A positive company culture is what we relied upon when building the Barefoot Wine brand into a national best-seller. Here’s how we did it:

1. The money map

When we hired people, they were give an infographic showing the circuitous route the money took to get to them from the consumers, moving through the retailers and distributors and eventually into their paychecks, bonuses and benefits. This was not just a great educational tool from an orientation perspective, but it was a great way to set the stage for a company culture of sales.

2. The two-division company

Unlike the typical pyramid structure with the CEO on the top followed by the C-suite and then the myriad of divisions and departments, our organization had just two divisions: Sales and sales support. Everybody who was not in sales was in sales support, including the CEO, receptionist and accounting, marketing, product development, and production.

Why? Because without sales there would be no income. If you really believe the customer should be on top, put sales on top and have everyone else support sales.

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.

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“As a company grows, a shift can occur as the owner transitions from exercising a lot of control and begins to delegate to management,” says business consultant Beatrice Chestnut of The Chestnut Group and author of The 9 Types of Leadership. “If managers have different personality styles and world views than the founder, a misalignment can occur between the original vision and the management team’s priorities.”

Organizations evolve, and that process is a natural part of growth, adds Brad Deutser, president of Deutser, LLC, a consulting firm that advises leaders and organizations during times of transition, growth and crisis.

“The highest-performing organizations are those that grow from the inside out. When organizations are anchored by a strong culture, they are more effective at scaling and driving performance of their people and business.”

To read the complete article, please visit American Express Open Forum

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 Is It Time to Make Up or Break Up With Your Management Team? appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

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 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

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 You Giving Your People Permission to be Brilliant? appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

When children receive food, candy, or drinks in disposable packaging, they are confused about what to do with the wrappers. Littering is not intuitive. It is learned by imitating adults who give children permission by their own behavior of littering.

We recently joined a group of US college students to help clean up a schoolyard in an impoverished town in Sinaloa Mexico. When we first arrived, we broke out rubber gloves to pick up the garbage. The kids eagerly joined in, grabbing the gloves and putting them on to help. To our surprise, however, they dropped the bags the gloves came in on the ground.

Picking up litter was a brand new experience for them. It was not part of their culture and they had not learned it from their families or teachers. Nevertheless, all the children enthusiastically joined in, and within hours, we had picked up 20 bags of garbage, transforming the schoolyard from a veritable junkyard into a showpiece of cleanliness.

We then celebrated with the traditional piñata and the kids all lined up to take a whack at it.  Finally came the big moment when the piñata burst open to the squeals of the kids descending on the candy as it sprayed out wildly onto the ground. Within seconds, hundreds of pieces of candy were picked up and stashed in pockets, shirts and skirts.

We watch as child after child unwrapped the candies, popped them in their mouths, and then eventually let the wrappers fall to the ground we all has so painstakingly cleaned.

One little girl held the wrapper out to us as if to say, “What do I do with this?” We looked around and noticed that the school had no trash cans! We scrambled around and finally found one old beat up, split plastic garbage can and lined it with a plastic bag. Some of the volunteers ran around picking up the recently dropped litter, depositing it in the can to demonstrate to the kids that this was the place for trash. Others tried to catch the kids before or just after they dropped the trash and asked them to use the receptacle, giving them enthusiastic praise when they did. Eventually the mothers of the children began to join in encouraging the kids to do the right thing. By the end of the event, everyone was seeking out the receptacle and using it, but it took a few more steps that the volunteers had anticipated.

As we were preparing to leave, we found out that when children were “bad,” they were “punished” by their teachers by having to pick up trash. So, the teachers and parents also needed a good example to follow. The volunteers returned a couple days later with several garbage cans for the school, and encouraged the teachers to celebrate cleanliness by making clean up a matter of civic pride rather than punishment.

The volunteers originally thought that the clean-up itself would have a lasting effect, that the kids would be proud of their now-clean schoolyard, and would refrain from littering. We were not prepared for their apparent inability to associate the clean-up project with their future behavior. The kids needed to realize that they were the ones who were littering, be told when they were in the act, and shown a constructive alternative. And they needed adults to set a good example.

We hope this town’s experience with the volunteers will make a difference in the school children’s future behavior, their parents’ direction, and their teachers’ leadership. Feliz Navidad to one and all!

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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This afternoon, we enjoyed a wonderful beachside luncheon with Melissa Moreno, the school’s Director. She has been instrumental in the creation and development of the Center. Only three years old, it’s already getting the attention and support of several successful entrepreneurs.

Check out their fireside-chat format conversations with these notables on video at their site. These chats are jam packed with excited students interacting with real entrepreneurial successes.

Today’s entrepreneurial students want case studies from real business founders. They want to hear their story and ask them practical questions about how they overcame hardship, challenges and undercapitalization.

Our economy has proven time and again that it’s the entrepreneurs that create new businesses, new jobs, and innovation. Today, we face big challenges. For many graduates, sometimes the only source of employment is self employment.

The Scheinfeld Center provides a big head start for anyone thinking about starting their own business, whether they are looking for credit, or just want to get the latest academic disciplines or practical tools necessary for successful entrepreneurship.

Like schools everywhere, they are struggling with the economy. This seems ironic since they are one of the obvious vehicles to turn the economy around. They deserve your interest and support, so please help pass the word about the Scheinfeld Center. We need more schools like this!

We were honored to be asked to present our experience to the Scheinfeld students next March. Now we have another great reason to visit Santa Barbara. We hope the lessons we learned, sometimes the hard way, will help the next generation of entrepreneurs to achieve success!

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 Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

While traditional employment prospects are certainly less accessible and less rewarding, college grads faced with these challenges might consider a different strategy altogether – starting their own business.

Here are some reasons why today’s college grads have an advantage as entrepreneurs:

1. Less to lose. If it’s going to take a year or two to find a job, if it’s going to pay peanuts anyway, and if the chances are it can be outsourced and leave you unemployed, then the prospects of self-employment suddenly don’t look risky by comparison.

2. Information Explosion. There has never been more information available on how to start and run a business. In addition, with your college education, you have learned how to learn, how to research and how to access that information. Your college experience has taught you to seek out the advice of experienced experts, a key to business success.

3. Essentials.  If you had any liberal arts classes, you learned how to communicate with people, and respect history, culture and psychology, all essential for entrepreneurial success. If you had any business classes, you will be able to at least understand the basic principles of commerce and provide value to your customers.

4. Youth. Most of you grads are relatively young and can handle the long haul it takes to develop a successful business. Get started soon and have a greater advantage over folks who wait or who are forced to become entrepreneurs. You have more time to learn from your mistakes, perfect your processes, and build your brand.

5. Cheaper Costs. Ironically, labor is relatively inexpensive. Rent is down. Interest rates are down. Suppliers and service companies need strategic allies and are more likely to offer beneficial terms. Unemployed and retired experts are available to give you advice.

6. Increased Demand. More than ever, the country is looking for new ideas to help invent our way back to prosperity. “Find a need and fill it” has never been more necessary. We need to save our environment, find clean energy, feed more people, improve education, and solve our clean water problems – just to name a few.

7. Opportunities Abound. Technological advances are begging for applications. We have only scratched the surface of what we can do with what we already have discovered. From digital to genomes, from materials to biotech, and from optics to communication, the world is your oyster. Check out “Abundance” by Peter Diamandis http://www.abundancethebook.com/.

Yes, times are tough, but remember that the last downturn spawned many of the top companies of today. Many of them were started in a garage. As you approach today’s challenges, your college education will give you a big advantage.

A degree is not a vaccination, anyway. Can’t find a job? Maybe its time to say hello to your garage.

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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