Debra Jarvis

Debra specialises in Feng Shui principles to help people turn their offices and workplaces into a powerhouse for success.
Debra has succeeded against the odds and in this interview shares her secrets to success in over twelve years in business.

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Christo: Today we have a special guest, Debra Jarvis. Debra Jarvis is a Feng Shui specialist, trainer, speaker and writer. Debra started her Feng Shui business in 1999 as a sole trader. And Debra specializes in Feng Shui principles to help people turn their offices and workplaces into a powerhouse for success. When Debra first started out in business over 12 years ago, she had no idea about how to run a business, how to generate leads or how to make a sale. And at that time, her husband was into sure things. Savings and security. To him, investing in business equaled gambling, plus, Feng Shui was not the easiest industry to enter into over 12 years ago when not many people knew anything about it. Luckily, Debra didn‘t give up. Investing in her education, she got mentors and kept learning.

She says it‘s been an interesting journey and one in which Feng Shui has certainly played a major role in her success. So thanks for joining us Debra. Can you please tell us… Is it cool if we get straight into it?

Debra: Sounds good to me.

Christo: Excellent. So you can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as a business owner?

Debra: Well I guess my business journey probably started at about the time I got married. My husband and I were always looking at ways to generate a little bit of extra income. And it was always in addition to what our jobs were. It meant that we had a little bit more of a lifestyle that we might have otherwise.

It got to a point when I was dissatisfied. I had all the things that people are supposed to have. I had a good husband, a good job, nice car. Overseas holidays. We had our own house by the time we were 25. But I was quietly discontent with inside myself. And I got to a point where I hated my job and I wasn‘t particularly happy inside the marriage. And I wasn‘t, at that point, looking for a business per se, I just wanted my life to change.

And I had some experience along the way because we kind of had… I don‘t know if you‘d call it an entrepreneurial spirit because we wanted the extra income, but we weren‘t out there aggressively pursuing one business. And it‘s a very big difference between doing something on the side to bring a little bit of extra income to doing something full time and having that make and sustain your entire life.

Christo: Yeah.

Debra: Don‘t know what else I can tell you on that question.

Franziska: And so how… So it was pretty much because you needed a change. How did you get into Feng Shui?

Debra: Well, what happened was that I was reading a book called, Pulling Your Own Strings. Which is written by a lady who‘s name escapes me. But it‘s a really good book if you‘ve not read it. Pulling Your Own Strings. Oh, Wayne Dyer. And a few months before, I read Pulling Your Own Strings by Wayne Dyer, I read, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher. And Barbara‘s book suggested just do stuff. Don‘t worry about whether you like or you don‘t. Just because you go and do it once doesn‘t mean you have to keep doing it. Just go and experiment.

So up until that point, I‘d always been very careful in my choices because it was kind of like once you made a choice you were committed. And she gave permission to go and do things to see whether I‘d like them or not. If I didn‘t like them, I didn‘t have to keep doing them. And in the process of reading Wayne Dyer‘s book, Wayne Dyer actually came to Brisbane. And I thought, “Wow. I‘m reading this book and getting this great information and he‘s going to be live in Brisbane. Wouldn‘t that be great to go and see him?”

And he was here with Louise Hay and Depak Chopra and there was stuff going on at work that I wasn‘t enjoying; wasn‘t happy with. I felt really guilty about asking for the time off because it was a really inconvenient time. But anyway, I eventually packed up the courage and I did. And I ended up going along to the seminar. The first person that spoke that day was Terah Kathryn Collins and Terah Collins is my Feng Shui teacher. She runs the Western School of Feng Shui in San Diego. And the thing I liked about Terah was she made Feng Shui make sense.

Because some years previously I‘d done a lot of reading and investigation into Feng Shui. My husband and I moved house and I‘d done some calculations for us individually based on the astrology of Feng Shui and for the house. And I‘d come up with the fact that we needed something metal by the front door. And I went on a wild goose chase looking for this something metal. I ended up looking at a whole pile of statues and sculptures which are very large, very expensive. And really didn‘t work for us. A couple of weeks after we moved into the house, we put on security screens and security doors. Which surprisingly enough are made of metal. And the reason that we needed something metal by the front door from all these calculations I‘d done, was for security and protection.

