values – Page 22 – The Business of Creativity

International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers

I just joined this organization…

IAHL Mission Statement:

The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers’ mission is to transform the practice of law, through education and support of holistic practice.

Our Vision:

The IAHL envisions a world where lawyers are valued as healers, helpers, counselors, problem-solvers, and peacemakers. Conflicts are seen as opportunities for growth. Lawyers model balanced lives and are respected for their contributions to the greater good.

If more people signed on to that vision statement, the world would be a better place. 🙂

Here’s their Web site: http://www.iahl.org/

Creative Power – Scene Magazine Column – July 07

Creative POWER
© 2007 Kevin E. Houchin

As an intellectual property and business development attorney, creative people surround me. I want it that way. I love it that way. I’ve been surrounded by creative people all my life, from the farm I was raised on (it takes creativity to get a few tons of tractor out of a mud hole), the guys in my fraternity house (engineers mostly), my fellow fine art undergraduates, the advertising pros I worked with before going to law school, my fellow law students, and now my clients. You’re surrounded by creative people right now too–just look around and notice all the creative energy filling the air around you.

Some people think creativity and successful business are opposites. They’re wrong. Creativity is the life-blood of business. Creativity is the POWER behind success in business and in life. You are probably no stranger to this, but sometimes things like invoices and deadlines distract us all.

Look around again. Look beyond the walls of your cubical, office, or studio. The business of creativity is changing. Look at Google. Look at YouTube. Look at MySpace. Visit CreativeCommons.org. The change may not seem that obvious, but it’s there and it’s very POWERFUL. The change is simply this – the face of creativity is leaving the fear-and-scarcity-based model of “protecting” creative work and moving toward an open-and-abundance-based model of “sharing” creative work. This is a profound shift enabled by digital technology. Those who understand, embrace, master, and BALANCE this shift first will make a living being creative and sharing the fruits of that creativity at the same time. That seems like true freedom to me…not a bad way to go through life.

While this is a profound shift, I think it’s very important to understand that this is not a new goal. The framers of the US Constitution understood that for society to advance, creativity (inventions and art) had to be shared. Each successive person must have access to the previous generation of creativity to build new ideas. Humanity advances through creativity. This truth goes back further than the Constitution. Check out the words of folks like Solomon, Jesus, Mohamed, and Buddha, and don’t forget to read the text of the Tao. It’s not just being creative that matters–it’s sharing that creative “fruit” with others that brings reconciliation and power.

In my law practice it’s easy to spot the people filled with this power. They’re the one’s who have easily committed everything they are and have to the idea, process, gizmo, or other form of creative expression. They’re “all-in.” They aren’t scared. They’ve surrendered their fear of being ripped off. They know that whatever they do in the future, they’re ALREADY successful. The only reason they’ve come to me is to make sure they are building the right balance of giving to society vs. receiving enough benefit to enable creation of the next contribution–be it painting, song, architectural work, cooking widget, branding package, or whatever fuels their passion.

I have some other clients who are wonderfully, prolifically creative, but sometimes get a bit caught up in the fear of getting ripped off. Obviously, one doesn’t want to invest literally years of one’s life in a creative effort, only to have the blessings of that effort redirected to someone who hasn’t invested the energy. Yes, there are people out there who are like creative vampires–sucking the benefits of the creative effort away from the artist or inventor, and sometimes those people can be hard to spot. Your lawyer can, and should, be a channel for your fears, allowing you to release that negative influence and concentrate on the true creative power of your natural calling. You should focus your creative energy upon sharing the fruit of your labor.

Sharing is the key to the successful creative business. It always has been, and it always will be. Whoever shares the most, will receive the most. Whoever provides the most value will receive the most value. You might say “Houchin, that’s crazy. Look at Microsoft.” Yes, for years Microsoft has zealously protected their brands and inventions. Some say the company has been a creative vampire, resulting in huge profits. One can also look at this company and say they have provided a great deal of value at a very reasonable price to a huge number of people. I CHOOSE to use MS Word on my Mac because it gives me the most value for my money. In one sense, this is a perfect example of sharing and receiving. But you don’t have to look far to notice things are changing. The open-source concept is starting to get real traction in the software industry. Royalty-free models have been working in music, photography, and art for years. Google Alerts may be putting traditional clipping services out of business. It doesn’t cost anything for a MySpace page or to watch videos on YouTube. CreativeCommons.org gives away intellectual property licenses that help people share. The process of sharing evolves, just like the results of creativity.

The power of creativity is found in sharing the results. How powerful are you now? How powerful will you be in the future?

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Kevin E. Houchin principal of Houchin & Associates, PLLC – a copyright, trademark, arts & entertainment, business development, and branding firm located in Fort Collins, Colorado. To contact Kevin, call 970-493-1070 or email kevin.houchin@houchinlaw.com.

Something New Every Day…

Yesterday I posted the quote from Lance Secretan’s book Inspire! This morning I received a thank you note from him for placing the quote.

