Did you know there are astrologists who focus exclusively on money matters? I didn’t, until I re-connected with Susan Abbott Gidel, an old high school mate.
Susan Gidel, Financial Astrologer, joins The Savvy Entrepreneur to share her journey from commodities trading and journalism to a self-employed astrologer. You’ll hear how to become an astrologer, and what financial astrologers do.
You’ll also hear how one entrepreneur methodically and internationally pivoted her career into something entirely new, and some tips for coping when your planned side hustle becomes suddenly becomes your full-time business.
Read a transcript of our chat below, or go here to listen to the original interview.
Doris Nagel 0:42
Good morning, all you entrepreneurs and small businesspeople!
You are listening to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show.
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
The show has two goals. First, to share helpful information and resources. I have made so many mistakes myself over the years, and I’ve seen clients and friends make lots of mistakes too. And if I can help just one of you entrepreneurs out there not to make some of those mistakes, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal of the show is to inspire. I found sometimes being an entrepreneur is confusing, and often lonely. And you have no idea if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice.
So every week on the show, I have guests who are willing to share their stories and their advice.
This week’s guest is Susan Gidel. She is a financial astrologer. And she’s joining me this week to talk not only about the business that she’s in, which is a less traveled corner of the business world out there, but also a little bit about her journey as an entrepreneur.
Susan, thanks so much for being with me today. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show!
Susan Gidel
Thanks so much, Doris. It’s nice to be here.
Doris Nagel
Susan, let’s start out by having you tell folks a little bit about your business. What exactly do you do?
Susan Gidel 2:12
I’m an astrologer that focuses on financial topics. And that can be anything from what market prices might do, to looking at people’s individual horoscope chart for indications about wealth potential, career changes, career suitability, timing for making changes, timing for when money might be rolling in and timing for when you maybe should lay low, all from a financial perspective.
Doris Nagel
So what are some of the kinds of things– I think you’ve hinted at them — but maybe some specific examples of things that you help your clients with?
Susan Gidel 3:03
Actually, the most common is someone who is interested in starting a business. They will come to me to find a good date and time to do that. It’s like you get to pick the birthday of your company
Doris Nagel So your birthday is important. Why?
Susan Gidel 3:25
Because it establishes like for all of us, it establishes astrologically where the sun, moon, and rising sign are in your horoscope. And those three things tell you: identity, the sun; how you approach things emotionally, the moon. And the ascendant reveals what kind of outward personality you have.
So if you can pick that for your company, then you can potentially support the idea that you have , as well as how the company functions and operates.
Doris Nagel
What are some other kinds of things that you commonly help people with?
Susan Gidel 4:09
In the trading world, I often talk with people who are interested in investing, and are just interested to see: one, if they have an inherent talent for it, which the chart can show.
And tow, to see if they are trading the right markets for them. I look at when you put two charts together, you can see connections between them.
You know how you’re drawn to certain people? You are also drawn to certain markets, and you do better with the ones that you are more connected with, just like you do better with people that you have connections with.
So I find that people are connected to their charts, even if they might not consciously know that. You know, there’s a zillion stocks to choose from. So I ask clients to just give me a list of the five that they like the most. And I’ll take a look at those and compare their natal horoscope versus when the natal horoscope of when each stock started trading and look for connections between them. And people generally pick ones that they really are pretty well suited for.
Doris Nagel
Talk a little bit about your background. I know you started out in commodities and journalism, but talk about your journey from that to where you are today.
Susan Gidel 5:51
At Illinois, I was in the ag journalism program, which was a combined major from the Ag College and the Jjournalism School. And at the time, I figured I’d be one of the farm reporters for the local newspaper, or I’ll work for one of the farm magazines, that sort of thing.
Having grown up on a farm, and having a dad who would come in every day at noon, and ask about the price of corn, and having had to listen to the noon farm report, I was fascinated with how the market can change every day. Why does it change? Why is it so important to know that every day? What can happen?
And I am still fascinated by what makes prices move.
So at any rate, I was in I was at Illinois in ag journalism and got a summer internship while I was in school at the Board of Trade, working for one of the wire services that covered the markets. And that just got me hooked. I was on the floor of the Board of Trade every day.
