107: Sacred Business Lessons & The 9 Frequencies of Success
What we learned from interviewing 24 incredible entrepreneurs about building Sacred Businesses aligned with their deepest truth
Over the past year, we’d had a very unique opportunity.
We sat down with 24 entrepreneurs through Sacred Business Stories. We heard about tactics and strategies. But, we also heard the truth: the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it isn’t usually a strategy problem.
It’s a pattern problem.
Every entrepreneur we interviewed, from Ryan Levesque who confessed his “embarrassing” truth to his audience, to Matt Sprang who transformed $800,000 in debt into his greatest gift, showed us the same thing: your business challenges aren’t separate from your personal growth challenges.
When we mapped their stories against the 9 Frequencies of Sacred Business, something profound emerged. Each frequency (CONNECTION, GROWTH, VITALITY, DISCIPLINE, SERVICE, SIMPLICITY, FAITH, LOVE, and BLISS) represents where energy flows freely or gets blocked in your business. And when you free the stuck energy, everything shifts.
Not just your revenue. Everything.
These frequencies aren’t abstract concepts. They’re the energetic patterns that determine how successfully and sustainably your business flows. They show up in your decision-making, your energy levels, your ability to receive money, and how you show up with clients.
Here are the lessons they taught us.
FREQUENCY 1: CONNECTION
Authentic relationships while staying true to your values
The Business Challenge: When CONNECTION is low, marketing can feel forced and “salesy.” You fragment into a “business persona” that drains you. Sales conversations leave you exhausted. You’re constantly code-switching between your “real self” and your “business self,” and that split costs you energy, authenticity, and clients who would resonate with the real you.
knows this frequency inside out. After seven years of building a successful business, he made a radical decision that changed everything.For seven years, every piece of communication with his name on it had been ghostwritten by his team. The business was growing. The systems were working. But something was off.
Then he wrote what he called an “embarrassing confession” to his entire audience: “Going forward, any piece of communication that has my name attached to it is going to be personally written by me.”
He could have kept the secret. His audience never would have known. But the fragmentation between who he was and what his business projected was costing him something deeper than money.
The result? His weekly publication, The Digital Contrarian, became one of his most engaged communities. When you stop performing and start being, people feel it.
→ Listen to Ryan’s full Sacred Business Story
brought this into sharp focus when talking about sales:
“The best sales conversations...we’re next to each other, looking at the future that they want. My job is to work with them to move all the stuff that’s in the way out of the way. That’s a conversation about commitment.”
This is connection at its highest expression: not you versus them, but both of you on the same side, moving toward what matters.
And reminded us that authenticity in business starts with doing what you actually want to do, not performing a role:
“What are the verbs attached to this concept that I’m doing? And do I want to do the verbs? And if I want to do the verbs and I’m open to doing the verbs, do the damn verbs and let the nouns emerge.”
Stop worrying about the title, the label, the “right” business persona. Focus on the actual work you want to do, the way you want to show up. Your authentic identity emerges from that aligned action.
The Pattern: Low Connection shows up as marketing that feels forced, sales conversations that drain you, and the exhaustion of maintaining a split identity. High Connection creates businesses that feel like natural extensions of who you are, where your authenticity becomes your competitive advantage.
FREQUENCY 2: GROWTH
Stepping into expansion versus staying comfortable
The Business Challenge: When GROWTH is low, you stay stuck in familiar patterns even when you can see what’s next. You resist stepping into a new business identity. You choose comfortable over profitable. You know you need to expand your offer, raise your prices, or step into a bigger role, but something keeps you playing small.
lived growth in the most visceral way possible.$800,000 in debt. Two toddlers. A sick wife. His business had collapsed, and with it, everything he thought he knew about success, about himself, about what he was capable of.
Most people would call this a failure. Matt calls it something else.
“Every bit of it was a gift. Every instance that I went through, every lesson that I was forced to learn is a gift.”
But here’s what makes his story about growth, not just survival: “Before you can forgive others, you have to forgive yourself.”
This is growth at its core. Taking full responsibility for your part in the story, learning from it, and using it as fuel. Matt didn’t just rebuild his business. He became someone capable of holding a completely different level of success because he transformed who he was in the fire.
