Category: Creativity

No Lame Names (FREE) talk in Fort Collins

Refresh NoCo Power Lunches begin in March

Thursday, March 11th, 12 Noon to 1pm
Art Lab Fort Collins, 239 Linden St. (next to Cozzola’s Pizza)

Grab Your Brown Bag Lunch and join your marketing, design, and web friends for an informative yet entertaining lunch learning session:

Kevin Houchin, Creative Business Lawyer, presents the first in this series:

No Lame Names.

Help yourself and your clients create brands for their companies, products, or services that will be both MARKETABLE and PROTECTABLE.

Before going to law school Kevin was a graphic designer. He wasn’t one of those people who would just buy a Mac and some software from Adobe and then call himself a designer.He spent 4 years at a top university and have a BFA in Graphic Design. He started his career in the design department of a Fortune 500 company and then built an Art Department in a small advertising agency. He built his own design studio, worked as Vice President of Marketing and Internet for a retail software company, and finally provided large-scale branding and communications consulting for colleges and universities all across the United States.

Kevin has designed dozens of logos and branding systems and supervised the design and implementation of dozens more.

The hardest part of those jobs: lame names.

This session walks you through the discussions Kevin has had with his clients. If you attend the session and then follow the steps in his FREE ebook (available free at www.houchinlaw.com – just input your email address) you will understand how to help yourself and your clients create brands for their companies, products, or services that will be both MARKETABLE and PROTECTABLE. It’s not easy. It can be frustrating, but the right name is the hub of your brand and few businesses or products will succeed in today’s market without a great name.

Where did February Go?

It’s almost the end of February, 2010.  The last 8+ weeks have been a blur of activity, but some cool things have happened:

1.  H&A has welcomed a new client every week so far in 2010 on average, with another handful pulling a few final details together before pulling the trigger to start their new companies. Almost all of these new clients are start-up businesses with some incredibly creative plans.  Some are existing businesses that are launching new products and services and need our help structuring joint ventures or helping with intellectual property strategies.  We LOVE working with these kinds of folks and they fit right in with our existing base of creative business clients. On that front, our existing clients haven’t stopped their creative output – while we love new clients, it’s just as fun to see the growth and success of the people we’ve helped before.

2.  I get to say “we” now because now I have an Associate Attorney on staff again.  I had a part-time associate back in 2007, but I honestly didn’t have the consistent flow of work needed to support the position back then, so I took a couple years to figure some things out (including the flat fee model introduced last May – more on that in a minute).  I’m happy to announce that Christina Robertson has joined me as a full-time Associate Attorney as of a couple weeks ago.  Christina graduated with a J.D. from The University of Denver College of Law and will complete her M.B.A. this semester – with an emphasis on entrepreneurism.  Obviously, she’s a perfect fit for H&A and is already helping me catch up on work.  I REALLY needed the help and she’s stepped into the role quickly.  Welcome Christina!

3. I’ve officially started The Creative Business Lawyer Program with my good friend Alexis Martin Neely. This program is helping other lawyers who focus on the needs of small business people change their perspectives and business model to better serve their clients, themselves, their families, and their communities. One of the key elements of being a CBL member is learning how to implement the monthly, flat-fee client relationships that have literally changed my since last May.  I’ve basically eliminated hourly billing (which NOBODY likes). If you want to learn more about this program (I have over 30 clients on the flat fee model now), go over to www.creativebusinesslawyer.com and let us know you’re interested.  If you are an entrepreneur, we’ll send you a list of our attorney members and you can find one that fits your needs.  If you’re a lawyer who wants to make some SERIOUS improvements in your life, then let us know you’re interested and we’ll get you signed up for our next open membership enrollment call on March 18th.

4.  We’re finally settling into the new office space in the Fort Collins Museum of Contemprary Art.  This building is a historic landmark. It was built in 1912 as the Post Office for Fort Collins.  Wonderful vibes.  My assistant, Nora, just told me she has ideas for opening her own business now that she’s been exposed to so much entrepreneurial and creative spirit coming from our clients and our new location. Good things are happening.

5.  Speaking events.  I have a bunch of speaking events starting to book including Ignite Fort Collins on March 4th, a lunch lecture on Trademark on March 11th, and a couple fun presentations at The National Guild of Hypnotists Annual Meeting and The American Bar Association Annual Meeting – both in August.  I’ll post details on those soon.

