www.lawyerist.com

and

www.thebillablehour.com/timesheet.php

Check out both sites.

I’ll be doing two full 4-hour versions of my Fuel The Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law & Life CLE Ethics Programs in the next few weeks.

A couple things previous attendees have said:

“A Massage for Your Career.”

- ABA Annual Meeting Program Participant.

“The Best CLE Program I’ve Attended in 27 Years.”

- Program Attendee, Reno NV

—

If you’re in Northern Colorado, attend:

Friday, December 17^th, 2010

8:30am-1:00pm

General Credits: 4.0

Ethics Credits: 3.5

Jury Assembly Room, Larimer County Court House

$60 in Advance. $75 at the Door.  All proceeds go to the Larimer County Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.

(Compare to $199 CoBar Home Study CLE Program)

REGISTRATION:

Young Lawyers Division, Larimer County Bar Association

c/o Josh Dart, Esq.

19 Old Town Square, Ste. 238

Fort Collins, CO 80524

For more info:

email: josh@dartlegal.com

phone: (970) 407-0090

NOTE: The Jury Assembly Room only has space for 50 people, so you’ll want to reserve your seat early. Tickets will go fast.

If you can’t attend in person, you can join online via a Webinar hosted by my friend Kendra Brodin and her Women Lawyers Online group.

Dates: December 8th & 9th @ 3:00-4:30PM EASTERN

Location: Online

Fee: TBD

Credits: (3-4 General & Ethics – will have final details soon)

Registration Information: kendra@kendrabrodin.com

—

All Participants will receive:

1. 1. A copy of Kevin Houchin’s most popular book: Fuel the Spark, 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law and Life.
2. 2. 40-Page Fuel the Spark Action Guide to help you integrate the content into your practice and life.

—

Program Description:

Sometimes we all need to look at things from a different perspective. This applies to both our personal and professional lives and how they blend into a successful and fulfilling legal career. Join Kevin Houchin for this nationally recognized Ethics program devoted to finding a more balanced perspective on the rules of professional responsibility and how we can put the rules into an easy system for finding more success in our practice and our lives. This intensive interactive workshop could be the best 3 hours you’ll invest in yourself this year.

Topics

The most profound choice any of us make is either to accept things the way they exist, or to accept our personal responsibility to change them.

PR Rules:

1.2: Scope of Representation

1.7 & 1.8: Conflict of Interest

1.13 Organization as Client

1.18 Duties to Prospective Client

Many successful people have found the simplest rule to success in anything is to “show up.” However, deciding where to show up and how to manage yourself when you get there can be a challenge.

PR Rules:

1.4: Communication

7.1: Communication Concerning a Lawyer’s Services

7.2: Advertising

7.3: Direct Contact with Prospective Clients

7.4: Communication of Fields of Practice

One of the hardest things to do in legal practice and in life is to truly pay attention. We get pulled in so many directions, so how can be do a better job of staying in the moment and how does that help our clients and colleagues?

PR Rules:

2.1: Advisor

5.x: Series

It’s easy to get bored and it happens to us all, so how can we avoid boredom and stay sharp? The answer is to keep multiple irons in the fire at once, paying attention to each in turn.

PR Rules:

1.1: Competence

1.3: Diligence

True fulfillment in legal practice and in life comes when you take the time to give back. Stewardship is the combination of giving ones time, talent, or treasure. This portion of the program helps define how you’ll make your greatest contribution.

PR Rules:

6.1: Voluntary Pro Bono Publico Service

6.2: Accepting Appointments

Faculty

Kevin E. Houchin is a different kind of lawyer. First, he has a fine art degree in graphic design and a dozen years of brand development and small business consulting before going back to law school. He uses both his marketing and legal skills every day in his efforts to help creative people reach their potential.

Kevin counsels creative people about how to maximize their creativity, build their businesses, and protect their intellectual property. Discussions tend to turn toward relationships and creative collaboration often, so sometimes Kevin plays the role of business and life coach in addition to attorney and marketing consultant. He truly enjoys the role of trusted advisor to his clients.

Kevin is the author of the book Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law School and Beyond (March 2009). He is also the author of the forthcoming book The Secrets of Creative Business. He contributed a chapter on the legal issues of social media in the best-selling book Twitter Power, and is featured in KaChing, both by Joel Comm, published by Wiley Brothers Publishing.