→ Listen to Matt’s full Sacred Business Story
offered one of the most honest reflections on what growth actually feels like:
“I did not fully trust as I jumped off that cliff. I was absolutely petrified, but I did it anyway.”
Growth isn’t about being fearless. It’s about moving forward even when you’re terrified.
spoke to the paradox of growth:
“My mind can be afraid of a direction, but my intuition feels very calm about it. So I can be anxious and peaceful about it at the same time. It just depends on where you’re currently locating your sense of self.”
This is the dance of growth: your mind generates fear, but your deeper knowing says move forward. You don’t have to wait for the fear to disappear. You grow by trusting the calm beneath the anxiety.
And reminded us:
“Sometimes we have a vision and the vision feels so far from where we are, but we forget that everybody at one point had a vision and it was also far from where they were.”
Every successful person you admire started exactly where you are now.
The Pattern: Low Growth keeps you in comfortable patterns that no longer serve you. High Growth means embracing discomfort as a sign you’re evolving, not as evidence something’s wrong. Your business can only grow as much as you’re willing to.
FREQUENCY 3: VITALITY
Consistent energy versus start-stop cycles
The Business Challenge: When VITALITY is low, you experience inconsistent action and start-stop cycles. You launch with enthusiasm, then burn out. You create content calendars but can’t stick to them. Your business drains you instead of energizing you. You’re running on stress hormones and willpower instead of sustainable energy.
knows exactly what it feels like when your life’s work starts destroying you instead of sustaining you.She’d been a yoga teacher for years. Built a successful studio. Ran it for a decade. This wasn’t just her business—it was her identity, her community, everything.
Then the pandemic hit. And in the aftermath, something broke.
“I started getting panic attacks when I was teaching, like while I was in my classes. And I just thought, oh no, like, this is my life. It wasn’t just something I love doing. It was my community, it was everything. And the thought of not being able to do that, it was quite a dark place in my life because I was like, I don’t know what I am without this.”
Most people would push through. Convince themselves they just needed to try harder. Do more. Jo did something different.
She completely stepped away from her physical yoga practice. Stopped teaching the way she’d always taught. Went back to the fundamentals—not the poses, but the philosophy. Started doing 5-10 minute practices woven through her day instead of big, demanding sessions.
“I thought that was going to be how I practiced until I got back to doing big physical stuff again. But actually, it just completely transformed my practice and it transformed my relationship with yoga.”
That’s when she created Yoga for Tired People. Not from a place of having it all figured out. From a place of deep burnout and rediscovery.
Within a year, she had 168,000 followers on Instagram. Not because she was doing more. Because she finally found a way to do her work that actually gave her energy instead of taking it.
→ Listen to Jo’s full Sacred Business Story
discovered her vitality by first experiencing its opposite. She tried the startup world. Pitching investors. Building the “right” kind of business.
“I had to do it to find out that I hate it. I don’t like to pitch. I don’t like to talk with investors. I don’t like any of it.”
The most creative part of running her startup? Writing the investor update emails every two weeks. That’s where she felt alive.
When she gave herself permission to leave what drained her vitality and move toward what lit her up—writing on Substack—she built a thriving business in six months. Not through hustle. Through alignment.
spoke to the long-term truth of vitality:
“I’ve had the same clients for eight years, off and on. Most of the revenue I’m making today can be tracked back to relationships over the last five, six, ten years.”
This is what sustainable business looks like. Not constantly chasing new clients because you burned out the last ones. Building relationships that last because the work energizes you.
reframed the whole concept:
“Every business is sacred if you, as a business owner or even if you’re working for someone, consider that what you’re doing is sacred. It’s not actually about what you’re doing, it’s about how you’re approaching what you’re doing.”
The Pattern: Low Vitality creates start-stop cycles where you’re constantly running on stress hormones and willpower. High Vitality comes from work that’s so aligned it actually energizes you. When your business drains you, it’s not a time management problem. It’s an alignment problem.
