Your Business Has a Soul, Your Spreadsheet Doesn’t
Written by Donna Wilding, Life & Business Coach
Donna Wilding is a former corporate advertising executive turned life and business coach who helps female entrepreneurs build strategic, soul-led businesses by working with the innate intelligence of their ideas, alongside her signature past life regression experience and heart-forward coaching techniques.
Discover how connecting with the soul of your business can help shape your decisions, deepen your business intuition, and transform the way you build and lead. We spend years learning how to lead a business, but few of us consider how our businesses may be leading us. Ideas can have a peculiar way of arriving. They wake us in the middle of the night, arrive while we’re in the shower, or interrupt us while we’re driving with such intensity that we find ourselves recording a voice memo before we forget them. They rarely wait until we’re sitting at our desks with time set aside to receive them. If anything, they seem to prefer the moments when our minds are occupied elsewhere and our usual filters have loosened their grip.
Every now and then, an idea arrives with even greater insistence. It follows us for weeks, returning in different forms and tapping at the edges of our attention. We may try to dismiss it as too ambitious for the person we currently believe ourselves to be, yet it continues to circle.
Then there are the ideas we ignore. Perhaps you’ve had one of those too: an idea you felt genuinely excited about but never acted upon. Months later, you watched as another person launched the podcast, wrote the book, designed the offering, or created the company you had imagined.
I’ve come to wonder whether we’re quite as responsible for our ideas as we’d like to believe. What if some ideas are looking for us? What if, when one arrives, we’re being invited into a relationship rather than handed something to own? Suddenly, the question changes from “What can I do with this idea?” to “What might this idea want to do with me?”
How creative ideas find us before we’re ready
Have you noticed that some ideas arrive with urgency behind them, while others are ‘patient’? One idea can feel playful, and it feels right to explore it without a plan, while another arrives fully formed, complete with a name and a clear sense of direction.
There’s something fascinating about the way ideas seem to have a life of their own. They arrive in their own time, capture our attention, and sometimes refuse to leave us alone. We can experience this through intuition, unconscious cognition, creative intelligence, or spiritual guidance. Whatever language we use, there’s often a sense that we’re receiving something rather than simply manufacturing it.
Elizabeth Gilbert explores a similar idea in her book Big Magic, where she describes creative ideas as having their own existence, seeking out people willing to bring them into the world. I’ve always loved this way of thinking about creativity. But I’m equally fascinated by what happens after we say yes to an idea, particularly when that idea becomes a business.
What if the relationship doesn’t end once we’ve brought the idea into existence? What if, in many ways, it’s only just beginning? After all, every business begins with an idea. Before the logo, the offer, the website, or the first client, there was something that captured our attention. Something we felt compelled to explore. At some point, whether boldly or with considerable hesitation, we said yes to it.
We tend to treat that yes as the beginning of ownership, but I’ve come to see it as the beginning of a relationship instead.
The soulful relationship hidden inside every business
I spent more than a decade working in corporate advertising, helping major brands communicate, position themselves, and sell. I understand the machinery of business. I know what a good strategy can accomplish. I also know what happens when we become so focused on making something successful that we stop questioning what success is costing us.
I eventually left the ad world, but I didn’t leave my understanding of strategy behind. I became interested in what was missing from the conversation. What happens when we give as much attention to the intelligence behind a business as we do to the mechanics of running it?
Most of us are taught to view a business as a structure we build and manage. We create systems, develop strategies, monitor numbers, improve marketing, and search for ways to make the entire operation more efficient. All of this matters. A business needs practical stewardship, sound financial decisions, clear communication, and work that genuinely serves people.
Yet when we look at business purely through the lens of strategy, systems, and productivity, we miss something extraordinary about the entrepreneurial experience. Building a business has a way of bringing us face to face with ourselves. Our fears, our beliefs, the identities we’ve outgrown, and gifts we may never have discovered had we not said yes to the journey.
