Why Aren’t Tarot Experts Doing Corporate Speaking Engagements?

[Benebell Wen]

Recently on my blog post I shared a simple tarot spread I came up with, based on a well-known business workflow improvement technique, and a few months earlier, shared a personal energy audit concept that I actually learned from a corporate speaking engagement that I then converted into a tarot reading method.

 

In both California and New York (and I’m sure other places as well, but those are the locations I know for sure), more and more corporations are inviting guest speakers to do events that will motivate their employees. Growth mindset, psychological safety, creative leadership, intuitive design thinking, cultivating an Agile mindset through more "out of the box" intuitive-creative approaches, mindful leadership, intuitive decision-making, intuitive analytics — these are all trendy buzzwords and catchphrases in the corporate world right now that include more "imaginative" and "boundary-pushing" approaches such as using tarot or oracle cards.

That’s right. The part I’ve put in boldface and underlined is what I want to talk about. Or rant. Or discuss. However you want to characterize my tone.

 

Some speaker engagement contracts run up to $15,000 for a couple hours of their time, and sure, it's because they're New York Times bestselling authors. I've also seen speaker engagement contracts for $5,000 with someone I've never heard of to teach one simple, beginner-level juggling maneuver, and then the juggler doing the speaking engagement ties it to how we juggle multiple tasks at work, and just like juggling, you focus on one ball at a time, one task at a time, voila, time management strategies connection. Like, okay. If we pay five grand for someone to do that, why aren't we paying five grand to a tarot expert to teach how tarot can be integrated into corporate practices and strategic thinking?

 

Because tarot experts aren't putting their hats in the ring for consideration.

 

I love the tarot experts we see teaching workshops at tarot conferences, and that should continue for the love of tarot (since no one's really there for the money, amirite?). But why aren't these same tarot experts seizing on corporate opportunities? I don’t get it. Why aren’t there more tarot experts being more assertive about getting gigs in corporate spaces as the New Agey breathwork instructor or "let's juggle balls as a metaphor for how to multitask" guy? Corporate gigs are where the money's at. And also, that’s where you can potentially make the most impact.

 

You do a tarot workshop at a tarot conference, and for the most part you’re preaching to the choir. You do a tarot workshop at a Fortune 500 and not only are you getting magnificently well compensated for your expert knowledge, but you’re a lot more likely to make an impact on people who otherwise had no idea what the tarot could offer. You’re spreading the gospel of tarot, in a manner of speaking.

 

This is not the same as doing a tarot gig where you’re there as a reader, doing card readings at a company social gathering. Oftentimes you can only make about $500, at most $1,000 for your time. What I’m talking about is teaching, coaching, mentoring, educating. Or heck, offer a bundle. It’s a full-day offsite corporate team-building event where you do the motivational speech, then the hands-on activity with the cards, and then as the employees mingle with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, that’s when you do one-on-one private tarot readings for the employees. Since now you’re presenting a whole package deal, you can command top dollar.

 

The first step the tarot expert needs to do is design a lecture plus workshop that is corporate-friendly. You need to pitch how basic, beginner-friendly use of tarot or an oracle deck can induce [insert corporate buzzword], like growth mindset, creative leadership, intuitive design thinking, intuitive analytics. So basically, it’s like what you would have to design for a tarot conference, except now you really, really need to make sure it’s beginner-friendly, and as secular and pragmatic as possible. You’ve got to strip away any woo or mysticism speak.

 

In the linked blog posts, I gave the example of how you can use that Personal Energy Audit worksheet in tandem with a tarot reading to help you assess how to improve your personal energy. That worksheet came from an actual corporate leadership event I was an attendee of, where I thought, gee, why can’t a savvy tarot reader be the one leading this leadership event and making the big bucks, too. For some "expert" to walk me through how to fill out that worksheet and self-reflect on it, that expert was paid $9K for the day. That $9K would be so much more effectively spent going to a tarot expert who takes that Audit worksheet and turns it into a hands-on tarot workshop.

