Success Stories
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Donna Van ToenAuthor, astrologer, conference developerI got into astrology as a dabbler at 16. My best friend at the time decided it would be a neat thing to do. I thought she was nuts. She lasted about 3 years. Here I am.I had no intentions of being a professional astrologer. I wanted to write the great Canadian novel. Or something. I spent several years of getting nice personal notes from editors, but I wasn't selling any articles. In frustration, I opened the Writers' Market, started with "A", decided I didn't know anything about art or architecture, got to astrology, and said "Yeah, I can do this!" Again I got a nice rejection letter back. "You write well. Unfortunately, we just bought an article on this topic. What else have you got?" Well, that's when I realized I had gaps in my knowledge big enough to drive a truck through. For 4 years, I joined everything with a newsletter or journal, went to every workshop within a 50-mile radius (and then some), haunted the bookstores, did charts for free for the feedback, and took classes when I could find them. When I started getting more requests for charts than I could handle, I started charging for my time. Most of my clients initially evolved from the freebie charts I had done, but later I started advertising in a couple of community newspapers. Eventually I started getting clients who wanted to learn astrology themselves, so I also started teaching, which is what I was trained to do anyway. And since at this stage I WAS selling articles, I also got a few clients and students that way. I have spent the past 30 years as a full-time astrologer, gradually building a clientele, teaching and writing. Within that 30 years, there were several moves and a house fire and with each move you lose some clients so you have to rebuild. I would therefore say building a practice is an on-going process. To find out more about Donna Van Toen and SOTA (State of the Art Conference), please visit her web site at: http://www.donnavantoen.com |
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Credit, NASA/JPL-Caltech. Artist's conception: Out of the Dust, A
Planet is Born
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