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Spirit · 29 episodes

Spirituality in Business for entrepreneurs

Search 'spirituality in business' and you expect vague comfort. What actually comes up across these conversations is more specific than that: a repeated claim that entrepreneurial burnout, greed, anxiety, and empty success are not separate problems but symptoms of the same disconnection between what you're building and what you actually believe about yourself, money, and worth. Guests arrive at this from wildly different vocabularies — Vedanta, Human Design, mediumship, Course in Miracles, Reiki, straight Christian faith — but they keep landing on the same diagnosis.

Where they agree: money and success are outcomes, not goals, and chasing them directly produces anxiety rather than relief. Gary Sprouse frames worry as a side effect of a useful skill, not a flaw. Ruchi Rai and Scarlett Stanhope independently argue that your relationship with money, not your revenue, sets your stress ceiling. Georges Karam made several fortunes and found that money alone didn't buy peace — it bought new anxiety about what to do next. Where they genuinely diverge is on mechanism: some guests want you to reframe your thinking (Gary Sprouse's worry organizer, Anthony DeNino's SMART process), others want you to go underneath thinking entirely into the body, energy, or intuition (Jordan Harcourt-Hughes's resonance, Dandapani's trained awareness, Caroline Cory's frequency work). Neither camp thinks the other is wrong exactly — they're describing different layers of the same system.

The other recurring tension is purpose versus performance. Several guests, from Gautam Jain to Tony Senf to Georges Karam, insist that selfish ambition is what makes the mind sick, and that purpose beyond personal gain is what calms it — not as a nice sentiment, but as a mechanical fact about how the nervous system works under pressure. Nobody on this page argues that spirituality means abandoning ambition. The consistent claim is that ambition detached from a bigger frame — of purpose, faith, or self-worth — eventually turns on you.

What holds across every conversation

  • Treat money as an outcome, not the goal — guests across the show independently warn that chasing revenue directly produces more stress than chasing purpose that happens to be profitable.
  • Audit your subconscious money story before you audit your budget — a 'blueprint' that shows what you can do with what you have works better than a restrictive budget for reducing financial stress.
  • Reframe obligations as choices — naming what you've chosen (not what you're forced into) measurably reduces the physiological stress response, per Gary Sprouse's coaching work.
  • Compartmentalize problems instead of lumping them together — overwhelm is often a mental habit of merging separate issues into one undifferentiated mass.
  • Build a short 'joy menu' of proactive resets (breathwork, a walk, a specific ritual) you use before burnout hits, not after.
  • If you're drawn to intuition-based decision-making, pair it with data rather than replacing one with the other — several guests explicitly use both, not instead of each other.

Purpose beyond personal gain

Multiple guests argue, independently and in different vocabularies, that selfishness itself is what makes ambition stressful — and that reframing your mission around something bigger than you changes how your mind and body respond to pressure.

The more selfish you are, the more the mind is stressed. This is the law of life. It is selfishness which causes stress. So if the goal of your organization, your mission, your purpose is something beyond your selfish interest, immediately the mind becomes calm. And this is the secret which nobody knows. No business school teaches you that.

Success Without Stress: Vedanta for Entrepreneurs · 29:33· listen →

It's my body that will get this done. It's my body that will attract a good mate, get me love. And the truth is your body is an effect of your mind. So you've got to start with what I've come to call source and then spirit, because that spirit is really who you are.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf · 4:38· listen →

And a lot of people sometimes tells me, ah, you know, you're lucky, George, you're doing this for others. And I say honestly, no, I'm doing for myself. I'm like selfish. I do it because I feel good by giving back, and I feel less guilty because whenever I travel with my kids and I see how they live and how we go to some countries sometimes and how much there is inequality— me, maybe not everyone the same— it bothered me.

Georges Karam: From War to Wealth to Purpose · 24:17· listen →

The more money you make, the more you can do for the world.

Redefining Prosperity: Money Mindset & Spirituality · 24:08· listen →

Money, worth, and the inside job

More revenue doesn't fix money stress if the underlying relationship with money is broken — this section covers the subconscious scarcity patterns guests say actually drive financial anxiety.

