This is an interview with Aisha of My Sacred Bridge Grimoire.
At a glance:
Current subscriber count: 322
Most successful post: By far, it’s my Hero Post: I Spent 20 Years Building a Career That Looked Perfect on Paper. Spoiler: It Wasn’t
Most underrated growth tactic:
The most underrated growth tactic on Substack is Notes with a real, present-tense moment rather than a lesson or a teaching statement.
This is based on what I’m seeing and tracking myself: the imagery that does well, the comments, the restacks. What I keep observing is that the Notes with the most traction tell a story and feel relatable, not the ones that teach. It feels like people aren’t looking to be taught. They want to be inspired.
I tested this directly against the alternative. I ran a four-part structured series pulling from my HR career, and it underperformed. My strongest Notes are the ones that open with something happening right now, or that has happened. In my experience, the platform rewards presence over polish.
I think it’s underrated because it costs nothing to try different tactics. The instinct is always to teach, which I get, because that’s my instinct too. I’m a natural teacher.
Favorite Substack feature: Oh, this was an interesting one! Surprisingly, it’s Notes. When I first started on Substack, I wasn’t really aware of how Notes worked or what they were. I thought that they were optional. How wrong I was. And when I started with them, I honestly wasn’t sure how to set a cadence, how to word them, how often, nothing. It took some research and a lot of testing, but now, they are really fun and a favorite feature of mine.
One tool you can’t live without: The Notes scheduling feature. When it first came out, I didn’t think I’d use it. Now, however, I use it all the time and leave room for more spontaneous Notes.
Key metric to track: The key metric I track is engagement, specifically comments. When my Notes or posts get comments, I pay attention to the questions people ask and what they say. Some of those comments have inspired entirely new Notes. Your audience will tell you what they want. You just have to pay attention.
Main revenue source: My main revenue source right now is 1:1s, including tarot advisory readings and longer-term 1:1 containers.
One sentence describing your newsletter: I help professional women introduce magic, ritual, and identity practices into their work, business, and life, to create wealth and success.
One piece of advice for new writers:
My advice for new writers: yes, when you first start out, there’s a lot of shouting into the void, without much validation for what you’re doing. I started from scratch, zero subscribers. Before Substack, Instagram broke up with me. I lost a couple thousand followers and never got an explanation. Moving to Substack and starting over felt terrifying, and at first there was no movement.
But the more I found my voice and remembered how to love writing again, the more my growth became steady. There’s a lot of advice out there on what to do and what not to do. I’ve paid attention to all of it, but I only use what feels good for me. Can you grow overnight? Sure. But in my experience watching other writers, that’s not the norm. Take a deep breath and keep going!
The Beginning
Tell us about your publication. What do you write about and who is it for?
I write about magic and ritual, elemental magic specifically, which is becoming my signature teaching, along with visualization and identity work. These practices are how you awaken the witch within. It means honoring the Earth and the women who came before us, honoring your past lives, and honoring yourself and your place on this Earth.
It’s for any professional woman: career women, entrepreneurs, anyone doing work in the world who wants to bring that awakening into her business and life.
What made you start on Substack in the first place?
What made me start on Substack in the first place was necessity at first. Instagram broke up with me, and I needed a new platform. Substack had been on my radar for a while, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger. I was dealing with real fear around showing my work in longer-form writing.
When I was in corporate, I was also on my spiritual journey, but I kept those two worlds very separate, afraid of being labeled “weird.” I come from an HR background, and part of my everyday job was assessing risk. Writing about magic and ritual felt like a huge risk at first. Now, I’ll talk about it all day.
What did your first few months on Substack look like?
I went from 13 subscribers in early April to around 130, then past 160, and now I’m at 322.
Growth was slow at first; there was no movement in those early weeks and the first couple of months, and I was still working through the fear of writing about magic and ritual in a longer-form, public way after keeping that world separate from my corporate life for so long.
The biggest challenge in those first few months? Me, believing in myself, and giving myself permission to be seen and believing that my words were worth putting out into the world.
At what point did you realize this could become something bigger?
Honestly, it was after my very first Live this past June.
I’d been loving writing and pretty much minding my own business when I was invited onto a Live with Lindsay’s Wavelength. We talked about my astrological chart, and she told me I was supposed to be talking, that this is how my career would evolve.
