As you conduct your business, you will find a myriad of folks you will interact with, and their cooperation and support are crucial to your success. Simply having a killer product at an unbeatable price just isn’t good enough to guarantee success. You must gain the trust of everyone you do business with whether they […]

Most start-ups fail. Two recent articles, one by Forbes one by Fortune, cited a 90% failure rate of start-ups. And top Harvard Business School lecturer, Shikhar Ghosh, confirms that 75% of U.S. venture-backed firms don’t even return investors’ capital. In search of understanding best practices for start-ups, I recently spoke with Michael Houlihan and Bonnie […]

Earlier this year, Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, warned about the declining “birth” rate of new businesses compared with the current “death rate.” We found his Gallup Business Journal article so interesting that we think some of the statistics he quoted deserve repeating, as they underscore the increasing lack of successful startups. According […]

When it comes to teaching entrepreneurship, it’s still the Wild West out there. Every school has a different twist on how to do it. Many outside academia say “You can’t teach entrepreneurship. You just have to do it!” As successful entrepreneurs, we believe that if we had the right kind of entrepreneurial training, it might […]

Corporations today say they want a more entrepreneurial culture. Some of the top search terms coming out of the C-Suite today are: entrepreneurial culture, employee engagement, and employee empowerment. But all culture and all change starts from the top, and the top execs have to be willing to change in order for these tools to […]

Earlier this month we were the guests of the Student Guild at Griffith Gold Coast University in Queensland, Australia. The University was originally founded by Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, the principal author of the Australian Constitution. He was also the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and served twice as the Premier […]

We want to take this opportunity to salute Enactus, an international non-profit, dedicated to creating sustainable solutions through entrepreneurship. Formally known as Students in Free Enterprise, their approach is to help humanity and make the world a better place by inspiring, educating, and encouraging the next generation to start and grow businesses that solve economic […]

Last week we joined in on a beach clean-up on Manly Beach near Sydney, Australia. It was co-sponsored by the Manly Beach division of The Surfrider Foundation and Barefoot Wines. We have been to many beach clean ups before but, not counting Bonnie’s spontaneous and constant solo clean-ups around the world, this was our first […]

The Barefoot Spirit is the spirit behind the famous Barefoot Wine brand. The word “spirit” has lots of meanings, including religious connotations, although that’s not how we used it. Just as often though, it’s used to define a certain style of performance, as in, “That’s the spirit!” which refers the type of tenacity that overcomes […]

 by Steve Olenski, Contributor, Forbes Last December, my fellow FORBES contributor Robert Reiss, wrote a great piece entitled “The Incredible Story Of Starting The World’s Largest Wine Brand, Barefoot Wines.” The article was essentially a get-to-know two amazing people who launched what is now an iconic brand in a laundry room of a rented farmhouse in the Sonoma County […]