Ready to quit your day job and become a full time, professional witch?
With a little determination and a lot of hard work, it is totally possible to use your witchy skill set to make a living.
I know, because I’ve done it myself. Here’s how.
Make sure you’re actually at a professional level.
When I say quit your job in six months, I’m assuming you’re technically proficient at a professional level in your given skill set.
For example, if you plan to specialize in gemstone distribution, we’re assuming you actually know how to identify gemstones.
You may not know the business end yet–like how to promote yourself on social media or structure your taxes—but you damn well know the difference between obsidian and hematite.
Before you get started on this path, you need to achieve technical proficiency as a fluent tarot reader, magical herbalist, maker of spell kits or whatever you want to do.
If you’re not there yet, back waaaaaaaaaaay up.
Before you lay out your new career path, decide where you want it to go.
Do you want to:
-Read tarot professionally?
-Write books about witchcraft?
-Become a pagan blogger?
-Open an apothecary shop with a magical twist?
-Travel the country officiating handfastings?
There’s a lot of ways to make this work. Your first step is to decide which one suits you best and get really, really good at it.
(If you’re stuck on this, check out What’s Your Witchy Talent?)
Get real about materialism.
Let me put it to you this way: I drive a 13-year-old Toyota, get most of my clothing at the thrift store and cook at home a lot.
And I’ve never been happier.
If you want to work in a spiritual profession, you need to take a hard look at your relationship with the material world.
This one never presented a problem for me personally because:
- Frankly, I never made that much money to begin with.
- I already had a base income independent of my job.
However, if you work a corporate job at a high salary, reducing your income (at least initially) to pursue a dream is probably the biggest factor in why you haven’t already done it.
But no matter how much you make, it’s not nearly as hard as you imagine to cut back.
Here’s the thing to remember:
What you lose in income, you gain in quality of life.
There’s an excellent chance you hate your “safe, practical” full-time job. And if you’ve gotten this far down the page, it’s probably time to evaluate how much money is worth hating something you have to do 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of your life.
Reducing your consumption of material comforts is a life-changing spiritual exercise. There’s a reason why monks take a vow of poverty and famous spiritual leaders typically lived very humble lives.
Now, I’m not saying you have to go full-on nomad and give up shaving your legs.
But evaluating your wants verses your needs is the foundation of more spiritual lifestyle.
“I want to be able to go out to dinner twice a week and live in a 4-bedroom home and drive a late model car.”
Verses::
“I need to eat at least twice a day, have a safe place to live and reliable transportation.”
Make a list of things you can’t live without.
Then, go over that list of things and cross off another 20% of them—because not only can you live with less than you think, you’ll actually be much happier without it.
Develop your business as a side hustle.
Okay, okay. You decided you can live without HBO and you’re willing to get a roommate to make ends meet.
So what’s the first step?
Most people begin their business as a witchy side hustle while still employed.
This strategy makes common sense. It’s smart to learn the basics, make connections and build a client list while you still have a consistent income.
Even if you never make it your full-time gig, side hustles are a great way to enrich your life.
Not to mention, multiple streams of income diversify your risk, keep you from getting bored or burned out and offer you options when business gets slow.
Set a deadline.
The problem with the side hustle approach is that it’s easy to get stuck in the side hustle stage. Months go by, and then years.
You tell yourself you’ll quit your day job when your side hustle makes enough to cover your current expenses. Except you’ll never have time to make enough to cover your expenses until you quit your job.
In order to make this work full time:
You must set a deadline for yourself.
Make it attainable, but just barely. Far enough away to realistically put yourself in a good position, but not so far that you can afford to procrastinate.
Six months is a good goal for most people. Put it on the calendar.
Then, get cracking and get your affairs in order. That means different things to different people, but in general:
-Build a client list.
-Reduce your monthly spending (downsize home/car/whatever you can).
-Pay off personal credit card debt.
-Pad your savings account.
-Line up any vendors or services you need (suppliers, a virtual assistant, web hosting, ect)
-Make sure you have enough money to float you for at least 6 months.
Know the limitations of your geography.
Unless you live in New York, you probably need to expand beyond your immediate area in order to get enough work to be a professional witch.
Most places just don’t have enough of a market for new age or witchcraft-related services to support a full time job.
Don’t worry. It’s a wide world out there. If you’re young, single or unattached, traveling is the best option. But even if you have a family, you can find a lot of work online in most witchcraft-related professions.
Tarot reading. Spiritual consulting. Selling herbs, spell kits or . . . . anything, really. All these things can be done online.
Find a mentor—and give as much as you take.
Find a mentor and save yourself years of time and frustration.
Ideally, you want someone who isn’t your direct competitor, but someone with a similar clientele.
So, if you want to read tarot professionally, find someone who owns an occult shop or vice versa.
Always offer them something in exchange for sharing their knowledge—whether they ask for it or not.
I traded my professional photography services for everything from tax advice to inside information on how to land interviews with high profile authors.
Whether you’re a professional baker or a civil litigator, there’s almost certainly something you can give back to another business owner in exchange for advice, service referrals or a shoulder to cry on when things aren’t going well.
Work hard now and it’ll pay off later.
If you’re trying to get a business off the ground while you’re still employed, there’s no way to sugarcoat this part:
You need to work your ass off.
At least in the beginning. Work nights, work weekends, work on your lunch break. Work, work, work.
Think about all those hours you spend drinking wine and watching Netflix and dying your hair and vow to give it all up for at least 6 months.
Spend your “free” time building your website, checking out (and reading!) books about entrepreneurship from the library, learning how to promo yourself on social media and getting really, really good at whatever it is you want to do.
Take the plunge.
If you want to go pro, eventually, you need to switch gears from part time to full time.
Generally, this is the scariest, most unsettling part of starting a business for real. Many people are so afraid of the instability, they never actually do it.
The difference between self-employed people and people who work for others is that at some point, they overcame this fear.
Or rather, they recognized that spending their lives doing something that makes them miserable for a paycheck is actually a much scarier proposition.
If you want to take the cautious, conservative approach, consider making your current full-time gig a part-time thing. So, if you are a full-time school teacher, consider taking on some tutoring while you make the transition. If you’re an accountant, try getting some freelance work for a while.
Personally, I preferred to rip the Bandaid off all at once and take the sink-or-swim approach.
Yes, it scared me. Yes, I sometimes doubted myself.
But during those times, I remember something I heard once from a medicine circle guru:
“Leap, and the net will appear.”