Now a security screen makes a lot more sense. It‘s also significantly cheaper and doesn‘t involve huge amounts of shipping. So I‘d actually gotten quite disenchanted with the idea of Feng Shui at that point and when Terah came along about three or four years later, it was like a breath of fresh air. She was talking in a language I could understand, that was common sense. That made it so logical which the books I‘d been reading to that point just made me very confusing, difficult to understand and at the end of it, you wondered why you‘d even bothered because you‘d been on a wild goose chase for something that wasn‘t the right answer.

Franziska: And was that when you decided that Feng Shui was something you would like to pursue as a business or did that come later?

Debra: No. That came later. What happened was I went to the seminar, principally because Wayne Dyer was speaking and there was a couple of things that day. One Wayne‘s probably not the best speaker on the planet. I thought if he can do that and make a living at it, what can I do? And the other thing was that Terah made Feng Shui make sense.   She made it interesting. She made it logical. I thought, wow, I‘ve got to know more about what it is that she knows about Feng Shui.

And so I went home from that day inspired. I looked up… She has a one-day workshop. I thought, wow, that‘d be great to go do that. The only problem was I couldn‘t do that here in Australia. And America seems a rather long way to go just to do a one-day workshop. So I signed up for the practitioner training course. And I didn‘t expect to able to go and do it all in one day. I thought I was going to have to spread it out over a long period of time because I figured I could spread the payments out. Financially, we weren‘t in a situation where it was sensible for me to be investing a large sum of money and doing something else as a hobby.

My husband, on the other hand, was so excited I was doing something that was hobby as opposed to a business.

Franziska:         Of course.

Debra: So, he was very encouraging to me to put the debt on the credit card and to go and do the course because he was just thrilled that I was pursuing something that didn‘t revolve around money and wasn‘t me trying to start a business or do something different.

Christo: Ha ha.

Franziska: He didn‘t know. He didn‘t know.

Christo: He didn‘t know what was coming.

Debra: No. Neither did I at that point to be fair. I just knew I wanted life to different and if Feng Shui could help me to make my life different, then, hey, I was going to give it every opportunity.

However, having said that, in the course of filling the application form, it asked me what I was going to do with the training. So I thought, well, you know, I can speak about Feng Shui and I can teach Feng Shui so that‘s what I put on the application form. And at that time I was justifying my entry into the course. I hadn‘t kind of quite figured out that they were happy to have my money and didn‘t really matter why I was doing it. But that‘s okay. I worked that out later.

But I got a lot of value from going and doing that course. And one of the components or one of the subjects that we studied was about starting our business and how to go about starting a business. And as part of that subject, we were asked to nominate a date to start. So, I nominated the 14th of August 1999. And on that day I held a talk in my home and ten people came.

Franziska: Wow. That‘s fantastic.

Debra: It is. And at the time I didn‘t realize how fantastic it was.

Franziska: Ten people on the first talk. Yeah I remember some of our clients when they did their first talk, maybe two or three, four people and maybe their dogs.

Debra: I‘ve had talks where I‘ve had two people and I‘ve had talks where I‘ve probably had 100 people. But I still get every extreme in between.

Christo: Awesome.

Debra: So, I haven‘t yet figured out how to get overdoing it. Two people talk, she still won‘t do those ones as well as far as I know.

Franziska: I think it‘s a good reality check. To appreciate when you have more people and it‘s also just reality check, just keep going.

Debra: Well I see… I didn‘t realize how great that was I had ten people at my first talk. Now five of those were referred by one friend that I‘d been doing some consultations with. So part of the training was to go out and do consultations and to send the information about that and find out about the results. Now this particular woman had had incredible results so she‘d sent five people along and from that, I booked a paying consultation.

So, I thought this was easy. I thought you just go and talk. People came. They booked you. You went and did consultations. It sounds pretty good to me. Doesn‘t it to you?

