Eric Lam on Feng Shui, Environmental Psychology, and Designing for Human Energy | 700

0:00Eric Lam: So if someone were to say, hey, I need more wealth, it's not just about, okay, well, we'll go to the southeast corner, we'll put something there and voila, right? It's a little more complex than that.

0:10Business of Architecture: Hello, Architect Nation, and welcome back. This is the right place for you if you run an architectural practice. On today's episode, you'll discover why one architect believes the layout of a room can quietly influence everything from stress levels to decision making and how that changes the way he designs homes and businesses. How principles behind Feng Shui overlap with sustainability, by flick design, and even the way high-performing firm owners position themselves inside their own workspace. And what happened when a subtle shift inside Eric Lam's own home led him to completely rethink the relationship between architecture, psychology, energy, and well-being.

0:50Business of Architecture: In a remarkably thoughtful way, Eric Lam has been building a practice that blends classical architectural training with a much older design tradition most architects in the West rarely encounter firsthand. Raised in Hong Kong before moving to the United States, Eric grew up surrounded by Feng Shui principles long before he ever understood what they meant. Years later, after working in large corporate firms and eventually starting his own studio, he found himself reconnecting those lessons with the worlds of sustainability, biophilic design and how people actually experience space. Today, alongside leading Redwoods Design Studio in New Jersey, Eric also serves as president of the Architects League of Northern New Jersey.

1:33Business of Architecture: In this conversation, we explore how he's integrating classical Feng Shui into modern architectural practice, what architects often overlook about the emotional impact of space, and how his own business journey led him toward a calmer, more intentional way of practicing architecture. You've built a practice that balances design, delivery, and client trust.

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2:40Business of Architecture: Eric, welcome to the Business of Architecture podcast. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you, Ryan, for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you. You are an architect, the head lead of Redwoods Design Studio in Englewood in New Jersey, where you focus on residential work and mixed use projects. You've been a business of architecture client for maybe two years? About two years. About two years. And we can talk a little bit about that and your journey as well. You are, is it the president-elect of one of the townships for the AIA?

3:19Eric Lam: Actually, I'm the, well, currently I'm the president of the Northern New Jersey section. So in New Jersey, we have six sections, which make up the entire state of AIAs. And I'm the ALNNJ, which stands for Architects League of Northern New Jersey. So I'm actually the president this year.

3:41Business of Architecture: Fantastic. Okay, excellent. So really accomplished architect and very interesting business. And one of the kind of niches as well that I want to talk to you today about was Feng Shui, which is a kind of ancillary practice that you've garnered a kind of level of mastery around over the years and started to integrate that into your architectural practice. and you know personally I've always I know as I've spoken with you before I spent a number of years in my youth growing up in Hong Kong and feng shui was kind of integral to the genesis of literally every building that exists in Hong Kong like if you're a developer or a commercial owner of buildings you you consult a feng shui consultant at the at the outset there's the famous story of Norman Foster with the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank.

4:39Business of Architecture: The reason why they won that was because they were the only architects, the international architects anyway, that hired a Feng Shui consultant right from the outset. And then it led to the very interesting design of them lifting up the lobby and having that kind of public space flowing underneath. So perhaps we'll just dive straight into beng shui and talk a little bit about how did you get involved in feng shui and how is it integrated into your practice so absolutely the the interesting

5:15Eric Lam: about feng shui is that's something that i grew up into my grandmother often talk about feng shui principles. There are certain things that we are allowed to place in a certain space, in a certain configuration. But at the time, I did not understand any of it. To me, it was just old people talking, right? And even though it was really kind of a 3 ,000 years old wisdom that was passed along generation to generations, I was just too naive to know about anything on that. But interestingly, since I'm trained here in the U.S. as an architect, I've been doing a lot of Western-style design. And through the years, I'm getting into more sustainable design, more into biophilic design.

