The Business of Being Spiritual

Can something be deeply meaningful to you and still be a business?

I’ve been earning my living as a psychic since I was 22, and over the years I’ve wrestled with money, charging for something I consider a gift, wanting to help people while needing to support my family, boundaries, ethics and the occasional “where the hell have all my bookings gone?” 

So this week I’m talking about the side of spiritual work we don’t always talk about — what happens when your calling also has to pay the bills.

And whether you run a spiritual business or not, I think there’s a much bigger conversation here about valuing what we do without feeling guilty for it.

🤍 If you enjoy the podcast and would like to help keep it independent, you can support Psychic Whispers and unlock bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes content and exclusive extras at psychicwhisperspodcast.com

And if you DO run a spiritual business — or you’ve been thinking about starting one — The Business of Being Spiritual begins inside The Circle on October 1st. Come and join us at  psychicwhisperspodcast.com

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Psychic Whispers Podcast. Hello, and welcome back to Psychic Whispers. I've been thinking recently a lot about something that can be a little uncomfortable to talk about in the spiritual world. And that's money. There. I said it out loud. No, in all seriousness. More specifically, I've been thinking about what happens when something you genuinely believe is meaningful, spiritual, and helpful to other people. But it also becomes the thing that pays your bills. You know, I have been a professional psychic for more than 25 years now. And for most of that time, being psychic isn't just something that I do. It's my job. It's helped put food on the table. It's helped me raise my family and paid my bills. You know, it's paid mortgages and rent and all the other boring stuff that, you know, apparently spirit doesn't take care of for you. Believe that. But I don't think I've ever completely stopped thinking about the strange relationship between those two things spirituality and business, helping people and needing to earn money. Having something you consider a gift, or some people would consider a gift, and then putting a price on it, being compassionate towards somebody who's struggling whilst also knowing that this is your livelihood. I think there's still a weird discomfort around admitting that, particularly in spiritual work. Because we're comfortable talking about purpose or about a calling or even about a service. But the word profit, and you know, suddenly everyone gets a little bit twitchy. So today I want to talk about that. Not really as a business lesson, but just coming from a space as someone who spent most of our adult life trying to work out how those two parts of me coexist the psychic and the woman who has bills to pay. I was 22 years old trying to convince people that I knew what I was doing. Backing up from there, I started reading tarot when I was 16. By the time I hit 22, I was doing this professionally. And when I think about that now, 22, oh, I was just a baby. Obviously, I didn't think I was a baby. At 22, you think you've seen some shit, you know? Then you get to nearly 50 and you think, oh, honey, you had no idea. Absolutely not a clue. But I had a problem when I first started reading professionally. You know, people would look at me, and although I looked older, I guess in a lot of ways, than I at 22, I still was young. And I couldn't just sometimes see that thought on their face. I actually physically heard people say, What can you possibly tell me about life? They just did not see me as someone with the life experience to give life advice. Which, you know, to be fair, I did understand that. But when I think about psychic energy and how it works, psychic ability being a channel for other things, there were times I just wanted to look at them and say, honey, I'm not giving you life advice. They are, and I'm just the messenger. I'm just the messenger. But I guess in their eyes, you know, they're not coming to me to ask what color they should paint their kitchen. They want to talk about marriages or divorce or even affairs, grief and children, jobs, money. Big life decisions. And, you know, I was not looking like I was anywhere of an age where I could know about those things. So I ended up working on psychic hotlines. I know that sounds really like uncouth, but I did. I actually had a really positive experience for the most part. Um, but that weirdly solved the problem because nobody could see me. They couldn't look at me and decide whether I had enough wrinkles to know anything about life. What they had was just the reading. And that worked. And that was incredibly important for me because I had to learn very quickly how to stand behind what I could actually do. I couldn't rely on looking the part. I just couldn't build an Instagram profile that may be parrot wise and mysterious. And by the way, Instagram wasn't a thing anyway back then. There was no beautiful websites. Back then, there wasn't even an I don't even know of any beautiful websites back then. But there was no personal brand. You know, someone phoned, I answered, and I read for them. That was it. And I had some particularly interesting phone calls. You know, I had people would call and, you know, they would be calling, I might be their fifth psychic that week that they've called. You know, hotlines are well open for people just phoning when they want. And you might be dealing with somebody who's had five other psychics talk to them already. So, you know, there was a lot of people to kind of talk up and down off of their fences or to convince, you know, this is my thought. This is what I believe is real. And they're weighing that up against, you know, all the other psychics they've spoken to. And I've also talked with people who were incredibly open and just wonderful, wonderful souls who just were curious or just in need of some kind of guidance or hope. Also talked to some guy who was running himself a bath and trying to take the phone call in different