I’ll try to do better about blogging, but it might take a little while.  I have several major writing projects that need my attention, but more on those as they get closer to completion.

Tobin (my 6-yr-old daughter) just woke up and is asking for breakfast.  Gotta go.

On Recognizing Your Life’s Purpose.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. This is the beginning of the season where we of the Western tradition begin to reflect and celebrate the light (wisdom, power, spirit) of the divine being manifested in humans. A few years ago I felt inspired to write an essay on the topic of Advent and Christmas, and that calling happened again today on the related topic of recognizing one’s life purpose(s).

As many of you know I’m a big fan of social media, especially Twitter.com (@kevinhouchin) and Facebook (Kevin E. Houchin). I recently posted the following and received a couple responses that motivated me to start writing.

Purpose

The question about HOW to recognize purpose is a question that a lot of people have. While I don’t profess to have THE answer, I think I have AN answer–one that I’ve shared in my Fuel the Spark books, in my workshops, seminars, and keynotes, and will definitely share again in my next book: The Secrets of Creative Business. But I don’t want you to have to wait or have to pay for this, because sharing this information is at the heart of MY purpose on the planet.

First, and this is VERY important, understand that you are not searching for your purpose, instead, the goal is to recognize your purpose. Searching for your purpose will lead you to failure every time, because by searching, you are looking outside yourself to find something that’s already inside you. If you search outside yourself, you’ll be fooled into accepting what other people think your purpose should be as what your purpose really is.

Second, know that you probably have more than one purpose, or at least more than one way to manifest that purpose in the world. Properly stated, your purpose will never be “completed” but you will always be in the process of fulfilling the purpose without “failure.”  Many times, if you feel that you have more than one purpose, each purpose you state will be related in some form to a higher purpose that you have not yet recognized and articulated. I’ll give you an example and then we’ll move on to why recognizing your purpose has become so difficult.

I created my purpose statement using the tools and structure from the book Inspire: What Great Leaders Do by Lance Secretan. (No, I don’t have an affiliate relationship with Lance.) This is one of my favorite books ever and one I think everyone should read.  My kids will be required to read this as soon as I think they can understand what’s being discussed and I’ll probably read it out loud to them well before they can read it on their own. Lance breaks purpose down into three statements: Destiny, Cause, and Calling.  Here are mine:

  1. Destiny: To reach my full potential in this lifetime by helping as many other people as I can reach their full potential in this lifetime.
  2. Cause: Every person on Earth recognizes their personal spark of divinity and begins to share their flame.
  3. Calling: Writing and speaking around the world to share the recognition of the personal divine spark and give people the tools they need to be accountable and share their spark.

This essay is a step toward fulfilling my purpose on the planet. My law practice, where I help people find ways to make their living through creative business (sharing their spark of divinity) is another. My books and speaking events are a literal calling to help people understand these concepts and then have the tools to act on what they’ve recognized in themselves. In a quite moment last night I literally heard my little voice say I needed to write this essay for my friends Terri and Marla who commented on Facebook, and share the essay with the world via my blog. I know my purpose. Now let’s get back to recognizing yours.

Understand that it’s not your fault if you can’t articulate your purpose yet, because it’s not something we’re taught in Western culture. In fact, our entire culture seems to be structured around obscuring your purpose or providing you with all kinds of false paths. This isn’t done intentionally. Most of the people providing these false paths to nowhere do it out of love and pure intention, but as we’ve discussed, anything coming from outside yourself is going to be a false path. Most of the time, these folks who are trying to help you find your purpose really have no sense of their own which means this isn’t really their fault either.

Your parents provided purpose in your life. They sent you to school, they taught by example, they taught by providing positive and negative feedback for your actions. Many of us discuss what we want to be when we grow up with our parents and sometimes our parents do far too much to drive that decision down a path that THEY define as “success” or “security” out of love for you and sometimes out of a desire to reach some unrecognized or unfulfilled purpose of their own.

If you were lucky enough to have some great teachers in your life, they probably exhibited some examples of purpose for you. How many people wanted to grow to be like one of their teachers or coaches? While at school, you find friends and those friends help shape your dreams, goals, and definitions of success – for better or worse. After school, you go to work and the culture of the job or company shapes your purpose.