6:08Eric Lam: And as I do more of that type of work, I recognize that a lot of these principles sound really familiar. It seems to me, wait a minute, have I heard from my grandma talk about this before? And it makes so much sense at the time. And because not to say the Western ideas of sustainability or biophilic is something that came from feng shui. Not at all. But in every culture, we have a certain principles of design of what's considered good space, what's considered good energy. Right. How do we interact with nature? And those are all kind of overlapping. And I think since then, I've kind of traced back my roots and go, wait a minute, let me find out more about what my grandmother was talking about.

7:03Eric Lam: Right. And that's when I got into feng shui. And it was still at the time a little bit confusing because the feng shui that I learned about here are more Western feng shui. we have basically three schools of feng shui and in the u.s and a lot of the even uk a lot of the practitioners are more of the bt btb style feng shui which is the black sect tantric buddhist feng shui or the new age feng shui and they are very different as far as how they were being interpreted it. Some call it watered down type of feng shui, more, I would say, cater to Western ideas. But I see them more as spiritual. People practice those or uses it to kind of give themselves a little more of a focus on the environment, but through symbols, through like you probably heard about people using crystals and things like that.

8:13Eric Lam: So I was a little confused at the time. It's like, why are we talking about this stuff? I never heard about that before. And then I slowly get back into doing more research about what is it that I learned from Hong Kong that I'm not hearing here. And that's when I discovered that what I've been growing up with was what we call classical feng shui, which is more of the form and compass style, or they call it the form and compass school or flying style feng shui.

8:46Business of Architecture: So does that mean more to do with a kind of approach to orientation and actual architectural physical space as opposed to other things?

8:59Eric Lam: more ethereal things. Correct. To me, it's more scientific. I think trained as an architect, we have a tendency to be more in tune with the scientific part of things. There are methods and there are proportions and scale we follow. There are rules, right? And to me, it makes so much more sense to me that classical feng shui is very much in line with what I do as an architect amazing so very interesting because it's kind of biographical story here

9:36Business of Architecture: where like you exploring feng shui also opens up a bit of your history and your past and your roots if you like can you tell us a little bit about your your background your where you where you

9:50Eric Lam: grew up and where your grandmother was from and sure so my first 12 years existing was in hong and then after that I migrate to the US and all my family they're all from Hong Kong and this you know if you know the geography of Hong Kong which you have been before there's the Hong Kong Island and then you have the Kowloon which is a peninsula and then there's the new territories before you get into mainland China the geographic condition of Hong Kong is very interesting because one of the grandmaster of feng shui, his name is Raymond Lo, basically proclaimed that Hong Kong has the best feng shui as far geography goes around the world.

10:40Business of Architecture: Oh, that's so interesting. Because Hong Kong is an extraordinary situation. I used to live up on Hong Kong Island in mid-levels, And it was just wild living in a skyscraper next to like tropical forest on the side of a mountain, basically. Yeah.

11:01Eric Lam: It's very interesting the way that because it's so geographically, it's not big at all. So in order to pack everyone onto the island and on the peninsula, they'd have to devise all kind of engineering so that they could build on the mountainside, just like you said.

11:19Business of Architecture: yeah it's great it's extraordinary and really interesting then that that hong kong as a city has very kind of powerful feng shui and also that there is a lot of masters of lots of different types of um oriental arts if you like that are located in in hong kong so i think feng shui and i know like i used to be into martial arts and there was like just all these grand masters of Wing Chun that were there in Hong Kong. And it's this sort of melting pot of extraordinary, you know, philosophical traditions and systems that are very, very old. And you have like some of the world's best practitioners all kind of in a very small spot exchanging ideas, I imagine as well.

12:09Eric Lam: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the martial org, Feng Shui is actually one of the, I would say, culturally part of the traditions in Hong Kong. You know, acupuncture, you know, using natural medicine, you know, right? And also martial art, actually, like, for example, Taoism, you know, they all have a little bit of philosophy that overlap each other.

