We were lucky to catch up with Karen Carter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How’s you first get into your field – what was your first job in this field?

It was a recession when I had a landscape architecture practice in California and I was facing laying off employees. I flew to Hawaii (where I also had a license to practice) to see if I could find work there. I was offered a hotel project but the caveat was I needed to know feng shui so I could design with that in mind. I said, “of course – I can do it!” as one does when desperate times call for it. (You know, actors take on a project and then research how to become that? That’s what I said to myself anyway.) So I started searching for someone to train me in feng shui for the project and once I did that job I was asked by other developers to help them with other projects. I was suddently a person who had a unique combination of talents.

During that same time I went to NYC to visit a friend who was attending the New York Paper and Stationery Show and very long story short, I ended up desigining a line of greeting cards that won the greeting card design of the year. That award got a lot of press interest, which lead an editor at Simon and Schuster Publishers TO CALL ME and ask for a book based on the greeting cards.
I co-authored two humor books for them but felt that my life was getting off track and so I pitched a “feng shui your landscape” book (as that kept me in my wheelhouse.)
They rejected the proposal but said at the bottom of the rejection letter, “Although we are looking for a feng shui book this isn’t the one.” So I simply asked “What ARE you looking for?” They said “a FUN feng shui book, and because you wrote those two humor books we think you can do it!”
I took them up on that challenge and wrote Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life – a book that is a national best-seller (organically – no strategies to make it hit for a second so you can call yourself a best-seller!) and it is still selling 25 years later, is in 9 languages, and still gets me around the world speaking and helping clients.
I got here by daring to be bold, saying yes to things without knowing all the steps to take, staying curious, thinking and designing things totally out of “what I know about” box. And finally, I got here because I was willing to take a chance, and willing to do it anyway even when everyone around me said closing my landscape architecture firm to do feng shui full time was nuts.

Karen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I help people break unresourceful patterns that keep them from living an authentically-fulfilled life. With me they dare to dream big (no shoulds or guilt – you gotta be willing to change!) and then create the internal mindset and physical environments that support living that dream.

I do personal one-on-one consultations for individuals — and businesses (as they can have big dreams too!)

I also teach people how to do what I do with my training course. I guarantee that you will be a confident, qualified, certified feng shui consultant by the end of the course, or I will personally mentor you one-on-one until you are!

My course is unique in that not only do I provide the traditional feng shui teachings, but also the “contemporary feng shui” information (such items as wi-fi routers, and microwave ovens and electric beds and massage chairs weren’t around during the traditional days!)

What sets me apart from other feng shui consultants from what I am told by my students is that “I walk my talk.” I’m living a big life, traveling the world spreading the feng shui word and loving it!

What I want potential clients to know is that it is possible, they are capable, and they deserve to live the life of their dreams – whether that is a health, wealth, relationship, career or other improvement – “it is possible to create that future if you get out of your own way and let the energies of the universe give it to you.”

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Actually practicing feng shui and trusting that when things look wonky and like they are getting off track, they are off the track you thought it should be on because a valuble lesson was being picked up over there! If I said no to designing greeting cards or humor books based on a line of greeting cards (WHAT? yes – they asked for a book that was based on line of greeting cards!) I would never have had the opportunity to write a best-selling book. I would not have had the credentials to pull it off. I would have not had a best-selling book as my number one calling card for getting business all around the world for years!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I was dyslexic long before there was a label, and was told that I wasn’t smart enough to go to college (literally, by my high school “counselor.” He told me to “be a hair-cutter.” swear to god…)

When I was a junior in college, I was told by the head of the department at the university where I wanted to attend to learn landscape architecture when I asked him “What should I take my senior year to better prepare me to be a landscape architect? “Honey, by the time you get to college, you will have changed your mind four times.” I literally drove eighty miles to hear that one dismissive sentence.

I was told by my english professor at college that I “will never get” how to write. (luckily I didn’t believe him.)

I was begged by my parents not to put my name on my humor books that had the word “gay” in the title (it was the early 90’s and AIDS and being gay were not topics you wanted to be associated with. And luckily I did it anyway.)

I was told by everyone that I’d never make up the money I would make doing landscape architecture if I took a year off to wrote a book. (update: that book has paid me over 10 times what I would have made if i didn’t write it and listened to them.)

I was told by my then husband when I received a second solo book deal and an advance, “I’ll give you double the advance not to write it.” (I wrote it.)

If I would have listented to or let anyone sway me from what I felt that I should authentically be doing, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karenrauchcarter.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenrauchcarter/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenRauchCarter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lifewithzing