We have been taught to think of business as arithmetic, defined by profit and loss, margins and market share, strategy decks, shareholder value, etcetera.
We speak of scale as if it were an engineering problem and of growth as if it were a mathematical inevitability. Yet anyone who has built something from nothing knows that this is only the surface story. Beneath the spreadsheets lies something far less mechanical and far more human. Business, at its core, is spiritual.
Business is not spiritual in the narrow religious or even ritualistic sense. It is spiritual in the sense of breath and intention, of the invisible forces that animate visible outcomes.
A business begins not as a structure, but as a thought. An idea stirs and it gathers energy. It is spoken aloud and finds collaborators. It then takes on form.
What was once unseen becomes tangible where contracts, products, offices, pay slips and livelihoods become. In that act of translation, from imagination to infrastructure, there is something profoundly sacred.
Every enterprise is, in truth, an ecosystem of creativity. Thought births design. Design births systems. Systems generate income and employment. And yet the original spark remains the most important element.
If that spark is clouded by fear, ego or desperation, the structure that follows will carry those same distortions. If it is anchored in clarity, service and conviction, those qualities will echo through the organisation. This is not poetic indulgence, it is lived reality.
Customers respond to perceived value
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Walk into two companies offering identical services and you will feel the difference immediately. In one, there is a subtle tightness. For example, conversations clipped, eyes watchful, decisions reactive. Of course, targets are met, but at a cost.
Staff turnover is high. Customers sense something transactional, even when the language is polished. The machinery functions. But there is no warmth in it.
In the other company, there is steadiness. There is no complacency, but composure. The reception is not merely efficient, it is attentive. The leadership does not perform urgency, it embodies purpose. The energy is different. You feel it in your body before you articulate it in your mind. There is coherence between what is promised and what is delivered.
We underestimate this embodied knowing. The body is often the first instrument of truth. It tightens when something is misaligned. It relaxes when integrity is present.
Customers sense when they are being processed and when they are being respected. Teams know when they are being used and when they are being valued. That knowing shapes behaviour long before a quarterly report confirms it.
Strategy devoid of spirit is brittle
Too often we reduce business outcomes to strategy alone. Strategy, discipline and governance matter. But strategy devoid of spirit is brittle.
A brilliant plan executed from a place of fear will generate frantic energy. Fear is centrifugal for it scatters focus, hoards information and breeds competition where collaboration is needed. Under fear, organisations become rigid. Feedback is perceived as threat. Innovation stalls.
Respect, by contrast, is centripetal. It draws people inward toward a shared centre. It creates order not through coercion but through alignment. When leaders operate from respect, for their teams, their customers, their communities, in essence, the whole business architecture becomes resilient. It can absorb shocks. It can admit mistakes and it can correct course without collapsing.
Money follows energy
This is why purpose is not a marketing slogan but a structural necessity. Purpose acts as a magnet. It determines who is drawn to your enterprise and who is repelled by it. A business built solely for extraction — maximum return in minimum time — will attract those who share that posture.
A business built around service and contribution will attract a different constituency: partners who see beyond immediate gain, employees who invest discretionary effort and customers who become advocates.
We like to dismiss such language as sentimental. It is not. Human ecosystems run on energy, which is attention, trust and belief. Money follows that energy.
Two entrepreneurs may sell the same product into the same market at the same price. One flourishes and yet the other flounders. The difference is rarely visible on a balance sheet at inception. It lies in presence. It is located in whether the enterprise carries a soul or merely a stock keeping unit.
Business mirrors inner leadership
A real business is not a static asset. It is a living organism. It breathes through decisions. It metabolises feedback and it mirrors the inner state of its leadership. When leadership is fragmented, defensive or unclear, the organisation reflects that confusion. When leadership is grounded, self-aware and principled, the organisation gains coherence.
Expansion, then, is not simply a function of capital injection or sharper key performance indicators. Those tools matter, but they are not sovereign. Growth requires cultivation. Just as a living being needs nourishment, pruning and protection, so too does a business. Toxic dynamics must be addressed, not ignored. Talent must be nurtured, not merely deployed. Systems must evolve and not calcify.
