84: How to Create a Life-First Spiritual Business

If your spiritual business feels like it’s taking over your entire life, where you’re doing all the things you’ve been told to do, but somehow you have less time, less energy, and less space for what actually matters to you…this episode is for you. 

If you’ve ever found yourself working more than you expected, second-guessing your decisions, or wondering why the business you created for freedom now feels like a cage, this episode will show you what’s actually going on and how to start shifting it.

In this episode, you’ll learn what it really means to create a life-first business, and the four foundational shifts that help you take your power back as a business owner. We go into the deeper internal dynamics that drive overworking, misalignment, and burnout, and how to build a spiritual business that supports your life instead of consuming it. 

Key Points:

• Why many spiritual entrepreneurs end up building businesses that feel like a cage 
• How expert advice can disconnect you from your own way of working
• The importance of defining your “why” as an anchor for decision-making and stability
• What values actually are, and how they shape your behavior and priorities
• Why intuition alone isn’t always reliable and how fear can disguise itself as intuition
• How embodiment and internal felt sense create a more trustworthy navigation system
• The role of systems and support in creating space without sacrificing your integrity

Links and Resources mentioned:

• She Leads Embodied Beta Programme 
• DM me https://www.instagram.com/tertia_riegler/
• Book Free Discovery Call https://tertiariegler.com/book/
• Episode 65: Fear vs Intuition https://www.buzzsprout.com/2004120/episodes/17729141

Keywords: life-first business, spiritual business burnout, feminine embodiment in business, nervous system and entrepreneurship, intuitive decision making in business, values-based business, embodiment for entrepreneurs, spiritual CEO energy

🧲Grab this free audio & discover the wisdom your body holds to move your business obstacles out of the way:

 https://tertiariegler.com/embodied-expansion-practice/

📌Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.  It does not constitute therapy, medical advice or business coaching.

Transcript

If your business feels like a drag and it feels like you're spending so much time working on your business and doing all of the things that the experts tell you to do that you end up having almost no time to spend with clients, you want to listen to today's episode. I'm going to talk about how you can create a life-first spiritual business. My name is Tersia and this is the Feminine Embodiment Podcast. 

It's a show where I teach women entrepreneurs, especially spiritual entrepreneurs, how to embrace their wild woman and step into their CEO energy so that they can create a thriving business. So the biggest challenges that I see when it comes to building the businesses that we want is that so often we have these incredible skills, we have like perfected our craft, we've spent so much time getting really really good at what it is that we do and how it is that we serve our clients, but we're not so enamoured with the business side of things. We feel like we might not even be made to run businesses or to be good business owners and the whole business thing feels a little bit slimy, especially if it comes to what is sprouted most often out there, although that it is changing and this is the whole bro marketing concept what it's all about hustle and you know just giving it your best and the more you work the more you'll get out. 

What I also see happen a lot and this was my own experience is that when I started my own business I took all the habits and the conditioning that I had working in corporate. I worked in corporate for eight years in marketing and on the first day of me working in my own business at eight o'clock I was sitting by my desk, I had my laptop open and I don't know really what I was doing, but I was working and I think this is also what happens especially if we transition from working in corporate first into our own businesses. We take all of these habits with us. 

Something else that can trip us up and that can cause us to end up giving so much more into our business and efforting a lot more than what we need to is the ebbs and flows that happen as a part of being an entrepreneur. We attach our worth and our value and how successful we deem ourselves to be. We attach that directly to how many clients we have in a month and then of course in the months where they are really where it's really slow months then we start feeling bad about who we are.

I see too often that despite the fact that we really desire to live our purposes into the world we end up building just another cage for ourselves where our businesses run us instead of the other way around. So in this episode today I'm going to dive into four things that you can do immediately to start taking back your power as a business owner and to begin to create that business of yours in a way that is life first. The first thing that I want to just define so that we're talking about the same thing is what exactly do I mean by a life first business. 

