Space Between Center: Authentic Expert Program
Posted on | July 21, 2011 | No Comments
Authentic Expert Program
More than ever, today’s business and entrepreneurial leaders must bring everything they are and nothing they are not to their businesses. By aligning who they are as a person with what they do for a living, leaders create deeply-rooted value and success. Seeing business development and personal development as inextricably linked, leaders become “Authentic Experts.”
The Space Between Center’s Authentic Expert program is a one-to-one customized coaching & consulting engagement with leaders who are committed to authenticity in every aspect of their lives.
Authentic
The program starts with a process of authentication. This authentication process uncovers one’s true self, the spark of divinity given to each of us to recognize, fuel, and share with the rest of the world. The process allows each participant to create a flexible mental model of their authentic niche. Who are you best able to serve with joy, passion, and expertise? What kind of business models can you use or create to share your flame with the rest of the world authentically, sustainably, profitably? How do you create an adaptable mental model for your business that will not shatter as you learn more about yourself, and grow in personal maturity and understanding as you business grows in scope and profitability?
Expert
The program flexes with you moving easily between the spiritual, mental, and practical business leadership challenges you face in the process of sharing your authentic self in the material world. What form of business fits your need? What intellectual property will you develop, share, protect? How will you engage with clients or customers? How will you market your expertise to the people who can benefit from what you offer?
Not Just Another Coaching Program
The Authentic Expert program is not a curriculum designed to force your unique personality into someone else’s process or business model. It’s a program of guiding you to uncover your true self, your authentic purpose, and then help you share what you discover inside with the rest of the world.
All participants will work individually with Kevin Houchin as the facilitator in the process. Kevin is the Founder of The Space Between Center for Creative Spirit in Business, and is himself an Authentic Expert in helping people align who they are with what they do. He is a creative entrepreneur, spiritual & personal development guide, practicing business & intellectual property attorney, mediator, artist, and friend.
Each Authentic Expert client engagement is completely customized individually to fit your specific needs.
See if the Authentic Expert program is right process to uncover your authenticity and align who YOU are inside with what you contribute to the world.
Email Kevin@spacebetweencenter.com now to schedule a free, no-strings attached, 20-minute “Ask-Anything” consultation.
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Tags: adaptable mental model for your business > artist and friend > Authentication > Authenticity > Business/Finance > creative entrepreneur > expert > Founder > intellectual property attorney mediator > Kevin Houchin > Kevin@spacebetweencenter.com > mediator artist > Packaging > Security > Skills > space between center > The Space
Lawyers & Hypnotists…
Posted on | June 30, 2011 | No Comments
Last year I was invited to give a couple of presentations at The National Guild of Hypnotists Annual Conference. You might wonder why an attorney would be presenting to hypnotists, but it’s really very simple—hypnotists are one more service profession trying to escape the bondage of the billable hour.
Like almost everyone who is tired of trading moments of their life for other people’s money, these professionals are creating products that can help people 24/7. In the hypnotherapy industry, this shows up as self-hypnosis audio, video, and written content. Hypnotists become specialists in a niche – “Experts” who are positioned as THE go-to person in their chosen area of passion.
Maybe you’re just like that. Maybe YOU are trying to figure out how to align your passion—who you are as a person—with what you do to make a living.
Last year I presented on the topic of copyright to a standing-room-only audience at the conference. I also presented a talk on The Power of Acceptance in the context of discovering one’s authentic niche. Both presentations received outstanding reviews, so the organizers asked me back this year for expanded offerings. I’m happy to be attending again.
This conference is different.
This conference is dedicated to helping people get the full use of everyone’s primary asset – our mind.
This conference is full of fascinating programming. There are usually 7 or 8 concurrent sessions happening for 3 days. The program has something for everyone, so even if you’re not a hypnotist, you might strongly consider attending anyway. Relative to most 3-day conferences, the registration is VERY inexpensive, only $395.00 for the full three days. You can take a look at the program here. It’s EXTENSIVE.