The religion of your parents, friends, and nation also shapes your definition of life purpose, usually with a moral undertone, but again as an influence from outside. How many times has religion been used as a tool to bend people’s purposes from what is inside them to what is willed from behind the pulpit. No religion is exempt from these examples and I believe that most of the time the outside influence is delivered with the purest of intentions. But none of these influences will guide you to your true life purpose, because your purpose can’t be FOUND because it’s not LOST.  It’s inside you right now. All you need to do is recognize, accept, and surrender.

I’m about to share with you the most powerful (yet simple) tool and process for recognizing your life’s purpose that I’ve found, and I’ve been working on this for YEARS. But first you have to be in a state to use the tool. This process can be used in your personal life, your career, or even at a business planning level. To make it work, you have to be able to get quiet.

Western culture doesn’t like people to be quiet. We’re bombarded with stuff every second. I do workshops and ask the attendees to just sit quietly and look at a dot on the wall for just one minute. To a person all of them think it’s the longest 60 seconds they’ve ever spent. We are taught to multi-task. We are taught to be on the go all the time. We are not taught to just be. We are not taught how to find the space between thoughts, but it’s in the space between that we find the place where God, the Universe, Spirit, Zero Point Field, or whatever you call the higher power can speak to us in a language we understand. It’s there right now trying to help you recognize your purpose. The tool I’m about to share can help you find the space between thoughts and get quiet enough to recognize why you’re on the planet. Nobody can do this for you.

This process is not about searching, but it does involve some work, focus and commitment. It’s not hard, and if done right is actually fun, fulfilling, instantly and permanently rewarding.  Are you ready to start?

Good.

It starts with this quote from an incredible book called The Universal Traveler:

The most profound choice in life is either to accept things as they exist or to accept the personal responsibility for changing them.

What does that quote have to do with life purpose? EVERYTHING.

Your life purpose is simply the thing you accept personal responsibility to change.

It really is that simple, because when you’ve truly accepted the personal responsibility to change something in the world, your path unfolds with opportunities for inspired action and your life will never be the same. Everything you do will be moving you toward the goal of fulfilling the responsibility you have accepted and if something doesn’t move you toward that change you either won’t do it for long or you won’t do it at all.

The work is figuring out where you TRULY and DEEPLY ACCEPT the PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to CHANGE something.

There are plenty of problems in the world that need solved. There are plenty of things that need changed. What are you going to accept as your problem or problems to solve?

What can you NOT live with as it exists?

I can’t live with people going through life in ignorance of the spark of divinity that lives inside them. I can’t stomach people living lives of quiet desperation working in a cubical at a job they hate waiting to have fun only on the weekends because they don’t know how to start their own businesses doing what they love. So, I became a Creative Business Lawyer, started this blog, and have been writing in an effort to change that situation.

I can’t stand how law school takes our brightest, most idealistic young people and beats the creativity and idealism out of them, redefining the definition of success into a trap of top 10% and six-figure salaries doing work they hate and feeding a lifestyle of internal and external conflict. So, I try to help change law schools through helping law school administrators better define their branding, and wrote a book to help law students stay balanced in the face of this 3-year+ hazing ritual. Finally, I wrote a book to help practicing attorneys recognize the trap they may be in and find a way out in order to truly use their passion and skill to manifest their purpose in life.

What can YOU not live with as is?

When you answer that question in the sincerity of your heart and soul, you’ve taken the most profound step toward recognizing your purpose(s) in life because all you have to do is flip the statement around.

Your purpose in life is to change the thing(s) that you can’t live with as they exist.

It’s just that simple.  And that difficult.

When you’ve found the quiet place to do this work, it will come to you. You will recognize your purpose. You will be inspired to act in authenticity in every element of your being and every moment of every day.

I could expand on this quite a bit – and in fact, I will. IMPLEMENTING this work is at the core of my next book, The Secrets of Creative Business. When you know your purpose, it will be time to act and I believe at a soul-level that the best way to implement one’s purpose in life is through founding and building one’s own busines and aligning one’s VOCATION with one’s Purpose and AVOCATION.

