democracy | The Barefoot Spirit

Immigrants Built Our Economy

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:00:20 +0000

Michael’s grandfather, John Francis Houlihan, came over from Ireland in the late 1800s. He was 19 years old. The only passage he could book was above deck on an ocean steamer headed for New York loaded with cattle in the hold. All the immigrants had to make the crossing above deck, exposed to the inclement weather of the North Atlantic. It was cold and windy and at night, the immigrants would huddle next to the smokestacks for warmth. It was a long trip. It was there that he met Michael’s grandmother Nellie, also a teenager at the time, and they fell in love.

When they got to Ellis Island, they were incarcerated in separate prison-like housing until they could prove on paper that they had gainful employment. Communications took forever in those days, so they remained imprisoned for several months. Finally, the word came from San Francisco that John was offered a job cleaning stables at the Sutro Stables that housed the San Francisco Police Department’s horses. John knew horses, but wouldn’t leave until he secured a job for Nellie as a washerwoman in a boarding house in San Francisco.

When they got to San Francisco, they were met with open hostility and prejudice against Irish immigrants because they would take lowly jobs at very low wages. Further, they were viewed as unamerican “papists” because of their Catholic religion which emanated from the Pope in Rome.

In the years that followed, they scraped together enough to make a down payment on their own boarding house. They studied the constitution diligently and became naturalized citizens earning the right to vote. John worked his way up in the stable to become the head horseman. Nellie worked managing room rentals and provided cleaning services for transients.

In 1906, an 8.6 earthquake and ensuing fire destroyed the city. The Sutro stable caught fire. All of the horses perished except the mayor’s prized Percherons. In the confusion and calamity, John had the presence of mind to save them. The mayor asked John how he could possibly thank him. John replied, “Make me a beat cop in the Irish ghetto,” which was the Mission District at the time and the place John and Nellie called home.

John served as a beat cop, walking the streets of the Mission District for 40 years, serving the people of the Mission, keeping the peace, fighting crime, helping in the emergencies, and putting his life on the line. He saw the reconstruction of the City. He attended the Panama Pacific Exhibition in 1915. The Palace of Fine Arts is the only building left standing from the World’s Fair that showed the world that San Francisco was back in business and now; through the newly opened Panama Canal.

John saw World War I and the influx of Italian immigrants that came into the Mission immediately following. He saw prohibition force average Americans to break the law. He saw the Great Depression, the Repeal of Prohibition and World War II. All that time, he saw wave after wave of immigrants come into the Mission and work their way into better lives.

During that time, they had three children. Two died in childbirth. One survived. The survivor, Michael’s father; John Charles Houlihan, was a public servant. Michael’s father worked with others to develop containerized shipping which revolutionized the shipping industry and reduced what they used to call shrinkage, or pilfering by dock workers. The containers were now locked. This alone cut the cost of world commerce significantly. Several container ports sprang up all over the world in the 1970s and ’80s. Shipping was now efficient, safe, and dependable. It became a standard.

Immigrants Don’t Take Citizenship for Granted

Michael grew up spending summers with his Irish grandfather who constantly reminded him of the great opportunity the United States offered to get ahead. He told Michael that hard work paid off in America. He extolled the virtues of American citizenship and expressed deep gratitude for his chance to get ahead in the United States until the day he died.

John and his son gave back to the country in different ways, but their lives improve the lives of many Americans. Think of all the jobs that containerized shipping created, and for that matter, Barefoot Wine.

Immigrants are the backbone of the economy and are why America is so “Great”! Let’s welcome the immigrants who want to work and show their appreciation for having been given the chance. In order to become naturalized citizens and gain the right to vote, they have to learn about the constitution, the divisions of government; and why they exist as well as the checks and balances they provide. Native-born Americans have no such requirement. They can just vote without that knowledge, or not even vote at all. Immigrants generally don’t take citizenship for granted. They understand our government and they vote.

Let’s rethink the value of immigrants and let’s all vote! Democracy is not something immigrants take for granted. Why should we?

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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5 Ways Today’s Students Can Save Our Democracy

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 18:00:53 +0000

Those of us who experienced the early days of social networking were concerned about the simplistic algorithms that were replacing critical thinking. Suddenly it wasn’t about trusted news sources with credentials and legal exposure. Now it was about the sheer number of likes, shares, and retweets that made the news “credible.”

It didn’t take long for our adversaries to figure out that they could take advantage of this new “system” of perceived credibility. It was no longer based on potential liability, established reputation, or even science, but solely on clicks!

And who was doing all that clicking? We were! We got suckered into 3 major misconceptions:

Entertainment is equal to facts. If it’s interesting but not vetted, the temptation is to share it and be appreciated as the source of the entertainment. You get more “likes” but you can spread falsehoods.
Agreeable posts must be right. When you share any “news” that supports your opinions, even if it’s not vetted, both sides of any issues are being duped!
Popularity = Credibility. Some folks believe that the number of interactions and engagements make posts reliable. However, the interactions can be made up from borrowed accounts or bots.

Now add to that a loss of interest in civics, which is how and why our government was designed to protect us from mob rule on the one hand, and dictatorship on the other. In other words, checks and balances.

