How I Built My 7-Figure Business Using Astrology
For many people, there’s the “thing you love to do”…and there’s your job. But what if your passion project could be your full-time gig? If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re considering that path.
My twin sister Tali and I are the co-founders of Astrostyle, an astrology brand that reaches millions every month with daily horoscopes, online courses, self-published books, and tools that empower people to thrive in love, career, and self-awareness using their unique birth charts. (Whew! #ElevatorPitchComplete)
It sounds impressive, but it was no overnight success. Getting here was a winding, 20-year odyssey. We want to help shorten your journey to career fulfillment by sharing tips from the trenches.
Too often, creatives and “soul-centered entrepreneurs” second-guess themselves and search for a script to guide them. They find cookie-cutter business advice that doesn’t fit or compare themselves to competitors and get discouraged. (Sound familiar?)
Good news, galactic grasshopper! Like Dorothy trying to get home from Oz, it turns out that you “had the answer all along.” That golden roadmap to success is written in your stars, blueprinted and inscribed at your exact moment of birth. It’s called your astrology chart. And we used ours to turn a homegrown hobby into the media company it is today.
We now teach this methodology to other business owners, whom we fondly call Astropreneurs: soul-centered entrepreneurs who want to blend the blueprint of their star charts with savvy business skills. (Our summer program starts August 2—details here!)
Here’s how we’ve used the stars AND our earthly experiences to craft a successful business—and how you can too.
Get the “user’s manual” for your life (i.e., your birth chart).
They say that human beings don’t come with instructions.
Guess what? We do.
Imagine looking up at the sky at your moment of birth and taking a screenshot of the planets in their journeys around the Sun. That map—your birth chart—is the cosmic code to your gifts, challenges, and mission in this lifetime.
At your exact moment of birth, the stars were positioned in a unique configuration. Each planet and its location represents a different aspect of your life, personality, and nature.
Your astrology chart is an incredible tool for decision-making, which can be a huge challenge for anyone trying to start or scale a business. We’ve used ours to guide everything from product launch dates to event planning to signing contracts.
You can do a free birth chart here to find your instruction manual. Got 30 minutes? Our “How to Read Your Astrology Chart” lesson will make you fluent in the basics of chart interpretation in less than an hour.
Use your chart as a decision-making power tool.
We as human beings can be our own biggest blind spots. We can’t see the frustrating or self-defeating things that we do. And we get stuck in our heads, gripped by fear of wasting time and money, of missing an opportunity if we don’t leap desperately to grasp it. As a result, weeks, even years, slip by.
But don’t beat yourself about it, please! Research shows that the average adult makes over 35,000 decisions a day. Is it any surprise so many people get stuck in “analysis paralysis” instead of taking action on their dreams?
Understanding your astrological blueprint can save you tons of time, delay, and headache as a business owner. Used correctly, astrology can help you make confident, clear decisions.
If you know, for example, that you’ve got Mercury (the communication planet) in a social air sign, you might opt to spend your best hours networking instead of doing desk work. If you have Saturn, the planet of structure, in your money house, you could choose to invest in a good financial coach to teach you budgeting skills and help you overcome a scarcity mindset.
View this post on Instagram
A few years ago, we created an algorithm called the I*AM System, designed to help business owners decide how best to use their time, money, and resources. It synthesizes 13 parts of your chart into 3 Success Archetypes: I (Influencer), A (Authority), or M (Maven).
Knowing your I*AM archetype can guide a slew of key decisions when you’re starting, growing, or even considering having your own business—from designing your brand to choosing your messaging to picking what products or services to offer. Your I*AM also helps you craft the ideal entrepreneurial lifestyle, whether that’s a mix of steady freelance work and your own part-time biz or a full-on indie empire that you scale to infinity.
Pop your time, date, and place of birth into our I*AM Calculator and find which of the three archetypes you are—and grab our free guide to activate your success blueprint!
Accept the contradictions in your chart—and your nature.