Here’s the thing. She was the third person to tell me this, and I had actively avoided being live and on camera.
Since then, everything has taken off. I’ve been a guest on two Lives, done two of my own, and I have plans to keep this going. Never in a million years did I think I’d be a podcaster or a speaker. And I’m having fun. Imagine that.
Building a Business Around Spiritual Work
How did My Sacred Bridge evolve from an idea into an actual business?
Corporate life had been feeling unfulfilling for me in so many ways, and I was struggling. Towards the end of my career, though I didn’t know it was the end at the time, I started studying with a witch in Walnut Creek, CA.
I’d been stalking her website for months, wanting to reach out, but never pulled the trigger. When I finally did, I booked a tarot reading that was so on point it freaked me out a bit.
One of the things that she told me was that I have gifts and to lean into them.
She was right. About 15 years earlier, I’d gone to a psychic on my lunch break with a work colleague, just for fun. She saw that I have Spirit Guides, and after that reading, everything shifted.
I started noticing signs and synchronicities, seeing images, feeling this inner knowing I couldn’t pinpoint. I’d felt it for years and chalked it up to oddities, played with tarot a little, but never took it seriously. I kept that whole fascination with witchcraft very separate from my “real” life.
It’s when I started seeing animal spirits and hearing messages that I knew something was up. So I took the plunge and studied with that witch for two years.
Somewhere during that time, the wild thought of starting my own business began to take shape. I thought I was nuts. But the evolution from that point to where I am now has been one of the wildest rides of my life.
What did the early days look like when you started offering spiritual services professionally?
My very first professional service was reading tarot at an anniversary party for a law firm in Walnut Creek, CA, for the lawyers, their clients, and family. I was terrified. I’d done practice readings and readings for family and friends, but never professionally, and certainly nothing like this.
I was booked for three hours and ended up staying over five, doing more than 30 back-to-back readings. I was in shock. People would sit with me, get their reading, and more often than not, get up and drag three or four others over to get one done too.
A lot of people cried, felt seen, and I was honored to give them the space to let go, even for a few minutes.
The last reading of the night, after 10 pm, was with the firm’s CEO. He was skeptical, humoring his colleagues by sitting down with me. And I was exhausted.
I drew the Tower, notorious for sudden upheaval or transformation, and thought, is this really where we’re going, at the very end of the night, with someone who doesn’t believe in any of it?
But I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, so I told him exactly what I saw. When it was over, he looked at me for a long time and said, “ That was interesting, and you are completely correct. If you ever need anything, remember that you have friends here.” Then he gave me a hug. I was floored.
And the funny thing is, I still have doubts over my visions. I’m a psychic medium and Spirit Guide channel. My work requires me to trust my gut, my sight, and what I hear. Unpacking decades of playing it safe while doing what I do hasn’t been easy, but it’s been extremely rewarding.
How do you define the energetic side of business for someone who has never explored these concepts before?
There are many layers to energetics, but the one I’ll talk about here is how things feel in your body.
As human beings in the modern world, we’re wired to keep going no matter what. Hustle culture is a real thing. That’s what I did for years, for decades. I ignored the signs my body was practically screaming at me to pay attention to, to stop.
The fear of leaving the stability I’d built in my HR career outweighed being happy with my life, at least in my mind. So I stayed, and I pushed forward. The cost of that push was my mental health and my overall health in general.
Now, one of the first things I teach my clients is “yes” and “no.” Your body knows which offer feels good, which job feels good, and there’s a simple practice for this.
Sit quietly for a moment and let yourself relax. Think of the word “yes.” Say it out loud if you want. Notice what happens.
Does your body feel different? Do you see anything? Just notice what you notice.
Once you have that information, shake out your hands and start again. This time, think of the word “no.” Say it out loud if you want. Notice where in your body you feel it. See what comes up. Shake your hands out once more.
Now you have real information you can use for practically anything. Deciding which offer to put out first? Try the exercise. Want to know which post to run? Try “yes” and “no.”
Are there any new magical practices, teachings, or areas of study you’re exploring?
Archetypal energy is the idea and concept that each of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, carries its own personality, energy, and its own way of engaging with the world. We all have all elements within, but we all have a dominant one, the lens we naturally see and operate through.
My dominant element is Air, and I’m the Visionary. This means I lead with ideas, pattern recognition, and communication before anything else.