Enter a tech savvy adversary with the goal of disrupting our democracy. How to do it? Simple, just undermine our confidence in the institutions that provide those checks and balances, like the executive, legislative, judicial branches of our government and our free press. Create millions of stolen identities to qualify for social media accounts, and use bots to create mega campaigns simultaneously on both sides of every trending divisive issue. Amplify the divisive posts already made by our own people and make millions of new ones.

If our adversaries can get us to lose faith in our 200-year-old institutions and distract us with infighting, then they have executed the age-old art of war – “divide and conquer.” Now they are free to move about the world and pursue their own interests at our expense while we get more cynical and divisive.

So, how do we defend ourselves from this kind of attack? This is not a quick fix, but a sustained effort. We have been working with students over the past five years and we have admired their desire to understand the world and be successful in it. It is precisely our freedom and democracy that provide the solid bedrock upon which they will build their new businesses. It is the enabling environment startups need to succeed.

Now Uncle Sam needs the students to take action to defend these institutions. Here is how it is done:

Accountability. Hold social media companies accountable for allowing false accounts and bot manipulation. Social media companies should not be making money from attacks on our institutions or the sowing of divisiveness.
Healthy Skepticism. Question all posts on trending divisive issues. Look for validation from news sources that have liability insurance and reputations at stake.
Take Civics. Understand and appreciate how our government is organized and why populist demigods cannot legally deliver what they promise. Appreciate and defend the checks and balances that have been put in place. If Civics is not offered in your school, create a club of like-minded students to learn the way our government works.
Vote. Even if your candidate doesn’t make it into the finals, still vote for the “lessor of two evils” so you don’t get the greater of two evils! Learn to compromise.
Speak Out! It’s your life, your safety, and your future that’s at stake. When students speak, the country listens. You represent our future and our new voters. Expose politicians taking checks from interest groups that undermine your future.

If there was ever a time where the future of our democracy was in danger, it is now. The boomers are transplants to the technological age. The students of today are natives. It is up to the natives to get restless! Uncle Sam needs you now!

Who We Are

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

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Is Tech Dumbing Us Down and Making Us Vulnerable to Mob Rule?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 18:00:55 +0000

As a result of ever-present information sharing technology, are we losing our freedom? According to Thomas Jefferson, we are moving in that direction! “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be,” he said. “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” By “informed” he meant well informed about the truth of matters, not just blasted with information coming from unreliable sources.

You can’t get a driver’s license without knowing the rules of the road, but you can vote without knowing the rules of the government – unless you are a naturalized citizen! Then you have to know the divisions of government, what they do, and how they check and balance each other. Why should native-born Americans know any less?

As we get further into the information age, we have become more and more inundated with a constant din of information and noise. Is it any wonder we have such short attention spans? Is it any wonder we want to hack everything so we can get the process without the principles?

We may think that all this access to information is making us smarter, but isn’t it just dumbing us down with over-generalized sound bites, sensationalized headlines, and simplistic explanations? Just having access to information doesn’t make us smarter. There needs to be a learning process that involves deductions, analysis, and validation in order to improve our intellect.

In the last election, we had two candidates, one at each extreme of the political spectrum. Each one addressed two very different crowds. But what both crowds had in common was a simplistic view of what the president could do legally. And it was wrong! Neither candidate could actually deliver what they promised without breaking the law. Nonetheless, both candidates got votes …and one got elected!

Why? Is it because we’ve grown so impatient that we want simple answers that sound good to us and we don’t know enough about how the government works to realize they are impossible to execute?

Are we now living in a country whose citizens think that they are voting for a cure-all candidate who can exercise extra-legal power to “get the job done”? If so, what’s to stop future candidates from pandering to this uninformed “populism?” As long as we don’t make knowledge of basic Civics a requirement, nothing!

Many folks who preferred a candidate who was not on the final ballot simply didn’t vote. They were not willing to cast their vote for the “lessor of two evils.” “That’ll show ‘em!” they may have thought – But without their vote, they got 4 years with the “greater of two evils.”

Hostile governments know what Jefferson warned us about. They know that we are likely to take action without fact checking. That’s why they spent millions on Facebook ads and tweets. They know the ads and tweets will get passed on before they are verified. Why? We’ve become impatient and want simple answers fast! This enables them to spread distraction, polarity, and chaos. This enables them to divide and (possibly) conquer.

The evidence is mounting that US election, the Brexit vote, and the Catalan succession votes were all at least influenced by foreign ads that played on simplistic cure-all themes.

Most of the world’s democracies are parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the legislature, not directly by the people. So, to change government you just vote for the opposition party so that you can presumably cause a vote of non-confidence and form a new government, more to your liking. But in practice, fragile coalitions must be formed because the multi-party system may not allow a clear majority in those legislatures.

In the US, our founders wanted to allow us the ability to vote for legislators of one party and a president of another. The problem is, however, that the decision you make on election day lasts 4 years! Even more reason to have an educated population.

So, if this sounds like a plea to bring back Civics class, it is – to save our democracy, to save our economy, and to save what really makes America great, diversity!

Who We Are

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

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