 

Or design your own proprietary approach to Agile tarot card reading. Agile is huge at so many companies now. What if you pitched a way to use the cards to teach Agile mindset? Likewise, my tarot spread inspired by the Six Sigma method. You could totally get yourself educated on the Six Sigma approach, or Agile, or whatever, and then create a hands-on interactive tarot workshop of sorts adopting that corporate methodology, and then teach it to a team of industry leaders and earn $5K at minimum when you're just starting out and $10K to $15K once you're seasoned, in one day, easy.

 

Step two is an attractive website or webpage that brands you as a tarot expert and motivational speaker. Go do some industry research and look up how other motivational speakers who do corporate events present themselves and what their platforms look like. Model your platform with a similar general vibe, but specific to your area of expertise (i.e., the tarot, as that's the main subject of this newsletter).

 

Step three is outreach. You need a LinkedIn page and you should be regularly updating posts on your LinkedIn page that support your speaker platform. Content marketing is the most effective bait. Post motivational snippets, quick snapshot videos of you doing speaking engagements, or photos of presenting in front of large groups, or testimonials. The reality today is most of the corporate folks on the hunt for speaking engagements find who they’re looking for on social media, which means you need to be on social media, be that LinkedIn, YouTube, or now TikTok.

 

Make a list of the top 100 biggest corporations within driving or travel distance to you that you would be interested in doing events at (and who would have the deep pockets to pay you the dollar amount you’re looking for) and craft personalized email campaigns to the HR manager, event planner, or the VPs of specific departments at the company that might be interested in hiring you for a speaking event. There are also Speakers Bureaus you can submit your info and speaking engagement proposals to. The agents at these Speakers Bureaus can then help you to land corporate gigs. You can also monitor platforms like MeetingsNet and answer any RFPs (requests for proposals) for corporate speaking engagements.

 

Personally, I think going the route of the executive assistants to the VPs of specific departments is going to be your best bet. You are more likely to get a response from the VP's assistant than the VP herself. And VP assistants have a lot of sway. You get the assistant to like you, the assistant says to the VP, "This is a fantastic idea and I know the team is gonna love it, it's so innovative and radical!" and the VP will simply shrug and say back, "Okay sounds good make it happen." 

 

In your personalized email query, you need to make sure your message is crystal clear on how your speaking engagement aligns with the company’s or the department’s goals. How might your tarot workshop improve employee morale, i.e., help them with work-life balance, emotional wellness, or mental health, or how it might teach one of those buzzwords, like intuitive design thinking, or intuitive analytics. 

 

Then you need to come up with your own ideas on how the tarot can be used by a professional in that specific industry. For example, how might lawyers leverage the tarot or a deck of oracle cards to help them with creative decision-making or risk assessment, or how a sales team might be able to learn about more effective marketing techniques by consulting the tarot. This is where the tarot expert with the best idea takes the prize. So you’ve got to get those gears turning and think up some super cool, and relevant concepts.

 

Take some time to script out five 30-second or even one-minute video shorts that are immediately attention-grabbing for someone looking for speakers to offer engagements to, that are motivational, that utilize buzzwords, and are memorable. If you can get the right people to see these videos when they’re looking, you’re in. A speaker reel is also probably going to be useful to have in your back pocket, in case someone asks for it. A speaker reel is a polished, edited video reel that highlights your most impactful moments as a speaker at past presentations, or even of you appearing to be an interviewee in a podcast (you can totally stage that). Staged snippets for a speaker reel is OK -- its purpose is to showcase your public speaking abilities and how you present the tarot content.