directions. And I had to very quickly end that one. But, you know, it was only maybe once or twice. Not fun. But gradually I built my confidence. Um, but not because people were telling me I was brilliant, but because I kept doing it, reading after reading after reading, and I felt good about the way I was leaving people, the things that I was saying, how I tuned in and what information I was getting. I got that validated that this was I was on the right track, at least to some degree. And that was really, really wonderful. They were very formative years in building what became my career. And to be honest with you, I didn't know this was going to be my career. I thought this was just something I was doing at the time. And I wasn't sure where it was going. I just followed. I'm really glad that I did. I've I've had such a beautiful journey. But I didn't start this thinking I was going to be 30 years down the line. I'm kind of baffled sometimes. I have to pinch myself and think I've been doing something for that amount of time. That's amazing to me. Incredible. But there's a difference between having abilities and making it your living. This was definitely not in my mind when I was 16 years old reading tarot. Being able to do something and making a living from it, uh, they're two completely different things. You can be a really great psychic and absolutely terrible at running a business, and probably vice versa. Probably some great business people out there who are terrible psychics and fair play. You can also be a gifted healer and still have no idea how to get clients. You can create beautiful spiritual work and yet still struggle to put a price on it. I think this applies way beyond spirituality. There are incredible artists who struggle to sell their art, brilliant musicians who absolutely hate promoting themselves, people who turn something they love into self-employment and suddenly discover oh, apparently I have to be an accountant, a marketer, a receptionist, customer service department, and now a social media manager. Fun. Nobody kind of tells you that part. You think, well, I thought I'll become a professional psychic. And then suddenly you're answering emails about whether somebody can move their appointment from Tuesday to Thursday, and that's considerably less mystical. Just FYI. But what if something you love becomes something you need? Oh, this is where things get a little dicey and complicated. There's a strange shift when something you love doing becomes something that you need to do. Because suddenly, you know, you need the booking. And that's different. When your income supports your family, an empty diary is just not simply, oh, well, you know, nobody needed a reading today. It's shit. Because, you know, the bills, unfortunately, don't accept being in alignment as payment. I've tried, trust me. Trust me. And I think this was probably one of the biggest internal struggles that I've had throughout my career. How do you genuinely care about the person sitting in front of you while also acknowledging that they're a paying client? How do those things coexist? For years, there was massive parts of me that felt slightly uncomfortable with that. Let me be honest with you. My investment in people is still, after all these years, so genuine. I will genuinely want to help. And I mean that. I to the bottom of my core, I mean that. I have never wanted money to contaminate something that felt important to me. I didn't want someone to think, well, she's only telling me this because she wants me to book another reading. Never, ever, ever did would I want that. I would never, ever want someone dependent on me. That's not who I am as a psychic, as a psychic medium, even. It's not my ammo. The truth is, I've always wanted the opposite. I want someone to leave a reading feeling more able to trust themselves, not thinking that they need to ask me what to do next Tuesday. But equally, this is how I earn my living. And those two realities have had to learn to sit beside each other. But why does charging for spiritual work feel so weird? I don't know where it came from. I don't know who told us, but there is this idea floating around that spiritual gifts somehow shouldn't be charged for. I know that we have changed our views much more in the modern world than we used to. But many years ago, you know, there I would remember people saying to me, you can't possibly charge for readings. You know, don't you have a duty or an obligation? I'm like, well, no, my time is precious. I can't, I don't have time to give my time away. And I wrestled with this. I did a lot of things for free. Trust me, I was giving my energy away constantly. I carried that belief, you know, if if my abilities come from some external otherworldly source, there was kind of this feeling of, well, who am I to charge for that? You know, like, don't I have an obligation equally? I had to look at things differently. I began to realize that what I was charging for was my time. And being able to take money for what I do allowed me more time to dedicate to this work. I could then have time to help people. That's where it started to make sense for me. And I saw what happened when I didn't charge for my time. And I saw that most people were very generous and very respectful, but there were a number that would just, you know, harass and hound and you know, almost ache for what you do and somewhat take advantage of that too. So money became a boundary. It became a way to protect and preserve my energy as well as charge for the time that I could suddenly dedicate my full-time life, my job, to this work. And that felt good to me, not to receive the money, but to be able to do the maximum amount that I could do with the love of this and the love of people. And now that price reflects my experience. You know, the years I've spent developing what I do. Obviously, like everybody else, giving every hour away for free just means I can't do the work anymore. I have a family, a home, responsibilities. Just like everyone else, there's a human being behind this mic. But I don't think that caring about those things makes me less spiritual. None at all. And that I