I have a business role model. This role model has helped me figure out how to do things for all of the years of my practice. My role model? My old art teacher from when I was a kid.
Her name is Mary and she is still practicing what she does. We aren’t in contact anymore because I haven’t been in Iowa but I still think about her from time to time.
Mary ran a small arts studio out of her home. She did portraits for people—family members, kids, and pets. She also did classes for women in the community. Women of all ages and abilities would come and paint together. Not all of the people who showed up needed instruction from her but she would also give basic drawing and painting techniques if you needed them to feel more confident in making art. Some people, especially people who have been coming for years, just showed up because Mary’s home was a place where you could make art with people.
The classes/art studio weren't that expensive. Mary charged $200 for a year of classes or studio time. You could come every Saturday or Sunday either in the morning or afternoon. Mary didn’t provide materials or anything like that but she provided coffee and people would bring snacks.
The classes were chill! You could come to work on a painting and not talk to anyone at all. You could come to be social and not work on art and just feel connected. Most of the women were retired and many were very old. People would go out to eat after together too if you wanted art time and social time.
When Mary made enough money for the month, she would spend time doing the third part of her practice: help women who were getting out of jail start their own art practices so that they could get back on their feet. Again, just basic drawing skills. People found their own styles from there and added their own ways of seeing the beauty in the world to their craft. Mary would help people with printing and some people who started making postcards and other art pieces did very well. When you’re getting out of jail, it just helps to have some independent income.
The reason why Mary is still my business role model is because she runs a very stable business with minimal scaling. She does all of her work herself. That means that she requires some services to be scalable or else she will exhaust herself. The art classes/studio time is scalable to some extent. However, space is still finite. There’s some balancing going on. Mary was already in her seventies when I met her and she was always talking with us about balancing her needs with the needs of her students.
The portraits cost a lot because hand painted portraits are extremely labor intensive. Mary didn’t undercut herself in terms of labor but she also didn’t overcharge. Not everyone is going to be able to afford a hand painted portrait so demand is lower. Portrait painting isn’t scalable because it’s too unique and labor intensive. That’s why portrait painting wasn’t the entirety of Mary’s business.
Because Mary had a small business that gave her independent income, she was able to enter into prisons without going through non profits. She didn’t have any institutional support and wasn’t paid for the work she did with incarcerated women. She was just a person doing repair work and she didn’t have a boss. Her relationships with everyone who worked for remained her own.
The reason why I find Mary’s practice inspiring is because it’s manageable for one person. If you try to find business advice online, you’ll find all kinds of personalities giving you questionable advice about how to start your own business empire. A lot of people who get into astrology aren’t trying to start some kind of spiritual empire. We’re just trying to make a living while figuring out a way towards doing some kind of repair work with regular people.
You don’t need to start an empire to make a living.
You don’t need every service to be scalable or even profitable.
You do need to be profit accountable because, if you show up to care for other people, you need to account for taking care of yourself. However, how that happens isn’t a perfect system. It’s a perpetual balance of give and take.
A lot of astrologers are afraid to ask to be paid for the work that we are doing. I can understand why. Showing up to create a business means that you will need to be vulnerable about what you need to live. All of us have needs that we hope making a business will support—housing, food, time, etc. Charging a rate can sometimes feel like asking for those needs to be met.
With astrology, a lot of our practices are one on one. Astrologers are diviners for laypeople. The priests who serviced kings and emperors didn’t necessarily need astrology to make their prophecies. Astrologers do because we are imperfect diviners who need language to work with regular people. One on one consultations are not scalable. They are extremely labor intensive because people require careful listening and attention.
Back then, Mary wouldn’t keep her needs a secret from us but she also didn’t stress us out either. She was just honest. She owned her one bedroom house because her late husband had paid it off but she was always scarce for time for her own interests. She was too busy. Her students would yell at her, telling her to make more time for herself and to charge a little more. She would yell back and go around, checking up on all of time. She always knew exactly where you were at in terms of your art and developing your eye.
By the time I met Mary, she had already been in business for several decades. Some of her students had been with her for the entire time. She was providing something real to the community around her. Her home had become a place. It was also a business. Those two things overlapped and sometimes interrupted each other but not unreasonably.