Recognize your purpose. Accept the personal responsibility. Surrender to that path and you will find more power than you’ve ever imagined you could wield.

Recognize Your Spark.  Share Your flame.

Big Day, Big Week

It’s a big day and a big week for me. Tonight my friend and marketing partner Joel Comm and I are launching the FTC Toolkit and Site Compliant system tonight on a Webinar (sign up here) to help people become and remain compliant with the new FTC rules and guidelines for use of testimonials and endorsements in marketing and advertising. These rules are going to affect almost every marketer selling products and services to customers in the United States, because most marketers use testimonials somewhere in their campaigns.

I’ve been working on this day and night since the new rules were released on October 5th. And, I’m not alone–I put together a full team of legal, editorial, marketing, and technical pros to bring this product and system together as quickly as possible, with the most thorough tools and systems as we could in time for people to implement our recommendations before the new FTC rules become effective 21 days from today on December 1, 2009.

This has really been a ride, and I hope it’s a ride that is just starting to gain speed.

It came together like this.

On Monday, October 5, 2009 – just 5 weeks ago, the FTC released the new rules. Joel sent me a quick email as he was getting on a plane to return from London after a speaking gig saying that when he got back into the office that Wednesday, he was going to have questions about how the rules were going to affect his information product business. On Tuesday the 6th I downloaded and did a quick review on the rules. Joel and I had some brief conversations on Wednesday.  That night, the 7th, I got home and felt something I can only describe as a “vibration.”

I was vibrating inside, kind of out of sync, excited and a bit off balance. I knew something was about to happen and as soon as I identified that my vibrating had something to do with the FTC rules (but not what yet), I knew I had to clear my schedule on Thursday the 8th and really engage my full attention on the rules.

So, I cleared my schedule to the best of my ability on Thursday the 8th, dug in, and wrote my initial blog post with analysis of the major issues that affect the businesses of my information entrepreneur clients. I sent the draft essay to a friend to proof-read before I posted it. The 8th was my daughter’s 6th birthday, so I knocked off work early to cook her favorite dinner (my famous garlic roast chicken and mashed potatoes). While cooking I came up with the idea to expand (greatly) on the essay and create a product with analysis, standard disclosures, forms, stock agreements, enforcement letters, etc to help every marketer understand the rules, bring their marketing into compliance, and remain compliant as enforcement actions by the FTC clarify the rules through real-life actions instead of the hypothetical examples included in the rules.

I emailed my friend Joel Rothman with the idea because I knew it was too big of a task to do on my own. Joel Rothman is a leading attorney in the area of nutritional supplements law (a major area/target of the FTC with these rules), and an intellectual property litigator. Rothman and I met and became friends when I needed back-up on the iFart v. Pull My Finger iPhone trademark litigation.  I knew he would be interested and be the perfect lawyer to bring into the team. Rothman and I scheduled a call for Monday the 12th to discuss working together on the project.  I went back to cooking and had a great birthday celebration with the most incredible little girl on the planet.

The next morning the edited version of my essay came back and I posted it to my blog and shared it with Joel Comm to see what he thought.  My blog traffic was spiking to an all-time one-day high in unique visitors, then Joel asked if he could post it to his blog at www.joelcomm.com as a guest blogger.  Of course I said “YES” because Joel’s blog is one of the most-visited and most respected internet entrepreneurship blogs on the planet. Traffic spiked again.  I knew this was going to be something big because my body and spirit started vibrating again. I was already getting blogtalkradio.com guest requests.

Monday came. At about 2pm I had the conversation with Joel Rothman. He introduced me to Hugo Ottolenghi, a very experienced business journalist and editor. We decided to work together to put together the “FTC Toolkit” product. I decided to bring in another lawyer friend, Julie Yates, to help craft the standard disclosures, agreements, and policy documents. The legal authoring team was in place. I left the office to pick up my kids.

While I was running an errand with the kids on the way home my cell phone rang. It was Joel Comm, my internet marketing client. Joel said “this FTC thing is big, how about we do a paid conference call where you answer some questions for everyone?” I replied “how about I let you know Rothman and I are putting together an info-product on that topic.” Comm replied “you’re thinking big, how about we do a joint venture and run this though my team and go big.”  I said “sure” and we scheduled a meeting on Wednesday morning in Joel Comm’s office, with his marketing and technical team in the room and my legal writing team on the phone. (Rothman and Ottoleghi are in Florida.)

