Compensation | The Barefoot Spirit

3 Ways to Prevent Growth from Killing Your Business!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 18:00:50 +0000

Expansion, growth, or build-out phase, whatever you call it, it is the most perilous time for your business. This is ironic because the perception from outsiders is that your business must be doing well because it is expanding! But it’s the expansion itself that can collapse your business.

Before you entered the build-out phase, your business had finally achieved its first level of precarious sustainability. You could finally pay your bills, not with investor’s money, but with revenue! Imagine that! You had finally achieved a few big clients who were making you cashflow positive for the first time since you launched your startup. You had built your business up to a point where you had proven your market proposition and some degree of stability did result, if only for a while.

It wasn’t long before you realized that the few big clients you were so proud of and dependent upon actually had you over a barrel. All your eggs were in one basket. Any one of those big clients could dictate terms or worse, stop buying and put you out of business right then and there. Lucky for you, you listened to your accountant and your salespeople who agreed that you were in a compromised position – until you got some new clients to mitigate the risk of coercion or financial disruption.

So, you decided to expand. You decided to get more customers so no one customer could hold you hostage. You decided to protect your revenue with more sources of income. And then what happened? You hit the wall! Like so many other build-out businesses, you were hit with costs and overhead you hadn’t seen coming. You found out the hard way about the cost of sales. Not the cost of goods. But the cost of sales!

We have found it to be the number one underestimated cost in business. Before the build-out expansion phase, these costs were spread out and absorbed under general “overhead.” But once you start moving into new markets, these costs make themselves known in no uncertain terms.

Suddenly you feel stuck. If you borrow money to expand, how long will it take to pay off the loan? If you sell equity to expand, how much control will you have to give up? And more importantly, what are the costs of expansion anyway? And are they the same in all markets? How can you know them ahead of time? And can you cashflow your way to achieve expansion?

The implications of growth are many. Here are 3 ways to survive this Build-out or Blowout challenge to your business:

Supply. You are going to need extended credit and terms from your main suppliers. They are more likely to extend them to you if you have developed a collaborative relationship with them during your Build-up phase. You have demonstrated empathy for their position by warning them ahead of time when you would be late or short on your payments. You have presented and executed payment plans to become current. You have shared your growth plans with them on a quarterly basis. You have entered into a long-term contract to give them the security that you will remain their loyal customer even after you get large. You have done these things all along, right?
Sales Cost Analysis. You have hired a cost accountant who has identified not only the cost of sales, but the cost of sales in various different markets. They have advised you about the profitability advantages of certain markets. You have heeded their counsel with an expansion plan based on a cashflow growth strategy. You have entered the most profitable markets first, the ones that cost you the least to compete in. You and your cost accountant have identified all the costs of sales, and how they differ from territory to territory. These include, but are not limited to, taxes, fees, transportation, advertising, promotions, customer service, representation, merchandising, presentations, discounting and so on. You don’t expand into the next territory until the first territory pays for itself. Right?
Compensation and Incentives. You have finally figured out that you can’t expect growth by paying your salespeople strictly on volume. In fact, you really can’t grow without a new compensation package based on new, higher goals every year. You have identified what growth means in terms of practicality and business health, and now you have developed the metrics that reward your people for growth and new markets and reorders. You have also set incentives in place for the other folks not on your payroll who can aid your growth. You’ve decided to take a smaller slice of a larger pie, haven’t you!

Of course, there’s a lot more to this tricky expansion business. The main thing is to not over extend yourself, make strategic alliances, grow slowly, and notice what it costs to actually make a sale, service a sale, and keep the sales coming. Work with a cost accountant and your suppliers, and follow a sensible strategy and you can build-out and not blowout! You can do this, right?

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.

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Give Your People Permission to be Brilliant

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 17:00:13 +0000

These days there are tons of companies that say they want their people to be more engaged, but are they giving them permission to do so? Yes: permission! It’s subtle, but powerful.

Permission is a powerful idea in determining company culture. Are you giving your people permission to be creative, make decisions, solve problems, and take responsibility? Or, in the name of efficiency, structure, or compliance, are you preventing the very type of support you need?

Here are some ways to give your people permission:

Compensation

Some part of employees’ compensation should be based on sales, growth, and profits. It will take some time to identify and agree upon metrics used to measure those key indicators, but get started now and tweak it every year until it’s right.

If you offer a bonus, make it quarterly. A year is too long for them to remember, and after a poor first half of the year, they may just give up. Quarterly is short enough to remember, and if they have a bad quarter, well, there’s a new opportunity next quarter.

