An astrological Business plan is a document, an ever- changing organic tool for organizing and advancing your professional life. Who needs an astrological Business plan? Everyone in any line of work needs some organized procedures stating how their enterprise expects to make money. This is an essential document for any company, partnership, or sole proprietor. With small businesses this need is especially acute and tragically often overlooked because it doesn’t seem productive; it’s much more immediately gratifying to work on a chart, see a client, or do something to promote your business. Writing a business plan looks like it’s no fun; it gets endlessly postponed in favor of things which seem more urgent. However, this simple exercise has a gigantic benefit; it can propel your business ahead exponentially. Astrologers have some uniquely useful skills as well as some unique needs when writing a business plan. First, astrologers can select an appropriate moment for timing the start of a new business venture and for the timing of key purchases. After all, these are services that we sell to our clients. We need to validate our selves and the seriousness with which we take our business by using what we know. Also, it is important to seek advice from another astrologer over your endeavor. This act of seeking aid from others in the profession unconsciously reinforces the validity of the type of work we market to others; also, reaching out helps build a supportive network as we become part of a community. Second, because we are running a small business we want to make sure that we don’t waste time on things only appropriate for large enterprises. Many things common to large companies, such as industry analysis, market analysis, and financial analysis, are not that important for our purposes. However, it is still important that our business plans have enough detail to be a guide for our everyday decision making; what we really aspire to in our initial rendering of a plan is to include only the essential ingredients without missing anything important. If you understand and implement a few simple categories, your business blueprint will be ready for stellar performance; but in order to be powerful and successful you must understand the meaning and purpose of every one of the plan’s components. Your Mission Statement Before you begin writing a business plan, refer to your personal mission statement. This will help you remember why you exist and what role work (gainful employment) plays in your life. If you have never written a mission statement, write one now. This helps you get clear within before you attempt to write a business plan. Do some journaling. Even it you need to take time off from work and go on vacation somewhere, a little self analysis and questioning simplifies your business plan construction later on. Ask yourself: What is it that I want to do? Why do I want to do this? Am I capable of doing this? What is my mission statement for this life, or, what is my purpose for existing, why am I on the planet? This questioning is preliminary. After this questioning, review or write your mission statement. Writing a Mission Statement It may be as long as a page or two or as short as a paragraph; regardless of how lengthy or brief it is, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind. An empowering mission statement should: 1. Represent the deepest and best part of you. 2. Express your unique gifts. 3. Express your higher or transcendent self, show the person you want to become. 4. Address and integrate the needs of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of your life. 5. Be based on your true values, and express your true beliefs about yourself and life. 6. Integrate your vision, values, and application of your talents. 7. Express some balance between your many key roles in life. 8. Inspire you, communicate to your deepest self, and help you be your finer self. A mission statement is your personal declaration of why you exist. My first mission statement was about a page. After years of reworking my mission statement, I have a page and a half statement. Its first paragraph is a summation of my life’s purpose; I remember this every day before starting my work. This brevity allows me to hold it all in front on my mind at once. Any mission statement should be something that you refer to frequently for inspiration. But regardless of how personally approach it, WRITE A MISSION STATEMENT. Declare what you are doing and why. From your mission statement it is possible to see what role your astrology business plays in your life. Then, your business plan will have potency and will inspire you to do your best and to be your best. How to write your plan A business plan, in its most basic form, is a paper describing what your goals are and how you will go about accomplishing them. It is that simple. Keeping it simple really helps you to stay on task and to be productive. This is the short path to success. Once you know what it is that you want to accomplish through your astrology business, you can explain your professional goals in simple concrete terms. Don’t fall into the trap of stating that you want to see clients and earn as much money as you can. Be specific, I want to see twenty-five clients a week, for one hour, Each paying me $100 at the time of their appointment, in cash. This is the way to declare your intentions, and to set those intentions into motion. If you have never written a business plan before, my suggestion to you is to keep it very simple. Here is a seven-step procedure that will get you on your way. (You may add in layers of complexity later as your business grows, and as you find more detailed planning necessary and helpful.) Categories of your business plan: 1. My current situation. 2. What I want. 3. My strengths and assets. 4. My market or target audience. 5. Reaching my market. 6. Timeline and capitalization. 