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In Practice: The Business of Tarot!
The Business of Tarot
by Bonnie Cehovet |
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This months column will wander around a bit - taking a look at some of the options that professional readers have to bring clients in during the summer months, when people are out and about, and looking for fun things to do anyway!
I personally would not look for reasons to discount my readings to bring clients in. Place your value where you think that it should be, and stick to it. You will respect yourself, and your clients will respect you. If they are not willing to pay your fee, they are not that serious about working on themselves anyway! If they were, they would approach you about a trade or barter - which I am more than willing to do, as long as some money changes hands (there are exceptions to this rule, but I do try and stick by it).
Late spring, summer and early fall are generally times when doing readings outdoors is an option. If you read from home, it will be relatively easy to set aside a place on a porch, out of the path of any winds that may be blowing, to do your readings. Comfortable chairs, a large enough table to allow you to place your spreads and a candle or two are all that you may need. You can add to this - play light music in the background, place one or two wind chimes out - whatever makes you happy and your clients comfortable. There is one thing here that is very important - voices carry. You want to be sure that the readings are being done in an area where voices will not carry over into the neighbors yard. What goes on between you and your client is confidential. If there is no "safe" place to read outside, you may want to move your indoor reading area near a window where flowers, or a wide expanse of lawn are visible, as this creates a peaceful environment conducive to bonding with your clients.
Spring and summer are also a very good time to focus on advertising for group readings. OK, maybe that title is a little misleading. I am talking about doing readings for small groups in a party setting - often for bridal showers, or even baby showers. Or, this can be a chance for a professional reader to give a short lecture about Tarot to a group of people, spend some time answering questions (have a set time limit in mind here, or you could be there forever!). After that, you can give short readings - say between ten and twenty minutes, for the guests (on a paying basis - just prorate your hourly rate to the number of minutes involved).
In conjunction with doing readings for parties, you might want to develop two or three spreads that can be used within the set time limit, and that are geared towards the interests of the group you are reading for. At a bridal shower, keep the spreads "light" and geared towards relationship/home/family. For a baby shower, develop a reading or two related to the interaction between the coming baby and the mother, or perhaps what can be expected in the upcoming months. It might not be completely out of bounds to do readings on karma and the baby's path in this lifetime. For more general parties - i.e. friends getting together to have some fun and learn about Tarot, bring with you spreads that deal with a wide range of subjects - career, finances, relationship, happiness - these are all areas that you might expect to come up here.
You may also want to think about getting together with two or three other people that offer metaphysical readings - you doing Tarot, another person doing astrology, another person doing numerology - and set up a weekend day for giving readings. This can be done indoors or outdoors, and you would need someone who is not doing readings to be there to manage the traffic flow and take the money (or, the money can be paid directly to each reader). What you do is offer mini readings from each reader in turn - and this is best offered as a package deal! The length of the readers to be agreed upon by the readers beforehand. As an alternative to this, you can hold a psychic fair on one or more weekends, giving slightly longer readings and allowing customers to purchase one or more readings at their discretion.
This next area is not seasonal in nature, but is something that a professional reader can work on at any time, and that is reading in a business setting. By this I mean - literally going out to brick and mortar businesses and showing them how Tarot can help boost their productivity. I will say up front that I have never done this, but I firmly believe that as a reader I do have something to offer. It takes courage to walk this path - but that courage might just bring you in a whole new clientele!
The first thing that I would do is read Mark McElroy's book "Putting The Tarot To Work" (Llewellyn Publications, 2004). Mark is an insider - he is a business trainer who is also a Tarot Professional, and in his book he discusses strategies for using Tarot in a business sense for creative problem solving, making effective decisions, and personal career planning. In his book, Mark offers specific strategies and spreads for use within the business environment. I am not going to go into them here, but I do think that they are very good, and could be used as is, or tweaked to reflect the readers own thoughts.
Now you have some sense of what to offer the business world. Decide what you want to focus on, and how you want to do the work.
A good start would be to offer your services through seminars given at the business location. Take your focus points, and decide in what order you want to present them. Work out what you are going to say, and how you are going to say it. Decide whether you want the seminar to be slightly formal, with a presentation followed by a question and answer period, or whether you want to be informal, with a structured talk that allows for questions as you go along. Work out a couple of different time formats - say, one for a two hour presentation and one for a three or four hour presentation.
