We recently connected with Joy KMT and have shared our conversation below.

Joy , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

As a spiritual practitioner, ritualist & mystic, there are no mainstream road maps for beginning a practice, especially as a young Black woman from the hood. At the time when I started, yoga wasn’t even really a mainstream practice and there certainly wasn’t a studio on every corner. Nobody was calling themselves a witch and they certainly weren’t selling tarot cards and sage bundles at wal-mart. And for me as a ritualist, putting my shingle out was really hard. I had a lot of internal messaging (still do) that told me that I was too weird, and that I shouldn’t charge anything for doing what I loved.

I remember the first paid event that I organized, a ritual healing circle. I charged $60 per person, but when it came time to actually put it out there and invite people to the circle, my throat swelled up and I could barely talk. I sounded like a frog. I had intended to invite people over the phone, but I felt like I needed to cancel instead.

My mentor, who knew my challenges around legitimacy and money, wouldn’t let me quit though. Instead, she told me- “Well good thing there’s the internet- you don’t need to talk to people to invite them.” (I’m telling you, this was back in the day, so the thought hadn’t occurred to me that I could just email or inbox people. So I did, as terrified as I was to ask anybody for anything.

4 people showed up. That $240 was more than I thought was possible for me at the time. It was more than money, it symbolized that it was possible for me to do my work in the world in a way that was sustainable and pleasurable and on my terms. Now my work ranges from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars. That young woman who was so scared to charge $60 now has clientele in the tens of thousands of dollars.

My advice for a young spiritual professional? Don’t let fear stop you from sharing and shining, and get yourself a mentor, a coach, somebody who “gets” you, speaks your language, sees your magnificence, and holds you accountable to it. Also, it’s not about beating the next person or being like the next- it’s about your own leading edge. Where in your life are your possibilities waiting to be transformed into reality? Lean into that more than you lean into anxiety and comparison.

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’m who you call when you’ve decided to stop swimming on the surface of your own life while getting bullied by the waves.

I am the person you come to when you want miracles in your life. When you feel called to more than what seems possible. When you want to feel alive at your core. When you’re ready to take responsibility for your life. When you want bliss, not as something you chase but as something you iz. When you are ready to wield the truth of your own power in a way that transforms everything in your life- most importantly the quality of your relationship to your own life.

I occasionally teach classes, but the core of my work iz one-on-one.

I have been mentored by Nut Tmu-Ankh Butterfly, Priestess of Sh’ti Mer & founder of Orgasmicliving.com, for 13 years.

I am most proud of my ability to help my clients untangle knots of self doubt, self injury, self hatred, self sabotage in ways that most say that even therapy hasn’t been able to touch. In my work, I am most proud of being a witness to the magnificence of the people that I serve through Tabernacle.Life.

https://www.tabernacle.life/testimonials

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Thelonius Monk says that the genius iz the one who plays most like himself. Don’t be afraid to be weird. By weird I mean, most completely yourself. As a spiritual support to people, my goal isn’t to work with “everybody”. I only desire to work with the people who find themselves deeply resonating with what I offer and share. My client relationships are sacred to me, and in these spaces of deep intimacy and vulnerability, the trust that I share with a client iz built on a foundation of deep resonance. That means that people come to me for the beacon that I put up, not because of a funnel or a gimmicky sales pitch that banks on desperation. I am not saying that this advice iz one-size-fits all. If you’re selling crystals, you may not have to be super authentic and speaking from the profoundest parts of you, and that’s more than ok, it’s about your business model. But if you are a dedicated spiritual support that serves people, that needs people to be vulnerable in ways they haven’t even shared with their own families or even themselves, you’d better have your own availability to your own integrity, authenticity, your own medicine and shadow, your own fire, because it iz the beacon that you put up that’s most like you that’s going to allow *your* people space to breathe, de-armor and free themselves from internal bondage in ways that they haven’t even been able to articulate to themselves that they need. And it iz that resonance with your own deep authenticity that brings your people to you, in my experience.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson that I had to unlearn, and its one I’m still learning, iz that you don’t always have to be producing. If you are somebody whose main service comes from you and not from a team, then continuously producing isn’t going to enhance your bottom line, it’s going to take from it. Along with this lesson iz another one: continuously creating from desperation creates continual desperation. This may not be something that everybody needs to hear, but coming from where I come from, it’s something that I needed to learn. I come from a background where I used to handpaint bags all night to see them for $5 a pop to feed my kids each night. I come from hustle. And what I had to learn that, if you are building a business that’s going to be sustainable and it’s based on a gift or an annointing you have, whether that’s art or singing or healing, you can’t hustle your way into the type of success that you dream of, not without the backlash of burn out, and for most, the burn out comes before the success, because it’s not sustainable. If you are building a spiritual practice, then you must listen to and be guided by spirit. Spirit did not tell you to put out a class every two weeks that you market, build the curriculum for, enroll and teach. desperation did. And it will show. and it will repel. and your bottom line will suffer for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tabernacle.life
• Instagram: @tabernaclelife