The way people seek spiritual guidance is changing. Instead of waiting days or weeks for a scheduled reading, more clients want immediate access to psychics, intuitives, spiritual advisors, and other practitioners—and they're increasingly willing to pay by the minute for it.

In this episode of Spirit Sherpa, Kelle Sparta talks with Adam Frank, CEO of Hypsee, about the rise of on-demand spiritual guidance and what this shift could mean for spiritual practitioners building sustainable businesses.

Drawing on trends Adam is seeing across the Hypsee platform, they explore why instant calls have grown dramatically, why chat is particularly popular with clients, and how per-minute pricing can lower the psychological barrier to trying a new practitioner while potentially increasing the practitioner's effective hourly rate.

But convenience comes with important questions. Kelle and Adam also discuss boundaries, practitioner availability, platform fees, deep transformational work versus bite-sized guidance, and how practitioners can adapt to changing client expectations without becoming available 24/7.

If you're a psychic, medium, intuitive, spiritual coach, reader, healer, or practitioner building a spiritual business, this conversation offers a fascinating look at where the industry may be heading.

What You'll Learn

• Why clients increasingly want spiritual guidance on demand
• How COVID accelerated changes in client expectations
• Why pay-per-minute readings can lower the barrier to entry
• Why chat may appeal to more clients than phone or video
• How instant access can complement traditional scheduled sessions
• The difference between bite-sized guidance and deep transformational work
• How practitioners can protect their boundaries while offering greater accessibility
• How platform fees affect pricing decisions
• Why third-party reviews can reduce perceived risk for new clients
• What changing consumer expectations could mean for the future of spiritual businesses

References Mentioned

• Hypsee
• Wisio
• Instant Calls
• Pay-Per-Minute Psychic Readings
• On-Demand Spiritual Guidance
• Psychic Readings
• Live Stream Management
• Scheduled Readings
• Asynchronous Readings
• Chat Readings
• Practitioner Boundaries
• Spiritual Business Pricing

Resources Mentioned

Kelle Sparta

https://kellesparta.com

Hypsee

https://hypsee.com

 Welcome back to Spirit Sherpa, where spiritual practitioners learn to master their gifts, grow their businesses, and change lives. I'm your host, Kelly Spartas, transformational shaman and spiritual business coach. I am here today with Adam Frank of Hipsy, and Adam is gonna share some really interesting concepts about what's going on in the spiritual industry right now, and I really wanted you guys to hear this.

So welcome to Adam from Hypsi.

I'm super excited to hear about it, but tell us a little bit about your business before you, before we talk about the industry stuff. Okay. So thank you so much, Kelly. I'm excited to be here. I'm the CEO at Hypsi. Hypsi's a company that allows spiritual creators to connect one-on-one with their followers.

We have a variety of, uh, products that, uh, we support. We support, um, offline guidance and readings where people can come and just send out their question, and then the advisors can answer them whenever they when- whenever they feel like. We also have live stream management tools where we really help creators who do live streams on social media platforms to make the most out of it and collect those leads, collect, uh, and make everything in order.

We have two other products. One is a scheduled reading, just like, the whole ind- industry is already doing, and the newest product that we just released about a year a- and a half ago is something that we call Instant Calls, and it allows creators to be available on demand and charged by the minute.

And we are seeing crazy shifts in, in this market and, and I'd love to talk to you about them. Awesome. So basically, you're the bridge between practitioners and their clients. Absolutely. That's the short answer. Yeah. Okay. Yes. We provide the infrastructure for spiritual creators to go and manage their business.

Okay, fantastic. So now because of this, you're in this very unique position of being able to see what's happening across a wide swath of practitioners and what the industry is shifting to, right? Yes. And so when you reached out to me because, you know, you reached out to me and said, "Hey, I'd like to be on your podcast," and I'm like, "Mm, I don't take a lot of interviews anymore."

Hypsi is kind of like a branched out company from Wisio. But Wisio was a generic platform for all c- uh, social media creators to offer advice and guidance to their followers. The reason we built Hypsi is because we saw that the spiritual creators found Wisio and we decided that they need a house from the, for themselves.