I've found time and time again that if you're somebody that experiences money stress, more money is not the solution to that problem because I've worked with clients with very little money coming in and they feel stressed... Because it's not about the amount of money, it's about your relationship with money.

Money Stress, Scarcity & Abundance with Scarlett Stanhope · 13:08· listen →

The first one is not enoughness. This is the idea that there's not enough to go around... nature proves to us that there is an infinite abundant amount available. For example, if you have one tomato, that tomato is full of seeds to create an infinite future amount of tomato plants.

Money Stress, Scarcity & Abundance with Scarlett Stanhope · 16:04· listen →

I bought myself a Prada bag and I thought that would change everything. I thought my life would be different and nothing changed. Like, I was the same. My life was the same, except now I had a little bit of debt and a beautiful bag on my shoulder, but I felt the same inside. So, what I realized then was prosperity comes from the inside. It's an inside job.

Redefining Prosperity: Money Mindset & Spirituality · 9:40· listen →

Your business revenue will never outperform your relationship with money.

Redefining Prosperity: Money Mindset & Spirituality · 20:37· listen →

You know, John, like we say always, money doesn't buy happiness. And I know that this is a very— we always say it after we make money. And I think the problem is it's because we don't have the right definition of happiness.

Georges Karam: From War to Wealth to Purpose · 16:33· listen →

Intuition as a business faculty

Several guests treat intuition not as mysticism but as an underused decision-making input — something to be trained and paired with logic and data, not opposed to it.

I think we forget how often we get stuck in our logical mind because the logical mindset is just the natural landscape in terms of how we work in business and our 9-to-5 life. And I think we forget that's not the only way of being. We have another way of living which is far more intuitive.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 2:07· listen →

Resonance for me is what vibrates truthfully in my body. So for me, if I resonate with something, I'm connecting with it holistically... and it is an intuitive feeling because it isn't based on one thing or the other.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 14:58· listen →

The funny thing about data is it tells whatever story you want it to tell.

Lindsay Mastrogiavanni: Spiritual Entrepreneurship & Mediumship · 28:17· listen →

Intuition is simply an expansion of all of your physical senses. Sight, smell, taste, hearing, knowing— our brain— feeling— skin. So it's what we've done is over thousands of years diminished our capacity to read energy and to receive information from anything except our core senses.

Teresa Wornstaff: Using Intuition to Grow Your Business · 12:58· listen →

So it's very, very helpful. Same with remote viewing. I use remote viewings every day. Like let's say I have a trip to take, you know, so I can remote view and see, you know what, I don't think I'm gonna stay in this area because it just feels, you know, you can feel things, you can see things, you can.

Consciousness, Intention & Healing with Caroline Cory · 22:41· listen →

Faith, forgiveness, and letting go

For guests speaking from explicit religious or contemplative traditions, spiritual practice functions as a mechanism for release — forgiveness, surrender, and acceptance are treated as active skills, not passive resignation.

You need to let it go. What we consider the religious word, although it's being very, very accepted now in psychology, is that word forgiveness. And all forgiveness really is, it isn't something religious, it's really very scientific.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf · 25:02· listen →

Remember, every thought system is founded on the cornerstone of what you think you are. A soul that fervently believes it is separate from God will create a building of thought based on that faith, and her mind will show her that she is right, even if it is not true. Ask the mind to show you the truth, it will. Ask it for anything else, and it will do it for you.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf · 30:31· listen →

So why do you stress out about things which you have no control over? Assess again. Use your intellect and assess. So a person says, 'I have a nagging wife.' Just a simple example. Or a wife says, 'I have a husband with a temper.' So I asked them, do you want a divorce? They say no. I said, then you must assess. My husband has an uncontrolled temper. That's it.

Success Without Stress: Vedanta for Entrepreneurs · 27:08· listen →

So spiritual is an interesting concept, right? My religion is Christianity, right? So I come from that perspective, but I've read a lot about Buddhism and Islam and all the other different major religions, Hinduism and stuff. And they all have some of the same basic tenets, which is, where'd you come from? Where are you going?

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 27:45· listen →

The truth is that the purpose of life is to decide who I'm going to be when I pass over and I go to the other side. Because this is just one little time limit here, as you're here as a physical being on this planet. That's just one little time limit. It goes on forever and ever and ever and ever. So who am I going to be when I pass over and go to the other side? And I want to be that now.

