Distribution Management | The Barefoot Spirit

Are You Ready to Be Your Own CEO? – 7 Steps You’ve Got to Take

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:00:15 +0000

With the accelerating rate of disruption out there these days, it makes you wonder if all of us will be self-employed one day. Access to technology is already empowering many of us to “hang up the shingle” and go into business for ourselves. With the explosion of new service providers, you can outsource almost every business function, and you can quickly become your own CEO.

Even though your new company may be spartan with just a few employees if any, you will still be responsible to your customers to get the job done and on time, no matter how much is outsourced. The majority of your team may work for other companies and probably will.

But how will you orchestrate all these in-house and outsourced people? How will you hold these folks accountable? How will you know when to hire and how to compensate? What form will your planning take? What will your contracts look like? How about your communications? What about cashflow, personnel, and distribution management? What about decision making? And what about leadership?

Is there an easy way to learn and apply the best practices successful CEO’s have been following for decades? And what about the most recent breakthroughs that can help you succeed? How would you like a neat little playbook that outlines and summarizes 70 of the best classic and modern CEO tools, all proven to be successful?

Our friend and associate Jim Canfield has just published such a CEO “user’s manual.” We think it should be on the desk of every CEO and every self-employed entrepreneur. It’s called CEO Tools 2.O: A System to Think, Manage, and Lead Like a CEO. Jim’s new book updates and pays homage to the famous original work, CEO Tools: The Nuts-n-Bolts of Business for Every Manager’s Success by Kraig Kramers published back in 2002.

CEO Tools 2.0 is a must have for any CEO, president, business owner, or senior executive who wants to execute easier and have more time – while increasing growth and profits. Sound like you?

Jim has a patent ability to distill complex ideas, policies and procedures into easy to understand principles and processes. Then he backs them up with tons of examples to help you get the message. His book is organized according to the seven steps of “The CEO Tools Business System”:

Set the Direction. Clarify your overall goals, vision, and action plans with a One-Page Business Plan and use it to better communicate your goals to everyone you depend upon.
Communicate to Build Trust. Ask everyone you depend on how to solve the challenges you face. They will surprise you with their solutions.
Track Metrics and Give Feedback. Identify and track key performance indicators with the Quarterly Priorities Manager (QPM) and the Trailing 12-Month Chart (T12M).
Anticipate the Future and Create It. Ensure your company’s future with tools like What’s Next and the 7 Key plans every business should have in place.
Attract, Hire, and Coach Winners. Put winners in the top 5 customer impacting jobs and make sure they agree on what constitutes excellent performance. Then empower them.
Build an Autonomous Company. Be free of day-to-day involvement with leaders who focus on long-term strategic issues and confidently keep daily issues on track.
Celebrate Successes. Spread recognition and appreciation throughout the company with programs for all team members designed to appreciate the contributions of other team members

CEO Tools 2.0 builds out each step with tools you can use and real case studies showing where and how they have been used effectively. Whether you have a big staff or work with an outsourced team, it’s teamwork that will increase your growth and profits, ease your execution, and save you time. CEO Tools 2.0 is the playbook for winning teams!

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 Ready to Be Your Own CEO? – 7 Steps You’ve Got to Take appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

4 Tips to Avoid Drowning in Startup Expenses

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 18:00:36 +0000

Worcester Polytechnic Institute near Boston may not be a familiar name. However, many major tech and engineering companies regularly recruit WPI grads. They appreciate the well-rounded education of many of their students who also take classes in business, management, and entrepreneurship.

We recently spoke as part of their executive speakers series about the three core competencies of entrepreneurship: Cash Flow Management, Personnel Management and Distribution Management. We shared with the WPI students and faculty lessons we learned from our experience building the Barefoot Wine brand that we believe all businesses must master in order to survive and thrive.

Many wanna-be entrepreneurs fear failure or loss of control of their companies due to lack of funds. They know many startups fail because they have made too many financial commitments before achieving positive cash flow.

Actually, what they really need is sales! Sales earn investments in real estate, equipment, and personnel, and not the other way around.

In our talk about Cash Flow Management, we offered these tips designed to avoid unnecessary expenses and lengthen the runway until sales take off:

Use Your Hidden Assets. Maybe you have a garage or an unused room you can use as an office to get started. We used our laundry room for the first two years. Maybe you have family members who can do some of the work. Bonnie’s mother and nephew came to live and work with us. What can you repurpose for your workspace? We used an old door on two sawhorses for our desk. This allowed us more funds for the surprising cost of sales required to get our business off the ground, as you too will soon discover

Outsource to Local Producers and Service Providers. Right in your own region are companies that can provide you with many of the goods and services you need. You can pay as you use them, eliminating the need to tie up capital in manufacturing, hardware, or office space. In fact, if you write your contracts properly, you don’t have to take delivery of any products not up to you strict quality control guidelines. We succeeded without ever owning an office, a vineyard, or a winery.

Hold Minimum Inventory. Strive for just-in-time production. Although it’s tempting to go for the quantity purchases to reduce your cost per unit, sitting on unsold inventory can be costly and get your business in trouble. Sales volume must justify quantity purchases. Instead, find suppliers who will warehouse goods for you until you need them. And offer buyers quantity discounts for cash to help your cash flow. We found when buyers buy big, they sell big – and reorder quickly!

Extend Your Credit and Terms. Treat your vendors as strategic allies. Grow together, each benefiting from the growth of the other. Gain you supplies trust by monthly or quarterly meetings where you share your goals, opportunities, and challenges. Show them empathy when you can’t pay your bill on time by giving your vendors advance notice and payment plans. Give them a long-term contract so they see your loyalty. Be patient. Your positive performance over time will win you the higher credit limits and terms you need to save your cash flow.