And then what we saw was COVID came and everything changed because it just started to be Zoom calls and scheduled calls and everything was, like, really, really rising. But something else had happened as well during COVID is that kind of like people were starting to feel that they want- more and on demand and immediacy and immediate things because they stayed at home and everything was online, so the kind of like their mindset has shifted to be more online mindset.

So now if I have an issue, I don't wanna wait a, a week for a scheduled session. I just wanna go and s- you know, get my remedy now. And what we're, what we've been seeing since about two years ago is that there's an, an increasing demand for on demand pay per minute type of service to kind of like support the demand.

So we released that product, and we're now seeing that this product consists about 70% of the business. So it's, it's like way... Yeah, like you would think, right? Wow. Yeah, that's huge. But, but it's hu- it's huge. And, and we don't... we're letting the creators do whatever they feel that suits their business, but somehow naturally it kind of like, uh, shows 70% of all the business going through the instant calls.

And it doesn't surprise me- Yeah ... because we're seeing this whole trend in so many other fields, like Amazon Prime. If, you can get the delivery at the same day within two hours, and if your Uber, uh, driver is, is late, you know, by two minutes, you can feel, guilt free of canceling the, the driver and, and bring someone who's two minutes earlier.

So this mindset, we're seeing it also tapping into the spiritual industry. It's an interesting topic to discuss. Yeah. Well, and before we got on this call, you were kind enough to walk me into sort of the back end and give me a sense of who's on the platform and, you know, how many followers they have and things like that, and we, we saw their pricing, right?

And I, I saw that, that many of the people had one price for chat and one price for phone and one price for video, and that that started somewhere at three minutes three, $3 a minute rather. A- and that, that was pretty common for chat, right? Right. How many minutes are you seeing people buying in this scenario?

It's a good question. So I would say that the average session is around the 15 minutes. Some, you know, of course average is, is, it's, it's all about the standard deviation. We saw on-demand calls that lasted for three hours, and we saw- Oh my gosh. Yeah, for sure. And we saw, we saw some on-demand calls that lasted for, you know, three minutes or four minutes or two minutes.

You know, "Hey, I just need a quick question, quick advice. What should I do? Thank you so much. I love you. Goodbye." Like, so we see everything from everything. Yeah. Um, but I would say that the average time would around all of the sessions would be around the 15 minutes for on-demand. That's fascinating.

You know, that's, that's really interesting, and it's ... Is it something where, and I didn't see this in the structure, but is it something where people can, like, turn it on and say, "I'm available now," and turn it off when they're not available, that sort of thing? So yeah you have a toggle. You can just toggle it manually on and off whenever you're available.

If you're available, if you have two hours of free slot, you toggle it on, you post your, a disappearing story on Instagram or whatever, "Hey, I'm available for the next two hours. Click here and get and reach me." But you can also- I was wondering what those disappearing stories were for. Yeah.

Yeah, because- That I know. Yeah ... yeah, because, because if you're only available for two hours, it doesn't make any sense to make a post out of it, right? Right. And then you have to delete the post because it's irrelevant within, you know, a couple of hours. So that's one use case that we see. The other use case is that you can you can, uh, set your availability on a daily basis and integrate with your calendar.

So let's say I'm working every day from 9:00 to 6:00, or whatever it is and I'm, I become unavailable automatically when I have something in my calendar, so it integrates again. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. Okay. We, we listened- So- ... to our users. They really wanted it. Yeah. I'm excited about that, because that's exactly what I was thinking.

I was like, "Oh, what if I forget to turn it off when I have an appointment?" And, ah, you know? Yes. That's perfect. Um- That's... And, and, and even if you did forget and you don't have the capacity to answer, after two unanswered calls we put you offline until you put yourself online again, just to make it fair for your followers so that- Right

Um, so how long has this particular trend been happening, and, you know, where do you see it going next? So it's a great question, and I'll actually kind of like, give it a, show you a parallel world of how things work in that world, and then- And then I'm gonna sh- try to show you how I think it's gonna work in the spiritual world.

Let's say the AI race, for example, okay? Like, people think AI is dangerous, and it, you know, there is a scenario where AI will, demolish the world. And there, there are, like, many theories about, hey, like, how about we all stop doing AI, right? And then they say, "But wait, if we all stop except for one country, then they will have some sort of, uh, uh, uh, advantage over other countries," right?