12:42Business of Architecture: Yes, the Taoism, Confucianism sort of roots and philosophically very aligned. So when you set up your own practice, did you start integrating Feng Shui as a silent practice? Or is it a service that you've kind of extrapolated and started to sell? Tell me a little bit about that.

13:11Eric Lam: So when I first started my practice, I was just really fresh off of the working with a corporate firm of a few thousand people, really large firm. And all I did was corporate offices and things like that. So never in my mind were thinking about doing feng shui. But the idea of being sustainable has always been something that I... really geared toward when I practice architecture. But at that time, when I first started my practice, I never really thought about biophilic and things like that. It really took me a long time to really gravitate toward doing architecture that relating to that side of philosophy.

14:05Eric Lam: It's no longer just about putting together cubicles and storefronts and things like that. Those become more technical. But the more philosophical side of things begin to develop over the years. Like I mentioned earlier, because of biophilic, that's what got me into feng shui, interestingly. And I think now when I look at doing, especially with, I would say, homeowners, by doing a smaller project. They seem to be more interested in that. I don't have any client who comes to me specifically ask for that because I think in some way they don't know what to ask for because Feng Shui is three different schools that I mentioned.

15:00Eric Lam: And most of my client knew of more of the B2B or new age Feng Shui. So it doesn't quite click, right? But when I start talking to them about placements of where the main entry door goes and things like that, I don't specifically mention Feng Shui, but I basically look at the environment. and if I knew my client's birthday, then I could do an actual full-on analysis and help them decide exactly where's the best place to put their entrance. That's so cool. Yeah. So, you know, it's something that I don't really push right now, but I see that there's a need for it just because I think a lot of people don't know to ask for it.

16:00Yeah.

16:01Eric Lam: It needs to be clarified.

16:03Business of Architecture: Obviously, there's a kind of difference in the market between here in the US and in Hong Kong where Feng Shui would be much more part of common parlance. And as we were saying earlier, if you're a developer, if you're developing a bank, the banks took the Feng Shui seriously in Hong Kong. how does it how do people relate to it there and how is it integrated into design and what would you like to see really kind of emerge in the U.S.

16:39Eric Lam: so in Asian countries like Hong Kong and in Singapore which is another really kind of hot bet for Feng Shui like you said building don't get built unless there's a feng shui consultant involved. As a matter of fact, Singapore, if I'm going to understand, the government actually really rely on feng shui to develop the city. We talk about large scale. The entire city was based on feng shui. It was quite fascinating. And we can see how a small nation that started in 1965, I believe, developed to be this kind of financial center. It's so rich. Everything is unbelievably rich in culture, in people, art, everything.

17:38Eric Lam: It's fascinating. I can contribute that to Feng Shui. and Hong Kong is the same thing just because it's been kind of developed through years of practice from way back 3 ,000 years ago the Hong Kong government interestingly will compensate developer if let's say for example certain things that they did let's say they cut a roadway in there and it caused any kind of shift in feng shui, they actually compensate the developer for having to destroy the qi, you know, which is very interesting.

18:23Business of Architecture: That's amazing. That's absolutely fascinating that the government would actually, yeah, have a budget towards a developer if their feng shui got disrupted. Yeah.

18:38Eric Lam: And also for normal people, as well other people who may be doing a small scale project maybe a home or something like that so you know that's something that they have to kind of make sure that people are still happy about it they don't want to you know make people unhappy just because their feng shui has been

19:00Business of Architecture: violated right can you talk a little bit about it's really interesting saying that a large city planning level these uh these kind of special administrative regions hong kong singapore their governments are protecting feng shui and actually deliberately deploying it into the planning of their cities what were the principles that say singapore or hong kong actually deployed in the town city planning again i'll talk a little bit singapore one of my one of my favorite places My sister, she's been living there for the last 15 years. Absolutely adore it. We were there this time last year and just one of the freshest, cleanest, beautiful, well-planned, utopian-looking cities.