 

At the end of the day, networking is still king. If someone inside the company with any pull at all can vouch for you, then you will almost certainly get the gig and get paid well for it. And if you’re being all debbie downer on yourself already with, “I don’t know anybody, I’m an introvert, I have no connections,” well you’re connected to a lot more people than you might realize. It’s just about pulling the right strings and having thick enough skin to do the outreach. Brainstorm and list out all your friends in corporate who might be willing to pass your vCard and speaking proposal on to their people leaders. (The speaking proposal should be a single page PDF document with a snappy photo of you, some snappy taglines and catchphrases, marketing you as a tarot expert and how you leverage that expertise to help business industry leaders apply intuitive analytics, or help with emotional wellness, whatever your pitch is).

 

When I say personalized, I really do mean personalized. Please do not send out mass emails with generic “To Whom It May Concern.” Any time I’ve gotten something like that, I’ve deleted it faster than I can read that first line “To Who It May…” Most people leaders in corporate believe their time is valuable, and if you do not first initiate respect for their time, they’re not going to respect yours. If you can’t even bother to figure out the right name to address, or write a sentence or two indicating that you did your homework about that company and that specific department, then why should they give you their time, or money?

 

Also, when you pitch corporate, your speaking proposal must present convincing points on the following: the objective of your speaking event, the benefits your approach offers that are specific to the line of work the audience members do, and provide a general outline of the content. If you’ll need the company to first pay for x number of tarot or oracle decks to give to each employee, mention that as well and quote that cost. Or just quote your speaking engagement fee and account for the expense of getting those decks as part of your speaking fee.

Often at these corporate events, especially where it was funded by a specific department or business unit, the department also buys a copy of the speaker’s book for all department personnel. That’s like 20 to 50 copies of a $25 book. Instead of buying a $25 book for each team member attending your tarot event, it’s a $25 deck that the company buys for each attendee to use during the event.

 

Other examples of corporate events are holiday gatherings or team-building exercises. Companies pay ridiculous dollar for, like, flower arranging, arts and crafts, candle-making, making essential oils for aromatherapy for emotional wellness, all sorts of stuff that’s flirting with the edge of the New Age but still practical enough to be justified. Tarot is now easily within that same alley and I’m just not sure why I don’t see tarot experts capitalizing on it the way the yoga, guided meditation, paint-by-numbers, and arts-and-crafts people are capitalizing on it. The cost for the company to pay for the supplies for a pottery workshop, soap making, journal making, or make your own terrarium workshop (all real events companies have paid for as “team building” exercises) is about the same as what they would pay for in terms of “supplies” to get every team member in the department a tarot deck for your tarot workshop. Now it’s on you to effectively pitch a tarot workshop as a corporate team-building exercise.

 

As for prerequisite steps before we even get to step one, I do think having a published tarot book is going to give you an advantage over a tarot expert who doesn’t have any publications. Traditionally published books are going to be weighted better than self-published books. And maybe even a few bragging rights with respect to having presented at tarot conferences. Do you have a masters or doctorate degree already? Lord that’s even better bragging rights.

 

I know so many tarot experts who have all this in the bag and could be earning those tens upon thousands of dollars right now, but they just haven’t taken the time to invest in seizing such opportunities. I’m seeing more and more podcasters and influencers get corporate gigs, and life coaches teaching basic guided meditation techniques for employees, and oh by the way, what sparked this idea in the first place was a motivational speaker who recommended an approach to decision-making: grab the nearest book and perform bibliomancy. This was a speaker that got paid over $15K for that one event just to tell everybody in the room, “Have you tried bibliomancy? That’s a solid approach to intuitive decision-making.” That was when I threw my hands up and thought, okay, where the eff are my tarot readers and why aren’t they raking in this $15K doing tarot workshops for corporate?

 

Another point of negative thinking you might be harboring—you don’t think you look “corporate” enough and you're afraid they won't pick you because you don't look the part. Yah, that’s the point. A lot of times when corporate is looking for speaking engagements that are “outside the box" and unconventional, they want someone who departs from what they’re already used to. They’re looking for something different, but just familiar enough to keep them comfortable. True, you may need to modify your presentation just a smidge to be palatable enough to keep them comfortable, but no, you don’t need to totally change who you are. They want somebody with your vibes. Remember that. Be confident in that.

