What does it mean to evolve your woo, and what does it have to do with how much your business earns?
Most women in midlife who build a coaching or healing business start with the practices that got them through their own hard seasons. A card spread at the kitchen table, a candle and a prayer, a spell, an energy session with a friend who understood. Those practices gave you somewhere to turn when nothing else worked, and they gave you the confidence to help other people. Then the business grew, and some of those practices began to feel like a coat from another year. You may have wondered whether changing them would betray the woman who first needed them.
I want to take that question seriously, because the way you answer it shapes your energy, your offers and your income.
The evolution of woo is how your spiritual framework changes as your business grows
Woo is the loving shorthand many of us use for the intuitive, energetic and mystical side of our work: tarot, energy healing, ritual, spells, angels, the Akashic records, prayer. The evolution of woo is the way your spiritual frameworks change as your business grows, and your newer practices can build on everything you learned before. Nothing in that definition asks you to throw anything away. It describes a path in which the practice you used in your first year of business and the practice you use in your fifth are connected, and the later one is better informed because of the earlier one.
Outgrowing a spiritual practice is a common experience
You are in good company. Pew Research Center's 2023 report on spiritual but not religious Americans found that about 22 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves that way. Among them, most said they have become less religious over their lives, and about half said they have become more spiritual. That survey describes how people see their own lives and says nothing about business, so I use it for one point only: a spiritual life moves. People change what they practice, how they practice it and what it means to them, and they usually do so because they have lived more.
Your spiritual practice and your business draw on the same energy
When you were healing, your practice only had to work for you. When you build a business around it, your practice becomes the foundation under your offers, your prices and your voice. How you feel about your own tools starts to show in how you describe your work and how you ask to be paid. A woman who feels she must defend her past spends energy on that defense, and she has less left for her next offer. A woman who knows her practice has grown with her can say plainly what she does, who it is for and what it costs.
Changing a tool keeps the teaching and changes the form
Here is the distinction that makes the question easier. Abandoning a practice cuts you off from what it taught you. Evolving a practice keeps the teaching and changes the form. The woman who learned to trust her intuition through card spreads still has that trust when she builds a different daily practice. The woman who learned to feel energy through hands-on work still feels it when her practice moves into silence, prayer, ritual or a traditional structure. What you learned lives in you, and the practice was one way you learned it.
That is why I think of an outgrown practice as work that is complete. It did its job, and honoring it means thanking it and keeping its lessons.
Abandoning a practice cuts you off from what it taught you. Evolving a practice keeps the teaching and changes the form.
Real spiritual power can live inside traditional structures
For some women the evolution moves toward older, more traditional structures. The conversation I am having today follows a path from spells and energy work to the sacred Mass, which is a central act of worship in several Christian traditions. I find it worth looking at because it questions an assumption many women in spiritual business have, that real spiritual and financial power only lives outside tradition. A woman can have immense spiritual and financial power inside traditional structures, and her wealth grows when her spiritual life and her business evolve together. For other women the evolution moves somewhere else entirely, and the principle stays the same: the practice follows the woman you are becoming.
Evolving your woo shows up in your income
Money moves when your offer matches the woman you are now. If you describe your work in the language of a practice you have outgrown, the woman who is ready for what you do today has trouble seeing herself in it. Your ideal client searches for help in her own words, and she tends to buy from the person whose description sounds like her next step. An evolved practice usually produces a clearer offer, because you know what you do, what it changes for the person you serve and why it works. Clear offers are easier to price, easier to explain and easier to say yes to. That is the plain link between your spiritual framework and your revenue, and it is why I treat this topic as part of spiritual business scaling.
Signs that a practice is ready to change
A practice may be ready to evolve when you keep it out of fear of what changing it would mean, and the practice itself no longer moves anything for you. It may be ready when you describe your work with a long apology or a long defense. It may be ready when the women you serve have moved further along than your offers have. These signs show that you have grown, and your business has a chance to grow with you.
A short audit you can use this week
- Write down every spiritual practice you use in a normal week, including the ones you do only before a session.
- Mark each one: still serves me, I keep it out of habit, I keep it out of fear of changing it, or I miss it.
- Choose one practice to change or retire this week, and write one sentence about what you will keep from it.
- Read the description of your main offer and ask whether it describes the woman you are now.
If you want more on how spiritual practice and money meet, I recorded an earlier live called Spiritual Laws of Wealth for Women Entrepreneurs With Monique Alvarez. I teach spiritual business building through Badass Butterfly Alchemy, where you can find more about my work.
Susan Glusica joins me live on Monday, November 9 at 2:00 PM PT to explore how a woman's spiritual framework can change as her business grows, from spells and energy work to the sacred Mass, and what that means for her feminine power, her energy and her income. You can watch the live or replay here.
Which of your practices is ready to evolve?
Join the Spiritual Business Hour community for weekly episodes, free cheatsheets and a welcome gift.
References
- Pew Research Center. (2023, December 7). Spirituality among Americans: Who are "spiritual but not religious" Americans? https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/who-are-spiritual-but-not-religious-americans
Connect With The Spiritual Business Hour
Catch every live broadcast, past replay, and community discussion:
Crystal Lynn Bell
Founder of Badass Butterfly Alchemy
Visit www.badassbutterflyalchemy.com →Crystal Lynn Bell is a Spiritual Business Mentor, visibility coach, and founder of Badass Butterfly Alchemy Coaching. Her work sits at the intersection of deep inner transformation and serious business architecture. Since 2011, she has guided more than 800 women through the process of building coaching businesses grounded in their genuine experience and designed to produce real, sustainable income.