Business Stories.

In March 2025 she published The Anti-Procrastinator with Penguin Random House. Today she’s launching the digital course. The premise overlaps with our work: humans procrastinate by nature and become anti-procrastinators by choice, and the choice runs through knowing your default pattern (one of six types) and rewiring it. The course covers the brain science, the diagnostic, and six mental workouts at what she calls the Anti-Procrastinator Gym.

Get The Course

If you’ve been holding a creative project in the journal stage or postponing the thing you’ve been talking about for years, take a look.

See the course →

Transparency Alert: We do receive financial compensation if you purchase the course from Veronica, but we only recommend affiliates whose work we believe in.

Things I’d Like to Share

Mia Kiraki writes Robots Ate My Homework, one of the sharpest AI voices on Substack. Twenty minutes in, she turned a question back on me that pulled at a habit he'd been quietly questioning.

Memorable Quote

"When you are surrounded with darkness, do not shake your fist and raise your voice and curse the darkness. Rather be a Light unto the darkness, and don't be mad about it." - Neal Donald Walsch

New Here?

There are no wrong emotions.

But there are emotions we’ve quietly put on a “not allowed” list.

And the moment we decide an emotion shouldn’t be felt, we don’t eliminate it… what we do instead is, we reorganize our lives around avoiding it.

The brain doesn’t store events, it stores emotion predictions. And because its job is to keep us safe and help us survive, the feelings that were registered as unsafe begin to shape what we allow ourselves to do, say, want, and pursue.

Without realizing it, our lives become organized around avoiding certain internal experiences.

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And when we live this way, our choices are no longer oriented toward expansion, but toward protection.

This is why we hesitate in moments that matter — not because we don’t know what to do, but because we are unwilling to feel what might come with doing it.

Like pretty much everything in life, emotions are not black and white. Within one emotion there is a whole spectrum of experiences one can have.

Envy is born in the same place desire is born. Before it becomes a thought, it’s a pull, a movement toward something. It’s a physical recognition — something in me responds to that. I see it in the outer world and it calls my attention.

Grounded desire is the cue for expansion.

When desire is born and it meets our stories of not enough, not feeling capable, the idea that we are separated from the whole — it becomes that unhealthy feeling of: why do they have that and I don’t? I shouldn’t want that for myself.

They were able to get that because… but this is not for me. As the energy of desire tries to rise in your body, it hits your relationship with yourself, and the story that what I really want is unavailable for me, or I am not capable of creating this…

Envy, if explored in a healthy way, is not about the situation or the thing or the other people at all… it’s not even telling you what you lack. It’s revealing what you are in relationship with, but not yet in expression of.

What you have been calling envy — maybe trying to avoid feeling it altogether — is just your desire meeting the version of you who doesn’t fully believe you can have it. Or that you are not capable of it. Or even the version of you that doesn’t believe you deserve it.

Next time you feel that, instead of projecting it outward and making it wrong — open yourself to receive its message. It has a gift for you. But the one who will open the gift is not the same one who avoided it for so long.

The version of you that doesn’t feel enough, not capable, not deserving — that one won’t build the sacred business you keep looking at and quietly wishing was yours. But the one who explores not-enoughness, who sits with incapacity and dances when facing the belief they don’t deserve it — that one will.

With love,

Carolina

Who We are Celebrating This Week:

with The Joy Club

Are you looking for a great Substack to follow? I am Celebrating Michele and her joyful Substack publication.

is a psychologist, educator, and the creator of The Joy Club Way — a space she built to help women live more fully alive through play, connection, and self-discovery.

Her main question is so necessary: Why do we need a “Joy Club” anyway?

This is my answer to that: I believe we lost touch with the essence of what we came here for.

In the chasing of money, meaning, and getting it right, we forgot the why. We need a Joy Club to remind ourselves that being is enough, that following your joy is the path.

We did not come here to survive or struggle — we came to have fun, serve, and love. And for me, The Joy Club is a beautiful reminder of exactly that.

Thanks Michele for bringing this work into the world!

Things I’d Like to Share

Sacred Business Stories with

We had such a rich conversation this past week. Brian brought us back to some marketing fundamentals that honestly never get old. Some of the principles that built businesses in the early days of the internet are still the ones that work today.

Sometimes the most powerful move is returning to the basics. I think you'll love this one

Consciously by

Another great essay:

Consciously

Maybe You Don’t Need to Regulate Yourself

There’s a reason we talk so much about nervous system regulation…

Read more

a month ago · 51 likes · 8 comments · Patricia W.

The foundation of my work is helping people come back to the body, that’s also my own journey (that never ends btw…) the very vehicle that gives us the chance to experience the gift of being alive, and the one so many of us have forgotten.

When we disconnect from our emotions, we don’t become stronger or more stable. We become empty. We start believing that feeling deeply is wrong, that being moved by life means something is broken in us. A regulated nervous system isn’t a system that feels nothing — it’s a system where the emotional cycle can complete itself. Patricia wrote something this week that speaks directly to this, and I couldn’t agree more.

Thank you, Patricia, for another beautiful essay.

Memorable Quote

She has the topic. She has real expertise, plenty of energy around it, and months of material from a workshop she’s been building.

So why wasn’t she writing?

Because every time she imagined “writing,” she pictured herself sitting at a blank computer screen trying to squeeze something out of nothing. She hated that picture. So she avoided it. And then she concluded that she couldn’t write.

Halfway through the call, I shared a few things I do. I don’t actually write at a blank screen. I walk. I talk to myself as I walk, and I record the talking in an app that turns it into a searchable note. Then I let an AI ask me questions about what I said until the idea sharpens into something I can use. When I do sit down, the “writing” part is mostly arranging what’s already there.

She went quiet for a beat. Then she said:

“This is a whole workshop you should be teaching. How we think we’re supposed to write versus how we actually write. I would pay lots of money to go to that workshop.”

She’d inherited a definition of writing as sitting-at-a-blank-screen. Nothing about that picture matched how she actually generates ideas, and she’d never questioned the mismatch. So the problem had to be her. But inside the span of a single hour on that call, her confidence in her plan moved from a 6 to an 8/10. All from reframing what writing actually is.

The pattern isn’t limited to writing.

“I can’t do visibility” usually translates to “I can’t do visibility the way I’ve decided visibility has to look.” Same goes for pricing, for selling, for charging properly. The block almost always sits one level beneath the action, in the picture we hold of what doing the thing is supposed to look like.

What shifted her was approach. The walking became her main mode of generating ideas. AI moved into the role of interviewer instead of ghostwriter. Her workshops started feeding her essays, her essays feeding her offers, her offers feeding her visibility. None of those tools are new on their own. Assembled in the right order, they change the whole experience of the work.

Next month, I’m running the first Architect Session inside Radiant Flow. This is the exact territory we’ll be in. How to use AI as a thinking partner without handing over your voice. How to turn work you’re already doing into the content you’ve been failing to publish. The goal is a writing practice built around how you actually generate ideas, not around the version of writing you’ve been told you’re supposed to do.

It’s the first of a monthly Architect Session series inside RF. Carolina holds the embodiment anchor. I’ll be bringing the structure.

If you want to know what Radiant Flow is and whether it’s somewhere you’d want to be, you can read about it here.

Learn about Radiant Flow →

Phil

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Who We are Celebrating This Week:

Ancient Wisdom Made Practical for Flow ✨ Monique guides women leaders & entrepreneurs into clarity, peace, and aligned success using Astrology, Feng Shui, Tarot, and intuitive strategy. Join her at the Flow Frwuenc for weekly guidance, resources, and rituals.

The Flow Frequency Collective™

The Flow Frequency Collective™ — a living community and podcast where women entrepreneurs, leaders, and creators align business, energy, and soul through Astrology, Feng Shui, and Spiritual Strategy.

By Monique Renée

Things I’d Like to Share

Carolina wrote this one. It’s about the not-enoughness most people try to correct with better thoughts, and why that approach never holds. The pattern isn’t a belief. It’s a survival strategy with years of loyalty behind it, and the way through runs through the body before it reaches the mind.

Last week a fever sent me to the emergency room and forced me to reschedule a presentation for Leo Babauta’s audience. But watching my mind through the recovery, I noticed I’d also been quietly postponing the prep, telling myself the calendar block was enough. This one is about the kind of avoidance that looks like planning.

Memorable Quote

"Every time you honor yourself, you receive all the support from the universe in ways your mind cannot even imagine." - Carolina Wilke

New Here?

There is a no that is there to protect the status quo.

It comes quietly. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s just the way things are, the job you keep, the dynamic you’ve adjusted to, the version of yourself you keep showing up as. You don’t experience it as a decision. You don’t experience it as a no at all.

But it is.

And it is slowly emptying you.

This no lives in the well-meaning people. Actually it lives in all of us.

The careful ones. The responsible ones. The ones who care deeply about not making a mess, not being reckless, not hurting anyone. Somewhere along the way, safety became their highest value. And a life organized around safety will say no to everything that can’t be predicted, everything that requires exposure, everything that asks you to become someone you don’t yet know how to be.

The problem is that this no doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like common sense.

It comes with a full story already attached. Why this isn’t the right time. Why that idea is too risky. Why what you have is good enough. The reasoning is solid. The logic holds up.

And something inside you gets a little smaller.

Not dramatically. Just quietly. Like a light being dimmed so slowly you don’t notice until the room is dark.

Your brain is a prediction machine.

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This is not a metaphor. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio spent decades showing that the body signals truth before the mind constructs its story. The brain is constantly running a loop of what it already knows. Anything outside that loop gets filtered fast.

So when something in you says this no longer fits, the brain doesn’t pause and sit with it. It reaches for the familiar. It fires the no before you’ve even consciously processed the feeling. Then your mind arrives a second later with all the reasons why that no makes sense.

You think you’re being thoughtful.

You’re catching up to a reflex.

This no shows up everywhere. But it’s hardest to see where you’ve already built something.

For those who are, by every visible measure, successful… this pattern is most dangerous for them. Because from the outside everything looks fine. More than fine.

You built something real. People respect what you do. It works.

And you keep saying no to the thing that’s trying to come through you. The part of you that has more to say. The belief you’ve never said out loud in your work. The way of seeing the world that feels too personal, too strange, too much.

You keep it private.

You’re not sure people would accept that version of you, so you keep offering the more acceptable one.

The business starts to feel like a costume.

It fits. It looks good. But you know it’s not fully you.

Every day you say no to what wants to come through, the work feels a little more like performance and a little less like truth.

Then there is the other no.

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This one is different.

It doesn’t come fast. It doesn’t come with a prepared argument. It comes from somewhere deeper, and when it arrives, it doesn’t feel like defense.

It feels like freedom.

This is the no that says: this no longer fits who I am. Not because the thing was bad — sometimes it was genuinely good, genuinely meaningful. But you’ve outgrown the shape of it. Staying inside it now costs you something you can feel but can’t always name.

This no carries grief. I want to be honest about that.

Even when what you’re leaving is no longer right for you, there is still loss. Because it gave you an identity. An answer to the question who am I.

The grounded no asks you to release that answer and sit with not knowing for a while.

That is genuinely hard.

And it is also where your life is waiting.

The truth of what you want doesn’t live in your mind.

It lives in your body.

Pay attention to the contraction. The flatness behind your eyes when you talk about certain things. The low-grade worry you’ve learned to call normal. That’s not neutral. That’s your body holding information your mind keeps overriding.

And pay attention to the opposite. The moments when something lights up in you. When you feel more awake, more real, more like yourself. Those moments are not accidents. They are directions.

You don’t have to jump off a cliff.

Start here: look at the things you are most accustomed to.

The relationships, the work, the ways of being that you keep choosing without questioning. Not because they are wrong… but because they are familiar.

Sit with them honestly.

Ask yourself: does this still serve who I am becoming? Does it still feel alive? Or has it become something I simply tolerate because I know how to?

If the answer is that it no longer serves you or you just tolerate… that is when the grounded no should come alive.

You don’t need to have the full picture of what comes next. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going before you take a step. The grounded no is enough to start with. It clears space. It tells the truth. And on the other side of it, there is something worth exploring.

The path forward rarely asks you to be reckless.

It asks you to be honest.

Honest about what the first type of no has been costing you. Honest about what you’ve been protecting yourself from feeling. Honest about the parts of you that have been waiting for permission to come through.

Those parts are not too much.

They are exactly what’s been missing.

With Love,

Carolina

If you're ready to stop tolerating what no longer fits and say yes to what actually matters, Phil and I are here for that conversation.

Let’s talk.

Happenings

Sacred Business Wonder Questions Call For Network Members

Wed Apr 15th at 2:30 EST

If you are a Sacred Business Network member, don’t miss our monthly call this Wednesday.

This is one of my favorite moments of the month. A real conversation with people who believe that business and personal evolution are not separate — they walk side by side. We go deep on topics that expand how you see yourself and how you serve the world.

Don’t miss it. See you there.

If you are not yet a member, click here.

Things I’d Like to Share

Still Rehearsing?

Great guided for you who have been avoiding to shine your light, it’s our gift for you. Click here.

Great conversation with

I want to share with you this conversation we had with Jane Riccobono.

Jane is a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner who refused to choose between real medical expertise and the deeper wisdom our bodies carry. She helps women heal by honoring both — what science knows and what lives within us.

As a woman, I deeply appreciate what she is building. Watch our conversation here and follow her work at The Wise Body.

Memorable Quote

Why Identity Evolution Demands Business Change

Something happens to people who do serious inner work. They change. Not incrementally. Not just on the surface. Fundamentally. The illness that strips everything back to what matters. The divorce that dismantles the life that was never quite right. The awakening that makes the old ambitions feel hollow. The years of therapy, retreats, and embodiment work that produce a person who is substantially different from the one who started.

And then they sit down to work on their business. And the business feels wrong. Not broken. Not failed. Wrong. Like wearing an outfit that fit perfectly five years ago and now pulls across the shoulders and sits too short in the sleeves. The business was built for someone you used to be. You’ve become someone else entirely.

This is the conversation nobody in the business world is having. Not because it isn’t happening. It’s happening everywhere, to some of the most talented and serious people I know. But because the business world doesn’t have language for who you’ve become. It has language for pivots. For rebrands. For niching down. None of which touches what’s actually happening.

