If you've heard of Feng Shui, you know it can be a powerful practice in drawing in the energy you'd like and moving away from the energy you don't want in your space and life. If you haven't heard of Feng Shui, and either of the above statements appeals to you, you're in for a treat in this episode of The Business Animal. Robyn Stevens join Kim for a discussion about Feng Shui practices and principles that you can apply in your business space that will reduce stress and set you up to attract what you've been seeking in your business.

About Robyn Stevens:

Certified Feng Shui expert Robyn Stevens transforms home and work spaces to help anyone wishing to attract more prosperity, joy, love and creativity into their life. Robyn is an entertaining and highly sought after speaker, TV guest and consultant who makes Feng Shui accessible and fun. Learn more at https://www.robynstevensfengshui.com.

https://www.instagram.com/robynstevensfengshui/

https://www.facebook.com/robynstevensfengshui/

Hey there, business animals. It's Kim with Be More Business, and welcome to the Business Animal podcast. And do we have a treat in store for you today? I'm curious how many out there of you have heard of feng shui? And so we're going to get to talk with Robyn Stevens, and she's going to tell us about feng shui and how to relieve our stress, or at least move towards better stress relief.

using some feng shui principles and I probably committed you to something that is not completely accurate Robyn but you can correct me all along the way. So welcome to the business animal. you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your business?

Definitely, well thank you for having me. So my name is Robyn Stevens and I am a Feng Shui practitioner. I have been a student of Feng Shui for almost 25 years and I've offered it professionally for about 13. And it's just been life changing for me. And after living through three corporate layoffs, at that point I was like, this isn't working Dalton. so.

Yeah, yeah, I caught it. caught it. So anybody that's Gen X will get that. Yes.

Yeah.

which all of that happened right before the third corporate layoff. And when that happened, was started my business and have just been going strong ever since.

I love that a lot of people who listen to this podcast have had corporate positions and gotten fed up with corporate politics, with the corporate grind, with being stuck working for somebody else. And so I love that you took the reins of your life and said, hey, I'm getting out of this little wheel. This is not working for me. I'm going to find something that does. that, as you know, my

Yeah.

tagline is to create a business that supports the life you want to live and I love that you're able to do that and you're a master networker you're a master connector because that's how I've met you and known you and so I feel sometimes like you're super living your truth in that capacity in addition to what you do in people's homes and offices and businesses and lives

thank you. Yeah, I feel really, really incredibly lucky and blessed that I found this path. And I know this is kind of a question later on from you, but, you know, I've been working since I was 14. And with few exceptions, I was never that kid that knew exactly what I wanted to do. But I fell into jobs with people I knew or opportunities never was without.

but never doing anything that I truly loved to do. It was just a job. And this is the first time ever that I know exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And it's like a career that's fulfilling. What is that? So that's been a blessing. And the networking is a fun part of it. I approached it.

Yeah.

as a way to connect and to make friends and community and that just changed everything.

Yeah, and I think it's an important designation to a lot of people when they think about, you know, how am I going to grow my business? Networking is probably the most efficient way, in my opinion, as a professional marketer to grow your business. And that is being genuine about being interested in people. But what you do is also really connected to genuinely being interested in people. And I've gotten to be privy to some of your stories

about the things that you've walked into in homes and in offices and businesses and everything to be able to see the one little thing that could really shift the energy in that space. And I guess before we go there, because I'd love for you if you have one or more of those stories you'd like to share, for those people out there who are wondering what is Feng Shui? What exactly is this?

Ahem.

Yeah.

Yes, I think honestly, it's an easy concept and it's very hard to describe. But the official version or definition of it is the balance and harmony, creating balance and harmony in your space, which to put that into something a little bit more understandable is our space, our homes, our offices, our cars.

I think you mentioned tractors, all of that, the condition of that, how it's set up, how clean is it, how organized, every bit of that highly, highly, highly impacts our own personal energy and our mood, our attitude, our health, our everything. And it's kind of the first indicator of how we show up in life.

because we're in these spaces and it's the last thing we walk away from, it's what we come home to. And if it's not set up in a balanced and harmonious way for you, it can make everything in life harder to navigate.

