Astrologer and the CHANI app co-founder Chani Nicholas understands planetary alignments—and how to run a company equitably.
On this week's episode of the Maire Claire podcast "Nice Talk," Nicholas spoke about how pay transparency is just as important to her business, the popular astrological app CHANI, as horoscopes.
She explained that meeting her wife Sonya Passi—who founded the organization Freefrom, which works to financially empower survivors of domestic violence—helped inform her perception of how important it is to speak openly about money. "Economic abuse becomes one of the main levers for humans to control each other, for men to control women. If I'm just gonna be super flat about it," she says. "Obviously, there's a lot of nuance, but that's how it works, and that's how it's always works because that's how patriarchy works. But we don't talk about it."
At CHANI, Nicholas says, they're as upfront as they can be about money. "We [at CHANI] post our salarie," the co-founder shares on the podcast. "But we should all be exceptionally transparent with what we pay, what we earn."
"You need to know what somebody else is making—otherwise it will be used against you because the dynamic is the same," she continues. "If it's in a marriage, if it's in a parent-child, if it's in a boss-employee, if it's in a president-citizens, it's all the same abusive dynamic because we're still so steeped in white-supremacist-het-cis patriarchy, and so extraction is the name of the game wherever we go, and the only way to start to chip away at that is to be explicit about what it is."
Nicholas reasoned that speaking more openly about money should be the norm and can only help get you where you want to be. "Taboos are just there as an invisible jail, and all you have to do is bust through it," the astrologer/activist says. "Just ask people, 'How did you make your first whatever?' Like, whatever it is you want to do, go ask people about money. Some people won't answer you. It's fine. Move on. Someone will have a conversation with you about money, and it is going to help clarify so much for you."
On "Nice Talk," Nicholas also shares her insight into the upcoming Mars and Venus retrogrades, which begin on December 6 and March 1, respectively.
She points out that Mars can represent masculine energy, equating the upcoming transit as potentially affecting how men voted for Donald Trump after feeling "left behind" in society. However, Venus, with its feminine and queer energy, could have its own impact.
"Mars will station direct a week before Venus stations retrograde. But there's a connection there between what's happening along the gender scale," the CHANI co-founder says.
Mentioning how Venus retrograde happens in the same place in the sky every eight years, Nicholas explains, "Venus is the planet of women and queer folks and style and beauty and all things that we love. But what happened eight years ago at the end of January? Okay, so we are going through the same Venus retrograde and the same inauguration."
"And just to put a little spin on it: What happened in 2017 was the Women's March, Time's Up, #MeToo, 'Nevertheless, she persisted,'" she continues. "So we had a coalescing of activism. It was imperfect, it was messy, it wasn't all effective...but that is what happened. And we are having the same exact one now."
Nicholas opens up more about when she realized to monetize her work as an astrologer, running a self-funded business, and more in this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is out now wherever you listen to podcasts.