7. My long-term outlook. After you are done, write an executive summary. This is a “Cliff Notes” version of the whole document and can be easily shared with others. An executive summary should be written after you are done with the whole document and should not be more than a page or, at most, two. 1. My current situation. In this initial portion of your business plan, you want to describe the circumstances and events that have led you to this moment. Either you are a professional astrologer looking to have a more satisfying and abundant career, or you are a student of astrology who is preparing to enter this field as your life’s work. In either case, it is important to list out what is important to you right now. What are your desires, values, and priorities? It is crucial to answer on paper a few questions: Why do you want to be an astrologer? Are you any good at it? How do you know this? Do you want to do this full time or do you want this to be a part time business? Do you have a working spouse? What are your family responsibilities? How much time are you willing to devote to building your business? Do you need (or want) to earn all of your living through astrology? After you have written these things out, what does your own horoscope say? Can you earn a living as an astrologer? Does your own astrologer say that you can do this, and is this the right moment on your life plan? If you don’t have an astrologer, get one that you respect and use them frequently. Would you go to see a dentist that did not ever have his teeth fixed? Just do it; this will be the best money that you have ever spent, if you are serious about doing astrology as a business. 2. What I want. This is the place where you describe the major sources of income that you envision for your business. For most of us this boils down to seeing clients and being paid for our work. You may have other ideas in mind like writing books or articles that you are paid for, teaching, or selling astrological based research. But for the majority of us, what we intend to do is get paid for giving advice to people or companies. In this part of a business plan, detail out exactly how much you want to make, and how you plan on achieving your goals. The time/money equation An example of this would be: I will charge $100 per appointment. Each appointment will last 90 minutes. I will have 3 appointments per day, 6 days a week. This will give me an income of $1800 a week. This means that I will have 18 clients (appointment times) per week. If you work 44 weeks a year and every appointment time is full, you have a gross income of $79,200. When you are planning your work week, don’t forget that you need prep time and maybe an office manager to do chart preparation, handle your schedule, and do your bookkeeping. When you do your time money equation, remember, counseling astrologers are in a high stress life style. To prevent burnout you need; good professional resources, continuing educational experiences, and time off. If you are a practicing astrologer and do not see as many clients as you wish, ask yourself, why? Be prepared to change aspects of yourself, not just the reflections of your inner self that show in your business. Real inner change is necessary in order to become consistent and manifest real change in your external world. If my current situation is that I’m seeing no clients right now and am thinking about becoming a professional astrologer, I have just described a gigantic stretch. If I project seeing 18 clients a week and will not see them again until next year, and I plan on working 10 months of the year or 44 weeks, I need 792 clients in order to make this goal. How is this goal to be achieved? Do you enjoy or think you will enjoy seeing clients only once a year? If you see them every 6 months, you only need 396 clients. If you are seeing the same people every 3 months you only need 198 clients. If you are seeing clients every 3 months and charging $200 per 90 minute appointment, you only need 99 clients to make the same $79,200 gross income. 3. My strengths and assets. Intangible Assets A radical self-inventory helps you get at your intangible assets. You have talents, preferences, and things that you like to do. You need to define your service in this part of your business plan. What is it that you plan of selling to people? Why would they buy this service? Do you regularly use this kind of service in your own life? I.e. do you see another astrologer and ask for advice or professional opinions about the circumstances in your life? If you do, how does this help you with your life plan? If you don’t, what makes your needs so different from the people in your targeted audience? Tangible assets Amongst your tangible assets you will want to list degrees, certifications, licenses, and awards that can open doors for you. Money on hand is important. Most small business that fail, do so because of a combination of being under-capitalized and bad accounting practices.
 Computer equipment, a house, a car can all be part of the business’ total assets. Books, desk, printer, other office equipment are also assets. But note, a leased car, or a rented house are not assets but business liabilities. These expenses show up on your accounting ledger only as expenses. 4. My market or target audience. Who are the people most likely to find your service useful? Do these people find this service useful now? Is there something unique about your work that makes it especially relevant to a definable group, giving you what is called in business, a competitive advantage? If you think about what you do in this way, you start forming a clearer picture of what you need to do next. Unless you define your market in some way that is aligned with your background, interest, training. and experience, you approach your market merely competing for attention (and client dollars) against other astrologers who presumably could supply the same service to your potential clients. This is why it is so important to clarify exactly what you do, and whom can best use it. One factor here is, you will need to educate your audience as to the usefulness of your service. It is helpful to do some envisioning of what the demographic make-up of your clientele will look like. I.e., if you are living on a college campus and have a large number of friends in the academic environment, this is your natural market. If you have spent the last 10 years working in a stock brokerage firm, you have a knowledge base, a language, and a rolodex of contacts that give you a natural ready made client base. This is your market. In other words, your life path and experience indicates your most realistic market for your service. The size of the fee that you are charging for your service also has something to do with the way that you put together a marketing plan to reach your targeted audience. If you plan to charge $25 per appointment, most everyone can afford your service, in which case your potential market is gigantic since it requires very little commitment for most people to have an appointment with you. However, if you charge $100, your clientele has to be more committed to your service and believe that it will have a positive impact on their lives in order to make the commitment required to pay this much for your service. 