And that is such a valid point, especially when this entire month of my podcasts and interviews and talks and dedication and in every place has been to relieve stress. If your environment is not supporting you in being stress free, or if it's adding stress, that's a huge thing, right?

100%. And another way to look at it is, most people are familiar with the vision board concept. There's something that you want to achieve. And so you get a poster board and you put the phrases and the images and the colors and the words to support that. And you put it somewhere in your sight line to help you achieve that goal, to manifest that goal. When you do that, you and your subconscious work together to achieve that.

Well, when you think about that, apply that concept to your entire home, to your car, to your office, everything in it, everything that you look at is there to either support your goals and your ambitions and the life that you want for yourself, or it could be holding you back.

Exactly. Exactly. So how, what, can you give us an example of, of someone's home and feel free to use mine if you would like, because you've been here and taken a look around of how that actually works when you come into somebody's home. Because I noticed when you walked into my home, it's like a switch flipped. It was Robyn, the networking person who I've met and become friends with and gotten to know you immediately.

went into this like radar of being able to look around my space and being able to identify things immediately that were not in alignment with who you know me as, which I found fascinating watching you work. So if you could give us a little taste of that, I know I'm probably putting you on the spot, but that would be great.

yeah, no, no, no. Well, I wanna say this first of all, if you know me, if I'm in your life and you invite me over, I wanna promise you I'm not going into feng shui mode and I'm not gonna judge you. I never turn that piece on until people engage me to do that specifically because otherwise nobody would invite me over.

But yeah, I do. I have conversations with people before I come to their home because I want to understand what areas of life are not working for them, either what areas of life or what areas of their home. And then we get laser focused on that. And I'm looking for the environmental clues that could connect what areas not working with what I'm seeing in the home. And I'll just use a, I'll share a couple of them that are

very easy to understand and kind of universal. had one client and this is most people usually call me for one of three reasons. The trigger that gets them to pick up the phone is career, money and love. And this particular client called me because she wanted to be in a relationship. She'd been divorced for many years. She decided she was ready to start dating and she was having no luck, getting no traction and just

was at her wits end and so she reached out to me thinking, let's see if Feng Shui can help. So she's telling me she wants to be in a relationship with a man and we're talking about it and we're walking through the house and the minute I walk into her bedroom, I start counting. There are 28 images of single women in her bedroom, whether it was artwork or pictures or little, not voodoo dolls, but some sort of like love doll.

And we just talked about, you talk about wanting a male relationship, but everything I see in your bedroom represents a single woman. That single woman energy is what you're calling into yourself. And Kim, this is not unusual either. When we make those connections, sometimes before I even finish my thought, people are taking things off the walls and moving them out. So we did, we kind of took everything out of her room. We found artwork in her house that more supported

Yup.

and was more appropriate for the bedroom. And I got a call from her about within a week, she got a call out of the blue from a friend of a friend inviting her on a coffee date. I mean, it happened that quickly. So it wasn't a love connection for that particular person, but that's how fast the energy changed and what she was now attracting to herself.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah, it's what we walk, I guess it's what we become so accustomed to that we don't even look beyond it. But the being accustomed to it just keeps its status quo. I know in my own life when you came here, a couple of the things that you noted right away were one, I wasn't using all the burners on my stove. And I can tell you, I'm like every other human, I think on this planet, you have a favorite burner.

Yeah.

And I don't know, that's not something that particularly you learn in college or high school, right? You're going to grow up and have a favorite spatula and a favorite burner on your stove. But it was interesting to note that I do, I go there and it is just such a common thing. And you explained, know, that's representative of, you know, the cooking, the creation process. And it was such a clue for me.

Right.

and also my light bulb issue. we have a tendency around here not to worry about out light bulbs, but that's not eliminating everything that we need to illuminate or being fully present in the energy in the room. And so those are two shifts that we have tried to make. I do have to say I'm a little bad about using the back right burner on my stove.

Yeah.

