Be a Feng Shui Consultant-10 Most Frequently Asked Questions

Many of my readers and even clients ask about working as a feng shui consultant. It’s a career that doesn’t have much written about it — especially from an insider’s view. And many people think it’s a New Age-y kind of career, but it’s much more than just good feelings! Feng shui is about black and white principles of placement, not just esoteric thoughts and holding the right kind of intentions.

We don’t make the environment, but we can make it suit us and we can learn how to adapt and cultivate our environments — much like a garden.

As a feng shui consultant, you can show you clients how to create home and office environments for better health, improved business, greater opportunities, and yes, more prosperity.

Here’s a basic outline of some of the most commonly asked questions.

1. Do I need to speak Chinese or know Chinese culture?
No, you don’t, but it’s a help if you have an understanding of the culture because of its influence on feng shui. You can pick up information about the culture by reading, traveling or even speaking with Chinese friends or neighbors. Visiting museums and Chinese cultural exhibits is another way. If you can travel to China or Asia where feng shui is often practiced – such as Singapore or Kuala Lumpur – you can learn a lot about Chinese customs and feng shui, too.

2. Do I have to be a new-age kind of person?
Many people have an idea that feng shui is very woo-woo or airy fairy and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Feng shui is basically thousands of years of plain old common sense. As a practicing consultant, I’m always amazed at how often clients tell me my recommendations are common sense and I’ll often remind them of what Mark Twain said, “Common sense isn’t so common.” Actually, the more down to earth and pragmatic you are, the better. But feng shui is big enough for people who enjoy the mystical as well as those who (like me) or more practical-minded.

3. Is there a demand for feng shui consultants?
Yes! In certain areas of the country and the world, there is great demand. California, the East Coast, and Hawaii probably have the highest demand, but consultants are also sought after in Las Vegas, large metropolitan areas such as Miami, Houston, and Denver. Even in the very remote area where I live, I am often amazed at the people who find me and want feng shui consultation. My largest and longest client resulted in a phone call from a hospital and school construction firm based in Corpus Christi, Texas!

4. What personal qualities make a good feng shui consultant?
You must be a person who cares about your clients and who puts their needs and concerns first. Having good communication skills is also a plus because you will need to deliver both positive and negative information.

Another highly prized skill is the ability to provide options to your clients and give them choices. Perhaps the best skill? Being a good listener. Your clients will want to share their very personal details of their lives and they need to know you can hear them and that their details are confidential and that they a talking to someone who cares about helping them.

5. How much money can I make as a feng shui consultant?
Some of this depends on where you live, but as a going rate, I would say you can safely charge about $250 an hour for an in-person consultation or about $500 for a two-hour consultation. If you just have two clients per week that adds up to $4000 per month.

Plus, you get the tax advantages of being in business, allowing you to write off mileage and any costs incurred getting to and from your appointments. You can also charge by the square foot of the space if you are involved in a large commercial project, for example. A fee of fifty cents per square foot would net you $2,000 on a 4,000 square foot office building assessment.

6. Are there other ways I can make money in feng shui?
Oh, yes. You can take your business online and work as an online consultant doing telephone consultations. You can also begin an import-export business and sell feng shui products. Lillian Too has franchises for her World of Feng Shui shops. You could become a shop owner if you like.

You can also work with builders, architects, designers and decorators, and professional organizers. Some feng shui consultants go on to become authors, teachers and bloggers! I’ve taken my remote location and turned my feng shui consulting practice into a lucrative business that pays me over six figures – and allows me to work in pajamas if I want to.

7. Do I need training to work as a feng shui consultant?
It isn’t necessary, but if you want to be taken seriously and be able to command higher prices for your services, you should. Training is also important for you because you will have the confidence to speak knowledgeably and have no problem asking for your fees because you can say you are trained and certified – and a lot of consultants out there can’t say that. And, if you’re serious about being in this business, you should be trained and certified.

8. How do I find clients?
You have to decide who you most want to work with and how your business model will be set up. If you’re a consultant, it pays to network and to have your services listed with feng shui directories and other professional sites. If you want to work with the more esoteric side of feng shui, such as Black Hat Sect, you may want to contact local New Age bookstores or advertise in New Age publications.

If you are a classical Chinese feng shui consultant, you may want to advertise in home and business publications, contact local real estate, architecture and design professionals and advertise in their trade publications. Word of mouth is another invaluable way to begin your career. Trust me: once you have a few successful clients, they’ll start looking for you!

9. What kind of work do most consultants do for clients?
When you do feng shui consultation work for clients you may be asked to advise them on color selection, site placement if they are wanting to start construction, give an opinion on whether or not to buy a certain house, help them to correct problems in their lives, such as marital problems, health concerns, or even help with landscaping or where to place a swimming pool.

Some clients have very simple needs and may not know what they want, they just know they want their home or office “feng shui-d.” In this case, you tell them what they need to know about the space – such as harsh illness energy, or great wealth potential (they love that!). It’s important that you remain balanced and give them both sides and offer ways to handle negatives and boost positives.

10. What’s the best part about being a feng shui consultant?
There are many wonderful things about being a consultant, but it comes down to two main things – helping people and having freedom. When it comes to helping people, working as a consultant gives you the ability to help someone correct a problem with their home or business that results in more abundance and prosperity to helping their children have more friends at school and everything in between. Sometimes you help save a marriage; other times, it’s salvaging a business.