And when I got out of school, I got a job with the commodity futures industry’s major trade publication, which was called Commodities Magazine at the time now. It was later renamed Futures.
At the time, soybeans were the biggest market in the world. It was really natural for an ag journalism graduate to go work in the commodities business, because it truly was dominated by the grain markets.
Doris Nagel
But at some point along the way, or maybe something you always were interested in, you started learning more about astrology, right?
Susan Gidel 7:45
Yes. While I was at the magazine, I interviewed some financial astrologers, because we were always on the lookout for stories about people who had different approaches to figuring out which way the markets were going, and that sort of thing.
And so that piqued my interest. I just thought that was interesting. So I just kind of kept that in the back of my mind.
Fast forward to the mid 90s. I was then self-employed as a freelance copywriter, a freelance journalist, and was working with a friend of mine in New York. And we were very early in wanting to put up a website in 1995.
Doris Nagel
It’s hard to remember a time when there weren’t websites, right?
Susan Gidel 8:41
I know, isn’t it?
Anyway, to do that, I had seen this article in Chicago Magazine about an astrologer in town, Barbara Shermer, who helped businesses pick launch times.
So I thought, “I should go see her. She’s right in town.” And so I did. And Barbara helped pick us a good time and date to start our website, which I think worked out well, because ultimately, I sold it a few years later, for quite a hefty sum.
And then I just started seeing Barbara on a regular basis. I just thought it was interesting. I’d see her once a year and then twice a year, and then quarterly.
Doris Nagel
When you saw her, were you consulting for your own personal guidance, or mostly just to learn more about financial astrology?
Susan Gidel 9:45
My own interest. We mostly talked about career things, and not so much financial. Like what was going on with my work and, and what I was doing. And I just kept soaking it up.
And then one time, she said, “You know, you have Pluto crossing your ascendant.” I know that means nothing to most people But it’s a big deal. “So if there’s anything that you’ve ever wanted to explore, or learn more about, now would be a really good time to do that.”
And so there happened to be an astrology conference out in the suburbs right around that time. So I said, “Okay, well, I’m going to take a week of vacation and go to this conference.” They had a financial only track, and I went to all of those. I furiously wrote down notes, because I didn’t get any of the jokes.
Doris Nagel
Well, it’s a whole different world. I mean, you’re making a major pivot into a world that’s totally different.
And I thinkt that is probably pretty interesting for a lot of folks, even if they’re not interested in astrology. A lot of people want to start a business or pivot their career into something that they really didn’t go to school for, or their job isn’t related to.
So I think this is an interesting story of how to start the pivot process.
Susan Gidel 11:19
Yes. And the interesting revelation about it was that I took a week off work, I went to this conference, and I just stayed out there. I didn’t come home in between sessions.
And even though it was really intense, because I had to pay such close attention and didn’t really understand what they were talking about, I just used my reporter skills. [I found] I could rely on those skills to take really good notes, really fast.
It was really intense, because I was in meetings five to eight hours a day for four days. It was It was intense mentally, but I came away so mentally refreshed. It I didn’t even feel like work. .
Doris Nagel
You were in a flow. And that’s probably when you knew that it was something that fit with your personality and where you were then.
Susan Gidel 12:21
Yes. And I still was really interested in how I could apply this to what I knew, which is the markets. I wondered if this was the answer to the question I have always had, which is, “What makes markets move?”
But I diidn’t really get to that point until probably four years later, when there was another astrology conference in town that I went to. [By then], I had been trying to figure out, how I might become a financial astrologer. How do I move into that kind of arena?
At the time, I had a great corporate job downtown, and I made a lot of money, and I enjoyed it, too.
But then I went to this second conference a few years later. And there, the president of the organization stood up to speak. She was a psychotherapist and also a practicing astrologer. She combined the two into her day job.
And at that moment, a little light bulb that went off inside me. I wondered if I could that, too?.
Doris Nagel
When did you start your financial astrology consulting or advising business as a side hustle at that point? When did you just make it your full-time job?
I mean, it’s one thing to learn a lot about an area you’re fascinated with and apply it to your life and your current job. It’s another to say: “I want to do this full-time and try to make money doing this.”
Susan Gidel 13:48
Right. And it took a little bit — I’m a Capricorn.
