November 2009 – The Business of Creativity

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:

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.
Cause: Every person on Earth recognizes their personal spark of divinity and begins to share their flame.
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.

Site Compliant Trust Seal Graphic

For those of you on the mailing list the trust seal graphic that displayed in your email message goes gray and says “status unknown” because the trust seals may only be used on the domain name registered to the trust seal in our Site Compliant trust seal system. If the code is used outside of the domain it’s registered to (such as in my email), it “flops” to an inactive status automatically. If someone is a member of the program, they can create up to 5 trust seals each to be used on a single domain. You can go to my web site at http://www.houchinlaw.com to see what the active trust seal looks like.

FTC Compliance: Blogger Disclosure System

As most of you know by now, I’ve been very busy since the new FTC Rules regarding the use of testimonials and endorsements in advertising were released on October 5th. Remember those rules become effective next Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

I’ve been doing Webinars, Blogtalkradio shows, phone interviews, magazine interviews (no TV appearances yet, but amazingly the national TV media doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to this yet…). I am also a co-creator of the new FTC Toolkit and Site Compliant program and expect to see you using the new Site Compliant Trust Seal right away. Here’s mine:

One question has been coming up over and over – especially for bloggers.

Do I have to put a disclosure next to every affiliate link or can I do one blanket disclosure?

Based on the new rules and the interviews with FTC officials that I’ve been reading, I think you need to do BOTH. So, I set up this site as an example.

Here’s what you’ll find:

1. A Disclosure Page

Some things you’ll notice about this page:

First, it makes the required disclosures of material connection with each organization or entity that pays me a commission for links.

Second, it makes the statement that I intend to be compliant with the FTC rules.

Third, it gives my contact information.

Forth, it tells people how I’m going to disclose material connections on my site.

Fifth, it turns the disclosure page into another marketing page by including examples of all the affiliate links! (I think this is brilliant…, but it’s 3:49am on Thanksgiving for Pete’s sake.)

2. Affiliate disclosures next to every element that visitors might not think I have a material connection with.

—

We’ll be posting this disclosure form to the membership area at www.sitecompliant.com for members to use as part of their membership. Yes, I know it’s short and easy enough that plenty of people are just going to steal this and use it without permission. I can live with that if it helps a few people, but I also sincerely hope that most people will do the right thing (and find an incredible value) by going to www.sitecompliant.com, purchasing the FTC Toolkit and getting their 60-day free membership in the Site Compliant program and start using the trust seal on their site too.

YOU SHOULD BE PART OF SITE COMPLIANT starting NOW.

Is your site compliant?
Don’t risk it. Get The FTC Toolkit now! (I’m an affiliate and co-owner)

OH! And I hope you have a GREAT Thanksgiving, 2009. We all have a great deal to be thankful for. 🙂

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 5^th. 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 6^th I downloaded and did a quick review on the rules. Joel and I had some brief conversations on Wednesday. That night, the 7^th, 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 8^th and really engage my full attention on the rules.

So, I cleared my schedule to the best of my ability on Thursday the 8^th, 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 8^th was my daughter’s 6^th 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 12^th 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 14^th, 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 9^th.

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 14^th 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 7^th 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.

Major Announcement! New FTC Toolkit and Site Compliant program – Webinar

As many of you know, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued new rules relative to endorsements and testimonials. Now, if you use endorsements and testimonials in your marketing (and every marketer worth their salt does) you could be fined thousands of dollars for “deceptive” advertising EVEN IF ALL YOUR TESTIMONIALS ARE ABSOLUTELY TRUE!

I’ll be leading a Webinar with my friend, marketing partner on this project, client, and internet marketing Guru, Joel Comm next Monday, November 9^th at 6:00pm MOUNTAIN time. The Webinar is free, but space is limited. You can sign up HERE.

Again: sign up for the free Webniar Here. Do it now. Space will fill up quickly.

The new rules go into effect December 1, 2009. Yes, in only a few weeks. So are you ready?

Do you even know where to begin?

No?

I didn’t think so.

Well, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. Most people don’t – and it’s not your fault because the new guidelines were just released a few weeks ago and they are subject to some different interpretations.

Joel and I will be discussing many of the implications of the new rules and introducing the project, product, and system that I’ve been working on almost non-stop ever since the new rules came out. Really, I’ve been dreaming about this stuff. Just ask my wife and friends – they’re sick of listening to me talk about this. Of course as a co-author of this product I’m hugely invested and probably a bit biased, but I’m convinced this is really going to help a lot of people quickly figure out what they need to do.

The product is a guide to the new rules we’re calling the FTC Toolkit. It is a thorough guide to the new rules including analysis, self-assessment checklists, sample disclosures, sample agreements, and sample policies. Incredible stuff here because I’ve not been working on this alone. I’ve assembled a team of lawyers, marketers, and communications professionals with over 75 years of combined experience in the relative material to develop the Toolkit.

We haven’t stopped there, because the FTC isn’t stopping there. These rules are going to evolve as the FTC starts enforcing the rules against people who don’t comply. So, people who purchase the FTC Toolkit will be able to join the Site Compliant(tm) program and receive ongoing updates to the Toolkit content and other timely information as the FTC begins enforcement.

And, we didn’t stop there. Members of the Site Compliant(tm) program will also be able to apply for and be able to use what we believe is the Internet’s first compliance “Trust Seal” that they will be able to proudly display on their site as a signal to consumers and to the FTC that they, as a member of the program, are taking a proactive and affirmative approach to being and remaining compliant.

This has taken a lot of work by a bunch of people over the last few weeks. If you were going to invest in this content from a lawyer on your own you would be need to budget at least $50,000 in legal fees, because my team has at least that much otherwise-billable time invested in this product.

Join us on the free Webinar to learn more. Again, that’s THIS MONDAY, November 9th at 6:00pm Mountain. Sign up HERE.

Remember to sign up NOW because space on the Webinar is limited.