Franziska: Definitely.

Debra: I know. So that‘s kind of how I got started in business. A few months went by. And I recognized that my job was quite demanding and that while I stayed in my job, I was never going to devote the time to the business that I needed to if I really wanted to be successful in the business.

I wasn‘t at a point where the business was financially viable or it was self-sufficient or any of those things. I just knew within myself that juggling my job and the business wasn‘t going to get me anywhere. I was just going to end up being pulled in two different directions and not doing either very well.

So, I handed in my resignation and I was convinced to go part-time. And at that time I was working in the accounting field doing auditing and just entering into the busiest time of the year. So I actually ended up working more hours part-time than I had been full-time.

Franziska: Making more money though.

Debra: Sorry.

Franziska: Making more money.

Debra: Yeah, but it wasn‘t fulfilling my… It wasn‘t changing my life. That‘s why I started this whole journey to have a life that I enjoyed living rather than one that I was pursuing at a given obligation for other people. And looking back, my life was about pleasing people. It was about pleasing my husband. It was about pleasing my employers. It was about making everybody else happy and the theory that I had running around in my head was if only I made everybody else happy, and don‘t ask me why there was a relationship between money and happiness, but the theory was if only I could make everybody else happy and do the right thing for them, then there‘ll be some money left over and I can go and do what I really want to do.

Of course, that never happened because I was always looking at putting everybody else before whatever made me happy and part of giving up my full-time employment was I was actually starting to do something that made me happy. That made my heart sing.

Franziska: That‘s fabulous and that‘s very inspiring for our listeners to maybe… We have probably listeners that are in a full-time job but maybe not completely happy. And that‘s very inspiring and I…

Debra: By the way. I don‘t recommend giving up your full-time job. It‘s not a good move.

Christo: You‘ve done it now. That‘s it.

Debra: Well I‘m still here 12 years later, but it‘s… You have to make sure that you know within your heart it‘s the right thing for you. For me, it was and certainly not something that I recommend for everybody. And if you are going to do that, make sure you have a marketing plan because that‘s one thing I did not have.

Franziska: Absolutely.

Christo: Absolutely. An excellent…

Franziska: Marketing is everything.

Christo: That‘s right.

Debra: It is.

Christo: The marketing is the oxygen. Of course, there‘s a lot of challenges that come with starting any business. So, what, as you‘re kind of touching on here, what would be some of the biggest challenges that you‘ve had in your business? And, how did you overcome them?

Debra: The biggest challenge is probably running out of capital. Because I was still married at this point, I‘d given up my income producing job and I was starting a business part-time so it was actually sucking capital out of the family budget as opposed to part-time businesses in the past that had been adding money into the family budget. I had a husband who didn‘t understand that sometimes you need to put something in like paying for marketing and newspaper adverts and going to networking meetings and meeting people and putting a picture on the car to travel to give talks that that was actually necessary in order to generate profits down the track.

So I ended up in a situation where… My husband had always brought in more income than I did. And that was part of this whole money thing for me. And I think this idea that when we go into business, we‘re going to have more money. Well we are, but we need to plan for how we‘re going to get there and we need to know our marketing plan. We need to have identified where our clients are. How we‘re going to get a message to them. And how we‘re going to get them to act on that message. And I hadn‘t done that.

It took me some years to actually formulate that whole thought in my head. What I was basically doing was throwing money against the wall and hoping it would stick.

Christo: Yeah. I know it all too well. And we definitely come upon a lot of clients that… I like the insight where you‘ve shared about putting something in and to realize that you‘d get a return. And, of course, creating a solid marketing plan so you know what you‘re doing moving forward and realizing that it often does take a bit of a challenge, you know. Of course, there‘s risk involved in putting some money in to get a better return and grow the business. Very good insight.

