Challenges I’ve Faced and Overcome Growing my Tarot Business

Challenges I’ve Faced and Overcome Growing my Tarot Business

At the time of writing this, I will have been running my tarot business for 2.5 years. My style is to share and teach everything I have learned and experiences as I like to take all my tarot clan on the journey with me.

Launching and growing my tarot business has been an amazing experience but I’m not one to sugarcoat anything. There have been plenty of challenges along the way.

Let’s have a look at some of the biggest challenges and lessons I have learned. Hopefully, this will help you avoid making some of the same mistakes.

Time

Oh my goodness. This is the biggest challenge. I have a full-time job on top of my tarot business and I have a puppy that is just about to turn 1 so time is not my friend.

However, starting any business takes a lot of commitment and you just have to look at your priorities. I watch a lot less TV than I used to! I also have learned to be much better with time management.

It’s always possible to squeeze more into a day but with something as spiritual as tarot we have to be careful that we keep a sense of balance.

Things are actually getting easier time wise. I’m now much quicker at writing blog posts, using more tools to help me with my social media and I’ve found systems that keep me on track with everything.

I’m still working on the business solo (with a little help from fabulous friends) but as I scale the business I would look at hiring a virtual assistant to keep me on track.

Top Tip: Batching has been a saviour! This is where you set some time aside and do a group of the same tasks at the same time. E.g I’ve been realising a lot of video tutorials of tarot spreads. My old style would have been to record the video, edit it, do the graphics, publish the post and move on.

What I did differently this time was film 5 videos at the same time. Do all the graphics at the same time. Write the posts then schedule them to be released over the next 5 weeks.

This meant that I had 5 weeks worth of content and it created so much space for me to focus on other things. I got all of that done in one afternoon. Usually, it would have taken me 2-3 hours or so per video and I would have been doing that each week.

Have a think about what you can batch in your business or ever your life!

Imposter Syndrome

This is a big one. Especially when first starting out. That little hideous voice in the head “am I good enough?”. We all have it but you just need to learn to conquer that fear.

To be honest it’s still there but I now use it to push me further and ensure that I’m producing great content.

Here’s the thing…my original posts were nowhere near as slick as they are now. I’m also pretty certain that my posts in 2.5 years will be a lot better than what I am doing now! We all have to start somewhere.

The fact is that you won’t know if you are good enough until you try. You will only get better as well. As John Lee Dumas says ‘every master started with disaster’. I’ve had loads of failures along the way but I just pick myself up, learn from it and try something different!

We all have this inner-saboteur who wants to derail us but just rise above it. Give it a try. What’s the worst that can happen?

Comparisonitis

Yuk!  This quote by Roosevelt really sums up this problem:

‘comparison is the thief of joy’

Starting your business should be a joyful experience! Do not fall into the trap of comparing yourself with others. This is actually a problem now with society as well as just in business.

I do believe that it’s good to keep an eye on your competitors and see what they are up to but please don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself.

Do you find yourself looking at other people’s Instagram and being crushed and shamed by how many likes their post got?

Have you watched a Facebook Live where the reader has hundreds of people watching?

Did you try a Facebook Live and nobody showed up?

I can definitely answer a big YES to all of these questions. Sure it’s disappointing to put a lot of work into something and nobody sees it. However, don’t give up! They eyeballs will come!

When I first started I was getting hardly any traffic to my blog but I didn’t stop. Now one of my most popular posts, that brings in hundreds of views a day (please don’t compare yourself!!!!) was a post that I wrote right back at the beginning. Nobody viewed it at the time but it’s suddenly taken off and found a life of it’s own. Remember that the content you are producing it out there for the long term.

You also don’t know what’s happening in somebody else’s business. Perhaps they have plowed all their resources, time and money into Instagram. Did you know that can buy Instagram followers???? I’ve never done it but some people do it to try to get credibility.

Just don’t worry about it. You have no control over what they are doing. Focus on creating worthwhile, engaging content consistently and your time will come!

Learning About Online Business

Yes, it’s been a challenge but I have really loved learning about the online business side of things. I know a lot of you get overwhelmed by technology but the sad fact is that you are going to have to start to learn if you want to grow your business.

