A Hive member asked on a call, “But where do I even start?!” regarding ‘a business.’
I cheekily replied, “Start where you are.”
Post-call, I realized there is no better group than The Hive members to illuminate the infinite ways this idea can materialize.
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Post-public excommunication from fundamentalist Christianity in 2018, I went seeking for answers, which led me down the path of healing my relationship with the Earth, my ancestors, & the Creator.
A teacher (who's now a dear friend) appeared - a woman practicing hands-on healing, locally, also of Filipino descent.
This felt rare, so I followed my curiosity into her practice, where I invested an entire year to learning & practicing my spiritual gifts.
Realized that I could speak to spirits and fell in LOVE with the magic of it all, so I opened up my own practice!
I started by sharing my excommunication story online via Instagram & YouTube, and pitched my story to any podcast / publication that would hear it. (def processing lots of pain here)
I knew I needed to get out of the realm of doing my own "thing" (aka doing random side quests, being all over the place, and not treating my work like a business) so I made that commitment by filing for an LLC in 2023.
Somewhere along the way, I thought it was a good idea to try working as a hands-on healing practitioner in-person for a massage / healing space. It worked until it didn't, so I left to recommit to my own vision.
Since then, I've sold vintage clothes, herbal smokes, flower essences, & sessions. Entrepreneurship is a winding road that always leads back home to what I love.
My role & practice continue to shape-shift with me and I'm starting to see how all of my renegade projects are coalescing after 6 years in private practice and 3+ years in (multiple) businesses.
Tbh I still feel like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall. 🥲
– SAMANTHA NACMAN | CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR
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The thought “I want my own business” had been with me since I was 16 years old or so. But I truly fell into daring to do it when I was 31, back in 2019.
I had a burnout after a wild dramatic year, moved into a new rental that was rather large and felt like mine for the very first time. Got out of my next unhealthy romantic relationship. And To end the drama of that year, I got fired from my fulltime job.
They said I was to nice. To show them how nice I truly was, I hired a lawyer and got a rather large sum of money (you legally can’t fire somebody in our country without a lot of backup) to get out of there and a back up fund for half a year from our government.
So my only thought was “If I don’t try this having my own business now, I never ever will”. And making money and work must be more than these soul sucking 9-5 jobs I have tried. And I tried a lot.
While on the fulltime job my previous employer sold her company and sort of sold me with it as ‘the girl who does the marketing and design things’. So I helped the two guys running that company, while I was employed. I figured I could call them up and see if they would like me to do even more work as a freelancer. I was terrified. They were super happy I had more time for them now. I charged very little per hour but I had money coming in and time to lay on the floor and heal (cry endlessly 😉) in between.
Word spread among my old employer and businesses they worked with and so my little client base grew. Some of them are still my clients now. Pretty much all my work came and still comes in out of my network. And I do not network consciously but my 4/6 line might have something to do with it.
I still don’t feel like I am running ‘a real business’ for I don’t do a whole lot to make it grow. Or use strategies or even plan or promote myself. I think it could be much bigger and better and stronger. And I officially have a business degree and helped companies grow. So I know what the shoulds are. Just never wanted to do them.
But this business has supported me for the last 7 years. With a little buffer to begin with, enough to take the plunge. And like Pilar said, with no intention of taking a step back. I Guess I also started from where I was, step by step. The things I do changed from communication stuff to mostly photography.
And now, living with my love who supports a lot of our daily costs (for it made him nervous that I did not have any savings). I now do have savings and a little system that transfers the money that comes in to the right places. And with all of that… my business will support me going on maternity leave next month for four months.
Guess I have more of a real business then I always give myself or her credit for 🥹 💕
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My business was born when I decided to “burn my dreams” in a ritual on Samhain 2022* I decided to devote a whole year to beauty and pleasure with no goals. I made an Instagram account called decafbubble as a visual journal of my aesthetic pleasures. At the end of that year, the idea for my first course, Cocoon fell into my lap one night as I was falling asleep. Every detail was given to me, including the venue. I decided to email the venue, and resolved that if they replied I would take it as a sign and do it. I was TERRIFIED! But alas they did respond, and so I kept taking each step as it was presented to me, drawn forwards by a sensation/feeling of the vision.
I held a free taster event which 12 women came to and it was a total flop, nobody signed up for the course, I felt like I failed completely. But I sold 2 zines, and I decided that first £5 made meant that I was “in business”.
The day before the first session, I had one person signed up, but I held the vision with a lot of delulu energy. 2 more joined just hours before. Then over the following weeks, more women came and by the final week the exact feeling I had envisioned in the group was there. (Since then over 30 women have taken Cocoon 🥲 I love remembering the scrappy origins)
– ABI GLASSER | ARTIST, PERFORMER, FACILITATOR, & FOUNDER OF THE DECAF BUBBLE
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My business didn’t really start until I experienced a huge life changing death.
But I had to begin walking the path many years before that…
So I’ll begin here- When my husband proposed, I felt the huge imminent timeline jump that it would bring. I decided I wanted to enter into this new chapter intentionally.
I had been working in a corporate health care job that I despised. But it had the best health insurance money could buy- and I was on a $5000/month shot for my auto immune disease at the time. Doctors told me, I would be on it for the rest of my life.