19:53Business of Architecture: And I find it interesting as well that both Hong Kong and Singapore have become these extraordinary financial hubs. So whilst we might in the West have a little bit of suspicion around Bengshui and its relationship to wealth, perhaps, the fact that, you know, very serious heavyweight business tycoons and wealthy cities like put it as a priority in a holistic sense, not just for the wealth, but for the overall kind of well-being of a city, I find really, really interesting. so my question was yeah what what specific things uh did singapore do for example that perhaps you could talk about um i don't know too much exactly what they were planning at the time

20:41Eric Lam: but what i know is that you know when when we do feng shui especially in the campus school and the forum school uh we've really focused on the landmass we focus and i think a lot of this observation a lot of feng shai master do a lot of observation about the environment um and understanding you know at which part of you know the property or land you know the the positive energy is coming from and where should that energy continue because you know as far energy goes it has to continue the flow. Any standard energy is not considered good. So the planning of how to make everything flow, like for example, when Singapore was developing the Marina Bay Sands area, where it used to be the Singapore River, and when the river comes out, it flows out to the sea.

21:45Eric Lam: So at that time, they considered that it's not auspicious because not all the wealth, because water kind of represents wealth. Right. And all the wealth is flowing out of the sea. There's nothing to contain it. So what they did is they created this man-made peninsula where they built the hotel. You know, the one with the tree building with a big pool on the top. The machine sub-D one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that's been kind of what's happening. Again, the idea of able to hold energy in the area so that you don't have a lot of those wasted energy or wealth being dispersed. It is really huge in the feng shui concept.

22:37Business of Architecture: That's so interesting that the feng shui is kind of focused on flows of energy, which I guess can mean, you know, everything from environmental factors and that that actually is related to the idea that wealth is a form of energy in itself.

22:56Eric Lam: Yes, it is really integrated into the thinking of feng shui. I think to me it's the qi, the water, you know, the feng shui. Soi means water, feng means wind, or air in my mind of how air circulates, how water circulates. And those are not just symbolic, but I mean, even for us as human beings, we travel, right? We have our way of flowing through space. we have created within kind of well we create kind of the architecture right that contained the space without architecture there's no space or there's a vast amount of space depends on how you look at it right so how do we interact with this space it's very much like how feng shui interact with space and i think this is really kind of the the core tenet of of feng shui and how to use it properly so that it could generate a smooth flow and allow people to actually experience the energy that comes with feng shui.

24:14Business of Architecture: So would it be like a kind of common brief that you as a feng shui practitioner might receive from say a wealthy businessman client or any client for that matter with their own home that you would be able to plan their house out in a way that was optimized for the cultivation of wealth yeah so i always say feng shui doesn't give you wealth right feng shui is a feng shui is a

24:46Eric Lam: a um a philosophy it's also a way a way of living it basically supports your goal so if someone come along and tell me, hey, Eric, you know, we want to really generate wealth. And wealth doesn't usually mean money. It can mean so many things, right? Someone who's wealthy doesn't always mean that they have a whole load of money in their bank, but they could live with a wealthy mindset, abundance, right? That's the word for it, as we always know from BOA, right? And I think if someone come along and say, hey, I want to accumulate wealth, I think the most important thing to find out is, well, what's the situation here as far as the place where they're living or working?

25:34Eric Lam: Because it applies to both businesses and as well as someone's home, residential. The key also is to find out this person's birthday based on the old Chinese calendar, where it basically spells out from the time that person is born down to the very last minute. We use that as a way to calculate their yin energy or yang energy. So it's in the yin-yang type of balances, yin-yang is about balance. So if this person has too much yin, they need more yang or vice versa.