Well, if it makes you feel better, I have my favorites too. And I have to remind myself, you haven't used that right back one in a couple of weeks, get it going. Because I wanna just, can I just jump in on two things there? So the reason the stove was important is because the stove is the biggest symbol of prosperity and health in our homes. And each of the burners represents

Yes, absolutely.

kind of like a revenue stream. And so when you're not using all of them and it can create the ability to make money easily, get a little stagnant, the creativity, the health. So you just want to keep them all active. And then the light bulbs. This is one of my favorite things about Feng Shui. Whenever I'm talking to people, I'm listening to the descriptors and the words they're using because so much about Feng Shui is really about the metaphorical symbols in

in our homes and light bulbs, we want them to burn brightly. We want them all to be the same. Either they're all warm or they're all cool. Hopefully they're all warm in your home because that's a softer light that's really better for our health and just how the room illuminates. But when people tell me they're feeling burnt out, I look for burned out light bulbs.

When they tell me that they have a hard time maybe connecting with people, like it feels like they're constantly exhausting the people in their lives, that could be representative of too much fire or too many bulbs that are burning too bright or are not consistent. We want them to all be the same bulb. When those Curly Cube bulbs came out, I was seeing a mixture of the Curly Cube and the bulb and that just...

Yeah.

It's very disconnected. It's disconnected and that shows up in how different areas of our lives.

Well, and as humans, part of what we're set up with is to recognize patterns, right? That's one of the things that is so important about my work in Gestalt, and also in business for that matter. I'll relate this back to entrepreneurship.

part of what I do when I work with clients is I look for patterns in their personal life and in their business because oftentimes they're in a pattern that they keep repeating without being really realizing of that pattern. Gestalt asks me to look for the metaphorical reason behind that. Like where did that pattern form and why does it keep replicating in somebody's life? And what is the

lesson there that needs to be absorbed, recognized and created an awareness so that that pattern can dissipate. And patterns for humans, I think make us feel super comfortable, right? And if the pattern is not consistent, like the light bulbs in your home are incongruous with each other, then that puts stress on the system because the pattern is difficult to be able to hold on to. it doesn't, you're even though you're not

Yeah.

cognizant of recognizing that your everything in your body and spirituality is cognizant of it. And even though your brain isn't quite picking up on it, your subconscious is and everything else aligned with whatever your faith is, is absolutely picking up on it. And so yeah, totally agree with that. And I do have to admit the light bulb thing is is a big deal to me now, even though we're struggling with the fact that in our kitchen,

Right.

What this eventually led to in my life was that we have some light fixtures that are no longer working. and there's no diagnosable problem with them. Like I hired an electrician to come out here and look at them and he's like, I don't understand why they're not working. They're wired correctly. So we're looking, there's something wrong in the fixture. And so now those are needing to be replaced. So it's an interesting thing. led down a whole path that I wasn't even aware we needed

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and you know, whenever people ask me, excuse me, whenever people ask me to diagnose what's going on in their home and I haven't seen it and I haven't talked to them, I'm really reluctant to do that because a lot of times the answer is, well, it depends. And one thing that occurred to me as we're talking is I think about you and how I know you and how you burn brightly the minute you walk into space.

And is your home almost doing you a service by just dimming it a tiny bit so you're not burning yourself out? You know what I mean?

dimming it a little. Yeah.

It could be it could be it could be because there's not a diagnosable reason for that to have happened the way that it did. So it's interesting because that happens in other places, right? It happens in our physical body. There are so many times when you work with somatics, which is another part of my work, especially with the horses, that your body and my mentor always says this your body speaks first and it speaks the loudest. But whenever anything is

out of whack in your world, it shows up in your body first. And that's symptomatic of the same thing we're talking about here. Wow, this discussion got deep fast, didn't it?

It did, it did. And I think when you're working with your clients, as they're trying to shift their patterns and they're trying to, maybe I'm assuming improve a different area of life, unless they can shift their home with that, what they're learning and what they're trying to achieve is less sustainable if their home is not in alignment with that.

shift that they're trying to make.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I laugh because I'm going to tie this into back to entrepreneurship and business. I just presented at Global Entrepreneurship Week on Tuesday. And my presentation was about the 16 points of a holistic marketing plan. And I think that if we want to look at it as kind of like a metaphor, the

the way people approach their marketing, sometimes it's like all social media and nothing else. So they pick the fancy thing and go with it. So that would be very similar to, I don't know, like rearranging your entire house, but then continuing to treat your body very differently when you're in. I mean, it's got to be sort of a holistic approach where everything supports everything else. Otherwise, you're trying to roll a much heavier rock up.