Knowledge

Your staff can’t help you if you don’t tell them what you need. Many businesses believe in the “need-to-know” policy which keeps employees in the dark. We believe in the “know-the-need” policy which includes them in the company’s challenges, opportunities and triumphs.

They already have your corporate knowledge and a stake in solving your problems, especially if they share in your success. We suggest quarterly meetings with sales and sales support staff (i.e., everybody not in sales) to brainstorm solutions. They will surprise you with their great ideas!

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

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

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Organizations That Say They Want an Entrepreneurial Culture Need to Walk the Talk

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:00:16 +0000

Every day we hear companies, organizations, and institutions say they “want to hire people with entrepreneurial DNA.” They all say they “want an entrepreneurial culture where their employees are engaged and empowered.” But do they really? You can hire the best. You can vet for self-starting, creative, resourceful people with a sense of urgency, who take responsibility for their own actions. And you can even hire entrepreneurship grads. But without the proper environment in your own company you will stifle the new hires, and lose others who are frustrated.

We saw a cartoon recently that best summed up the paradox. The tired, haggard, office employee was down at the bar after work, sipping on his martini. He turns to the woman next to him and says, “Sure, they want me to be creative, imaginative, and resourceful, but I have a career to think about!”

Long before Barefoot Wines, Michael worked for the Federal Government. Right out of college, he was keen on being productive, making a mark, and moving ahead. But he ran into office politics, turf battles, and empire building within the organization. Few folks seemed to care about more than their job security. Most had become isolated and insulated from the real job at hand. Upon realizing that this could become his future too, Michael decided to not just quit his job, but quit the idea of having a job in any siloed organization.

The good news is that if it wasn’t for that experience, there would be no Barefoot Wine today!

The biggest problem with any kind of vertical or pyramid structure is that the structure itself is contrary to the entrepreneurial culture. Why? Because as the organization grows, sales and personal responsibility for the customer experience become more removed from the process. Soon, under the guise of efficiencies of scale and divisions of labor, folks get comfortable strictly focusing on their own specialties. They figure they‘re going to get paid, no matter what. Sales is someone else’s responsibility, they think. At the governmental level, it can be even worse. They can feel like their organization exists without customers, sales, or accountability.

Sales is the key to the entrepreneurial culture. Three entrepreneurs in a garage have no question that they must make sales happen or they won’t be there tomorrow. No matter what their skill set, all know that sales are critical. So what happened as they grew? Simply, many new divisions were created and they separated themselves from sales! So it’s not so much how to build an entrepreneurial culture as it is how you lose it! Little by little, the principles that allow an entrepreneurial culture to survive and flourish are replaced by fear, compliance, and restrictions on communication. Compensation systems increasingly are based on attendance, status, and tenure, rather than sales, growth, and productivity.

In order to attract and retain a staff with entrepreneurial DNA, you must provide the fertile ground that is essential for them to thrive and be effective. Just like an early stage startup, you must provide a culture of permission, enthusiasm, inclusiveness, recognition, acknowledgment, and performance-based compensation. The customer experience must be more important than the structural or political limitations of the organization.

You must get back in touch with the organization’s goals and means of support (i.e. sales). That must be the entrepreneurial motive that overrides corporate divisions of labor, status, and tenure. Serve your customer with an engaged and empowered culture that wants to, and is allowed to, deliver the excellent customer experience you desire. Your people are engaged when they know they can make a difference, and are encouraged, appreciated and compensated to do so!

Who We Are

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

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Are You Giving Your People Permission to be Brilliant?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 17:00:31 +0000

These days there are tons of companies that say they want their people to be more engaged, but are they giving them permission to do so? Yes, permission! It’s subtle, but powerful.

Here are some ways to give your people permission:

Compensation. Some part of employees’ compensation should be based on sales, growth, and productivity. It will take some time to identify and agree upon metrics used to measure those key indicators, but get started now and tweak it every year until it’s right. If you offer a bonus, make it quarterly. A year is too long for them to remember, or if after a poor first half of the year, they may just give up. Quarterly is short enough to remember, and if they have a bad quarter, well, there’s a new opportunity next quarter.

Knowledge. Your staff can’t help you if you don’t tell them what you need. Many businesses believe in the “need-to-know” policy which keeps employees in the dark. We believe in the “know-the-need” policy which includes them in the company’s challenges, opportunities and triumphs. They already have your corporate knowledge and a stake in solving your problems, especially if they share in your success. We suggest quarterly meetings with sales and sales support staff (i.e., everybody not in sales) to brainstorm solutions. They will surprise you with their great ideas!