As you learn your chart, you’ll discover a bunch of paradoxes and personality traits that don’t fit together neatly. In fact, some may contradict each other wildly, meaning you have to reconcile two very different impulses that pull you in opposite directions.
Here’s the good news: Your chart gives you permission to be a messy, imperfect human. And that can give you the freedom to take calculated risks that help you grow and evolve.
Sometimes, that also means pivoting.
When you’re starting or growing a business, you’ll face tough decisions that can have a huge impact. For example, leaving a steady day job could radically alter your financial status, your free time, and your quality of life.
You may have earned your degree in a certain field, only to realize (from under a hefty pile of student debt) that your profession and your passion are not the same. You want out. But that doubting inner voice insists, “You can’t make money doing THAT!”
Or maybe you’re like our friend Anne, a photographer (and an Authority in our I*AM System) who quit her secure 9-to-5 corporate job to open a full-time portrait studio. A few months in, Anne realized that she preferred to take photos without the pressure of business ownership. Oops! Luckily, in astrology and entrepreneurship, there are no mistakes—only lessons and opportunities to grow. Anne now joyfully works as a freelance photo retoucher and sells an online course about studio lighting. With her flexible schedule, she can pay the bills and enjoy her artistic gifts on her own terms.
I myself spent a decade working in publishing and web design while doing people’s astrology “for fun.” I was a straight-A student who attended the University of Michigan and took great pride in my academic achievements. I once even uttered the words, “I didn’t go to the ‘Harvard of the Midwest’ to become a fortune teller!”
But my cosmic blueprint had something else to say about it. I’m a Sagittarius (the sign that rules publishing) with a mystical Scorpio moon and a business-savvy Capricorn rising. I’m an Influencer in our I*AM System, which means my chart is perfectly suited to a career that’s off the beaten path. It makes total astrological sense that I’d end up owning an independent media company that gives practical, soul-centered career advice.
View this post on Instagram
Embrace the quirks in your chart—and use them to find your niche.
Good news: Whatever your passion may be, it turns out that there’s almost no topic too weird to turn into a business if you find that “product-market fit.”
In fact, the “riches are truly in the niches” now. Algorithms steer us deeper and deeper into any subject we type into a Google search bar or utter after “Hey, Siri…” And the algorithm in my astrology chart has never steered me wrong.
Knowing this helped me make choices that sounded controversial on paper, like turning down an $80K book deal from a major publisher.
Now, I understand that publishing contracts don’t get handed out like Halloween candy. Yet, the time and energy I’d have put into that project would have prevented me from doing more lucrative ones. Understanding my birth chart allowed me to say, “no thank you” to a tempting but time-sucking offer. And I went on to earn $250K by self-publishing a totally different book, a choice I made guided by my chart.
Strengthen your chart’s areas of weakness.
Every zodiac sign (and chart) has at least one Achilles heel. But those flaws don’t have to be fatal! Being conscious of your shortcomings is the first step to getting out of your own way.
I remember reading that Sagittarians lacked follow-through and didn’t always finish what they start. A glance at the many projects-in-progress on my desk was undeniable: I resembled that remark.
And in full transparency, I still do. My Sagittarian nature is addicted to the dopamine rush of novelty, expansion, a juicy big idea. I will always tip into “too much.” Boredom is not an option!
But knowing that this is a facet of my nature, rather than a character defect, I can create workarounds. I consciously put buffers into my business; from instituting a project approval process with my sister so I don’t say “yes” to everything on a whim, to hiring a project manager, to having weekly budget meetings with our Scorpio business advisor.
I’ve also created hacks for when my attention starts to drift—the crucial point when I might abandon a project and not follow through. I stop and ask myself: What do I need next?
Maybe it’s simple team support. Maybe it’s feedback from someone whose opinion I respect. Maybe it’s hiring a specialist instead of DIY-ing. Maybe it’s just a snack and fresh air.
