Tarot Card Reading: The Business, Part 1

I've been using Tarot Cards for 20 or so years. Just lately, I've decided to go professional. The idea of going professional started about two years ago.

I met Yvette through my other friend Tina. Tina worked at a local casino in the Seattle/Shoreline area. It was there that she met Yvette. After getting to know each other, they found that they shared a common interest in Spirituality and other New Age topics. Yvette had started to dabble in using the Tarot and told Tina about it.

Tina and I didn't know each other that well at the time, eventually the same topic of Tarot cards came up and I started to teach Tina how to read the cards. Tina introduced me to Yvette and soon a "partnership" of sorts started to form.

Yvette had the idea of opening up a business. Tina and I thought that it would be a great idea as well. We found the book Professional Tarot by Christine Jette and began reading. All the while, I started to take a look into the legalities and other formalities of establishing a business in Washington State.

I was between contracts for my usual job in my career, so we met almost every day to discuss ideas about how to advertise, how to conduct business and how to read for customers. We got together a stack of note cards to write one and just started to brainstorm. After the brainstorm session ended, we organized the cards into several piles, such as "Business Conduct", "Advertising", "During Readings" and "Wish List". We can up with a lot of ideas and many of them were just brilliant. We started to put things down on paper, regardless of Yvette's protests.

I wanted to put it down in writing on how to conduct "our" business so that we would be on the same page and to prevent any misunderstandings amongst the business' members. Yvette protested that we didn't "need" to, or that it was just a formality. It was a good thing, however, that I wanted to put things down in writing before we applied for business licenses or corporation status. Certain issues came to light that I didn't agree with.

To begin, the way that I imagined the way profits were to be divided would be uneven. As each of us started to create a list of clients, our clients would be most comfortable with one of us as an advisor. Because, we had our own client lists, that member should receive a majority of the profit made from a particular reading. My reasoning was this would encourage some friendly competition amongst us and it would drive up sales. For example, the reader would receive 70% percent of the fee collected from the reading; the other 30% would go to advertising, taxes and other expenses that we could share. Yvette thought that such a set up would be "unfair".

What she had in mind was similar, but it differed in how the profits would be split. Yvette imagined that the fees would be split three ways. Each member would get one third of the profits. Her only reason what that she thought that it would be "greedy" for only one person to receive the fees for the reading. But, underneath that statement, she was jealous that Tina and I could read much better than her, not only in terms of knowing the cards, but how we interpreted them for the client. We had a tactful approach especially when it came to any negative cards that would show up in the reading. Her approach was rather brusque and, at times, insensitive. Another, reason why her way would not be feasible is that any one of the members could sick back and receive money, regardless of the amount of work they put in since it was always split three ways. It is because of this possibly scenario that Tina was more agreeable to the idea than Yvette.

Another issue that came up was where we would conduct business. Per Christine Jette, she suggests meeting the client in a quiet but public place, instead of renting office space. Or, find a psychologist or psychiatrist who would be willing to lease their office space by the hour. I was fine with that, and also the idea that if we were to go to the client's house, at least two of us would go, never just one of us. Yvette had other ideas for that. In Yvette's mind, we would work for her boyfriend in his pool/billiards hall.

Hello… we're self-employed!

In essence, she missed the point of being self-employed or running our own business. You might work for someone else but as an independent contractor, not as an employee.

Yet, another issue was how Yvette conducted herself. She constantly was looking in the book. She didn't project the feeling of confidence; she was always saying things such as "I don't know…" or "I guess…" She didn't handle negative issues well. For example, she did a reading for a woman who worked at a local casino. She saw some separation or that her husband would leave her. All the while she was acting like it wasn't important; she wasn't sensitive to how the woman felt. She'd say "Oooo, he's going to leave you…" or something rather insensitive. Later on, word got around and the woman's husband committed suicide. I thought then on, that she would need to shape up, or I would not want to do business with her. She, herself, was a liability.

Eventually, issues, such as how profits were used and how the definition of "self-employed" was applied, split the team apart, not to mention certain other factors regarding Yvette in the personal arena.

So, the idea of starting a business with the Tarot Cards, faded away until very recently a friend of mind started me thinking, yet again…

To all my readers, LOVE, LIGHT and LUCK.

-- Eutyches

(c) Joseph S. Maza