I was in Diamond Bar, California last week for an emergency call by a new client on a case of bad Office Feng Shui. The previous Feng Shui consultant messed up big during the Feng Shui renovation.

The client is a wholesale technology company that has been in business for 7 years and has always experienced a fast-growing pace. The owners requested my professional opinion because they just expanded their facility (taking over the 2 adjacent office suites in the same building). During the addition, they also took the opportunity to reconfigure the room’s layouts and up-date their colors and furniture arrangements as well.

Since inception their offices had been in the same building that I was now requested to review. The problem surged right after completing the remodeling 2 months prior, when their business suddenly started registering a loss. Their CEO was beside himself because in the 7 years prior this had never happened and he suspected some “faux pas” was done in the course of the renovation. Upon listening to the facts, I also shared his concerns.

While the building was an excellent building for business financial success (which explained the previous continued success of the enterprise), I noticed that key offices and entrances were misplaced, and water and the color red (both money enhancers) had been placed in the wrong areas, thus “draining” from the financial success and increasing the potential for break-ins and robberies.

These seemed common mistakes that beginner students in Feng Shui would make because they haven’t yet familiarized themselves with the advanced theories of time and construction cycles. These mistakes are also normally made by people who have read about Feng Shui in one of those do-it-yourself types of books (and that are often so generic they only work for a limited number of buildings).

So I began inquiring about the original, pre-renovation positions of the offices, their entrances, and the choice of colors used. After some hesitation, the owners “confessed” that I was not the first Feng Shui consultant they had hired. Infact, living close to the Asian community, they consulted with another “consultant” before planning the renovation. (I am not going to reveal his name, but suffice to say he was not one of my students.)

Upon his suggestions, they had painted the very long wall in the South red and added water in the North. Now, from my analysis, the South direction (their warehouse) had potential for office arguments and break-ins (which the owners reported had happened twice since they had completed the remodeling). And in my opinion, in a case like this, you would not add any red colors because, as an enhancer, it would only increase the negative potential. Hence, I had to suggest for them to paint over the wall with a neutral color instead to eliminate the effects of the red (fire element).

Furthermore, the main entrance in the North had a good potential for career achievements (metal energy). However, the use of water fountains was completely inappropriate here, as water tarnishes away and cancels the achievements. So I suggested they remove the water fountains.

At this point the owner asked me where the best position for a financially successful entrance would be. I pointed to the location (a very high “money’ spot) and told him, “This is the best location for the main entrance and your receptionist (who’s also a sales associate).”

Imagine my surprise when his jaw dropped and he lifted his hands over his face and uttered, “That is where the entrance and reception was before, and where they had been for seven years!”

Now, how do you explain to your client who has just completed a $150,000 renovation that he now needs to put everything back? That they had a better Office Feng Shui before? In this case I was lucky because the business had been in this building for a long time and my client had seen the success before seeing the failure that came from the bad renovation. But what if you are moving into a new facility, building a brand new building, or renovating your existing one? How do you know how to do it right?

If you do not know about Feng Shui renovations, any relocation or new construction is simply going to be a game of chance, a hit-or-miss. And sadly, this is not the first time I have seen this happen. When a successful building needs additional space the company either move, or take over an adjacent space, renovate the entire thing and then bam! After then things are never the same again.

This time we can blame it on the poorly-prepared, supposedly “Feng Shui expert person” they had hired, but truthfully I have seen this happen also when no Feng Shui Master had been consulted on a project at all– and no matter how good the architect, designer, and contractor were either. You just do not know what you do not know.

And in today’s economy you don’t want to take the chance of seeing your business sink because you didn’t think about investing in the consultation of a good, professional Feng Shui Master on how to set it up right.

In my client’s case we decided to turn it around as much as their budget allowed them to do at the moment and then later they will tackle the structural part. And because the building has overall good potential it will make it easier (and less expensive) to do some structural work rather than move to a different building (which was also my client’s main concern). So, we’ll put the entrance and the reception area back later, once their budget increases.

For now, some of the management offices were easy to switch around and then we painted them red (here the color is used purposely to increase the financial success) over the gray color they had been painted during the renovation. We also used the rest of the five-elements to correct all the other areas (as needed).

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Let us know if we can assist you in any way with our professional consulting services. And if you are a design professional who’d like to learn more about Feng Shui, check out our Feng Shui Courses and Certification Programs. Help your clients avoid making the mistakes mine had to deal with!

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