This year I’ll be giving a 1-hour version of my No Lame Names: Trademark & Branding presentation on Friday, August 12th and a 2-hour version of my Alchemy of Creative Business: Copyright/Copywrong presentation on Saturday, August 13th.
The Bigger Opportunity
The bigger opportunity this year is a 2-day Workshop on August 15th & 16th tilted “How to Create a Highly Profitable Practice in Your Authentic Niche: Identifying & Creating Information Products and Services that Sell Themselves.”
This workshop is for ANYONE who wants to align who they are with what they do. The tuition is only $375 for the workshop ($50 less if you’re a full conference attendee). During the two days I’ll be leading people through the processes of identifying one’s “Authentic Niche” and then outlining the process and developing a strategy for sharing one’s passion through business in order to become what I call an “Authentic Expert.” We’ll be discussing business formation, business relationships, intellectual property (copyright & trademark), marketing, social media, branding, blogging, public relations, and speaking.
If you want to understand more about this workshop and get a few hints that you can implement right away, listen to this teleconference recording.
Download Free Teleconference Recording
I hope to see you at the conference. Tell your friends. This workshop is open to anyone.
Click Here to register for the 2-Day Authentic Niche Workshop on August 15th & 16th. It’ll be well worth the investment.
Finally, don’t worry – nobody will make you cluck like a chicken (unless you volunteer of course…).
Tags: authentic > expert > niche
I love creative clients.
Posted on | June 15, 2011 | No Comments
I’ve been doing a lot of writing for other blogs lately, so my posting here has dropped off a bunch, and I want to do something to change that. What is that something? Get up early and write more.
I had a meeting with a new client yesterday. This man retired after 20 years in a corporate job for a major international company. Then he got really creative. For the last few years he’s been working on hobby-type projects—just stuff that interested him—and prototyping different products. One of the products is ready for market, well designed, a fun name, very interesting. (I’ll share more about this in separate post soon). One of the products is a learning system that he’s currently applied to teaching the use of foreign language verbs, and while I don’t do patent work, I think this system may be patentable. The third product is a journaling system that has a wonderfully modular set of components that he could produce and market and also license to others.
I LOVE this kind of person. The way their brains work. The joy they bring to creating products is contagious.
I couldn’t help myself, I started tossing out all kinds of ways to increase sales, leverage content, and share this client’s creativity with the world. What was scheduled for a 1 hour meeting lasted for 2.5 (until his parking time was up and I had another appointment – otherwise we might still be there…). I love how that happens when there is no hourly-billing happening.
So, the level of our business relationship is moving into more of a coaching/consulting relationship instead of being limited to me just drafting contracts and protecting the IP. I’ll now be helping him craft his larger strategy and prioritize which elements should be developed first. Hopefully, this will allow him to spend more of his time doing the things he loves – creating new products and building prototypes.
That’s good. It’s valuable for both of us.
I’m happy to accept more clients like this. If that’s you, come on down. 🙂
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Tags: Creativity > Problem solving
How to Create a Highly Profitable Practice In Your Authentic Niche
Posted on | May 28, 2011 | No Comments
FREE Call Details:
June 29th – 9PM EASTERN
1-321-354-6946
Conference room ID is: 191630#
Tags: authentic niche > Boston Workshop > creative business > expert niche > National Guild of Hypnotists
SBC: Conflict Management & Mediation Services
Posted on | April 18, 2011 | No Comments
I’m now offering Conflict Management and Mediation services. However, since I’m not wearing my lawyer hat when I’m in this role, I’m offering these services through The Space Between Center for Creative Spirit in Business. But, I thought I’d at least share an overview of the services here.
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Conflict is an unavoidable part of our lives. The question is: How do we handle that conflict? Do we handle it with grace or outrage? Do we look for opportunities in conflict or do we let ourselves stew in anger?
