We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashani Dunwell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ashani, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

As someone with a spiritually driven business, I think the biggest challenge in achieving and maintaining profitability would be that monetary gain and success is often dependent on my own personal alignment, physical and mental health, environment and more. I don’t get to just clock in, check out, do the work and go home. I’m working with people, energy, and emotions; which is often a 24 hour job due to the energetic maintenance necessary before, after, and during sessions. This is to ensure that my own health is kept in tact and I am properly grounding myself between client interactions. Which also means that often times profitability cannot always be priority. Otherwise it would not be sustainable. I often have more clients reaching out to me than I can physically respond to. In addition, I handle every aspect of my business on my own. Marketing, customer service, budgeting and finance, and more. I know that I am now at a place in my career where I need to consider bringing in assistance in order to properly scale my business, but financial limitations (I MUST be able to pay someone a living wage) have made that a future goal for now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Ashani Dunwell, I’m 28 years old and have been offering services as a spiritual practitioner, astrologer and tarot card reader since March 2020. I have been personally practicing tarot and astrology for almost 10 years, but took it on professionally at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic. I was living in Brooklyn, New York and had just lost my job at a local vegan juice spot. I needed something to supplement my income and was already slowly but surely growing a following on Twitter for my rants and readings. I remember starting out offering $5 and $10 readings and maybe had around 400-500 followers at the time. I was passionate, determined and little naïve, but looking back, I’m proud of myself for going for it. You could call it my “Fool” moment. (A tarot card representing new beginnings and leaps of faith) Now, two years later, I’m up to almost 37K on Twitter with a loyal clientele who has grown to love me for my no-BS communication style, personable nature and compassionate spirit. I offer both Tarot and Astrology based readings that cover topics such as Career Development, Shadow Work and Inner Child Healing, Love and Relationships and more. I am humbled by the positive responses I often receive from my clients in reference to the accuracy of my readings. I never thought I would find such a deep sense of purpose in reading energy but now that I’m here, I can say it’s become very undeniable that it is apart of my calling and what I’m meant to offer the world.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This year alone has been one of the most trying years of my life due to my house burning down in Los Angeles this past April while I was out of town. I lost nearly everything I owned, which wasn’t much after also being robbed last November, and having majority of my belongings stolen during a car break in. For a moment I thought I was cursed. I remember not understanding why or how any of this could be happening. Things had gotten so bad that I was genuinely convinced I was being spiritually targeted. “Why me?” I started thinking. Then I remember hearing this voice in my head respond, “Why not you? Everyone experiences loss, suffering, sacrifice. What makes you so special that you think you shouldn’t have to?” For the sake of not going too far down the spiritual rabbit hole, I will just say it was a major ego death for me and since has taught me a lot about attachment, entitlement, and my core values. Instead of dwelling on the fact that “shit happens,” I now ask myself “How can you learn from this?” “What are the possible reasons this may have happened?” “In what ways is this teaching me how to surrender control?” I think when very tragic things happen in my life, my defense mechanism (and super power) has always been transmuting it into a resource for progress and growth. It’s like my pride won’t allow me to feel 100% defeated or victimized. You could chalk it up to being a black woman in America and often having no other choice. Or maybe I just have a very constructive outlook on life. Either way, I think resilience is an inherent part of who I am but I’m currently working toward building a lifestyle where it doesn’t always have to be my default.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Gratefully my social media audience grew pretty organically after being chronically online through the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdowns. I took full advantage of no longer having to be up at 6am to prep smoothies by investing a disgusting amount of hours into getting very comfortable using Twitter, brushing up on astrology techniques, learning new ones, refining my tarot knowledge, researching various spiritual concepts and so much more. I went DEEP down the rabbit hole and I don’t know if I ever returned to be honest. In the spiritual community, that is what we call an awakening. Which I feel so many people were going through during the pandemic that it mostly felt very natural and like a safe space to connect with everyone online through similar experiences. I started going viral and I figured it was dumb luck or due to the level of engagement I was participating in at the time. It wasn’t until I started getting so many messages that I couldn’t keep up and people were reaching out for opportunities offline, that I realized I had actually developed an effective marketing strategy simply by being myself and speaking my mind. I will say the biggest thing for me was and still is, consistency. I find that the algorithms like when you post regularly because you are actively creating engagement on their platform. Even if it isn’t getting the likes and comments you want, keep posting. If you’re just starting out, it’s going to take some time. Don’t worry too much about numbers or it will all feel disingenuous. Build a community of like minded individuals by following people who post and share content that is similar to yours then comment and like to build relationships naturally.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashanithealchemist/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashanism
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXe-B-sKZ-43xmsToFhmXw

Image Credits
Novaa Network and otherwise personal photos