I was amazed both by his willingness to spend a couple moments to send the thank you (he must get quoted quite a bit, so sending the email shows some true consistency with the values he presents in his books – adding credibility to this reader’s thoughts of him…) – but also because he KNEW about the published quote at all. I don’t flatter myself enough to think well-known authors and leadership experts spend a lot of time hitting my little blog, so there had to be something else going on… So, I asked him how he knew.

“Google Alerts”

So I “googled” “google alerts” and guess what – the top listing is Goggle’s FREE alert service. You just type in the search string you want them to watch for you, and you’ll get an email when something gets a hit (I think it’s in digest form once a day). I signed up. This is like having the biggest clipping service on the planet working for you for free and providing daily reports.

If you do any PR or blogging at all, I’d sign up for this.

THANK YOU LANCE!

Pricing Model(s)

As you know, I’m building Houchin & Associates around an integrated set of legal and marketing services. I believe it’s a unique model, which has benefits and challenges. Many of my clients are telling me they love the fact that I can (and will) give advise on both legal and marketing issues.

I want to take this to the next level. I want to come up with a pricing model that matches what I love doing (listening, identifying issues, coaching, and giving advice) with what clients seem to need most.

I want to provide so much value for the fee that it’s a no-brainer to choose this firm over “conventional” law or marketing firms.

Consider this post an invitation for feedback on some ideas. Feel free to tell me I’m crazy and that the conventional pricing models of legal and marketing services are the way they are simply because these pricing models have proven effective over decades of use. I’ll feel free to ignore that advice and try to shake things up anyway – you know me, it’s the kind of guy I am…

NOTE: I was getting a lot of “blog spam” in the commentary sections, so the best way to give feedback is to send me an EMAIL.

Here are two quotes from some great books to put us in the right frame of mind.

From “Inspire! What Great Leaders Do” by Lance Secretan:

We overuse the word “driven.” We want to be values-driven, customer-driven, mission-driven, market-driven, technology0driven, solutions-0driven, and self-driven. Perhaps this is why so many people are driven to drink, driven insane, or driven to distraction? Are Zen masters “driven”? Were Christ, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, or Mother Teresa “driven”? Is being driven part of the problem rather than part of the solution? What would it look ilie if we were customer-inspired? Or market-inspired? Or values-inspired? Or family-inspired? Wouldn’t anyone rather be inspired than driven? There is a greater sacredness and inner beauty associated with inspiration, the breath of God, compared to the manic style of the old story leader that causes us to be driven – and thus drained.

From one of my all-time favorite business books: “The Trusted Adviser” by Maister, Green, and Galford:

More value is added through problem definition than through problem answer.

(I love that quote, and when you think about it, I think you’ll see it’s truth…)

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This post is getting long, so I’ll try to cut to the chase now.

I’d like to offer clients a flat monthly fee that is simply for my advice and counsel. Of course I could go broke if this was defined as doing all the legal or marketing work. Therefore the challenge is to define both the price and what’s included in that retainer.

I don’t like tracking my time, but I have to – it’s something I can’t get away from. I don’t like putting a price on each hour or fraction, but again, that’s the reality.

I think the value of my advice is subjective to the client, not objective relative to time I’ve invested. For example, I could spend 3 hours working on a contract that is of relatively little importance to the client, yet say something in a 15 minute conversation that solves a huge problem or allows someone to sleep at night – that 15 minutes was just worth way more than the 3 hours of contract work.

One thing I would like to do is have people WANT to call me to talk about their issues, without thinking they are always “on the clock.”

Perhaps I can set a retainer at $______ which includes conversations and emails that (as stated in The Trusted Advisor) focus on issue DEFINITION and approaches to finding solutions. Then, if I need to engage in actually drafting the contract, filing the TM registration, engaging in litigation, etc we would move out of the retainer and into the flat fee or hourly models.

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I just got off the phone with one of my favorite clients. She suggested that I offer three packages to clients:

Straight hourly work. (at a higher hourly rate…)
Project Flat Fee + Hourly
Retainer + Reduced Flat Fee + Reduced Hourly Rate
The challenge is setting the rates.

Right now, my hourly rate is $175 for consulting and $250 for litigation. Those rates are relatively low-mid for the area, but would be considered WAY low in Denver or in my areas of specialization, and they do not take into account my marketing/branding background and the value that creates in the discussion.

Perhaps my fee structure should look something like:

$250 for hourly work – consulting and litigation.

Project Flat Fees: For example, to file a TM application I charge $800/mark/class + an hourly rate ($175) for the inevitable office actions.

$1,000/month retainer for “business coaching” advice (legal and marketing/branding), and then $175/hour for actual work “solving” the problem – transactional work like drafting contracts or negotiating deals. Another way to think about this would be the retainer covering “counselor” time and the hourly rate covering “attorney” time.
Actual marketing/branding PROJECTS would be quoted conventionally as projects.

My thought is that the $1,000 MIGHT be capped at 6 hours of consultation time per month (or maybe it’s just “unlimited”). I’m doubting that my entrepreneurial clients will have the time to talk with me for more than 6 hours of “defining the problem” each month. There-in lies the risk… I would do the retainer on a month-to-month basis I think, that way if the value is not present for both the client and/or myself, neither is “trapped” in the relationship/contract for more than one month and can make adjustments accordingly.