It’s easy to get the idea that these breakthroughs are instantaneous bolts of clarity from very gifted people. Once in a while there is a sudden stroke of genius that leaves us all in awe. But most of the time the real breakthroughs are years in coming and the result of much cooperation and analysis.

Sure, there are the “Why don’t we just…” moments, but most practical and lasting breakthroughs require a team. Here’s what we experienced with several breakthroughs that occurred in our business.

1. Other industry practices

We had a problem with keeping our advertising signs up on the supermarket shelves. The competition, or the cleaning people, would take them down regularly.  Sometimes we couldn’t even get our marketing materials to the shelf. They were thrown in the dumpster by our distributors. We were spread so thin we couldn’t cover all the stores with our own limited staff.

One day we noticed that some soup cans had an award medal affixed right to the can to communicate value to the shoppers. It took us two years to work out the mechanical issues necessary to put our award stickers on our bottles, on the bottling line. That meant that finally we had at least one piece of merchandising material that made it to the shelf every time and couldn’t be removed.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

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 Breakthroughs Are Rarely as Spontaneous As They Seem appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Of course, you do! Without sales, you don’t need production or even marketing. In fact, your whole company is supported by sales.

We like to say, “Regardless of what their organization chart says, all companies only have only two divisions, sales and sales support.” In other words, if you’re not in sales, you’re in sales support. You are there to support sales.

So, how can you improve sales this year? Here are our top five tips to do just that.

1) Believe in your product

Sales is frustrating more times than not. The sales cycle always take a lot longer than you expect. Meanwhile, you’ve got bills hungry for bucks. It can get downright discouraging.

What keeps you going? A deep belief in your product and the benefits it will provide your customers.

But it’s not enough for you to believe in your product. Your whole sales support staff has to believe as well. It’s not only what keeps them going — it’s what keeps your people engaged in the sales process. It’s what encourages them to come up with solutions to sales challenges. Everyone they talk to will know they believe in your product.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals 

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 5 Tips to Sell More This Year appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Silicon Valley has become Main Street Disneyland for international technopreneurship worldwide. The top international universities that teach entrepreneurship in its various forms all pay homage to Silicon Valley. They want to immerse their students in this wondrous place of Stanford University, Facebook, Google and other techie attractions, if only for a week or two.

Most of the international students are engineers with an extremely technical education. This narrow focus is somehow celebrated in this magical land of startups, V.C.s, burn rates,and unicorns. What can we offer the students that will help them in their quest for entrepreneurial success?

We have no technological background, nor are we even V.C.s. We have a few clients with software and high-tech products, but we are not their technical advisors. However, we are their business advisors. We help them make better business decisions and keep them on track to their ultimate acquisition. It’s what we’ve done. It’s what we’re experienced at.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals 

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 Soft Skills That Boost Entrepreneurial Success appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

They fear their people will jump ship if they know that the company is facing difficulties. They put their people on a strictly need-to-know basis.

This may keep them from jumping ship when times get tough because ignorance is bliss — till they get the pink slip.

We think there’s another way that may solve those challenges and even prevent the pink slip. We call it the “know-the-need” basis. The concept is simple. Your people can’t help solve the problem if they don’t know what the problem is.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals 

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 How Know-the-Need is Better than Need-to-know appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

We had no idea how long it would take, the opposition we would face, or the enormous hurdles we had to clear in compliance, distribution, and personnel management.

Every day there were new fires that had to be put out. Every day there were unexpected bills hungry for bucks. And every roadblock challenged our very approach to problem solving.

After a while, we began to develop actual problem-solving principles that gave us structure and a set of standards we would apply to future problems. As we solved problem after problem, we slowly improved our approach to problem solving itself.

To read the complete article, please visit Business Journals 

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 5 Principles For Solving Problems appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.