Most of us created our businesses for freedom but we end up not even having a life anymore because our businesses become all consuming in an attempt from us to actually make it a viable business that brings us income so that it's not just a very expensive hobby and so when I talk about life first business I don't mean something where now all of a sudden you don't have to work anymore you only have to work like two hours a week. It doesn't mean that we completely disregard structure, it doesn't mean that we're constantly and continuously only going to be in flow and no more doing only being but what it does mean is it means that we set up a business that is aligned to who we are, that is aligned to our values, that's aligned to our purpose, that actually supports our service and our purpose in the world in a way that stays true to who we are so that we don't have to sacrifice ourselves, we don't have to sacrifice our well-being and we don't have to sacrifice our life and we don't have to abandon ourselves. So let's now look at the four things that you can do immediately starting right now that's going to help you to create this life first business and the first thing that I want you to consider is your why. 

What is the thing that you will burn at the stake for? What is the thing that you will hold on to no matter what? What is the deep deep core truth of what it is you are here to bring to the world, how it is that you are here to serve and what is your true purpose? And those answers won't come to you from the external world, these are answers and insights that we get from the inside. You want to get truly clear on what your purpose is and what your why is and what is the thing that you will burn at the stake for because this becomes your anchor and when you have that to align yourself with you can use it as a filter and it's a filter that helps you become more, what's the word that I'm looking for, it helps you become more discerning. I went through an experience not so long ago where I was working with a coach on one of the aspects of my business and even though I had followed this coach for a while I've never worked personally with the person and when I started working more closely in contact with this person there were definite things that this person did that was completely out of alignment with my why. 

It was chafing up against my purpose, my worldview, the things that I believed in and what I stood for and what happened initially is I ignored that. I had these warning flags that went up but I completely ignored that and instead I followed along on this path that the person suggested to me that I experiment with and I burnt my fingers. It didn't work for me and I'm not going to get too much into the detail of exactly what this situation was about but the fact is I had put my why, the stake that I will burn it, I had put that to the side and I followed expert advice and so the reason that I'm sharing this with you is to tell you that this it's not like none of us are infallible, none of us are doing this perfectly. 

We're learning as we go along and we're trying all of these different things and we're finding out where our own edges are and where our own boundaries are but the power lies in always being able to come back to your truth and always being able to come back to your why, your reason for serving, your purpose of what you are here to contribute to the world and if I can take as an example my why is that I want to bring more money into the hands of more women. When women have money they have power and if you have power and you have money you are able to change the world and my purpose is not to put the money into the hands of women through teaching strategy but it is through teaching women how to come back to themselves, how to lead with their whole self, so not only leading with our heads and our logic and our structure and our masculine go energy but to lead with our full being, our thoughts and our emotions and our knowings and our feelings and our sensations and when we do that, when we lead in this way, it means that we fully inhabit the full spectrum of who we are. We inhabit our light and our dark, our shadow and our brilliance and when you begin to do that, when you inhabit yourself fully in that way, when you lead from your full self in your business, what happens is the blocks that stand between you and your income and your impact, those blocks begin to fall away and when we have this why, what you will also find it supports you with is those months where we have that inevitable ebb and flow which happens, that anchor is going to provide you with a measure of internal stability. 

If we go into survival mode, if we go into fear mode, your subconscious mind is going to kick in to protect you, your nervous system is going to kick in and to protect you and you're going to do things to get you away from danger, to make you safe. So you're going to start overcompensating, you're going to start throwing spaghetti at the wall, you're going to start publishing 120 times a day because experts tell you that's how you get clients and in the end you are going to burn out. So when we anchor into our why, when we get anchored into our purpose, then it allows us a measure of internal security, so even when things go wobbly, we can still stay grounded and strong within ourselves. 

Okay, so that is the first thing that needs to be in place for you to build a life-led business, is get clear on your why. The second thing which ties into this is to get clear on your values and values here are not only the simple words that say this is what I value, that's what I value. Your values are the thing that decides what gets your time, what is the thing that gets focused on and these things happen on an unconscious level and sometimes your values might even clash. 

So you might for example have a value that says you really want to make more money because money is one of your core values. You also have a value that says you really want to spend a lot of time with your family because family is one of your core values and these two values can't coexist without bumping up against each other if you are not conscious of them. Because you're going to inevitably want to do the actions that make the money which will neglect your family or you're going to spend time with your family which might neglect the actions that's going to make you money and that's why it's important for us to know what our values are so that we can begin to incorporate them into the way that we run our business, into the way in which we step into the CEO energy. 