26:17Business of Architecture: and yin and yang and these are like the hard and the soft energy or sometimes masculine feminine

26:23Eric Lam: right or correct and also mean you know quiet or loud energy right um so we depends on the person and based on their birthday and we use that to map out in which part of the space that they're living in is most appropriate for it, how to amplify that energy based on that person's, you know, yang energy or yin energy. So if someone were to say, hey, I need more wealth, it's not just about, okay, well, we'll go to the southeast corner, we'll put something there and voila, right? It's a little more complex than that. We really kind of calculate, okay, this is not the right number. It's something called quant number that everyone has.

27:14Eric Lam: You have one that's very different than mine. And we could be going to the same house. Your energy is very different than my energy in different part of the house. So I would then find out that person's best location that could help to support the wealth. And that's where we do, you know, different type of strategy. We call it a strategy. like for example we need more water feature or we need something that relating to metal or something relating to earth or wood right so there are a lot of different things relating to the to the

27:50Business of Architecture: five elements in feng shui right and so your and your birth date kind of relates to which which sign you are in terms of um element and then is it something like with the with the um the I Ching relates your birthday relates to a particular element and then you move into another element as you're growing older

28:14Eric Lam: yes pretty much the I Ching you're talking about is a little bit beyond my pay grade it's really a different kind of study but it's totally relating to the Feng Shui as a matter of fact a lot of grandmasters in Feng Shui they do study the four pillars of destiny which and some i think is translated to body or you know and then and then beyond that will be the icing right right and the i've seen these beautiful compasses in hong kong

28:50Business of Architecture: when i used to live there are they related to feng shui like sometimes they're really big and they've got beautiful kind of chinese writing on them you know you often see uh you know westerners buying them and sticking them in their house for well that that's i don't know if that's appropriate

29:07Eric Lam: or not but it it is a instrument we use as an instrument for what i call a feng shui survey it is a actual compass but like you said it has chinese characters on it and each character and actually all the different characters means something relating to the person and relating relating to the direction where it's facing. It could get very intricate as far as the writing on it. It takes, you almost need a microscope to read the letters, but it's so small on it. And I happen to have one because I practice the campus school. And oftentimes if I want to study the feng shui of the house, I would bring that with me.

29:57Eric Lam: like for example if i want to purchase a home and sometimes i offer that to a client if they want to purchase a home maybe you want to study the feng shui first before you put the money on it right maybe this house is not for you um why spend the money and have to renovate it so that it has to then spend all the you know money and resource to yeah it's amazing you could you could either be a real estate broker's best friend or a nightmare absolutely I I have that so I I don't usually I don't usually um talk to people about that especially with estate brokers because like you said you know he's gonna come along and he's gonna ruin my deal

30:42Business of Architecture: that's oh that's so fascinating that you that you'd actually um yeah kind of be able to do that sort of audit uh and and and be able to sort of preempt some of those sorts of things that would be suitable for uh a a purchase when you're working with you know kind of typical residential clients you were mentioning earlier that um you know a lot of good design principles are very well aligned with feng shui principles um do you find yourself you know sometimes obviously a client they might come to you they might not know that you're a feng shui uh practitioner um do you find yourself ever wanting to kind of have a separate package of work or sort of say you know what i'm you know you kind of sense that they would be open to the ideas of it and then you can introduce another layer of depth?

31:45Business of Architecture: Or do you typically find people who seek you out, especially because you are a Feng Shui practitioner?

31:54Eric Lam: Yeah, I think that for me, I still haven't quite resolved that part of, you know, how to run the business with my belief in Feng Shui and my classically trained architecture background. is i think if i were in hong kong it's a no-brainer this is something that i would just tell them hey i'm an architect and i've practiced feng shui and they'll be like excellent i don't need to hire another feng shui consultant here it's a little bit different uh you know i i think most of the most of the feng shui practitioner here whichever school they they are in a lot of them rely on clients seeking them out just because I think the feng shui as a genre is still not being widely accepted because it doesn't look at the point as having any real scientific approach to it but like I said I basically contribute it to the fact that most Westerners know the Western style of Feng Shui and not so much about a classical Feng Shui.

33:08Right.