Debra: Marketing is absolutely key and that‘s something that… People in business, Mom and Dad might get a super payout, they buy a shop because there‘s a series of shops being bought there. And because they just think they‘re going to be successful. They never stop to think where are the customers going to come from. And that‘s one thing that I hope that the people listening to this can really think about. Okay, I‘ve got this business concept, this business idea. I‘ve got a business already. The thing to focus on, in my opinion, is where are my customers coming from? Who are my customers? And not who you want them to be. Who they really are. Who are the people that are going to come to you and pay you money for whatever it is that you‘re offering?   Are they a big enough group that it‘s sustainable for you for your lifestyle.

Christo: Yeah. This is gold. Thank you very much. Great insights for our listeners, of course. So while we‘re on the topic of money, how do you market your business? And, what‘s most effective or been most effective for you?

Debra: How I started out marketing my business was in networking, giving talks, and meeting with anybody that would meet with me. I was also very fortunate in that I was in the very early days of Feng Shui becoming popular in Brisbane. So, I was like the fourth Feng Shui consultant. And the first European woman. So, I was someone that people could relate to. They could kind of go, “Well, she‘s logical. She makes sense and she‘s not Asian so I can understand what she‘s saying to me.”

So I was very fortunate in that that gave me a huge advantage. It also… I mean there‘s something like 400 or 4000 plus consultants in Brisbane today. So that‘s a huge variety and difference. Because I was among the first, that‘s something I‘ve been very fortunate even though perhaps the road‘s been a little rockier than I would like to admit. That has given me still a competitive advantage today.

Christo: Right. Right. I love that fact that you said getting out and meeting people, too. Because a lot of business owners kind of as they‘re building a business tend to spend a lot of time at home and/or in their office and kind of work on back end things. But, as marketers ourselves, we all know that the more you‘re out there face-to-face, especially in the very early days, even if you‘re just meeting one-on-one with people, it‘s such an effective way to get things moving.

Debra: I couldn‘t agree more Chris. The reason I‘m still here today is because I met with people. I joke that I‘d go to the opening an envelope.

Debra: I don‘t network anywhere as much as I used to. But people still know who I am because of what I did ten years plus ago.

Franziska: And another reason that I can hear from what you say is persistence. You‘ve been persistent over the last ten years. Doing it. Doing it. Never giving up and believing in yourself.

Debra: Yeah. Well one of the questions you had for me is what keeps me motivated. That‘s never been a problem for me because I just knew this was the right thing for me to be doing. So, that persistence was just something that… There was an inner knowing inside of me that I was just going to keep going at it. And I think that lack of capital actually helped with that. Because I can remember very early on I… Obviously, my marriage didn‘t survive. People haven‘t picked that up by now.

Franziska: We did.

Debra: That was extremely huge and the… Leaving that marriage actually… Leaving at some point extra stress in some ways. And I got to a point where I asked myself, “If I was ever at this point again, what would I do financially?” And the answer that came up for me was persistence. I‘d just keep going. I‘d just keep doing what I‘m doing.

Because it‘s by that persistence. The book called, Great by Choice by Jim Collins. It talks about a 20-mile march and it‘s basically about being persistent day after day after day. It‘s not about leaping over a mountain one day and resting for 40 days. It‘s about 20-mile marching up the mountain every day for as long as it takes and then 20-mile marching down the other side and up the next one and down the next one. So it‘s about consistency and persistence rather than a big cannonball shot and then nothing. Do you understand what I‘m saying?

Franziska: Absolutely. That‘s a fantastic metaphor. One thing that we see a lot is start up businesses. They go hard and they do the climbing the mountain in one day and the next day maybe they don‘t and a lot of those business owners they‘re just… Just about to really make it but because they don‘t see across or over that mountain they give up too early.

Debra: Yeah. And I‘ve seen that myself. I‘ve seen people who are very good at plugging along and from Day one and because it‘s not coming together as quickly as they would like or it‘s not equaling what they were earning in their job six months or 18 months earlier, they just stop. Instead of looking at and looking at what the projections are. Looking what they‘ve achieved and how far they‘ve come and where to from here.

And the other thing is to remember that little curve. I can‘t think of what it‘s called, but you‘ve got a chart that shows time along the bottom and success up the side and it goes along pretty close to the ground at the bottom along time and then all of a sudden it starts to curve up and then it curves up very sharply. And it‘s about that consistent persistence so those good things can come to you and those great opportunities can come to you. But don‘t stop doing the other stuff when you get those. You’ve got to keep doing it because the first one might not pay off.