think is a very different place than my 22-year-old self, who was a little weirded out about charging and who made this kind of a weird and uncomfortable conversation about accepting money or even developing approaching the conversation about money. It's a very different space having lived and learned so much. But, you know, there's another side to this whole charging thing. And this is where I think that spiritual industry has to be willing to have some uncomfortable conversations. Because just because it's okay to make money from spiritual work, because our time is precious and we do want to do the work to help people as much as possible. But it doesn't mean that every way of making money from spiritual work is okay. You know, we're dealing with people when they're vulnerable. You know, someone's partner might have left or they're grieving or they're terrified about their future. Someone might feel completely lost. And when someone believes that you have access to information that they don't, there is an a power imbalance here, whether we like it or not. That's real. And you have to respect that. There are people that come and give that sense of authority over to someone in my position. The authority is all mine. And that's not something I've asked for. That's just that's reflects the space that they are in, that vulnerable space that people can be in when they come. And the reality is, unfortunately, there are people out there who are making money because, you know, they want people to become dependent on them. If you say, Oh, you might need another reading next week, or, you know, there I can tell you more if you spent another hour with me, or there's something terrible around you and I need to clear it. Oh, I hate that. Um, or, you know, don't make a decision until you've spoken to me. No way. No way. These things will never be uttered out of my mouth. And certainly I see these tactics with others where they're trying to create, they just want the money. They don't care about anything else. That's fear-mongering. That's not helping anyone. That's not compassionate. That's, you know, for me, where the line becomes incredibly important. Making money doesn't make a spiritual business unethical, but how you make the money absolutely can. And I think that's something every person who works with vulnerable people has to think about, spiritual or otherwise. Now, here's the problem with wanting to help everyone. And this is something I've personally struggled with because I am naturally somebody who wants to help, honestly, the world. I know loads of people listening will recognize this, even if they've never worked spiritually in their lives. Someone tells you they're struggling and you immediately want to fix it. You make an exception, you give a bit more, you stay an extra 10 minutes. Oh my gosh, the amount of times. You answer the message, you know, you might squeeze somebody in or reduce the price. You say yes when maybe you wanted to say no. And individually, none of those things are actually necessarily a problem. Sometimes they're lovely. Sometimes going above and beyond is the right call. And it does feel good to give extra or do more. That's not to say that it never is. You know, sometimes somebody genuinely just needs a bit of compassion. But the problem comes when exception becomes expectation. And suddenly, you know, you've created a version of helping people that requires you to constantly abandon yourself. I have done that. You know, I think somewhere underneath us there can be this belief that if you're charging somebody for something spiritual, you need to somehow prove that you're not greedy. So you over-deliver. And maybe you make yourself endlessly available or you almost apologize for being paid. And that will drain you and knacker you out in two minutes. I think it's important in not just spiritual businesses, but businesses and self-employed people in general. We need boundaries. They're really important to preserve and protect our sanity and our ability to help others after that one person. And I think it's really important to remember that. I don't know, it's hard because when you are giving a spiritual service, there is that, I don't know, that desire to just go above and beyond all the time. And then there's pricing. I'm not going to turn this into a discussion about how much anybody should charge because you know what? That is so individual and that is so dependent on their experience. And it is just not a conversation that's always comfortable to have. But pricing spiritual work is actually fascinating psychologically. Because what are you actually putting a price on? An hour, your experience, ability, energy, outcome. And then there's that horrible moment when you actually have to say, well, this is what I charge, without adding, but obviously, if that's too much, you know, maybe, yeah, no, let's not negotiate. And I'm gonna say it, but I think women in particular can struggle with this in all kinds of work, whether you do this work or not. Owning our value without immediately trying to make ourselves more affordable, more accommodating, or less threatening. But spiritual work adds another layer because money can somehow feel incompatible with being caring. And I don't think it is. I think you can be compassionate and have a price. You can care about somebody and have working hours. You can want to help people and need to support your family. Those things are not opposites. And let us from be reminded, we did not create the systems that are at play here. I didn't create the system that asked me, that told me that I needed money to get stuff. I didn't create that system. But we're living in that system. And I think sometimes we have to be aware consciously that, yeah, my time is precious. And if I want to do this on a big scale, if I don't want to do this at all, I'm gonna have to have something for it. There has to be an exchange of energy, and money is the exchange to allow us to live like everyone else. Let me tell you about the strange thing about becoming in quotations professional. Because there's another part of my story here that I think is relevant. You know, for