Access. Clear the channels of communication. Don’t force interdepartmental messages go through a complex pyramid structure, and back to the department right next door. Don’t lock down creativity by allowing compliance to use fear to demand that everything goes through them. Their extensive turnaround time itself can discourage many good ideas from ever surfacing. Give your people ways to access top management directly to prevent middle managers from stopping good ideas.

Acknowledgement. Thank each of your people publically for all the good ideas they’ve produced to improve your company. This validation will make them want to do more. Their teammates will see your acknowledgement, and want some for themselves. We recommend once a year, on their anniversary, send the entire staff a memo that summarizes what that staff member did during the past year that improved the company, resulting in bigger bonuses for the whole staff. This will give everyone more respect for their teammate’s contribution and improve overall teamwork.

Mistakes. Give your people permission to experiment and make mistakes – as long as they make mistakes in a productive manner. This means that they come to you with the mistake they made and a list of documents that need to be created, altered or improved, so the mistake is less likely to reoccur. Companies that frown on mistakes force their people to hide them and the opportunity to improve the company’s policies and procedures is lost. Encourage your people to aim not blame. Aim at what they can do to prevent a reoccurrence, and don’t disempower themselves by blaming others.

Your people are looking for the limits you will allow. Some are very obvious and necessary like dependability, production and civil behavior. Beyond that, show your “personal settings” by giving them the permissions we have discussed here. The message will soon become crystal clear and they will operate within those limits. Don’t let your structure and procedures deny your people the permission they need to help you!

Who We Are

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

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3 Essentials of Effective Leadership

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 17:00:31 +0000

Running a company, division or a team is a responsibility that goes way beyond being the executive. In many ways you are in a parental role. It’s not enough to lay out the path and make the big decisions. You must also nurture your people if you want them to perform at their best. After all, they are spending more time with you, in many cases, than they spend with their own families. They not only take direction from you, but they look to you as an authority figure. A word from you can make a big difference in their personal development as well as their skill set.

And isn’t that what you want – team members who are better this year than they were last year? So what exactly are those words from you that can make all the difference to them and your team’s productivity and your company culture? Just like the gas you put in your tank that gets you to your destination, here is the “G.A.S.” that keeps your team running:

Guidance. Make sure your team has clear and achievable weekly goals. Review them again on Wednesday to make mid-course corrections. Clearly describe to every member of the team what they have to do, and by when, to achieve those goals. Be sure to explain why what they are being asked to do is important to the big picture, the health of the company, the security of their jobs, and ultimately their compensation, bonuses, commissions and benefits. In other words, tie it to sales! Get the deadlines on the calendar. Get involved in helping to remove roadblocks and barriers to communication. Make suggestions and offer help when needed. And then get out of their way!

Acknowledgement. This often overlooked essential is the building block of validation. And validation is what your people want when they are creative, take responsibility, and complete a job well done. We feel that acknowledgment is right up there with compensation when it comes to why they even work for you at all. A heartfelt “Thank You” is always appreciated, but don’t stop there. Do it in writing, be specific about what they did and how it moved the project forward, saved money or made money, and copy the entire team. Public acknowledgement creates more appreciation among team members for their team mates, encourages more of the productive behavior you want, and creates loyalty and tenure.

Support. This is not hand holding. This is not micromanaging. This is being there to answer questions, and to provide the right tools, applications, and services. This is conducting yourself in a reasonable and understanding manner during frustrating times. This is taking it down a notch when things get crazy. And this is standing up for your people when they need it. It’s also interceding on their behalf when they run into the type of contracted or other ‘outside’ folks who won’t work with a delegated person and want you personally on the line. Take those types aside in advance and spend the time to convince them to work with your delegate. Then help your own people develop the confidence and people skills to get the respect they need to get things done on their own.

So when it comes to Leadership, don’t run out of G.A.S.!

Who We Are

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

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Base Compensation on Sales, Growth, and Profitability

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 17:00:21 +0000

Brian Tracy once said that most employee behavioral problems are caused by compensation systems. In short, you get what you pay for. Nowhere is this more critical than in how you compensate your sales team. For years we paid our salespeople a commission based on sales alone. Much later we realized that our compensation plan was incomplete. We had to find a way to also reward for growth and profits!