Franziska: Yeah, exactly. Now Debra, thank you so much. Our listeners absolutely love hearing some tips from our experts. So, I was wondering, and I‘m going to share a little secret with you, too, if you can share some Feng Shui tips…

Debra: Sure, I‘d love to.

Franziska: And here‘s my little secret to you. Just before when we were preparing for the interview, I said to Christo, “Yep. We‘re going to talk about Feng Shooey.” And he was like, “What do you mean Feng Shooey?” I was like, “Feng Shooey. Don’t   you say Feng Shooey because in my language, in Swiss, we actually call it Feng Shooey.” And he was laughing at me.

Debra: Well, one of the things that I say is that there so many dialects in China somewhere you‘ll be right.

Franziska: Exactly. You know what, I‘m probably more right than any of it.

Debra: So we‘d like some Feng Shui tips?

Franziska: That would be fantastic.

Christo: Yep.

Debra: I‘ll share with you the classic configuration because to me this is the foundation of Feng Shui and and if we can do these four things in our businesses, it can help everything else go so much more smoothly.

So, the first thing we want to do is we want to welcome opportunity in. Now Feng Shui is about working in our physical or our seen environment to create a change in the physical that creates a change in our experience. So wherever your business is located, have a look at what the welcome is like and don‘t bother telling me, “Well, nobody goes there. I go out to see clients.” Whatever it is, there‘s somebody that goes to that space in your business and that‘s the most important person. That‘s you. So it really does matter what the welcome is like. So what I suggest is you go out to the front of the property into the street so whether you‘ve got a shop front of an office or whether you‘re working from home, go out to the street and see what your business looks like from the street. Does it have a nice clear number that you can see?

Now I‘m pretty sure it‘s the same in Sydney as it is in Brisbane. Businesses aren‘t too good at putting numbers on their buildings.

Franziska: Might be the same here.

Christo: I think it‘s the same.

Debra: Yeah. So, it‘s not really a hard thing to do. And a lot of our streets are quite long. So if you can put a number on the building that can be easily seen by traffic. A lot of the time when I‘m driving around Brisbane, if I see a number that‘s 385 and I‘m looking for 246, at least I‘ve got some idea of which way to go back to go and find the building number I‘m looking for. And I hear similar stories from people all the time. We just don‘t appreciate how important it is to have a number so we can clearly see where it is that we‘re going to. And we can find that building. And I don‘t care who doesn‘t go there. We say in Feng Shui, opportunity comes to us in direct proportions to how easy we are to find and the quality of that opportunity is related to the quality of the welcome.

So if you‘ve got a really scruffy looking door or a scruffy looking entrance, you want to smarten that up so that your clients, your staff or if it‘s just you that sees it, you feel good about that when you pass through there. We say there‘s nowhere to hide from Feng Shui eyes. So, you can think that it‘s not that important, but it is. I often say that things in Feng Shui might make a quarter of a cent difference. If you‘ve got a front entrance that‘s scruffy. You can‘t read the numbers, that‘s at least a 2 percenter. And that‘s something you can easily do something about.

We also want a doorbell or some way of people gaining the attention. That‘s not that difficult to do either. And once again, I don‘t care if nobody else goes there. You want to be setting up the energy of being receptive to have opportunities come in. Does that make sense?

Franziska: Yes. That makes sense, yeah.   What we have on our door is a nice… What do you call them?

Christo: Like a welcome sign. Beachy looking welcome sign.

Franziska: With a surfboard on it, of course.

Debra: Absolutely and welcome‘s great. And a sign that says what the name of the business is. Because then people know that they‘re in the right place. And it confirms for visitors that you are a real business. It‘s amazing how many… Even people that have got retail space and sort of starting out, don‘t put up signage. And it looks tacky and it tells people, hey, I‘m not serious about this.

Christo: Yeah, that‘s right. Great tips.

