You show up brilliantly for your clients.

But when your own business needs you, sometimes you disappear.

You know how to hold space, solve hard problems, and help other people move through the places where they are stuck. Yet when your own business asks you to become more visible, follow up on the lead, name the price, hold the boundary, or finally do The Thing, somehow you end up doing almost anything else.

I’m Wendy Faith, a Trauma Informed Business Coach and creator of The Intrinsic CEO™. I help solopreneurs stop ghosting themselves when visibility, sales, and growth get hard.

Explore The Intrinsic CEO Workshop

**Download my free Have Your Own Back Workbook**

If this sounds familiar…

You know what to do, but something in you hits the brakes.

You research, plan, prepare, and wait until you feel more certain. You may even know exactly why you are avoiding the thing. Somehow, knowing why does not make The Thing easier to do.

You can show up brilliantly for other people and still struggle to show up for yourself.

Your clients get your presence, insight, creativity, and follow-through. Meanwhile, the work that would grow your own business keeps getting pushed to tomorrow because somebody else needs you today.

The harder it gets, the more you seem to disappear.

A high-stakes decision becomes a week of overthinking. Visibility turns into perfectionism. A scary money moment sends you searching for another strategy, tool, course, or expert to tell you what to do when, somewhere inside, you may already know.

This may not be a mindset, discipline, or strategy problem.

It may be an internal leadership problem.

When you work for yourself, there is no boss, team, or organizational structure between you and the parts of you that want very different things.

The part that wants visibility is not necessarily the same part that wants safety. The part that wants growth may be terrified of what more success will require. The part that wants to raise your rates may be sharing a body with the part that cannot bear the thought of someone deciding you are not worth it.

This is where The Intrinsic CEO comes in

Your business does not need a version of you who never gets scared, stuck, overwhelmed, or distracted.

It needs a leader who knows how to find her way back when she does.

The Intrinsic CEO is a parts-based approach to business building for solopreneurs who can show up brilliantly for their clients but struggle to lead themselves through the moments that grow the business. It helps you recognize the competing voices, fears, needs, and protective strategies that take over under pressure, so you can hear what they have to say without handing any one of them the keys.

This is not about becoming perfectly consistent. It is about changing what happens when you are not.

Hear every part without losing yourself.

Understand the protective voices running the show, including the perfectionist who needs one more revision, the people pleaser who is spectacularly unqualified to set your prices, and the researcher who would happily keep you preparing until roughly 2047.

Make decisions you can actually follow.

Stop waiting for every part of you to agree before you move. Learn how to make choices that account for your fears, needs, capacity, values, and actual business reality.

Take action when the moment gets uncomfortable.

Visibility, sales, boundaries, and growth will still bring up shit. The difference is that discomfort no longer has to mean disappearing for three weeks.

Build a business without abandoning yourself.

Growth should not require you to become one more person who overrides your limits, ignores what you know, or treats you like a problem that needs to be fixed.

Ways to Work Together

There is more than one way into this work | Start where you actually are

You do not need to diagnose yourself, prove how stuck you are, or choose the biggest possible commitment. The right next step depends on what you are noticing and what kind of support would be useful now.

HAVE YOUR OWN BACK WORKBOOK

Start by noticing where you leave your own side.

This free workbook will help you recognize what happens to your relationship with yourself under pressure and begin building a simple practice for finding your way back. It is a good place to start if you are curious about my work and want to experience how I think before deciding what comes next.

THE INTRINSIC CEO WORKSHOP

Learn how to lead the conflict that keeps stopping you.

If you keep finding yourself in the gap between what you know and what you actually do, the workshop will help you understand what is happening inside that gap. You will learn to recognize the competing roles that show up around visibility, sales, money, decisions, and growth, and begin developing the self-leadership to move forward without fighting or abandoning yourself.

1:1 INTRINSIC CEO COACHING

Bring me the conflict where your business and your internal world keep colliding.

Sometimes you do not need another general idea. You already know the decision, the boundary, the visibility problem, the offer you keep circling, or the conversation you have been trying to think your way through for six months. In 1:1 coaching, we work with the actual place where you are stuck and build a way forward that does not require you to override yourself to make progress.

I know business. I also know what happens when knowing is not enough.

Hi, I’m Wendy Faith.