Take the time to develop handouts that can be given to the participants - either before the presentation, so that they can follow along with you, or after the presentation, so that they will have a clear idea of what they just heard! These handouts can be a listing of your talking points - or they can be more involved. One thing that I would include here would be the Tarot suits and what life areas they represent, and key concepts for each of the cards. The point here is that they should represent you and your personal style. I would use letterhead for the handouts, so that people can contact you personally if they want to know more about what you have to offer. In this way, you could build up a professional consultation business, if you wanted to.
OK - You are ready to go knock on the doors of the business world! Where exactly do you start? Do you go down the business pages of the phone book and hope? The first thing that I would do here is to pinpoint the businesses that I would feel comfortable working with. Then I would visit the phone book, and get all of the information about them that I could - name of business, type of business, who their advertising is aimed at, their address and phone number.
My next step would be to send a letter introducing myself and my services. Some people feel perfectly OK doing cold calls - I do not, so I wouldn't even attempt them. The letters should go out on letterhead, with a professionally printed envelope (these can be done from your own printer). The letter should be short, and to the point - something like the example below. I would also attempt to get the name of the owner, office manager or head of HR so that I could personalize the letter. A quick call to the company, stating that you offer a service beneficial to the company, and asking who to direct your offer to, should get you the information that you need.
April 25th, 2004
Business Name
Business Address
Business Address
Dear (owner/manager/HR head):
My name is Bonnie Cehovet, and I am a personal consultant. I offer business seminars that focus on the following areas:
* creative problem solving
* effective decision making
* win/win supervisory skills
* interpersonal business relationships
I work with the Tarot, and the archetypes found within the Tarot, to help people think outside of the box and find new and creative ways of accomplishing their business goals.
If you would like more information on how to put real spark into your employees decision making and problem solving abilities, and offer them an exceptional tool for sharpening their people skills, please contact me at 555-555-5555, or e-mail me at: Crystalgate@aol.com.
I look forward to hearing from you in the very near future.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Cehovet
The Crystal Gate
220 W. Cota
PMB 207
Shelton, WA 98584
I would wait for five business days after the promotional letter was mailed, and then I would do a follow-up call, asking to speak to the person the letter was addressed to. I would introduce myself, restate the services that I offered, and ask if the person would be willing to set up an in person meeting.
I would advise practicing what you are going to say before you make the call. You can practice using a tape recorder, but it is better to have interactive trial runs using willing friends or family members. More than likely you will be facing a negative reaction to Tarot itself. You do not want to have a prolonged telephone conversation about this, so you need to decide how you are going to handle this. In some way, you need to get the point across that Tarot is used as a very effective focal point for thinking "outside of the box". You might also want to offer to meet with the person that you are talking to and give them a demonstration by working through a business issue that their company is currently facing.
There will be a certain amount of businesses who will not want to work with Tarot - period. Move on to the next contact - there will be people who want their business to succeed badly enough that they are willing to check out new ways of doing things.
Once you set the meeting up, you need to be the consummate professional. Dress professionally, show up on time, bring your talking points with you - and leave a copy with the person you are meeting with, as well as a brochure that advertises your business. Take a Tarot deck along with you - they may want to see a sample of your work, or they may just want to see what kind of deck you are working with. My advise here - choose a deck with no nudity, and no "themes". You want to work with a deck that will be acceptable to a wide range of people. My suggestions would be along the lines of the Rider-Waite or Morgan-Greer decks.
These are just a few ideas that will help you to enjoy your summer and grow your business. Perhaps some of what I have presented here will act as a spark for your own creative nature. Allow that spark to light the fires of your own creativity!
Wishing you all a wonderful summer!
May your paths be well lit and well traveled.
Please contact me at Crystalgate@aol.com with any subjects that you would like to see discussed in this column. I want this to be reflective of the needs and concerns of the Tarot community at large.
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Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master, and Reiki Master/Teacher.
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Bonnie Cehovet is a Tarot Master, professional Tarot reader and Reiki Master/Teacher.
Bonnie has been reading the Tarot professionally for over ten years. She has served in various capacities with the American Tarot Association, including Secretary and Web Assistant For Links. She is currently Certification Director and Secretary for the American Board For Tarot Certification. Bonnie is also a founding member of the World Tarot Network.
Bonnie has had her work published in the ATA newsletter, in Geraldine Amaral's "Celebrating The Tarot" print newsletter, on the World Tarot Network and other internet sites. She is editor for her own monthly newsletter "Gateway To Tarot" (Yahoo Groups).
www.tarot.thecrystalgate.
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