Don Estes: How Words and Waveforms Shape Reality · 41:21· listen →

Joy as a discipline, not a mood

Guests distinguish joy from happiness — happiness is circumstantial and fleeting, joy is described as a stable internal state that has to be actively cultivated through daily practice, not waited for.

And so, yes, there's nothing wrong with vacations. And there's nothing wrong with checking off boxes and all of the external things. And those will make you happy for a moment until when is that next thing? But joy, joy is eternal. Joy is constant. It is what lives within.

Joy vs Happiness: Shari Alyse on Finding Light in Pain · 10:58· listen →

Big Joy is all about realizing that we're born for joy and not for deficits. Most of the leaders, most of the souls, most of the amazing people we work with have been taught somewhere in their journey that they're going to have to perform some version of perfection that I never figured out.

Dr. Jax Black: Redefining Success Through Joy · 4:07· listen →

I'm grateful for this pillow. I look over, I'm grateful for my husband, grateful for these 3 kids, I'm grateful that I can breathe. I'm, you know, just— and every day you can shake it up or you can do it the same, but it does, it kind of like puts you on a path of saying, I can look at what is wrong or I can look at what is right.

Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well · 34:03· listen →

Can I be more resilient through joy, through the things that enlighten me and light me up and also light up other people? And that's what the whole premise is about. And you know what I found out? Because I'm a big nerd, there's facts that having more joy in your life leads you to success.

Nicole Van Valen on Joy, Spirit & Resilient Leadership · 11:12· listen →

Bigger frameworks: consciousness and the unseen

The furthest-out material on the show — psychedelics, cymatics, remote viewing, quantum framing — is included here not as decoration but because guests use it to argue the same point from a different direction: that reality responds to intention, belief, and frequency in ways conventional business thinking ignores.

The mushroom is a bit of a house cleaning mechanism that helps you to make decisions and choices to move forward. So the vessel, the human vessel, is sort of like stronger and cleaner as you move forward in decision making.

Conscious Leadership Through Psychedelic Journeys · 13:07· listen →

So for those who don't know, haven't seen the film, working with scientists, you create baselines and you do it over time and you repeat it and we have controls. So we did do that. But of course, in the film, we show the part. And so what was fascinating was when we work with the DNA, the idea, the intention was to increase the electrical conductivity.

Consciousness, Intention & Healing with Caroline Cory · 11:58· listen →

If you don't remember anything else about what I've said, remember that, that you have to watch what you say. Because if you say it just one time, uh, and whatever, it just kind of comes and goes. But if it's a mantra, something that you say over and over and over again, it sets up reality through those sine and cosine ways to make that come true. So you have to really watch exactly what you say, uh, because otherwise it will come true.

Don Estes: How Words and Waveforms Shape Reality · 13:37· listen →

The essential aspect of how sound works in reality, in nature, is that all audible sounds are spherical in their space form. So right now I'm talking and there's a bubble of sound coming out of my mouth and a little bit out of my nose as well.

Cymatics & Sound Healing: John Stuart Reid Explains · 1:38· listen →

The companion guide

Reading about spirituality in business is one thing. Changing it is another.

John’s companion guide turns what these conversations cover into something you can actually work through.

More moments worth hearing

Everything else these conversations turned up on this subject.

I believe every single human being has the beautiful power within them to transform, to come home to themselves, as I like to say. And so my role is really to provide the safety, the love, the education, and the tools that people need in order to kind of cross that bridge into self-transformation.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 2:25

Everything is a choice. Truly, everything is a choice to wake up, to say yes, to say no.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 6:12

I said, okay, well, I see the divorce and I raise you. I'm quitting the job, selling the house. I'm gonna go on this travel sabbatical and just, you know, kind of my own little Eat, Pray, Love adventure because I knew that I could handle whatever came my way.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 14:50

It's really hard for judgment and curiosity to coexist, 'cause if we can truly embody curiosity and say, huh, where does that pattern come from? Why do I think that? What am I afraid is going to happen? Then that's where we're really opening a door rather than judging something and closing a door.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 16:19

