Faith Over Formula: How Shayla Atkins Leads with Surrender

Shayla Atkins, CEO and founder of The Atkins Impact Group, embodies the transformative power of faith in entrepreneurship. Her journey, marked by prayer, obedience, surrender, and strategic pivoting, offers a compelling blueprint for leaders seeking to align their professional aspirations with their spiritual calling.

Atkins Impact Group, launched in March 2020, just a week before the world shut down, is a testament to Shayla’s unwavering faith. “To be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit crazy and have a lot of faith,” she quips. This faith was tested from the outset, as she navigated the uncertainties of a global pandemic while simultaneously building a business. Her decision to leave a ‘cushy multi-six-figure job’ in corporate America for the ‘unknown territory of entrepreneurship’ was another profound leap of faith.

Disciplined Obedience and Surrender

Central to Shayla’s approach is the concept of ‘disciplined obedience,’ and she is precise about what that means and what it doesn’t. It isn’t about cherry-picking the parts of faith that feel comfortable or convenient. “Disciplined obedience is not just being obedient some of the time, or piecemealing and taking the pieces that feel good,” she explains. “It’s doing all of it: the yucky, mundane, day-to-day stuff. The things you’re probably avoiding most are the things you need to be doing most.”

For Shayla, this kind of full, unedited obedience became her anchor during the turbulent year of 2025, a year that tested faith-based entrepreneurs across the country. She watched colleagues shut down businesses, lose their entire client base, and return to the workforce. According to workforce data, 600,000 women exited the workforce in 2025. Not voluntarily.

And yet, in the middle of that disruption, Shayla found not panic but clarity. “You’re not going to strategize your way through this one,” she recalls. “There’s no playbook. There’s no precedent. This was full surrendering. Okay, God, I’m turning my business over to you.”

Surrender Over Strategy as a Business Plan

For most leaders, surrender sounds like defeat. But Shayla has built her operating philosophy around a different conviction: there are seasons when no amount of strategy can carry you through, and knowing that is itself a form of leadership. Her first business, the one that never launched because she and her partner were too busy perfecting it, taught her that lesson the hard way. “We poured so much into getting it perfect,” she says, “that it never got off the ground.” Strategy without surrender, she learned, is just control with better language.

The image she returns to is a balloon: “If you hold a balloon down, it stays down. But if you let it go, it soars.” In 2025, that theology met its hardest test. Every industry signal said contract, conserve, and wait. Shayla launched a leadership conference. Not because the data supported it; conferences were down across her industry. She launched it because she saw a need the data wasn’t measuring. “We needed each other so badly. We needed community and camaraderie. We needed to learn and grow together in a sacred space.” The conference was a resounding success.

This is what surrender over strategy looks like in practice: not the absence of planning, but the willingness to let a higher signal override conventional wisdom. Shayla still measures outcomes and builds systems. But underneath that structure is a disposition of openness, rooted in her core principle of chasing impact over income. “When you’re not chasing money, you’re chasing impact,” she says, “and that leads you to do things differently.” In 2025, doing things differently meant surrendering the plan and trusting the Designer. It worked.

Stewardship of Time, Talent, and Treasure

This commitment to impact extends to how Shayla stewards her time, talent, and treasure. Her talent is dedicated to delivering measurable outcomes and transforming lives. Her treasure isn’t defined by financial gain, but by the purposeful investment of what God has entrusted to her. And her time, once constrained by corporate demands, is now generously poured into her family and the work that truly fulfills her.

“You can’t build an empire with an empty cup,” she says, a reminder she keeps literally posted beside her bed. The flexibility of entrepreneurship now allows her to ease into her mornings, have lunch with her children at school, and show up for the moments that corporate calendars swallowed whole. “It’s almost like a reinvestment,” she says of the time she now controls, “versus giving it to an employer and not getting anything back.”

Advice for Aspiring Faith-Based Entrepreneurs

For those contemplating a similar leap, Shayla offers a pointed challenge: “Let go of the false pretense of perfection.” She sees perfectionism not as a standard of excellence but as something more revealing. “Perfection is just lipstick on fear. What are you actually afraid of?” Her prescription is direct: “Do it scared. Do it ugly. But just keep going.”

She also strongly recommends therapy for anyone making the transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, coining the phrase “corporate PTSD” to name what she has seen again and again: professionals so thoroughly shaped by organizational culture that they no longer know their own creativity or identity outside of a job title. “You have to do some unlearning,” she says. “You have to do some shedding.”

Conclusion: When Faith Leads, Impact Follows

Shayla Atkins’ journey is a powerful testament to the fact that when faith leads, impact follows. Her story challenges us to embrace disciplined obedience, surrender to divine guidance, and fearlessly pursue the calling that transforms not only our own lives but the lives of those we are called to serve.

Her second annual leadership conference is set for September. She is already planning. Already expecting the unexpected. Already trusting the Designer.