First Time Professional - Any Advice?

I'm about to start doing Tarot and Rune readings for Lumina Pacifica and I'm so nervous I don't know how I'm going to do. I feel confident enough in my skills that I want to do this, but at the same time I wonder if I'm really ready for this step. What worries me is that Jan, the lady who hired me, is stressing the entertainment factor. I just know I'm going to bomb that one! How do you turn advice and guidance into a show??

And with this one, you have to develop your clients into repeat callers in order to make any money in the first place, but if you have no repeats they let you go. Another worry is that people generally want to know when something is going to happen. Yikes! I have yet to find an accurate way of determining timeframe with the Tarot, except to give them a general idea in terms of a month or few months.

If anybody has any advice, I'd greatly appreciate it! Thanks!

I hadn't heard of that one before, are you comfortable in sharing what their pay schedule base is?

Best of wishes in your quest!

Rereading your letter, I'm wondering how you can verify if people are indeed calling back and asking for you, or if they just say no one has? I'm all for readers doing well, but my cynic meter has a pretty low threshold.

I hope others here who are or have worked for them will chime in.

well I don't know the place you are talking of but i have had a reading by you and you were awesome and very entertaining!

I opt for readings because I love to watch the style and you my dear have loads of style! You got me to buy the numerology book which is on my night stand right now....came in yesterday. I am dying to figure out how you read all of that etc...

I think you will do wonderfully!

AJ - Starting out, the pay is $.20 per minute of talk time and increases up to $.50 per minute as you build up more repeat callers. You give your callers your extension number so they can dial you directly rather than waiting for the next available. I gather it would be fairly easy to tell, but I've never done this before.

Franniee - Thank you! I really appreciate the vote of confidence right now! I just can't believe how nervous I am about this. Maybe once I'm actually taking calls and find my rhythm the nerves will settle a little lol.

Frannie what is the name of your numerology book? I just posted a thread about timelines in "using Tarot cards" and got great info! I'll look it back up and post it here.

Good luck Waterfaery

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=88782

Wow! Thanks for the link, lilith! Or chain of links actually lol. I bookmarked those on my browser to keep them handy. Thank you, thank you!

The book Franniee is talking about is one I recommended to her - Numerology: Your Character and Future Revealed in Numbers by Norman Shine. It's a good one for Numerology basics.

lilith said:

Frannie what is the name of your numerology book? I just posted a thread about timelines in "using Tarot cards" and got great info! I'll look it back up and post it here.

Click to expand...

Numerology: Your Character and Future Revealed in Numbers

It looks wonderful but I haven't gotten a chance to get into it yet....

Waterfaery said:

I'm about to start doing Tarot and Rune readings for Lumina Pacifica and I'm so nervous I don't know how I'm going to do. I feel confident enough in my skills that I want to do this, but at the same time I wonder if I'm really ready for this step. What worries me is that Jan, the lady who hired me, is stressing the entertainment factor. I just know I'm going to bomb that one! How do you turn advice and guidance into a show??

Click to expand...

Hi Waterfaery.

My advise is, don't turn it into a show. There are several things going on here. First of all, make sure you understood correctly. Did she say you have to *make* it entertainment, or was she stressing that you have to impart that the readings are for *entertainment purposes only.* If it's the latter, then she was just covering her butt. If it's the former, then ask yourself why you are going to be working there, what you will get out of it, and what you're willing to give up.

I was fortunate enough to work for a psychic line when they were housed at a call center and we were paid hourly, whether we had calls or not. We were hired because we were professionals and we knew what we were doing. Nobody ever *told* us how to read. It was a great environment and it was a great opportunity to hone my craft.

Those kind of phone readings always are. But you *will* get people who want to know their *future* and be insistent on you telling them what they want to hear. Whether you do that or not is up to you and your own personal code of ethics. I would not. If they had told me I had to, I would have quit.

If you are doing this to jump in and learn your craft, and get some experience, that's great. It will do that for you. But don't stress over it. You will get a far different clientele than you will get elsewhere, very needy and desperate people. I found that I did about 20% tarot and 80% counseling. It will still help you improve, but step carefully.

The repeat caller thing sounds really odd to me. If you are really helping someone, you have either sent them on to a therapist, or you have satisfied them enough that they shouldn't be calling and wanting or needing to talk to another psychic for 6 months or more. Otherwise, you are just preying on dysfunctional people who need a fix so that you can make money for the corporation funding the network.

I don't know anything about this network you are about to work for. I know there are a lot out there, and I know that there must be some that are more, or less, ethical than others. You just need to assess who these particular people are, and what you are willing to do as far as your own readings and ethics go.

Like I say, phone work is *great* experience. And I have no doubt you'll do a good job. But do *your* good job. If that doesn't match their marketing plan and they let you go, you have lost nothing. You have retained your ethics and your dignity, and you have gotten some good experience in the process.

Don't know if I was rambling or not, but I hope that helps.

Caat

Thanks, bigcaat, and no you were not rambling! You made a lot of good points. I don't know what to make of the entertainment thing; I passed the reading exam with no trouble, but she told me to work on my greeting. She said, "If you don't hook the callers in the first few minutes, they're going to lose interest." That confused me a good bit. Seems to me that if they're interested enough in calling a psychic line in the first place, they probably just want to get to the reading lol.

I figured with this kind of reading line that I would probably be doing some counseling along with the reading. That part doesn't worry me because I tend to do that anyway, try to help them to help themselves so to speak.

The repeat caller thing does bug me a little. She encouraged me to "leave them dangling a little" so that they would call back, but that it had to be up to me. I can't do that because it does seem unethical. But I always encourage people that I read for to come back if they have any other questions pop up or just need some guidance further down the road. I hope that will be enough to satisfy their callback system lol. I can't and won't limit my readings for people just so they have to call back to get all of the information. If that's how this works out, then I'll be out the door.

Thanks for your help, bigcaat! I appreciate it greatly!