So the other countries need to do it. Even if they wanna stop, they can't stop. Now, I'm taking it back to the spiritual industry. What we're seeing now is there's a shift in the mindset of seekers. Not all of them, I'm talking about, you know, a segment of course. Yeah. And that segment expects not less, expects immediate remedy.

Now, when they're already used to seeing more and more creators joining the trend and offering on-demand availability, then they start expecting it. And once they see that the that there are creators who don't offer it, they're kind of out of the game for them. Right. Because, because it's kind of like, like in my generation, I know that I have a weekly therapy session.

It's fine. I keep my insights and my questions and my sharings for that hourly session, for example. But if I would be in this generation where I would be used to getting therapy whenever I literally want it- Right ... then I wouldn't be able to go back. So that's kind of, like, where I'm seeing the market.

I'm seeing the market, we're seeing more and more expansion of creators who are seeing that, are seeing a decline in their scheduled sessions. And once they offer, uh, the on-demand sessions, they see where, where the, the, the, the focus shifted. Yeah. So that's kind of- Well, and, and the- ... like how I see it

there's a benefit to the per-minute thing, because then you're not committing to an entire hour when you only need 15 minutes, right? Which is lovely, right? But I guess my question is, is I also wanna look at this from a what's the best path scenario, right? So you've got chat, you've got m- phone call, and you've got video, right?

Yes. So how does, how ... For one, how does the phone call and the video work? Are you actually giving away your phone number to people, or are they calling through your system? They're calling through our system. Okay. Everything's completely private. Absolutely. And the same thing with video, or are they getting on- Yeah

Zoom? So it's not a Zoom. It's like you... Only creators need to download the app. The, the seekers don't need to download anything. It's just simple as, you know, a click of a button. Um- Perfect ... the re- And the re- The reason that the... Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. And then how do they, how do the seekers get onto the platform?

Are they on an app on their phone, or are they on the computer, or how does that work? So it's both. The seekers, we don't market to seekers. We market to creators. Right. The creators market themselves and their services to seekers. Among their services, they market Hipsy as well. You know, they have a suite of offerings.

They have their Patreon and their own website, and everything integrates beautiful, uh, with each other. And, um, once you are exposed to that option through social media usually, social media, newsletters, blogs but usually it's social media, you just click the button, and then you s- land on the store of that creator, and then you can choose whatever you want, if the creator's available now, if you wanna schedule, if you wanna send an asynchronous question and receive an answer.

There are different tiers and different price points. Right, but, but are they coming in through an app on their phone, or are they coming in through a website w- from the platform of the person who's... Like, it would come in through my website, or is th- are they coming through your webs- how are they, how are they accessing the phone call and video and chat?

So it's... So they are exposed to Hipsy through social media. Let's say I follow a creator on Instagram or, or on YouTube, and then they say, "Hey, if you wanna talk to me, check my link in bio." So I go through my phone to the link in bio. Okay. So it's a, it's a web link. It's a web link, and- Okay ... it's a web app.

So- That's what I was trying to determine. Okay ... the web app. It looks and feels like- The web link ... an app. Okay. But it's a web- So, yeah. But they don't have to download the app. No. Okay. Not at all. Now, what percentage of people are choosing the different types, chat versus video versus, uh, phone? It's a, it's a good question.

Uh, assuming that the creator, that the advisor offers all of them- ... I would say that about 60 or 70% choose chat And the rest choose- That's amazing ... yeah, and the rest choose voice or video. 'Cause video can be very intimate also from the seeker's side, not only from the advisor's side. Yeah.

So m- like, and we have advisors who who offer video advice, but they charge much more than the chat advice because energetically it requires different you know, it, it requires just different type of, uh, of, uh, of energy. Well, you know, you have to control your background. You have to be- Exactly

you have to have your hair brushed, you have to be dressed, you know? Exactly. You know, I can chat all day long- People are so- ... but, you know, putting on my video, I'm like, "Eh, I'm sitting in the dark right now. I don't wanna turn on my lights," you know? Yeah. And again, like, people- Which I do a lot, so yeah ... true.

And, and people are so used to chatting these days. Right. So it's just very, very intuitive. Like 10 years ago it wouldn't be so intuitive in a way because, like maybe 15 years ago. But now it's like, you know, "I WhatsApp everyone, I SMS everyone, no worries. Answer at your free time. I can chat with you and do the dishes."