Kevin is expert at helping people reach their creative potential, whether as an entrepreneur or as an attorney. He is the Founder of The Space Between Center for Creative Spirit in Business – an organization to helping entrepreneurs including attorneys align who they are with what they do. In addition to working with clients, Kevin writes a regular column for the leading business journal in Northern Colorado, blogs regularly at his several sites, and enjoys one of the top legal followings on Twitter.com. He speaks regularly for creative entrepreneurial business, continuing legal education, and law school audiences throughout the United States.

—

Of course I jumped at the opportunity. Then I jumped on a plane. I’d been hoping for an opportunity to get to San Francisco on business ever since Missing the Flight.  This was it.

I was picked up at the Airport by Mary Kay (my biological mother) with whom I would be spending the first time together ever in my almost 42 years of life. We got to spend some great time.

The next morning I was able to hook up with one of the Members of The Space Between Center for Creative Spirit in Business lawyer mastermind group, Kristen Kuse and have our first in-person chat. Then off to the venue.

The presentations were given in a segmented area of the Exhibit Floor of the Annual Meeting. Mine is titled: “The F-Word Manifesto” and deals with 4 F-Words: Fear, Fail, Flat & Free.  Here’s the presentation.

You can pop over to the F-Word Manifesto Web site and sign up to receive the freebies.  Also take advantage of scheduling a 20-minute “Ask Anything” conversation with me.  I’m convinced that my flat fee model will work in any service business if you do a little homework, get past your fear, and have a little faith.  I’d love to help you figure out how to implement this system in your business too.

You can find the other ABA Ignite presentations here.

I’ll be doing a similar presentation of The F-Word Manifesto talk at Ignite Fort Collins #6 on September 22st.  You can get your Free tickets here.  The presentation I’ll do that night will be tailored for service businesses in general rather than just for lawyers.  I hope to see you there or talk to you soon on a 20-minute Ask Anything call.

Replies & Comments Welcome.

-

This is an “Ignite” style event – all the speaker have 6 minutes with 20 slides on auto-timers.  If you’ve ever been to an Ignite event locally, do it.  You’ll find that these are very high-energy programs and I’m sure this Legal Rebels program will be a crazy good time – at least a crazy good time for lawyers.  :-)

Here’s the list of speakers:

Paul Lippe

Gregory Norman Fernandez

Stephanie Kimbro

Kevin Houchin  (That’s ME!)

Ron Baker

Alexis Martin Neely

Kevin O’Keefe

Michael O’Connor

Francine Ward

Matthew Homann

A video of each talk will be posted at legalrebels.com during the month of September.

—

If you are not yet registered for the ABA 2010 San Francisco Annual Meeting, please take a moment to register now at www.abanet.org/annual/2010 .  For specific registration questions or details about the Annual Meeting in General go to www.abanet.org/annual/2010<http://www.abanet.org/annual/2010 or call 312/988-5871.

If you’re reading this as an email, rather than a blog post, you’re being served by the system.

But now, after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to change the system over to AWeber to manage my contact lists.

So, as an incentive to have you opt into the new list system, I’m offering you a few valuable gifts.

1.  An updated version of my NO LAME NAMES ebook.

2. A new ebook discussing the topics you should understand when considering forming a business – specifically YOUR LLC.

3.  The first chapter from my FTC-TOOLKIT product that will give you an intro to the issues you need to understand regarding the Federal Trade Commission Guidelines for the use of endorsements and testimonials in your marketing.

To get these ebooks, just visit my Website at http://www.houchinlaw.com and sign up  - I don’t think you can easily miss the sign-up area.  :-)  After confirming your email address, you’ll receive a link to the dowload page.  It’ll take about 30 seconds of your time, but you’ll I’m sure you’ll feel well rewarded.

I hope all three will provide great value to you and I look forward to seeing your name in the new list so I can keep you updated on all the fun things happening through the firm and my other initiatives.

Sincerely,

Kevin Houchin

This information IS that important.

A lot of people are waking up to “Conscious” Business, instead of just stumbling though business and life in the usual fog.

Conscious Business is a trend in business that’s getting a lot of attention.

Doing well by doing good.

The new discussion on the table is how are we consciously generating  business and what is the process of consciousness in business development?

Business as it has been done is just not working. . . and conscious business is more than  people, planet, profits and passion.

Dawn and Rikka will both be speaking at a single event here in Fort Collins next week.

August 4, 2010

9 am to 1 pm

Rikka will be speaking on the subject of Getting Out of Your Own Way and Dawn will be giving a talk on Conscious Business Development.