Yeah.

the hill because you're carrying so much. But I speak with entrepreneurs all the time about you've got to have a holistic approach to pretty much everything you do in business. You've got one system cannot function well unless the other systems are also functioning well because they're all part of a larger system that has to function and then we're all tied to each other. So it keeps expanding like nesting doll boxes on out. So that's fascinating as well.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Robyn, do you have some tips that you're willing to share with the business animals about how they can utilize some of the things that Feng Shui principles to start to away at some of the stress that they've got going on in their lives? Because all entrepreneurs I know carry a large amount of stress in their bodies, in their minds, in every capacity.

Ahem.

Definitely, with business owners, when I'm doing consultation with business owners or people who want to improve their career or their paycheck, one of our starting places is always their office. Because the office, regardless of whether you work in an office, you work in your home, your office is your car or a vehicle of any kind or a barn,

those places symbolically represent your career. They're the symbolic representation of what you're trying to achieve. And I'm gonna start a little bit with the desk because even if you're spending most of your time in your vehicle, if you have a home office, those two things are linked. That home office still represents your career.

If you're working in an office, but you have a home office, those two things are linked. The condition of your office can still impact how you show up and how your career can kind of manifest itself or grow or not grow. Your desk is the, where I talked about how the stove was symbolic of health and wealth, your desk itself represents your career.

So the condition of your desk, the positioning of your desk has a huge impact. So with that in mind, everything I'm gonna talk about, you can apply this to your vehicle. I know Kim, you spend a lot of time in your truck. yeah, so what I'm gonna talk about applies to the truck as well is if you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling stressed, if you're looking for focus, and I did this right before the podcast, before anything that I'm gonna do where I have to show up,

I do.

I clean off my desk. take everything off of it. I clean it. And then I deal with what I've taken off with it. I shred it. I toss it. I put it back where it belongs. I donate it. You know, I really deal with everything. And what you're doing is you're just shifting that energy and clearing away the cobwebs. It's amazing how

It just allows your whole psyche to just kind of anchor in. Because whenever our desks are cluttered, your vehicles cluttered, when the area of the barn that you're doing your work in is cluttered, it bogs us down, it affects our decision making, it kills our focus and our creativity. And so we have to deal with it. And...

The first, so I will be fully transparent here. I am the clutter bug in my relationship. I was the clutter bug in the family. Thank God I discovered Feng Shui because it completely changed everything, including I'm probably still married because my husband is, there's a place for everything, everything is placed. So I tend to get cluttered on my desk pretty quickly, but I like to say I visit Clutterville, I just don't live here anymore. So I've set up.

That's a nice way to think about it.

Yeah, it's been a life long journey. I think that

Feng Shui gives you the tools and the knowledge and the understanding of how detrimental clutter is, how detrimental disorganization is. And if you can just be open to that, it's much easier to address it. And when you're just trying to shift the energy and get out of a stressful state, clean off your desk. That's always a starting point.

Absolutely. So I want to give you a little insight because a lot of people who listen to this podcast, there's a lot of people who are just in general business who actually have desks that they sit at. But I have a lot of clients and a lot of listeners who are in situations where they're not working in what would be considered a traditional office space. And a lot of them are in barns somewhere. And here's a fascinating thing that is kind of known in the industry of agriculture horses and that kind

thing is that in in many, many of those situations, the barn itself is very clean, very tidy, very well kept, everything is organized well. Part of that is because of safety, right? You you can't be tripping over a pile of lead ropes when you have a horse that's hurt and you need to get them to safety or care. And so you're really driven to keep that. But I know a lot of people listening to this podcast, they keep a really

Yeah.

nice barn. So their workspace is very well thought out. It's it's often cleaned. It's often organized and done so on a daily basis. Yet when you walk into their office office, and some of you are going to feel very seen right now, it's piles of paper everywhere. It's, it's, you know, horse registration paper scattered all over the place. It's piles of and I dare to say the mud room in any farm is like your

