When Agita Bergmane moved from Latvia to the United States, she had ambition, momentum, and a clear path ahead of her.
Then life happened. Marriage, kids, a few years at home, and a quiet but persistent feeling that something was deeply missing.
She looked successful from the outside. Traveled frequently. Lived in Amsterdam, London, and New York. But internally? Stuck.
The thing that changed everything wasn’t a marketing strategy. It was twelve weeks with a coach.
That experience unlocked something that eventually became the foundation of her business. And the lesson she keeps returning to is the same one her own clients experience repeatedly, which is the same one most founders learn only after years of grinding in the wrong direction.
Nothing on the outside changes until something on the inside does first.
The Trap Most Founders Walk Straight Into
There’s a very specific moment that happens in nearly every service-based business. It usually occurs sometime after the initial excitement fades and the real work begins.
You stop asking, “How can I help?” and start asking, “How do I make money?”
It’s understandable. You have bills. You have goals. You have metrics you’re supposed to hit. And somewhere in that transition, the business starts to feel heavier. Harder. The work that once felt like a calling starts to feel like a transaction.
Agita describes this shift as the moment she lost her original why. She had started her coaching practice out of genuine personal experience. She had lived through the transformation she wanted to help others find. But as the business grew, the focus quietly moved to revenue.
The tension she felt wasn’t just psychological. It showed up in her energy, her client interactions, and her results.
The moment she consciously shifted back from money to mission, from lack to service, everything changed.
The Belief Underneath the Problem
This isn’t just Agita’s story. It’s one of the most common patterns running underneath the surface of women-founded businesses.
Christine Hakkola hears it constantly in her work with female founders: the unconscious belief that doing work you love and earning what you need to live cannot coexist. That you have to choose between passion and profit. That building a values-aligned business means accepting a smaller income.
It’s a false choice. But the belief itself is real, and it has a real cost.
When you carry that belief, it shows up in your pricing, your sales conversations, your willingness to market yourself, and your capacity to say no to the wrong clients. It limits what you build before you’ve even fully started.
The work of clearing that belief, truly clearing it, not just intellectually agreeing that it’s false, is exactly the kind of inner work Agita facilitates with her one-on-one clients.
Why Inner Work Is a Business Strategy
This might sound like soft territory. It isn’t.
Agita has been coaching for 4.5 years. She watches the pattern repeatedly. When a client shifts a core internal belief, the results show up in their external experience sometimes within weeks.
“The moment they shift their beliefs, they see results instantly.”
This is not a motivational claim. It’s an observable pattern rooted in how belief systems shape behavior, decision-making, risk tolerance, and the energy we bring to every client interaction.
The business owner who believes she deserves what she charges shows up differently in a sales conversation than the one who is secretly apologizing for her rates. The founder who trusts that genuine service creates abundance operates with a different posture than the one who is quietly scrambling for clients out of fear.
The internal state drives the external result. Not the other way around.
What This Means for Scaling
Here’s where this conversation gets practically useful, especially for founders who are trying to grow.
Scaling is not one thing. It is not a specific revenue number, a team size, or a particular offer structure. It is a massive umbrella, and it can and should look different for every business.
Agita explored group coaching. She tried it, thought seriously about it, and ultimately returned to one-on-one work — not because it was the safer option, but because it was the aligned one. Her work is deep. It’s personal. It operates at the level of the subconscious, and the modalities she uses (including hypnosis) require a level of individual attention that cannot be replicated in a group format.
That decision was a values-aligned business strategy. Not a retreat.
For her, sustainable growth means expanding in ways that don’t compromise the quality of her client results. That might eventually include group meditations or collective consciousness work because she genuinely believes in the power of community to amplify inner transformation. But it won’t look like generic scaling advice, and it shouldn’t.
The question isn’t “How do I grow?” The question is “How do I grow in a way that stays true to why I started?”
The Sales Problem Nobody Talks About Honestly
Selling intangible services is hard. This is a real thing and it deserves a real answer.
Agita is direct about this. You cannot hand someone a box. You cannot guarantee a specific outcome. What you can offer is a clear transformation pathway and the certainty that their life will improve. Not in a scripted way, but in the way that inner work always moves people toward a better version of themselves.
