How professional soothsayers prepare for work

Job: Money manager.

Tools: Levin, who was named one of the nation's top financial planners by Barron's, relies heavily on experience. After getting a business degree from the University of Minnesota in 1985, he founded Accredited Investors.

Approach: "We try to make more decisions that are more good than bad rather than right or wrong."

Accuracy: Accredited Investors must be doing something right: It has retained 95 percent of its customers from five years ago, Levin said.

Fallout: "We look at how we could make a better decision. … It's important to evaluate both your process and the decision. You can have a bad decision with a good process, but also a bad decision that come out of a bad process."

Job: Tarot card reader and spiritual adviser.

Tools: Greenway says her trust in tarot cards is "complete, totally complete."

Accuracy: Greenway said she's more than 50 percent accurate. "Not 100 percent because that's absurd and people are so complex. … Even after 25 years I'll be blown away by how accurate something is."

Fallout: As many as half of the people who have their fortunes told at the Renaissance Festival are repeat customers. As for others, "If they didn't find [a reading] helpful, chances are I'll never hear from them."

Job: Projecting box-office returns for Rentrak, a Los Angeles-based company that provides research and analysis for the entertainment industry.

Tools: He studies past patterns of movie attendance and sales and talks to other industry insiders.

Approach: Dergarabedian has spent two decades in the business, including stints predicting opening weekends for the Associated Press and Hollywood.com. Still, he admits that "a lot of it's your gut. It's an educated guess."

Fallout: "Projecting it in a range gives me a little bit of an out. If you say $75 to $80 million and it does $70, nobody's going to get mad."

Job: NFL draft expert, owns Eagan-based Draft Headquarters and consults for pro teams.

Tools: Zobel, who played football when he was young, watches endless hours of game film and scouts every player at the Senior Bowl and the NFL Combine, where potential draftees' skills are measured and tested.

Approach: For the 250-page annual players' guide he produces, "I do it from the perspective of 'If I was running an NFL team, what would I do, how would I value them?' "

Accuracy: Over the past six years, Zobel has a better record of nailing first-round picks in the exact spot taken (9.67) than ESPN's two experts, Mel Kiper (8.17) and Todd McShay (6.67).

Job: Owner of Paul Douglas Weather Service and meteorologist for the Star Tribune.

Tools: The longtime weather forecaster uses scores of computer models, but said the key is "knowing which ones to trust. That only comes with trial and error. And error and error."

Approach: "We have these big hairy equations. It's really calculus. … The reality is that every day is a new creation. There has never been a day where the weather has been the exact same."

Accuracy: The 24-hour forecast is "88 percent accurate and holding steady," he said. The seven-day forecast is "getting better," he said, but still is only 59 percent accurate.

Fallout: Douglas admits he gets depressed when the forecast is wrong. When confronted, he apologizes and tries to "make the person laugh, defuse the situation," but sometimes he points out the fallibility of predictions. "I might turn it around with 'Hey, how's your fantasy football team working out?' "