Why Who You’ve Become Demands a Different Business

Your business is a reflection of who’s running it. Which means when you change in a genuine and substantial way, then the business must change with it. The old model wasn’t wrong. It was built for someone you no longer are. As a therapist who's deepened her understanding through inner work, or an executive who can no longer align with past ambitions, your business needs to reflect not just what you do, but who you are now.

Here’s how this shows up in practice: The message that used to feel true now feels hollow. You can say the words. You’ve said them hundreds of times. But they no longer feel like yours. They feel like something you constructed before you knew what you actually wanted to say. The real thing you want to say feels too specific, too personal, too much like the new version of you that hasn’t yet been authorized to show up publicly.

Steps to Realign Your Business With Your True Self

Step 1: Diagnose which floor your problem is on.

Think of your business as a three-story building. The top floor is Strategy: your offer, messaging, content, sales process.

The middle floor is Identity: who you believe yourself to be, what you believe you deserve, how you see yourself in relation to your work.

The ground floor is Nervous System: the physiological patterns running underneath everything, the protection programs your body activates the moment you try to show up as who you’ve become. Every floor is only as stable as the floor beneath it.

Step 2: Rebuild from the ground floor up.

Start at the ground floor. Your body is running protection programs written for your old life. These activate the moment you try to show up as who you’ve become. The tightening before you hit publish, the speeding up before you say the price, the going blank before you make the offer. This is your nervous system protecting you from a threat that no longer exists. The intervention is somatic work. Specific, embodied practice that builds the physiological capacity your next chapter requires and aligns with the values and truths that now guide your life and work.

With that underway, move to the middle floor. Map the transition: who you were professionally, who you’ve become personally, and the precise gap between your current self-concept and the one your next-level business requires. This is where the permission you give yourself actually shifts by building the inner authorization to show up as who you are now rather than who you were trained to be.

Step 3: Let the new identity lead.

The final step is the simplest and the hardest: stop editing yourself down to something more palatable and start saying the true thing to the right people. This means writing the post you’ve been afraid to write. Making the offer at the price that reflects the depth of what you do. Introducing yourself as who you’ve become rather than who you were. Showing up with the full complexity of your perspective rather than the managed version that feels safer.

Avoiding the Trap of Old Strategies

The most common mistake when you sense you’ve outgrown your business: fixing the top floor while leaving the bottom two intact. New niche. Same identity. New offer. Same nervous system response. New messaging. Same self-concept. The result is a business that looks different on the outside and feels identical on the inside.

What Transformation Actually Looks Like

One client had been helping people with creativity for years. Genuine work, real impact, but messaging that belonged to a previous version of her. After mapping the identity gap and rebuilding from the ground floor up, she found the specific perspective she’d been softening for years and stopped qualifying it. The result: 25 people signing up for her challenge from four continents, strangers reaching out after finding her writing, a business that finally reflected the depth of what she’d always been capable of.

Your Next Step

We’ve created a free guide:

Aligning Your Business With Your Evolved Identity

It walks you through a brand new diagnostic process we are starting to use with our clients. It includes the three questions that reveal which floor your problem is on, the ground-floor-up rebuilding sequence, and the first three actions to take this week.

Download the Free Guide →

The business you’re capable of building isn’t waiting for a better strategy. It’s waiting for you to stop building from who you were. This guide is not just a tool, it's a pathway to ensuring your business success.

Happenings

Sacred Business Stories w/

Kevin built one of the most respected communities in his industry over 11 years. Then walked away. This conversation is about what happens after.

When you know exactly what you should do next and still can't make yourself do it. If that gap feels familiar, start here.

Sacred Business Wonder Questions Call For Network Members

(Wednesday April 15th @ 2:30pm eastern)

Join us for a new type of gathering where we explore the deeper questions of creating sacred business. During this call we’ll share a passage we’ve been reflecting on and pose a Wonder Question - not to get answers, but to open into living inquiry together.

A Wonder Question (as taught by one of our mentors, Jayem) invites you into the mystery of Presence through openness and curiosity, like dropping a pebble into still water and watching the ripples move through your experience.

Come as you are.

Bring your questions, your heart, and your willingness to explore how everything connects in your sacred work. No agenda, no pressure - just space for authentic conversation and deeper connection with yourself and our community.

Network Members RSVP Here

Not a member? Upgrade to paid to access our monthly community calls + many other perks.

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Who We Are Celebrating This Week:

Proponent of social capital, human connection, the power of community—Sharing our gifts with others, living with purpose, generosity of spirit—Inspired by nature—Avid reader moved by words—Living with MECFS—Grateful—UX product designer by profession

We’ve been enjoying getting to know Autumn, and we encourage you to connect with her here!

Connect with Autumn

Things I’d Like to Share

The Love-Led Leap

At some point the clarity work stops being useful and the only thing left is the actual move. This essay is about what that looks like when it isn’t dramatic — and why the leap you’ve been avoiding is probably smaller than the one fear has been describing.

Read More

Stop Performing, Start Being

Carolina wrote this one. It’s about the mask, the version of you that your business has been built around, and what it costs to keep wearing it. If the idea of building from who you’ve become landed for you, this is where to go next.

Read More

Memorable Quote

Your Next Step

We’ve created a free guide: Aligning Your Business With Your Evolved Identity. This guide is not just a tool, it's a pathway to ensuring your business success. Download the Guide Here →

Ready for Deeper Transformation?

For those ready to take immediate action and truly integrate these principles into their business and life, consider booking a call with us. In this session, we'll dive deep into your unique challenges and opportunities, crafting a personalized strategy that aligns with who you've become.

Schedule Your Transformation Call Now →

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

You might even notice the obstacles get bigger each time.

It could be a big project that takes up all your time, a move, a new relationship, the end of a long one. It has infinite ways to show up, but only one outcome.

You delay, once again, something that matters to you.

And for a while it starts to make sense to let it go.

Why bother?

It seems a little crazy anyway. What would people think if you actually shared it?

So you let it go.

But it doesn’t let you go.

It fades for a season, while you recover, while you grieve, while you integrate the new thing or finish the move. And then it comes back. Quiet but strong.

You almost feel upset that it won’t leave you alone. What was quiet starts getting louder. After a few months you decide you’ll try again, and then something important, tragic, unexpected, new happens again.

You let it go again.

Every time you do, it feels like the right thing. Responsible. Mature. Necessary. That’s what makes it so hard to see.

You question why the desire keeps coming back. You make it wrong. You wish you could forget about it. You question that quiet voice so many times that you never once stop to question the nature of the obstacle itself.

The obstacle isn’t wrong. It happened. And yet you never pause to ask what your participation was in creating it.

And this is what most people miss: some people use an obstacle as a reason to stop. Others use it as a reason to keep going.

That single interior choice determines whether you will ever actually experience the joy you’ve been postponing, or whether you’ll spend your life coasting, never really meeting your own light.

Choosing to stop doesn’t make you more compassionate.

It doesn’t make you more available to the people you love. You can hold everything life is asking of you and still not put yourself down. Those two things were never in competition. The belief that they are is the story that keeps the lukewarm life intact.

Lukewarm is a temperature we choose.

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Not because we’re weak, but because we’ve learned it’s the only way to never really fail. If life kept interrupting, the dream is still pure. Still possible. Still out there. And so is the version of you who would have done it.

But you’re reading this because you’re done with that story.

You’re not confused about what you want. You’ve known for years.

You’re tired of it feeling noble to leave yourself behind.

You’re tired of the delay feeling like the responsible choice.

So this is where the delaying ends.

Every obstacle that shows up from here is not evidence that you should stop. It is life helping you become the person who can hold what you’ve been carrying in your heart.

Start now. Or keep going if you already did.

That’s enough.

With love,

Carolina

Take the free Harmony Map assessment and discover your breakthrough frequency — the hidden opportunity that’s been waiting for you all along.

Happenings

Radiant Flow

This week we had our very first week of Radiant Flow, and I am celebrating every single person who said yes to themselves.

Who decided they were done postponing what matters. Who chose to work at the level of the body — to break old patterns, unlock their power, and expand their capacity to move toward a life that feels alive. Toward service. Toward love.

So many people love knowing. Studying. Accumulating knowledge. Giving beautiful speeches about profound things. And when it comes to actually bringing any of it to life, nothing moves. It stays an idea they entertain in their heads.

That is not what this is. And it is not who these people are.

Being surrounded by people who are truly ready to transform, to act, to live fully — that is one of the greatest gifts life has given me. I could not be more grateful.

Things I’d Like to Share

Still Rehearsing?!

Stop rehearsing and begin living.

wrote a beautiful guide to invite you into action… toward the very thing that’s been in your heart.

No more practicing.

No more refining.

The stage is ready for you. Go have fun on it.

See you there.

Subscribe now

This came from someone I truly admire. Someone who has been beautifully following her heart, showing up for her calling, and creating real impact in the world.

Is she doing the work? Absolutely.

But that’s not the question I found myself sitting with.

The question is: Who are you being asked to become — that you keep refusing to be?

A few weeks later, I heard something very different from another woman.

“I’m stuck. I’m working a job that means nothing to me. I’m busy, I have little time, but I carry meaningful work in my heart that is ready to be shared. I just don’t know how to start.”

Two women. Two completely different situations on the outside.

On the inside? The same problem.

They are both trying to enter a new cycle of life carrying old energy. They want a new life, but they’re resisting the transformation required to sustain it.

Life moves in cycles — just like nature. And every new cycle asks something different of you. Not just a new strategy or a new schedule. A new way of being.

For the first woman, the answer became clear as we talked: doing more is not it. She built her whole career in doer mode — pushing hard, staying busy, making things happen through sheer effort.

That energy created everything she has — her successful career and her sense of who she is.

The next cycle is asking her to be different. To slow down. To create more space. To restructure her foundation from a place of rest rather than force.

And here’s what’s fascinating — slowing down doesn’t feel safe to her nervous system. Her identity is built around busyness. She has every tool available to bring herself back to regulation, but her real work right now is rarely the work she practices.

It’s learning to tolerate space. To let herself receive what she’s already built.

For the second woman, the busyness lives in her mind. The doubt around whether what she carries in her heart will actually work — that doubt is eating her time, her energy, and her ability to act. Her next cycle is calling her to step into the creator she already is. It’s asking her to get out of her head.

Life is asking her a simple question: What are you going to do with this?

There is more doing involved, but she needs to make a decision first. She needs to decide that what is in her heart truly matters and deserves more space in her life.

Then let the universe meet you there.

Both of these women are on the edge of something new. And what’s standing between them and that new thing isn’t a lack of ideas, time, or talent.

It’s the nervous system’s relationship with expansion.

They are both avoiding expansion — one by overdoing: staying busy, pushing harder, filling every moment with activity. The other by overthinking: circling in doubt, confusion, and hesitation until nothing moves.

Both look different from the outside. Both serve the same purpose: keeping you from becoming someone you’ve never been before.

Because that’s what expansion is. It’s not adding more to your plate. It’s priming your whole system to hold more — more energy, more clarity, more aliveness. And when that happens, action follows naturally. Not scattered, reactive action. Focused, meaningful movement toward what actually matters.

The nervous system, though? It reads “becoming someone new” as a threat. So instead of letting go of the layers of protection built over years, it clings to what it knows — even when what it knows no longer serves.

The first woman already has the business of her dreams. She just hasn’t let herself enjoy it yet — because somewhere deep inside, she still believes that earning is tied to effort. That if she slows down, it will all fall apart.

The second woman already has clarity about what she’s here to create. She just hasn’t let herself trust it — because somewhere inside, she doesn’t fully believe she can make a life from something she loves.

Both are being protected from moving forward by the very system that was built to keep them safe. Regulating this system into calm is not the answer.

The discomfort is not the enemy. It’s information. It’s life telling you something needs to change — not just what you’re building, but how you’re living.

You have two choices. You can work with life as a partner, training your system to welcome what’s coming. Or you can fight the discomfort, trying to stay the same person inside a life that no longer fits you.

One of those will exhaust you. The other will transform you.

This is why you can leave a corporate job, build a heart-centered business, pour yourself into it for years — and still recreate the same cage you left behind. Not because the business is wrong. But because the internal energy running it never changed.

Expansion isn’t just a mindset shift. It’s a practice of allowing.

With Love,

Carolina

Happenings

Radiant Flow

Our twice-a-week movement practice, begins this week. If you missed enrollment, I want to extend a personal invitation. If you feel it in your heart, just reply to this email and we will talk.

This is for you if you have a lot of tools in your belt, if you have a desire to create greater impact in the world or help people with your gifts, but you feel blocked or stuck.

This work is not personal coaching. It is not focused on strategy. It is focused on helping you build the capacity to trust your own wisdom again. I did not start creating my life from my heart because I had a clear plan. I did it once I felt so connected to my inner wisdom that I knew I could follow my heart.

This is not about accumulating more knowledge. This is about moving differently on the mat so you can move differently in life. This is about reconnecting with the aliveness of being in your body, so that translates into a life you actually feel. The energy you cultivate on your mat can be carried into your life, and through action, experimentation, and curiosity, you start moving.

This is about unlocking the courage so you don’t find yourself five years from now sitting with the same unrealized dreams you are holding today.

If you are ready to own your life, have fun, and take action, this is for you.

As within, so without.

Who We Are Celebrating This Week:

Morena Cardoso

Of course I am celebrating Morena Cardoso.

After our conversation on Substack, I felt even more the urge to call people to wake up and move. And she is a big part of why.

I am celebrating how brave she is to honor her body the way she did. To pause for more than a year, to truly listen, and to come back even more powerful than before. That takes courage most people underestimate.

I am celebrating the energy of authenticity and contribution. Of thinking beyond yourself and actively building a world you believe in, one choice at a time.

She is not very active on Substack yet... but she does have an account. Go follow her.

Thank you, Morena, for being you. For not shrinking. For showing others that honoring yourself is not selfish, it is the most generous thing you can do for the world around you.

You inspire people to be more and more themselves.

And that is everything.

Things I’d Like to Share

She had 100,000 Followers. Then She disappeared for 18 months. Here's What She Came Back With.

I want to share this powerful conversation with this powerful woman, Morena Cardoso. If you love being inspired by authentic people, this conversation is for you. She has been running a successful business for over 10 years, building from her heart, honoring her values, and being guided by her body.

If you are looking for ways to be more authentic, be present to the energy in this conversation and let it affect you. The world is waiting for your most authentic version yet.