5. Reaching my market. How do you plan on letting people know that you have a service to sell, then proceed to closing the deal; booking appointments and fulfilling them? Some form of advertisement is necessary. Word of mouth is the best advertising because it brings clients to you that are already “in tune” with what you have to offer, they know what to expect from you. Always work to satisfy your existing clients because, in any business, you need customer satisfaction to establish long-term viability. No astrological consulting business survives without a pool of satisfied customers; clients pay our bills. Advertising in a local magazine or newspaper can help build your business, if your targeted audience reads them. 6. Timeline and capitalization. Now we need to plan a set of goals and set up a time line for achieving them. This is the soul of the business plan. What do you want? How long do you think it will take to get these numbers? How are you going to achieve this, what’s your method and timeline? Are you sufficiently capitalized so that you can survive if you don’t make your numbers and have to move your timeline? If you are in a job paying $2000 a month, how long will it take you to make this same money in astrology? Do you have a transition plan, like seeing clients at night and on weekends while you are building a clientele? The attrition rate amongst astrologers is much higher than in most small businesses. For the most part, people enter the field very poorly trained. They fail because they can’t do the work. But even if you are very well trained and are a dynamite astrologer technically, and a good counselor, and very capable of self employment, well disciplined and all; still, it takes a certain amount of money to start and build a business. Most astrologer fail when they first enter the field because they are undercapitalized. This is preventable by taking an honest assessment of your current situation before you enter the field. Plan, and for God’s sake, have enough money for what you need to do to build a successful practice before you start. 7. My long-term outlook. What is the long-term outlook for your business? What is the final outcome? Do you have a pension plan? Do you have an exit strategy? Do you plan, at some point, to make a transition to seeing fewer clients or to become a teacher or a writer? How long do you plan to stay in your present business model? Make some contingency plan and make allotment for your retirement. Executive Summary An executive summary should be written after you have written your entire plan. This goes on the top of any business plan that is longer than a few pages. But, even if your business plan is longer than 50 pages, the executive summary should still only be a page or two at most. This is not just a preview or highlights of what is to come; it is the whole plan in a condensed form. This “cover page” for your whole plan has to present the bottom line in a simple and believable manner. The reason this is so important is because; this is the part of the plan, everyone reads first. Sometimes this is the only thing that people read. It has been known for a bank to write a loan to a business without looking at anything other than the executive summary. A sample business plan This sample is not anyone’s actual plan; it is rather, an amalgam. Everyone’s situation is different. We would need several sample plans to adequately demonstrate even the basic categories of circumstances between starting or expanding an existing business, or the vast difference between astrologers who, have support, and those that do not. I’ve tried to construct this artificial sample plan, based on many astrologer’s actual situations. Business plan for Maple Ryan DBA/ Universal Astrology Unlimited. 1. My current situation. I’ve been working in the field of astrology for the last 10 years. I see an average of 5 clients a week at $100 per appointment. My appointments last about 90 minutes. I can count on earning about $2000 a month or $24,000 a year. My husband earns about $50,000 a year. 2. What I want. I would like to earn $40,000 a year seeing clients. This would require me to see an average of 2 clients a day, working 20 days a month? I would like to work 10 months of the year and take time off to improve my skills, attend conferences, and take a vacation. 3. My strengths and assets. I became a professional astrologer after studying at the California School of Astrology. I have a degree in history from the University of Colorado, so I have knowledge about life to draw on. I have taken some counseling classes at the Tucson Community College. I like talking to people about their lives. I’m compassionate and a good problem solver. I own a computer; it should last another two years without repair. I have an office in my home, recording equipment, telephone, and a car I can use for business purposes. 4. My market or target audience. My client base is very diverse in age and background. Most of my clients come from the local metaphysical society and people who are looking for options in their lives. Most of the people that come to see me are people with a feeling that there is more to life than they are getting. They believe in astrology as a system with some answers and believe that I can give them some help. 5. Reaching my market. I realize I have to do something different if I want to see more clients. I could advertise in the local newspaper and yellow pages, but that might be a waste of money and bring inappropriate clients, people looking for something I don’t do. I should have set up a web page to describe my services long ago, but I’m going to do it now. I could see clients in other towns. I can travel to see them. Also, I can work with clients over the phone. The new digital technology makes recording and sending a file to clients easy. I have a long time client (Tom) that has moved to NYC, an aunt in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and my sister in Tucson, AZ. These three people are all possible sources to helping me build a client base in another city. I could write for astrology magazines as a possible source of income. This could also expand my client base if people were to read what I wrote and feel inspired to come for an appointment. 