Rikka Zimmerman

Rikka’s Background:

Rikka Zimmerman; author of  soon to be released “21 Secrets of the Universe” and Access Consciousness Facilitator is a world class leader in the consciousness movement. She is a gifted speaker and workshop facilitator domestically and internationally. Her work empowers, enlightens, engages, and inspires.

Dawn Todd

Dawn’s Background:

Dawn Todd is a Collaboration Strategist, a Client Attraction Expert, a Certified Coach  and CEO of Wildly Successful, Inc.  She is the creator of The Inside Edge ™ , Founder of Wildly Successful Network and author of Make Money, Change the World – Conscious Business Development for Entrepreneurs and The Power of Positivity. She has been a small business owner for over 25 years.

Access Conscious Business

• Learn the practice and structure of using consciousness in business
• Expand your clients, income and business
• Eliminate beliefs that prevent your success
• Bring conscious business practice to ground for you and your company
• Hands on, practical tools for  more sales,  better systems,  and conscious leadership in your organization

Conscious individuals transform business. Create a new framework for how business works!

RVSP NOW

“It’s Foolproof!”

“I think you’re nuts.”

-       Finding Nemo

Are you attracting the type of clients you want?

I’m surprised at how many lawyers and non-lawyers answer “no” because it’s really not that hard to do. It seems that not a week goes by when I’m not asked how I’ve been successful in attracting the clients I love to work with – entrepreneurs.

You can use my system to attract your perfect clients, no matter who they are. You don’t need a massive marketing budget either, because you can do everything on this list without spending a dime.

Here are the steps.

1. Know the type of problem you will be helping people solve until they put you in a hole.
2. Create a product or service offering to solve that problem.
3. Share information of value to people experiencing that problem for free via your blog.
4. Let people know where they can find what you’ve posted on your blog.
5. Allow people to hire you to help them solve their problem.

Want to know more?

I thought so.

Here’s how you do it.

Step 1: Know the type of problem you will be helping people solve until they put you in a hole.

That may sound crass, but when you know what you love to do – the thing you can’t NOT do – you’ll have recognized your purpose in life and retirement will be an obsolete concept.  The day you commit yourself to aligning your income streams with that thing you love to do will be the day you “retire” no matter if your 65 or 25. For instance, I’ll be helping people share their creativity with the world through entrepreneurism until the day I die.  I can’t NOT help those people. What will you do until the day you die, happily, and for free?

Step 2: Create a product or service offering to solve that problem.

You have to “package” your passion into something people can repay you for.  Notice I didn’t say “pay you for”, I said “repay” you for.  You MUST provide value first. You have to put it out there.  You put it out there for free initially (see the next step), but don’t expect people to take a risk on you – you must take the risk on them.

If you have a service offering, package it up in some way that doesn’t equal a blank checkbook – in other words, do you absolute best to avoid pricing your service by the hour.  Hourly fees are lose-lose, you only end up trading your life for a few bucks.  Sometimes you’re not worth your hourly rate, sometimes you’re worth a thousand times more. It’s a bad, outdated, shortsighted metric of value. If you can build in some continuity, such as a monthly flat fee for your services that lasts for a year, then do it.  Trade a long-term relationship for a higher project fee every time you can.

If you have a product offering, price it to move, but at a profit.  The key to success is to make a lot of people a little happier, at a profit each time. If you can build in some continuity (and you can), do it.

Step 3: Share information of value to people experiencing that problem for free via your blog.

There is no excuse for not having a blog. None. You can have one set up for free inside of 10 minutes. Just go to http://www.wordpress.com and you’re good to go.  If you have 20 minutes, you can get your own domain name and have a wordpress blog set up in your own name or brand, like http://houchinlaw.com , http://www.spacebetweencenter.com or http://kevinhouchin.com . It doesn’t take a technical genius, it only takes a bit of passion for your message, which shouldn’t be a problem if you took step one seriously.

The thing I hear most often is “but I don’t know what to write…”  Ugh.  Yes, you do know what to write.  At least if you took step one seriously you do, because if you took step one seriously you have something to say.  It’s more likely that you probably have so much to say that you don’t know where to start and are simply overwhelmed.  Or, you’re really just afraid that you can’t write.

So, just have a conversation.

Imagine a perfect client sitting in your plush office.  What question do they ask you?  That’s a blog post.

• What do they fear?  Each of those fears is a blog post.

