Patricia Lohan is the creator of Feng Shui Mastery and the Author of The Happy Home: A Guide to Creating a Happy, Healthy, Wealthy Life. Patricia Logan helps women make their home magnetic to money, luck and blessings. She shows you what they don’t teach in school, what lies between the lines, your top secret tool for success. She is a Feng Shui expert, a healer and a passionate female entrepreneur who has shaped her dream life living in Bali with her husband.
Patricia has a gift making feng shui simple and easy to understand and implement. She has helped thousands of people across the globe embrace Feng Shui and create long lasting changes in their homes, lives and businesses. She has seen firsthand the power of mind, surroundings and inner healing, clearing and aligning everything so it works holistically.
Questions
- Could you share a little bit with us about your journey and maybe just explain to our listeners those who may be familiar with Feng Shui or those who may not know exactly what Feng Shui Mastery really is? And how did you get on this path to helping others in this way?
- Could you share with us exactly what is Feng Shui? Is it like a principle? Is it an exercise? What does it really entail?
- How is it that business owners can actually use Feng Shui, maybe two or three things that they could do that they’re not doing, especially if it’s a practice that they’ve never done before in their lives, like where would they start?
- Let’s say you work from home and you don’t necessarily, as you said, have an office space. What recommendations do you give to someone who probably only has like a living space versus their bedroom, how do you know where is the best place in your house to do work and be productive?
- And a big part of what I’m getting from what you’re saying in your practice is how you feel about yourself, your environment and just everything around you; because all of that energy will impact what you pour out into your interactions with other people. What are your thoughts on that?
- Can you share with us maybe what’s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
- Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
- What’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now? Something that you’re really excited about – either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people.
- Can you tell our listeners where they can find you online?
- What is one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to – it kind of helps you to get you back on track and to refocus you.
Highlights
Patricia’s Journey
Patricia shared that she actually got her first books about Feng Shui when she was 16, and she had no idea how she found it or came across it, but it really just struck a chord with her internally and she felt like her soul knew what she was meant to be doing with her life, but she didn’t. But she really was so just enamoured by the process of working with your home and they had moved house many times, her parents bought houses and then upgraded them and then would sell them and they’d move to another house and upgraded.
So this experience of moving from different houses and seeing very dramatic shifts in what was happening to the people in their life, like their family, as they move from one house to the other, like their family didn’t change. But the experiences they had changed a lot between financial experiences, illness and lots of drama in one house to another house that her parents business went so well and they made loads of money, but lots of people were sick. So it was very interesting that was going on when she was tuning in to asking for books about Feng Shui.
Now as she looks back on that time, it just fascinates her so much. But that was really where it started. And then in her late 20s, she moved to India and became a yoga teacher and trained in lots of holistic practices. And when she came back to Ireland, she was working with clients, hopping the release trauma and doing really alignment and energy work for them as people internally. But what happened was she decided she wanted to find herself a new apartment and she also wanted to find her husband and meet her husband to be. And she set up her new apartment for love. And very soon afterwards, she met Ken and she had used lots of Feng Shui principles in her home to call in her soul mate, her husband. She met him very soon afterwards and actually he had used Feng Shui also.
So, it’s a quite a synergistic process that she was led back to Feng Shui to fall in love. And everyone started asking her, like, “How did you meet Ken? Oh, my God.” And all of her single friends like what did you do. But when she met Ken, she realized, Oh, she can use this Feng Shui for, like money and for her career and for her reputation and for all these other aspects of her life. So, she dived down the path and so did Ken and they both did Feng Shui together and dived into becoming Feng Shui consultants and experts and training much, much deeper level. And they did it on their home together.
And all of a sudden she was getting huge contracts. She actually had a huge six figure windfall and lots of things just changed. And it was very visible change from a year earlier. She was cycling around Dublin making Five Euros and teaching a yoga class to now being in a pretty much a new car, a million dollar home, making lots of money and everyone’s like, “What’s just happened?” And she’s like, “Well, we just started doing this Feng Shui for ourselves. And all these things started flowing.”
So, it just made this huge shift and that obviously more people started asking them. That’s how she and her husband really dived into the practice. And she never set out to be a teacher of Feng Shui. But what happened was everyone started asking her and she just was like, okay, let’s do it. And that’s what’s unfolded. And she’s excited to speak to Yanique because your theme of like about customer service and how they’ve transformed the process of teaching and helping people Feng Shui their homes to an online experience but it’s really around very customer and client centric. So, yes, that’s how she got it, very short story version of it.
Me: Wow, that is truly amazing. So energy flows where energy goes. And it’s so amazing when you give a lot of energy and effort to a particular practice how abundance just follows you in different ways, that’s what I really got from what you said just now.
