There are problems with the media itself and the use of the media that we would like to address. It’s bad enough that you can’t be there, but if you’re a speaker, others want your time for free, and then there is the feedback problem: There’s no laughing or clapping in real-time from the audience. It’s all very sterile and detached.

Lost etiquette

So why do folks further isolate themselves from the conference by trying to watch it on their phones? If someone makes a virtual conference date with you, don’t they deserve a bigger monitor than 2” x 3”? Don’t they deserve to appear on a screen that is closer to life-size? And don’t they deserve your attention uninterrupted by constant mobile phone connectivity issues?

When we used to meet in person, we gave them, and they gave us, their undivided attention. It was considered polite. How much attention can you give someone on a tiny screen? And what about the attendees, they are in even smaller boxes?

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 Why It’s Time to Stop Trying to Have Virtual Conferences on Your Phone appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The conference was held in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, but still under 300,000. The state is much bigger in area than Texas but lacks the infrastructure we take for granted in the lower 48. As you can imagine, the winters are harsh, and the people are stalwart.

While most of the rest of the country enjoys a booming economy, Alaska suffers from a recession, brought on by the collapse of oil prices in an oil-producing state. Needless to say, they have to find a new path economically and so they are turning to entrepreneurship.

What could we possibly bring to the table that would help them in their challenge? What could we bring that would have a universal and positive impact on those folks who now face raising themselves up by their own bootstraps? We looked at our own bootstrap experience and discovered three practical lessons we could share:

1. Follow Your Opportunity …Passionately!

You often hear, “Follow your passion!” It seems to make sense on its face, since we all need that drive and tenacity that comes naturally when we follow our passion. But you can follow your passion right into the poor house if you are not fortunate enough to have a passion that is in great economic demand.

We followed our opportunity, passionately. The chances are greater that opportunities, not necessarily in your passion, will present themselves more often. We found we didn’t have to give up on our passions to seize the opportunity we were presented with. As a matter of fact, we found many creative ways to use and incorporate our passions into our mercantile business, not the least of which was Worthy Cause Marketing.

We saved a bundle on commercial advertising by supporting worthy causes we were passionate about. We wanted to give the members of those causes a social reason to discover, buy, and advocate our products. This can work in Alaska!

2. Use your Hidden Assets and Resources.

The VC’s have brainwashed most startups and small businesses into believing that the only way to success is to secure a big investment, go through a burn rate, scale fast, and fail fast. If you are playing a numbers game, then you only need one unicorn in 10 if you expect a 10X return. Forbes, the SBA, and others all agree that still, today, 9 out of 10 new businesses fail. ‘Sounds like they are indeed failing fast.

But what if you don’t get a big investor and don’t have the luxury of a big burn rate? If you are like most of us, you don’t! So now we are talking cash flow management. And the secret to cash flow management is reducing your need for cash and growing slowly, but surely!

One hidden asset we had was our top supplier. Outside of product (wine), our biggest need was packaging materials (glass, corks, closures, labels and cartons). Because we were a low priced product with high volume, we would use more of these materials than any of our supply company’s other customers. We certainly let them know this, but we didn’t stop there.

We met with them quarterly to share our growth plans and negotiated a long-term contract. We let them know ahead of time when we couldn’t make our payments. And we gave them a catch-up plan that would bring out account current. Over time, we were able to gain extended credit and terms that saved us from borrowing the money or worse, trading equity for it.

Treating your suppliers as partners to save money can work in Alaska!

3. Put Your Self in the Other Guy’s Shoes.

You hear this all the time. It basically the golden rule. But just how does that translate into practice in the business world? And why does it remove obstacles and speed the processes you rely upon?

We found 7 distinct people we had to sell in order to get our product to market. They each wanted something different. Surprisingly, most of them were interested in something else entirely beside “The best wine and the best price” (our slogan).

For instance, our own people wanted income, acknowledgment, time off, and a company that stood for more that its product. The ownership of our distributors wanted a strategic advantage with a powerful retailer who wanted our product. The distributer’s sales managers wanted to make their numbers. The salespeople wanted to make their commissions. The retailers wanted a proven product with excellent customer service. The store clerks wanted to feel important, so they would recommend and reorder our products. Only the consumer really cared about the wine or the price!

But discovering and delivering what each person in the chain wanted (and not what we thought they wanted) was the key to our success. This can work in Alaska, or, for that matter, anywhere.

We admire the spirit of Alaska, and hope these lessons help vitalize their recovery!