It’s obvious that helping people is its own reward. But as a career, working as a consultant gives me the flexibility and options few other careers have. My business has allowed me to live the way that I want instead of the way I have to if I had a regular job. In other words, feng shui has given me a freedom in my life to work the way I like and earn a handsome living. But it’s freedom combined with an income that I set and is limited by how much I want or don’t want to work — and I’m helping people. What could be better than that?

FENG SHUI MASTER CONSULTANT CLASS COMING IN OCTOBER!

Register now to learn to become a Feng Shui Consultant.  This 3-day intensive will train you to become a certified Master Consultant in Feng Shui and you can begin your own business! 

 Send me an email ASAP and we will send you an information packet and registration forms.  Don’t delay.

 
© K Weber Communications LLC 2002-2009
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Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Red Lotus Letter Feng Shui E-zine and certified feng shui consultant in classical Chinese feng shui. Kathryn helps her readers improve their lives and generate more wealth with feng shui. For more information and to receive her FREE Ebook “Easy Money – 3 Steps to Building Massive Wealth with Feng Shui” visit www.redlotusletter.com and learn the fast and fun way how feng shui can make your life more prosperous and abundant!

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Common Questions about Feng Shui

Feng Shui FAQs
Common Questions about Feng Shui

1. What is the difference between traditional Chinese feng shui and western, or Black Hat Sect, feng shui?
Black Hat Sect or western feng shui uses the front door to align the bagua, the eight sided octagon that corresponds to the 8 Aspirations, or guas, in life (wealth, health, fame, marriage/love, children, career, wisdom, and benefactors). Black Hat sect aligns the career sector, or gua, with North, the career sector. Traditional Chinese feng shui says that if your front door faces east, you align the east gua with your front door. In other words, you follow the compass directions.

2. Can I use both Black Hat and traditional Chinese feng shui?
You can, but you need to know what you are doing. It’s usually best to use one method or the other. If you’ve had good results with the Black Hat, stick with that. If you’ve done well with traditional feng shui, then use this as your preferred method.

3. Do I use the bagua over the house or over a room?
You can use both. Apply the bagua over the entire house by the facing direction. Apply the bagua in a room according to the compass directions. You can apply the bagua to areas as large as a city or as small as your desk. There’s no limit to how it can be used with regard to size.

4. I have an L-shaped house. Should I apply the bagua to both sides of the L or to the entire home?
I typically recommend that you apply it to the whole footprint of the home, and this usually means that there will be large sectors that are missing. Some recommend applying two separate baguas to each “rectangle” of the L. However, that doesn’t treat the house as a whole, and that is what concerns me about doing it that way. If you prefer to apply it this way, though, you certainly can.

5. Can I use personal feng shui and compass feng shui together?
Yes! They go easily together.

6. What if I am an east person and my spouse is a west person in personal feng shui. How do we decide whose feng shui to focus on?
The Chinese are very old fashioned about this. Basically, you select to enhance the breadwinner’s directions, regardless of who is male or female. The person who brings home the most income should be protected. Therefore, if you’re the breadwinner and you are an east person, then you will want to select a house with an east-facing entrance and position your bed according to your best directions.

7. If I move my bed to suit my personal feng shui, my bed lines up on the same wall as the door. Is that OK?
No, it’s not good. Never forsake good feng shui basics (easily be able to see who enters the room from a chair or bed) in favor of your best directions. Always follow good feng shui first before following personal feng shui.

8. The south is my total loss direction according to personal feng shui. What can I do to enhance my fame sector?
The south is still the fame sector and you should enhance every direction regardless of whether or not that sector is good for you personally. That’s because when you enhance a particular sector, you aren’t magnifying your bad luck…you’re just enhancing that area and that’s still good for you. Personal feng shui just means that you try to avoid sitting and sleeping in those sectors that are not personally beneficial for you, not that you avoid them altogether or that you don’t enhance them.

It’s ideal if you can select houses with beneficial directions, such as entrances in your best directions, and you want to face, sit, and sleep using your personal directions as much as possible. So, even if your dining room is in your loss sector, you can still eat seated facing your health direction, for example.

9. Do I have to change things around every year for feng shui? Can’t I just “feng shui and forget it”?
Of course you can. Even simple, easy feng shui is still very effective. But, there are some who want more and more detail. Feng shui is a complex art that has been developed over the past few thousand years. Anyone who studies anything in detail delves deeper and deeper with each passing year. Feng shui can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Don’t feel obligated to follow flying star or annual feng shui if you don’t want to.

10. I live in Australia. How does that change my feng shui?
It doesn’t. I have no idea why that notion that everyone “Down Under” doesn’t have the same directions ever got started. South is still south in Australia and New Zealand and Argentina, for that matter. You use the directions exactly the same way below the equator that you do above because the compass needle moves to the north in Australia the same way it does in Morocco. Only the toilets go in a different direction when they flush!

11. If I put a fountain on the right side of my door (looking out from the house toward the street), does that mean my husband will have an affair?
This is a common question many people have about water to the right of the front door. What it means is that the water could draw predatory females who are interested in your husband. If you trust your husband, it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve had a fountain to the right of my front door before and mentioned it to my husband just in case. If your husband has a wandering eye, though, you might not want to chance it!
© Kathryn Weber, All rights reserved

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Kathryn Weber is the publisher of the Red Lotus Letter Feng Shui E-zine and certified feng shui consultant in authentic Chinese feng shui. Kathryn helps her readers improve their lives and generate more wealth with feng shui. For more information and to receive her FREE E-book “Easy Money – 3 Steps to Building Massive Wealth with Feng Shui” visit www.redlotusletter.com and learn the fast and fun way how feng shui can make your life more prosperous and abundant!