Robots ate my Homework by

I want to recommend Mia Kiraki’s Substack for anyone curious about AI.

I am not an AI expert, not even an AI lover, but I do use it. And I am finding incredible ways to let this tool contribute to the way I think without letting it replace it.

If you don’t have a clear sense of your own thoughts and opinions, if you often feel lost in your own mind, you might not be ready to prompt AI yet.

And Mia says this beautifully.

For me, she is not just teaching AI. She is teaching people how to think. And that is the only place where AI can actually amplify the good in you, instead of amplifying the mess.

Follow her work.

One morning I went out alone. I walked all the way to the end of the beach where the rocks are, where the serious surfers go. It was around 6:00am.

I just stood there, this quiet sense of awe filling my chest … these humans choosing to get in that water before most of the city had even opened their eyes, paddling hard toward those big waves right there by the rocks, over and over again, with so much courage and so much joy.

If you’ve ever been on a board, you know that feeling of floating. For me that’s the body sensation of surrender, the water carries you up and down, lightly, gently, you have zero control and somehow that feels like peace.

But floating doesn’t catch waves.

To catch a wave you have to move. Paddle as hard and fast as you can, match the force of the ocean with everything you have in that moment. And what I kept noticing was… they don’t wait to fully see the wave before they go (actually they can’t) .

They feel it first. Something in their body reads what their eyes can’t yet confirm, and they commit completely to that feeling.

Sometimes the wave carries them. Sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does… when a human being and the ocean become one for those few seconds… it’s pure beauty. They flow!

The surfer I kept coming back to caught 2 big waves in those 15-20 minutes I was there. But before each one, there were false starts … he would feel something, paddle with everything he had, give it all... and the wave just didn’t carry him.

Every single time, without any frustration I could see, he quietly paddled back to his spot, turned to face the ocean, and waited.

His body language said one thing: another one is coming.

Not as a hope. As a certainty that lived somewhere deeper than thought.

A phrase from one of my teachers came to me standing there … when life knocks on your door, don’t be wearing pajamas.

That’s exactly what I was watching.

Someone who was ready. Not tense, not forcing, ready.

Relaxed and completely engaged at the same time. The posture of someone who has no doubt the ocean is not withholding from them. It’s just moving. And their job is to stay present enough to feel it.

He had also paddled hard probably 10 to 15 times that morning without catching anything. That’s not failure. That’s training. That’s how the body learns to read the water. Every false start is the body getting more fluent in the language of the ocean.

Standing there I thought about an earlier season of my life when I was so hungry to make things happen that I spent most of my energy paddling into nothing. Not because I wasn’t capable. Because I hadn’t really found my lineup yet.

I was in the water, working, trying, caring deeply, but I was in the wrong place, chasing waves that weren’t mine, exhausted before the right one arrived.

And then there were times I was barely in the water at all. Standing close enough to feel the pull of it but not close enough to actually be in the dance. Waiting to feel more ready. Waiting for a clearer sign. Waiting for something outside of me to confirm what I already knew inside.

The sign was always the longing itself. The thing that kept coming back no matter how many times I set it aside. That quiet persistent pull, that was the wave announcing itself. I just hadn’t learned yet to call it by its name.

I want to ask you something, and I’d love for you to feel into it rather than think about it.

Where are you in relation to your wave?

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Some of you are on the shore.

You can see the water from where you stand. You’ve felt called to something, a project, a business, a creative dream you’ve carried for years. It lives in your chest and it refuses to leave, no matter how many times life has pulled your attention elsewhere. You’re waiting for the right moment, the perfect conditions, the day you finally feel ready enough.

I want to be very gentle here, but the ocean will not come to you on the shore.

And that desire that keeps returning, the one that won’t leave you alone, that is already the sign. You’ve been waiting for something that has been calling your name all along.

Some of you are already deep in the water but you’ve drifted too far out.

You got in. You tried. More than once. And somewhere in the trying it got complicated, too many directions, too many pivots, too much searching for the wave that feels guaranteed before you commit. You’re working hard but something feels scattered.

The energy is going out but it’s not landing anywhere that builds.

You're not doing it wrong. You're just still negotiating with yourself about whether this is really yours.

Surfers have a name for where that man was sitting so calmly, so ready.

It’s called the lineup.

A specific place in the water, past where the waves break, but close enough to feel them coming and reach them when they do.

Not too far in. Not too far out.

You don’t think your way to the lineup. You feel your way there.

And I want to offer you this… the lineup is not a strategy.

It’s not a better plan or a clearer offer or one more course before you begin.

The lineup is an internal yes.

It’s the moment you stop negotiating with yourself about whether this thing is really yours, whether the timing is right, whether you’re enough for it.

It’s you planting yourself in front of the one thing you know you’re here for and saying: I am here. This is mine. I am not leaving.

That’s it. That’s the whole first step.

Not paddling hard yet. Not catching the wave yet.

Just… naming it. Owning it.

Showing up in front of it consistently with your whole self, relaxed and ready, the way that surfer sat in front of the ocean at 6:00 in the morning knowing with everything in his body that the wave was coming.

Because once that yes is real, once it lives in your body and not just in your thoughts, everything starts to orient around it. The false starts stop feeling like failure. The waiting stops feeling like stagnation. You know where you are and you know why you’re there.

You give the step. The universe gives the ground. Not the other way around.

The ocean will always be there. The waves will always come and go. They don’t stop for anyone and they don’t withhold from anyone.

So what is the thing you’ve been feeling for a long time but haven’t fully said yes to yet?

That is your lineup. And now is always a good time to find it.

With love,

Carolina

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Happenings

Quarterly Workshop: Leverage Substack’s 5 Best Growth Features To Build a Thriving Publication In 2026

If you are a paid member of our community, this Monday March 2nd at noon EST we have something special for you. , Co-Founder of Write. Build. Scale., is joining us live to share his Substack expertise, specifically the 5 best growth features to build a thriving publication in 2026.

You will walk away with real clarity on what to focus on right now to actually move the needle forward.

Substack has been a huge part of our own growth and we chose it intentionally as a tool to build a strong foundation for our business. Many of our clients use it as part of their audience building strategy too. If you want to make the most of your publication and use it to support your business, you don’t want to miss this one.

Who We Are Celebrating This Week:

from Healers Unite

I want to take a moment to celebrate Brooke and the work she is bringing to the world.

Brooke is building something called Healers Unite, and if you are a healer, or if your work supports healers in any way, I want you to pay attention.

She saw a gap: healers are not burning out because they lack dedication or gift. They are burning out because they have been left without the infrastructure that every other care-based profession takes for granted.

Healers have largely been left to navigate everything on their own.

Brooke decided to build what was missing instead of accepting that.

Healers Unite is a professional cooperative, shared administrative support, collective purchasing power, and real tools that make healing practices sustainable over time. Not inspiration without structure. Actual infrastructure for people doing sacred work in the world.

I deeply believe we are not meant to build alone. Brooke lives that truth in everything she is creating.

If you are a healer or you support healers, go find her on Substack. Together we go further is not just a nice idea in her work. It is the entire foundation.

Celebrating you, Brooke. Your courage, your clarity, and your willingness to let this come through you.

Things I’d Like to Share

Joy is Strategy

Joy is Strategy is a great essay I had the pleasure of reading this week and I want to share it with you because I believe it relates to flow. It felt so connected to the class I was teaching this week on the same topic. The participants and I came to a conclusion together that felt really true in our bodies, flow only happens when you are yourself, when you accept your uniqueness with all your heart. I think this essay is about exactly that. wrote beautifully, using lessons from Olympic champions to illustrate her point

If it doesn't make you glow, grow or flow, choose yourself and go

I also want to share this essay by — The Glorious Fail. And yes, this is the second essay I am sharing about Alysa Liu, because clearly she is teaching something to the world that the world needs to hear right now. Eleni uses her story to say something I believe more people need to sit with.

The real burnout epidemic is not about working too hard, it is about doing work that doesn't make you glow, grow, or flow.

Work that has no aliveness in it. Work that asks you to perform a version of yourself that was never really yours. Eleni says it so clearly: flow is not ease, it is alignment, what happens when skill meets genuine ownership, when the performance and the person are the same thing.

This is the wake up call. Finding your joy, your bliss, becoming fully yourself, this is not a luxury or a spiritual extra. It is the foundation of a healthy, alive, sustainable life.

P.S. If you are feeling called to work together, a great place to start is the Harmony Map assessment. It will reveal your breakthrough frequency — the one pattern your business idea or your next chapter is already asking you to look at. Think of it as finding out exactly where you are in the water, and what it will take to find your lineup. Take the Harmony Map →

Some relief. Some resistance. Perhaps a low hum of “I already know this” fighting with “but why can’t I do anything about it?”

All of it makes sense.

This essay is about something most people sense but rarely name: the gap between who you are as a person and how you show up in your work. That quiet disconnect. The way your work can feel like it's happening to someone else, or for someone else, even when you're the one who shows up every day.

This separation protected something worth protecting. Your sensitivity, your depth, the parts of you that don’t survive well in transactional environments. At some point, you learned to keep those parts out of the room where work happens.

That made sense then. It might be costing you now.

If that gap doesn’t exist for you, this probably isn’t your reading for the week. Close this tab. Come back another time. Or skip on to the other parts of the newsletter.

But if you’ve ever felt successful on paper while something inside felt hollow, or found yourself dreading the very work you once couldn’t wait to do, stay here for a bit.

This isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about noticing something that’s been running in the background for a while now.

A pattern shows up in nearly every client Carolina and I work with.

Someone builds a business. Or climbs the corporate ladder. Or lands the role they spent a decade positioning for. It works, at least by external measures. Clients come, or promotions come, or the comp package finally hits the number they’d been chasing. From the outside, things look like they’re moving.

But inside, a different story is playing out.

The work feels like a performance. Showing up feels like acting. Asking for what you need feels like asking for something you don't deserve.

The pattern isn’t laziness. It isn’t lack of strategy.

It’s separation.

Your professional self lives in one room of your life. Your actual self lives in another. And you commute between them, putting on a different face each time you cross the threshold.

This separation makes sense. At some point, you learned that business required a certain version of you. The professional one. The polished one. The one who has answers and doesn’t flinch.

So you built a wall. Not because you’re broken, but because it felt necessary. The wall protected the softer parts of you from the demands of performing. Selling, managing, presenting, leading. Whatever the role required.

The problem is, walls don’t just keep things out. They keep things in. Including your energy, your clarity, and your ability to show up without that quiet pull on your reserves.

I see this pattern in executives who've spent twenty years climbing. I see it in founders who built something from nothing. The context is different. The separation is the same.

Back in 2019, I was running a consulting business in the hearing industry.

By every measure that mattered to the world, it was working. Six-figure months. A client roster that kept growing. The kind of revenue trajectory people put on slides at conferences.

And I remember standing in my kitchen one morning, coffee in hand, staring out the window at nothing in particular, feeling absolutely nothing about any of it.

Not grateful, not excited, not even stressed in a way that felt useful. Flat.

My body had started sending memos I kept ignoring. Headaches that wouldn’t quit. A jaw so tight my dentist asked if I was grinding my teeth at night. Background anxiety that showed up around 4pm every day like clockwork.

I noticed I’d been holding my breath through entire Zoom calls, exhaling only after I hit “Leave Meeting.”

I kept telling myself the problem was tactical. I needed better systems. To grow the team to take some of the workload off of me. Maybe a different niche.

But the real problem was simpler and harder to solve.

I had built a business that worked. It didn’t feel like mine.

The person who showed up on client calls wasn’t exactly me. He was a competent, confident version of me who said the right things and closed the deals and then collapsed on the couch at 8pm, unable to explain why success felt so heavy.

I didn’t have language for it then. I knew something was off. I kept looking at the numbers, waiting for them to tell me why I wasn’t happy.

They never did.

You already know what it feels like to be whole while you work. You’ve felt it. Maybe not recently, but it’s in there somewhere.

That feeling isn’t something you build from scratch. You remember it. It was there before you learned to compartmentalize. Before someone told you that business is business and feelings are feelings and never the two shall meet.

Think about the last time work didn’t feel like work. Not because it was easy, but because it was yours. When the doing and the being were the same thing.

The last time you helped someone without thinking about what you’d get back. The conversation that went long because you forgot to watch the clock.

That was connection. It didn’t require effort.

The feeling isn’t reserved for artists or monks or people with trust funds. It’s available to anyone willing to stop treating their work like a role they have to perform, and start treating it like an extension of how they move through the world.

This doesn’t mean your work becomes your therapy. It doesn’t mean every client call needs to feel like a spiritual experience.

It means the wall comes down. Or at least, gets a few doors cut into it.

You don’t have to become a different person. You stop pretending to be one.

The Practice

This week, try a simple check-in before you start any work task.

Pause for ten seconds. Put your hand on your chest or your stomach, wherever feels natural. Ask one question: “Am I here?”

You’re not trying to get centered. You’re not trying to breathe your way to enlightenment. You’re noticing whether you’ve shown up, or whether some professional avatar has shown up instead.

Do this before you open your email. Before you get on a call. Before you write that post or send that invoice.

Don’t expect anything to shift immediately. This isn’t a hack. It’s a practice of noticing the gap when it’s there.

Over time, noticing changes things. But not on your timeline.

Some days you’ll check in and realize you’ve been absent for hours. Just notice that.

If You Want to Go Deeper

Choose one of these.

Write for five minutes on this prompt: “The version of me that shows up in my business is different from the real me because...” Don’t edit. Don’t make it make sense. Let it come out.

Or try this: Pick one recurring task this week, something you do regularly that usually feels like a slog. Before you do it, ask yourself what would change if you did this task as yourself, not as your business persona.

Notice what happens. Something might shift.

Where This Shows Up in Your Work

These are signals. They tell you where the separation is showing up.

Visibility becomes exhausting. Not because you're introverted, but because every time you show up, you're performing. In the meeting, on the call, in the presentation. You're putting on the professional version of you, and performances drain energy. The real you stays hidden, which means nobody sees the real you, which means the people who would genuinely resonate with you can't find you.

Compensation feels like a negotiation with your own worthiness. Whether you're setting prices or negotiating salary, when your professional self is separate from your real self, asking for money triggers the question of which self deserves it. The professional one can make a case. The real one isn't so sure.