Franziska: What other tip have you got Debra?

Debra: Okay. The other thing I‘d like to suggest is you want to make sure that once we‘ve got the opportunity coming in, that we secure it so it‘s going out to everyone else. So when you‘re setting up a room where you‘re going to be spending time in like an office, we want to set that up so you‘ve got your back to a wall and you can see out any windows and out any doorways. So, we‘re in what‘s called the power position. So that nobody can come up behind us with a bit of 4 by 2 and bump us over the back of the head.

Christo: Hope not.

Franziska: Hope not. That‘s my secret, too, when I sleep in a hotel. I always make sure I sleep right next to the door.

Debra: Yeah. We want to make sure ideally that you can see people coming in the door before they get to you.

Christo: Yeah, right. Wow.

Franziska: That‘s awesome.

Christo: And your back to the wall. Because normally you‘d have your desk pushed up against a wall.

Debra: Well, yeah. This is several things that… It makes you feel like you‘re in a closed in space. Actually it‘s easier to be creative when you‘re looking out into a bigger space. It‘s better for your eyes because you‘re focusing up close and then when you look up you‘re focusing at distance. So there‘s lots of good reasons for that. You don‘t feel like you‘re a mushroom. You‘ve got this opening out into the world.

Franziska: Excellent. Any other tips, Debra?

Debra: A couple of quick ones if I have got time.

Franziska:         Yes, please.

Debra: Have our boundaries clearly defined. So we want to know where our business starts and stops. And we want to, if we‘ve got an office at home, we want to have that separate from the rest of the house somehow. If we‘ve got retail space or we‘ve got commercial office space, we want to make sure that each person within there knows where their space is. If we‘ve got hot desking, each person that uses that desk needs to have a drawer or a box or something that their stuff can go into when they‘re not there so that any other person using that space can fully spread out and utilize that space while they‘re there.

And the fourth tip is we want to have a clear center. So we want to think about the fact that everything around us is alive with memories, feeling and associations. It‘s connected to people, places and events. And it‘s always changing. So, stuff that maybe was great at one time may not be so great any more. So go have a look at it through Feng Shui eyes and see what it‘s saying to you. Is it lifting your energy up?   Have you had some marketing materials prepared that didn‘t work? Or maybe it‘s that you‘re not using them. Instead of keeping them because they might come in handy one day, either go and do a mailbox drop with them or dump them.   Because while you‘ve got them hanging around, they‘re just making you feel bad.

I had one client who is in the driver training industry. And they‘d done a whole series of television adverts and they had some huge posters of the machinery that they got made up. And they‘re all lying around the office on the floor. They hadn‘t even been hung up. One of my favorite questions to ask in a consultation is, “Tell me about these.” When I asked him that question he told me all about the television advertising campaign. Now it never went to air so he‘d spent money in getting it put together and all the posters were telling him was about something that went really, really bad. So that was something that, in my opinion, needed to get out of his space no matter how much it cost him because it was taking him back to something that didn‘t work rather than helping him to look forward to what was going to work in the future. To look for the next thing to do.

So we don‘t want to have a lot of stuff around that‘s keeping us stuck in the past. We want our environment to reflect who we are now and who we‘re becoming and to have it propelling us forward to success in the future.

Franziska: Fantastic. That‘s a great tip.

Christo: Awesome tips. Thank you very much.

Debra: Thank you for having me on the show. I‘ve really enjoyed chatting with you and maybe we can do this again sometime.

Franziska: Yeah, of course. Can you please also just tell us where people can find out more about you before…

Debra: Sure. The best place to find out more about me is at my website. It‘s at debrajarvisfengshui.com. D-E-B-R-A-J-A-R-V (for victory) -I-S-F-E-N-G-S-H-U-I.com.

Franziska: Fantastic.

Christo: Awesome. Thank you very much for being so open and for sharing so much with us today. It‘s been great.

Debra: By absolute pleasure. It‘s been fantastic to chat with you.

Franziska: Thanks Debra.

Christo: Thanks Debra. Bye for now.

Debra: Bye.