We know our lives are more fulfilling when we are able to prevent most conflicts, while handling the unavoidable conflicts in a healthy, dignified, and proactive way. At The Space Between Center, we believe there is opportunity in every challenge, and healing is available inside every conflict. This is why The Space Between Center for Creative Spirit in Business is proud to offer Conflict Management services for individuals, businesses, and public organizations.
What is Conflict Management?
Conflict Management is a distinctive combination of prevention, resolution, and education services offered to you exclusively by The SBC. Read on to understand how The SBC uniquely weaves together conflict education, prevention, and resolution to provide creative ways to handle conflict in your life and business.
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Conflict Education:
Often, conflict can be resolved without the need for third-party help if it’s addressed early. Our education services help you learn how to identify a potential conflict, analyze the issues involved, and work toward an appropriate solution before the conflict has escalated. Think of our third-party mediation services as insurance for the big stuff, while using what you learn in our education services to deal effectively with the little things that come up day-to-day all on your own.
1. Negotiation Coaching
When you don’t need a full mediation process, you will still benefit from some negotiation coaching to help form strategies to make the best deal for achieving your long-term interests. Negotiation coaching focuses on a particular relationship or situation.
2. Negotiation Training
Negotiation training helps you or your group learn the critical interest-based negotiation skills needed in every relationship. Training services are focused on the process of interest-based negotiation generally and are not intent upon resolving any single issue or situation as in our coaching engagements.
3. Negotiation Skills Presentations
The professional conflict managers from The Space Between Center are available to give negotiation and deal-making presentations to your group, team, or organization.
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Conflict Prevention
Identifying a conflict after it’s happened is easy. Feelings of anger, hurt, and discontentment come to pervade a relationship–whether in our personal lives or in our business lives–making communication difficult or at worst, impossible. Mediation, arbitration, or litigation, are great tools for settling a conflict after it’s happened.
At The SBC, we believe that conflict management can begin at the start of a relationship. Investing extra time laying the groundwork minimizes potential for future conflict. Granted, this approach isn’t practical for all relationships, but in relationships where stress and conflict could potentially cost a great deal, it makes sense to invest energy forming the relationship correctly right from the start.
Relationship Formation Mediation
Similar to conventional conflict resolution mediation–only without the conflict–our process helps people identify and resolve the key issues in a relationship with the goal of minimizing the potential for future conflict.
When to Use Conflict Prevention Services:
- Important business deals
- Multiple owners/investors forming a business
- Key employee hiring
- Significant customer contracts
- Significant supplier contracts
- Pre-nuptial agreements
- Public policy making
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Conflict Resolution:
Even with extensive planning and foresight, conflict does happen–and it happens everyday. The SBC has a thorough process for humanely and fairly helping you resolve conflicts outside of the legal system–saving you significant time, stress, and money. We offer three approaches.
1. Mediation
We work to help the parties in conflict find their own creative resolution to the conflict. We do not make decisions or sell a specific agenda, but instead provide a safe space and process within which the people searching for resolution can find a solution. We don’t do this the same way as most mediators, so be sure to read the “what makes us different” section of this page.
2. Conflict Assessment
If you’re unsure of whether mediation or coaching will work in your situation, we can conduct an assessment to help identify issues and risks associated with attempting to mediate the conflict.
3. Conflict Coaching
If you would like us to coach you through dealing with a conflict yourself, we’re happy to help counsel you through this stressful situation. This is NOT a legal service. If you need legal counsel in a conflict situation, we can refer you to lawyers we trust.
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What Makes SBC Conflict Management Different?
Core Beliefs
- More than money is at stake in any conflict.
- The mediation process should be used as an opportunity to heal relationships and look for new opportunities for collaboration whenever possible.
- Opportunity is hidden in almost every conflict.
- Understanding the individual personality types at the negotiation/mediation table is essential for finding resolution.
- Given a fair and safe process, most conflicts can be resolved between the parties rather than decided by a third party.