Right. I can get spiritual advice in a way and, and, you know, do the dishes and, and do my other chores. So ab- absolutely. Yeah. So there's no audio, asynchronous audio chat or- Is there- Um, no. No. Okay No, that- no, not yet That would be my preference, would be asynchronous audio chat, because I'd be like- That's interesting

I wanna just hit the button and speak, and not have to sit here and type and hurt my fingers, you know? Yeah. 'Cause I have tendonitis. Yeah. But yeah. So yeah that's fascinating. Okay. And, um, this is what I like about being able to talk to the owners or the CEOs of the, the, the platforms is because then I get to get these statistical numbers, because, you know, that helps me as a creator decide, do I want to enable all three types, or, you know, do I have to enable video if I really don't want to?

And the answer sounds like no. 60 percent's chat, and probably 20/20, uh, or probably even 35/15 is gonna be my guess for the other ones, right? Yes, but it is a little biased in a way because if the video is three times more expensive usually than the chat, then you'll see just by the natural distribution that that's how it goes.

So it is 60, 70%, but I don't know if it's causation you know- Right ... what came first. But I, I do believe that even if everything was the same price we do see creators that price things y- uh, uh, but all options, uh, similarly, and, uh, they do see more chats as well. So I just don't know what's the difference.

Okay. Yeah, well I think it's generational too. Yeah. The younger generations wanna do chat, so- Yeah ... you know, they don't like to look at people. So they wanna be in their screen, right? Okay. So yeah, that's, that's valid. And, and, and you also mentioned something about, um, not all people want to have, you know, a, a, a one-hour session.

And to me, like, there are pros and cons to this change of mindset because- when you do bite-size spiritual guidance, you kind of miss out on the deep work. And w- and, and vice versa. If you're only aiming for the deep work, you're missing all of those, you know, low-hanging fruit opportunities to

of helping people that don't need the deep work and need ... Like, we don't always need to do the deep work, or we don't always have the time or capacity. So this is literally shifting how spiritual creators give spiritual guidance. And this it's shifting the whole industry, and that's what excites me.

That's the reason I really wanted to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's good and it's bad, right? Yeah. I mean, I like ... I like the idea that if I have time that's un- uh, committed and I'd like to have a client or two come through, that I can turn it on and just be, like, available. I, I'm not as excited about being available 24/7, you know?

Yeah. That was the ... I, but, you know, when cell phones came into being, I had the same thing. I'm like, "I'm not getting a cell phone. I don't wanna be of that available. I don't want people to expect to be able to reach me at any time," you know? And it's boundaries, right? It's, it's all about making sure you have good boundaries, and the

We talk about that a lot on this show, is making sure you have good boundaries. So okay is there a cost for the platform? So it's, it's free to join and- Okay ... uh, if you don't earn, we don't earn. We take commissions. Um, our commissions vary from 9.6 to 29.6. Everything is in the terms of use. And if you don't earn, we don't earn.

The, the reason that I'm e- super excited about Hypsi is because this technology that we're now en- uh, enabling exists, but it, it exists in the big, in the marketplaces, in the big play- with the big players, like California Psychics and Keen and all the other, uh, platforms. They do offer this type of technology in s- in some different formats, but they will all charge 50 to 80% commissions from every client that comes in.

Yeah, but they're providing the clients, right? But they're providing the clients. Yeah. That's right. You're not providing the clients, so. Exactly. But yeah, you know, nine, 9.8, I was like, "Eh, that's a little pricey," because y- but then, you know, you're paying, you're paying the fee for the credit card, right?

Yeah. And so that's 3.5% of that potentially as much as 4.5 to 5% if somebody's international. Exactly ... and so, you know, then 9% doesn't look too terrible, but 29% looks pretty high for y- for us having to provide our own clients. I'm gonna be honest about my feedback on this one. But, you know- I see ... what, what is the difference between a 9% and a 29% commission?

What... how, how does that work? It depends on the service. So the 29... it's, we have some... we have tiers. The 9.6% is for the live stream management services. This is, like, one service that we have. And then we have... and then we go up to the 29. .6%, which would be for the for the instant call services- Mm-hmm

uh, where we see that, you know, this is kind of like a product that, you know, we spent a lot and we spend a lot of, of, uh, resources in, in building it, developing it, and so on. And we're seeing that, you know- it's still far off from any other solution in the market. And there are tiers. So it starts from 29.6, but the more you earn, the lower the commissions we charge.

