This episode explores entrepreneurship as a spiritual path and the role of inner guidance in building a business. Sara Avant Stover joins Rob Dube to discuss how spiritual practice, Internal Family Systems (IFS), embodiment, and practical business skills can work together. The conversation is especially relevant for women entrepreneurs seeking a more integrated approach to leadership, decision-making, and personal growth.
In this episode, we explore:
- What it means to approach entrepreneurship as a spiritual practice
- How perfectionism and overachievement can disconnect us from inner wisdom
- The role of Internal Family Systems (IFS) in navigating fear and business growth
- Daily practices that support grounded leadership, resilience, and decision-making
- Integrating money, prosperity, and business through a spiritual perspective
Key takeaways
- Entrepreneurship can become a path of personal and spiritual development when guided from within.
- Sustainable business growth requires both practical business skills and ongoing inner work.
- Fear, self-doubt, and perfectionism are parts of us that can be understood rather than fought against.
- Consistent daily practices help reconnect with inner guidance amid the demands of business.
- Creating healthy financial structures supports both nervous system regulation and long-term business stability.
Resources mentioned
- Order Sara’s book: Handbook for the Heartbroken
- Rob Dube’s website
- Join the free training for spiritually mature women in business here.
- Subscribe to elle-même, Sara’s Substack
Episode FAQs
What does spiritual entrepreneurship mean?
In this conversation, spiritual entrepreneurship refers to approaching business as an expression of one’s deeper purpose. Rather than separating spirituality and business, the two are viewed as interconnected, with business becoming one way to serve others while continuing one’s own personal and spiritual development.
How does Internal Family Systems (IFS) relate to entrepreneurship?
Sara explains that IFS helps entrepreneurs recognize and work with the different parts of themselves that may experience fear, self-doubt, perfectionism, or overwhelm. By developing a relationship with these parts rather than identifying with them, entrepreneurs can make decisions from a more grounded place.
Why are daily practices important for entrepreneurs?
Sara describes her morning routine of meditation, yoga, reflective reading, and journaling as a foundation for her work. These practices help her reconnect with inner guidance before entering the demands of the day.
How does this perspective approach money?
The conversation presents money as something that benefits from both practical stewardship and a healthy internal relationship. Financial systems such as saving, budgeting, and planning are discussed alongside examining beliefs about abundance, worthiness, and prosperity.
Why does Sara describe entrepreneurship as a path of personal development?
Throughout the conversation, entrepreneurship is described as continually revealing areas for growth. Business challenges often bring underlying fears, patterns, and beliefs to the surface, creating opportunities for greater self-awareness and inner development.
Read the Full Transcript
At the beginning of this year, I led my first retreat for spiritual women entrepreneurs at Drala Mountain Center in Colorado. Following that retreat, I was invited by Rob Dube to join him on his podcast to discuss the emerging archetype of the spiritual entrepreneur.
In this conversation, we explore embodiment practices, my key mentors, my morning routine, books that have influenced my understanding of prosperity, Internal Family Systems (IFS), redefining overachievement, entrepreneurship as a spiritual practice, and the way I teach women entrepreneurs to relate to money.
Rob Dube: Sarah, welcome. I appreciate you joining me.
Sara Avant Stover: Thank you for having me.
Rob: I’d like to begin with a quote:
“Turns out the very achievement-driven perfectionism that had defined me for years had also muffled the voice of inner wisdom I needed most to guide me through my most difficult challenges and biggest opportunities for growth.”
Can you expand on that?
Sara: One of the central messages of my work has always been to listen to the still, small voice inside. Over time I realized there was so much conditioning layered over that inner knowing. Much of it came from my upbringing and from our culture. Eventually I reached a point where I saw that living from those external expectations was harming me.
The work became peeling back those layers so I could hear my own truth. Throughout adulthood, every season has invited me into deeper levels of that process.
Rob: You were entrepreneurial from a young age. Where did that come from?
Sara: I don’t have entrepreneurial role models in my family, but from childhood I was always creating businesses—selling candy, T-shirts, jewelry boxes, and other things. After college I taught in Thailand for a year and then began working for myself. I’ve always loved the freedom and creativity that entrepreneurship provides.
I also love the intersection of business, money, and spirituality because I believe they naturally belong together. Much of the suffering we experience comes from separating those areas instead of seeing them as part of the same whole.
Rob: Early in your twenties you experienced a significant health challenge.
Sara: While preparing to join the Peace Corps, I was diagnosed with advanced cervical dysplasia and early-stage cervical cancer. My plans changed completely.
Soon afterward, an opportunity arose to teach in Thailand. Thailand’s healthcare system allowed me to receive regular treatment, and I also worked with a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Within a year I had healed.