- The mediator is NOT the decision-maker. The mediator facilitates resolution between the parties by helping the parties discover and agree upon a solution themselves.
- People have done and will do the best they can in any given situation.
- Creative solutions are encouraged and honored.
- Measures of “quality” are inherently subjective, at least in the creative industries.
Niche Experience
- Creative Services Industry
- Technology Entrepreneurs
- Information Entrepreneurs
- Internet Marketing
- Business Start-up
- Business Divorce
Distinctive Mediation Process
Many of the processes of conflict management are universal, especially in mediation situations. However, at The Space Between Center, we do a few things a bit differently. We think our approach brings added value to the process and increases the chances that you will find a successful resolution to conflict or make a better deal to avoid future conflict.
Focus on Preparation
We invest more energy in preparation than many mediation professionals because we think it is better to go into a mediation session with great information and conscious strategy rather than walking in cold and hoping the process will magically yield a wonderful solution. Because conflicts are the result of personal interaction, we invest time understanding the people and building strategy in two primary ways.
1. Personality Assessment
We ONLY work with conflict when everyone at the table is willing to complete an Enneagram Personality Assessment and share this report with the mediator/coach. This process is built into our engagement fee and allows everyone to understand the personal approaches to conflict, stress, success, and communication much more quickly and accurately than trying to build that picture during the course of the mediation. We encourage (but do not require) both parties to share the top-level results with each other in an effort to facilitate understanding and effective communication. Finally, we believe that the assessment report is a valuable tool for personal understanding and development outside of the mediation context, which insures at least one ongoing beneficial outcome from any conflict.
2. Negotiation Toolkit
We invest significant effort coaching each party to achieve the best result from mediation. This includes:
a. Issue Identification
It’s part of our job to make sure all the issues in the conflict are identified. We may not need to address them all in mediation, but we want to make sure that each party is making conscious choices about what is on the table and what is not.
b. BATNA Definition
Perhaps the most important element of successful conflict resolution or negotiation–especially in the mediation setting–is having a clear statement of your Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement (“BATNA”) or, what happens if we walk away. We’ll make sure you know your BATNA before you come to the table so that you can recognize and accept a better alternative when you see it.
c. Technology Training
Because we use online video conferencing technology during mediation, we make sure that each party has practiced using the technology and is comfortable before the group session(s). We want the technology to assist in resolution, not add anxiety or frustration. We’ll schedule the group meeting only after each party is comfortable and competent using the online systems.
Mediation Technology
In-person mediations are the norm in most firms and we are happy to facilitate in-person, meeting either in our Fort Collins, Colorado offices, or at your location. But, for those of you who do not want to invest the travel time and expense for your team or the mediator, we offer secure, confidential mediation services via the Internet using state-of-the-art video- and audio-conferencing technology. While there are some undeniable advantages to in-person meetings, our investment in pre-mediation preparation combined with the right technology-savvy parties allows for effective online mediation–saving you time, money and stress. The technical requirements are only your telephone, web cam on your computer, and a decent Internet connection.
Agreement Drafting
Many wonderful mediators are not lawyers, and many mediators who were or are lawyers focused their careers in areas other than agreement drafting. The Conflict Management professionals working through The Space Between Center are attorneys who have drafted literally hundreds (probably thousands) of agreements between individuals and businesses. They know how to get the essentials drafted into the resolution document without wasting time and energy on things that just add confusion.
People
The Space Between Center’s Conflict Management Team is lead by Kevin E. Houchin, Esq. Kevin is the Founder of The Space Between Center, an attorney, and a negotiator with deep experience in the creative business niche. Kevin has been negotiating deals and resolving conflicts for over 20 years.
Other conflict management professionals may be engaged on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of the conflict prevention or resolution situation.
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Contact Us.
To discuss hiring The Space Between Center to help with your Conflict Management strategy or situation, please call 1-970-493-1070 or email kevin@spacebetweencenter.com.
Tags: conflict > conflict management > dispute resolution