• What gets them jazzed? Each spark of enthusiasm is a blog post.

• What’s the latest and greatest thing in their life?  That’s a blog post.

• What just made YOU happy about the progress toward solving the problem from step 1?  Blog post.

• What just made you angry about a setback? Blog post.

Are you starting to get the picture?

500-1000 words.  Just a few paragraphs.  FYI, we’re at just under 800 words right now.

I work with a lot of lawyers. There is absolutely no excuse for lawyers not to write because the one thing law school did to benefit each of us was to thrash the fear of writing 500 words in 15 minutes out of us. The place lawyers screw up is that they think they have to write like we did in law school or for the court. They think they have to include footnotes and case citations proving up every factual statement.

When lawyers write a blog post, they should write for clients, not other lawyers. No footnotes. No case citations. Minimal statutory citations (only if they’re REALLY helpful.)  You don’t get brownie points for acting smarter than your clients. They expect you to know the source, and they really don’t care where the answer comes from, just that you know how to help them, so don’t slow them down for the sake of your ego. Only your competition cares about the citation. Help them if you want, but I’d rather focus on attracting clients.

If you’re afraid you can’t write, then record yourself and pay someone the $12/hour it takes to have that recording transcribed.  If that’s too technical for you, trade services with a copywriter who can interview you for 15 minutes and type up a blog post for you.  There’s nothing wrong with “ghost bloggers” helping share your message.

If you don’t write or don’t want to work in the written word, record yourself and post audio files, or even better, do video files (known as a “vlog”).  None of these will take much money or any real programming skill.  If you can use a computer, you can accomplish these tasks.  If you’re not willing to do any of this, get used to looking at the world from the inside of a cubical – if you’re lucky.  These activities are becoming more critical to successful businesses of any size every hour.

WordPress blogs also have “Pages” where you actually share how people can REPAY you for the valuable content you’ve shared with them via your blog by hiring you for your services or purchasing your products – maybe even both – but we’ll talk about that in step 5.

Step 4: Let people know where they can find what you’ve posted on your blog.

This is where social media comes in. You know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and if you’re a video-savvy person, YouTube. These are speed-networking-on-crack and blow the roof off of conventional media outlets.  Sure, you’ll want to submit your great articles to major publications, but get the quick stuff out quickly – via your social media networks. Provide value and share the value.  Your blog is the hub. Media outlets are the spokes.  Almost all of the good ones are free.  Again, no excuses.

You can very quickly and easily set up your system to update your twitter.com status every time you post a new entry to your blog, and have that update Facebook and then LinkedIn, AUTOMATICALLY sharing your content with the world even EASIER than copy/paste. Again, no excuses.

If you are comfortable speaking in public, start giving talks to groups of people who personify the ideal of your perfect client. When you show up to speak, you’ll walk away with clients.  The key is to create as many avenues for people to engage with the content on your blog as you possibly can.

Integrated Marketing Model for Lawyers

Step 5: Allow people to hire you to help them solve their problem.

If you’ve thoughtfully, sincerely, and regularly completed steps 1-4, your perfect clients will find you. They’ll ask for your products and services.  You just have to let them.  Too many people say “I’m just doing this for fun” and fail to create an income stream from their passion or hobby that will allow them to escape the day job and “retire” doing what they love.

If you take just these few steps and practice them regularly, the income streams will appear and you’ll be able to focus as much time on them as you want. You’ll “retire” well before you’re 60s because you won’t think of quitting what you do for a living – what you do FOR a living will be aligned with ACTUALLY LIVING, now. What could be better than that?

This is the only life you have (at least right now), why waste another day of it doing something you don’t love?

The model just got the attention of the American Bar Association – specifically the ABA Journal online edition. They are currently running a short feature on the model and the firm on the front page of the ABA Journal Web site.

ABA Journal Online Home Page

I’m sure it won’t be on the front page forever. So I grabbed a screen capture.

ABA Journal Online Article

The full article will probably be online indefinitely, but I grabbed a screen capture of that too.

Many might question the wisdom of sharing that I’ve been through a personal bankruptcy and the struggles surrounding that time in my life, but it’s part of the story and helps put the who issue in full context. I learned a great deal during that experience and I believe what I learned has value to other people in both that as I survived, so will they and that it’s better to try and fail then to never try at all.  Then get up and keep trying new things until something works.

I think I’ve found a system that works, for me, and for my clients.  Other people are starting to think so too.

—