How to Start a Tarot Card Reading Business
It may seem hard to start a business, but it can be simple if you focus on the right things. Fortunately, once you’ve read through this guide, you’ll have everything you need to know to get started!
Understand your motivation for pursuing an intuitive reading business.
First and foremost: What is your purpose?
Running a business is an amazing journey, but it can also be challenging at times. As in any arena of life, you’ll experience periods of success and face periods of struggle. The challenging times are when it is most important to understand your purpose so that you can motivate yourself to push through to good times again. Make sure that your purpose for running a Tarot reading business is impactful to you–such as pursuing personal growth, creating income for yourself so you can live life on your terms, being able to support yourself while doing something meaningful, etc. A poor reason for embarking on this journey would be because you want to afford some fancy item to impress others (a superficial desire).
Going into this adventure, it is valuable to remember that many people have had great success as Tarot readers. It’s a validated business model and it can be done. There is plenty of room for more people, such as yourself, to make a splash and earn some impressive profits. That’s nothing new either, Tarot readers have a long history of making waves.
So, let’s consider how to begin moving forward. Have an idea of success in your mind before you gets started. Even though things never go exactly to plan, you at least want to know what you are working towards. What kind of income would you like to achieve? How many hours do you want to work each week? What do you want your days to look like? A general understanding of these things can help you develop your business in a way that best suits you.
Know your brand
Importantly, take some time to consider your personal brand. What makes YOU unique and different from someone offering a similar service? There is no right-or-wrong answer here, simply put your best strengths forward. If you’re great with relationships and enjoy dealing with matters of that kind, you could tailor your intuitive reading brand to focus on helping your clients understand and succeed in their relationships. Maybe you’re a social media wiz and want to build a strong online presence and conduct readings over Zoom. There are limitless ways to reach success–find the one that is best for you.
Know your target market
Define your target market. Who do you want as your ideal customer? How old are they? Are they from a certain region or city? Where, online or in-person, are the best places to reach them? All of these are things to consider when pinpointing your target market. As a Tarot card reader, you want to cultivate an audience of people that you understand, so that you can give them the best readings and guidance possible
Once you’ve established the basics for your intuitive reading business, it will be easier for you to scale it to reach your desired size. As you tap into your intuition and help others make sense of the many messages and signs the Universe gives us, you’ll be finding fulfillment in your work. It’s a beautiful ordeal—you can provide for yourself, develop your skills, and help others.
Getting Started
Having put together a general idea of what your business is going to look like, it’s time to act. Business is not like a classroom setting where you learn-then-do. It’s more about learning as you go along and making lots of little changes along the way. So, firstly, make sure your intuitive reading skills are adequately developed. The Intuitive Souls Tarot Course will give you all the information you need to get started. Just make sure to practice, practice, practice!
Start by giving readings to friends free of charge. Use the free sessions to find areas of improvement and feel free to ask for feedback. Tailor your readings until they are going smoothly, and you are constantly delivering a great experience to your clients. Also, don’t try to push it on anyone as it’s definitely not everyone’s thing. Once you’ve got this down, you can begin charging clients and building your book of business.
Official Paperwork
At this point, it will be time to officially establish your business. There is some paperwork involved, but many services online can handle most of the heavy lifting for you. It’s important to do these things so that you are following the law and are personally protected in a worst-case-scenario situation. Your Tarot card reading business won’t cost you very much to start. You will just need to pay for some business registration items.
Most Tarot card readers form either sole proprietorships or LLCs. An LLC is a “Limited Liability Corporation” and means that your business is a separate legal entity from you–this is a good thing because it protects you from being held personally liable. It may be best long-term to form an LLC, as it’s an easy way to ensure you won’t be held personally liable; only your LLC (the entity) can be. To get set-up, there are a lot of online services that can help you set up your business in your state. You can use a service like Zenbusiness or Legalzoom (not affiliated) to register your business, and they’ll handle most of the heavy lifting. There will be a filing fee, as well as a fee from the service, but fortunately it’s only a one-time payment. You can get set up with your brand’s name, get an EIN (Employer Identification Number, basically the business equivalent of a social security number) and have a business bank account.
Pick a name and establish your brand. You may want to skim through different social media platforms and websites to see what kind of name’s similar businesses are using. These will help you to both know what’s available to use for a name and give you ideas of how you should brand yourself in entering the space.
Developing an image
It can be worthwhile to make or have a logo made for your brand. Remember that your brand is much more than just a name or an image–it’s everything about what makes you and your service special. It’s up to you to figure that out. You should pull from what you like and what you want to do to make your own unique brand. Intuitive reading is about cultivating deep connections with people and the universe. So, how do you want to present yourself?
You may also want to set up a website for yourself. Luckily there are many easy templates, like Wix.com, that allow you to create a handsome website with great ease and little effort. For the promotion aspect, there are many inexpensive ways to spread word of your service organically. The ongoing costs will also be minimal–the bulk of your expenses will most likely be incurred from marketing depending on how you pursue that. If you also conduct readings remotely via FaceTime, Zoom, or Skype, you shouldn’t really have any travel costs either.
You’ll need to figure out what you want to charge your customer per reading, and you need to figure out how long your readings will be. To start, as a rule of thumb, it’s better to start with free or for very low prices to attract customers and make sure you’re delivering an excellent reading before you start asking for more. After you’ve established yourself with a reputation of being a skilled interpreter, you can start charging higher rates per reading–likely around $40-60 for a 30-minute reading, and about $100 for an hour-long reading.
Accounting Stuff (Boring!)
It’s been said that only two things are certain: death (an energy transition) and taxes. You’ll hear about the former in your readings, and the taxes come into play afterward. Reporting your income and paying the appropriate taxes are the responsibility of any business owner. So, make sure you keep track of your income and expenses, and work with an accountant to ensure everything required is taken care of.
Accounting may not be fun, but it’s critical to running a business; it’s even said to be the language of business. Many people hire bookkeepers to help them run their businesses. They keep track of all your income, your expenses, profitability, and the list goes on. This is a necessary step in which if you decide to not use an accountant, you can always bookkeep for yourself with an easy-to-use software, like the QuickBooks Accounting Software. It makes it easy for any business owner to keep track of everything they need when they need to file taxes and make business decisions.
Social Media
You’re going to want to promote yourself through social media, and you would do well to use one or a combination of the following: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and/or Snapchat. Using channels like these will allow you to reach out to a wide variety of people (specifically your target demographic), with relative ease. Those are more tactics, but the main thing is having a brand persona. You want your target audience to know that if they need spiritual guidance that you’re the one to best provide it. It will take time, but as your business grows more and more, you’ll acquire a lot of customer feedback. An effective marketing tool is to create content based off customer testimony. Potential customers like to know other customers’ experiences with a product or service. Consumer testimony can be very powerful, so make sure you capture testimonials from your most satisfied clients.
Hopefully, this has been helpful for you. With this, you should now be ready to embark on an incredible journey not only as a business owner, but as an Intuitive Reader of the Tarot!
*This is not financial or legal advice, these are just suggestions on how to get started with a Tarot reading business*