Prophecy for Profit
Contents Introduction 1
Professional Consulting 4
When “Spirit” is important and money isn’t - if you need to earn a living - materialism - marketing -
a day’s work for a day’s pay -what any successful business person will tell you - what any professional psychic will tell youSkills and qualifications 9
What qualifications do you need -
beginners section - early days as a professional consultant - where to find training - training in astrology - training for healing - other divinations - watching the professionals - books & other
literature - groups & organizations Do you need Counseling Skills? 16
Do you need training - an astrologer’s view - special advice - advice-giving
Combining Consulting with a “Proper Job” 21
Part-time consulting - should you keep your consultancy a secret Working from Home 24
Location, location, location - accessibility - a place to
work in - your own appearance - a few essentials - food & drink - smoking - drinking - your loo - clients with children - your waiting area - insurance and other protection - the loneliness of the
long-distance Reader Location, Family Life, Relationships and Sexual Peril 36
Family life - some alternatives - family friction - hours of work - spiritual incompatibility - a classic true story
- dangerous situations - sensible solutions When you can’t work from your Home 44
Someone else’s home - a local shop - a shopping mall - psychic fairs & festivals - telephone readings -
postal readings - party plan readings - other exotic venues - readings at your other place of work - Barbara’s story Combining different jobs 59
Health & Healing - teaching - keep it simple -
venues for your work - adult institutions & regular schools - the world of commerce - job applications - lectures & demonstrations - dial a psychic phone lines - lecturing - broadcasting
Consulting as a sideline to related work 67
The mental & physical health field - spiritual healing - recruitment - banking Fairs and Festivals 70
Sheila McGuirk - psychic fairs &
festivals - your space is your altar - color coding - all the fun of the fair Startup Costs 76
The expensive divinations - other expenses - the Internet - teaching - raising money for startup
costs What should you charge for a Reading? 85
Rip-off merchants - high, low & realistic fees - a high-income area - three ways of costing your readings - don’t shoot yourself in the foot -
other considerations - hidden costs - facts to remember - time is money - value for value - comparisons are odious - charlatanism -fraudulent mediums - clients’ expectations - off days - off lives -
disastrous Readers Charges in other parts of the world 101
It’s all relative... Building a Clientele 104
Advertising in local newspapers - word of mouth - business cards - other forms
of advertising - ways of marketing your services - talks, lectures & demonstrations - the media - too many clients - nuisance phone callers - psychic fairs & festivals - school fetes or charity events
Writing 118
Magazines - writing a stars column - phone lines - books - how to write a book - computers, disks & other nightmares - is it really worth writing a book?
Mental Health and Well-being 126
Stress in the workplace - financial uncertainty - hours of work - living over the shop - the loneliness factor - dealing with too many people’s’ problems - psychic
self-defence - closing your chakras - more serious forms of self-defence - your own performance rating Organizational Methods 138
Your appointments - the telephone - secretarial skills -
letterheads - files & filing - time management - travel & transport Legal and Official Matters 147
Tax - legal problems An Overview of Financial Management 150
To be
legitimate or not - when to open a bank account - what kind of bank account - the benefit system - budgeting - savings schemes - make a will Cashflow 158
Budgeting - Fluctuations in the flow of
clients - times of optimism & pessimism - psychic self-defence Record keeping and the Tax Man 166
How long to keep your records - keeping your diary records - sample records - do you need an
accountant - income tax, VAT & National Insurance - fiddles - tax avoidance - tax deductible expenses - setting household expenses against tax - wot, no receipts? - things you can’t claim - things you
can partially claim - don’t be afraid to communicate - finally... Readers, Clients and Civilians 179
Clients & civilians - being special - hostility - more advice on handling social occasions
- take a break A Potpourri 183
If you see something bad in a reading - be kind to your self - the garden party - further dead-loss situations - mildly hostile clients - getting it just right - an
exciting tale - Nostradamus & company... When it all goes wrong... 188
When the Reader has it all wrong - common personal or emotional problems - avoiding common practical problems - timing -
readings that misfire - client related problems - the plumber - blockages - the wrong kind of reading - dozy clients - foreign clients - clients from hell - it’s not over until the fat lady sings - the
oversized bosom syndrome - bad news - Veronica - a plate of jelly - can I have the good stuff now, please? - the proof of the pudding - what can be expected from a reading - over demanding clients - the
Royal Marine Bandsman syndrome Profiles of a few Readers 208
Jonathan Dee - Roy Gillett - Sue Lilly - Sheila McGuirk - Tracey Risman - Dave & Eve Bingham - Molly-Ann Fairley - Betty Nugent
When it all goes right! 217 oooOOOooo CHAPTER 1
Professional Consulting“Who is this book for?”
In this book we use the word Reader with a capital “R” as a title for those who give readings. We refer to various Readers
and their clients as “he” or “she” depending upon what seems most appropriate to the topic at the time. We are equal opportunity writers!
