In this episode, Sara introduces the idea of the “Sorceress CEO” and explores how business can become a feminine spiritual practice. She reflects on a more intuitive, service-oriented approach to leadership that integrates spirituality with the practical responsibilities of running a business. Through personal stories and teaching, she offers a perspective on entrepreneurship that values devotion, stewardship, and wholehearted presence.
In this episode, we explore:
- What it means to embody the role of the Sorceress CEO.
- Why business can be understood as a spiritual practice rooted in service.
- The relationship between intuition, leadership, and sacred stewardship.
- A formative teaching from Sara’s mentor, Sophia Diaz, about practicing love in difficult moments.
- How approaching business with devotion can reshape the experience of entrepreneurship.
Key takeaways
- Business can serve as a meaningful expression of spiritual practice when grounded in service and integrity.
- Leadership includes both practical business skills and devotion to a larger purpose.
- Intuition and inner alignment can guide business decisions alongside strategy.
- Challenging moments provide opportunities to practice presence, compassion, and love.
- Viewing business as a vehicle for contribution reframes everyday responsibilities with greater meaning.
Resources mentioned
- Join the free training for spiritually mature women in business here.
- Subscribe to elle-même, Sara’s Substack
Episode FAQs
What is a Sorceress CEO?
Sara describes the Sorceress CEO as someone who combines practical business leadership with spiritual devotion, intuition, and service. She views this role as both a responsibility and a privilege, grounded in stewardship rather than control.
What does it mean to practice business as a feminine spiritual practice?
In this episode, business is presented as an extension of spiritual life rather than something separate from it. Everyday business activities—from financial management to leadership—can become expressions of service and devotion when approached intentionally.
Why does Sara emphasize being “in love”?
Drawing on a teaching from her mentor, Sara uses the question “Are you in love?” as an invitation to reconnect with the heart, especially during difficult moments. Rather than referring to romantic love, she describes it as an inner orientation of openness, presence, and connection.
How does intuition fit into leadership?
Sara encourages leading from intuition while also developing practical business skills. She presents intuition as a way of staying connected to inner guidance alongside the responsibilities of being a CEO.
Why does Sara describe business as sacred?
She explains that business can be a vehicle for creativity, service, and contribution. When rooted in values and genuine care for others, entrepreneurship becomes one way of expressing a deeper spiritual calling.
Read the Full Transcript
To start, I want to define Sorceress CEO for you.
I love blending two seemingly contradictory words or ideas together. Even the title of this episode, Business as Feminine Spiritual Practice, does this. We don’t usually equate business with feminine spiritual practice. We don’t usually combine sorceress with CEO.
Blending contradictory ideas helps us break out of rigid thinking, step outside conventional boxes, and spark new insights and connections. In turn, it helps us forge new ways of being and new identities, which is exactly what these times are calling for. They are calling for reinvention and innovation.
When I first started my business over twenty years ago, I was one of only a handful of women I knew who worked exclusively with women, supporting them through women’s spirituality. People often looked at me strangely when I explained what I did because they couldn’t imagine that it could even be a profession.
For me, though, this focus has always been clear. It has always been where my passion and interest live.
Today it would be nearly impossible to count how many women are in business serving other women. Many of you listening are likely among them. This is a beautiful development.
There has been a tremendous rise in women-owned businesses. Many of us have also been shaped by more masculine models of business and by patriarchal culture in general. We all carry an inner patriarch regardless of gender.
In business, this often appears as constant hustle, operating as though every season is summer. It can show up through marketing approaches that feel inauthentic, competition, cancel culture, and scarcity.
The idea of the Sorceress CEO invites a different possibility.
It invites us, as women business owners, healers, creatives, and leaders, to root ourselves in the sacred first. It reminds us that the source of abundance comes from within rather than from something outside ourselves that must be forced or controlled.
We are connected to the rhythms of our bodies, the rhythms of the earth, and the rhythms of the cosmos. We are deeply connected to our intuition, and we lead from that place.