Growth is the key to survival for any new startup. But be careful. Your sales team will do exactly what you pay them to do! If you pay by the hour, then you are giving them the message that you pay for attendance. They will put in the time but not necessarily do the job you need them to do. The alternatives require some serious thought: If you pay a guaranteed flat rate plus commission, how big is the guarantee? What is the commission based on? And what are the levels and how are they set? Can these levels be achieved at any cost, because if they can, your sales team will spend as much as necessary to make sales, thereby reducing your overall profitability.

So you need a system that rewards for sales, growth and profitability.

This may sound simple, but it’s not. Your salespeople must be provided with last year’s sales figures. They have to be aware of the cost of sales. And they should understand the cost of goods of each of the products your company sells. Although they have no control over the cost of goods, they can increase profitability by offering discounts on products that have a lower cost of goods, rather than discount products that have a higher cost of goods.

We built our system over a period of years of trial and error. First, all sides had to agree on the term, what was being measured, when, and why. We started by providing a small base salary that would basically cover their bills.

Every territory was different and had to be treated differently when analyzing sales. In each, we used the sales for each month last year and the cost of those sales per case. That became our baseline to compare to this month’s sales figures. We then determined profitability per case in that territory.

But some argued it wasn’t fair because of special market dynamics that created one-time anomalies. So we calculated a 3-month average, using the previous month, the same month, plus the following month of the previous year. This became our new baseline for sales this month this year.

Now we needed a plan that would reward for growth, which was sales greater than the baseline. We paid commission on each case sold that exceeded last year’s 3-month baseline.

Then, if in any given month, sales exceeded the baseline by a pre-agreed upon amount, say 25%, the commission would double on all cases back to the baseline. And if sales exceeded the baseline by 50%, all cases over the baseline were worth 3 times as much in commissions.

So the same case could be worth one, two, or three times the commission if the salesperson hit the various plateaus. Our salespeople naturally would push for the next highest plateau every month!

We also kept a close eye on their cost of sales and would reward them for savings in this area, or penalize them for increased costs. This kept them mindful of the costs and use of marketing materials, sales trips, distributors’ incentives and other costs required to make sales. Our sales staff became very resourceful and frugal!

Finally we were paying for sales, growth and profitability. Within two years of implementing this plan, we became one of the fastest growing wine brands in the country. It was well worth the effort! Now, with the proper compensation plan in effect, you too can watch your sales, growth, and profitability soar!

Who We Are

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

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Why Your Business Should Take an Active Interest in Your Parks

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 18:00:37 +0000

These days parks across the country are underfunded. In fact, if all the local volunteers who donate their time to provide access, management, funding and maintenance suddenly quit, the parks would have to close down. In most states, parks are kept open only due to the love and care of local residents and non-profit members. Many who vote against additional funding for the parks argue that the locals benefit the most, and therefore locals should provide most of the support. But there is another group that benefits greatly from the existence of well-maintained and well-managed parks. It’s local business owners and their staff!

How can your business benefit from the parks? Several ways, not the least of which is recruitment. At the higher end of the pay scale where specialties become scarce, you are competing for qualified candidates from all over the country. Country wide, other businesses are doing the same.

Many of these candidates have families. Aside from the job, the benefits, and the career opportunities, they want to know what the lifestyle is like where you are asking them to move. They want to know about the obvious – good schools, low crime, good neighborhoods. But they also want to know about recreational opportunities, such as the parks and open space. Before they make any career decision, they want to know if they and their family will be happy and healthy in the new area. It may be more important than the compensation offered.

So now, from a Human Resources recruitment standpoint and from an employee’s tenure and loyalty standpoint, the parks and open spaces near your business are critical in attracting and keeping the talent you want to hire. Parks and access to open space can be the deciding factor in the candidate’s decision to work for you.

Your HR people should already be aware of the natural attractions immediately surrounding your place of business. But do you, as a business owner, contribute your fair share to this local resource you depend upon? Or do you take it for granted? Maybe you think, “I pay my taxes, so the government should provide these services.” If you do, you haven’t been reading the news. The parks are considerably underfunded and have huge backlogs of deferred maintenance. The parks also are now dependent on volunteers to help with management and maintenance. Chances are the trails you walk on in your local park were built and maintained by a local non-profit.

We believe all businesses have a responsibility to help support the parks that are supporting their communities. You can do this by writing a big check, which would be very welcomed by these non-profit groups, but there are other ways, too.

You company already has heath programs that involve some kind of exercise to keep employees in shape and reduce medical costs. Why not join an organized group to do clean-ups, trail maintenance, and ecological restoration projects in your nearby parks? Your people will love it and you will be helping to pay the parks back for their positive influence on the recruitment and tenure of your staff.