I'm not going to go into the gym on day 1 and try to lift 100 pounds off the rack. You know, I'm going to go with a 5 or 10-pound weight. And then over time, I'm going to slowly increase the amount of weight that I can lift until I get to that 100-pound weight.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 22:30

I also really love the one, worrying is like a rocking chair. It'll pass the time, but it won't get you anywhere.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 34:58

It's not the point to make something beautiful or to make something perfect. It's actually getting in touch with your physical senses and it's being playful again. And getting adults to come back to a place of play is a wonderful invitation.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 6:12

I really felt like I was tapping into extraterrestrial energy. I really felt like that there was potentially a portal or a pathway where there was energetic energy coming and going. And there's no other way that I can sit with that experience other than to just let that be the case.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 9:51

I am not my story and you are not your story either. Because with the ego and with our own self-talk, sometimes we can forget that the things that we tell each other and the things that we think about ourselves are not a set part of our identity.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 24:14

People actually fear success more than failure because you have to be visible. You have to, you know, you're there standing up for what you believe in. People are going to be looking at you. You're going to be in plain sight. And that is terrifying.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 32:17

So we have the ability to envision the future so we could say, hey, I'm gonna meet you at 2:30 and we're gonna do a podcast. Right. And we did that, you know, a couple weeks ago. So we were able to envision the future. But the side effect is then we have to worry about it.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 2:15

So in her case, she said, well, it's 100% chance I'm gonna get it. My mother and my sister both got it. And if I get it, I'm gonna die like they did.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 9:05

Here's what I say. So humans like to feel like they're in control. And so when you're in a startup business, you don't really feel like you have a whole lot of control here, right? So where our control comes from is through our choices.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 22:55

Well, that's, I was talking about this earlier, like when you have a fear reaction, it goes on. So fear was really designed to last only about 10 or 15 minutes. So like if we lived in a jungle, right? And I see a lion, ah, right? My fear reaction goes off.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 17:46

So the answer then is compartmentalization, and that's the shoeboxes. So the more compartmentalized these problems are, the less overwhelming they become. So I got this problem. That by itself is not overwhelming. And I got this problem. That by itself is not overwhelming. It's only when I let them all merge together that I get into trouble. So what I say to people that are overwhelmed, don't lump, compartmentalize, use your shoeboxes.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress · 34:04

So healing trauma is about dealing with what exists in the moment, dealing with your defense mechanisms, dealing with how it hurts right now. And when it comes to mental health and anxiety, trauma, the way that these things hurt, The pain that you feel in the moment is your unresolved trauma. That's all of these things.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer · 4:04

And trauma doesn't need to be getting kidnapped and thrown in the back of a car. It could be your parents telling you you're not good enough. It could be a partner taking advantage of you because you're too honest or something. It could be your friends making fun of your dreams and goals.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer · 15:46

So people can live— these thick-skinned people can be living with unhealthy defense mechanisms, taking their anger out on their family, walking around with stress all day, every day, not feeling and living and enjoying their lives in all sorts of ways. And it's not until something finally snaps.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer · 17:34

I think to put it different, instead of thinking about it of thick-skinned, think about it in terms of wearing armor and then ask yourself, okay, so there's someone who's really weak and can't take a punch. And there's someone who walks around town all day wearing their armor. You don't want to be either of those.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer · 24:03

The goal is to open up the pipe and let that thing finally move through us. And when it does, it can be a little bit uncomfortable in the moment. But as you start getting used to this feeling of processing your emotions, it can actually feel really good.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer · 26:42

Every episode on spirituality in business

29 conversations, oldest to newest.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban

Living safely and checking boxes for success often leads to burnout rather than fulfillment.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity

Entrepreneurs over-rely on logical, scheduled thinking and need to balance it with intuitive, embodied ways of knowing.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress

Worry, guilt, and regret are side effects of the human skill of envisioning the future, not separate flaws to be eliminated.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer

Trauma is the wound as it exists right now, not the past event, so healing means addressing current defense mechanisms rather than re-analyzing history.

Success Without Stress: Vedanta for Entrepreneurs

Stress comes not from desire itself but from losing control over desire, which turns ambition into greed or addiction.