What is Feng Shui and What Does it Entail?
Patricia shared that essentially we can fluctuate anything. So, if you live in a small, tiny home to a big mountain, to an apartment, you Feng Shui anything. And a lot of people think what it is, is moving furniture, hanging weird frogs in your house and weird things like that and knocking walls. And actually, for her, how she like to describe Feng Shui is actually it’s like acupuncture for your home. So, you go to your acupuncturist, she checks what’s going on. But she’s looking kind of at you physically, but she’s checking what’s going on with your pulses and looking at your tongue and really diving deeper into the energetics of tapping, it’s like working with the invisible stuff that’s happening in your body.
And that’s essentially what she does with Feng Shui is actually, they work on the hidden energy of your home and do acupuncture for your home. So, it’s a very ancient practice, it’s 5000 years old and they work with five to five elements theory, which is working with fire, water, metal, earth and wood, the same as an acupuncturist would. And essentially, as they do that, they bring slow to a home. So, when you bring the sense of energy and flow and balance to a home, it really allows and supports them to grow and really connect with what their purpose is in life.
When Feng Shui is kind of brought to the west, it was brought in, “Oh, put a chair and put the bed here and sit this.” And that is one tiny aspect of it. There is a little bit of that in it. But for her, most of the time, she doesn’t care where your couch is or your bed is. She’s much more concerned with what’s going on in your life and how your home could be actually holding you back or causing the struggles in your life. So, it sounds a little bit mad, but this is what her experiences with herself and her clients, they come to her when something’s not moving.
So, whether they want to call in love, whether they’re not being seen in their business or they’re not making the money they desire or the kind of feel kind of jinxed since they moved into their house, things have started going wrong or just not flowing like they really are. And they’re working hard, but not getting the results they want. And she’s like, hey, there’s this resource like working with the energy of your home that can support you. And that’s where this flow starts to come into place.
That sounds brilliant. So, as you know, we are a customer experience podcast. And we have a lot of listeners who are small business owners, medium sized business owners, or they work in organizations where their responsibility or core functions require them to really enhance, develop, and energize their customer experience. It’s been a very odd year globally with the COVID and everything and just everything that’s happening. And so, if someone was listening to this interview now, how is it that they can actually use Feng Shui, maybe two or three things that they could do that they’re not doing, especially if it’s a practice that they’ve never done before in their lives, like where would they start?
How Can Business Owners Use Feng Shui?
Patricia shared that she absolutely loves this question because for her, the very first place that you start is at your front door. So, like the entrance where you come into your home, very much so, we kind of take for granted our physical environment and we don’t give it enough time and attention. So the very first thing is like when you arrive home, what’s the first thing you see? Is there like weeds, is the welcome mat all tattered, are there like these cobwebs, is the door like tacky, really what you want is when you arrive home, you want to feel good, you want to feel excited to be able to come into your house like, “Oh, I’m so happy I’m home. I love this. I love nice and clean. It’s bright.” So first off, I always start there.
And then when you start there, it’s like, is the door easy to open? Is it actually easy to open? Because what they’re looking at is your house actually is almost like a person and it has eyes, the windows and the mouth is the where the energy, where all the things flow in. So they wanted to make it easy to get in and also attractive and easy to kind to attract it all in also. So make sure your front door, it’s easy to open and then coming in and just seeing what’s the first thing you see, do your spirits rise or fall? And then just have a look and see, well, what could I take out of here that’s blocking that energy, that’s making it feel a little bit hard. The next thing she would recommend then is also just wandering, like literally pretending this is the first time you’ve walked into your house and looking around and being like, does this make me feel good? Am I holding onto this because somebody gave it to me that I don’t even like, a piece of art on the walls, whether it’s like something that’s broken or cracked.
All of those things are like depleting the energy of that part of your home, but also kind of subliminally affecting you. So, for example, if it’s like a door that’s like stuck or hard to open or if there’s something that just feels awkward or hard, those little friction points about your house, you’ll notice that if you just decide, “Okay, I’m just going to like fix that or tweak that or make this easier.” That, again, will just create more flow and make you feel better as well.
Me: So basic things in terms of when you just arrive, how the entrance looks, is it appealing or how does it make you feel, those things you need to be very aware of and just become very aware of.
Patricia agreed and stated that just become more conscious of what you have. And then the next principle of Feng Shui is, when she works with clients, they work kind on like the invisible energy, but it is also what’s visible. So, most people are like, “Oh, don’t come to my house, it’s full of mess, it’s cluttered.”