On the morning of Wednesday, October 14th, the team met and the FTC Toolkit and the Site Compliant program and trust seal were born. Then we went to work. We knew we had to move fast, but be thorough. After all, there was a lot of analysis that needed to be done, and we had to have the product ready to launch well BEFORE the rules go into effect on December 1, 2009. We set what is normally considered a VERY aggressive launch date: November 10, 2009, with a pre-launch Webinar on November 9th.

Now, the Webinar is only a few hours away and almost all the seats are spoken for. The days and weeks since that meeting on October 14th have been intense with early mornings, late nights, and weekends of working on the project. (and trying to serve clients during the day too…).

Tonight the energetic vibration I felt on October 7th manifests as the launch of the FTC Toolkit and the Site Compliant system. This project is motivated by an intention to serve as many people as we possibly can. I believe in helping small businesses (and large businesses) reach their potential. I think the creativity found in small business is divine. Helping businesses understand these FTC rules and stay out of trouble is an opportunity that came out of the blue, but I feel the idea was inspired, and so was the action, or else the team would not have been able to put such a comprehensive system together so quickly. Honestly, I hope a lot of people invest in the Toolkit and join the Site Compliant program, but even if they don’t, I’m still incredibly proud of the work we’ve done in the last few weeks and look forward to seeing how the next chapter of this adventure unfolds.

Later this week I get to travel to Reno, NV to present to Continuing Legal Education workshops at a bar association event. Thursday morning I lead a session based on my book Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law and Life, and that afternoon I do a session on Social Media for Attorneys.

Big week.  Wish me luck.

Creativity—You’re Full of It!

The American Bar Association asked me to write the introductory article for the November Issue of The Young Lawyer (one of their many magazines for attorneys). The issue is dedicated to the theme of Creativity.  It’s on the streets now, so I can finally share the essay.  Enjoy.

—

Creativity—You’re Full of It!

By Kevin E. Houchin

You’re full of it! You really are. There’s no way that I’m the first person to tell you. You can’t deny it. You’re full of it up to your eyebrows.

Full of creativity. You were born with it. You are made of wonderful, delicious, colorful, smelly, heaping globs of creativity!

As a child, your humanity burned with the divine spirit of creativity. You imagined games. You imagined friends. And, you even created vivid experiences that existed only in your mind but existed nonetheless.

Then, you went to school.

You learned to live by other peoples’ rules and their ideas of how and what you “should” be. Walls grew that blocked your view of those wonderful places in your imagination. Those walls grew until finally the creativity of your heart, spirit, and right brain were all but abandoned in favor of subjects that could be objectively tested with multiple-choice exams and computer-graded bubble sheets.

Then, you went to law school.

Your walls were adorned with thorns and you were not even allowed to have ideas of your own. Any creativity you were allowed to display was carefully disguised as nuanced synthesis of precedent (other people’s ideas—the older and less original the better).

It felt like you had suddenly become unworthy of being the source of an idea or thought. You felt like a slave to a footnote or maybe like a footnote yourself.

But, you’re not in law school anymore. Now, you’re the only “source” that really matters. Your senior partner may determine your job status and salary, but you get to decide how much credibility to give those things.

If you’re feeling trapped in a job that doesn’t allow you to express your creativity, you have the power to change that. You don’t have to leave your job to feel more fulfilled. Rather, start chopping through the thorns and breaking down the walls that decades of education have placed around your creative spirit. Trust me, you can do this and still be an effective lawyer. It may even be the secret prerequisite to a happy and satisfied life in the law.

There’s no simple seven-step process to recovering your creative spirit. The journey is different for each of us. A simple start is to look for creative opportunities that already surround you. You happen to be holding one of them in your hand. This issue of The Young Lawyer is dedicated to helping lawyers recognize opportunities for expressing creativity in their lives and work. Use it to jumpstart ideas for creative outlets that you would enjoy. Paint, play music, sail, climb, write, spend time with family, do community service, sing—do something other than work.

It’s time to start living a more creative life. Read these articles. Fuel your spark of creativity, and then share your flame. You’re full of it!