More importantly, that experience showed me how much I had been pushing myself. I had been living through trauma-driven achievement, struggling with anorexia and bulimia, and constantly overextending myself. The diagnosis became a wake-up call and eventually led me toward Buddhism, yoga, and the path that shaped my work today.
Sara describes remaining in Thailand for nine years, where she completed her yoga teacher training, built her writing career, and eventually returned to the United States with years of teaching experience that became the basis for her first book.
She also reflects on extensive travel throughout Asia and Europe, explaining that exposure to different cultures broadened her perspective and made her more adaptable.
Discussing dance, Sara shares that ballet was one of her earliest forms of expression. While discipline became one of her strengths, the competitive aspects of ballet also intensified her eating disorders. Eventually she shifted toward yoga and later rediscovered dance through more expressive movement classes, which now serve as joyful embodiment practices and a way to step away from the demands of work.
Sara explains that her online business grew during the early expansion of yoga education. After returning to the United States, an early mentor introduced her to online business tools, including email marketing, online courses, and digital programs. Combined with years of writing for magazines, this foundation supported her publishing career and ongoing teaching.
She also names Sarah Powers as an influential mentor whose integration of yoga, meditation, and Internal Family Systems deeply shaped her work, along with Hiro Boga’s influence on soulful entrepreneurship.
Rob: What does it mean to allow the soul to guide entrepreneurship?
Sara: A spiritual entrepreneur sees business as part of the spiritual path. Looking back to ancient traditions, business and spirituality were never separate.
Listening to our inner guidance becomes essential because that guidance reveals our deepest purpose. Ancient Greek philosophy described this as telos—our ultimate aim. The practical skills of building a business are important, but they are meant to flow from that deeper source.
The conversation turns to prosperity and money.
Sara explains that she views the source of prosperity as the Divine. Rather than believing abundance comes only from external circumstances, she emphasizes strengthening one’s relationship with inner truth while also developing practical business skills.
Giving and receiving become part of the same ongoing cycle.
Sara describes her morning practice as the foundation of her work.
Each day begins with meditation and yoga, followed by reading from books on prosperity and wealth consciousness, including works by Florence Scovel Shinn, The Abundance Book, Think and Grow Rich, and The Science of Getting Rich.
She then journals as though in conversation with the Divine, asking what is needed for that day before beginning work.
Discussing her work with women entrepreneurs, Sara explains that serving women was not a strategic decision but one that emerged naturally throughout her career.
Sara introduces Internal Family Systems (IFS), describing it as an evidence-based therapeutic model that recognizes we all contain different inner parts while also possessing an essential Self that cannot be damaged.
Much of the work involves helping entrepreneurs recognize fearful or doubtful parts rather than identifying with them. When those parts are acknowledged and supported, more of the essential Self is able to lead.
She explains that in her year-long mastermind this often involves working with fears around visibility, judgment, overwhelm, and self-doubt while continuing to build businesses.
When discussing overachievement, Sara explains that she still possesses ambition, but the motivation has changed.
Rather than being driven by external expectations, her work is guided by a desire to fulfill her deeper purpose. She emphasizes creating healthy rhythms through daily practices, regular rest, and awareness of the parts that tend toward overwork.
She also contrasts creating from inspiration with creating from competition, referencing ideas from Think and Grow Rich.
The conversation returns to money.
Sara explains that desire itself is not something to reject. Authentic desires can point toward what the soul intends to experience and create.
She also teaches practical financial management, including saving, investing, and using the Profit First system by Mike Michalowicz to allocate business income intentionally across operating expenses, owner compensation, taxes, and profit.
Having financial reserves creates stability, reduces nervous system stress, and supports healthier decision-making.
Sara also encourages developing a healthier relationship with money itself by seeing it as a form of energy that flows rather than something to fear or control.
Sara discusses her book Handbook for the Heartbroken, which grew from a series of personal heartbreaks between 2016 and 2020 involving relationships, health, finances, identity, and career.
She explains that heartbreak extends beyond loss through death or separation. Entrepreneurs can also experience heartbreak through business struggles, financial setbacks, and changing identities.
Although her foundational practices remained consistent during that period, they continued evolving as new teachers and experiences entered her life.
Discussing retreats for women entrepreneurs, Sara explains that many business owners lack spaces where they can honestly discuss personal and professional struggles.
Her intention is to create environments where women can strengthen their inner resources through nervous system regulation, wealth consciousness, emotional resilience, and deeper connection with inner guidance.
As the conversation concludes, Sara reflects that this is an important time for spiritual entrepreneurship.
She believes entrepreneurship offers a profound path of personal development because it continually reveals opportunities for growth. Business repeatedly brings people to their edges, inviting them to listen more deeply, clarify what truly matters, and continue aligning their work with their deeper purpose.