FREQUENCY 4: DISCIPLINE
Consistent execution versus knowing but not doing
The Business Challenge: When DISCIPLINE is low, you know what to do but struggle to do it consistently. You create plans but don’t follow through. You jump between strategies without completing any of them. You have entrepreneurial ADD. The gap between your knowledge and your action feels impossible to close.
learned one of the most important lessons about discipline through what looked like a simple mistake.
She’s a ghostwriter. She had conducted an interview for a client. Important interview. Full of valuable content. And then she discovered something that made her stomach drop.
“I don’t know what went wrong, but that was not recorded when I thought it was. I wasn’t taking notes. And I didn’t realize this in a timely manner.”
She could have made excuses. Blamed the technology. Minimized it. Instead, she did something that built more trust than a perfect recording ever would have.
“When we mess up, the people that we’re serving just want us to fix it. We earn more of their respect when we just come back and say, I don’t know what happened, but we need to redo this.”
Discipline isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being accountable and following through.
→ Listen to Cindy’s full Sacred Business Story
offered a reframe that makes discipline sustainable:
“I was just looking at the next step. What’s the next thing that you need to do in order to take you one step further away from what it is that you’re doing right now?”
She didn’t try to predict the 10-year plan. She just focused on the next right action. That’s discipline without burnout.
And cut through the overthinking:
“Sometimes people are like, ‘should I do this or this?’ Well, it doesn’t really matter...try one to see how it feels, then try the other one.”
Discipline is about taking action and learning, not perfecting the plan.
The Pattern: Low Discipline shows up as knowing what to do but not doing it. High Discipline feels like honoring commitments to yourself because they’re aligned with your purpose. The gap between knowing and doing closes when you address the pattern underneath the procrastination.
FREQUENCY 5: SERVICE
Clarity on who you serve and how you transform them
The Business Challenge: When SERVICE is low, you’re trying to serve everyone (and therefore no one clearly). You struggle to define your value proposition. You can’t articulate the specific transformation you provide. You say yes to clients who aren’t a good fit because you’re unclear about who you’re really for.
discovered something profound about service in the last place you’d expect: a prison.
She had no prior experience. No credentials for this work. She walked into that first session not as the expert, but as the learner:
“I’m not here to teach. I’m here to learn.”
There was a man in that first group who did press-ups throughout her entire session. Never engaged. Never looked up. Just press-ups.
Years later, she ran into him on the street. What he told her changed how she understood service forever.
“That group changed my life. I realized I love opera. I moved away from London. I got a degree while living in my car.”
The man doing press-ups the whole time. The one who looked completely disengaged. He was the one most transformed.
Her lesson?
“You don’t know who’s being impacted. We don’t have eyes on that. That’s why you can just let that go.”
Service isn’t about seeing every result. It’s not about knowing exactly how your work lands. It’s about showing up fully for the people in front of you and trusting that the transformation happens whether you witness it or not.
→ Listen to Mama J’s full Sacred Business Story
and his wife, Cory embodied this when they created their business from their deepest struggle
They transformed their own crisis into service for others facing the same challenge.
brought clarity to his service:
“I’m helping entrepreneurs build more sustainable, fulfilling businesses that support their lifestyle.”
Clear. Specific. Grounded in his own experience.
The Pattern: Low Service shows up as trying to serve everyone (and therefore no one clearly). High Service means knowing exactly who you’re for and what specific transformation you provide. When you try to be for everyone, your marketing becomes generic and your ideal clients can’t find you.
FREQUENCY 6: SIMPLICITY
Focus on essentials versus overwhelm from options
The Business Challenge: When SIMPLICITY is low, you’re overwhelmed by too many options and strategies. You overcomplicate your offers and messaging. Analysis paralysis keeps you from taking action. You get lost in the “how” instead of doing the next thing. You consume more courses but implement less.
Derek Sivers taught us the ultimate lesson in simplicity. By accident.
We interviewed him for Sacred Business Stories. It was an incredible conversation. Wisdom. Insights. The kind of content you know will resonate with people.
And then he accidentally deleted the entire recording.
In an age where everything is saved, archived, backed up, and permanent, Derek reminded us that some moments are meant to be experienced, not preserved.