So after the second conference when the light bulb went off, I decided that I actually needed to get serious about learning astrology. And so I started a formal online program that took me a few years to get through. My intent was to have a late life career shift into being a financial astrologer.
But that timeline got pushed up dramatically when the company I was working for went bankrupt in 2011. So much for my plan of “Oh, I’ve got three more years to get ready to do this.” Now it was, “Okay, now what?”
Doris Nagel
Yes, that is quite an abrupt shift. It’s not only the substantive knowledge you need, but there’s obviously the whole piece of how to market yourself, how to find clients.
You’ve already alluded to a little of this, but how did you know you were a good fit as an entrepreneur?
I’m guessing you drew upon some of the things that you learned in the past – you mentioned your previous website and how you sold that for a tidy sum? So I’m sure you were able to draw on some of those skills and learnings this time around too?
Susan Gidel 15:21
Yes, for sure.
One of those skills was that I had been freelancing for about 10 years before I went back to the corporate world. I worked for 10 years, I freelanced for 10 years, went back to the corporate world for 10 year, and here I am again.
What I learned the most from that first round of freelancing was that the phone always rang just in time. If you just do the basics of staying in touch, picking up work from whoever has some, and then letting that lead you on to the next thing, [it tends to work out].
In the end, I never really worried about where the next gig was going to come from, because just as I would start thinking, “Oh, I wonder what I’m going to do after this one wraps up, the phone would ring.” And it would be the next gig. So I got really comfortable with that.
Doris Nagel
What do you think it tells you if the phone doesn’t ring?
Susan Gidel 16:31
I think it probably tells you that you’re not doing the basics right. Or that you’re just simply not on the right path.
Doris Nagel
Yes. I think that’s one of the dilemmas a lot of entrepreneurs face: at what point do you just continue to persist? There are the stories out there, right, of the entrepreneur who on their last box of MacNCheese when Voila! The big client that saved the day was came through.
But then there’s probably also plenty of stories like my old neighbor across the street who mortgaged his house. He ended up having his house foreclosed on. Because he just kept thinking, the big break, the phone call was gonna come, and it just never did.
So I’ve always been curious, how do you as an entrepreneur – and maybe putting on your astrologer glasses — how do you know whether the phone is gonna ring in the nick of time or whether your house is gonna get foreclosed on?
Susan Gidel 17:55
From an astrological point of view, there’s two ways to know.
One is, does my natal chart — that’s shorthand for your natal horoscope chart, which is the snapshot of where all the planets were when you were born — does my natal charts support this kind of work for me? And if it does, cool. Like I say, I think most people feel their charts in some way. I think most people are drawn to professions that they’re suited for.
Now, I’ve seen some that aren’t because there was big family pressure to do something different. But for the most part, I think people have a feel for what it is that they are good at.
And so an astrologer can help with whether you are on the right path or not.
And then too, there certainly are times when planets in the sky are connecting with your natal chart in a way where life is just difficult. None of us get through life without some of those challenges.
Looking at with an astrologer can help you realize, “Oh, I’m in one of those periods.” So chill, or do something different. Understand that you’re going through it now. And it’s going to be rough.
But there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel is it will end by [some defined time period]. Because the transit will move on, and that energy will lift.
So your old neighbor with the foreclosed house might have just not been able to hang on long enough to get through the end of a very difficult transit.
Doris Nagel
Right. Or like you said, maybe he just didn’t have some basic stuff in place. As I said, for me, one of the great mysteries of entrepreneurship: when do you keep eating MacNCheese, believing that the next that phone call is eventually going to come, versus realizing that it’s time to pivot.
So I find it very interesting that you just had faith that the phone was going to ring.
Susan Gidel 20:20
Well, it took a while to get there. But that’s what happened in the end. After a few years, I started to fell like, “OK, I guess that’s just what happens.”
Doris Nagel
One of the interesting things about your journey is that, when you started, you were still learning about astrology, and particularly how to apply it to financial aspects of people’s lives.
It’s not as though you started under somebody else’s wing, and you joined their business. You didn’t have it as a side hustle so you could slowly grow this business.
How did you find clients to help you build this new business?
Susan Gidel 21:02
Well, you’re right. When I got done with my formal astrological training and I got the diploma, I felt a level of comfort that , “Okay, now I have the foundation for it.”