The stages of readiness are real. Some people come to this work from rock bottom, something has broken down badly enough that they’re willing to try anything. Others come proactively, after noticing the same negative pattern cycling through their life over and over again.
The good news for coaches and service providers is that you do not need to force people across the readiness threshold. What you can do is show up consistently, share genuinely useful insight, build real trust, and be the obvious choice when the moment of readiness arrives.
Selling becomes service when you stay focused on your mission. When you are reliably useful to the people you most want to help, the sales conversation stops feeling like a pitch and starts feeling like the natural next step.
The Ripple Effect That Actually Motivates
When Christine asked Agita what she’s most excited about over the next year and a half, she didn’t talk about revenue goals or audience growth.
She talked about children.
Specifically, what happens to the next generation when parents do the healing work now? When a mother works through her inner wounds, it changes the emotional environment in her home. Her children grow up differently. They carry less inherited weight.
That’s the real scale of this work. Not a bigger program. A generational shift.
For every woman founder who does the inner work to build a business that is genuinely aligned, who stops apologizing for what she charges, who stops choosing between passion and profit, who builds something sustainable because she understands the service-abundance relationship, there is a downstream effect that extends well beyond the business itself.
That is not a small thing. And it is not accidental.
Start Here
If you’ve been feeling the tension between growth and integrity in your own business, if you’ve noticed yourself slipping into “how do I make money” mode and losing track of why you started, consider this an invitation to look at what’s underneath.
Not because inner work is a shortcut. It isn’t. But because no marketing strategy, no funnel, no new offer will hold its weight against a belief system that is quietly working against you.
The external strategy can only take you as far as your internal foundation allows. Connect with Agita Bergmane at blisswithinhealing.com to learn more about her one-on-one transformation and energy leadership coaching.
Full Transcript
Christine Hakkola: Welcome to another episode of FoundHer Rising, a podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Today I’m joined by Agita Bergmane, a transformation and energy leadership coach. She helps women heal subconscious blocks and shift their energy to create lasting change in love and success. Agita, welcome to the show.
Agita Bergmane: Thank you for having me.
Christine Hakkola: I’m so excited to have you. We just had a little exchange right before we hit record and I’m already loving your energy. I’m so excited to hear more about your story.
Your story, from what I’ve heard so far, is so full of lived personal experience. I speak with a lot of women who have successfully brought their own personal transformation into their work, and you strike me as one of those people. You’ve moved from Latvia to the United States. You’ve navigated a lot in your life. I’d love to just hear how you got started and what led you to build your current business.
Agita Bergmane: You are absolutely right. I believe that the most amazing, successful businesses grow from personal experiences — where you take that experience and use it to help others.
I started my business when I was honestly in a pretty difficult situation in my life. I had been a stay-at-home mom for a few years after being very ambitious. I moved across the ocean from Latvia to the United States to go to school. I was building a career in the hospitality industry, and then I met my husband, had kids, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to stay home with them when they were young. But time passed, and I just felt like something was missing. That affected my relationships and my personal emotional state.
From the outside, people would look at my life and think, “Oh, she’s doing great. She’s traveling. She’s living in Amsterdam, in London, in New York.” But internally, I felt like something was hugely missing.
That’s when I started to figure out what I really needed. I hired a coach. That was a life-changing experience — twelve weeks of coaching sessions with her. It awakened something in me. I started to see my life from a completely different perspective. It affected me so deeply that I thought, I want to share some of this work with other people.
What I realized is that we are not aware we’re in a trap unless we intentionally look for the answers — look for the roots of what’s actually causing us to be stuck or repeating the same cycles.
That’s where my business grew. I got my coaching certification through IPAC, started doing coaching, and then added other elements over time — meditation, inner guidance — expanding into more modalities I now use with my clients.
Christine Hakkola: That’s so fantastic. I’m sure there are people listening right now going, “Yes, yes, me too” — resonating with that personal story and who have also made that shift into building their own business, or who are thinking about it.
I want to dive a little deeper into that. It sounds like the moment you realized you wanted more, you were very ambitious and career-driven, and hiring a coach was not only a turning point but a real shift in your awareness.