Lindsay Mastrogiavanni: Spiritual Entrepreneurship & Mediumship

Conscious entrepreneurship means building a business grounded in your why, mission, vision, and values rather than external expectations.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur

Awareness, not the mind itself, is what moves, and entrepreneurs can train it to stay anchored in a chosen 'home' area instead of reacting to their environment.

Integrative Medicine for Entrepreneurs with Carolyn McAuliffe

Integrative medicine combines conventional evidence-based care with alternative approaches like acupuncture, massage, and nutrition, while functional medicine seeks root causes rather than just treating symptoms.

Joyspan Over Lifespan: Dr. Kerry Burnight on Aging Well

Joy is a stable, inside-out sense of well-being and satisfaction, distinct from happiness, which is circumstantial and fleeting.

Conscious Leadership: Deciding from Presence, Not Fear

Decisions made from fear and survival mindset produce competition and destruction, while decisions made from presence and abundance mindset align with purpose and values.

Dr. Jax Black: Redefining Success Through Joy

Joy, not deficits or trauma, is our natural born state, and fear of judgment or failure is taught by others rather than innate.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders

Entrepreneurs should prioritize mental and emotional profitability before financial goals, or financial success becomes unsustainable and leads to burnout.

Georges Karam: From War to Wealth to Purpose

Growing up during Lebanon's civil war built the resilience and risk tolerance that Georges credits for his entrepreneurial success.

Money Stress, Scarcity & Abundance with Scarlett Stanhope

More income doesn't resolve money stress because the problem is an unconscious, emotional relationship with money, not the amount earned.

Dr. Lynn Anderson: Proactive Aging & Naturopathic Health

Health rests on three pillars—sleep, nutrition, and movement—and it takes roughly 120 days to replace an old habit with a new one, both cellularly and mentally.

Redefining Prosperity: Money Mindset & Spirituality

Prosperity is an inside job driven by subconscious money beliefs, not just practical financial tactics like bookkeeping and budgeting.

Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets

Energy, not time or intelligence, is the entrepreneur's true currency, produced through mitochondrial ATP, regulated by the nervous system, and channeled as qi in Chinese medicine.

Sound Therapy & Cymatics for Entrepreneur Health

Cymatics is the science of making sound visible through mediums like water, sand, or powder, where pleasing sounds form organized geometric patterns and dissonant sounds create chaotic ones.

The Clarity Map: Lynn Mull on Purpose and Alignment

Career transitions away from toxic, high-pressure environments often take years and require deliberate financial and emotional planning, not a sudden leap.

Nicole Van Valen on Joy, Spirit & Resilient Leadership

Resilience doesn't have to come from grit and misery; it can be built through cultivating internal, self-sustaining joy.

Joy vs Happiness: Shari Alyse on Finding Light in Pain

Joy is an internal, constant state distinct from happiness, which is external and fleeting.

Cymatics & Sound Healing: John Stuart Reid Explains

Sound is not actually a wave but a spherical, pulsating bubble of energy, and cymatics makes this energy visible by imprinting it onto membranes like water.

Anthony DeNino: SMART Mindset for Entrepreneurs

Success follows a four-step SMART process: mindset, emotion, confident speech, and action.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf

The body is an effect of the mind and spirit, so entrepreneurs should prioritize source and spirit first for real effectiveness.

Conscious Leadership Through Psychedelic Journeys

Psilocybin mushroom journeys can act as a 'house cleaning mechanism' that releases habitual patterns and unresolved grief, trauma, or depression.

Consciousness, Intention & Healing with Caroline Cory

Controlled experiments filmed for Superhuman showed human intention measurably changing DNA electrical conductivity and the pH of water.

Teresa Wornstaff: Using Intuition to Grow Your Business

True success should not be measured by money, which is an outcome rather than the goal itself.

Don Estes: How Words and Waveforms Shape Reality

Waveforms have three components—frequency, phase, and amplitude—and phase, which is usually ignored in sound therapy, actually determines the shape and geometry of a wave.

Introducing The Total Entrepreneur: Mind, Body, Spirit

Entrepreneurial stress and disconnection are more intense today, making mind-body-spirit balance more critical than ever.