If your business or your affiliates are in construction, building materials, engineering, water, or maintenance, you can donate supplies to the parks and take it as a tax deduction. It will reduce their expenses and be very well received. Further, most parks will allow signage that says donated by your company for all visitors to see. Now you are improving your company image!

Time for your business to say “Thank You” to your local parks that make your business a more attractive place to work!

Who We Are

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

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Busy is Not Necessarily Productive

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 17:12:46 +0000

Are you paying people to stay busy or are you paying them to be productive? Having a great deal to do or keeping occupied is no measure of productivity. If you pay employees no matter whether the company succeeds or fails, folks will actually look for ways to appear occupied. This makes them feel comfortable that they have filled up their time. But are they making a contribution? Or are they just being busy?

We think this happens because it is allowed to happen. The way these folks have been oriented during the training process, the way they are paid, and the level of their knowledge of the company’s sales, growth, and profitability can make all the difference. With the right preparation, incentive, and visibility, employees will know how to set their priorities so they’re not just busy, they’re productive!

Orientation. This is not something that has to do with the coffee room, the bathroom, or the forms. It has to do with where the money for the company that pays their salary, bonus, and benefits actually comes from. It has to do with how their job impacts that process. It has to do with really breaking it down graphically so there are no misunderstandings about who the real customers are, what they expect, and why they continue to pay good money for the goods and services the company provides.

We developed a “Money Map” to make this clear to all new hires. Not too different from a treasure map, it showed our people how the money travelled to them, who were involved at each level, and what they wanted. This kind of orientation is not a one-shot deal. It should be revised and repeated annually to keep people focused on the real priorities which change as the company strives to remain relevant and advance in the marketplace.

Compensation. We believe at least some part of an employee’s salary should be based on the performance of the company. Sure you can get granular and bonus on specific production, but in order to build team peer pressure and cooperation, you must focused their attention on the customer. And that goes for everybody in the company.

Since most people are coin operated (respond to monetary incentives), a quarterly 401K matching contribution gets the attention of your staff. Base it on agreed upon metrics of sales, growth and profitability. Since the employer’s matching contribution is voluntary, you have the ability to send a powerful message to your people every quarter. This works better than annual bonuses because the one year time period is simply too long and allows your employees to give up if the first quarter is poor, or lay back if the bonus number is met mid-year.

Visibility. If you have their attention with a well-thought-out performance bonus, they will be very interested in how the company is doing simply because it now reflects in their paycheck. So share with them your monthly reports, identify key challenges and focus on priorities during regular monthly meetings. This will help them zero in on the tasks that really make a difference to the bottom line. It will give them the perspective to understand what they can do to improve the picture.

By practicing what we called “Know-the-Need’ rather than “Need-to-Know,” we got great ideas from our people on a regular basis that solved problems in production, quality control, and marketing. We were able to cut costs and increase profitability because they knew what was needed, they knew we would listen, and they were members of a team interested in achieving quarterly bonuses. Suddenly they were focused on being productive and not merely busy!

Who We Are

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

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7 Ways to Spot Entrepreneurial DNA – Part 2

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:17:08 +0000

How do you spot the candidate with entrepreneurial DNA? Here’s part 2 of our discussion on the 7 things to look for during the interview.

4. Resourcefulness. Ask them how they solved a professional problem when they lacked the time, support, or funds they needed. Listen for how they used their imagination, asked for help, and thought outside the box. Listen for how they identified, re-purposed and used unlikely resources to achieve their goals in spite of the obstacles. Take note of how they rephrased the problem, saw the bigger picture and enlisted the help of strategic allies who would also benefit from the solution. See if their solution solved more than one problem. Those with entrepreneurial DNA will demonstrate their resourcefulness.

5. Preparedness. Does the candidate expect you to ask all the questions? Do they just react to your initiatives? Do they wait for you to tell them about your company, its goals, successes and challenges? Or do they ask you questions? Candidates with the entrepreneurial DNA will treat you like a prospect for their services. They think of everyone as a customer for them, their service or their product. They know that the best sales pitch is, “I can help you sell your product,” and they can’t do that unless they thoroughly understand their prospect and how they can help. They have carefully researched your company in preparation for the interview. They know your products, your challenges, and your history. They come to the interview with a pen and notepad, and a list of questions.