Find the obstacles in your chart. Get clear about the ways they could stop you or derail you. Then make it a game—and a mission—to beat them!
Make mistakes and learn from them.
Before I start sounding like a zodiac zealot, let me issue a disclaimer: Your chart is not a replacement for common sense, hard work, and solid business skills.
Astrology is like an insurance policy. It can’t stop you from crashing the car, but it can help you recover faster and minimize the damages.
Sometimes, people get in our own way, even when we know better. Plain and simple: We have free will. Astrology isn’t some alien force that seizes control of your brain. It offers explanations, not excuses.
So while you’re learning your chart, make it your mission to also strengthen the muscle of personal responsibility. Mercury retrograde might have wiped out your hard drive, but uhhh, it was your job to back up the files weeks ago, amiright? Own your role instead of blaming the stars (even if it is partly their fault). This kind of leadership is a hallmark of seasoned business owners. And it will earn you both stars and stripes.
Learn hard business skills and use them.
While my chart showed me where I was naturally gifted and what roles would make me happiest, it was up to me to take the next step. At a certain point, my celestial skills and university training were no use. Yes, I could code and design a simple website that attracted a couple thousand visitors. But I didn’t really understand how to market my company, grow an email list or analyze visitor data.
When I became a mom in October 2010 (#Libra), I felt a new urgency to take Astrostyle seriously as a business. I wanted to stop building websites on the side and make this my absolute full-time career path. But how? I was anxious about supporting my growing family if I gave up the bread-and-butter gigs, fearful of making a foolish and irreversible move, and terrified to fail publicly.
In 2011, I signed up for Marie Forleo’s B-School, a lively but legit program taught by Sagittarius spitfire Marie, designed for creative, heart-centered entrepreneurs. The timing was perfect astrologically (the north node, aka the cosmic destiny point, was in my sign!). And it was a game-changer. Marie’s course demystified things like “opt-in offers” (i.e., that email signup box on your website) and helped us understand our ideal customer’s hopes, dreams, and pain points. From applying her teachings, our mailing list doubled and our website traffic went up 650 percent!
Numbers don’t lie, and a few years later we teamed up with Marie, creating a companion Astropreneur program that we pair with B-School every year. (You can see Marie’s interview with me about the experience here). We now have a lesson to go along with each of Marie’s business training modules that helps our students apply the weekly trainings to their unique charts—with amazing results!
Design your business around what works for you and your crew.
Because I respect the way people’s charts are wired, I know that there’s no one-size-fits-all work style. Some of our brightest team members do their best work at 2AM, listening to music and burning a scented candle. Others like the structure of nine to five hours (they’re often the “A” people in our I*AM System). To each their own!
To honor this, we have “full-on” rather than “full-time” employees. In other words, as long as you complete your assignment within the budget and time allotted, I don’t care how, when, or where you got it done. People’s output is invariably better when their hearts are happy.
Employees have turned in work from diving expeditions in the Maldives, Canadian ski lodges, and jungle cafes in Tulum. We keep our crew organized with project management tools like Asana and Clickup. We check-in by phone, Zoom, Voxer, or in person. Our only demand is that we get to see the scenery from someone’s far-flung video chat locale!
In this pandemic era, there are no conventional rules for where and how people work. We suspect that this full-on style may become more of an industry standard.
Here’s hoping. Because as Astropreneurs, we believe that when you let freedom ring, the galaxy’s most talented and innovative people will answer its call.
I’m so grateful that I learned the skills of modern marketing from B-School at such a pivotal time. It showed me that I could create a business on my own terms, suited to my unique temperament and working style—and gave me the confidence to take that leap of faith. A decade later, owning a company that’s crossed the seven-figure mark for three consecutive years, I continue to use a blend of B-School’s systems and my astrological chart to grow, scale, and now teach this star-powered recipe for success!
Subscribe to the BlogHer newsletter for more tactical advice, exclusive content, and timely event updates.