It felt very much like when you graduate from college, and you’re like, “Okay, now what am I going to do for work?” There are no companies that hire astrologers that I know of. You can’t say, “I’m a new astrologer, so who’s going to hire me?”
Doris Nagel
Right. There is nobody. I’m sure.Price Waterhouse Coopers doesn’t have an astrology department where you could go and really hone your craft?
Susan Gidel 21:47
No, not really [laughing]. Though I strongly suspect — although I don’t know for sure — that there are some trading firms in New York, in particular, that do hire astrologers.
Doris Nagel
But they would probably never admit it.
Susan Gidel 22:06
No, they would never admit it. And at any rate, I probably didn’t know enough to do that anyway.
But there was a wonderful woman in Chicago who has since moved to Florida, who is a financial astrologer: Grace Morris.
And she was very kind to me. I went to see her a couple times. And she took me under her wing from a financial astrology point of view, probably more than anyone else.
And not that there was not that we had a lot of connections or conversations or anything like that. But she was really interested in what I was trying to do. And she’s a big name in the astrology world. And so I think she probably had some influence in helping me get started on the speaking tour.
Astrologers are famous for having a zillion conferences, and now a zillion webinars. And so I got started that way. And the school where I went also was supportive in terms of helping me get some exposure from a speaking perspective.
Doris Nagel
Is that how you found your first clients? Through speaking?
Susan Gidel 23:22
Some of them, yes.
But actually more important was my last day job downtown. There, I ran the marketing department for a brokerage firm. And that this was in the early times/middle start when internet marketing was really taking off. And so I learned a lot there and applied to my business.
And honestly, search engine optimization is how I find clients. I know how to put an SEO program together pretty well for my own little website. And fortunately, my keyword phrase that I want to rank for is financial astrology. There’s not a lot of competition for it.
My site just has great SEO, and I’m on page one of the Google search for financial astrology.
And I know that not everybody can do that. I’ve got a friend in town here who’s a graphic designer, and I think, “Okay, well, he’s got a road to hoe, at least from an SEO perspective.”
Doris Nagel
What don’t financial astrologers do? At one level, it strikes me that financial decisions are often intertwined with your personal situation.
I was poking around on your site, preparing like I always do for my guest interviews. And I saw you had a recent blog post about the war in Ukraine and politics, which also can affect financial things.
So what kinds of things don’t find out financial astrologers get into?
Susan Gidel 25:07
At the top of the list for me is relationships. I have no interest in talking to you about whether your husband is cheating on you, or whether you’re going to get married. Sorry, I don’t know, and I don’t care [laughing]. So I stay away from relationship issues.
I also don’t get involved in medical things. For friends I will take a look at someone’s chart and try and pick a favorable time for an important medical procedure. But I don’t do that professionally. And the same with relationships. Okay, maybe if my very best friend in the world wants to know what’s going on, I’ll take a look at the chart for them. But those two things for sure financial astrologers don’t look at.
But certainly when I work with someone, I may see something big in the chart — sometimes it can be related to real estate. There are big signatures that often pop up when people make big physical moves, like buying or selling a house, changing countries. I’m surprised at the number of people that come to me who’ve actually moved across the world several times. And I think, “Wow, I live 150 miles from where I grew up.”
Doris Nagel
Are most of your clients local? Are they International? Are they older people? Younger people? Are they repeat clients? How have you found your client base?
Susan Gidel 26:53
Well, God bless the internet. And God bless Zoom. I have clients from all over the world.
Doris Nagel
That’s amazing. This is so this is not like the little house that you drive by with the sign outside that says, “Palm readings, $25.” This is definitely not that.
Susan Gidel 27:16
No. Now, when I started seeing my astrologer in Chicago in the mid-1990s, it was more like that. It was difficult to have clients that weren’t local. Then, you met in person or had phone calls, although I think that’s hard for an astrological reading.
I do think there’s a lot of information that can be exchanged when you’re actually looking at each other, whether that’s in person or over Zoom. So, like I said, “God bless the internet and Zoom!”
Most of my clients are from the United States, because we’re in similar time zones. Pllus there’s just more people here. But I’ve had people from Australia, UK Singapore, I don’t think anybody from South America, although I’ve had South Americans that live here. And Canada, Central Europe.