I'll give you another example. Let's say for example your values are centred around family and presence but your business is set up in such a way that you hardly have any time with your family. That again creates internal conflict.

Let's say that you value success and ambition and drive but there is a part of you that's been conditioned to say that that is not spiritual or that's not a good characteristic to have. So can you see how your internal conditioning is going to bump up and it's going to show up in your behaviour? So you're going to pull back when you need to sell. You're going to the moment that there's an opportunity for you to go to your next level or to rise and shine a little you're going to pull back. 

So the values that you hold it's not the problem but it's the conditioning that goes against the value that you need to be aware of. Well you need to be aware of your values first right so that you can begin to honour them and bring them like make space for them in the way that your business is set up. This is how we step into the CEO energy of our businesses. 

Now this is one of the things that I teach my clients and in fact I'm teaching it again in June and in June I'm running a brand new never-been-done-before-by-me programme. It's the beta programme for She Leads Embodied which is my brand new signature programme and it is specifically for spiritual business owners. So if you are a spiritual business owner and you want to build a thriving business you want to create more income you want to create more impact but you don't want to do it in a way that betrays your soul or your body or your values then this is for you. 

The beta programme runs for four weeks and at the end of four weeks you will stop going backwards and forwards on decisions you'll know exactly what it is that you need to focus on when you sit down and work and you will follow through on what matters so that your business can actually start working for you instead of you working for your business without needing to wait for pressure or internal motivation or having all of your ducks in a row to be able to do that. So it's for those of you that you are already good in your craft but you're not so good on the business side of things and you have all of these ideas but you're struggling to follow through you don't know what to focus on next and you might even know that you're meant for great things you do know that you are here to truly live your purpose into the world and fulfil a bigger purpose than what you currently are but you are hitting those internal ceilings. So you can either send me a dm or you can if you like to talk instead of write I'm a talker for sure. If you like to talk about it then you can hop on a free discovery call with me. I'm going to leave all of the links for that down in the show notes. 

So let's move on to the third thing that you need to have in your business in order to go from the business running you to having a truly life first business is you need a reliable navigation system. Okay so as spiritual women we know that our intuition is something that we can count on and perhaps you are someone that has a very close intimate and trusting relationship with your intuition and perhaps you're someone who like it's a little bit of a hit and miss what I see happen is we tend to hook our behaviours onto our intuition. So say for example we don't feel like doing something we go my intuition says that it's not the right thing for me to do my intuition says it's not the right time my intuition says it's not meant to be.

However there is always the possibility that it's not truly our intuition that's speaking and that's pulling the brakes but it is in fact our internal survival systems. So it's our nervous system and our subconscious mind that are actually pulling the brakes in order to protect us. So I created an episode on this it's episode number 65 that I recorded for you. I'll also link it in the show notes. Go and listen to that if you want more information on how to discern between fear and intuition like how can you tell the difference of which is which. 

So if we say that intuition might not always be that reliable system because sometimes fear can mask itself as intuition what then can we use and this is where the thing that I will burn for at the stake comes in again and that is embodiment the ability for us to connect with the feelings and the sensations in our bodies and to use those feelings and sensations to navigate the world to navigate business decisions to navigate relationship decisions and to make choices that are not abandoning of ourselves. We have got four different data sets that we can tap into when we work with the internal felt senses, these feelings and sensations inside the body. Now typically in the world we are all very used to using our mind right the mental body the thinking body we're very good with strategising and making plans and like seeing the future of things and that's all and well but that's not the only information system the only data set that we can use to navigate decisions. 