After more than fifteen years of coaching women through life and entrepreneurship, I’ve watched businesses behave far more like relationships than like machines. They evolve. They pass through seasons. They respond to the way they’re treated. They reveal where communication has broken down and where the person leading them has stopped paying attention.
Over time, I began to sense that businesses possess their own guiding intelligence, a distinct character that cannot be fully explained by the founder’s preferences or the demands of the market. I came to call this the soul of the business.
When I talk about the soul of a business, I’m speaking about something I believe exists within all living and creative expressions: an animating intelligence that gives something its unique nature. I believe a business can carry this same kind of intelligence, an essence we can come to know through our relationship with it. Much like we come to know another person over time, we begin to recognize its character, its aligned ways of expressing itself, and the specific possibilities that tend to expand it.
Through meditation and intuitive practices, I’ve learned to communicate with that intelligence. To ask questions, receive guidance, and often be surprised by what comes forward. I’ve come to experience my business as a creative partner, with its own character, desires, and ways of expressing itself. While I love a good marketing strategy, some of my most meaningful business insights have come from getting quiet enough to listen.
When we begin to relate to a business rather than merely operate it, we notice things that strategy alone can miss. For example, we sense when an offer is technically polished but carries little life. We can recognize when our marketing looks impressive yet no longer feels human and relatable. We feel the tension between the pace we are forcing and the pace at which the work can grow with integrity. In this way, what appears to be a marketing problem may be a relationship problem.
What your business growth challenges reveal about you
We’ve been taught to believe businesses grow through better branding, sharper messaging, stronger systems, and more effective sales. They do. But those tools only tell part of the story.
Two entrepreneurs can take the same course, hire the same coach, follow the same launch strategy, and create vastly different results. We often explain the difference through execution, audience size, or timing, yet there is another variable that deserves our attention: each business is asking its founder to become a different person. The strategy may be the same. The personal invitation the business is presenting to the owner rarely is.
When a client reaches an income ceiling or feels stuck despite doing all the “right” things, I often find that the real obstacle isn’t another strategy. Instead, I find a deeply personal threshold where the next stage of growth is asking them to become someone they haven’t been before. For example, they may be required to be seen in a way that once felt unsafe. We can spend thousands of dollars trying to solve a visibility problem with better branding when the real issue is that some part of us is terrified of being seen.
We can hire another business coach to help us increase our income while still holding onto an identity that equates being a good person with giving a lot away. We can wear our fierce independence like a badge of honour, without ever questioning why asking for help feels so uncomfortable.
Essentially, the business keeps presenting opportunities to confront our subconscious blocks. The question is whether we’re willing to look at them.
How to balance intuition and strategy in business
There can be a tendency in spiritual entrepreneurship to elevate intuition while treating strategy as cold, aggressive, or disconnected from the soul. I don’t believe we need to choose between them. Strategy gives an idea structure. Intuition helps us determine which structure belongs to it.
Without strategy, a meaningful idea may never reach the people it could serve. Without a relationship to the deeper intelligence of the business, strategy can become an elaborate way of forcing an idea into a form it was never meant to take.
I love strategy. Give me a brilliant marketing concept, a beautifully positioned offer, or a clever way to connect people with something they genuinely need, and I’m all in. But I don’t believe strategy should be the loudest voice in the room.
Sometimes the smartest thing we can do for our businesses is put down the spreadsheet, close the seventeen tabs of research, and get quiet enough to hear what we already know. Sometimes after we’ve listened, the next right move is to open the spreadsheet again. There’s room for both.
One of the ways I explore this relationship with my clients is through a guided meditation designed to help them meet the soul of their business. I’ve witnessed some extraordinary responses.
One woman opened her eyes with tears of pure joy. She’d experienced a profound knowing that the idea she’d been building her business around wasn’t entirely hers to begin with. She felt that the idea had chosen her to bring it into the world, and that she’d been so busy figuring out how to build it that she’d forgotten to check in with the very thing that had inspired her.