It goes down to 19.6. If I'm not mistaken everything is in... is, uh, transparent in, in the terms of use. Yeah. But we do have creators who, who earn thousands of dollars per month through instant calls, and that's where the commissions go lower. Well, and, you know, i- if you know that that's the price, then you up your price on a per minute basis to compensate so that you still make what you wanna make, right?

Yeah. So, you know, y- people are like, "Oh, but I can only charge this." No, y- the platform fee is the platform fee, and if you wanna make $100 an hour, which is really low, but if you wanna make $100 an hour, then, you know, let's, let's make that easier. M- 60 bucks an hour is 60 minutes, right? That's a dollar a minute.

And you're paying 30% 29 point whatever it is, 30%, then you charge $1.30 a minute, right? Okay. And that's... Then you still net what you wanna net. You just... This is part of doing your business, is recognizing what your costs are and accounting for that, right? Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I'll, I'll give you a, I'll give you an example that I stumble upon nearly every, every time I speak with a creator.

As you said, many creators, they charge more than $60 per hour. They charge, let's say- Oh, sure ... $100 per hour or a hundred- You should be charging 150 or so for a psychic read these days for an hour. Yeah. So let's, let's talk about the avera- the pricing of $150 per hour. So what we are seeing, I'm witnessing this, is that when I speak with creators who are honest enough with me to tell me that they don't get a lot of bookings for various reasons, you know, their size, their engagement, their potential, whatever it is, they don't get enough r- bookings for $150 per hour.

Then they join Hipsy. They offer readings for $4 per minute or $3 per minute, but let's say $4 per minute. So what they see is that at the end of the day, their face value for their hour is $240 instead of- Right ... 150, and they get tons of mo- ton- tons of more clients because the barrier of entry- Is very low

psychologically goes- Yeah ... down from 150 to $4. Right. So this is like creating this win-win for the creators and the seekers, and that's what shifts the industry. Now the, the, the, uh, if we're talking about a few years from now on, creators who won't offer some sort of instant access, I don't think that they'll have a lot of, uh, game game unless they're, like, huge or VIP or, like, mega- Yeah

mega uh, you know. That's different. Yeah. Yeah, so I, but what I can see is not only are you lowering the barrier to entry, but you're lowering the risk for the client. Because if they get on the call with you and, and five minutes in they think you suck, they can get off the phone or get off the chat.

They can close it and be done, and they, they're out very little cash. Absolutely. They didn't have to commit that 150 bucks to find out that they hated you, right? You know? Yes, absolutely. And, and there's something- And so that there's no risk for them, right? Yeah. You're, you're right. And also when a creator has their own website, they control the reviews.

When you go on a third party platform and you see that there are reviews, five star reviews, then you know it also reduces the risk and gives you you know, another reassurance. Yeah, it's kind of like Trustpilot in that way. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. This has been fantastic, Adam. We have, we've run out of time.

We've already gone up to the very last second here. So, tell people how to find you. So it's, it's easy. Hypse.com. And I'm a real person. You can come and find me on Instagram. It's Adam bottom line FRX. In my, at my free time I do Ninja Warrior, uh, uh, I, I'm in the Ninja Warrior, so you can, uh, feel free to w- to follow me and, uh, and enjoy it, and then follow Hypse and enjoy.

Awesome. So Hypse is H-Y-P-S-E-E and you can download the app on the Google Play Store or on Apple Podcast Store, Apple Store. And uh, yeah, if you're a practitioner it sounds like you really need to get on the, on the money on this one. So I know I'm gonna go out and try it and see how it goes for me. Uh, I do promote to pod...

uh, other pro- practitioners, so we'll see if there's, if that's a good fit for the practitioners, and I'll let you guys know how my experiment is going. Adam and I are actually gonna be doing a sacred business calibration too, so you'll hear more about him, uh, a little bit later on. And, uh, that's it for this week.

Please remember to like, subscribe and share. If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend of yours. I, we, we would kill for a review. We haven't had one in a while, so if you're out there and you like us please give us a review. And remember, what you focus on expands. What you intend is what you create, so choose wisely.