Doris Nagel
Are there things that these people seem to have in common? What seems to make someone more likely than not to seek advice from an astrologer?
Susan Gidel 28:27
Well, one: you have to start with someone who is interested in astrology to begin with.
Doris Nagel
So you’re not trying to educate people on the benefits of astrology.
Susan Gidel 28:40
No, someone else has to do that [laughing]. People who contact me have taken that step already, for whatever reason. And then they’ve gone down the rabbit hole enough to wonder, “Oh, financial astrology. I wonder if I can apply this to my investments? I wonder if I can apply this to my business? Is there such a thing as financial astrology?”
Like I said, they start Googling and they learn more, and they find me, and here we are.
But most people that I have talked with come in with at least a smattering of understanding about astrology, if not very advanced. But once again, they’ve all taken that next leap into applying astrology into a particular area of their life, not just the overall perspective that you might get when you have just a regular meeting with you know, all purpose, astrologer.
Doris Nagel
How did you know how to price your services? There aren’t many of you, so you have that going for you. But at some point, you could probably easily price yourself out of the market, I guess.
How did you sort that out?
Susan Gidel 30:04
Like any kind of pricing, you take a look at what the competition is doing. In my case, there were other financial astrologers who were doing consultations and work. And so I looked at what they did, and also what astrologers in general were charging.
I found itwas very much like when I was a freelance copywriter: I could charge by the word, or I could charge by the hour, or I could charge by the project, depending on what the client preferred.
And when I was pitching a job, I would calculate it out all three ways. And I found out over time that they all ended up really pretty much the same price, or at least were in the same ballpark.
Although for me, I ultimately decided that my prices would always be associated with the horoscope.
Doris Nagel
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that as a pricing strategy in any marketing book or article!
Susan Gidel 31:16
You know, there are big degrees and angle transit angles in a horoscope chart. There are 360 degrees in the entire circle. So 360 is a number I use. Half of that is 180. A quarter is 90. A sixth is 60. And so I kind of put those different numbers together to come up with pricing.
I got that idea from a friend of mine way, way, way back. His name was Bob Proctor, who wrote the Elliott Wave Theorist newsletter back in the 80s and 90s. And he used he priced his newsletter at a Fibonacci number.
Doris Nagel
Okay, that’s another approach that I haven’t seen in many articles about marketing and pricing your services [laughing].
Susan Gidel 32:08
Yeah, he charged $144 a year, I think, for his newsletter. I asked him once about it, since it was kind of an odd number. And he told me, “It’s a Fibonacci number.”
And I liked that idea. And so I just picked that up and applied it to my astrology business.
Doris Nagel
What are some of the most common misconceptions people have about what you do?
Susan Gidel 32:30
I think the biggest misconception is that any kind of astrologer, financial or otherwise, is in the prediction business. We cannot say this is absolutely going to happen next week, next month, next year.
But what we can say, with clarity, and authority, is that we can describe the energy that is coming up, and the character of the energy based on the planets involved in the signs they’re in and their connections with other planets.
Now how you choose to use that energy is up to you. And there is always a high road expression or a low road expression.
Doris Nagel
Can you explain a bit more what you mean?
Susan Gidel 33:23
It means that if you are aware of this energy that is coming, and could find the positive, useful purpose for it, you can get through it easier than if you are typically unaware that it is coming.
And the unaware unconscious response is typically the low road.
For example, my Pluto conjunct the ascendant example from before. Pluto takes 248 years to go around the entire horoscope chart, so you will never have every transit of Pluto to any of your planets.
But crossing the ascendant is your one of the primary factors that you look at in the horoscope chart that identifies who you are, and how you express to the world.
Pluto crossing the ascendant can transform your identity, and there are horror stories about Pluto conjunct the ascendant — people’s houses burned down, or they were in the most horrific accident. And it changed their life.
Pluto’s job is to transform, to take away what is no longer needed in order for something new to come up. It’s very Phoenix-like.
Doris Nagel
Actually, my house did burn down about five years ago, and a whole bunch of other bad things happened. So it would be interesting to see if Pluto had something to do with that. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Susan Gidel 35:09
It very well might have. And I would be happy to take a look at that for you.
