Why Pay What You Want / Can?

I get asked about this a lot.

People tell me I should raise my prices. They worry that I’m undervaluing myself, my work, or my time. Sometimes people genuinely cannot understand how a pay-what-you-want or pay-what-you-can model could possibly work as a sustainable way of running a business.

But it does.

And I’m far from the first person to discover that.

Pay-what-you-want and pay-what-you-can models have been used by businesses, artists, restaurants, cafés, bakeries, community organizations, and service providers all over the world. There are bakeries that have built portions of their businesses around this idea. There are community food programs that allow people to give what they can. There have been experiments and studies around what happens when you remove the fixed price and simply trust people to decide what something is worth and what they are able to give.

And something interesting happens when you do that.

Most people are far more honest than we expect them to be. That’s certainly been my experience. And that’s exactly why this model exists. I want my work to remain accessible.

I don’t want someone to look at their bank account and decide they aren’t allowed access to guidance, spiritual care, or a moment of clarity because they don’t have enough money. I don’t want someone struggling financially to have to choose between something they deeply need and something they literally need.

Then there’s the other side of it.

Some people have the ability to give extra, and they choose to. Sometimes they explicitly tell me that they want their payment to help keep my work accessible for the next person. That generosity helps create the space for someone else to give less.

It balances.

That’s the part of this model I think we underestimate when we assume people will automatically take advantage of something simply because they can.

Most people don’t.

Most people want to participate fairly. Most people understand reciprocity. And when people have more, many of them are remarkably willing to give more when they know their generosity helps make something accessible to somebody else.

To me, that’s community.

There’s also something deeper underneath all of this.

Time is sacred.

Money can be earned again. Time cannot.

Every reading is an exchange of something neither of us can get back. I am choosing to share a portion of my life with you. You are choosing to share a portion of yours with me. You are trusting me with your questions, your stories, your grief, your uncertainty, your hope, your animals, your loved ones, your dead, your past, or whatever else has brought you to me.

I don’t know that there is a dollar amount that can accurately measure that. And money itself doesn’t mean the same thing to every person. Eleven dollars from one person may represent half of what they currently have available to them. Two hundred dollars from another person may have very little impact on their life. If I judged those two offerings solely by the number attached to them, I would be ignoring what those numbers actually represent. Eleven dollars given when you have twenty-two is enormous. It isn’t less meaningful. It isn’t less respectful of my work. And it certainly doesn’t make that person less deserving of my time.

That’s why I don’t change the depth of my readings according to what someone pays. You aren’t purchasing a different version of me. You aren’t buying more care, more attention, or more access to Spirit because you have more disposable income.

You give what you want.

You give what you can.

And I give you the reading.

That’s the exchange.

This model requires trust, certainly. It asks me to trust the people who come to me rather than building my business around the possibility that someone might take advantage of me.

I’m comfortable with that. Because after doing this, I’ve learned something incredibly simple: When you give people the opportunity to be fair, most people are. And when you give people the opportunity to be generous, many of them are. That generosity makes room for someone else.

So, yes, I could set higher fixed prices. I could decide what an hour of my life is worth and put a number beside it. I could make access to my work dependent upon whether someone can meet that number. I simply don’t want to. I want divination to remain as accessible as I can reasonably make it while still creating a sustainable life for myself.

Somehow, beautifully, you all make that possible.

Pay what you want.

Pay what you can.

Come as you are.