How One Mom's Passion Led to a Six-figure Book Deal

From childhood, Christine Gutierrez always knew she wanted to help people and following her intuition has allowed her to do that.

Born and raised in New York City, Gutierrez was inspired by her Puerto Rican roots and moved to the island in 2010. "I really went on a quest to reconnect with my cultural roots and it's been amazing being here," she notes. "Not really knowing and understanding the complexities of Puerto Rico has been challenging and magical."

Following her instinct also led Gutierrez to study psychology and become a therapist. "I went on this soul quest in my own personal life, and I went to therapy and I realized how helpful it was for me," she says. "I went to do spiritual work and I realized how healing it was for me, and healing my own trauma and my own childhood abuse. And I knew that I wanted to help other women, particularly Latina women and women of color, to be able to access those tools."

When she first started her business in 2011, creating a community called The Diosahood, "a soulful sisterhood honoring the diosa (goddess) within," Gutierrez says she was just doing what she loved. "I started hosting free and by donation circles where women would just gather and we would meditate and share what was going on in our life and support one another," she remembers. "And from that deep desire and passion, it just kept on growing."

Similarly, she knew she wanted to write professionally from a young age. "I always knew that I wanted to write, and I wrote poems since I was a little girl," says Gutierrez.

In 2020, Gutierrez published her first book I Am Diosa: A Journey to Healing Deep, Loving Yourself, and Coming Back Home to Soul, for which she was paid six figures.

Making that much money was a "big financial milestone" for Gutierrez. "For me, it was really deeply personal, because in my family, everyone works so hard, and I wanted to show myself and break that paradigm and work with ease, do what I love, and make money. Now, I believe we're hitting close to half a million and my next milestone will be hitting a million."

One of Gutierrez's key messages is that it's possible to follow your passion and succeed financially. "Especially as a Latina woman, I'm really here to break the myth that you can't do good in the world and make money," she says.

To Gutierrez, making money and being an entrepreneur is also about getting to pick and choose what she puts her energy toward. Committed to mapping her business around her life—and not the other way around—the therapist says her priority is her 1-year-old daughter, Mar de Luz. "That's the freedom that I get from being able to be an entrepreneur—getting to be there for my daughter, getting to breastfeed on demand, getting to nurture her, love her, be present to her, and still show up for the world in ways that are working for me."

Here are Guiterrez's tips for entrepreneurs hoping to channel their own passion into a profitable venture.

Know Your Why

Gutierrez encourages entrepreneurs to know why they want to make money. "What are you going to do with that money?" she asks. "How are you going to give back, and how are you going to help people with that money? Who are you going to donate to? What people are you going to impact in your own life and your family's life and in the world?"

What money means is up to you, she points out. It could mean freedom, beauty, power, or having more scholarships available for retreats. "There's so much more that you can do when you have money," says Gutierrez.

Offer Tiered Pricing for Your Services

Gutierrez offers clients a variety of prices, each based on certain features, benefits, or services, because it's important that her offerings be within reach for different people from different financial backgrounds. "The way I've structured my business is that I have different price points so that people can access this information wherever they're at financially," she notes. "We have free workshops. We have low cost offerings, we have mid-tier offerings, and then we have our higher price offerings."

Following that model can help an entrepreneur make their product accessible to everyone.

Always Be Conscious of Your Value

The therapist and author says anyone running a business would do well to ensure their customer is able to get to know and trust them. "It's important to share from your heart and share value," she says. "And when you share value, people will get to know you and they will benefit from your work and then want to work with you."