For years I tried to force myself into more grounded, methodical ways of running a business because that’s what I saw other people doing, and it never fit.
The more I’ve leaned into my dominant archetype instead of fighting it, the more everything, my content, my offers, even how I structure my day, has clicked into place.
That’s the real magic of this work. Once you know your dominant element, you stop trying to run your business like someone else’s.
A Fire archetype needs faster movement and visible wins.
A Water archetype needs intuition and emotional depth built into how they sell and lead.
An Earth archetype needs structure and tangible results before they’ll trust and move on an idea.
None of these are better or worse. They’re just different operating systems, and most people have spent years running the wrong one because nobody ever told them there was a choice.
What advice would you give women who feel called toward spiritual work but are afraid of being judged?
First and foremost, I get it. I truly do. Because I’ve been there.
When I first started studying with the witch in Walnut Creek, in our first session, she asked me what I wanted to learn. “I want to learn how to cast spells” was my very generic, very safe answer.
I said that because for one, I had no idea what I really wanted to learn. And for another, I wasn’t about to tell someone I’d just met that I was seeing animal spirits and hearing things. It took time for me to trust her.
By the time our sessions were done, I was helping her teach her classes, connecting people with their Spirit Guides, turns out what I was seeing was true after all, and speaking with people who had passed on.
My advice: start. Because you have no idea where that journey will take you.
Substack & Content Creation
How does your Substack newsletter fit into your broader business ecosystem?
Substack is it. That’s the honest answer. It didn’t start out that way, but Substack is the platform and space where everything gets built from now on.
I have a website I love; it’s beautiful, and it holds my magic. But Substack is where the magic is taught and where it all comes together.
There’s a lot more coming in the next couple of months.
What were the biggest growth drivers?
A combination of Notes, posts, and collaborations, but mostly Notes, which still surprises me.
Notes did the heavy lifting because they’re where the discovery happens.
A restack from one writer puts me in front of an entirely new audience, and the personal, present-tense ones especially, the story-driven moments rather than the teaching ones, are what people restacked and commented on the most.
That engagement fed itself: comments would turn into ideas for more Notes, which kept the cycle going.
Collaborations played their part too.
Being a guest on Lives, like the one with Lindsay’s Wavelength, put me in front of people who’d never have found me otherwise.
But if I had to point to the single biggest driver, it’s Notes. I went in thinking long-form writing would be what grew the newsletter, and Notes did more of that than anything else.
What’s something everyone says to do on Substack that didn’t work for you?
Short-form Notes. The 3-5 liners.
It’s literally impossible for me to do consistently, despite all the advice on the platform and online telling you to do exactly that.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time mentally fighting with myself over this, thinking I was wrong, or worse, that there was something wrong with me. There’s so much good advice out there on how to grow, and almost all of it says to keep Notes short. I honestly can’t do it. I’ve tried, and it feels horrible.
So, I write the Notes the way I want to, despite the advice out there. Some are shorter, some are longer, way longer.
Have I made a wrong decision? I don’t think so. Because my body feels better when I simply write to my heart’s content.
What’s your content creation process like today?
My weekly content has leaned more towards themes as this work has evolved. I’m a Visionary, and sticking with one concept week after week doesn’t work for my brain. At all. It can almost be physically painful for me not to explore and share other concepts, hence the weekly themes.
I let the themes emerge. From my guides, from the shower, where I get a ton of downloads and messages, and from my own life experiences.
The fabulous thing about elemental magic, ritual, and identity work is that there’s so much to write about. When I first started posting three to four Notes a day, I was worried I’d run out of things to say.
Quite the opposite has happened. I almost have too much to say.
What types of posts resonate most with your readers?
In every post, I explain the “why” behind the magic. I attribute that to my HR background, where nothing went out without an explanation of why things are the way they are, that same risk-assessment instinct.
I teach and talk about magic, witchcraft, spellcrafting, and Spirit Guides, and let’s be real, none of that gets taught or even talked about in the boardroom. I get it.
The stigma around the word “witch” is one I still work through to this day, no matter how trendy magic and ritual have become online, especially in business.
I’m lucky to have a solid grounding in business, strategy, and people leadership. Combined with that natural instinct to explain the why, it makes the magic easier to talk about, especially when it comes to business.
