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

Alright, Bill thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Part of my mission is to bring credibility and professionalism into my industry, and I do this by incorporating professional tricks I have learned over the years in corporate America and professional life in general. This includes incorporating as a business, keeping office hours, being careful what I post on social media, advertising, marketing, networking, and timeliness.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have had an interest in all things supernatural, weird, and paranormal for most of my life. It began with UFOs and ghosts when I was a child, and branched out from there into occultism. Once I hit thirty, I decided that the best way to predict the future is to create it, and a few years later I started my astrology business. A lot of my emphasis is on helping people help themselves, rather than doing things for them, sometimes to the consternation of potential clients. This year (2022) I celebrated fourteen years in business, and have a global client base. Many of my magical writings have been translated into half a dozen languages, and I have given tarot readings to people on most of the continents on the planet. I have also traveled extensively, focusing on learning so that I can share with others. I do astrological charts for people, as well as tarot card readings. I am also a former publisher, as my publishing house Draco Press is currently undergoing a rebrand. I am a published author, with over sixty essays in over two dozen anthologies, and book number nineteen came out in early 2022, with many more in the works. I have been teaching occultism and astrology as long as I’ve been in business, and have been reading tarot cards for twenty-nine years, professionally for fourteen. I have also made many media appearances, and have presented in a number of venues, ranging from colleges to high schools and community events.

One of the things that sets me apart from others is that I like to research things and enjoy using Occam’s Razor. This tells you I am also a no-nonsense guy. Besides what you read above, I also worked at a top-tier metaphysical shop for fifteen years, so I know the industry from that direction, too, and have assisted shop-keepers with their side of things that many people don’t know or see. Another thing that sets me apart is that I am familiar with most western spiritual topics and systems, as well as a few eastern ones. My bachelor’s minor is in religious studies, so I am familiar with the mysteries from that perspective, too, and not just my subjective experience. I am also an ordained Thelemic bishop, and before that I was an ordained independent Spiritualist minister, part of which included being a legally certified medium.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

This is an interesting story. I started my astrology business and professional development when I was working a full-time higher education job and at a metaphysical shop on the side for a total of three jobs, and I stayed that way for several years. Then I transitioned out of higher education and full-time into the metaphysical shop retail side of things while continuing to develop my business. For a little over a decade, I worked six days a week, averaging about twelve to fifteen hours a day, until I could fully transition into my business and leave the other two. Even after I transitioned out of the metaphysical shop, I kept teaching there for many years. Now my business, professional, and spiritual side has become a state of being.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I didn’t put any capital together to start my business, and my journey is an important lesson to those that are thinking about going in this direction. Most small businesses that are successful start off in the home, and usually on a part-time basis, at that, and that is what I did. The other important thing that I did was learn how to run a business. Most of my professional life has been working with independent small businesses, and because of that, I got an intimate and behind-the-scenes look at the administrative side of what I wanted to do, but for my astrology business to grow, I had to put all of those principles into practice. It took several years but was successful. This includes things like learning about taxes, deductions, CPAs, and other related subjects.

If someone wants to come into this field, then they are usually a creative person, to begin with, so developing creativity is not a priority. The priority is to develop your business skills as well as your creative skills or to find someone that can do it for you.

Contact Info:

• Other: Link Tree. This has all of my links to my various online presences. https://linktr.ee/418ascendant