Consistency becomes a willpower problem. You start things with energy because the business self gets excited about new projects. Then the real self has to show up and do the work. The two don’t always agree on what matters.

Decision-making gets slow and second-guessed. Without a clear sense of who’s running this thing, every choice becomes a debate between personas. Should I do what’s strategic? What feels true? What looks professional? The questions multiply because there’s no unified self to answer them.

This Week’s Questions

At the end of this week, sit with these. No need to write answers. Notice what comes up.

When did I feel most like myself in my work this week?

When did I feel like I was performing?

What task did I dread, and what version of me was dreading it?

Did I notice the gap between who I am and how I showed up? Even once?

What would have been different if I’d shown up as myself?

What surprised me?

The gap between who you are and how you work didn’t form overnight. It won’t close overnight either. And closing it completely isn’t even the goal.

Noticing it is.

You’re not behind. You’re right where you’d expect to be, given what you’ve been carrying.

I’ll be honest: I still catch myself in this as well.

Last Tuesday, I noticed I’d been holding my breath on a call. Not a hard call. A call with someone I like. But somewhere between “hello” and “let’s talk next week,” the professional version showed up and the real one stepped aside.

Seven years later, and the pattern is still there on some level.

I’m starting to think the goal isn’t to stop it. Maybe the goal is to notice faster. To shorten the lag between separation and return.

I’m still in that work. It is an ongoing practice.

If you’re in it too, tell me what you’re noticing.

Phil

P.S. If you want to see what other patterns might be running, the Sacred Business Harmony Map can help. It’s a free assessment that measures nine frequencies, including Connection. Takes about ten minutes. No email required to see your results. Take the Harmony Map →

Happenings

This Week on Sacred Business Stories w/

Kevin Rogers built CopyChief into an 11-year powerhouse. Live events with 300 people flying in from around the world. A coaching program that actually worked. By every external measure, he’d made it.

Then he walked away from all of it.

Kevin talked about the moment his business stopped feeling like his. About needing five approvals to send his own emails. About being “banned from pushing 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.

Sound familiar?

If this week’s essay resonated, Kevin’s story is the same pattern playing out at scale. He achieved everything he set out to achieve, and somewhere along the way, the professional version took over completely. Now he’s 55, starting fresh, sitting with uncertainty, and being incredibly honest about it.

His line that stopped me:

“There’s no workbook for what comes next. You just have to let go of any expectation for what life might have waiting for you.”

Listen to the full conversation →

Interview w/ on the Notes Playbook

If you are curious about how we approach Substack notes, this is worth a listen.

Journey to Success Club

The Notes Playbook: The Real Power of Engagement, Energy & Sustainable Growth with Phil & Carolina

Listen now

3 months ago · 16 likes · Fabio Posca, Phil Powis ❤️⚡️, and Carolina Wilke

The gap between who you are and how you show up at work doesn’t close on its own. Most people try to think their way out. Read another book. Take another course. Hope that this time the insight sticks.

It rarely does.

The pattern runs deeper than information can reach.

Carolina and I created something called the Serve & Receive Partnership for exactly this.

Over 90 days, we build three things together: the frequency alignment that stops you from sabotaging yourself, clarity on what you’re actually here to do, and a structure that makes follow-through possible.

Whether you’re building something of your own or figuring out what comes next, the work is the same. Get clear on who you are. Then build from there.

You also get a full year of support to make sure it sticks. But the foundation happens in the first 90 days.

Learn more about Serve & Receive →

Who We Are Celebrating This Week: Jeff Kimes

started publishing on Substack recently. And he came out swinging.

His first series, “Creative Agency in an Age of Collapse,” names something most of us feel but can’t quite articulate: the most brilliant, creative minds of our generation are trapped in systems that waste their gifts.

The visionary artist working as a UX designer for Microsoft. The brilliant music producer grinding 60-hour weeks in the bowels of Amazon. The writer locked into copywriting, his own stories shelved to sell other people’s widgets.

Jeff calls it “creative constipation.” We have everything we need to transform our world. The talent exists. The vision exists. The capacity exists. It’s just stuck.

If this week’s essay about the gap between who you are and how you show up hit close to home, Jeff’s writing is the macro view of the same pattern. Individual disconnection scaled up to civilizational crisis.

But here’s what I love about Jeff’s work: he doesn’t stop at the diagnosis. He gets into systems dynamics, strange attractors, and why collapse actually creates the conditions for transformation. His take: this is the age of the artist. Not because we have all the answers, but because we’re the ones who can seed new ideas in the fertile compost of what’s falling apart.

His words:

“In those quiet moments, between projects, late at nights staring at the stars, there’s a low-grade despair I can’t quite shake. This sense that I’m not doing what I’m actually here to do. That I let a side-quest become the whole game.”

Jeff describes himself as a multi-passionate creative and neuroscience nerd exploring the intersection of creativity, natural systems, and songlines of culture. Marketing strategist by day. Musician and girl dad by night.

He’s in motion. And his writing is worth your attention.

Read “Creative Agency in an Age of Collapse” →

Things I’d Like to Share

The forbidden question in client retention

wrote something that made me uncomfortable in the best way. He noticed that when he asks founders about client churn, they react like he just said Voldemort’s name.

We tell ourselves we don’t have time to look at the data, or that we need more clients before we can worry about keeping them, or that churn is outside our control anyway. But underneath all of it: the sting of not being enough. The fear that if we look too closely, we’ll confirm something we don’t want to know.

Filip’s take: the founders who are willing to look without flinching are the ones who actually improve. Not because the data is comfortable. Because they stop letting shame run the show.

(Full disclosure: Carolina and I are featured in this piece. Filip looked under the hood of our business and showed us something we couldn’t see ourselves. Worth the discomfort.)

Read “The shame behind the forbidden question in client retention” →

Design Your Creative House: a weekend sprint

is running a free 3-day challenge at the end of February, and the premise stopped me mid-scroll.

When she was a child, she used to draw floor plans of imaginary houses. Not the outside. The inside: secret rooms, back staircases, the attic where she’d hide and write. Years later she realized she wasn’t drawing a house she wanted to live in. She was mapping one she already lived in.

The challenge invites you to do the same for your creative life. Draw the floor plan. Name the rooms. Find the heart. Stand at the threshold of the room you’ve been avoiding.

Her point: before you can change your creative life, you need to see it. Not the life you wish you had. The one you’re actually living.

The challenge runs February 27 to March 1. Free. Twenty minutes a day. Wobbly lines welcome.

We sat down to talk with Rachel about it here this past week

Also worth Checking out:

on building a collective

on turning the page on an old story.

on growing your organism.

Notes I Loved This Week

Memorable Quote

“Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives.”

from A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

If you read this and felt something stir, but you’re not sure what to do with it, that’s okay.

You don’t need to know exactly what you want. You don’t need to impress us. You don’t need a polished pitch for your business or a clear explanation of why you’re stuck.

You just need to be honest about where you are.

Maybe you’ve been scattered across too many ideas and you’re looking for the one that would organize everything else. Maybe you’ve been sitting in rooms that only speak half your language, strategy without soul or spirit without systems, and you’re tired of choosing. Maybe you just want to be in a conversation where both parts of you are welcome.

This is 30 minutes for us to listen, ask a few questions, and share what we see. We’ll talk about what you’re building, what’s getting in the way, and whether working together makes sense.

Schedule a call →

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

It feels like wearing clothes you’ve known for years, clothes that once fit you well. But somehow they don’t sit the same on your body anymore. So you decide to go out and look for something new… and nothing calls your attention.

You feel confused. Lost.

There’s an urge to rush into “what’s next,” even though you don’t know what “next” means. There’s a subtle tendency to blame people or circumstances around you. And when your mind finds someone to blame, or at least something to name, you feel a strange relief.

Relief because now there’s a reason.

But underneath it, you still feel fragile. Slightly unstable. You look for the woman who used to feel certain, and you can’t quite find her.

January started a bit different for me.

I signed up for the Sober Reset Challenge with , with the intention of exploring my relationship with alcohol. I was grateful to be inside such a safe container, surrounded by people genuinely wanting to become more conscious.

At some point, I realized I had never considered alcohol a problem in my life. I could go days or weeks without drinking. I never used it to numb negative emotions. Often one glass was enough, and I genuinely enjoyed a good white wine.

But as the days passed, I started feeling better. Clearer. More present. More energized.

And in removing something I didn’t think was a problem, I gained perspective.

That’s when a question came:

What else in my life do I not consider a problem, but if I removed or shifted it, would change everything?

This essay is not about sobriety.

The reset challenge, for me, wasn’t about alcohol. It was about noticing interferences.

And what I started noticing was the way I communicated with the people closest to me.

There was a tone. A subtle intensity. A way of responding that didn’t match who I want to be, or what my heart knows about love.

With that awareness came shame. Disappointment. And an almost immediate thought: if I can see it now, I should already know how to fix it.

But awareness doesn’t automatically give you the new answer.

The way I communicated felt like old clothes on a body that had already evolved, yet I kept reaching for them out of habit. And if I’m very honest, out of patterns.

I started noticing my inner experience more clearly in situations that were seemingly innocent. I was anticipating an attack. I felt guarded. Defensive. As if I was bracing for something wild… when the moment was simply asking for listening. Or even humor.

Nothing was actually threatening me.

So I had to gently ask myself: what am I protecting?

And then, with more clarity in my body, something deeper revealed itself.

The communication wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom.

What I started noticing were the small moments throughout the day. The tiny things that would close my heart, one by one. Things I wouldn’t even name as significant. A slight irritation here. A small disappointment there. A moment of impatience. Nothing that felt like it mattered.

But they accumulated.

I realized I could (often) hold my heart open through bigger challenges. Through moments that would feel like obvious tests of love. Those, I could meet with more presence.

But the small ones? I was missing them completely.

And by the time I was communicating with the people I love most, my heart had already been closing in small ways all day long. So of course the communication came out less than love. Not because I wanted it to. But because I was already carrying all those tiny closings with me.

That’s what the clarity has been showing me. The small things matter more than I thought.

I don’t have a grand conclusion. I don’t have a new perfected version of myself to present.

What I have is this awareness.

That sometimes the struggle to grow isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. It’s subtle. It’s noticing the ways we brace when there is nothing to brace against.

It’s admitting that something isn’t wrong, but it’s also not aligned.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

And I can feel this “in-between” state touching everything, even my work.

Not long ago I was writing three essays a week, with ease. And then this one came, and I found myself staring at the page for hours. Draft after draft. Not because I didn’t have something to say, but because something in me was reorganizing.

I think this is part of what business asks of us too.

Not just to create, but to meet ourselves. To notice the places we brace, the places we polish, the places we hide, and to let our work come from a truer place, even when we don’t yet know what that “new way” looks like.

Maybe growth is not about becoming someone new.

Maybe it’s about softening into what my heart already knows, without the old armor.

This is where I am.

And if you recognize yourself somewhere in this, you’re not alone.

With Love,

Carolina

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Happenings

Substack Unconference #001: 581 days to Montreal

Let’s just say… I’m excited and scared about this adventure Phil and I just signed up for.

I love the community energy of it.

The idea of co-creating something in public. Alone we may go faster, but together we go further — and this feels like choosing the longer road on purpose.

If you’re curious about what we’re building, Issue #001 is already out. We are in the very early stages — nothing locked in, everything still a question — and already there’s support gathering around it. If it speaks to you, come subscribe.

Come be part of building it with us

Who We Are Celebrating This Week

Celebrating Jenn Ocken she is a Substack Unconference Founding Builder number #4

Jenn publishes Creative Return… for those done performing certainty and ready to return to discernment. Quiet rebels. Deep feelers. Creators of the in-between. She’s all about exchanging ideas, not just content, and that’s exactly what we’re here to do.

Happy to have you with us, Jenn. Let’s have fun while we build this event.

Things I’d Like to Share

Some great Substack accounts I came across lately:

for great music. It’s just so beautiful

for relationship with self. Her Consciously publication is full of gold, I love the way she writes and the clarity she brings to the most confusing moments.

If you're dealing with what I described here, this one is great: When Your Old Self Has Died But Your New Self Hasn’t Fully Emerged Yet

Smarter Substack for Substack Growth. , and just launched this and they’re on fire.

These three know Substack inside out.

Here’s what they’re doing: Substack is simple. Growing on Substack isn’t. The problem isn’t lack of information, it’s filtering through the noise to find what actually matters. Smarter Substack solves that.

They deliver three carefully selected Substack resources straight to your inbox every weekday. No long essays. No recycled advice. No opinions pretending to be strategy. Just the most valuable resources for creators who actually want to grow.

Go follow them.

for beautiful art and creative work. her publication makes my Substack prettier and happier. full of colors and creative ideas.

Draw Your World

67: Draw Your Adventures is Here

Today, Draw Your Adventures is officially out in the world…

Read more

a year ago · 126 likes · 40 comments

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If you read this and felt something stir, but you’re not sure what to do with it, that’s okay.

You don’t need to know exactly what you want. You don’t need to impress us. You don’t need a polished pitch for your business or a clear explanation of why you’re stuck.

You just need to be honest about where you are.

Maybe you’ve been scattered across too many ideas and you’re looking for the one that would organize everything else. Maybe you’ve been sitting in rooms that only speak half your language, strategy without soul or spirit without systems, and you’re tired of choosing. Maybe you just want to be in a conversation where both parts of you are welcome.

This is 30 minutes for us to listen, ask a few questions, and share what we see. We’ll talk about what you’re building, what’s getting in the way, and whether working together makes sense.

Schedule a call →

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

It’s the wrong question. It leads to spreadsheets, pros-and-cons lists, and paralysis disguised as rigor. You evaluate twelve options. You pick none. Or you pick three and do all of them badly.

There’s a better question: “What would make everything else unnecessary?”

One commitment so clear that the hundred smaller decisions answer themselves. Not “what’s optimal” but “what would change who I have to become?”

For and me, the answer turned out to be an event we’d been avoiding for three years.

The Short Version

We’re hosting a gathering for 500 people Substack creators in Montreal in September 2027. Four days. Mornings in a historic theater hearing stories from people who’ve built audiences and offers in public. Afternoons, the city becomes the venue: self-organized meetups in cafes, parks, bagel shops across Mile End.

No corporate sponsors. No panels. No lanyard culture.

We’ve been talking about this publicly for a week. But I realized I hadn’t shared why this matters with this community specifically. So here it is.