Take my post on visualization, “Visualization: One of the Most Powerful Mental Tools That Speaks Directly to Your Subconscious.”
I walk through the science behind it, then guide readers through a written visualization and decode the symbolism and imagery that comes up. Decoding symbols and signs is my superpower, and it took me a while to actually talk about it, because how do you explain clairvoyance?
The comments on that post confirmed it: explaining the why helps the writing land and actually get absorbed.
What metrics do you actually pay attention to?
Beyond the Notes metrics, I also pay close attention to who likes my content and who subscribes and follows me.
Substack doesn’t give you a breakdown of who your readers are, so if I want to know my audience, I have to go find out myself.
I spend a lot of nights clicking through profiles, looking at what people post, share, and comment on. I look at their background, what they like, what they write about themselves.
It tells me who is reading and following along with this work, and that helps shape what I write next.
What was the biggest mistake you’ve made on Substack?
Honestly, tons of mistakes came from trying to do this the way everyone else said to, and not trusting myself to figure this out.
I taught in my Notes instead of telling stories from my perspective. I forced myself into short-form Notes because that’s what all the advice said to do. And I didn’t talk about my own posts nearly enough, like I was almost hiding them instead of pointing people toward this work that I’m proud of.
Trusting in myself has been the largest hurdle on this journey, and it’s taken me a while to realize that I can really do this.
Wealth and Personal Evolution
Many spiritual entrepreneurs struggle with pricing and selling. How did you develop a healthy relationship with charging for your gifts and expertise?
In all honesty, this is something I still struggle with myself. I come from a background where you didn’t ask for more. What you were paid was what you were paid, and after a lot of hard work, you might get a small raise if you were lucky.
The odd thing that’s saved me here is numerology.
I resonate with numbers and what they represent. $222 speaks to partnership, harmony, and balance. $88 speaks to power and success. $444 speaks to stability, foundation, and steady progress.
When I’m pricing something, I sit with what the offer is, what it represents for the client, and I price from there.
Can you walk us through the different ways your business generates revenue today?
Tarot for career and business advisory readings are where a lot of my clients get a first taste of what I do.
So much can come through in a session: Spirit guides, channeled spells, past lives, the list goes on, and I’ve experienced all of it, sometimes in one 30-minute session.
Some of my favorite readings are for things like which social platform has the best energy, or someone who’s applied for five jobs and wants to know which one has the right energy for them.
Visualization alchemy is a live, channeled visualization session. I’ve spent almost four years perfecting my guided visualization technique, and my superpower is decoding symbols, messages, and imagery in real time. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
The My Sacred Bridge Gatherings are my monthly virtual events. They started as workshops where I taught participants how to cast spells, and they’ve evolved into a safe space for professional women to learn about witchcraft, spells, the elements, and their Spirit Guide teams, all to support their work, business, and life.
Longer-term clients get deeper containers, with weekly and bi-weekly check-ins through tarot, channeled messages, and guided visualizations.
Every client gets a spell kit I put together myself so they can learn to create spell blends and work with different forms of magic. Casting spells and spellcrafting are very personal, not one-size-fits-all, and I love this work because it gives a client more than one session to really find what works for them.
How has your relationship with money evolved throughout your journey?
I’ll be very honest here. I hated money growing up.
My mother (a single mom) was born three days after Pearl Harbor, into a time of shock, anger, fear, and being attacked. Her family did everything they could for each other, but money was always tight, and that shaped how she grew up, which she then passed onto me.
We were never without a roof over our heads, food on the table, or the lights on. My mother made pretty good money as a school psychologist. But she didn’t live like that. Money was always something to fiercly hold onto, no matter what was happening.
Throughout my journey, I’ve come to understand that what I felt had nothing to do with money itself. It had everything to do with what I had been taught through other people’s perception and experience of it, the money paradigm, if you will. Money is an energy. It ebbs and flows, and it deserves our respect and an energetic relationship with it.
This isn’t a concept that’s easy to embody, especially if your money story has a stressful foundation.
I recently bit the bullet and taught a class where participants actually met the Spirit of Money through a guided visualization. When people shared what they saw, there was genuine shock at some of the imagery. Money wants to help and be friends with us. Doing identity work around this is key to understanding and unlocking that power.
What beliefs about success have you had to unlearn?