Our primary motivation is service because serving is one of the highest expressions of the human soul. We are here to create and to serve. We are vessels for the divine, and for those of us who own businesses, our business becomes the vehicle through which we express that service.
Business can therefore become a force for good. It becomes a creative act and an expression of our deepest values and vision for a more whole and thriving world.
This is business as a feminine spiritual practice.
The role of CEO then becomes something we wear like a crown because we recognize both the responsibility and the privilege of leading a business. Many of our female ancestors did not have this opportunity.
As CEOs, we commit ourselves to becoming skilled stewards of our businesses. Most of us never earned MBAs. We learn these skills because stewardship matters.
In the eyes of the sacred, there is no difference between seated meditation, practicing yoga, reviewing financial spreadsheets, or creating systems that allow us to delegate work. The exchange of money is no less sacred than the exchange of a gift when it is rooted in the heart and in service.
A Sorceress CEO is, in many ways, a priestess and a queen within the realm of business. She is the self-led steward of sacred business, uplifting herself, her family, her community, and the wider world while also growing into her fullest potential.
About twenty years ago, I attended a retreat with my teacher in feminine spiritual practice, Sophia Diaz, at Mount Madonna Center outside Santa Cruz, California.
Each morning we gathered before sunrise for practice. One exercise in particular has stayed with me ever since.
Sophia guided us into a deep wall squat. Our backs pressed against the wall, our knees bent, and we remained in the posture far longer than felt comfortable.
As our legs burned and our minds wanted to escape, she invited us into the heart of feminine spiritual practice.
She encouraged us to soften into a smile, radiate love through our entire bodies, and notice even the smallest place that still felt good. She often joked that if nothing else felt comfortable, our earlobes always did.
She reminded us that the feeling of light is love and that our spiritual nature is to radiate that love through every breath and every action.
Although the posture felt endless, I made it through. More than twenty years later, I still remember that experience clearly.
Whenever I face a difficult moment in my business—whether someone unexpectedly leaves my team, I navigate a challenging interaction with a student, or I encounter a technical problem—I remember that posture.
I remember that I can choose to radiate love and light even in difficult situations.
One of Sophia’s core teachings was this:
“The difference between doing yoga and dragging your body around like a cantankerous dog on a leash is the answer to the question, ‘Are you in love?'”
So I ask you:
Are you in love?
Notice what happens inside you when you hear that question.
Perhaps your heart softens. Perhaps you reconnect with your breath or simply return to your body.
If your answer is not yet yes, what would need to shift?
Usually it is something subtle rather than dramatic.
Business is not simply a transactional process. It can become a central part of our spiritual practice.
If you own a business, it likely occupies much of your waking life. Rather than separating it from your spiritual life, allow it to become part of it.
Throughout history, thriving civilizations have also had thriving commerce. Where healthy exchange exists, creativity, art, health, and flourishing tend to follow.
You are part of that exchange.
The function of the soul is to serve.
You are here to be a conduit for the sacred.
If you are listening today, there is likely a reason you chose entrepreneurship despite its challenges. Alongside its risks come profound opportunities.
This work may be a central part of your soul’s calling.
So I leave you again with the question:
Are you in love?
Can you bring that orientation into your business, even when things are difficult, when you feel uncertain, when you want to quit, or when you question yourself?
This is the primary disposition of the Sorceress CEO.
This is where we begin.
Between now and the next episode, I invite you to try a shorter version of the qi-generation practice.
Stand with your feet hip-width apart on a stable surface. Bend your knees so they track over your second toes while lengthening your spine upward.
Bring your arms in front of you as though gently holding a large tree. Close your lips and rest the tip of your tongue behind your upper front teeth.
Set a timer for three minutes.
Remain in the posture without fidgeting or coming out early. Simply observe what arises. Practice being in love. Notice what still feels good.
When the timer ends, slowly come out of the pose.
Observe everything that arose during the practice with compassion, and notice where similar patterns appear in your life, especially in your business.
As you move through your work this week, pause from time to time and simply ask yourself:
Am I in love?
You might even write the question on a note where you’ll see it throughout your day.