When “Spirit” is important and money isn’t
Your motivation for giving readings may primarily be spiritual and you may have no need to earn money from your work, and you may even feel
that it is wrong for you to do so. If this is the case, you will still find plenty in this book to show you how to make a success of what you do and to minimize the aggravation factor. If you need
opportunities to give your work for little or nothing, consider offering your services to your local Spiritualist Church. You will have all the pleasure of helping people who need a reading, you can raise
money for charity and at the same time become part of our wonderful spiritual world, without having to sully your conscience with filthy lucre. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this attitude, and we in
this book are under no circumstances interested in pressurizing you into changing your outlook. If you need to earn a living
If you
need to earn good money, you can easily do so without ripping off the public. We will show you how to give your clients a quality service while at the same time enjoying a comfortable lifestyle from the
fruits of your efforts.Our book is for the most part a business book and it contains much that is similar to the kind of information that you will find in regular business books, but you will find the
explanations in our book far easier to read and to understand than in the average business book. The chances are that if you are a crystal gazer or a sand Reader, you won’t have read the usual business
books that concentrate on such matters as finance, bookkeeping, cashflow, business plans and so on, and you may never have read a book on marketing either. Although this book has sections on all these
subjects and much more, it concentrates strictly on how to apply these concepts to the business of being a Reader. So if you want to maximize your profits and minimize your losses without losing your soul,
read on... You will have already noticed and you will see again and again in this book that there must be a spiritual element to all that you do, but there is no reason for you to starve for the sake of
“upstairs”. You can make a good living - perhaps not a magnificent one, but a good enough living, if you set about your work in the right way. Materialism
Whilst
writing this book, the topic of materialism has come up in conversation with others on several occasions. Many of those who are new to spiritual work (and some who are not so new) have the perception that it
is wrong to have more than the bare minimum that is needed for survival. Apparently it is spiritually incorrect to want money and possessions, and it is wrong to take a commercial view of our work - or
indeed any other kind of work. This anti-materialistic view was not always prevalent among psychics, it came about after the explosion of interest in Indian and Asian religious concepts that swept westwards
on the heels of the Beatles’ friend, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1970s.Oriental and Eastern peoples, whether they come from India, Hong Kong, Malaya or Saudi Arabia, are often extremely money-minded.
Wives drive their husbands crazy to give them the kind of homes and goods that will give them “face” and thus make them the envy of the neighborhood. Men will work themselves to death in order to obtain
status symbols, and worse still, dubious business practices are sometimes the order of the day. The religious folk from these countries fight hard against this tide of crass materialism. They take the
opposite road of living an extremely simple life and of preaching that the Almighty will provide their followers with sufficient for their survival. The chances are that those who are reading this book
will have been brought up in one of the Judeo-Christian western societies. These have always emphasized the need for charity, fair play, decency in business dealings and in not looking too rich or too flash.
We don’t need to have anti-materialism drummed into us; on the contrary, spiritual people need to know that there is nothing wrong in having “abundance” as long as it is obtained by fair means. If you want
confirmation of where all this is coming from, take a look at your television next time there is a human tragedy, and see how many oil-rich or trade-rich eastern peoples rush in to help. It will be Christian
Aid, Oxfam, Medicine Sans Frontiers and even the Israelis most likely!
The average western Tarot Reader doesn’t need lessons in anti-materialism... Marketing
In any business, whether it be manufacturing, selling goods or giving a service, you have to bring your “product” to the notice of the public. Marketing is the
key to building a clientele and in this book we will show you how to go about this. Sitting at home waiting for business to walk through the door all by itself won’t get you anywhere. We have all come across
the kind of female clients who would, “love to meet a nice man” but who do nothing to make this happen. We are sure that you, like us, have pointed out to these lonely ladies that sitting night after night
in front of the television isn’t going to do anything to make their dreams come true. It would be terrific if the right kind of man or the right kind of income jumped out of the television screen and landed
in our laps, but it doesn’t, so whether it is love or business that is wanted, marketing is the key. Do a day’s work for a day’s pay
It may
sound simplistic for us to say this, but if you want to earn money you must be prepared to work for it. Being self-employed requires far more self-motivation than going out to work. If you work in a proper
job, you will doubtless be under the eagle eye of supervisors, managers and directors who keep your nose to the grindstone. You may have targets to meet and budgets to work within, and if you don’t do so you
will soon find yourself out of a job. Working people must offer their employers their best efforts or they are not worth employing. If you are self-employed you must become your own supervisor, manager and
slave-driver or you won’t succeed.We all know Readers who stop work the moment that they go down with a slight cold, putting their clients off for weeks or even months. When they begin to feel in
the mood to make the effort once more, they are surprised and aggrieved to discover that their clientele has disappeared off the face of the earth. If you only want to work for a few hours each week that is
fair enough, but if you want to make money, you will have to do at least the same hours that you would expect to do in a normal job. If you charge the kind of fees that we recommend in this book and if you
work at least a forty hour week, you will make a living. Of course, you will have to build your clientele first, but we will show you how to do this. You may not devote every one of your forty hours to
readings, because marketing, client building, broadcasting, traveling and administration can all be counted as part of the job, but the more time you can put into seeing clients, the more money you will earn.
Sitting around and watching the soaps on daytime television brings some people inordinate pleasure, but the only people who earn money out of the soaps are the actors, writers, producers, studio staff and
marketers who sell the programs. Earn your living first and if you must follow a favorite soap, record it and watch it after your day’s work is done.
What any successful business person will tell you
Be enthusiastic about your work, be pushy, make it happen, keep your eyes on the stars of success, fame, glory, having money to
spare after paying your bills or anything else that you want, and it will happen. Ensure that you have a good “product” and market it well, keep working and build for the future, save some of your money for
the quiet times and keep cheerful, and you will be a winner. What any professional psychic will tell you
Keep a
positive mental attitude and even your own Spiritual guides will become excited by your progress. If you are negative, lazy, uninspired or boring, they will find someone else to channel their love and
inspiration through.
oooOOOooo
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