(There’s an ask later in this essay. I’d rather you know that now than feel led somewhere you didn’t choose.)

Why We Kept Saying “Not Yet”

Carolina loves retreats. I spent my early twenties working for an event production company, close enough to concerts with 50,000+ people to feel what happens when that many humans gather in one place.

We both knew events would be part of Sacred Business Flow eventually. But we also knew we weren’t ready. The business needed stability first. The community needed time. The methodology needed to prove itself.

So we parked the idea. For almost three years, every time it came up: “Not yet.”

What Changed

That question I mentioned: “What would make everything else unnecessary?”

Once we said yes to creating Substack Unconference, a certain kind of clarity showed up. Not because it’s the only thing we’re doing. But because a commitment this size forces you to get honest about what actually matters and what’s just noise.

Some decisions got simpler. Some distractions lost their pull. When you know where a big chunk of creative energy is going, you stop entertaining every shiny opportunity that floats by.

The second question was simpler: “What feels like a stretch?”

I don’t know how we’re going to get 500 people to Montreal. Not yet. That’s the point. The goal isn’t just to host an event. It’s to become the people capable of hosting this event. Your business is a container for your growth. Ours is no different.

Three Threads That Lined Up

First: timing.

Substack reminds me of the blogging wave in 2006-2007. Same vibe: people guest-posting on each other’s blogs, promoting each other’s work, building audiences together. Out of that era came World Domination Summit, an event that ran for over a decade and shaped how a whole generation of online creators thought about gathering in person.

Second: values.

Everything we teach comes back to this: structure supports essence, not the other way around. Inner alignment creates outer results. You don’t build a business by forcing yourself into someone else’s template. You build it by honoring who you actually are and then creating systems that serve that.

We’re building this event the same way. We want to do it. That’s allowed. Then we wrap structure around that want. We’re practicing what we believe.

Third: what’s happening with AI.

I’ve watched it get better at everything I do online. It can’t get better at being in a room with me. That’s where I want to put my chips. Community, in person, remains hard to fake. For now, that’s enough for me.

These three threads lined up. So we’re moving.

What This Has to Do With You

You’ve probably felt a specific kind of loneliness that’s hard to explain.

You’ve sat in business programs where nobody talked about energy, alignment, or what it actually feels like to build something that matters to you. You’ve sat in spiritual containers where nobody talked about money, systems, or how to actually get your work in front of people. You’ve been looking for a room where both are welcome.

This is that room.

The main stage will run a few hours each morning. Stories from entrepreneurs and creators, including the parts that didn’t go as planned.

What actually matters happens in the afternoons. Self-organized gatherings across the city. You could host a session. Because you are building something too, and this is a stage.

The environment will support strangers becoming collaborators, as speakers and attendees mix without distinction.

I experienced this firsthand at Camp Good Life Project, an event run by Jonathan Fields. Big names sat next to beginners. No VIP section. Everyone contributed. Everyone belonged. I left that event knowing: if I ever were to build a gathering, it would look like this.

Building in the Open

We’re publishing the whole process as it happens. Venue research, budget math, fears, mistakes. Not a polished announcement followed by a ticket link.

Building in public is partly transparency and partly marketing. I’m aware of that. But I’d rather you watch us stumble than read a case study afterward.

We started a separate publication for this. Subscribe for free and you’ll get updates every few weeks. First access when registration opens.

Substack Unconference

Building a 500-person gathering for Substack creators in Montreal in public, from scratch. Every decision, dollar, and lesson shared as it happens.

By Phil Powis ❤️⚡️

The Ask

There’s a paid tier called Founding Builders. $250 for the year. You get the actual numbers: vendor quotes, budget lines, the spreadsheets behind every decision. Monthly calls where we make decisions together.

I won’t pretend it’s not also how we fund the early work. It is.

I also know $250 isn’t nothing. For many of you, it’s a stretch. That’s why it converts to a credit towards your ticket if you come to Montreal. You’re not paying twice. You’re investing early.

Founding Builders shape this before it goes public. Speakers, workshop hosts, community leaders will come from that group first. Not because it’s exclusive, but because they’ve been here while it’s being built.

If that’s not for you, no pressure. Following along for free is plenty.

Become a Founding Builder

What I Know

I don’t know if 500 people will show up. I don’t know if the math will work the way I’m currently thinking about it. I don’t know what problems we haven’t anticipated yet.

What I know: the people doing this work need a place to be together. Not to network. Not to collect business cards. To feel less alone in something that is, by design, done alone.

If you’ve been waiting for permission to take your work more seriously, to invest in being in the room instead of watching from outside, consider this that permission.

The parking lot is empty now.

One thing I’m genuinely curious about: if you showed up in Montreal, what’s the one conversation you’d want to have that you can’t have online?

Happenings

Sacred Business Stories w/

Jane Riccobono spent years inside the medical system thinking she could change it from within.

She became a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. She did everything right. And slowly, she became the thing she never wanted to be: rushed, burned out, squeezing patients into 15-minute slots.

So she left.

Now she calls herself a nurse, midwife, and witch. Not witch as villain. Witch as in the wise woman healers who were persecuted for knowing that bodies and spirits can’t be separated.

Her Substack, The Wise Body, sits at the intersection of women’s healthcare, yoga philosophy, and intuitive wisdom. She lights candles before sessions. She gives people more than 15 minutes. She treats menopause as initiation, not disease.

This is someone who refused the false choice between legitimate medicine and honoring the body’s wisdom.

Sound familiar?

We’re talking about what it means to build a practice that holds both. What she had to unlearn. What she’s still figuring out. And what happens when you stop trying to fit yourself into a system that was never designed for the care you know people deserve.

Join us live this coming Tuesday at 9am pacific / noon eastern!

Sacred Business Wonder Questions Call For Network Members

(Wednesday Feb 11th @ 10:30am eastern)

Join us for a new type of gathering where we explore the deeper questions of creating sacred business. During this call we’ll share a passage we’ve been reflecting on and pose a Wonder Question - not to get answers, but to open into living inquiry together.

A Wonder Question (as taught by one of our mentors, Jayem) invites you into the mystery of Presence through openness and curiosity, like dropping a pebble into still water and watching the ripples move through your experience.

Come as you are.

Bring your questions, your heart, and your willingness to explore how everything connects in your sacred work. No agenda, no pressure - just space for authentic conversation and deeper connection with yourself and our community.

Network Members RSVP Here

Not a member? Upgrade to paid to access our monthly community calls + many other perks.

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Who We Are Celebrating This Week: Francis Nduati

said something out loud on our Sacred Business Stories episode with .

He declared he was going to start showing up on Substack. Not someday. Now.

And then he actually did it.

Francis is a manufacturing engineer in the medical device space who’s building two platforms on the side: Moneytallyhq.com, a budgeting app to help people feel in control of their money, and NursingFront.com, a platform helping nurses find workplaces where they can thrive instead of burn out.

He joined the Sacred Business Network to connect, offer support, and keep learning. But what I want to celebrate isn’t the ideas or the plans. It’s the follow-through.

There’s something that happens when you declare something publicly and then do it. Not perfectly. Not with everything figured out. Just doing the thing you said you’d do.

Francis is now sharing practical daily tips on Substack about building intentional financial habits, plus lessons from building these platforms from scratch. He’s in motion.

His words:

“I believe in multiple streams of income. Not just as a smart strategy, but as a hedge against the constant technological changes that can make a 9-to-5 uncertain.”

This is what it looks like when you stop waiting for permission and start building.

Check out the note that started it all:

Things I’d Like to Share

Survival Patterns to Wealth

talks about money and investing, but not in the way you usually hear it. Her argument: the reason most people struggle with financial decisions isn’t a lack of knowledge. It’s a survival pattern.

The nervous system takes over. Fear starts to feel like information. Time horizons shrink.

check it out here

Community as creative fuel: We create courage when we tend the fire together

named a particular kind of loneliness that belongs to creative work. Not the loneliness of being alone. The loneliness of carrying something inside you that wants to emerge and having no one to witness its arrival.

If you’ve ever wondered why all the courses and strategies haven’t moved the needle, this might be why. Some kinds of becoming can only happen in the presence of others. Not the crowded room of strangers, but the intimate circle where your voice is heard and your particular light is seen.

Nine minutes. Read it if you’ve been carrying your creative work alone.

Community as creative fuel

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: BOB BURG

We brought the legendary on because The Go-Giver has sold over 1.5 million copies and been translated into 30 languages, but also because we discovered he’s been quietly subscribed to our Substack for over a year. We had to know what he was thinking.

The core insight that grabbed us:

He calls it the “treacherous dichotomy,” defined simply as the unnecessary use of the word “or.” Do you want to be wealthy or happy? Do you want to do what you love or make money?

The answer is yes.

The line that really go me: “Money is an echo of value.” You don’t chase the money. You focus on the value you’re providing. The money follows as a natural result.

If you’ve ever felt guilty about wanting to profit from something you love, or wondered why having fun and making money feel like opposites, this one’s for you. That belief didn’t come from nowhere. It came from society. And it can be unlearned.

Notes I Loved This Week

Memorable Quote

"The most important things in life aren’t the ones you can optimize or automate. They are the things that require you to show up in person, with all your flaws, and participate in the messy, unscripted reality of being human." -

If you read this and felt something stir, but you’re not sure what to do with it, that’s okay.

You don’t need to know exactly what you want. You don’t need to impress us. You don’t need a polished pitch for your business or a clear explanation of why you’re stuck.

You just need to be honest about where you are.

Maybe you’ve been scattered across too many ideas and you’re looking for the one that would organize everything else. Maybe you’ve been sitting in rooms that only speak half your language, strategy without soul or spirit without systems, and you’re tired of choosing. Maybe you just want to be in a conversation where both parts of you are welcome.

This is 30 minutes for us to listen, ask a few questions, and share what we see. We’ll talk about what you’re building, what’s getting in the way, and whether working together makes sense.

Schedule a call →

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

I would say that more often than not, the problem is not your dream, your passion, or your calling.

The problem is the misaligned actions you keep taking.

Subscribe now

I hit a wall in my previous business a couple of times. But armed with good spiritual excuses, I kept hitting the same wall and then blaming the universe.

I almost made my calling wrong.

Thinking that maybe this is just not for me.

It was feeling like too much effort, like swimming upstream. And in fact, I was swimming upstream.

When life invited me to serve in a different way from what I was currently doing, the seed was planted as a desire to share. A feeling without heaviness, without any sense of need. It was just a feeling of possibility and excitement in my heart that I could do something more.

Life has its way of speaking to us. It speaks in a language that defies logic, at least in my own experience.

Not all businesses are made the same. But my business started as a calling, as an invitation for something I couldn’t quite put words to.

I just knew I had to follow.

It came first as my own healing, then me digging deeper into myself and questioning life in every aspect. From that space I got some clarity, and then the desire to share. And from that desire, at some point it became so loud that it almost felt like an obligation.

I had to do that. No matter what.

I wasn’t building in the online world. I was far from the coaching world but from a distance, I rejected everything that felt like sales and marketing that I was watching online.

That was a game I thought I wouldn’t need to play. I was above all that.

I was co-creating with the universe and being guided to serve my soul.

I thought I didn’t. I was wrong.

I was rejecting something I didn’t even fully understand.

The empty promises, the know-everything people in the powerful pose, the $1000 promotion marked down from $10,000 just for the next day, buy now.

For me, this was everything that I didn’t want to be a part of.

I also thought that marketing was for already well-established people. You know, the people looking to scale, go big. And in that early moment, it wasn’t me.

I was right. I wasn’t at the point to scale my business. But I was at the right point to build a strong foundation to sustain whatever big meant to me, and that is marketing too.

But I didn’t know it.

What I know now that I wish I knew in my first year?

What we see as marketing, social media posts, ads, email campaigns, sales funnels, conversion strategies, lead magnets, freebies to get people in, social proof - all those things are just the above-the-water game.

The real work in marketing is a process of self-discovery. Inner investigation.

Marketing became to me a spiritual tool of stitching it all together. All my parts, my story, my desires, to help me feel whole in ways I had never felt before.

A few years back I was walking down the hill on the farm I used to live on, and I had one of those aha moments.

The reason I was feeling stuck and kept hitting the wall in my business wasn’t because my calling was wrong. It was because I was living as the yoga teacher and the energy healer as separate identities.

That’s why I couldn’t articulate with clarity what I was doing. That’s why I couldn’t really feel super excited to expand or scale my business. It felt unattainable.

Not because the desire to help more wasn’t there, but because I didn’t have the structure in place.

We talk to early-in-their-journey entrepreneurs, people with multiple successful businesses, people in corporate.

They’re all having that same calling I had.

They're being pulled into something they can't quite put words to. They want this new business, even if they can't fully name it yet.

If I was to give anyone in that space a single piece of advice: go learn about sales and marketing as soon as you decide you want to dedicate more of your life to your calling.

But the real marketing.

The craft of pulling together all your gifts, your experiences, your failures, your certifications. Not the ready template that makes you look good and makes you question your calling because you don’t get anyone responding to it.

Go learn about connection, building relationship. This is real marketing.

There is no too early to start thinking about the foundation, to do the inner work.

People say they need more clarity but they go to try to find more clarity in the very place confusion makes its kingdom… inside their heads.

If you are in the early stages of moving from calling and desire to business, this is the right moment to start learning the fundamentals of marketing and sales.

And if I can share this with you: marketing is a very spiritual tool.

It challenges you in every way.

Real marketing will invite your growth. It won’t just do lip service to make you feel good and beautiful on social media. It’s going to make you go where you have been avoiding.

And if I talk about foundation and you don’t even know what I am talking about, that’s a sign for you too. The work you see others doing will only work if the work underwater was successful.

Both are marketing, but you gotta start in the right order.

This is what we do at Sacred Business Flow. We help entrepreneurs build the foundation that turns calling into mission. The real marketing work, the stitching together, the clarity, the structure under the water. So you can get visible, get clear and get clients.

If you’re ready to stop hitting the wall and start building, we’re here.

If not, don’t wait as long as I did. Your calling is too important to risk losing it because you’re choosing the wrong actions.

With Love,

Carolina

Things I’d Like to Share

beautiful work

Last week, shared this gem he found on Substack. It’s worth every second, the art, the message, the tenderness of it all.

Pure beauty to my eyes.