a long time, I really tried to make myself more professional. I'm gonna say that in that voice, professional. And obviously, there's nothing wrong with professionalism. I am all for it. I think standards matter enormously. Um, and I remember the game when I first started this and when social media became a thing. Oh my gosh, how we looked and our image was just it was vital. Everybody wanted to look a certain way. We wanted it to look like it was like perfectly curated out of some magazine. It was insane. I mean, there was even websites dedicated to showing you how to do that. It was, it was pretty crazy. But, you know, I started confusing professional with palatable. I even moved away from calling myself a psychic. I did an episode about that. I liked, you know, to use words like intuitive a little bit more. I tried to make what I did, you know, a little easier to explain, maybe a little even more corporate or acceptable, less, you know, witchy. And then somewhere in the process, I think I started sanding the edges off the very thing that people came to me for. I was trying to build a better business and then accidentally distancing myself from the heart of my business. That is a really interesting lesson for me right now. Because professionalism shouldn't require pretending your work is something it isn't. And I think what we see now as professional is different to the way we used to see it. And let's Honest, people want more of us now in the world. They're looking for individual stories, they're looking for real people. We've been sold to and commercialized. And the internet, like I said, was some weird funky place on social media where we had perfectly curated Instagram grids. And now everyone's like, give me raw, give me open, be a person. That is so weirdly tough after you've been trying for so long to maintain a certain image. I never pretended to be anybody I wasn't. I just tried to be, you know, a version of me out in the world. Like, here's my professional face. And then, you know, come in the room with me and you'll notice that I'm actually more relaxed. I'm actually really casual. I'm actually a little bit, you know, my sense of humor is quite quirky and I'm a little out there and eccentric. You might expect those things from a psychic, but still. But some of those things, I'm still working out. You know, how do I evolve? How do I run a modern business now that, you know, the MO has changed for people? What they're looking for has changed. How do you market what I do? How do you remain commercially viable? How do I do all of that without turning myself into some polished version of a spiritual entrepreneur that I don't recognize? I don't want to do that. That's not who I am. I think that the internet kind of changed everything. You know, when I started, like I said, there was no social media. Gosh, it makes me sound like I've been doing this too long. There was no social media. No, there wasn't. It wasn't even reels. Nobody was telling me I needed three content pillars and a hook in the first two seconds. Thank God for that. Um, it was so much easier. Now you can be absolutely brilliant at what you do, but you also have to be visible. And that creates another weird tension. You know, spiritual work is very personal. Social media encourages a kind of performance, it rewards certainty, you know, big claims. Three signs, your ex is your twin flame. And if you see this video, then spirit chose you. And apparently the algorithm has become an oracle now. So fair enough. Uh, that's not how I want to work. But then the alternative isn't pretending that marketing doesn't exist. We can't build a business that nobody knows about, right? We have to be seeing invisible. And I think that's one of the hardest things for people who do this kind of work, feels really deeply personal. You know, how do I tell people I'm good at what I do without feeling like a complete dick? Excuse my French. How do I sell something without feeling salesy? How do I remain visible without turning every part of myself and my life into content? Those aren't all only just business questions, you know, those are identity questions. You know, because eventually you have to ask, what am I actually building? And I think this is where my thinking about business has changed the most as I've got older. At 22, I just wanted people to take me seriously. Then I wanted enough clients to make a living. And then, you know, you reach different stages where you're thinking about growth, you know, money, security, success, you know. But now I'm increasingly interested in something else. Can I build something that I actually want to live inside? Because there's no point in creating a successful business that makes you miserable. Mine has not. Thank goodness for that. But there's no point in filling every hour of your diary if you've got no life outside of it. And there's no point in helping everybody else while your own family gets what's left of you. And my family have been there. And I want to thank each and every one of them for being so patient in those times and those periods of time when all I was doing was just trying to fill all the hours of my day. It was exhausting. But there's no point in building a spiritual business that gradually disconnects you from the spiritual part that made you start it. That's the balancing act. I haven't perfected it. I, no way. I'm still working on it. Every phase of my life that changes, my business has to change too. If you have been a client of mine, you've watched me change my identity, my brand, my prices, my everything, my schedule. Everything is constantly being revamped. Why? Because my life continues to evolve, my priorities change, my life evolves and changes, my needs change, the needs of my clients change. I have to work with that. And that's all I can do. I have made a lot of mistakes. I've undercharged. I've been overworked. I've tried things that totally failed. I changed direction. I worried about money. I've had periods where bookings were fantastic, and periods where I've looked at my diary wondering where has everybody gone? Like what is happening? That's business, spiritual or