At just eight years old, Candiss Pitts knew that entrepreneurship was her future. She sold rhubarb pies at an Amish market with her family growing up.
After college, she worked in direct sales and secured a spot in the top 2% of consultants at her company. “The job came with many perks,” she told CNBC Make It. She was rewarded with free trips, designer handbags and mansion parties.
Being a mother from a small town in West Virginia, this was more than Pitts had ever dreamed of. However, she had this nagging feeling that something was missing. “I started asking myself: Who am I? What am I here to do? Am I living my purpose?”
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These questions would eventually inspire her to build The Royal Shaman, a spiritual advising business for elite CEOs and entrepreneurs.
“I’ve always knew I had a gift — a way of knowing and seeing things other people can’t. After feeling disconnected from my sales career, I decided to follow my intuition,” she said.
Before beginning her business, Pitts quit her job in 2013 for a five-year spiritual journey that led her to South Africa, where she trained to become a shaman. A shaman is a “healer” who in a variety of ways bridges the physical and non-physical realms, she explained.
“Initiation involves rigorous training in psychology — healing a person physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually by diagnosing their roadblocks, performing rituals that call upon ancestors to help, or guiding them back to harmony with their soul,” the 33-year-old noted.
The process didn’t come cheap for Pitts. According to her, she spent more than $100,000 and had to take on jobs in marketing and business strategy to get by.
She returned home in 2018 and started offering individual spiritual advising sessions. “Spiritual advising is different than life coaching,” she explained. “Life coaches typically focus on personal growth and success. But I help my clients expand and uplift their consciousness on a more spiritual level. This is an ancient and esteemed practice — even the Dalai Lama has a ‘spirit’ advisor.”
According to her, she first priced her services at $197 per session. Her clients were mostly from her Facebook page. She launched her first group program in December 2018, where members had access to weekly group coaching calls. For the first month, she enrolled 20 people in her group program, which only brought in around $17,000 the following year. By 2020, Pitts knew she had to expand her operations and attract new members.
“My new goal was to attract an elite clientele — particularly high income earners and high-level entrepreneurs. I stopped posting on Facebook began marketing myself on podcasts, interview appearances, and on Mighty Networks, a community platform for brands,” she said.
Her current offerings now start at $15,000 for a group coaching membership and extend to over $200,000 a year for exclusive, one-to-one coaching. Despite the challenges occasioned by COVID-19, her gross revenue grew to $209,000.
In 2021, she closed out with $972,000 and she is on track to make more than $2 million in gross revenue this year. She has made an average of $119,000 per month this quarter with her team comprising a business manager, digital marketing manager, sales specialist, mindset coach, and a virtual assistant.