Another woman burst into laughter. The soul of her business had appeared to her as a friendly ghost who couldn’t stop playing! The experience completely changed how she approached her work. She began making more room for play and enjoyment in her days, and as she did, she found herself less preoccupied with getting clients. Interestingly, she began attracting them with ease.
What I love about this practice is that I can take what comes forward and work with it strategically. The meditation opens a conversation, and my experience in business helps me decide what to do with what I’ve received.
The business you are building is also building you
I see entrepreneurship as one of the great initiatory experiences available to us. It brings us into intimate contact with our fears, our desires, our relationship with power, and our willingness to be seen.
There are moments when building a business feels less like developing a company and more like being asked to surrender an identity you’ve spent your entire life constructing. I find something sacred in that.
The business becomes a place where our inner work meets the world. Where what we believe about ourselves is tested through the very real experiences of selling, leading, creating, receiving, and being visible.
There’s research that supports this relationship. A 2016 paper published in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development explored how entrepreneurial identity is both a driving force behind our actions and something that evolves through the experience of entrepreneurship itself.[1]
In other words, who we believe ourselves to be influences how we build our businesses. The experience of building them can change who we believe ourselves to be. This suggests that the personal evolution happening alongside business growth deserves just as much attention as the business itself.
This is why I no longer believe a business exists solely to generate income. A business can also become an initiatory space: a place where we are repeatedly asked to meet the person we are capable of becoming.
That doesn’t mean every struggle carries a profound spiritual message. Sometimes a sales page simply needs to be clearer. Sometimes an offer needs to change. Sometimes the wisest decision is to close a business that no longer belongs to our lives. Listening includes the willingness to hear answers that challenge our attachment to what we have already built.
I’ve met women who have built businesses that look incredibly successful from the outside but have very little room left to actually live inside them. I have to wonder: what exactly are we building all of this for?
More money? Wonderful. I’m all for women having more money and more power. But I also want us to have lives we’re wildly in love with. Time to create. Space to be with the people we love. The freedom to change our minds, take risks, follow our curiosity, and enjoy the fruits of what we’ve worked so hard to build.
Because how we live informs how we lead. I think our businesses deserve to be led by women who are actually participating in their own lives.
How to connect with the soul of your business
If the idea of a business having a soul feels unfamiliar, you don’t need to accept it as fact. Consider it a question. Notice what changes when you imagine your business as a living ally rather than an object you must continually push forward.
What has it been revealing through the patterns you keep encountering? Where is it asking you to become more honest, visible, discerning, supported, or brave? What part of its nature have you been trying to change because another person’s version of success looked more legitimate? Perhaps most importantly, who is this business asking you to become in order to steward what you have asked it to create?
We spend enormous amounts of time learning how to lead our businesses. We study strategy, communication, marketing, money, and growth. Yet some of the most important guidance may emerge when we pause to notice the intelligence already present within the relationship.
Think back to the idea that started your business. The one that wouldn’t leave you alone. The one you said yes to, perhaps without fully understanding what you were agreeing to.
What if that yes was the beginning of a relationship that has been shaping you ever since? What if the business you’ve spent years trying to figure out has been trying to tell you something all along? Perhaps it’s time to ask.
If you’re curious about what your business has been trying to tell you, Donna Wilding offers a free guided experience to help you meet the soul of your business. It’s an invitation to begin a different kind of conversation with the work you’re here to bring into the world.
Read more from Donna Wilding
Donna Wilding, Life & Business Coach
Donna Wilding is a life and business coach and former corporate advertising executive who walked away from conventional success to build a more honest way of working and living. She supports women in creating businesses that are both profitable and deeply aligned, combining strategic clarity with past life regression and energetic work. At the core of her approach is the belief that every idea has its own guiding intelligence, and that business becomes easier when you learn to work with it. With over a decade of experience in transformational practices, Donna’s work bridges the worlds of strategy and soul.
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