Why Soulpreneurs Struggle to Make a Living (...and What Actually Works)

You’re talented. You’re passionate. You care deeply about the people you serve. Yet, if somehow the income isn’t flowing, this blog post is for you. You’re not alone. Many soulpreneurs are facing this struggle.

The challenges aren’t merely personal… they’re systemic, cultural, and economic. To navigate them wisely, we must understand and accept these forces. Then we can explore what actually works.

Part 1: Why It’s So Hard

As a soulpreneur, the work you wish to charge for, was free for thousands of years. For most of humanity, services like coaching, mentoring, healing, and spiritual guidance happened naturally within communities. Someone struggling would turn to an elder, a wise friend, a village healer. No one expected to pay.

It’s only very recently in our societal evolution that charging for this kind of support is getting normalized. This means you’re not just selling a service — you’re also working to shift a cultural paradigm that runs deep. There’s an unconscious resistance from potential clients that’s generational.

You’re competing in an ocean of other helpers. Unlike fields with clear licensing requirements, almost anyone can become a coach or healer. In fact, there are silly programs that “certify” all kinds of coaches for under $100 and barely any work is needed! So there are people constantly entering this industry. And they’re not just anyone: they tend to be passionate people and more likely to do whatever is necessary to spread the word about their services. So, the supply of providers keeps growing.

Your services compete with everything else money can buy. When someone considers, for example, a $2,000 coaching package, they’re unconsciously weighing it against rent, a family vacation, their child’s college fund, or simply saving for emergencies. Your transformation has to feel more valuable than all those tangible, culturally-normalized purchases.

And you’re up against industries that have had generations to establish themselves as “necessary expenses” while your work still feels like a luxury to most people…

AI is now offering (some of) what you offer — for free. This is perhaps the newest and most disruptive force. AI chatbots now provide coaching conversations (and within a few years, video coaching and therapy) that are free, available 24/7, private, infinitely patient, and very knowledgeable-sounding!

From a potential client’s perspective, it makes the case for hiring a fallible, expensive human with limited availability genuinely harder to make…

The clients who can afford you are rare. Your ideal client needs two things that rarely occur together: enough disposable income AND genuine willingness to do difficult inner work. That’s already a tiny group.

Within this small pool, money tends to flow toward established figures with premium brands and professional marketing, while soulpreneurs with homemade websites struggle to project the same credibility.

We haven’t yet discovered the magic fit. Most of us soulpreneurs haven’t yet done enough volume of service delivery to discover our authentic client “fit” — that particular segment of people who get the most value from what we offer. This process involves working with many different types of clients, and doing different things for and with them, before we find the best fit. This helps us discover the ideal intersection between what we love to do and what the world loves to receive from us.

Finally, sometimes the skill just isn’t there yet… This point is very difficult for most of us to acknowledge, myself included. If your clients aren’t spreading the word enthusiastically, it often means the service isn’t yet creating the dramatic results that inspire them to naturally want to share about it. Sometimes, your clients haven’t yet been educated by you to understand the process enough to appreciate it. But let’s not look at this as failure — let’s see it as information. We need to be humble and acknowledge to ourselves that we still need a lot of practice, and be willing to offer clients a rate they can easily say yes to. With real-world practice, we will get more skillful, and we’ll know because our clients will start to spread the word without us having to even ask them to.

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Part 2: The Path Forward

Given all this, what do we do?

We stop fighting forces we can’t control.

We let go of the “scale at all costs” narrative.

Instead, we choose a different path — one that’s more aligned with how authentic business actually happens.

Choose depth over breadth. Instead of chasing a huge, anonymous audience, consciously choose to go deep with the people you can easily reach. This isn’t settling. It’s choosing focus vs diffusion, real relationships over marketing funnels.

Listen to your market like your business depends on it. The most powerful marketing insight you can gain is this: Find out what your potential clients have already paid for in your area of expertise… but were disappointed by.

When you identify that gap — where willingness to spend meets inadequate solutions — you can then create an offer so aligned that it requires minimal marketing. You just have to mention it clearly, and people say yes.

How do you find this? Have real conversations. Ask: “What have you already invested in for [the area I serve]? What were you hoping would happen? What actually happened?” Their answers become your roadmap. For more, dive into Authentic Market Discovery.

Make your service so good that clients can’t help but talk about it. This is the fundamental solution to any marketing problem. When your service genuinely transforms people’s lives, they become part of your volunteer marketing team.

Getting there requires deliberate practice — not just doing more sessions, but intentionally focusing on specific skills you want to improve. Record your sessions (with permission). Notice patterns. Ask for honest feedback. Experiment with different approaches.

One powerful method: partner with other soulpreneurs for practice exchanges where you genuinely critique each other’s work. The improvement can be dramatic, but you have to be open to that kind of feedback.

Connect with others doing this work. Most competitors isolate themselves. You can choose differently.

When you gather with other authentic soulpreneurs to transparently share what’s working and what isn’t, everyone gets smarter faster. This isn’t transactional networking — it’s what I call “netcaring.” It’s bringing genuine care and curiosity to how we support each other’s growth. Read more: The Collab Spiral (5 Levels of Netcaring).

It’s more effective than working alone, and more fulfilling! And it serves the deeper purpose of learning to genuinely love and support one another, while building our businesses.

An Invitation

This conversation affects all of us. If you’re a soulpreneur, these business challenges affect you, every colleague you admire, and every friend struggling with the same challenges.

We’re all navigating this together, and we can create healthier markets by pooling our wisdom.

So I invite you to share in the comments: What’s your biggest struggle right now in building your practice? Or, what’s one thing that’s actually working for you?

There are no wrong answers here. Let’s figure this out together.

By shifting our focus from chasing scale to serving deeply, we can build the sustainable businesses that nourish our souls — and that the world genuinely needs. 🙏🏼💛