Doris Nagel
Share a success story or two, or something that you were proud of, or that really made you feel good. Maybe where you made a difference in a client’s life?
Susan Gidel 35:36
From a market perspective, one of the first really big international stages that I had speaking wise was here in Chicago in 2018. At that point, in my head, I had arrived in terms of being accepted in the astrological world.
There, I gave a talk on the commodity markets, which is what I specialize in, from a research perspective. I was talking mainly about the Dow Jones Industrial Average and where it might go and that sort of thing, even though that’s not it’s a stock and it’s not commodities.
But at the end I tossed out, “Okay, I think the gold market is going to reach a big high – potentially — a year from now, in the fall of 2019.” I thought that because there was a huge, huge transit coming up to the first trade gold chart.
Someone who was at that talk got a hold of me after this gold projection had come and gone, and said to me, “Impressive. You were within two days of that high, more than a year out.”
So that was a really good projection from a market perspective. And I will say that at the top in 2020, I was within a couple of days of that top, as well as the low in March.
Doris Nagel
Hopefully there are clients who listened to you and were able to take advantage of those!
Susan Gidel 37:19
Well, I hope so. But I don’t make buy or sell recommendations. I’m not registered as a financial advisor, or as a commodity trading advisor.
So all I can say is that I think, astrologically, there’s potential for a high or a low around these times. And I’ve seen so many happen on the exact date of the transit that I just presumed that that will be the date.
In fact, I’ve tracked it. It’s very much a bell curve. About 10% that are right on, and in the middle are those that are within a couple days.
Doris Nagel
From a statistics perspective, that’s pretty good!
Susan Gidel 38:01
And then there’s another 10%, where I’m just completely wrong. Wrong direction, wrong date, missed everything.
Doris Nagel
What are the things that happened where you just completely wrong? Were there some other aspects you didn’t think about, or some other force that is beyond the astrological chart that influence things?
Susan Gidel 38:25
Typically, it’s because I wasn’t paying enough attention to what the moon was doing.
The moon can be the final trigger. And I counted on the bigger planets and the bigger connections to overpower that when I’m typically way off.
Doris Nagel
And why is the moon so powerful? Because it’s so close and because it has such a big gravitational pull on the earth?
Susan Gidel 38:56
Exactly. See, you’re on it!
Doris Nagel
I just know it from an astronomy perspective. I love astronomy.
Susan Gidel 39:36
But that’s exactly it. It has influence on a very quick basis. The moon goes through all 12 signs once a month. Whereas Pluto goes through all 12 signs in 248 years.
So the moon just moves quickly. It touches every planet in every chart, once a month.
Doris Nagel
It would be interesting to learn more about how the moon has influences on things way beyond what people think.
Because anybody who’s been near the ocean when the tide is coming in knows that you need to pay attention. It can have a pretty significant effect if you’re camped out on the beach, or even whether you can get out of a place fast enough where beach access might be limited.
And fishermen know very clearly how much influence the moon has on the tides.
And yet, we don’t think very much as people about its influence. If it has that kind of an influence on the ocean, it probably has an influence on lots of things. And what are those influences that maybe we’re not even aware of?
Susan Gidel 40:25
Exactly. What you just described is why I think astrology is absolutely valuable and legit. Because if the moon can move the ocean twice a day, why does it not have an effect on us? After all, we are 70% water.
Doris Nagel
It must. It absolutely must.
Susan Gidel 40:50
Yes. And so how do we capture that? How do we define it? How do we use that to our advantage?
You know, just last week, a big container ship that was stuck in Chesapeake Bay. I heard on the news that they targeted the full moon — when the tide was higher — to be the day where they really tried to get it released. And they did. They were tracking the full moon.
Doris Nagel
That totally makes sense.
Talk about your business journey. What have been some of your biggest challenges in your setting up and growing your financial astrology business? And how have you overcome some of those challenges?
Or maybe you haven’t had many challenges, because you read your charts. And they were all very successful! [laughing]
Susan Gidel 41:48
No, I just kind of jumped in. I got thrown into the fire because my old employer went bankrupt.
I think it probably would have been easier if I’d had those extra three or four years to work on my new business as a side hustle – to build it up slowly to the point where I could make that nice gliding transition.