His philosophy: do less, not more. Let go of attachments. Choose simplicity over complexity.
And then he literally disappeared from the interview series, leaving behind only the 25 people who were present in that live moment.
Most people would have been mortified. Would have tried to recreate it. Would have seen it as a failure. Derek saw it as perfect.
→ The story of Derek’s “lost” Sacred Business conversation
lives this frequency daily:
“The power of one and what is in front of you right now. By doing that consistently, then eventually it invites more and more and it grows into bigger numbers. But that’s not even the purpose of it.”
One person. One action. One moment. That’s where simplicity lives.
gave practical wisdom about focus: “For me, it’s really been one person at a time, one connection at a time has really been the best. And whenever I don’t do that and I end up trying to create a lot of content for social media or whatever else and I forget to do that piece, my business completely doesn’t do as well.”
One person. One connection. One moment. That’s where simplicity lives.
The Pattern: Low Simplicity creates overwhelm from too many options and strategies. High Simplicity means focusing on the essential and letting everything else fall away. The most successful entrepreneurs we interviewed weren’t doing more. They were doing less, with more focus.
FREQUENCY 7: FAITH
Trusting your path versus overthinking scenarios
The Business Challenge: When FAITH is low, you overthink every decision and get paralyzed by “what if” scenarios. You need guarantees before taking action. You won’t invest in your business until you’re already making money (creating a circular trap). You over-research instead of implementing. You wait for the “perfect time” that never comes.
demonstrates what faith looks like in action.Twelve years. Twelve consecutive Camino pilgrimages. Walking the same path, year after year, with no business plan. No strategy for how this would become something. No guarantee it would lead anywhere.
She just kept walking.
She didn’t know the twelfth Camino would be different from the first. She didn’t know that these pilgrimages would eventually become central to her work. She didn’t have a 10-year plan that said “walk Camino 12 times, then build business.”
She just followed what was calling her. Year after year. Step after step.
That’s faith. Not the faith that says “I know exactly how this will work out.” The faith that says “I don’t know where this leads, but I trust it enough to keep walking.”
→ Listen to Rebecca’s full Sacred Business Story
spoke to the pace of faith:
“Take your time. Treat it as a discovery and get really clear on your motivation. Why are you doing it?”
Faith isn’t rushing. It’s trusting the unfolding.
brought it back to the essential question: “
How do I make what I’m doing right now reflect who I am on the inside?”
Faith is about inner alignment, not external proof.
described her relationship with faith this way:
“I don’t try and predict what is going to happen over the next 10 years. I know that it will be wild. I know that I will look back and be like, ‘oh my God, I had no idea.’ But I know that it will be exciting because of who I am and how I show up.”
The Pattern: Low Faith shows up as overthinking every decision and getting paralyzed by “what if” scenarios. High Faith means trusting your inner knowing and taking action even without all the answers. Every entrepreneur we interviewed took leaps without guarantees. That’s not recklessness, it’s faith.
FREQUENCY 8: LOVE
Being visible and receiving money for your gifts
The Business Challenge: When LOVE is low, you resist being visible or vulnerable in your marketing. You struggle to receive money for your services. You undercharge or over-give. You feel guilty about selling. You’re harsh and critical with yourself, which affects your confidence. You hide behind perfectionism instead of showing up as you are.
captured what shifts when you elevate Love frequency:“My unique greatness...this thumbprint...there is no one in the universe that has ever had it and there is nobody that will ever have it. We take our uniqueness for granted so much of the time, and it is your ability to take proven pathways but superimpose yourself onto that pathway.”
This is Love frequency at its core: knowing you’re worthy of being seen and compensated, not despite your uniqueness but because of it.
For years, Suzy followed the proven pathways. Did what worked for others. Built a successful business. But something was missing.
When she became a mother, everything changed. She couldn’t keep fragmenting herself anymore. She couldn’t keep hiding parts of who she was to fit the “successful business owner” mold.
She had to bring all of herself. Her spirituality. Her motherhood. Her unique way of seeing the world. Not as a liability, but as her superpower.