And yes, love has a place in this conversation. Love in business is not indulgence. It is care applied with discipline. It is the decision to treat stakeholders not as instruments but as partners. It is the refusal to cut corners that would erode trust, even if the shortcut promises immediate gain.
It is the commitment to build something that can endure beyond the personality of its founder or its current leadership. When such care is present, the enterprise develops a hum, a sustainable energy.
The market responds not only to price points and features but to atmosphere. Customers return where they feel seen. Suppliers prioritise relationships where they feel respected. Regulators engage differently when transparency is evident. These are not mystical phenomena; they are human responses to integrity.
Profit divorced from ethics corrode
A spiritually conscious business does not ignore numbers. On the contrary, it honours them by situating them within a broader narrative.
Profit is not an idol, it is an indicator. It signals whether value is being created in a manner that the market recognises. But profit divorced from ethics corrodes. It may accumulate quickly, but it does not anchor.
Stewardship offers a more enduring frame. Under stewardship, budgets become instruments of intentional allocation. They support the development of people, the strengthening of systems, the mitigation of risk.
Efficiency is pursued not as an end in itself but as a means of preserving resources for meaningful use. Governance becomes a practice of accountability, not a bureaucratic exercise.
There is humility in acknowledging that the leadership’s inner life shapes outer results. We measure revenue growth and customer retention. We track churn rates and cost-to-income ratios. But we seldom measure the quality of conversations within our organisations. We rarely quantify trust. Yet these intangible assets often determine whether a strategy thrives or collapses.
When leadership operates from a clarified purpose, it generates a field of gravity. Talented individuals are drawn not merely by remuneration but by meaning. They offer more than compliance.
They offer creativity. Customers align not merely out of convenience but out of conviction. What emerges is not simple loyalty but shared ownership of an idea.
There is a paradox at the heart of this approach. The more one acknowledges the unseen dimensions of enterprise such as trust, intention, virtue, the more practical decision-making becomes. Clarity of purpose sharpens prioritisation. Ethical grounding simplifies complex choice and presence reduces noise.
Economics and character intersect
Rigour is not abandoned, it is refined. Discipline is not weakened, it is deepened. The invisible becomes the soil from which visible results grow. In fertile soil, creativity produces durable systems.
Those systems generate life — giving work — employment that sustains families, products that improve daily living, services that rebuild confidence in institutions. Profits then fund reinvestment, innovation and broader social contribution.
In societies where institutions are fragile and trust is easily eroded, the spiritual dimension of business becomes even more critical. Commerce can either exacerbate cynicism or restore confidence. When enterprises operate with transparency and reverence for those they serve, they counter the narrative that success requires compromise of principle. They demonstrate that value creation and moral clarity are not mutually exclusive.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the world responds to the spirit infused into an enterprise. When leaders show up with discernment rather than impulse, with courage rather than fear, with reverence rather than arrogance, they create conditions for sustainable growth. The business becomes more than a revenue generating vehicle. It becomes testament. A testament:
That intention matters;
That fear can be tempered by faith in the long arc of one’s purpose;
That each transaction carries ethical weight and
That every sale, every negotiation, every partnership is an opportunity to embody one’s values.
In this light, business is not a separate compartment of life. It is life expressed through commerce. It is where economics and character intersect. Where imagination meets responsibility.
Where the unseen currents of belief and integrity shape the tangible realities of markets and communities. To build a business, then, is to engage in an act of creation. And creation, at its deepest level, is always spiritual.
Ndoro-Mukombachoto is a former academic and banker. She has consulted widely in strategy, entrepreneurship, and private sector development for organisations in Zimbabwe, the sub-region and overseas. As a writer and entrepreneur with interests in property, hospitality and manufacturing, she continues in strategy consulting, also sharing through her podcast @HeartfeltwithGloria. — +263 772 236 341.