Tell me more about what you learned in those first few years of running your own business. What were some of the turning points as you started to build?
Agita Bergmane: The biggest thing I learned from my own experience is that nothing is going to change on the outside unless you start from within. You experience your life based on your internal beliefs about yourself and about what’s possible for you.
I’ve been coaching now for about four, four and a half years, and I repeatedly see the same pattern with my clients. The moment they shift their internal beliefs, they see results in their outside experience — sometimes instantly. For some clients, it’s happened in a week or two weeks.
Christine Hakkola: What were some of the specific shifts you experienced in your business — whether around getting your first clients, your offerings, the thinking behind how you built it?
Agita Bergmane: As I mentioned, I was inspired to start this business because of my personal challenges. That was my why. But as time went by, it almost became about, “I’m doing this to make money.” There was tension in that.
The shift happened when I returned to the original reason: I didn’t start this to make money. I started this to help people. And that shift changed everything. It was no longer a selfish reason — it expanded into service. The moment we let go of that tension, the flow opens up. The gates to abundance open when the shift happens, because it’s no longer based on lack. It’s based on abundance.
The biggest shift was from “How can I make money doing this?” to “How can I actually help?”
Christine Hakkola: I love that you brought this up, and I love how eloquently you speak about this shift. Full disclosure — it’s one of my favorite topics: building a real, values-aligned business that is also profitable and sustainable.
I don’t know how it is for you, but a lot of the women I speak with carry this unconscious belief that building a profitable business — one that earns the kind of income needed to pay the bills, fund their kids’ college, cover retirement, take a trip or two a year — can’t coexist with doing the work their heart calls them to.
And it’s not just that these two things can coexist — they have to. Because unless you have a trust fund, and I’m speaking for about 99% of us who don’t, they have to coexist. Otherwise, we’re stuck choosing between work we love that isn’t sustainable, or compromising our values to earn money we’re not aligned with.
This is something I’m deeply passionate about. Can you speak to your own experience of that?
Agita Bergmane: Yes. I want to answer this by sharing something personal first. I’m very spiritual — not religious, but spiritually guided. I was actually going into a massage one day, asking myself exactly this question: how can these two things coexist? How can I be financially successful while staying heart-centered?
During that massage, a message kept coming through: “God will provide. God will provide. God will provide.” And I’m not religious in a traditional sense, but that message kept repeating. Don’t worry. Just share the good word. Have the good intention, and God will provide.
When we look back at the really difficult periods in our lives, somehow, in some way, people always get through. The divine power — whatever we relate to, whatever we call it — will never let us suffer forever. Every difficult season is temporary. Every time people come out of one, they can look back and say, “This happened for a reason. I grew.” So if we have good intention and truly want to help, that work will always be recognized.
Christine Hakkola: Thank you so much for sharing that so openly. I personally spent many years in India practicing yoga — four yoga teacher trainings and a long meditation practice. I share that only because I fully resonate with what you’re describing.
I’ve seen time and again that when women business owners have some kind of spiritual practice — religious, spiritual, or whatever feels aligned — they have something to anchor into. It doesn’t make life easier, but having something to trust through the challenging seasons keeps us grounded.
And one of the offshoots of that alignment is the ability to say yes to the things that light us up and feel more empowered to say no to the things that don’t. In business, those informed choices actually make us more successful — even financially — because we’re bringing our highest selves to our work and getting better results for our clients. You can see how the snowball grows from there.
Speaking of that snowball — you started in one-on-one coaching but have since layered in other offerings. Tell us more about what you do now, how you help your clients, and how your business is evolving.
Agita Bergmane: I started with one-on-one coaching, and as I grew, my vision for how I want to expand changed as well.
When I was new to coaching, I needed to get my first clients. Then that shift happened — “How can I make money?” — and I saw everyone doing group coaching. I thought, maybe I should do that too. But after considering it honestly, the work I do is so deep, so personal. It works with the consciousness, the soul of the person. I don’t believe it can be done at the level I want my clients to experience in a group setting.
I shifted back to: I started this to help people, one person at a time. We always want to scale. We always think more is better financially. But I stepped back and realized that I truly love working with someone one-on-one, getting deep to the roots — the blocks, the limitations. I do a lot of hypnosis work, and you really can’t do that in a group. You have to do that one-on-one to pull out from the subconscious what is really blocking someone.