We can also use the information of our body. And what happens for most of us, since we are so locked onto using our mental body, is we ignore a lot of the information from our physical body.Think, for example, how easy it is for you, if you're busy doing something at the laptop, how easy it is to just, even if you feel you need to go to the bathroom, you just ignore that and finish what it is that you are busy with. Or maybe you're so involved in a business task that you work right through lunch, even though you feel you're hungry. You just kind of push that to the side.
And sometimes it might serve you to kind of push your physical feelings, physical sensations, and these gross information signals from your body. It might be helpful to push it to the side. But if you consistently do that, and you consistently override these signals from your body, you are not only telling yourself that you're not worth listening to, you don't need to listen to you, you dismiss yourself, you abandon yourself, but you also are setting yourself up for burnout.
And then the next one is our emotional body. And again, I think in the world today we often get told that our emotions are a liability. Our emotions are something that we should not bring into work. Our emotions are something that makes us unpredictable, and it makes us messy. And emotions are energy in motion, and by learning to tap into the feelings and the sensations that come as a result of emotions, this can give you valuable data to help support whatever decision it is that you are making.
And then the fourth aspect that we tap into when we get sensitive to our internal world, this internal navigation system, is our energy body. And here it's not the physical energy of being tired or being like excited, but it's more the energy of how close or how far away from yourself do you feel, how big do you feel, how small do you feel.
If you step into a room of peers, how much space do you allow yourself to take up? If you are showing up on social media, or even recording a podcast or making a video like this, how much space do you allow yourself to take up in the room? This is something that I saw many years ago at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. One of the subjects, or topics, what would you call it, that I used to teach was presentation skills. And it was always fascinating for me. This was long before I even knew about the concept of embodiment and our energy body, even of how that manifests in real time. But it was always so apparent and interesting to me how you could see, when the different participants in the training, as they had their turn to go and do their presentation, which they prepared over our time together, how the different people took up different space, different amounts of space.
And guaranteed, the people who took up more space were the ones that were more compelling, the ones that were more charismatic, and the ones that you wanted to listen to.
All right, so we need this reliable mechanism that we can use to tap into the data that's available to us all around, also our internal data, to help us navigate decisions. Because those decisions are going to be the most true decisions. They are more true than any strategy, any blueprint, any funnel, any method that anybody is going to teach you, if you can learn how to tap into that deep truth of yourself. And you know I'm going to say it, this is what I'm teaching in she leads embodied.
All right, and then the fourth point that you can begin to do if you want to turn your life into, or your business rather, into a life first business, is to bring systems in place. I think often as spiritual entrepreneurs we afraid of systems. We're afraid that it's going to make us seem too like the man, like we're selling out. It's going to maybe even make our businesses look too corporate, or it's going to make our businesses look too legitimate. And even though you want a legitimate business, there might be a lot of conditioning that's happening behind the scenes that's like holding you back. It's the subconscious mind and the nervous system pulling up those brakes.
And non-negotiable for you is to heal this relationship that we have towards systems and that we have towards structure, and see that it is not taking away from our legitimacy, it's not taking away from our purity, but in fact it is a support system. And the second thing that we need to do is we need to learn how to delegate. Now I want to be careful here, because never will I say that you need to delegate. That all depends on where you are in your business, if it's financially possible for you to do that, and also kind of the season that you're in.
I think it's very wrong for us to say that you must delegate no matter what. So in my own business, for example, in those seasons where I get particularly busy, I will bring in team members. I might bring in a VA, I might bring in a video editor or a podcast editor. But I don't use people all the time. It all depends on how busy I am in my own business. But the thing is, I have the support. I have someone to kind of take the load off my shoulders. Because if you are a solopreneur like I am most of the time, all of the hats of your business fall on your shoulders, right? And this is one of the things that takes us away from our lives, is if we try to do all of the things all of the time.
So these four things: knowing your why, your purpose as your anchor; being clear on your values and bringing them into your business; having an internal navigation system that is infallible, that you can consistently rely on to help you navigate business decisions; and then finally making use of systems to take off the load so that it doesn't all fall on your shoulders. Those four ingredients are things that you can start doing right now to bring your life first business to life.
So if you have been feeling lately that your business is too heavy, and it's taking too much of you, and you don't even know why the hell you bother anymore because you don't have a life, then I hope that what I shared with you in this episode today is going to be helpful.
Remember to either send me a DM if you want to find out more about she leads embodied beta round that's happening in June, or you can hop on a free discovery call if you want to talk. I'm going to leave all of those links for you in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I will speak to you in the next one. Bye.