That integration, that willingness to be fully seen for who she actually is, transformed everything. Not just her business. Her entire life.
→ Listen to Suzy’s full Sacred Business Story
embodies this through her art. Every watercolor piece is a visible expression of her inner world. She doesn’t hide behind perfectionism. She shares her unique vision and receives for it.
reminded us:“True resonance is unforced. It’s either there or it’s not.”
Love frequency means not forcing yourself to fit. It means showing up fully and letting resonance happen naturally.
The Pattern: Low Love shows up as undercharging, hiding from visibility, or feeling guilty about receiving money. High Love means being fully visible and receiving abundantly for the transformation you provide. Your worthiness isn’t something you earn. It’s something you remember.
FREQUENCY 9: BLISS
Connection to your original passion and purpose
The Business Challenge: When BLISS is low, you’ve lost connection to why you started. Your business feels like obligation instead of inspiration. You’re going through the motions. Perfectionism prevents progress. You can’t enjoy the process because you’re too focused on the destination. The joy has drained out of your work.
discovered what he’d been seeking his whole life:“I came across this yoga text, the Shiva Sutras, where it describes a quality called vishmayo, which in Sanskrit means joy-filled amazement or wonder... And it was like a lightning bolt went through and it was like, oh my gosh, this is what I’ve always been pursuing.“
Fifteen-plus years later, he’s still following that lightning bolt. Not because it was the most profitable niche. Because it’s what makes him come alive. That’s Bliss frequency. Not the fleeting happiness that comes from hitting a revenue goal. The deep, sustaining joy that comes from doing work that’s aligned with your original passion.
→ Listen to Jeffrey’s full Sacred Business Story
described her multi-faceted work with pure devotion:
“I love doing many different things. One day, I love standing at my easel and making a painting. And one day, I love sitting in my presentation space and I love presenting courses. That makes me happy.“
She teaches yoga, creates art, writes books, volunteers as a chaplain - not because she’s chasing income streams, but because:
“These are all things that really light me up that the business that I built allowed me to explore.“
described the simplicity of Bliss:
“The more I understand or the more I connect with my own wisdom, it’s the simplest thing. It’s just the power of one and what is in front of you right now.”
offered this truth:
“Your niche finds you. You follow the nudges of life and your niche finds you.”
Bliss is about following what’s alive, even when it doesn’t make logical sense.
The Pattern: Low Bliss shows up as joyless obligation, going through motions, disconnection from why you started. High Bliss means your work energizes you because it’s connected to your deepest passion. When you lose Bliss, everything becomes harder. Not because the work changed, but because you did.
THE THROUGHLINE: Everything Is Connected
After 24 conversations, one truth emerged again and again: your business challenges are not separate from your personal growth challenges.
When Matt Sprang was $800,000 in debt, it wasn’t just a business problem. It was an invitation to transform how he related to failure, forgiveness, and his own worth.
When Ryan Levesque finally wrote his own content after seven years, he wasn’t just changing a business process. He was integrating his fragmented self.
When Jo Hutton stepped away from the yoga teaching that was causing panic attacks, she wasn’t just pivoting her business model. She was honoring her vitality.
When Cindy Childress took accountability for the missed recording, she wasn’t just solving a logistics problem. She was practicing discipline through humility.
Every challenge in your business is pointing you toward a frequency that wants to be elevated.
The patterns that show up in your business (the resistance to visibility, the fear of expansion, the exhaustion from inconsistency) aren’t business problems. They’re invitations to transform the relationship you have with yourself, your work, and something greater than yourself.
This is what makes Sacred Business different from traditional business advice. We’re not just optimizing tactics. We’re addressing the underlying patterns you bring to those tactics.
HOW TO WORK WITH THESE FREQUENCIES
These aren’t just inspiring stories. They’re invitations.
Start with Connection: Are you showing up as your whole self? Where are you still fragmenting?
Move into Growth: What expansion is calling you that scares you a little?
Check your Vitality: Is your business energizing you or depleting you?
Examine your Discipline: Are you honoring commitments to yourself?
Get clear on Service: Who exactly are you for? What specific transformation do you provide?
Embrace Simplicity: What can you let go of to focus on what matters?