33:09Eric Lam: And I think, you know, for me to move forward, I would say I will probably stick with a model where I will still make it known that I'm practicing a classical Feng Shui. And I think this needs to be a little more clarified than something that I would just spill out of the client when they ask me hey you know i want to do this and do that and and all of a sudden i go hey i'm i do feng shui and why don't i do a study for you on feng shui

33:38Business of Architecture: i don't know how that goes you know sure sure um in in terms of uh let's say how you've used feng shui in your own life how does that what does that look like

33:55Eric Lam: well I have to say I wouldn't be talking to you right now about feng shui if I didn't experience it myself um I I had a really bad health situation um back in 2007 2008 and that was around the time when I was discovering about biophilic design and sustainable design and that was before I even sort of trace back to my roots about feng shui and and this health condition lasts for a long time almost four five six months and at the time i i was basically kind of given up i'm like i'm going to just take the medicine that was given to me by you know whatever the doctor prescribed then I went to get herbal medicine in Chinatown New York and by the way herbal medicine I think I mentioned before is relating to the whole practice holistic practice of feng shui and everything so I had the medicine I feel a little better but at the same time a family friend of mine who was from Hong Kong and said well you try maybe looking at what's going on in your and in your health aspect of your life in light of in you know in the context of feng shui and i'm like what does it have to do with feng shui you know and and i kind of skeptical about that um but then i'll say hey what what i've got to lose i'm not feeling so well so i look into it And basically, I did a little bit of change in my environment.

35:40Eric Lam: And there's some, I wouldn't say, huge adjustment to my environment, but it's enough to make me feel better. So I'm like, oh, that's a little spooky. But then I'm like, okay, well, let's put it, you know, in the to be considered column. Could you describe what it was that you did? So what I did was we had, at the time I was living in a house that my wife and I purchased back then. And we did some modification to the, I'm trying to remember, to the bedroom where we had one part of it is kind of, it wasn't built very, sturdy because i'll say it before it's kind of slanted um so what happens is that we actually have a contractor comes in after i study about feng shui and how the structure is not you know leveled and we discovered that you know one of the principle in feng shui is you know everything should be non-cluttered.

36:55Eric Lam: You know, clutter is one of the, like allowing you to chi to have a place where it's sturdy. And this part of the house is kind of crooked. So we have a contractor who came in and he basically fixed the floor where it was slandish. And it was, I think, a little bit of structural reason for it. So we framed the portion of the house and everything's leveled. and I think at that time things started looking up for me health-wise I felt much better after that again I chalk it up as could be coincidence but then I do feel better that the house wasn't

37:36Business of Architecture: slanted yes yeah that's so interesting that's so interesting I mean I guess you could relate that back as well like the sort of like subtle perceptual effect that being off balance might might have just you know physically and mentally that that over a period of time starts to

37:55Eric Lam: manifest itself in the body which is interesting because to me there's a little bit of environmental psychology involved with feng shui a lot of these things that we we kind of took it for granted um but then they really bother us but we couldn't name it right so it's really kind of fascinating to me that you know when i think about feng shui is is part is part spiritual practice and part environmental psychology it's it's very interesting you know a lot of wealthy

38:29Business of Architecture: people who i who i know have a set of rituals or belief structures perhaps that go beyond what might be considered you know everyday logic if you like and I've always found that really interesting that there's often like a desire or people who are very well accomplished will have a lot of trust in being able to be connected to something greater and actually have some reverence for it and not to dismiss it as just being something frivolous or superstitious though it can look like superstition on the surface of it um and but but just having a reverence and a desire to be connected to something greater and actually kind of um taking some time to think about your environment and actually what becomes so deep is that there are these practices like feng shui which are thousands of years old that cities have been based upon um and they kind of uphold that idea?

39:38Eric Lam: Yeah, absolutely. I think feng shui is not for nothing. It brings awareness for people, understanding their environment, especially where they work, where they live, where they spend most of their time indoor in their life, you know, about what are all these different object arrangements doing to me? Most people don't know that. And I think feng shui kind of brings that awareness to them.