One of the challenges is that there are so many avenues to advertise your business. Where are you going to focus or even start?

There are a lot of free resources on the internet that can help you learn about online business such as Amy Porterfield’s podcast.

I would encourage you to dedicate some time each week to learn about online marketing. Maybe you want to take a course or just get the low down from the free podcasts.

Top tip: Don’t try to cover everything at once. If you want to get onto social media, put your energies into one platform. Maybe you focus on growing a Facebook community or perhaps you love taking pictures of different decks and want to grow your business on Instagram. Start small and you can always expand when you have mastered one platform.

Generating Ideas

My belief is that if you want to grow a thriving and successful business you have to consistently be creating content. This can be a bit tricky at the beginning. I am constantly coming up with ideas for new blog posts, videos, tarot spreads etc.

It’s all very well coming up with the idea but then you have to execute, which kind of ties in with the time thing.

This actually starts to get a bit easier as your business grows as you can engage with your community. A lot of my ideas come from questions that I get asked by my audience. You can bet if one person is asking me a question it means that others also want to know the answer.

Top tip: Think about your ideal customer. Do you have a niche? Write a blog post for them. What would they want to know? What language would they want you to use? Even if your audience is tiny, don’t be afraid to talk to them and ask them what they would like to know or what they are struggling with.

It’s Been Done Before!

This has been a tricky one for me. I think I have come up with a new fresh idea for a blog post, lesson etc. I do a quick search only to realise that it’s been done before!

You just need to get over this. The sad truth is that pretty much everything has been said before but it hasn’t been said by you! Your audience is coming back to you as they want to hear your take on it and what to hear your tone of voice.

You don’t want to be a copycat but as long as you stick to your own tone and keep talking to your specific audience you won’t go wrong.

Scaling my Tarot Business

Right from the outset, I’ve had a clear idea that I eventually want Tarot Avenue to be a full-time job for me.

I come from a business background so I like to get deep into the figures. I was doing the planning and looking at what a full-time tarot reader job would look like.

It very quickly came to me that doing 1 on 1 readings is wonderful but if I truly want to scale my business I’m going to have to move to a ‘1 to many’ model.

Luckily for me I absolutely love teaching. I’m definitely going to continue doing 1 on 1 readings but other ways that I will be scaling my business will include online courses, tarot candles, ebooks, webinars, tarot teaching etc.

Top tip: If you want to work as a full-time tarot reader just work it backward. Figure out how much money you would need to make in a year. Divide that by 52 to get the weekly figure. Now divide that by how much you charge for a reading. You will get an idea of the number of readings that you need to do each week to hit your figure.

You might want to check my post about 9 Places to Sell Your Tarot Readings.

Social Media

Social media is a beast and it’s an ever-changing beast! To be completely honest I don’t think I have mastered social media at this stage.  I have limited time so I haven’t really put my energies into social as I’ve been more focussed on creating content on my blog.  However, it’s definitely something that I will be looking to do further down the track as I know how important it can be to reach new customers. Of course, you will be the first to know!

Too Many Ideas

This is a character trait of mine that I need to keep in check. I get an idea for doing something new and I just take action and do it. This has been wonderful, however, I do have a tendency to have ‘bright shiny thing’ syndrome and move onto another idea before I have really perfected the first thing.

I have the following projects all in the works at the moment. This is why it’s important to scale it back and focus on one thing at a time:

Webinars (free and paid)
Facebook Group (yet to be set up)
Tarot Course (started)
Tarot Business Podcast (started but not nearly ready to launch)
Ebooks (outline done by not written yet)
In-person tarot course (dates not confirmed)

Eek! Ok. I need to prioritise stat! haha

Building a Community

This is one that is really grating on me. I’ve built a really loyal following and I love when I hear from my readers.

One of my issues is that I don’t really have a way of connecting with you on a day by day basis. This is the reason I am looking at setting up a Facebook Group. This will give me the opportunity to work with you guys and support you more on your tarot journey. Watch this space!

What challenges have you had in your business? Please write in the comments below as I would love to hear.