As we celebrate another graduating class, we thought we’d give them some good advice to help them turn their dreams of business success into reality. We recently caught up with Ivan Misner, the founder of BNI (Business Network International), the world’s largest business network. Ivan was good enough to agree to an interview where we could […]

A Classic Case of a Lack of Acknowledgement & Confirmation Our friend recently graduated with an advanced degree in Nursing. To celebrate, we invited her and her friends over for a party. A week before the party, we went to our friendly neighborhood grocery store where a young man does barbecuing out in front on […]

The Starbucks Experience Starbucks just found out the hard way. Their own people can take unwarranted, fear-based actions that marginalize an entire segment of the population. They found out that those actions can reflect on their company which relies on the entire population, not a single segment, for its reputation, brand image, and ultimately, its […]

When you’re in college, it’s not only what they teach that will enable you to be a successful entrepreneur, it’s the skills you acquire just to get through. About this time of year, many students are near completion of their college year and wondering if they should continue. They keep hearing stories about successful entrepreneurs […]

We are set up to answer questions on Quora. It may not be a good match for us because our experience is in a relatively narrow niche, entrepreneurial brand building in the CPG space. Most of the questions have to do with things like, “How much money does Elon Musk have,” and “Why do they […]

Founders Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey didn’t set out with the intention of creating the world’s largest wine brand. At the time of Barefoot Wine’s founding in 1985, they both lacked the money and the industry knowledge necessary to launch a brand of any kind. Instead, they relied on innovative, entrepreneurial tactics that would later prove to be more than successful. Their […]

Our clients come to us because of our credentials as the founders of the largest wine brand in the world. They want to know how we began (in our laundry room), how we were financed (we assumed a debt which we traded for wine and bottling services), and how we overcame the challenges of personnel […]

We were interviewed on “Misfit Entrepreneur” by host, Dave Lukas. To listen to our section of the interview, please  click the play button below and the interview starts at 2:20.    

This is a question that has plagued us for years and we have spoken to many “experts,” but they seemed to be speaking in another language. We are not the professional online marketers they usually have as students. We are regular small business owners looking for advice we can understand and apply. We decided to […]

We recently had the pleasure of spending the day with 65 MBA students from Nanyang University in Singapore. 25% of the class were part-time students who were already running their own businesses. They asked most of the questions because they obviously had the most immediate concerns. One question that was particularly telling was, “How do […]