6. Timeline and capitalization. My time line could be casual since my husband and I can live on what he makes. However, I understand that unless I put limits on what I’m doing, nothing is going to happen. I’ll call my Aunt Margaret in Grand Rapids Michigan and see if I can do a lecture about my work for her friends in a month or two in order to sell my work in this town. If my aunt can’t help me I will try Tom. Next I will try my sister. I’m sure that I can have a productive business trip set-up for the summer vacation period. “Civic Newcomers” meets one night a month and I have a speaking slot scheduled for May 15th. About 150 people ordinarily attend the meeting. I will explain my work in a short talk. I anticipate being able to pass out business cards and other literature and get 5 new appointments from my talk. I want appointments with clients, from groups of people, that would not normally come to me. “Civic Newcomers” is one group; “Young Business Women’s Network” is another. Perhaps I can try traditional organizations like, Kiwanis, Moose Lodge, Lion’s Club, or Optimists Club as a secondary source of community penetration. My goals are to be seeing 20 clients for the month of June, 25 in July, August and September; this includes taking a week off to go to “The Astrologer’s Retreat” at the end of June and beginning of July. My chart indicates a big upturn in people who could be clients in October. This will translate into more appointments again if I focus my energy correctly. It is realistic that my new city can generate an average of 5 client appointments a month in October, November, and December. This puts me at 30 appointments a month if I have made significant headway with appointments through speaking to different groups. To boost my appointment calendar in January, February, and March, so that I can reach 40 clients a month by April, I will need to get my new clients to be referring my work to their friends, relatives, and business associates. To achieve this goal, I will need to let my clients know that I have room on my schedule for more clients; I would like them to refer people to me. I’m still puzzled as to how to do this tactfully. 7. My long-term outlook. I’m 58 years old and have been doing astrology for clients 10 years; I plan on seeing clients for another 12 years. I would like to stop running an astrology business at this time. I have no life savings, but my husband has a retirement program and social security, I plan to save half of my earnings over the next twelve years for my own retirement. This would give me $200,000 to add to my husband’s retirement income. Executive Summary I want to earn $40,000 seeing clients as an astrologer. This is a substantial increase over my $24,000 a year gross income. The way I will accomplish this is by expanding my client base to include a wider cross section of the general population of my town of Omaha, Nebraska. Further, I will see clients in at least one other city in person, once a year for the next 12 years, and I will talk to these clients over the phone during the rest of the year. I will keep experimenting until I find a way to get more referrals from my clients. Your final Step I live in Naples Florida. Ten years ago, the city counsel paid 1 million dollars to a consulting firm to write a plan for the cities coming expansion. The report that required so much tax payer’s money, laid for 10 years in the bottom of a filing cabinet. It was discovered recently. The report described accurately where the needs were for: the new roads, parking, hospitals, schools, walk-ways to the beach, etc. Everyone on today’s city counsel agrees these were the very things that the city should have done ten years ago. These suggestions were brilliant but never implemented. Now the city is trying desperately to catch up to the plan, at more than ten times the original cost, and to develop the infrastructure in a way that should have been done long ago. Your business plan, no matter how detailed, inspiring, correct, and insightful, will not implement itself. You have to work the plan. This means follow your own assessments. Do what you say you will do, monitor results, and alter your plan when you miss your goals. Don’t be afraid to move your time line, alter your strategies, or ask for outside opinions. Do you really want success? You can have it; all that is required is honesty, effort, and discipline. I have a short in house planning meeting every day with the people who work for me. I have a once a week business meeting with an outside consultant, and strategy secession every month with a business professional. These outside resources help me keep my business plan working for me. Remember, your business plan is your creation and will work for you if you continue to animate it. Notes: I expressed this viewpoint in detail in my article “Plan for Success; then achieve it!” in “The Career Astrologer” Volume 14 number 1. This is an adaptation for a list found on page 113 in the book “ First Things First” by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, published by Simon And Schuster, 1994. I would have included my own mission statement as an example, but for space constraints. There are many examples in other works. If you want to see mine, contact me. Writing a mission statement is the subject for another article. My most general explanation of this work for professional astrologers is given in a taped lecture called “Using Symbols for Self Development.” If you have never written one, please take a day off and seriously think about what you want to see that you have accomplished at the end of this life. This can be something that you review and revise every year. For more information on goal setting, see my article in “The Career Astrologer” Volume 14, Number 1 – January 2005 – “Plan For Success, then Achieve it.” See my article “How to Fulfill Your OWN Career as a Professional Astrologer” in the book “How to Use Vocational Astrology for Success in the Workplace” edited by Noel Tyl, Llewellyn Publications, 1992. This topic is taken up in chapter one “Boundaries” in my book, “ Between Astrologers and Clients.”