And she’s not the Feng Shui police and for her, clutter isn’t like everyday stuff. So, she’s sitting in their living room right now and there’s like a cup and a plate and a dish from earlier on today, that’s not clutter to her, that’s called life and she knows she’s going to clear it up after this and put it away.
And the books that are there, that’s life, all of that, if it’s kind of just surface things that are moving and changing all day, that’s fine. But for her, clutter is you go into that cupboard that has not been touched for six months and you kind of are afraid of it. And you’re like, “Oh God, I don’t know what’s in there.”Like that is really stagnant and that’s where energy gets blocked.
So, there are cupboards or spaces in your home where it’s just kind of like a bit like still things haven’t been looked at. So maybe your filing cabinet for people in business, like go to your filing cabinets, go through it and clear out all of those old clients, the clients you didn’t like, the clients didn’t work out, any of the bills that you don’t need records for anymore, like make space for new things, like as you release something, make space for new things. Especially entrepreneurs, she finds and in business that they keep and hold onto.
For example, if you studied something different or you used to have an old career, it’s almost like they hold on to all of the journals and the books and all of the stuff to do with that business or career. It’s like, you know what?
If you really want to focus on what you’re doing right now, you don’t need to keep your focus or keep a kind of a hold on all of that. Let it go and make sure your environment especially your working environment is really as inspiring as you can possibly make it.
She’s just back in Ireland and she’s in her office and there’s a painting behind her that has the word smile kind of over her head. So, when she’s doing Zoom calls, everyone can just see this weird smile over her head and it makes her smile. And everyone is commenting, “I love that picture.”
And it’s like, does it feel inspiring?
Does a space that you’re working from feeling inspiring and feel happy to be there?
Because if there are things there that are not lined up with who you are in terms of your business and your work, that can really deplete your energy and you want to be as productive and creative as you possibly can be in your space.
Me: You brought some really, really valid points because as I said, it’s been a very unusual year and a lot of people are working from home. And so, you’re not leaving out anymore and going to a physical workspace where you’re not necessarily in charge of that space because your employer would have painted a building or decorated the place to kind of have to brand values and core values of the organization. So it’s almost like you’re now responsible for generating the kind of energy you want in your own personal space to make sure that it motivates you to want to get out of bed and actually get the work done.
So I think this is so important, especially most of the articles that I’ve been reading, like on Business Insider or Forbes, a lot of organizations are looking for this long term work from home strategy, they’re seeing the benefit of it financially as well as strategically. And they’re really looking to extend it even past COVID. So, you really have to kind of personalize that space, as you said, to make it your own that you would feel very comfortable and it would generate the kind of energy that you need in order to get the work done.
Patricia agreed and shared that from that perspective, she does actually have a guide on her website, people can download it, How To Feng Shui Your Office and there are loads of steps with that about creating the space. But for her, it’s like just looking, especially from now working from home, some people are working in their bedrooms, their offices, they may not have the luxury of having a separate office if you’re like, “I’m here in the corner of my sitting room.” and for that perspective, which she doesn’t talk about in the guide and she wants to talk about here, is that you can get that and go through the steps of the Feng Shui, the space.
But the really important part is about clear boundaries. So, making sure that where you’re working from, her clients, and one particular client comes to mind in New York. She got her to get a closed sign. So, she has a separate office but she has a sign that she turns off because she literally would not stop working. She could not switch off from work. And she’s like, we need to close the door, we need to put a closed sign. And then on a Friday evening, you close the door; you’re off like business is closed. And she said it has changed everything. She now has her weekends back and it’s kind of like a fundamental off switch.
And the same goes for example, if you happen to be working at your kitchen table, you’re working at your kitchen table, that’s the current situation is what it is. But if you are like make sure start off your day, you clear everything off, you set yourself up for work and maybe you have a special cupboard in your kitchen that your work stuff just goes into when you finish and you put it all away and then maybe you put some placements out, put out some flowers, you set the place up in a different way to be different.
So there’s a clear boundary between working on and off because that’s kind of a really confusing thing around where we’re working from home that you can kind of tend to, like, overextend your hours as opposed to really have some focus time when you’re working.
Me: That’s a very good strategy. I do have a cousin who works from home; I think she uses her dining room table. So, basically what you’re suggesting is when it’s Friday evening, she just packs up all of her work stuff and puts it away and sets up her dining room table for what the purpose it was built to serve, which is for eating, for family gathering and prepare for the weekend to embrace that, because maybe with the work clutter there, it will definitely impact her mentally and definitely probably not motivate her to want to relax because she’s always going to be seeing it, it’s in that central space there.
