Laura Peppard makes herself comfortable in a training room whose chairs appear to represent samples from the best of Reno garage sales for the past decade.
Just outside the training room, customers browse through her Mystic Rose Gift Shop it bills itself as Reno's complete metaphysical store and glance at posters for the Reno Psychic Fair, another of Peppard's business projects.
Peppard may speak the language she learned during her training at the Berkeley Psychic Institute years ago, and her life's calling may be assistance to people who want help learning what they are all about.
But even while she speaks the language of a psychic, Peppard practices the skills of a savvy owner of small businesses.
"I try to arrange things in triangles that feed into one another," she says.
One leg of the triangle is represented by Reno Psychic Institute, which offers six-week classes in meditation along with a busy calendar of beginner and advanced classes in subjects such aura reading and out-of-body healing.
Peppard has been teaching many of the classes for 15 years, and the evening sessions extend workdays that already have included a full stint in the store.
"I've never been bored by it and that's because of the people," Peppard says.
As consumers tightened their spending on non-essentials during the recession, Reno Psychic Institute felt the effects.
"We've been fighting a typical battle, getting someone to give some time to themselves," says Peppard. "But when people want to do it, they find a way."
A steady stream of e-mail marketing helps keep the classes in front of potential students.
As a business proposition, the institute also provides an important source of customers for the Mystic Rose Gift Shop at 20 Hillcrest Drive, a low-profile location a half block west of South Virginia Street near Plumb Lane.
"The store would not survive without the school," Peppard says.
Peppard hunts through a couple of annual wholesale trade shows that specialize in merchandise for the metaphysical market, and she makes an annual trek to the Tucson Gem Show to find the stones and crystals that make up a significant part of the store's inventory.
Starting as a retailer with a booth at craft shows, Peppard built her knowledge of retailing she carries merchandise for spiritual traditions ranging from Christianity to Wicca and moved the store into its currently location in 2000.
The Reno Psychic Fair, meanwhile, has grown into a twice-a-year event that draws about 1,000 people and 60 exhibitors who provide a wide range of spiritual and tarot-card readings and sell products such as inspirational sculptures and essential oils.
Between the three ventures, Peppard employs about 10 people, and the Reno Psychic Fair relies on a cadre of volunteers who have spearheaded the event's growth.
The business require Peppard to stand firmly, with feet planted in two very different worlds the world of spirit and the world of material success.
"Psychic is about seeking truth, the journey to your own answers," she says.
The desire to help others in their search, even after Peppard leaves the businesses to others, provides strong incentive to the businesswoman.
"I'm obsessed with the model, with making it self-sustaining," she says.
But despite the differences between the spiritual and the material worlds, she says success in either starts with a single attribute: Integrity.