Zone it's where all of the animal medicine lands. I mean my mud room is full of goat feed And and right now we have to do eye drops for a horse and they're back there I mean, it's it's a crazy amount of things But there are so many places that are in especially the office that is very disorganized So here's where I come into this people contact me. My business is not going well I I don't and I can tell you most anybody who does outdoor work with

Hahaha

animals on agricultural property, whether it's ag tourism, equine gestalt, any of those things, or whether they're out on a farm farm.

that they will tell you they would far rather be outside than in their homes. But from what I'm understanding from you is that they've created a lot of chaos in their home that makes it not the comfortable place to be. And also they're calling me to help them with their business and yet their business is the place where all the chaos lives, right? Am I making sense in that?

Yeah, 100, yes. It's interesting because it's, what I'm hearing is, if that's the situation, your business is twofold, right? It's the barn where all the animals are and you're taking amazing care of the animals and you're giving them this beautiful place and this healthy place and this clean place, you know, for a barn, for these animals to exist, but you're not doing the same thing for yourself.

Yeah.

Yep, that would probably be a very accurate statement for a lot of people in those situations. And also for those of you who don't work with horses or have a barn or are living in the city, a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't just live in their office, they have to live within their business. And I know a lot of people are out there in their vehicles. I do a lot of business in my vehicle. And it's not the most organized

Yeah.

place. And last podcast we had Joni Nicholas on who you know very well. And one of the very first interactions I had with Joni was, was to clean out something that was cluttered in your life. And I went to a workshop of hers. And it was the console of my truck. And took everything out and put it in the box and brought it in to go through in that class. And it was really eye opening about how much clutter had had

Yeah.

Yeah.

found its way into the console of my truck. And I will call out some of you farmers out there that are listening to this while you're driving your tractors. I can guarantee you there's a lot of clutter in those tractors, probably a bunch of leftover coffee cups. I mean, I can see the inside of a lot of tractors not being exactly feng shui friendly and adding to your stress, right?

Yeah.

for sure, it's definitely adding to the stress and I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on barn living or farm living or any of that. I just know that clutter of any kind, it brings us down. It emotionally stunts us and I don't wanna say stunts, but it's like a heavy weight. And in Feng Shui,

We say space equals opportunity. When there is space for opportunity to come in, it comes in, whether it's experiences, people, opportunities. And so when the space where you work is filled to the brim with the coffee cups and the files and the receipts and all of that, it makes it difficult for new opportunities to come in and land because there's no space for them.

And, God, this is probably where people were gonna turn this off and I apologize, but the rule of thumb, the rule of thumb in Feng Shui is 50 % of your space should be empty. know, like I think about 50 % of the top of your desk, 50 % of the top of your dresser, the drawers, the closets, and you know, it's...

It can be daunting, but once you start to be intentional about it and just, you know, maybe give yourself 27 days, 27 days to create a new habit, which for you, let's say it's keeping that dashboard clean. And, you know, to get it to a point where then it sticks and then go on to, okay, I'm gonna attack my glove compartment. You know, do it, it's okay to do it in Baby Bites because what happens is when we are successful in one of those little projects,

We get these hits of dopamine. We have victories and they're contagious and they make you want another one. And so all of a sudden you go from maybe the glove compartment to the middle console and you get energy to get bigger and bigger projects. I know that's the way it works for me.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And along the way, you're reducing the amount of stress in your life. I know for me, when I clean out the truck, it reduces my stress once that truck is cleaned out. Robyn, do want to ask, do you have any other tips that you would like to give? Or do you ready to get into how you are supported by your business?

Yeah.

I will, you know, and I'm not sure how to incorporate this because one of the things I always talk about is adding light, life to your office, life and vitality. And we do that through light and through nature. But I think about who you are, your audience is, and you guys are doing that anyway. I mean, you're living in nature.

And maybe trying to find ways to incorporate the nature into your workspace or into your home specifically, maybe your home, because that, you know, letting natural light in, opening your window treatments, cleaning your windows, all of that just, it just helps to kind of chase away anxiety and a little bit of depression. And it reduces stress when

things are well lit. So taking that bit of nature that you're living outside but bringing it into your home will then translate into every area of your life. And then nature can be, of course, plants. It could be artwork. It could be photographs. It could be fabrics. But the more nature we can bring into our homes, the easier it is for us to breathe. It just raises our own vibration.

raises the vibration of your home. And I think that can translate then into helping you take care of business.