Doris Nagel
That’s what we all hope for, right? But it doesn’t work out for a lot of people, so you’re not alone.
Susan Gidel 42:25
I just kind of hung in there. As I said, I’m a Capricorn, so I just told myself, “Okay, this is what I do. I’ll keep following the right paths.” I see like little astrological flags in the road in front of me, and I just follow them if they make sense.
Doris Nagel
What kind of challenges did you face? Was it just finding a steady influx, a manageable steady influx of clients? Are there aspects of doing people’s charts that can be automated through software that you had to invest in? Give us a glimpse and into what that’s like?
Susan Gidel 43:09
Well, there’s certainly software. I couldn’t be an astrologer without the software. I’m absolutely in awe of ancient astrologers who did this kind of work without software.
So there is a software investment, but it’s not expensive in the big scheme of things.
The bigger thing for me was — and still is actually — being the one-person shop. The “Which hat am I wearing today challenge. Am I the marketing director? Yes. Or am I the salesperson? Yes. Or am I the content provider?” Yes.
Doris Nagel
Right. And you also need the doer, the worker bee.
Susan Gidel
Yes. That’s always a challenge.
Doris Nagel
I don’t know about you, but when I was consulting – and even if you consider my little radio show a little business – I found there are times when I have to really work to find clients. And there are other times when it’s just an avalanche, and I don’t know how I’m going to manage it all.
I certainly found that when I was consulting, everything seemed to come at once. And then I was terrified about how I would get it all done and make all these clients happy. But then the crickets would chirp, and I didn’t know when the next client was coming.
Susan Gidel 44:29
Yes. I had one of those periods in January, February, March of 2021. In the middle of the pandemic. I have an online calendar set up that works pretty well that I had completely wide open, you could book me anytime, for anything.
And what I learned is that I just had too much work. I was exhausted. And I didn’t have time to do what I wanted to do. Because there was so much demand on my time from clients.
Doris Nagel
You also may find you can’t always do a good job with that many when there’s too many.
Susan Gidel 45:09
Yes. And so what I learned was to shut my online calendar down.
I also had a very needy client last year, who was just really demanding of my time who was driving me crazy
Doris Nagel
I wondered about that. Because you I could envision in your business having somebody who just is like, “Well, what about this, what about this, and what about this?” I find those people take up a lot of your time and energy. They pay you a lot, but then they usually suddenly go away. Which is not so good for your business.
Susan Gidel
Yes. And I also found that It wasn’t good for me. It was really too draining.
So last summer, I just decided I’m taking the summer off. I’m not doing anything. I’m going to work on my research. I’m going to work on a book I want to do next. And I’m not doing any client work June, July, August, from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
And it was mainly because I needed to get rid of this needy client. I had to be able to say to her, “Listen, I’m just not doing anything.”
Doris Nagel
Hopefully, you got a lot of work on your book done. What’s your book going to be about?
Susan Gidel 46:19
Well, I didn’t actually get a lot of writing done on my book, although I did start chapter one…
Doris Nagel
Well, the stars were probably not lined up for that.
Susan Gidel 46:29
No, you’re right. I think that was probably true, actually.
But I’m writing a book about the Air Economy.
Doris Nagel
I saw something about the Air Economy on your website, and honestly, I didn’t even know enough to ask you an intelligent question about it. I’ve never heard of the Air Economy. What that’s about?
Susan Gidel 46:55
I’m happy to talk about it, because it’s important for all of us to know.
Jupiter and Saturn make conjunctions every 20 years and are the two planets that you look at from an economic basis for economic cycles and business cycles.
So Jupiter and Saturn have been making conjunctions in Earth signs since the mid 1800s. That means that from the mid 1800s, until the end of 2020, the economies the world over were focused on things of earth — things that came out of the earth: oil, gold, minerals, whatever, physical things, manufacturing stuff.
Doris Nagel
That’s true. That was the industrial era and certainly, the big era of petroleum dependence.
Susan Gidel 47:44
Well, as of December 2020, Jupiter and Saturn made a conjunction at zero degrees of Aquarius, an Air Sign. They will make conjunctions in air signs for the next 199 years. So we have moved into a 200 year period where economies the world over will value things of air ideas. Intellectual property. Internet technology
And so I just want to say what I want to write about in the book, and what I want everyone to know is that we’ve shifted into this new paradigm of what is important economically. And whatever you can do to be more aligned with air things is good.