40:05Business of Architecture: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's really it's funny, but my wife and I, we have a, I don't know where I picked this up from, but somebody told me like a Feng Shui principle of, you know, not keeping your shoes by the door, because it kind of blocks, it kind of blocks the wealth energy or coming in and out. and my wife and I turn that into like a ritual where we every evening like we'll make sure that there's nothing blocking the door and that there's kind of a clear space and you know it made us made us find a place to put away our shoes but it you know whether that's you know there's there's a there's a an effect that it has of the ritual of doing it together and there's an effect of just the clarity that comes with like you say not having a cluttered space yes yes uh is

40:52Eric Lam: it's basically a main idea in in feng shui to allow the energy to flow without hindrance right look a shoe by the door is not gonna block all the energy but over time someone's gonna trip over it and that's bad energy right yes yeah and and you start collecting things you start with one shoe before you know it is another pair before you know another pair so clutter become a nightmare over time so i think it's also preaching a little bit of discipline in function there's a lot of um you know things that it's just the mindset that's also get built into how you operate on a daily basis how do you interact with your space you know so that you know you're not creating hazards or unwelcome scenario in your life.

41:49Business of Architecture: How have you used Feng Shui principles in the design of your own business?

41:57Eric Lam: So in my business, it's kind of difficult because it depends on a lot of factors. One is being in business, I'm a sole practitioner. So I have the freedom of working remotely anywhere I want, per se. So trying to find an anchor sometime was hard. But I basically now set up my studio the same as I set it up in my home in regard to what they call commanding position. So one of the things that Feng Shui talks about is you have always not sitting in a way that is not facing the door. you always have some way of seeing it but not directly have your back facing it or not seeing it at all because that is creating anxiety plus to me it seems interesting also because being in a commanding position is a mindset it allows you to act like a boss pretty much and the more you are in a commanding position the more you're able to kind of direct the different traffic, right?

43:16Eric Lam: Traffic in terms of, you know, how the finance goes, how are you dealing with troubling matter, you know, with a job, maybe disgruntled employee, maybe unhappy clients. But as long as you're in a commanding position, I think the mindset is, hey, I'm in control. I could do this. so i set up both my studio and my home office the same way where i'm sitting facing in a way that i'm never had my back facing the door i said i won't be in control you know well this this um

43:53Business of Architecture: you know you hear us talking at boa a lot about the idea of altitude and that we we talk about the altitude of the ceo to be able to be able to see all the different components of the business at and you're describing like the physical manifestation of that idea in this commanding position. Yes, really important.

44:12Eric Lam: It's a really important principle.

44:16Business of Architecture: Amazing. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your journey with BOA as well. I know, as I said at the beginning, you've been with us for a couple of years. What brought you to business of architecture and what have been some of the breakthroughs that you've been creating in your firm?

44:33Eric Lam: So I knew Ineq before then, before two years. I think I knew him back in 2017. And at the time, I knew a little bit about the business of architecture. But I wasn't ready then. I was really kind of still exploring different way of running the business. and it's interesting two years ago I had this revelation and I'm like you know what I gotta I gotta really focus on how to create a business that is no longer just me running it I want to be in a commanding position where I want to be setting up an office so that it create a type of work that i enjoy doing and one of those being more involved into feng shui more involved into biophilic design and and to do that i really need to be focused and i think one of the the the difficulty of running a practice has always been you have so much to do and you only have so much time being one person um that has always been my biggest downfall as far as trying to want an efficient office because i know what i want um i'm i wanted too much at the same time sure so so i i need to kind of well let's figure it out maybe i'm just not doing it in a way that allow me to move three steps forward and not take two steps back type of scenario right i want to be able to take three steps forward and another three step forward so two years ago I decided you know I'm going to talk to you actually I heard a couple of podcasts actually you and a few other practitioners talking about you know development and different things you know what it's interesting what was talked about on the podcast really kind of resonate with these other practitioners they had the same situation or really similar situation that I was in and that's when I go, you know what I'm going to jump both feet into this and make it work and I think two years now I've really learned a lot about things that I thought I knew but it's now coming kind of full circle for me understanding, oh you know what, I did that before and it didn't work and maybe because I was overthinking or maybe because I was not, you know, or maybe because I was thinking about marketing too much or maybe I'm just burying myself into doing production work.