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 3 Lessons to Vitalize Your Business! appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Four years ago, conference organizers would tell us as speakers not to sell from the stage! We didn’t and never have. Our goal has always been to educate and entertain our audiences with the hard lessons we learned building an international brand using resourcefulness, cash flow management, employee engagement, and strategic alliances. Our goal has always been to send the audience home with effective tools they can use in their business today. We want our audiences to thank the conference producers for providing those tools.

Over the past year we’ve noticed a big change. Now, most conference producers are operating on a model that basically “sells” their audience to their unpaid speakers. Now, these producers actively promote platform selling by their speakers to their audiences who have paid to attend their conferences. Imagine, free speakers plus income from attendees! When we point this out, they’re always quick to say that they are creating networking opportunities for their audiences and speakers. But how much longer will audiences pay to be treated like prospects?

We believe audiences attend conferences not just to network but to learn new strategies and techniques they can use in their businesses. We believe they can “smell” an upsell 20 minutes away. We believe upselling speakers creates a kind of anxiety as the audience is expecting to be teased and have key pieces of information withheld from them unless, of course, they pay more to get it. Now their conference ticket just buys them a pitch.

More new conferences are popping up every day trying to use this pay-to-be-upsold model. “Why should we pay speakers,” they say, “when we have a whole stable full of free speakers?” The fact is, there are no “free” speakers. They may not charge the producers for their talk, but they are hoping their audience will buy their services instead. When an audience is used like this, are they more likely or less likely to return next year?

Today many so-called speaking coaches are quick to jump on this bandwagon. They advise their speaking clients to sell their services from the stage. This advice is based on the idea that their clients are not professional speakers but are merely using the stage to sell something else to a sequestered audience.

Think about the last three conferences you’ve attended. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you need more people soliciting you? Do you need more emails from their sales campaigns in your inbox? Or do you want to get value for the money you paid to attend the conference?

We think you should get information that is of great value to you. It won’t happen unless you complain about platform sales or simply vote with your feet. Let’s go back to paying speakers on the condition that they don’t perform platform sales and that they deliver valuable and usable content in return for their fees. Let’s get more speakers who have actually done what they’re talking about instead of those who’ve created a new word, written a book about it, and were a bestseller on Amazon for 2 ½ seconds.

When speakers only speak for fees, they have a financial interest in delivering value. They don’t tease, scare, or hold back. They must perform, or they won’t get paid again. Speaking is their real job. It’s what the audience is paying for. Right? If you are a speaker, a conference attendee, or a conference producer, let us know your ideas on this subject.

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 Are Conferences About to Change …Again? appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

We went to a conference recently and one speaker actually advised the audience, “Ya wanna get rich? Find the next gold rush!” He was obviously alluding to the old saying that the only people who got rich in the California Gold Rush were selling shovels. Today there are so many people “selling shovels” it makes you wonder what they would all do without those miners.

The real entrepreneurs are producing products and services that improve our lives. These are the miners, and they comprise most of our audience. Surrounding them is an ever increasing rabble of so called service providers who could not exist without the true entrepreneurs who are actually doing the heavy lifting. Each is promising instant success. Each is promising a big short cut. And each is promising big savings. The advent and growth of the internet have only exploded their numbers. Their pitches are polished. Their presentations are formulaic. And their campaigns are ruthless. What most all have in common is 3 types of hype:

1. False or Unproven Premise. “If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs… if we had eggs.” This tactic usually tries to get you to buy in to the results when you don’t have the ingredients. Once you have this (their product or service), they say, then you can have that (what you really need). In this way they sell you services that you don’t need or are premature for your business. This has happened to us and it can happen to you as soon as you open your doors. Listen closely to the pitch. See if it includes attractive numbers like hits, time on pages, shares, and likes, but not actual sales of your products.
2. Good Money After Bad. We actually had a customer in the early days of our business who said, “If you don’t sell me more goods on credit today, I won’t pay you what I already owe you!” He knew that we were depending on him for a certain volume and he basically used that against us. This can happen in various forms. We have had service providers quote us a price for their service but they conveniently left out all the other necessary monthly services we had to buy just to get a return on our investment with them.
3. Everybody’s Doing It. Especially when you are new in an industry, you are preyed upon by all manner of advisors, each extolling the practice of the majority of players in that industry. If they are right, so much for disruption. If they are wrong, how would you know? All you know is they are implying that because so many people are doing it, it must be right. But have these advisors actually done it themselves? And will they be saying the same thing next year? Probably not. Meanwhile you paid them and they got what they wanted. Some industries are changing so fast that by the time you “learn” it, it’s obsolete and you have to buy more consulting. We understand the lemmings all jump over the cliff at the same time, too.

These are just a few of the hypes that new business owners have to be wary of. But wait! There’s more! If you buy right now, we will send you this lovely set of steak knives!

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 3 Types of Hype to Fight appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.