Doris Nagel
Well, certainly with climate change, anything you can do to be less aligned with earth and petroleum is probably good for all of us.
Susan Gidel 48:51
Exactly. And I really cracked up when COVID started in 2020, because that was an airborne disease.
And it pummeled the economy starting in February, March of 2020.
Doris Nagel
Well, it pummeled the earth based economy. Yes, like petroleum, but things of the air started taking off. More and more Zoom meetings and work from home, right?
Susan Gidel 49:23
Yes, exactly. So I think the universe has a sense of humor. So here’s COVID. Pluto has been trying to transform business and government since 2008 when it was in Capricorn. Now it moves into Aquarius and will transform technology.
So we’re at the very end of this big transformation in how business and government work. And COVID, an airborne thing, is ushering in the new era economy.
Doris Nagel
Very, very interesting.
You’ve been an entrepreneur really, two, or maybe three or more times over.
There are no doubt lots of people like you out there with talents . People like you who dream of doing something like you’ve done: taking your talents, and making a business out of it.
But often they don’t have the courage to start. What advice would you offer them?
Susan Gidel 50:38
Well, of course, I think figuring it out from an astrological perspective would be helpful. But that’s not to say that I think everybody has to go have a consultation with an astrologer to do that.
From a practical standpoint, I would recommend starting small and on the side while you can. I didn’t have that luxury. And I just kind of started from zero, with nothing.
It is tough. It’d be easier to have built it up on the side a little bit. Be intentional about having the finances to get through that first year, when there are no clients.
Doris Nagel
I always tell people it cost it’ll probably cost more than you think or take longer than you think. Or maybe both.
Susan Gidel 51:28
“Both,” says someone who’s experienced it. And so just be prepared for that. And I know, that’s harder to do than to say.
Doris Nagel
It is hard. We all read about the great quit, the great resignation. And people’s interest in entrepreneurship and having their own business is higher than ever. And certainly a lot written about younger generations in their impatience and lack of willingness to compromise, wanting to do the right thing, wanting to follow their heart. All admirable things.
But then there’s the practical piece, which sometimes suggests maybe sucking it up for a little while is not a bad idea. Take time to get your ducks in order to help make your transition a lot easier.
Susan Gidel 52:24
Yes. And I never went to the bank and said, “I need a loan. I’m gonna start this business, blah, blah, blah. Because I didn’t know that I could pay that back.
Doris Nagel
Or whether you get a loan at all, right?
Susan Gidel 52:39
Yeah. I have paid attention to shows on TV, talking about what kind people start businesses. And how do they do that?
In the end, I think what I’ve realized is that it would be really nice to have a sponsor. A financial mentor. Someone who believes in you enough to make sure you can get going. And is there to help pay the bills, either personal or business wise, so that you have so that you aren’t freaked out about how I am going to pay the mortgage next month!
Doris Nagel
Yeah. And I certainly wish I had found that, too, but if not, we soldier on.
What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you and learn more about your services?
Susan Gidel
Go to my website: susangidel.com.
Doris Nagel
And there’s a contact form on the website?
Susan Gidel
There is. Or you can just send me an email directly at Susan@Susangidel.com.
Doris Nagel
I noticed there’s lots of interesting content on your website. That’s worth taking a look at if folks are interested. You’ve got a nice library of resources and blogs and things like that that are, I think, very interesting.
So I encourage people to check out your website.
Susan, thanks so much for being with me today. It was really interesting learning about astrology, something I really don’t know very much about, and for joining me and sharing a little bit about your journey.
Susan Gidel
Thank you so much. It’s been fun to chat with you. And nice to reconnect.
Doris Nagel
It has been!
And I want to say thanks as well to all my listeners. You’re the reason I do this.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my consulting website, which is globalocityservices.com, as well as my new radio show website, thesavvyentrepreneur.org. I’ll be increasingly moving over things like blogs and tools and podcast archives of this show and other shows.
My door is always open for comments, questions or suggestions or just to shoot the breeze. I’d love to hear from you. Email me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday at 11am Central/noon Eastern.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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