Having built the wine brand Barefoot, we learned a few things about branding consumer products. Get your product in front of the folks who will benefit from it. Be clear about what you are selling. Distinguish your product from the competition. Understand and work the distribution system. Deliver a consistent message. If you want to build a successful consumer product brand, you don’t have the time nor the luxury to deviate from this path.

We’ve become experts at branding in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space. But what if you want to build a personal brand? Are there definitive rules like branding packaged goods?

To read the complete article, please visit Entrepreneur.com 

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post The 7 Habits of Highly Brandable People appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Start Up. This is the exciting phase when your business concepts are launched. First you must get through the pre-launch by raising enough capital to prove your concept. Then you must design, build, test and hone your product and marketing plan.  Then you enter the real market. Here you discover the misconceptions you had regarding what your customer really wants, and what that means to your product, package and pitch. The speed of this early course correction is critical.  You must make many expensive changes at a time when you are racing the clock to achieve a positive cash flow. Most studies put the start-up success rate at less than 1 in 7.  The goal of the start up phase is to prove your concept and achieve positive cash flow before running out of funds – or losing control of the company through subsequent rounds of financing.

Build Up. Now that you have beaten the odds and achieved a positive cash flow, you must identify and sell a few large customers. This will keep you going long enough to overcome the challenges of personnel management, cash flow management and distribution management. This is a dangerous time for most businesses because you may have all your eggs in a few baskets. Sure, you have secured a big buyer enabling you to pay your bills, but now you must service that buyer or get discontinued. This increases the cost of sales and now you are trapped. With volume purchases over time, you become dependent and then the big buyer can coerce you to lower your prices – or worse, temp you to give up on your brand equity by becoming a mere supplier of the big buyer’s house brand.  If this big boy discontinues you, you are out of business. The goal of the Build Ups is to increase cash flow, maintain profitability, build brand equity and prevent discontinuance by your biggest buyer.

Build Out. Here is where you expand your branded product into other markets. This will help you diversify, thereby reducing your dependency on any single buyer. And it will give your brand the geographical recognition it needs to command the respect of future buyers. It also provides you with the commercial proof that your brand is in demand in other markets. However, now you must support those sales with local representatives, resulting in a dramatic increase in the cost of sales – which threatens your profitability. The goal of Build Outs is to expand slowly enough to afford the increased cost of sales while properly servicing multi-state buyers.

Enterprise. At last you have achieved a national brand. Now you can reduce your cost of goods by getting discounts for larger bulk purchases.  Now you have brand recognition and can become an acquisition target. But now you can also suffer from the loss of the entrepreneurial spirit. Your non-sales divisions start to act like the sales division is somehow below them. Employee engagement and innovation can take a hit. Turnover can increase as “professionals” begin to use your business as a stepping stone in their careers. The thrill of those start-up days in the garage is gone. The goal of the Enterprise stage of business is to capitalize on efficiencies without losing entrepreneurial spirit.

If you make it this far, you have gained great insights into business, as well as our heart-felt respect!

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post The 4 Stages of Business Growth Face Their Own Challenges appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Sure, 70% of all those responding also said they were being subsidized by their parents, and perhaps that’s why they have the luxury of making such a choice. But we still find it interesting that what we call “positive company culture” is the deciding factor for so many young people today.

An analysis of the Census data by the Pew Research Center showed that Millennials now account for the largest share of the US work force. So, if you are an employer, you’d better take positive company culture seriously if you want to attract and keep the largest and fastest growing segment of potential employees.

So what does a positive company culture look like?

Fun. That’s right, just plain fun. Fun titles, fun events, and fun environment. The ability to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously. Working in teams that are highly collaborative with clear goals and celebrations for accomplishing them. Colorful work spaces, with natural light, and playful graphics.

Respect. Staff is recognized for outstanding performance with public acknowledgement. New team members receive mentoring to help them achieve their goals. Staff is viewed as an asset, not as a cost. The company practices know-the-need instead of need-to-know so challenges are shared and everyone brainstorms solutions.

Philanthropy. A company that stands for more than the mercantile value of its goods and services. A company to be proud of, to tweet about, and to share its good deeds with a social network of friends. A company that is making a difference in the environment, society, health and education. A company that is committed to a better world, not just a better product. A company that matches employees’ charitable donations.

Flex-hours. A company that allows more time to live life outside of work. Deadline-based timetables rather than strict work schedules. Financial rewards for performance rather than attendance. Allowing for working at home as much as possible. Minimizing commute hours and maximizing remote production.

Family. Smaller companies over larger ones. Knowing the owners. Integrity and stability. A feeling of kinship. A tribe, a team, a support group that has your back and your best interests at heart.  Basically, a friendly group you look forward to working with during the majority of your waking hours.

Success in business requires personnel management with a positive company culture, and this is essential if you intend to build a team of Millennials to power your company.

And what happens when their parents can’t subsidize them anymore? Think they’ll settle for less in the workplace – just to make a few more bucks? Soon enough your competition will woo them with higher salaries and a positive company culture. So now is the time to get in front of the curve and attract the folks you need to build your company and more importantly, keep them.

After all, shouldn’t work be fun? Isn’t that when we all do our best anyway? Isn’t that the fertile ground for the best solutions and disruptive ideas? And aren’t challenges and respect the basis of company loyalty? With the right people in the right environment your company will be more likely to hit its numbers and be able provide those increased salaries when mom and dad pull the plug.

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post Millennials Want a Positive Company Culture appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.