I’m deeply moved by how Atom illustrates and speaks about our essence and our relationship with the physical body. He touches on choice, why we chose to be here, in a way that feels both simple and profound.

His work goes beyond what I can put into words.

Less than three minutes. A true must-watch.

Aiming 4Joy by

Another inspiration here on Substack is . Her paintings speak to me every time. The colors, the shapes, they gently invite me into presence.

And maybe it’s a coincidence (even though I don’t really believe in coincidences), but her work always seems to arrive with a message. Sometimes that message is simple: slow down, soften, pay attention.

Another beautiful account to add more beauty, and quiet depth, to your Substack feed.

Another gem from Substack - on Adventure

Commitment has been our theme in embodiment classes all month. And what keeps coming up is this: we often feel that commitment is heavy. Like something you grit your teeth and push through.

But what if we committed to something lighter? To feeling more alive. To loving more. To adventure.

What if sometimes we commit to the “wrong” things—and that’s okay? What if changing direction isn’t failure, it’s part of the process?

I loved how frames this: Commitment doesn’t end Adventure.

For me it is about committing to the unknown.

When you commit to adventure itself, the form it takes will change. And that’s the point.

I also came across this question from : “What if I commit and then want something different?”

The only real problem isn’t committing and changing. It’s when the fear of that keeps us from doing anything at all

I guess life is inviting me to commit more to adventures! And I say YES to it!!

What about you? What are you committed to?

Who We Are Celebrating This Week

and her brand new Substack

I want to celebrate my dear yoga teacher Paolla. She’s an Embodiment and Sacred Feminine Global Mentor, guiding transformation and community leadership.

And she just made her way to Substack.

I feel lucky to have her as my teacher for in-person classes. Her wisdom, her presence… it’s powerful.

I’m so happy she’s bringing that to Substack. Welcome Paolla! The world deserves to hear more from you.

Happenings

When Success Isn't Enough

I started my previous business while working full-time in corporate. And honestly, I wish I’d been more intentional while I was there.

You don’t need to hate your job to dedicate yourself to something you hold in your heart.

You can be busy, successful, and still feel this pull to serve in a different way. To create something that matters. To build toward impact that feels true to who you really are.

Here’s what I want you to feel into: this isn’t about needing another income stream. You already make money. If you lost your job tomorrow, you’d find ways to make money. Probably different ways from this business you hold in your heart.

Will this business make money? Yes. But that’s not why you’re building it.

This is about deep desire. About that voice that whispers every night when you’re trying to sleep. The one you keep pushing away, but it never actually leaves.

I’m inviting you to step into the sense of adventure, aliveness, and excitement that comes from building a business because you want it. Not because you have to. Because something in you refuses to stay quiet.

We’re creating a small cohort of powerful women with huge hearts who know there’s more for them to experience.

Not a course. Direct work together on building something meaningful while you’re still showing up fully where you are now.

If you see yourself in this, book a call. Let’s see if it’s a fit.

Let's Chat

Memorable Quote

Some good wisdom here by . I hold the belief that there are always millions of good things happening around us.

Sometimes we just can’t notice them… but they are there, 100% of the time.

What landed for you in today’s issue? If you noticed yourself in this anywhere, you’re already doing the work. The Harmony Map shows you which of the 9 patterns is creating the most friction right now. Your breakthrough frequency might surprise you.

Take the Harmony Map Assessment →

I’m not bringing this up so you’ll feel sorry for him. I’m bringing it up because he’s the logical endpoint of advice you’ve likely been on the receiving end at some point.

Hormozi is the bro marketing king. Millions of followers across platforms. The guy who wrote the book on $100M offers. He represents the dominant philosophy of how to build: push hard, execute constantly, outwork everyone, figure out happiness later.

He did exactly that. And “later” arrived. He’s 36 with more money than he could spend, asking Tony Robbins on camera how to actually enjoy his life.

He admitted he adopted “fuck happiness” as a personal mantra years ago because joy felt unattainable. So he settled for being useful instead.

This isn’t a story about rich people problems. It’s a warning about where a specific approach to building leads. And it matters most if you’re still early, because you’re still choosing how to build.

Tony Robbins made a distinction in that conversation that I’ve seen play out repeatedly with the people we work with.

He said there are two types of motivation: push and pull.

Push motivation is willpower. Duty. Grinding through because you said you would. It’s waking up at 5am to work on your business before your day job. It’s forcing yourself to post content when you’d rather do anything else. It’s “I have to” and “I should” and “I need to.”

Push works. Hormozi built an empire on it. You can build real things through force.

But push has a cost. It depletes. Every action requires energy output. You’re the engine, and engines need fuel. Stop pushing, it stops moving. Push harder, burn out faster.

Pull motivation is different. Tony described it as having something you serve that’s larger than yourself. Something that feeds you instead of draining you. Where the work feels less like obligation and more like expression.

“Willpower only goes so far,” Tony told him.

“Pull motivation is where there’s something out there that you want to serve more than yourself that’ll get you up early, keep you up late, and it isn’t hard. It isn’t duty.”

Here’s what I’ve observed.

We work with entrepreneurs at different stages. Some are still in corporate jobs building on the side. Some are grinding through inconsistent months trying to get traction. Some have built profitable businesses and feel inexplicably stuck.

The pattern is consistent enough that I’ll stake my credibility on it: how you build becomes how you operate.

The people who build through pure force tend to stay in force mode. The ones who start by grinding eventually find they can’t stop grinding, even when the external pressure is gone. The “I’ll enjoy it when I make it” crowd rarely does, because they’ve trained themselves that enjoyment comes later. Later never arrives.

This isn’t mystical. It’s neurological. You’re literally training your nervous system in how to relate to your work. Do something repeatedly while feeling obligated and stressed, your body learns that this work equals obligation and stress. That association doesn’t disappear when your revenue hits a certain number. If anything, it deepens.

I’ve watched people quit soul-crushing jobs expecting relief, only to find they recreated the same feeling in their own business within six months. The job wasn’t the problem. The pattern was.

Here’s the limitation of Tony’s example.

His “pull” was feeding a billion people. Literally. He’s built a philanthropic operation that delivers billions of meals, gone undercover to rescue trafficking victims, airlifted food to war zones. When he talks about finding something larger than yourself, he means it at a level most of us can’t touch.

That’s not useful if you’re trying to make rent.

So let me make this practical.

Pull doesn’t have to be a global mission. It can be as simple as actually giving a damn about a specific person you’re trying to help.

One of the clearest differences I’ve noticed between people who sustain momentum and people who burn out: the ones who sustain can describe a real person whose life gets better because of their work. Not an abstract “target audience.” A human being they can picture.

The ones who burn out are usually pushing toward a number. A revenue goal, a follower count, a launch target. Numbers don’t pull. They just measure.

Here’s what pull actually looks like at the early stages: you talk to one person who has the problem you solve, and something in you lights up. Not because you see dollar signs, but because you’ve felt that problem yourself and you know you can help. That’s pull. It’s small, but it compounds.

When you post content from that place, it feels different than posting because you’re supposed to post. When you make an offer from that place, it feels different than making an offer because you need the money. Same action, different source. The first depletes you. The second feeds you.

“Does your body contract or expand?” might sound vague. Let me make it concrete.

Think about something you have to do this week for your business. Notice what happens physically when you think about it. Does your chest tighten? Do your shoulders creep up? Does your breathing get shallow? That’s contraction. That’s push.

Now think about a conversation you had recently where you actually helped someone. Or a piece of content you created that you were proud of. Notice that physical state. Usually there’s more space in the chest, shoulders drop, breathing deepens. That’s expansion. That’s pull.

This isn’t woo-woo. It’s your nervous system giving you feedback about your relationship to the work. And that feedback matters, because it predicts whether you’ll sustain the action long-term.

You can push through contraction for a while. You cannot push through it forever. Your body will eventually refuse. That’s called burnout, and it’s not a character flaw. It’s a signal you’ve been running on the wrong fuel.

So what do you actually do with this?

I’m not going to pretend there’s a simple three-step process to finding what pulls you. If there were, Hormozi would have bought it already.

But I can tell you where to look.

Start with what pisses you off. Not mild annoyance. The thing that makes you actually angry when you see people struggling with it unnecessarily. That anger is usually connected to something you’ve experienced yourself. And that connection is often where pull lives.

Ask yourself who you would help for free, and have helped for free, not as a marketing strategy but because you couldn’t help yourself. That’s data.

Notice when time disappears. Not when you’re numbing out on Netflix, but when you’re working on something and suddenly two hours have passed. What were you doing? That’s data too.

Pull doesn’t announce itself. It’s more like a consistent low-grade interest that keeps showing up no matter how many times you try to be practical and focus on what’s profitable.

The irony is that building around pull is often more profitable long-term than building around pure strategy. Because you actually sustain it. Because it doesn’t require constant self-coercion. Because people can feel the difference between someone who’s serving and someone who’s selling.

I want to come back to Hormozi because the point isn’t to trash him.

The point is that he followed the dominant advice exactly and still ended up asking the question you probably think success would answer: “Is this it?”

He’s now trying to reverse-engineer meaning into a machine that was built without it. It’s possible. But it’s harder than building it in from the start.

You’re at the start. Or at least, likely earlier than he was when he asked that question.

Push will be part of your building. There’s no version of entrepreneurship that’s effortless. You will have to do hard things, things you don’t feel like doing, things that require discipline.

But push should be in service of something that pulls. The discipline should support the devotion, not replace it.

Hormozi is figuring this out now, publicly, with resources most people will never have. That’s useful to watch.

But here’s the tension I keep coming back to:

What if you don’t have the luxury of pull yet? What if right now, push is all you’ve got because the bills are real and the pressure is immediate?

My working answer is that even in survival mode, you can start noticing what feeds you versus what just gets done. You’re not choosing between push and pull. You’re looking for the thread of pull inside the push. The one client conversation that lights you up. The one topic you’d talk about even if nobody paid you.

That thread is usually there. Quiet, but there.

It took a tumor in my neck and a 50/50 cancer diagnosis before I finally heard mine. Here's that story →

But I’m curious where you are with this. Are you in full push mode right now? Have you found something that pulls? Somewhere in between?

Happenings

Automated Intimacy

I’ve been writing about engagement on Substack for months now. And recently, the 15-20 minute notes daily rhythm. The three layers. Building real relationships instead of grinding for metrics.

But there’s a piece I haven’t shared publicly yet.

We’ve been testing a more targeted approach with a handful of clients. Using subscriber behavior data to identify who’s actually ready for a conversation, then reaching out with messages that feel personal because they are personal.

Not cold outreach. Not spray and pray. Genuine connection, informed by what someone’s already telling you through their actions.

When a subscriber opens every email, clicks within hours, comes back to re-read the same post twice, and runs a business that fits what you offer, that’s not a stranger. That’s someone raising their hand. Most creators never see the signal because the data isn’t surfaced in obvious ways.

We figured out how to see it. And we’ve built outreach templates around what we’re finding.

The results feel different than typical “sales” conversations. Because you’re not convincing anyone of anything. You’re starting a conversation with someone who already trusts your work. You just didn’t know they existed.

We’re looking for 5 Substack creators to go through this process as case studies.

Not a course. Not a template dump. We’ll work with you directly: the data strategy, the outreach approach, the messaging that’s working for us right now. You’ll need an established publication and something to offer. This is for people who want to turn readers into clients without feeling like they’re “doing sales.”

We’re putting together the cohort this week. If this resonates, book a call and let’s talk about whether it’s a fit.

See if you are a fit

Substack Live with Bob Burg

Friday, February 6th at 10am Eastern.

We’re hosting for a special Author Spotlight conversation about his international bestseller, The Go-Giver. The book has sold over 1.5 million copies and been translated into 30 languages. It was rated #10 on Inc. Magazine’s list of The Most Motivational Books Ever Written.

If you’re not familiar with it, The Go-Giver is a business parable built around Five Laws that flip conventional “get ahead” thinking on its head. The core premise: shifting your focus from getting to giving is not just more fulfilling, it’s more profitable.

This aligns so closely with what we teach about serving before selling that we had to get him in front of you.

One idea from the book that I want to dig into: “Does it make money?” is not a bad question. It’s a great question. It’s just a bad first question.

That single reframe changes how you think about everything you build.

Bob also publishes the Daily Impact on Substack, a brief daily message on professional success and personal fulfillment. Worth subscribing to before the interview so you get a feel for how he thinks.

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.

Who We Are Celebrating This Week: Nikki Kountouriotis

shared something in our community that stopped me in my tracks.

She did a subconscious rewiring exercise, sat with the tightness and frustration she was feeling in her business until the image dissolved and the feeling left her body. Ten minutes. Then she wrote a Substack note about finding her people. No expectations, just following guidance.

Her inbox exploded. Comments, likes, new followers. Over 60 subscribers from one note. More than she’d gained in the previous 30 days combined.

But here’s the part that matters most. When the thought “this is too much” popped up, she noticed it, thanked it, and took a break. Not forcing. Honoring her energy. Letting her body lead.

Her words: “The important thing to me right now isn’t that I’m gaining traction. It’s how I’m showing up for myself in the process.”

This is what it looks like when inner work creates outer results. And when you don’t abandon yourself the moment things start working.

Check out the note that started it all:

Things I’d Like to Share

The Alex Hormozi and Tony Robbins Session That Inspired This Essay

Why Complexity is Your Superpower

writes about AI and creative work, and this essay with really stoked my own creativity.

The premise: when people can’t easily explain what you do, they hesitate. Your diverse skills unintentionally whisper “jack of all trades” unless you show how they form one integrated solution.

The fix: six AI rituals that help you find the hidden patterns connecting your scattered interests. Not by simplifying who you are, but by revealing the throughline you couldn’t see yourself.

I loved the Vision Dump concept so much we shared it in our Sacred Planning Rituals Challenge Group thats currently in session. Our members absolutely loved it too. Several people ran the first ritual and were genuinely surprised by what the AI found connecting their “random” obsessions.

If you’ve ever felt like your brain has too many tabs open to fit into a neat business plan, this one’s for you. And in case you are curious, my buckets were:

Channeling, Building Containers, Moving the body as worship, Being witnessed, Bridging worlds, Tending the garden.

Give it a try!

ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK

Why complexity is your superpower (and 6 AI rituals to prove it)

Welcome to today’s edition of ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK. Today we’re borrowing a bit of 12th‑century pattern thinking and using AI to bring order to our messy minds…

Read more

4 months ago · 53 likes · 56 comments · Mia Kiraki 🎭 and The Strategic Linguist

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: DR. KELLY FLANAGAN

We loved our first conversation with so much we brought him back for a special Author Spotlight on his upcoming book, The Road Less Triggered.

The core insight that grabbed us: connection doesn’t break down between people. It breaks down within them.

He spent five years developing a framework for what Michael Singer’s quote couldn’t teach him how to do:

“Do not let anything in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”

The stat that stopped me: your body gives you 80% earlier warning that your heart is about to close than your thoughts or behaviors do. You can learn to catch it before you’ve already shut down.

If you’ve ever wanted connection while simultaneously protecting yourself, and wondered why that wasn’t working, this one’s for you.

Notes We Loved This Week

Memorable Quote

“There’s an awful lot of self-help where people would say, push yourself to do the thing and I don’t think that works, because it turns life into a fight, and nobody likes to spend their lives fighting with themselves”. -

If you’re stuck between “I need to push harder” and “this isn’t sustainable,” you’re not confused. You’re at a decision point.

That’s what the Integration Call is for. 30 minutes to look at what’s actually happening, what patterns are running, and what would move you forward without burning you down.

Book an Integration Call →

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

It was probably six months to a year in when I realized I was playing the same playbook as corporate, without even being in corporate.

I was rushing my mornings, rushing with my daughter, because by 8:30am I needed to be in front of the screen working.

In those early days, most of what I was doing was trying to find the language to explain what I was even doing.

I decided to organize workshops and invite my friends and ask them to invite their friends to listen to what I had to share.

So I’d spend time in front of the computer working on that. I’d go for longer walks to think. And at the end of the day I wouldn’t feel like I’d done much.

Clarifying my message wasn’t enough of a task.

It didn’t have a clear output I couldn’t show someone and say “this is what I did.” It was more like a process.

Same thing with the workshops.

Because everything was still being born, a lot of my time went toward exploring angles, studying what could be helpful for people to hear that would help them see if what I had to offer would help them.

But the workshop wasn’t ready to present at the end of my work day either, very differently from all the things I would get done in my previous job.

Walking in nature for me wasn’t part of working. It was walking in nature, even if I was thinking about my work.

It took me years to realize how productive I was being on those walks, but in a different way of being productive.

Another challenge: I wasn’t finding things to do for eight hours straight in front of a computer, so in my head I was procrastinating.

Working meant sitting down for 8 hours and doing stuff!

My bossy mind was telling me, “you should be able to get your website up and running in eight hours, why does it take so long? Why do you keep rewriting your intro for this workshop? Just do it.”

My rushed mornings were also me being the tough boss that asks you to sit in your chair for eight hours because this is what the corporation requires from you, even if you don’t have things to do on your computer.

Creating your own business requires a different relationship to creativity that I wasn’t aware of.

Until one morning I woke up and had this thought:

oh shit, what the heck am I doing? Why am I replicating the very things I was trying to escape?

I was so conditioned and so out of touch with my own creativity that I’d lost the ability to create and choose differently.

I was just repeating old patterns.

Being productive meant exclusively getting things done, checking boxes, having something to show for my time.

But there’s another way of being productive.

It’s the kind where you take action, then step back to clarify. Where you talk to people and your message gets sharper. Where you rewrite your workshop intro for the tenth time because each version reveals what you’re actually trying to say.

Where you do volunteer work to practice being in the identity of someone with a real offering. Where you find places to expose yourself and your work, even when it’s not fully formed yet.

This kind of productivity doesn’t give you a deliverable at the end of the day.

It gives you clarity. But I couldn’t see that then. All I could see was that I didn’t have eight hours of tasks to check off.

In my head, none of what I was doing was real work.

And when I sat in front of a computer, it would be incredibly frustrating that I didn’t have eight hours of things to do.

Here’s what’s wild: my last boss in the corporate world was actually kinder to me than I was being to myself. I’d left to go after things that were important to me and experience more freedom. But I just brought the parts of me that had kept me in a cage all along.

Reading Veronica Llorca-Smith’s article “Being Your Own Boss Doesn’t Make You A Good One” this week actually inspired me to write this piece and reflect on how far I’ve come.

She says: “we are often tougher on ourselves than we are on others and operate in ways we couldn’t ask of our team.”

This was so true in my own reality.

The inner talk was harsh and because we don’t say it out loud, it becomes acceptable, the level of criticism and pressure we add to ourselves.

Over the years, I’m becoming a better boss to myself. But more than that, I’m evolving to not needing to be a boss anymore. I’m evolving my relationship with myself, with control, and with my business.

Through the work that we do, I’ve grown so much into the frequency of Service that the boss I needed at the beginning is needed less and less.

Our structures continue to evolve, but at this point discipline has evolved to devotion and structure has allowed my flow with focus.

Service is meeting what’s in front of you with less judgment or opinion about how things should be. It’s showing up for what’s actually here instead of forcing what I think should happen.

The energy of devotion in a business is powerful.

That feeling of “I don’t want to post, I don’t want to be seen” doesn’t truly matter anymore. The opinions about posting consistently, sharing authentically, making mistakes... it’s not heavy. It doesn’t have power over me.

I’m serving and doing what’s been requested of me.

And when you truly serve you don’t need a bossy mind criticizing you to do more, because you just do it from love.

It’s not that the bad boss is completely fired.

She shows up from time to time. But the more I lean into service and have the right structure in place, the more I have space to surrender. And in that surrender, action happens.

Maybe one day the tough boss will disappear completely, who knows. I’m holding the possibility.

What’s helped me most isn’t a perfect system. It’s remembering this work isn’t about control. It’s about allowing what wants to emerge.

Small things anchor me back to that. Lighting a candle or incense before I work and asking for guidance. Not because it’s productive, but because it reminds me I’m not doing this alone. Even simple tasks like emails, the initial organization of my day that could feel less sacred, have a touch of the divine in them now.

This helps me approach my day with presence and joy.

And yes, my week is very well structured.

But now that structure serves something different. It creates uninterrupted time for creativity. Space to pause and listen. Room for ideas to ripen without forcing them.

When an inspiration comes, I don’t have to drop everything and chase it. I have space in my week where it can land. And if I’m not ready to act on it today, that’s okay too. I can revisit it later.

The structure holds me so I don’t have to grip so tight.

That’s the shift.

Being a boss meant controlling outcomes. Being in service means creating conditions for the business to flow through me.

I don’t have to figure it all out alone. I just have to honor the ideas, the sparks, the whispers that come.

Entrepreneurship requires a level of commitment that’s different from corporate. You’re responsible for your own success, and that weight can lead to rigidity in how you treat yourself.

But what if we’ve been asking the wrong question?

This is about recognizing your relationship with yourself....

What’s the self-talk like?

Would you let someone speak to your team that way?

Would you accept that kind of pressure from anyone else? Would you do that to others?

What began as obligation and commitment and “I have to” became “I want to” and this is so much fun.

That’s the evolution I didn’t know I needed.

So I’m wondering: what type of boss are you being to yourself right now? And what would it feel like to serve your business instead of trying to control it?

With Love,

Carolina

This is what the Harmony Map reveals. 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 →

Happenings

Meu Sagrado Business (Our Portuguese publication on Substack)

This piece started as a response to 's article, but it's become so much more than that. Our conversations during Sacred Business Stories episode and the talks we've had after have been sparking something in me.

She inspired not just this essay, but something I've been holding in my heart for the longest time … we're launching our publication in Portuguese.

Yaaaay!!!!

This has been a desire in my heart forever. We’ll be serving in a different way, focused more on our written content than calls or community for now, but it lights up my heart big time.

And you know where it was born? Out of pure fun and joy.

This was actually how I spent a few hours on my birthday, and it was exactly what I wanted to do. This project has great potential in terms of expansion, but it‘s main reason to exist is because it brings me joy… and I believe this is enough to bring something into existence.

If you know Portuguese speakers who would benefit from our content, please share the word.

Meu Sagrado Business

Clareza, visibilidade, clientes. Um negócio que é tão bom por dentro quanto é por fora.

Por Phil Powis ❤️⚡️

Things I’d Like to Share

Sacred Business Stories

If you missed this week’s episode here is the link for you! Maybe it will inspire you to take some powerful action the way it inspired me.

Why We Avoid Hard Things (And How to Start) - great article by

I wanted to share this article because it’s full of helpful information on how to actually start taking action. And I believe once you take small actions and see yourself moving forward, it contributes to a more loving and peaceful inner conversation.

Laurie brings so much clarity to why we procrastinate and how that harsh inner voice gets created. The myth of the pressure player is especially powerful - it’s not only about getting things done, but cultivating a sense of safety inside.

This is about being and taking the actions that will contribute to your transformation, in a way that you can enjoy the journey and not create more stress in your life.

Research shows that while pressure players might finish the work, they often perform worse and suffer more stress than those who start early.

It’s not about just getting things done!

The Habit Healers

Why We Avoid Hard Things (And How to Start)

Read more

5 months ago · 47 likes · 7 comments · Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

It’s worth reading and implementing.

Who We Are Celebrating This Week

Sam Illingworth from Slow AI

I want to celebrate , who just launched his Slow AI Curriculum for Critical Literacy - a 12-month programme that asks the questions about AI we actually need to be asking.

Sam is a Professor and poet in Edinburgh who writes with this rare ability to make you pause, think deeper, and question the rush we’re all feeling to integrate AI into everything.

His work is about slowing down in an era demanding we speed up, and honestly, his words touch something real every single time.

I first connected with Sam when he wrote a post about AI-generated comments… how they weaken authentic connection in our writing spaces. He invited me to collaborate on a piece with other thoughtful humans, and I couldn’t stop following his work after that.

Sam brings critical thinking to AI in ways that feel essential right now.

His curriculum covers everything from data bias and surveillance to creative agency and ecological costs, not as technical training, but as inquiry into how we want to live with these tools. It’s about developing your own ethical framework, not just learning to prompt better.

If you don’t know Sam’s work yet, I encourage you to explore his publication Slow AI.

And if his approach resonates… if you want space to think critically about AI rather than just use it faster… consider joining his curriculum. The first hundred people get an inaugural rate of £50 for the year. This is the kind of work that raises how we all engage with technology, and I’m grateful Sam is creating it.

Memorable Quote

What landed for you in today’s issue? If you noticed yourself in this anywhere, you’re already doing the work. The Harmony Map shows you which of the 9 patterns is creating the most friction right now. Your breakthrough frequency might surprise you.

Take the Harmony Map Assessment →

Or just reply or comment below and tell us what came up. We read every response.

I wasn’t dabbling. I was training regularly and following the program.

From the outside, it looked like it was working.

And in many ways, it was.

This Isn’t About Beginners

This isn’t for people who haven’t built discipline yet. It’s not for people still negotiating with themselves about whether they “feel like” showing up.

It’s for people who already do.

People who are consistent enough that effort is no longer the variable.

This is about what happens after that.

When a System Mostly Works, It Hides Its Flaws

Training on my own, without a coach watching in person, I developed a small movement habit that shifted load away from the joint.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing obvious.

The reps passed casual inspection. The movement “worked.”

But the angle was off ever so slightly.

Not enough to stop progress immediately. Enough to slowly stress my shoulder.

The tricky part was that it felt normal at first. Controlled. Familiar.

The pattern was undetectable while I was doing it.

That’s the danger of systems that mostly work.

When you’re inside them, inefficiency doesn’t feel like you are failing. It feels like normal.

Your body adapts. Your system compensates. Force gets rerouted instead of transferred.

Until it doesn’t.

What Expert Support Actually Looks Like

This is what people misunderstand about one-on-one guidance.

It’s not about learning something new. It’s not about motivation or mindset.

It’s about correction in context.

I eventually went to a Seitai master in São Paulo. His background wasn’t just therapeutic. He also studied movement patterns from jujitsu, not as a sport, but as a way of understanding how force should move through the body.

He didn’t hype me up. He didn’t explain theory.

He watched me stand. He watched me walk. He watched me initiate movement.

Within minutes, he saw what I couldn’t.

The feedback was immediate. Mechanical. Specific.

Adjust this. Brace here instead of there. Stop protecting the joint. Let the force pass through.

The changes were small. Almost boring in how simple they were.

The impact wasn’t.

Force started transferring cleanly again. The shoulder stopped compensating. Progress stopped leaking.

I wasn’t training more. I wasn’t pushing harder.

I was moving correctly.

The Same Thing Happens in Business

I see the same pattern in business all the time.

A creator publishes consistently. The writing is solid. People engage.

Replies come in. Posts get shared. The work lands.

And yet, sales stall.

Visibility without action. Engagement without conversion.

When this happens, the instinct that we want to follow is predictable.

Add more.

More content. More platforms. More offers. More tactics.

But most of the time, what’s needed isn’t more.

It’s a subtle correction in direction.

This is what the Harmony Map reveals. 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 →

The Frankenstein Business Problem

I was reminded of this during a coaching conversation with a creator in a very specific niche.

She wasn’t lazy. She wasn’t unclear about her mission.

She had momentum on a good day. She also had too many directions.

Like most creators, she was looking around and borrowing ideas.

“I like what is doing over there.” “I like what is doing with mini-courses.” “I should probably do a paid newsletter like too.”

So she stitched together pieces from different businesses.

The result was a Frankenstein business.

It technically worked. But it had too many moving parts. It felt clunky. It demanded constant energy.

That’s what happens when you copy tactics without understanding the strategy underneath them.

You’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg of someone else’s success. You don’t see the system operating below the surface.

Instead of a monster, you need one simple lane to run in.

The 1,000 Subscriber Reality Check

I know this firsthand.

I used to think I needed a massive audience to make real money.

Then I looked back at my first successful business.

At one point, that business crossed $100,000 per month in revenue. Not forever. Not effortlessly. But long enough to teach me something important.

My email list never grew past roughly 1,000 people.

Not ten thousand. Not a hundred thousand.

One thousand.

That wasn’t an accident. It was a fit-and-offer game, not a volume game.

Deep, not wide.

The people were right. The problem was clear. The offer matched.

At my price point, I didn’t need virality. I needed a handful of yeses per month.

Which is why, when I hear someone say “I need a bigger audience,” what I usually hear is “I don’t have leverage in my offer yet.”

