Back on Track

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of law, business, creativity, and spirituality. I’ve been listening to some recordings of Joseph Campbell and reading his work, along with a lot of other great thinkers. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Law enables Business

Business is the vehicle for our Creativity

Creativity fuels the spark of divinity within our Spirit

Spirit should inform Law

Here’s a visual model of what I’m talking about:

Back On Track Model

When you see it this way, you also see that Law effects Creativity – in a left-brain (law) v. right-brain (creativity) sort of relationship. Business and Spirit also interact in a quasi-kabbalistic way with Spirit on a “higher” plane manifesting on the material plane in the form of business.

I think it’s worth examining these relationships, especially in the areas of the overlap.

How can we get more spiritual influence in our legal policy? Should we? I’m not talking RELIGION, I’m a firm believer in the separation of Church and State. I’m talking about SPIRIT – or at least the golden rule, should infuse all of our laws. Can we overcome the greed and short-term self-interest that seems to motivate our law-makers and lobbyists working behind the scenes? Maybe that’s naive, but I think we need to start somewhere.

How can we get more people, especially small business folks (the backbone of our country and future), to understand and engage in the aspects of the law that KEEP them out of trouble rather than waiting until they’re neck-deep in bad stuff to ask for help? It seems that people get upset that legal fees cost so much – but they usually are only engaging with lawyers AFTER they’ve gotten in trouble. I can guarantee that it costs way more to get out of trouble than to avoid it in the first place.

How can we get more spiritual inspiration happening in our businesses? Maybe that’s simply through the Creative process itself. Maybe the role of Creativity is simply to channel a spiritual aspect of existence into our daily lives, which tend to revolve around business. Maybe our arts organizations need to take on more outreach programming (if possible) rather than constantly trying to just get people to come to the museum, symphony, etc. (Of course I recognize that many arts organizations already do great outreach programs.) How can we get more Creative inspiration infused into our legal framework at the national, state, and local levels?

I think if you have read books like Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind, watched Shift Happens on YouTube, engaged in Bruce Mau’s thoughts of Massive Change or even just been allowed to lift your head up out of the cubical and take a fresh look around – these questions should be bubbling in your subconscious.

To use some of the language of Joseph Campbell, I think American Culture is hearing “the call” of the “hero’s journey” into some challenges that we need to face head-on, or be forced to face in a bad way (much like those small business owners who wait until after the trouble starts to create a plan). Maybe an understanding of the interactions above might help us in that quest.

I’m no expert on these topics. I’m as guilty as the next person (maybe more so) of waiting until I’m in trouble to start finding a way out, but I think these issues are too important to ignore. Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think it is this time.
I’d really like some feedback on this topic and I’ve enabled the commenting feature on the blog again (thanks to some blog-spam software that seems to be working). So, feel free to chime in with your thoughts on this or other things I should be considering. I’m going to keep exploring and writing on these issues and hearing (and sharing) some different perspectives would be great.

Comments coming back

YEA!

My web hosting service installed some software that protects my site from spam blog comments.  So, I’ll start allowing comments on my posts again.  I was receiving over 200 bogus spam comment posts each day, which was why I had to stop allowing comments in the first place…

Now I just have to post something worth commenting ON…  🙂

Rune’s Journal

My son Rune will turn 6 in January.  Earlier this year he took an interest in the journals that Abra and I normally keep. He kept wanting to write in mine, which is OK every once in a while, but it seemed the right time to get him his own “special book.”  He’s really taken to it.  Tobin (4) has one too, but it’s not quite kicked in with her yet – so it seems like 5 years old is a great time to start kids journaling.

He gave me permission to share one of his favorite pages.  It’s a work in progress. He adds stuff on this page almost every session.

Oh ya, he uses a fountain pen!  🙂

Click on the Thumbnail below for a larger view.

Rune's Journal Thumbnail

(c) 2007, Rune Cleo Houchin, Age 5.

Magic Marketing Formula

At about 3:00am this morning, after the 2-year-old had climbed in bed and started staking his claim to “his” space by kicking me, my brain turned on. Most of the time, I hate it when this happens because I can’t get back to sleep. This morning I came up with something useful.

For a long time I’ve told marketing clients, especially in admissions marketing/higher education, that the goal was simple. We simply show the prospect other people who were happy with their decision to attend the institution in question. Specifically: “That person reminds me of me and they are obviously happy with their decision, so I think I’ll make the same decision and attend that school.”

What I realized this morning is that I’d hit on a simple formula for almost every marketing problem. It’s a syllogysm.

[Variable A: person, business type, situation, goal, etc.] is like me.

[Variable A] is [Variable B: happy, smart, sexy, rich, efficient, etc.] for having decided to [Variable C: buy the product, attend the school, invest in the company, hire the consultant, etc.].

Therefore, I should [Variable C], because then I will be/feel [Variable B].

The only hard part about this formula is filling in the three variables:

A: What NICHE are you targeting?

B: What EMOTION are you trying to connect with your product/service?

C: What RESULT are you promising?

Those three decisions are the most important decisions you’ll make in your marketing adventure.