That I have to work like a mad person to achieve success. That’s the biggest one.
In corporate, as the person who built recruitment strategy, I averaged 15-hour days, six to seven days a week. I didn’t stop, like some kind of machine.
That one was hard to let go of: the idea that if I wasn’t working day and night, I was failing.
Another one I still deal with is that my voice is okay to be out in the world, and that it’s okay to make waves.
My very first job in HR was in government, and my supervisor, a woman of color like me, told me, point-blank, that I had to work harder, be better, but not make waves. Head down, do the job, do it better.
She told me that out of a want to protect me, not realizing the damage it did at the time. No hate toward her at all. I get it. Being a woman of color in business has not been easy for a lot of us.
I carried that advice into every job I had after, wondering why I wasn’t okay, why I felt awful, and why I grew to hate what I was doing. Unpacking all of that has been a thing.
And also, that if I’m not building my business the way people who have “made it” do, I’m straight up failing.
I love the concept of marketing; it fascinates me. It’s also the hardest thing I’ve had to become friends with as a solopreneur.
Being “salesy,” the used-car-salesperson type, scares the shit out of me, and I physically recoil from that kind of selling.
Selling what I do hasn’t been easy to explain. I mean, how do you explain, “I’m seeing a raccoon washing his paws in the water, and he has a message for you”? True story. That happened with a client.
What does success mean to you today compared to ten years ago?
Ten years ago, I was working for the success of someone else’s company.
Is there anything inherently wrong with that? Absolutely not. A lot of us have amazing careers and are genuinely good at what we do. The world needs companies to keep going, and the people behind the scenes are what make that possible.
I was very good at recruiting and recruitment strategy. I led some of the highest-performing departments in the company for three years running, and I’m extremely proud of what I accomplished.
But there was always that nagging feeling of being unhappy. At the time, I didn’t understand it. Now, after years of healing and unpacking those feelings, I’ve come to realize that corporate life just wasn’t it for me. Success, while it looked good on paper, wasn’t successful for my soul.
Being in business for myself hasn’t been easy, and I don’t want to sugarcoat it. But I’m happier. I’m doing things I love. I’m teaching professional women how to embrace the witch within and introduce magic into their work, businesses, and lives. Success for me has been exactly that: magic.
What’s Next
What’s your goal for the next 12 months?
I don’t know if I can answer this without giving away things I’m not quite ready to share yet. What I can say is this: I’m supposed to use my voice.
That much is clear. There are still fears and blocks around visibility that I’m working through, and I’m doing that work with my Peacock guide, helping my throat chakra get used to being on camera, being seen, being me.
But I see where this is going. I see myself on stage, teaching large groups of professional women. I see myself talking about the wonders of elemental magic, how to embody the identity of someone who holds money and wealth, and how to create magic in everyday life.
If you could leave readers with one message about building a business that’s aligned with who they truly are, what would it be?
I cannot stress this enough. Your body knows. Your soul knows. And they will tell you, even show you, the direction to go.
It is your birthright to be happy. It is your birthright to earn more money and wealth than you’ve ever let yourself dream about. Everything around you is energy, and once you understand that and you trust what your body and soul are telling you, there is nothing you can’t build.
Does it take work, and will you sometimes want to turn around and go back? Possibly. I know I did, more times than I care to admit, in fact. But I’m so glad I stuck to it and stayed the course. Best decision I ever made for myself.
Where do you think Substack is heading as a platform, and what opportunities do you see opening up for creators?
This one is harder for me to answer.
I genuinely hope that Substack stays this very unique platform that allows creators to . . . create, in whatever fashion feels right for them.
For me, I love that I can write shorter or longer form, and I love that I can also talk to my heart’s content on Lives about magic and everything that comes with that.
Will the platform stay this way? Well . . . probably not. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that businesses evolve to meet the times.
Substack is proof of that. I haven’t been on the platform for even six months, and I’ve seen about five or six updates and upgrades to the platform in that time. I get it. And only time will tell with how it evolves from here.
But for now, at least for me, I’m grateful for the space, the collaborations, the people, and for having a place where my inner child is having the time of her life.
Check out her publication here.
Did something in this story inspire you? I’d love to hear what you’re taking away from it in the comments.
Thank you SO much for the interview!
Inspired to structure my first live. Thank you for all the amazing advice!