I felt paralyzed, and helpless- stuck in a reality I did not want to be in.
So when my husband’s invitation came; I took the leap.
I quit the job, I stopped the shots- I got off all medication and lost health insurance.
Without my weekly paychecks, I turned to my side hustle- teaching yoga, guiding creative seasonal workshops, and trying (but failing) to get more 1:1 sessions.
This was all in person at the time, and it was hard on me. I’m a homebody.
And I was barely getting by financially.
So, my beloved mom who believed in me so much, paid for me to take a few trainings in the things I actually wanted to do, and was trying to help me make a business plan.
In 2020 everything, obviously- changed.
All my yoga classes were cancelled or went online.
I was home all the time and loved it, but I had very little money coming in.
My mom, again- loving stepped in to help me out.
But in October of that year- she suddenly; died.
She had always been the biggest supporter of my work.
So after a few months, on the solstice December 2020 specifically- I decided to follow the threads of who I once was back to my practice, and I invited others to sit with me in the ritual. It was my biggest class ever, even my big brother was there.
It takes a lot of courage and chutzpah, no matter when one starts- but eventually we just have to stop putzing around “what to do with our business” and just build it.
Or at least that’s what my mom would say.
Begin where you are, is the way.
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In true 3/5 fashion, I took the “traditional” corporate path to try and fulfill expectations (💀), but could never evade bumping into my passion for artistic, entrepreneurial side quests. So, I taught myself design, among other skills, and without my doing much—if anything at all—about it, invitations came here and there.
After falling sick from stress, of living a life that was slowly killing me, I quit my job (with the support of my parents) and faced the not-always-pretty journey of entrepreneurship. The first 5 years were a rollercoaster of trying things out, failing, burning out, collapsing, depression, recovering, tons of healing, and trying again.
At the end of 2024, during the ALTER immersion, I finally realized what I wanted to build. I also realized that my work could take many forms, as long as the foundations were there. And they were. So I closed the doors that weren’t aligned, and at the beginning of 2025, I went all in.
It took me a couple of months to put my first service together and offer it. And half a year for the first person to knock on my door.
Quoting Pilar, terrified, unwilling to go backward, barely confident I had something to offer to the world, and second-guessing what I was doing most of the time.
Yet, here I am.
– SARA MENDOZA | BRAND & WEB DESIGN ALCHEMIST
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I have been a feverish journal keeper, documentarian of my own life, I used to save everything as a young teen - movie tickets, airplanes tickets, physical calendars that I had scribbled in what was going on in my life week to month basis. I started a YouTube channel in 2011 and then another one in 2013. I have always loved to self express. I did this through my blog on xanga and then a fashion and lifestyle blog in my 20s.
I grew up in a house and born into a family that did not care about my creative and self expressive pursuits so I decided to become a doctor, in many ways I didn’t have another option until I got into college, my world expanded.
After “quitting” the path of a traditional job after my first “big girl” job at age of 23. All I wanted for myself was to work from home and call the shots on my time. I managed to create a biz as a “life coach” and coach, which I struggled through, to be honest.
When I had my daughter in winter of 2022, everything died including that biz, my creative and self expression. I was in purgatory, surviving and fully in devotion to my daughter and what life was asking me to be - mother.
I found my way to Pilar on the last of December 2024, and I quietly devoured everything in the hive, and something in me started to wake up. I also crossed a threshold of stopping breastfeeding. I felt space in my body for the first time in 2 years. I could look up and see myself again, and then another round of purgatory season came and something me was yearning to be in connection to my creativity like I was as a teenager just blogging about my life and taking pictures of my outfits, foods and all the things.
To honor that yearning I went back to basics, what felt accessible to me now as a mom: a podcast. One where I share stories of my life, that I could whenever I had time. So after its conception, 9 months later this spring I launched the podcast, Meet Me at the River. I took what I was doing in my life all the time and I started to just talk.
My creativity was there, ready for me. I engaged it. Then, came Story Circle in May. Now I have facilitated 4 rounds of Story Circle.
This time around I didn’t try to have a biz, I just wanted to be creative and self expressive - two things that I have loved doing. And in that somehow a biz has been born, that I’m now tending. Terrified, scared on the playground though engaging it. Letting the creativity build the biz.
– SHIKHA
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* Post-cataclysmic familial event that left me pressured (full of other people’s energies) to ‘do something with my life.’ I (absolutely terrified) hung ‘Astrology Reading’ fliers in one spot in my town that gave zero information about me or the reading. No one emailed.
* A few people knew about my one feeble step; one of those was Kara. With unwavering belief in me, she urged me to post in a manifestation Facebook group where hundreds of women were looking for Human Design readings.
* I was off to the races with readings and, once again, absolutely terrified, began the great work of an email list. I instantly fell in love. Mainly because I went into them completely naive about niching and wrote about whatever I damn well pleased.
And so the story goes.
Where was I?
Terrified. Unwilling to go backward. Semi-confident in my ability to give a reading. A tremendously unskillful energy worker. Desperately wanting to share my inexhaustible supply of contemplations with anyone who was willing to listen.
– PL