6. Teamwork. Contrary to popular opinion, entrepreneurs are not loners. Realistically, they know that they must build, depend on, and be an essential part of a team. This requires respect for how each player is key to the overall success of the company. They are keen on understanding all the jobs, procedures, outsourced services and suppliers that keep the customer loyal. Listen for candidates who show an interest in this process. Ask them how their last job fit in to their company’s big picture. Ask them how they worked with their teammates and improved communication both inside and outside their previous company.

7. Organization. During the final interview, you do all the talking. Tell the candidate more about what the job entails, who they will be working with and why, how their job supports the customer experience, how your company is organized, and what the expectations are of their performance. Be sure to include how the funds get from the ultimate consumer to the company to cover their paycheck. Then ask them to write a one page summary of your company, the money trail from the end-user consumer, how they will be working with their teammates and why they qualify for the job. Then, tell them it’s due by 5PM tomorrow. This summary will tell you volumes about their comprehension, organization, communication, and ability to hit a deadline. These are all attributes of the entrepreneurial DNA.

There are other key “tells” that can help you spot the entrepreneurial DNA, such as assertiveness, dependability, sociability, humility, practicality, tenacity, empathy and humor. Asking the right questions will bring these attributes to light.

Also remember, it’s not enough to say you are looking for the entrepreneurial DNA in your candidates. You and your company have to walk the talk. You must build a culture of permission, enthusiasm, inclusiveness, recognition, and acknowledgement, and have a performance-based compensation plan to provide the environment the candidate with entrepreneurial DNA needs to flourish and remain with your company. If you want your employees to be more entrepreneurial, create the fertile ground in which they will bloom!

Who We Are

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

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Spark Entrepreneurial Culture in Your Business with The Barefoot Spirit

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 19:30:50 +0000

After we sold our business, our acquirer asked us to come to work for them as brand consultants to, as they put it, “keep the Barefoot spirit alive.” We liked the term “the Barefoot spirit” so much we named our first book, The Barefoot Spirit, How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand.

Since then we have spoken at more than 30 universities that teach entrepreneurship throughout the country and internationally. We also have given many keynote addresses for conventions and conferences of all types, where they see us as real-life examples of successful entrepreneurs. They all want to know our secret.

We have branded our guiding principles, many of which we learned the hard way outlined in The Barefoot Spirit, and we encourage our audiences to use this to build a positive company culture within their own organizations.

Last week we were honored to speak at the 2^nd C-Suite Network National Conference. Over 400 C-Suite executives gathered at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey to hear the latest disruptive business approaches, best practices, and emerging business philosophies. They heard from real people with real successes about how they did it.

We told them our story and a few of the guiding principles we used to engage and empower our people, disrupt a staid and stogy industry, and make work more fun and inclusive. We started out with our mistakes and misconceptions that took us by surprise and cost us plenty. Then we told them what we learned and how we applied a new and different spirit of entrepreneurship to our staff, vendors, customers and community to build a best-selling product.

The backbone of the Barefoot spirit is the two-division company. The popular thinking is a top-down pyramid structure with the president and CEO on top, followed by the senior vice-presidents, junior vice-presidents, division chiefs, department heads, teams, groups and so on. One of silos in the pyramid contains sales and customer service. We asked, “How can you put the customer on top if you put sales and customer service on the bottom?” We think pyramids are for dead pharaohs.

Our company had only two divisions: sales and sales support. Everyone who was not in sales was in sales support, from the CEO to the receptionist, from marketing to production, from accounting to compliance. All received bonuses based on sales, growth, and profitability.

Our corporate culture was based on permission, acknowledgement and fun. People had permission to contribute because we practiced know-the-need rather than need-to-know. Our best marketing solutions came from our own people. They also had permission to make mistakes as long as they came forward, identified how it happened and improved our procedures. Instead of hiding our mistakes, we celebrated them. We built our business on the backs of mistakes.

On each individual’s anniversary we sent out a memo to all our people that publically validated and appreciated them by acknowledging what they did in the past year to improve sales, growth, and profitability. Now, the rest of our team knew better what their co-worker did, and how they could likewise be acknowledged.

We enjoyed a fun and playful spirit. We made a game out of adversity and what could be more adverse than getting told “no?” So we invented the “no game” where each person kept track of how many “NOs” they got. The average number of “NOs” was 7. You couldn’t even begin playing the game until you were over 3, and if you were at 15 you were overdue for a “YES!”

We chose the C-Suite Network Conference to release our second book written especially for corporate leaders who want to infuse the Barefoot spirit in their own companies. The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People is now available at www.thebarefootspirit.com. Enjoy!

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

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