Recommendations for Working From and Being Productive
Patricia shared that actually is a great question. And first of all, she would like you to move around your space and just find a place that you know that you can set aside for yourself. And interestingly, she’s going to be doing a consultation with a client just about her workspace. And currently her desk is in her bedroom and what she wanted to say to her was like, “Let’s get you one of those nice dividers, like a room divider so you can just separate it.”
She thinks this is a really big part is that you don’t want to be going to bed at night, looking at your office and looking at your desk, that is the last thing you want. And talk about, like impacting your relationship, you’re literally sleeping with your office, with your work, in bed with work. Who wants that? Nobody.
So, it’s about just that clear boundaries of like, whether we’re going to do a room divider. The other thing that she really likes to emphasize is just about like having yourself like a good I’m the boss chair. She was on a News TV show in the US, it was last year. And one of the jokes was saying like, get yourself an I’m a boss chair, like a proper strong back chair, with a nice high back that supports you, that you feel comfortable in for working from, and in a position where you can have maybe the wall behind you, where it’s bright and well lit, where you can see the door ideally.
But if you can’t, that you have some space around you. She sees a lot of the times like oftentimes when it comes to setting up your workspace, it can be a bit like it’s an afterthought. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll just squish myself in the corner.” It’s like you want to be the CEO of your business and you’re pushing yourself into a little corner like you’re not allowing yourself the space of it. And you think about like CEOs and entrepreneurs, like of big huge companies, they get the best office, they don’t like hold back on creating this space that is a mirror representative of what they want their business to be like.
So, she often say to people, pretend that you had clients coming to you, pretend that you had meetings coming to you.
How would your office space look then?
And that’s a very different way of like, wow, like how would I want to look?
Because even if nobody’s going to come, you would create the space that would feel really good and welcoming for clients but also it’s going to be inspiring for you.
Feeling Good About Yourself, Your Environment and Everything Around You
Me: So customer experience is all about ensuring that your customers leave feeling satisfied. Every business goes into business, I believe, primarily to solve a problem, whatever that problem may be for that client. Whether if you’re a construction company and you’re selling the tools necessary that the client will need to fulfil their project or in your case, if you’re a Feng Shui Mastery expert and people are looking for clarity and they’re looking to just get your headspace clear or if you’re a customer service trainer like me, where people are looking to ensure that your customer satisfaction is at a particular level so their customers will keep coming back and that they’ll have more repeat business and their customers become their advocates and evangelists for their business.
But when you think about customer experience and this is one of the things I teach. One of the core principles in one of our programs is that you must feel good about yourself in order to deliver a quality experience to someone else, because everything starts with you. And a big part of what I’m getting from what you’re saying in your practice is how you feel about yourself, your environment and just everything around you; because all of that energy will impact what you pour out into your interactions with other people. What are your thoughts on that?
Patricia shared that she totally agreed with that. And for her, when you talk about customer experience, the best part of her job is the results that her clients get. And one of the things that the journey of really teaching Feng Shui came from, originally she would go to someone’s house, she would do all of the work while she was there. She would have a consultation time with a set 3 or 4 hours, come in and have to draw out plans, have to do her calculations, have to kind of calculate, figure everything out while they are kind of sitting there, just kind of like doing their thing and waiting for her. And then she would give them all of the information in one go. And what she realized was that for them to get the best results they needed more time with her, they didn’t need to be sitting around while she was doing all the work. And this is how they transitioned into online, where everything is done virtually, they send them everything, she has all the information from them and they are actually working on de-cluttering program.
They’re actually working on de-cluttering while their preparing their space before they get their report from her to really implement it. And it’s just been so fascinating in terms of the customer journey, because the more she has done it and extended their length of support because now they have like basically lifelong support with her in her online community to ask her questions, the higher implementations is as they drip feed the information to them. And that has led in better results in Feng Shui.
So, it’s been this huge transformation to her that like what fed her with more energy to do it was seeing their results. And that makes her happy so she wants to do more of it. But the part of all that is that she had that results for her first. She had the success stories for her and now it’s not about her anymore, it’s about her clients successes. And they really focus on that and their success is the success of their business and their stories and what’s happening to them is really the focus on it. So it’s kind of this crazy spiral or this little infinity loop between them getting great results comes back to her to give her more energy to go and to get to really share the energy and the positivity of Feng Shui.
Me: I agreed. I strongly believe life is like a boomerang, whatever you give out, it comes back to you. And that’s why you should live a life where you treat people well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Just ensure that whatever you are doing, your intentions are good and they are pure and your initiatives are all in the aim of helping someone else. And I believe that if you do that holistically on a day to day basis, goodness will always come back to you.