I’m creating different programs, but I truly believe the most powerful work happens in one-on-one. That’s where clients get the best results. And that’s all I care about. It has always been quality over quantity for me.
[SPONSOR BREAK]
Christine Hakkola: Quick resource for you. If you’ve hit consistent revenue but working harder isn’t creating more growth, I put together a free guide called From 10K to 40K Months. It breaks down what actually has to change when you move from solopreneur energy into real scaling — structure, profit, team, capacity — not just marketing tactics. If you’re ready for growth that feels sustainable instead of chaotic, go download it. It’s free. The link is in the show notes.
Christine Hakkola: A few things are coming up for me as I hear you speak, Agita. One is how deeply in integrity you are about the way you want to serve your clients. As any business owner does, you’ll experiment — and sometimes things work, and sometimes they don’t.
The word “scaling” gets a bad reputation because we assume it looks one particular way. In my world, it’s a massive umbrella that can and should look very different for every business. What’s coming up for me is this desire to grow and become more profitable — and the question of how we hold that alongside our values.
How much do we need? How much is enough? How do we grow a profitable, values-aligned business at the same time? It sounds like that’s exactly what you’re navigating — how to serve your clients in the highest possible way while also staying in integrity and growing a successful business.
How do you see that continuing to evolve?
Agita Bergmane: You touched on something important — how much is enough. A lot of people focus only on the money. And sometimes, I hate to say it, they sell their soul for it. When I look at companies selling things that are genuinely harmful to people, it must not feel good internally. The business might look great on a financial statement, but walking into your day knowing you’re profiting off harm? That’s not it.
But to actually answer your question — I truly believe the deep one-on-one work I do needs to stay one-on-one. However, I also do a lot of subconscious programming meditations, and I do believe those could expand into a group setting. I believe in collective consciousness. When two people come together on an idea, it’s more powerful. When a group focuses on one intention — abundance, love, financial success — and we all genuinely wish each other the best, the energy created is something you can’t manufacture alone.
So my vision is to scale in that direction — not because I want to take more money from more people, but because of the amplified benefit a collective creates. Finding that balance is always the work.
Christine Hakkola: I love this conversation. And I find so often that when we get out of our own way and trust that there is a way to stay in alignment, serve in the highest possible way, and grow a truly successful business — and when we really believe all of that is possible, even when we can’t see exactly how — we live into that.
One thing I’m hearing from you is how central the one-on-one work is. It doesn’t sound like something you’d move away from anytime soon — and if I were your coach, I wouldn’t encourage you to. That’s really the core of what you do.
At the same time, from my own experience in yoga and meditation communities, I’ve experienced the power of doing that kind of inner work in community as well. And for all the business owners listening — when you think about scaling or growing your income, it doesn’t always have to be either/or. Sometimes a group offering is the entry point for people who are building trust or who aren’t yet at the investment level for one-on-one. Then one-on-one becomes the premium tier. Or the reverse — an exclusive high-touch membership for long-term clients.
There are so many ways it can be structured.
Agita Bergmane: That’s a great idea. I really love what you’re sharing.
Christine Hakkola: We’ve talked a lot about the vision and how it’s come into form. What about the obstacles? What are some of the challenges you’ve had to work through as a business owner?
Agita Bergmane: The basics of running a business were genuinely challenging. Even though I grew up with an entrepreneurial mindset — my dad has probably built twenty businesses over the years, and I picked up that mentality from him — setting up systems and operations is hard.
The other big one is sales. That’s one of the most challenging aspects for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in coaching and inner healing — because there’s nothing tangible being sold. People like to pay money and receive something they can hold. With mindset coaching and inner healing, you have to take a leap of faith. You’re investing in yourself without knowing exactly what’s going to happen. I know their life will improve — I’m one hundred percent sure of that — but in what ways? We can never fully predict, because we don’t know what their journey is.
That’s what makes it the hardest thing to sell. The intangibility.
What I’ve noticed is that clients always have to be ready. Something has to happen in their lives where they say, “I’ve tried everything. I’m going to do this.” Some people need to warm up first — they get to know me, and then they say, “Okay, what you talk about makes sense. Let me try.”