I have spent more than 25 years building businesses online, long enough to remember when Google was still a plucky little startup and social media meant leaving a comment on someone’s blog. I have founded and sold two companies, reached more than 55 million readers, sold more than 400,000 books, led teams, built audiences, created intellectual property, and made a living from my ideas.

I have also burned out, frozen, overworked, people-pleased, ignored my own instincts, and spent far too much time trying to mindset my way out of problems that were not actually mindset problems.

The Intrinsic CEO grew from the intersection of those two lives. I am not a therapist teaching business theory, and I am not a business coach borrowing trauma language because it sounds current. I have built successful companies, lived through collapse, done the healing work, and spent years asking a question I could not find anyone else answering:

What actually helps a capable, self-aware person lead herself when the hardest business moments arrive? That’s the work I do now.

What Clients Are Saying

I recommend Wendy's business coaching to any entrepreneur who has experienced deep trauma — personal or professional — and is ready to let go of the self-protective mechanisms that are holding them back from creating a thriving business. I had a coaching session with Wendy regarding my cycles of feast and famine in my business. I felt immediately a sense of peace and of being seen. Wendy asked very precise questions and I felt at the edge of comfortable as I was facing my blind spots, yet empowered at the same time. In the days that followed, I felt a relief and peace I hadn't experienced for a very long time. It was as if a long-lost part of me had been recovered and integrated. I feel so much more grounded and at peace with my challenge.

I've always known I was different, and identified as Queer for several years, but never really felt at home in the LGBTQ+ community - I felt like I didn't fit any of the identities, and wasn't 'queer' enough. After one conversation with Wendy, I felt safe to explore my queer identity with her, and our session together was profound. Wendy is a warm, kind and intuitive guide. I connected with my Queerness on such a deep level, it felt so honouring and sacred. Afterwards, I felt a deep sense of belonging that I didn't know I was missing, more awareness of my own unique identity and expression, and so much certainty that when I'm in Queer spaces, I'm with my people. It's a tender integration, but I feel an incredible sense of ground which is shaping how I'm showing up in my business - with more confidence & authenticity, generating more momentum behind my actions, and more visibility. I'm so excited to see what comes as a result of embracing my identity.

Wendy is great at helping me get clear on the competing (and often hidden) factors that are affecting important decisions and execution of those decisions. She has an impressive ability to track the complex interplay of demands, beliefs, constraints, and assumptions that impact my ability to move forward. She is also an astute observer of nuance and was able to point out tensions I was unaware of. Finally, she is great at gently yet firmly keeping us on track towards my goals in a session when I am prone to rambles and side quests, which is particularly important for us ADHDers.

Wendy has an innate ability to make me feel seen and heard. She provides a safe space for me to explore my inner obstacles and asks thoughtful questions that enable me to do a deeper dive into untangling and understanding whatever challenge I am facing. At the end of every session; I feel more empowered, more confident and more deeply rooted in my authenticity and self-worth.

Working with Wendy has been such a gift in my life. She is a heart-led leader. She creates a space that's both deeply safe and transformative.

Wendy is amazing at what she does. I feel like I've upleveled after our session together and I'm feeling hopeful.

Beyond the Business

I’m not just a business coach. I’m a whole human who believes the life we are building has to matter while we are living it, and I do not trust any version of success that requires us to forget that.

Here’s a little of what matters to me:

Kayaking, biking and camping all over Wisconsin with the love of my life, who also happens to be named Wendy.
[Yeah, we’re The Wendys. Wendy Squared. Wendy 1 & Wendy 2. We’ve heard it all!]
Cheering (loudly!) for women’s hockey – especially Team USA and the 9 time NCAA champs, the Wisconsin Badgers!
Practicing Reiki as a Master Practitioner and drawing, coloring, and painting mandalas to keep my own nervous system happy.
I care deeply about justice, queer community, and helping good people make enough money to keep doing work that repairs some of the damage this world keeps causing.

You do not have to keep ghosting yourself.

Build your business without leaving yourself behind.

Not Ready to Book Yet? Let’s Stay in Touch.

If you’re curious but not quite ready to book a session, I’d love to stay connected. Join my email list for gentle encouragement, creative inspiration, and trauma-informed insights to help you grow your business in a way that feels true to you.

No spam. Just meaningful support—right when you need it.