Are You Ready?

Before we start

This course is not about the cards

This whole course assumes one thing. You can already read. If you are still learning what is in a card, go and do that first, because none of what follows will help you.

What this course is about is everything else. How to talk to a real person who is sitting in front of you with something heavy. What to charge. How to get found. How to keep money coming in without working yourself into the ground.

Here is the thing nobody says out loud. Being good at tarot and running a tarot business are two completely different skills. I have watched brilliant readers quit, and almost none of them quit because they could not read. They quit because they charged too little, gave too much away, took on work that upset them, and ran out of steam.

So we start here, with you.

Lesson one

What this job actually is

When you turn professional, the reading stops being the job and becomes part of the job.

Think about what a paid reading actually involves. Someone has to find you. They have to trust you enough to book. They have to be able to pay you without a conversation about it. You have to turn up prepared, hold the session properly, and finish it cleanly. Then there is the note keeping, the tax, the messages afterwards, and finding the next person.

The cards are maybe a fifth of that. Possibly less.

And you are not being paid for forty five minutes. You are being paid for every year you spent learning to do this well. Price it that way in your head from the beginning, because it is true, and because if you do not believe it nobody else will.

Lesson two

Decide who you are before anyone else decides for you

If you do not say what you do, people will fill the gap themselves. They will assume you can find a lost cat, tell them if he is cheating, and say when their mother is going to die. Then they will be annoyed with you when you say no.

So settle three things now, in plain words, and say them the same way every time.

What you read on. Who you read for. What you will not touch.

That is your position. It goes on your website, in your bio, and in your mouth when somebody asks at a party.

One more thing while you are deciding. Your name. Pick one you can live with for ten years, and make sure the same handle is free on the places you will post. Changing it later costs you everything you have built under the old one.

Lesson three

The readiness check

Ten questions. Answer them honestly rather than hopefully. Nobody sees this but you.

Lesson four

The four things to fix first

If the check came back low, do not panic and do not stop. These four are the ones that actually block you from trading. Everything else can wait.

1. Register as self employedYou tell HMRC you are trading. It is free, it takes about ten minutes online, and until you do it you are not running a business, you are just taking money. Module seven covers the rest of it.
2. Set a price and say it out loudPick a number. Say it to the mirror until you can say it without softening it, apologising for it or adding but. If you flinch when you say your price, the person you are saying it to will hear the flinch and not the number.
3. Take the money before the readingNot after. Not on arrival. Not by bank transfer when they get round to it. Impulse does not survive a delay, and a booking that is not paid for is not a booking, it is a maybe.
4. Write your no go listThe subjects you will not read on. Mine are legal matters, anything illegal, financial advice, medical questions, births, deaths and pregnancy, and I do not do predictions. Write yours down before somebody asks you on the spot, because on the spot is when people say yes to things they should not.

That rule earns its own line because it is the one that catches everybody. The moment people find out you read, every person you have ever met crawls out of the woodwork wanting a quick one. Reading for family and friends because you want to is lovely. Doing it because you feel you owe them is how you end up resenting the thing you love.

If it is not money, make it something. A review. A referral. A service swapped. An exchange keeps it clean on both sides.

Worksheet

Who I am as a reader

Fill this in now, while it is fresh. Short answers are better than clever ones. You will use this again in module six when we build your online presence, so keep it.