Practice Faith: Where do you need to trust the path even without seeing the whole staircase?
Elevate Love: Can you be fully visible and receive abundantly for your gifts?
Return to Bliss: Are you still connected to your original passion?
These 24 entrepreneurs showed us: success isn’t about having the perfect strategy. It’s about elevating the frequencies you bring to your work.
Your business will only grow as much as you do.
The question isn’t “What tactics should I implement?”
The question is: “Who am I becoming, and what frequency am I operating from?”
MEET THE ENTREPRENEURS
Explore the full conversations behind these lessons:
The 9 Frequency Stories
CONNECTION |
Building Businesses That Serve Your Vision | Listen →
GROWTH |
From $800K in Debt to Finding Freedom | Listen →
VITALITY |
From Panic Attacks to 168K Followers | Listen →
DISCIPLINE |
From PhD Rejection to Bestselling Ghostwriter | Listen →
SERVICE |
The Prison Experience | Listen →
SIMPLICITY |
On Impermanence | Read →
FAITH |
A 12 Year Journey | Listen →
LOVE |
From High School Dropout to 7-Figure Coach | Listen →
BLISS |
Finding Your Way Through Uncertainty | Listen →
Additional Wisdom Featured Throughout
| Zen Monastery Living | Listen →| Accidental Entrepreneurship | Listen →
| Business Triggers | Listen →
| Business as a Spiritual Path | Listen →
| Surrender as a Practice | Listen →
| Intentional Stress | Listen →
| Client Success | Listen →
| Authentic Pricing | Listen →
| Multi-Dimensional Leadership | Listen →
| Building a Sacred Business From Marriage Crisis | Listen →
| Authenticity as an Act of Service | Listen →
| Anchoring Vision Through Art | Listen →
| Multiple Identities | Listen →
| Embracing Imperfection | Listen →
| The Courage to Pivot | Listen →
| Honoring Profit & Purpose | Listen →
Explore the complete Sacred Business Stories archive →
THE INVITATION
We created Sacred Business Stories because we needed these conversations. We needed to hear from real people building real businesses about what it actually takes. Not just the tactics, but the transformation.
Every Wednesday, we sit down with another entrepreneur and ask: What does it look like to build a business aligned with your deepest truth?
The answers keep surprising us. The wisdom keeps flowing. The community keeps growing.
These 24 entrepreneurs showed us something that changes everything: when you address both the inner patterns AND build the outer systems simultaneously, transformation accelerates. You don’t just learn better tactics. You become someone who can implement them.
Your Harmony Map shows you which frequencies need your attention right now. Those lower scores aren’t failures. They’re your business saying “this is where we grow together.”
When you free the energy trapped in your lowest frequency, everything shifts. Not just your business metrics. Your relationships. Your health. Your sense of purpose. Everything.
Because everything is connected.
If you’re building something that matters, you don’t have to do it alone.
Take the Harmony Map Assessment if you haven’t already. Discover which frequency is blocking your flow. Then do the inner work AND implement the outer strategy to transform that pattern.
This is the work. This is the path. This is Sacred Business.
The 24 entrepreneurs we interviewed didn’t have it all figured out before they started. They didn’t wait until they felt ready. They took the next step, addressed the pattern that was blocking them, and kept moving forward.
You can too.
Take the Harmony Map Assessment →
Want to go deeper? Explore the full Sacred Business Stories archive and discover which frequency is calling for your attention.
What’s next?
Carolina and I are ready to support you in creating a business that aligns with your heart’s calling. Here’s how we can help:
Discover Your Sacred Business Alignment (Free): Take the Harmony Map Assessment and read our Sacred Business Manifesto to understand where you are on your path and how to move forward with clarity and confidence. Perfect for entrepreneurs wanting to understand how everything in their business connects.
Read the Sacred Business Manifesto (Free): Learn the core principles of building a Sacred Business through our founding story and framework. See how we transformed our approach to business by understanding that everything is connected.
Thanks, Phillip, for this summary. Yes, I've been tracking wonder my whole life. Honored to represent BLISS. :) What a great season you've had at SBF.