47:30Yeah.

47:30Eric Lam: I don't have the balance, the yin and the yang, right? Yes. So I'm now learning a lot of those and really kind of really putting all those in practice. And I think I can see from the way I practice now It's a lot calmer, a lot more organized, and it still requires a lot of discipline. I'm finding that this really kind of speaks to me because if I don't continue doing what I'm doing with BOA, I probably will go back to the way it was, which is really running a practice by myself and always... overwhelmed and confused. Great.

48:20Business of Architecture: Great. I love it. Amazing. Well, Eric, I think that's a lovely place for us to conclude the conversation. Thank you so much for giving us a kind of tour around your business and your business journey, as well as the fascinating world of Feng Shui. And I think, I just think it's such an amazing, interesting niche to be occupied in well i do have one other question are there a lot of architect feng shui practitioners or normally do you just have one or the other it's basically

48:54Eric Lam: separate um i actually have a couple clients who have their own architects but then they came to me for feng shui consultation only because you know a lot of architects here especially um a quick example i have one colleague of mine when i was studying feng shui with when a master out in california she's opening up a she was opening up opening up a business in arizona and she have the property is a brand new building commercial building that she was developing with her husband and they have the plan all drawn everything and then the very last minute she goes you know what can you do me a favor and study this site plan and see how the feng shui work on it?

49:47And I looked at it from both architecture standpoint

49:51Eric Lam: and from the feng shui principle and discovered that their main door to the store need to be shifted another two feet over in order for them to capture the wealth energy. And I was having a conversation with their architect. Say, hey, you know, we need to do this. I'll show you a map of how I do this. And I think they were a little bit fascinated about how it goes. Like, wow, it make a two feet difference. I said, yeah, it does. So this friend of mine, the colleague, she basically then, you know, have the architect change the plan. And it's been five years now. And I think they're still doing fabulous as far as the business goes.

50:38amazing love it i love it great so it is so it is it's quite a unique kind of combination of both

50:44Business of Architecture: our practicing architect i'm practicing feng shui practitioner yeah amazing brilliant well eric thank you so much and um love love speaking about you and i look forward to talking to you again one of our next meetings about feng shui so thank you very much ryan awesome architect if your design software is collecting digital dust while you're buried in admin work you're not alone you are in admin hell foul delegation isn't just stealing your weekends it's robbing you of the meaningful design work that fueled your passion in the first place the delegation roadmap smart practice tool is your 60 minute blueprint for identifying energy draining tasks and creating bulletproof systems to delegate them successfully one architect cleared 20 hours from their weekly schedule using this tool?

51:35Business of Architecture: What masterpiece could you create with that time? Get this tool 100 % free by going to www.businessofarchitecture.com forward slash delegate. Thank you to our recent listeners who left reviews for the podcast on iTunes. Your reviews help others find this podcast with the rising tide raises all boats. To big noise on the show, open up the podcast app on your iPhone, search Business of Architecture, and after clicking on the show, scroll all the way to the bottom and leave a review. You've built a practice that balances design,

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53:30Business of Architecture: If free advice was enough, everyone would already be crushing it. The truth, free advice can't take you so far. The breakthroughs come when the advice is designed around you. Hey, Ryan here. And I want to thank you for joining us today and remind you that the views expressed in the show by our guests do not represent those of the host. And we make no representation, promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you do your best work and be handsomely paid for it. Carpe diem.