 

This is just a newsletter that I hope will push you to do some serious brainstorming. This is not a how-to. There’s so much more for you to do on your own, and sort through on your own. This is going to take hard work on your part to come up with some solid ideas and then how to communicate those solid ideas in speaker proposals, and then practice presenting your content. But that could be a very smart investment of time in creating a sustainable business model for yourself doing what you love.

 

Also think about which “soft” adjacent industries would be most receptive to a tarot expert coming in doing a tarot or oracle card workshop with their employees. A vegan milk or games app startup who just got an injection of $10 billion in venture capital money is more likely to invite you in for a full-day offsite workshop than a conservative white-shoe accounting firm. But don't dismiss that accounting firm either. Maybe they have a PR or Communications department that would be totally open to something fresh and nontraditional. Sales teams often embrace fresh and nontraditional professional development workshops. And your likelihood of success hinges on how well you can come up with a corporate-friendly pitch that perfectly aligns with the buzzword objectives their HR or VP is looking for.

 

Sure, in the past you’ve come up with tarot courses for those who are into numerology, mediumship, or shadow work, but can you come up with beginner-friendly, sanitized tarot courses for—

 

• Encouraging growth mindset, supporting employee well-being, embracing Agile thinking and corporate practices, or driving innovation and creativity?
• Or championing purpose-driven work, and how the tarot can connect employee tasks to larger organizational missions and societal impact?
• Or how to use the tarot to build resilience and prepare for uncertainty by fostering adaptable mindsets and systems of thinking?
• How to use the tarot for professional development planning
• You know how there are courses like tarot and numerology, tarot and astrology, tarot and shadow work, etc.? Well, what about tarot for mapping a kanban board (that’s an Agile thing, a visual system for managing workflows and emphasizing continuous workflow improvement – come up with a way to use tarot for that), 
• Or tarot and TQM (total quality management)
• Tarot and the Lean methodology
• Tarot for setting OKRs (objectives and key results)
• Tarot and hoshin kanri (strategic planning)
• Anything tarot and Agile, i.e., scaled Agile frameworks and the tarot
• How to use the tarot to balance a scorecard (teach a tarot spread keyed to strategic planning and measuring organizational performance across the four perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, and learning-growth)
• How to use tarot for BPR (business process reengineering)
• How to use tarot for VSM (value stream mapping)
• Tarot and design thinking (teach a tarot spread with card positions designating empathy, ideation, prototyping, iterative testing, etc.)
• Tarot as a creative tool for Blue Ocean strategizing (how to discover and pioneer in new, uncontested market spaces, rather than in existing saturated markets)
• Or maybe you can come up with a very cool interactive tarot gameplay for a team-building exercise, and fostering collaboration among a department’s personnel.

 

Were there a lot of corporate buzzwords that you aren’t familiar with yet? Well start the independent study journey and get yourself up to speed, then figure out how to integrate them into a tarot speaking engagement. In the same way you, as a tarot expert and thought leader, might design a workshop for using tarot for shadow work, or using tarot for connecting with spirit guides, design a workshop for using tarot for one of the trending corporate strategic thinking practices I listed above.

 

Yes, if you want to make this a full-time thing for yourself, you will need to do quite a bit of pre-work and formulate some awesome, unique ideas that touch into popular and familiar corporate strategies. And have the communication skills to pitch those ideas. And the bravado to position yourself as a leading industry expert. And train yourself to adopt the extraversion needed to do outreach and marketing that’s palatable to corporate.

 

I just hope this newsletter is the kick in the pants you needed to start optimizing your earning potential and seizing these opportunities that I think tarot experts should be getting, and could, if they would only market themselves right.

 

Best of luck. I’m rooting for you.

Bell

 

Benebell Wen

Website. http://www.benebellwen.com

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