There are really two pathways. One is rock bottom — something really difficult happens, and they look for help. The other is more proactive. People start to notice they keep running into the same cycles. Different situations, same pattern. They don’t have to hit rock bottom. They just have to have enough awareness to say, “This pattern keeps showing up no matter what I do.” That recognition can be the starting point for change.
Christine Hakkola: I resonated deeply with that. I had my own private therapy practice for six years and saw the same thing. In psychology, this is called the stages of readiness. One thing that always stuck with me — and I say this with full awareness of my own life — is that we often won’t seek change or support until we’re suffering enough. Until the problem is big enough or we’re in enough pain.
I’ll speak for myself: I have a busy life. Two young kids, a business, a spouse. When things come up, I often try to push them aside until they’re interfering enough to demand my attention. I’d like to think I’ve learned not to wait until rock bottom. But I completely understand how hard it is to pause, take a breath, and act proactively on what your inner voice is telling you — before it gets worse. Because it usually does when it’s left unattended.
Agita Bergmane: One hundred percent. And it has a ripple effect into almost all areas of life. If you’re not at peace internally, it’s going to affect your children, your relationship, your business, your health. It’s not worth waiting.
Christine Hakkola: I want to circle back to what you said about sales, Agita. I appreciate you naming that — it’s a real sticking point for a lot of female service providers. This feeling of having to “sell themselves.”
One of the things I teach is that selling can become service when you stay aligned with your mission. Whether you’re offering free resources, posting on social, doing talks — getting yourself in front of the people you most want to help and just being genuinely useful builds trust, builds likeability, builds relationships. So when those people reach the stage of readiness and look around for help, the most natural thing is to reach for the person who’s already been speaking directly to their experience.
When we focus on being of service rather than selling, the sales process becomes so much easier. There does come a point where you have that direct conversation about cost and commitment — but when trust has been built and value has already been received, that conversation is so much easier.
Agita Bergmane: You’re absolutely right. I’ve had clients who went back and forth for four or five months — “I feel like I’m ready. No, I don’t know yet.” And I would say, “Okay, take your time.” But there comes a point where I have to say, “You feel it. You know you need this. How much longer are you going to put it off? Let’s just do it and see.”
And when they finally say, “Okay, fine, let’s do it” — I’m happy for the new client, but even more, I’m happy because I know something amazing is about to change in their life. The hardest part is always that lead-up to making the decision to leap in.
Christine Hakkola: Yes. All right — one final question. When you look to the future of your business and the clients you support over the next six, twelve, eighteen months, what are you most excited about?
Agita Bergmane: What excites me most is the ripple effect this work will have on people’s lives — and on their families and the people around them.
When parents heal their inner wounds, it flows down to their children. In a positive way. And that’s what I care about most when I look to the future: the next generation. Children growing up with a genuinely happy, healed mother — or father, because the mother is thriving and the home environment reflects that. It always comes from within.
When I look ahead, what I see is children growing up with really happy moms. That’s big to me. And it doesn’t have to stop at moms — it can be sisters, partners, parents. Let’s just spread the healing. Spread the good energy and the love. That’s what really excites me.
Christine Hakkola: It warms my heart to know there are people like you doing aligned work and creating that ripple effect. That’s what lights me up — getting to speak with women who are doing that kind of work in the world.
Agita Bergmane: This is my business, but it’s also my calling — truly my mission and my purpose. That’s why I care more about the effect on people than anything else.
Christine Hakkola: It is so obvious hearing you speak, Agita, that this is your calling. That just shines through.
I’m sure there are people listening who are interested to learn more about you and the work you do. Where’s the best place for them to connect with you?
Agita Bergmane: They can find me on my website at blisswithinhealing.com. I’m also on Instagram. The best place to start is the website — there’s contact information, details on the programs I offer, and a description of my coaching philosophy and the modalities I use for deeper inner work.
Christine Hakkola: Fantastic. Go check out Agita’s work — she is doing something genuinely meaningful in the world. Thank you so much for being here and for such a great conversation. It’s really made my morning.
And thank you, listener, for tuning in to another episode of FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at hakkolahorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