Absolutely. I know that my life is not complete unless this plant back here is here. My plant, and I also notice when it's thriving, I thrive. And when it starts to look a little icky and I'm back there pulling dead leaves off of it, there's usually something that I probably need to be paying attention to. So I feel very connected to it. But I think that's true of any of us who live on the land. You can kind of notice if the land is suffering, you are

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

internally suffering. So that connection is always there. So I always ask everyone on this podcast to answer two questions. And the question one is, how does your business support the life that you want to live?

That makes sense.

I touched on a little bit earlier. I feel like for the first time ever, I am living what I'm supposed to do. There's nothing better than when I go into somebody's home or business and I make that connection for them on why maybe an area of life is not working. And I'm dancing right along with them because it's just, it's such a gift that I get to do it.

And it fills my cup every single day. I absolutely love it. And then being an entrepreneur, especially as I'm getting older and my parents are getting older, has given me lot of flexibility that I didn't have in the corporate world to help navigate for them areas of life that they need some help with.

Absolutely. I love that. And then the final question is, how has an animal in your life or a group of animals shown up with a lesson or some type of inspiration for you?

You know, I thought a lot about that question and I don't have like a spirit, well I do, I don't know if you can see this, I do have my little snake t-shirt on. I am, my Chinese horoscope is a snake and I do fill in affiliation to them even though they also kind of.

nice.

Creep you out a little?

I like the shedding of the skin. When things have to change, you have to be able to adapt and bob and weave to make those things happen. And so I do relate to that in that way. But I can't not share about the experience I had with your horses and some life long issues that I have been.

working on and working on with healers and doctors and therapists for decades that seemed to just disappear after the work we did.

I've never been on a horse, but I think I love them so much.

No, I had no idea what I was coming down to see you for and it was life-changing and the timing could not have been better.

I love that that worked out for you like that. And I hear that so many times. And I think people come here because they're like, well, Kim asked me to do it. So Kim said it would be good. So I'll do it. I, I first of all, with great personal power comes great responsibility in me being able to, but I don't invite people down that I don't think that are going to get something out of it. But I also feel like most people who come here really

Yeah.

they are open and have a transformational experience, but they don't know what they're getting themselves into. And I'm happy that that that prints definitely added to your experience in life and cleared out some things for you. That's, that's how I experienced Gestalt work. I was the first time in my life that I was actually able to make progress in my own personal mental health. And I had tried a

Yeah.

of other options that didn't work. this absolutely positively worked for me. And I'm so blessed to be able to share it with other people. So Robyn, do you do consultations with people over Zoom? Like, you work with people outside of Kansas City area because you're Kansas City based?

I do, quite frequently. A lot of my clients, it's not unusual for my clients to start paying attention intentionally to their home and the next thing you know, they're moving out of state. And so, yeah, I've done consultations all over the country.

I think a great place is my website or even social media, Robyn Stevens, Feng Shui. I've got lots of videos. I've been lucky enough to do some TV segments so you can kind of see Feng Shui and me in action. And then if you're interested in having this conversation, I always encourage people to book an exploratory call and let's just talk. We'll talk about kind of what's going on in your life, whether Feng Shui might be a consultation, might be a good option for you.

And I promise no pressure if it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit for you, it's not a good fit for me, and that's okay, but I'm still happy to have that conversation. And that's a great place to start.

Absolutely. And I can tell you Robyn is incredibly approachable and friendly. And she brings a little bit of humor into the whole experience so that you can definitely have a big smile on your face while you're working through it. I've had a very positive experience with you as a coming into my home and looking around, which is an uncomfortable thing for me. don't, I'm very comfortable having people as far as my office, but not many people make it past that. So it was

comfortable having you here for that. And so I encourage people if you do want to get in touch with her, I will put the link to her website in the show notes for you. And I encourage you to reach out if this has held any interest at all for you and hope that you get a little bit of relief through Feng Shui. Thank you again, Robyn, for coming today.

Thank you, Kim.