The Menu Problem No One Notices

As we kept talking, another issue surfaced.

At the bottom of her newsletter was a long list of links.

A mini-course. An affiliate tool. A paid subscription. A coaching link.

Each one made sense on its own.

Together, they created paralysis.

When people have too many choices, they don’t pick the wrong one.

They pick nothing.

So the correction was simple.

Delete everything except the one thing that matters right now.

“If you want help, let’s talk.”

One call to action. One next step.

Not forever. As an order-of-operations decision.

Why This Matters More Than Tactics

Early momentum matters. Cash flow matters. Confidence matters.

You don’t get any of those when your audience has to decode your priorities.

This is especially true in sensitive niches, where people won’t comment publicly or self-identify.

They’ll read quietly. They’ll nod privately. And they’ll act only when the path feels safe and clear.

That path isn’t created by pushing harder.

It’s created by sequence.

Story. Context. Insight. Invitation.

Same effort. More leverage.

Where the Compounding Actually Happens

This is why I care so much about small corrections.

The compounding isn’t just in the numbers. It’s in the lived experience as the one who needs to show up powerfully every day in your business.

When you simplify to one lane, energy stops leaking. When you choose one call to action, learning accelerates. When you package an offer with an arc, trust increases.

The effort stays the same.

The results improve big time.

My shoulder is healing now, not because I’m pushing harder, but because of those subtle adjustments I’ve made within my same training plan.

The entrepreneurs & creators I work with experience the same shift.

They don’t add more tactics. They remove drag.

If you’re already consistent and your results aren’t matching the effort, you probably already know where the leak is.

Happenings

The Copywriter Reinvention Project

My friend is closing Copy Chief after 10 years. His words:

“Working your way up as a freelance copywriter, in my estimation, is gone as we knew it.”

He’s not wrong. AI didn't kill copywriting, but it killed the middle. What's left is either commodity work or something AI can't touch.

The copywriters who thrive in 2026 won’t be “copywriters” at all. They’ll be something new, built on everything they’ve learned, plus everything they’ve never figured out how to monetize.

We’ve spent the past couple years coaching a handful of copywriters through this exact transition and talking with friends across the industry. The patterns are distinct. The path forward is clear. Most people just can’t see it from inside the problem.

That’s why we’re looking for 5 experienced copywriters to go through our reinvention process as case studies.

Not another positioning exercise. Not “copywriter who does AI.”

A complete business built on your unique combination of gifts that can’t be commoditized or replaced.

We’re announcing Monday. But if you want early access and the best shot at one of the 5 spots, book a call now.

See If You're A Fit

Substack Live with Dr. Kelly Flanagan

Monday, January 19th at 2 p.m. Eastern.

We’re bringing back for a fireside chat about his new book, The Road Less Triggered, releasing in March. This is our second interview with him. His work is so aligned with what we teach that we wanted to go deeper on the ideas in this one.

He’s going to walk us through The Peaceful Pivot Process, his framework for choosing connection over conflict in triggered moments. More on the book and why it matters below.

We’re giving away 10 copies of The Road Less Triggered. First 10 people to drop a comment in the live chat when we kick off win a copy.

(US-based only, apologies to our international friends.)

RSVP Now

Who We Are Celebrating This Week: Dr. Kelly Flanagan

Author, “The Road Less Triggered” (March 2026) | Clinical Psychologist | International Speaker | National Bestselling Author

I’ve been following ’s work for a while now, and his upcoming book “The Road Less Triggered” is one of my most anticipated reads for 2026.

The premise lands squarely in Sacred Business territory: communication doesn’t break down between people, it breaks down within people. The moment you get triggered, you flip from connection mode into protection mode. And that single moment is the source of most disconnection and conflict.

This connects directly to the work Carolina and I do around inner patterns creating outer business challenges. Dr. Kelly’s approach addresses the same truth from a relationship lens: until you master what’s happening inside you, no amount of strategy fixes what’s breaking on the outside.

Our Sacred Business Story episode with Dr. Kelly was one of my favorites of 2025.

His framework for navigating triggers has already had an impact on how I show up in hard conversations.

Here’s 3 things I’m looking forward to learning from this book:

• The Peaceful Pivot Process. His proprietary framework for joining the 6% of people who can actually choose connection over conflict in triggered moments.

• Creating peace in here that produces peace out there. While your lizard brain tries to force peace externally to feel peace internally, your higher mind can empower you to flip that. His words, not mine.

• How to reconcile in minutes rather than months. He says you’ll learn to “leave behind the endless slog of rupture and repair.” If that’s true, this alone is worth the price.

Give The Man Some Love

Dr. Kelly made a New Year’s resolution on December 31, 2020 that transformed his life and became the foundation for this book:

“Moment to moment, I will notice my heart closing and try to open it back up.”

Five years of testing that resolution in real relationships. Now he’s sharing everything he learned.

Dr. Kelly’s pre-order announcement post

Pre-order page with $348 in bonuses

The pre-order bonuses include early chapter access, a 90-minute masterclass ($149 value), launch team access, and 6 months of his paid community ($150 value).

Things I’d Like to Share

ULTRA SUCCESSFUL

coaches top percentile executives, and her piece on complexity crystallizes something I see constantly: complexity is easy, simplicity is the harder work.

The CEO quote alone is worth framing. “If someone makes everything complex, they can’t stay in my org. It just makes everything a nightmare.”

Ultra Successful

Cut Complexity—Simplify Everything

Want to listen to this week’s edition of Ultra Successful? Click here or scroll to the bottom of the post to tune in…

Read more

8 months ago · 68 likes · 5 comments · Dr. Julie Gurner

RADICAL CONFORMITY

writes about power dynamics for senior leaders, but here is an essay on unconditional giving. The thesis: if you’re disappointed someone didn’t thank you, that’s evidence you gave with strings attached.

“Reclaim control. Give freely, or do not give at all. But do not outsource your peace.”

Radical Conformity

You Ungrateful Git

git /gɪt/ noun. British colloquial. A mildly contemptuous term for someone perceived as thoughtless, selfish, or lacking basic decency…

Read more

5 months ago · 8 likes · Colin Gautrey

The AGI Games: May the jobs be ever in your favor

The headlines want you to panic. offers something better: prepared confidence. Her advice isn’t about frantically upskilling or hoarding certifications. It’s about picking one small thing, building flexibility through integration, and strengthening the human skills machines can’t touch. “Crawling is how to start,” she writes. Sound familiar?

Natural Intelligence

The AGI Games: May the jobs be ever in your favor

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash…

Read more

8 months ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · JHong

This note felt very connected to this essay. Thanks !

Memorable Quote

“The goal of the mentor is not to be right. The goal of the mentor is to help the mentee learn how to learn, understand how to work through the problems they have, [and] navigate challenges.” -

Stuck on what to do next? That’s what the Integration Call is for. 30 minutes. We’ll look at your patterns, your business, and what would actually move you forward.

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P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

There are many ways to build a business.

There are multiple structures that can support a system where you thrive.
It always depends on where you are, how you want to serve, and where you want to go.

But when you’re a healer, a coach, a writer, or a creative helping others… or even when you’re monetizing something you love creating… most of us don’t know any of this at the beginning.

I didn’t.

And I ended up building a system where I was chasing my own tail, which is not fun, not sustainable, and definitely not scalable.

We also don’t ask the questions that reveal what works for us.

We start working above the surface, copying strategies from people who are not where we are… or who are playing a completely different game… and we tell ourselves that imitating them will bring us their results.

And that just… doesn’t work.

There are some important questions to be asked, to assess where you are and where you want to go…

If you’re starting something new, I would say these questions matter more than your niche, your logo, or your posting schedule:

• How much money do I need this business to generate in the beginning to feel stable?

• Am I transitioning from something else (a job, a business, an identity)?

• Do I have a proven way to help people — even with small, early results?

• How long have I been doing what I do (formally or informally)?

• Who’s already in my network?
  List the people you know, ]who’ve worked with you before, or who’ve shown interest.

• How much time do I have to deliver my service or product?

• How much time can I dedicate each week to building this business?

• How quickly do I need this to replace my current income?

These questions bring you back into contact with reality… your reality…instead of building a business based on someone else’s blueprint.

However… there is a hidden inner challenge in charging premium, we think about the price but… the hardest part of this structure is not the price.

It’s the identity shift.

It’s the real confidence that needs to be remembered! (Yes, not the one you got from experience, repetition or certifications).

Before it’s a strategy…
Before it’s a number…
Before it’s a business model…

Charging Premium is an identity decision.

It asks you to step into:

• Who am I when I stop playing small?

• Who am I when I choose stability instead of struggle?

• Who am I when I stop climbing the ladder rung by rung?

• Who am I when I stop hiding behind “I just want to help everyone”?

This is where impostor syndrome kicks in.

This is where we start protecting ourselves with beautiful stories about wanting to be “accessible” and generous.

This is where the familiar identity of working harder for less feels safer than working clearly for more.

But here’s what we miss:

Charging premium for your services allows you to replace your current income faster than selling one thing for very low price to a lot of people.

This other model is incredible… when it’s the right season.

But if you’re building something new and you want stability sooner, it’s rarely the fastest path.

If you have a proven concept…
If you’ve been helping people but charging low…
If you know your work creates transformation…

Then this is not about pricing… it’s about permission.

Charging accordingly to your value becomes a declaration:

• I trust my work.

• I trust myself.

• I am building a sustainable foundation.

• I am done waiting for external validation.

• I choose a structure that supports my life, not drains it.

This model doesn’t make your work “available to fewer people.”

It does the opposite.

It gives you the stability, time, and energetic capacity to:

• support the lifestyle you want,

• transition out of misaligned work,

• create from overflow instead of pressure,

• and eventually build low-ticket offerings from true abundance.

This is how you serve more people — not fewer.

And when you start seeing your business as a powerful tool of transformation you stop clinging in old ways of being, and start being more curious in who you are becoming.

It’s amazing hearing someone say:

“I went from charging $100 per hour to my first $2k client using this new structure.” I have one client, paying what before I needed 10 people to do it.

Yes we celebrate the money… but more than that we celebrate when people honor their needs, their desires and see the true value they bring into this world.

The pricing didn’t change their identity.
Their identity changed the pricing.

You can do this too.

But you must ask the right questions, choose the right structure for your season, and be willing to let the transformation happen inside you.

Your business… the one born from your heart… isn’t meant to be a side gig or something you squeeze into your days off.

It’s meant to be the place where you spend most of your time doing what you love, earning what supports you, and serving from your fullest expression.

Charging premium is not only about charging more.

It’s about expanding your ability to give, when you finally learn how to receive!

With Love,

Carolina

Happenings

Sacred Business Wonder Questions — Monthly Call for Paid Subscribers

(If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, you can upgrade here.)

We’re hosting our first monthly call of 2026 this coming Wednesday, January 7th, at 10:30am EST.

If you’re someone who relates to business as more than a way to make money… but also loves making money, and sees business as a tool for evolution and part of your spiritual journey, you may really enjoy this conversation.

This call was born from a genuine desire to build meaningful connection.

Connection with others who care about true service, and who understand how wonder opens the door to new possibilities.

Through wonder questions, we explore how we relate to our capacity to serve in our own business.

There aren’t enough conversations like this in the world. When we look inside and do the work, the outside transforms. Come and join us!

See you soon.

Join The Network

Sacred rituals Planning Challenge starting soon (Jan 12th)

Our Sacred Rituals Planning Challenge enrollment closed yesterday, and we’re so excited to begin this journey together once again.

This is how intentions become reality.

Through the small, daily actions that gently move you closer to what you named in your resolutions for 2026.

Not through pressure or force, but through presence, consistency, and devotion to what truly matters.

We can’t wait to begin.

If you feel called to participate and would like to join, we still have a few spots available… just reply to this email and we’ll make it happen.

Who We Are Celebrating This Week: Dr. Kelly Flanagan

I want to celebrate the work of .

If you’re not familiar with him yet, this is a beautiful invitation to explore his writing, his publication The Less Triggered Tribe carries so much wisdom about how we relate to our own triggers.

I often see myself in his posts. Again and again, he reminds us that what we experience as “out there” is so often happening within. We perceive situations as separate from us, without realizing that the trigger lives inside, just waiting to be met, not avoided.

There is always more room for love when we’re willing to look inward.

His new book is coming out in March, and I have a strong feeling it will be pure gold. I’m genuinely excited to read it and to keep applying his wisdom in my own life.

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, here’s the link for the pre-order.

With gratitude for teachers who help us soften, remember, and love more deeply.

What You May Have Missed Last Week

1. The Morning After Your Plan Falls Apart. That whiplash between total clarity and total doubt isn’t a strategy problem. It’s your nervous system hitting its limit. This essay breaks down why plans collapse overnight, why more thinking makes it worse, and the three structural anchors that make progress possible even on your hardest days.

2. The Part Of Your Work You Keep Hiding. Your real advantage isn’t another strategy. It’s the part of your work you quietly downplay to avoid judgment. This essay explores why hiding your Invisible Edge drains momentum, how commoditization makes presence more valuable than tactics, and what happens when you stop treating who you are as optional.

Things I’d Like to Share

Adam Quiney - Saying Yes to the Dance

I read a piece the other day called “Saying Yes to the Dance,” and I’m sharing it here because it shined light on something in me and I have a feeling it might do the same for you.

It’s about our relationship with fear.

What touched me most was how it spoke to being my own leader.

To my capacity to choose from love and not from fear. And how, when fear is mislabeled, we don’t even realize we’ve lost that choice. It hides itself as protection, as being “right,” and from there we keep choosing things that don’t actually serve us.

He asks a powerful question:

What do we say yes to when we have mislabeled our fear as something else?

I’m still digesting that question. I’ve been journaling a lot, and I’ve also been feeling very triggered lately…more than usual, actually.

It doesn’t feel good, but it’s bringing me clarity. I’m beginning to see how many things I once labeled as something else are, in truth, fears.
Fear of being alone, of not being able to handle my responsibilities and fear of not being liked.

It takes a lot of honesty to peel off the layers what we once called protection, or what once felt like the right way of being, and name it as fear.

And then to lean into it fully.

Wishing you the courage to look at your own fears and choose love instead. Let’s dance!

Thanks , I had some great insights out of your essay :)

P.S. You can read all previous editions of the newsletter here, and you can upgrade your subscription here.

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.