otherwise. But maybe money and meaning are not enemies. Probably the biggest thing I've learned. For years, there was some part of me that felt like meaning lived over here and money lived over there. The purer the work was, the further away from money it should be. I definitely don't believe that anymore. Money is practical. It keeps the lights on, it buys food, it supports families, it allows people to keep doing the work that they believe matters. I don't think there's anything inherently unspiritual about that. The question is not, am I making money? The questions that interest me are, how am I making it? How am I treating people? Am I being honest? Am I creating dependency? Would never want that. Am I respecting people's vulnerability? Always want that. Am I respecting myself? And more importantly, do I still recognize myself in what I've built? I think these questions can apply whether you do spiritual business work or self-employment, or you're just living your life. In the life that you've built, do you still recognize yourself in it? In this line of work, the work that I've made, created, has been my life's work. So it's become very integrated in my journey. That's mine. That's my truth. And for all of us, I think we can still look at that outside of a job and look at the life that we've created and ask the same things. But why have I been thinking about this now? I mean, part of the reason, the main reason this has been on my mind is because I'm about to do something a little different inside Psychic Whisper's Patreon in a little tier called The Circle. I'm putting together a five-part course specifically about spiritual business. I was actually asked to do this by a really wonderful, wonderful patron that uh is there with us and my little community. And I'm really, really, really excited about it because I don't want to teach people how to become some generic online entrepreneur. That's not remotely what this is. I want to talk about what happens when the thing you're building a business around is also something you consider meaningful. You know, how do you market yourself without losing yourself? How do you make money while maintaining ethics? How do you care deeply about clients without carrying them home with you? And how do you create boundaries when empathy is a part of what you do? How do you navigate social media or build relationships with clients that are caring but still professional? I love that word. I love that word, professional. And how do you keep the spirituality in a spiritual business once you've got bookings and emails and marketing and money and admin flying at you from every direction? We're gonna get properly into all of that. And not just for psychics either. I'm talking about anybody in this spiritual realm. I'm actually just talking about people who are building a business that they want to be meaningful. Maybe tarot readers, mediums, healers, Reiki practitioners, practitioners, excuse me, astrologers, spiritual creatives, just anybody trying to navigate that strange intersection between calling and commerce. Because I know from experience that it can feel incredibly lonely when you're trying to work it out by yourself. Trust me, I had to work it out by myself. But you know, even if you have absolutely no intention of ever turning something you do into some spiritual business, I think there's something bigger in this conversation. Most of us have something we value, something we're good at, something we give to other people. And I think a lot of us struggle with the idea that valuing what we offer somehow makes it less sincere. It doesn't. You can be generous and have boundaries and care about people and still care about your finances. It's okay. It's okay. Me accepting the exchange of money does not make me care less about you. It doesn't make me care more about you either. I just need the exchange to be understood that we're charging because we have to live like everyone else. You can do what you love and still expect to be paid for it. It is okay. And you can have purpose without sacrificing yourself to prove that your purpose is genuine. We don't have to prove things to everybody. We really don't. And I think that's what I've spent the last 25 plus years learning. Being a professional psychic medium has never been about just learning how to read people. It's also been about learning how to remain me while doing it. The 22-year-old answering phones because she didn't want anyone seeing how young she was would probably be quite surprised that I'm still here. Nearly 50, kidding close. Still reading to tarot and talking to dead people, still trying stuff, and still occasionally screwing it up, honestly, and still figuring out business. I mean, oh, it's been a journey. But I think that's the point. There isn't a moment when you feel like you've mastered all of it. Your life changes, your business changes, and you change. And whatever you're building has to be allowed to change with you. So if you're listening to this and you have a spiritual business, or you've been sitting on an idea because you don't know how to reconcile making money with something that means so much to you. I hope this conversation has at least made you realize that you're not the only one who's wrestled with it. And if you'd like to explore it properly with me, come join us in the Psychic Whispers Patreon. Sit inside the circle for the business of being spiritual. We're getting into the practical stuff there. And you can find us on psychicwisperspodcast.com. Unless you just want a reading, in which case it's psychic-whispers.com. So I'm going to leave you with this today. Your work having value doesn't make it less meaningful. And being paid for something you care deeply about doesn't automatically make it less sacred. Perhaps the real work is learning how to honor both the purpose and the person who has to live from it. And if you were thinking about somebody else during this entire episode and you thought, oh my gosh, that's so my friend, please send it to them. They might need to hear it. Give them a little boost. Until next time, trust your path, honor your truth, and always keep listening.