Patricia totally agreed and shared that when you’re coming from a very positive place, like for her, with the idea and the transformation that we see with Feng Shui, it’s the ripple effect that’s so powerful for her.
It’s like a lot of women who come and join her program, like 99.9% is women. And what’s so fascinating is then she gets a message the other day from a client saying, “I just wanted to tell you and share the good news. My husband has just started a new business and he shared a video with some friend of his and he’s got 14,000 views today. And he started doing this and this and this. And I’m so excited for him.”
She joined the program for her career and her career has been doing great things and great things. But now it’s like this ripple effect, it’s affecting her husband as well. So, it’s this kind of everybody wins when they start working with your environment.
Me: I agreed. It’s funny you just said that 99.9% of your customers are women, do you do you know why it is that men don’t necessarily gravitate to Feng Shui as much?
Patricia shared that she doesn’t know, because actually, it was the emperors in China, in the Chinese dynasties that were like the real advocates first originally. And she thinks it’s almost a little bit like yoga as well. Yoga was originally just practiced by men and women were not allowed to practice yoga and now in the West, it’s a complete different opposite. It’s like 90% women and 10% men. And that’s obviously changing.
But she feels like obviously, women are mostly the people who are the homemakers and they’re in charge of the energy in their home, and they are the ones that are more committed to really working on, “Well, there’s something going on.” And they are there are more intuitive as well. Like that’s just a natural gift of women, so intuitive.
So they’ll be guided more to this practice and go, “Hang on a minute, yeah since we moved into this house, like we’re not getting on as well or financial things have been happening to us.” So, she thinks that’s where it has ended up being more women.
App, Website or Tool that Patricia Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business
When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Patricia stated Voxer. She hates typing anything and she just loves communicating with her team via Voxer. So, that is the one thing that she absolutely love. Just any voicemail app, voice app is so good because she loves talking, but she doesn’t like sitting and typing and doing coffee or anything like that. So that’s how she works. And it’s like a walkie talkie app. And so, she can just communicate with her team really easy via voice.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Patricia
When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Patricia shared that she just loves books so much. And what’s coming to her mind is actually from a really good friend of hers, Denise Duffield-Thomas, who’s written a book called Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!: Release Your Money Blocks and Live a First-Class Life.
She (Patricia) has been a part of her program for so many years when she was teaching yoga and earning Five Euros. And she’s a huge fan, an advocate of her work. And it’s really just around a financial mindset and money mindset in terms of allowing yourself to receive more. So, that has definitely had an impact, her community has been really big. And another book that she absolutely loves is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
What Patricia is Really Excited About Now!
Patricia shared that they are in a huge place of transformation with their business this year. It has just been probably one of the biggest years for growth and transformation in terms of growing their team, improve their communication, getting more systems in place, but also doing a huge rebrand. So, their program when you introduced her was called Feng Shui Mastery, it’s being rebranded to Powerhouse. And that just feels so true, it sings through on so many layers as in like powerhouse being your house, being a powerhouse. But it’s also for women who want to be powerhouses and are powerhouses like it’s just feels so good. So, that entire rebrand is so exciting for her.
And the other part of that is actually stepping to the next level where some of their clients are going to be joining her on a journey to learn to become powerhouse certified Feng Shui consultants and be able to support people in their communities. So, her mission is to raise the vibration of the planet using the power of Feng Shui one house at a time. And she’s not able to do it on her own. So, she’s excited to share it with some amazing women and they’re going to be stepping up to really sharing this magic with more people as well.
Me: Powerhouse Feng Shui consultants, sounds like an army of people transforming the world. I love it.
Patricia stated, imagine all those powerhouse women. She just saw one of her team members created the hashtag Powerhouse Revolution. She was like, “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.”
Where Can We Find Patricia Online
Patricia shared listeners can find her at –
Instagram – @lohanpatricia
Facebook – @PatriciaLohan.Restoring.YouBack.ToHarmony
Website – www.patricialohan.com
Linked In – Patricia Lohan
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Patricia Uses
Patricia shared that the one thing that she always say is, “This too shall pass,” So, that is a really big one, it’s like this too shall pass. Nothing is permanent in life; everything is in transition and transformation all the time, change, death it’s all inevitable. Two things that are inevitable are change and death, there’s no need to be afraid of it and it will pass.
And then her favourite quote of all time is just, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” And she’s currently reading Ghandi’s Autobiography so that’s quite good.
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Links
- The Happy Home: A Guide to Creating a Happy, Healthy, Wealthy Life by Patricia Lohan
- Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!: Release Your Money Blocks and Live a First-Class Life by Denise Duffield-Thomas
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
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