There’s more than one way to achieve a positive cash flow in the early days. These are some that worked very well for us. And, if you are lucky enough to have investors, they will be more comfortable working with you when you demonstrate resourcefulness by reducing your need for cash.

Who We Are

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

The post 4 Tips to Avoid Drowning in Startup Expenses appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Save Time and Money Monetizing Your Idea

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:01:47 +0000

Many people have a simplistic view of how to make money on their idea. They think that if it’s good enough, someone will buy it. We have come to realize, finally, that it’s not about the idea, it’s about the business that sells the idea.

The idea might be for a great product that makes life easier. But to actually have a monetization event where you get paid for your idea, you must create a business that sells it. Now you have to demonstrate that there is a substantial and increasing market for your idea. You do this with sales.

If you intend to eventually attract an investor, acquirer, or cash infusion partner, your business must show the level of earnings they are looking for. Most businesses are valued on a multiple of annual earnings, so, in most cases, it is the earnings they are investing in, not the “idea.”

For us, it took 19 years to finally achieve the earnings and the sales necessary to attract an acquirer. For every category of consumer product and price point, there is a corresponding number of earnings and sales that your business must achieve before any acquirer will even look at you. And those numbers can change with the times and the economy. But once you know what those numbers for your particular type of business, you must grow to at least that size.

Now you are involved with growing a business and all the critical make-it-or-break-it decisions that are required daily. How will you make more right decisions? What principles and standards will you employ to hold up as a guide in every aspect of your business?

If we had known then what we know now, it might have taken us half the time to monetize our business. We learned most lessons the hard way, but now we have 20-20 hindsight. Like a Monday morning quarterback, we look at our history and realize what we did right and what we could have done better.

Many folks with great ideas who want to get paid for them are starting out just like we did: not realizing all that is involved to reach that monetization event, not realizing the long term effects of daily decisions, and not really employing a set of time-proven standards. We can help!

Our New York Times bestselling book, The Barefoot Spirit, is our story of hardship, hustle, and heart. We wrote it as a business adventure story to entertain and enlighten. It’s about the real world, not academic form and function. But now we have distilled out of it The Guiding Principles for Success that ultimately guided us, resulting in our success. We put them into a 30- day, four-part video-webinar series. Each week for 4 weeks we present a one-hour content video and 4 days later, a one-hour live Q&A. We wish someone would have sat us down and had this chat with us!

Part 1 is “Starters for Startups.” It breaks business down to the things you should know before you get started and the mindset required to overcome the challenges ahead.

Part 2 is “Being Resourceful – Cash Flow Management.” It examines the ways you can reduce your need for capital, increase your credit, and extend your terms.

Part 3 is “Engaging and Empowering Your People – Personnel Management.” It explores ways to reduce turnover (the #1 hidden cost of business) and how to motivate your people.

Part 4 is “Sales Is King – Distribution Management.” It focuses on the most important part of your business – sales. It tells how to get your product to market and how to keep it there.

We employ 20 Guiding Principles for Success to these core competencies. Stop wasting your time and money in your quest to monetize your great idea! Go to www.BarefootSpiritGPS.com for a free sample.

Who We Are

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

The post Save Time and Money Monetizing Your Idea appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The Barefoot Startup’s GPS Will Help You Succeed in Business

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:00:32 +0000

After several years of keynote speaking, writing and coaching, we, the Barefoot Wine Founders, are happy to announce our first full-length video series on our favorite subject, entrepreneurship! We’re pretty excited!

Announcing The Barefoot Startup’s Guiding Principles for Success (GPS)TM.

This video series is designed for aspiring, startup, and growth-phase entrepreneurs in all industries who want to benefit from our considerable experience building and selling Barefoot Wine, an iconic international consumer products brand.

This is a wide-ranging collection of hard-learned lessons that are easy to understand and will be of great benefit to beginners and experienced business people alike. The lessons are designed to show you how to save time, money and precious resources.

We discuss the three core competencies that every business has to master… no matter what the business. These competencies are: cash flow management, personnel management, and distribution management. Proficiency in all three is a must for success! We provide the primary objectives of each core competency, and share with you the key guiding principles that apply to each one. We also provide the standards to guide you to better decisions in these crucial areas, these are game changers!

The videos are dynamically organized and presented in 4 modules, each one under an hour, presented each week over 30 days: (1) Starters for Startups (Start off on the Right Foot), (2) Be Resourceful (Cash Flow Management), (3) Engage and Empower Your People (Personnel Management) and (4) Sales Is King (Distribution Management). After each module, we offer a live Q&A session for another 45 minutes to answer your burning questions!

(1) Starters for Startups (Start off on the Right Foot): Thinking about our own experiences, we realized that if we knew more about where we were headed, we would have done things differently from the start. So, the first module begins by asking a lot of questions we wish, in retrospect, we had asked. For instance, why are you in business? How big do you want to become? How do you discover the key metrics that help set your goals for a capitalization event (public stock offering, an investment partner or acquisition)? How do you organize your documents – and why? And the list goes on. The answers to these questions will lay a solid foundation that you will thank yourself for later.

(2) Be Resourceful (Cash Flow Management): The cash flow report replaces the business plan on day one. Just how do you make ends meet? How can you increase your cash and reduce and extend your payments right away? The answers we have may surprise you.

(3) Engage and Empower Your People (Personnel Management): You are going to be working with people. How you treat, compensate and engage your personnel will build your business, forge and grow critical relationships with outside vendors, buyers, and lenders – AND will reduce the #1 hidden cost of business, turnover.

(4) Sales Is King (Distribution Management): Ultimately you’ve got to sell your products. That means you will have to depend on others to get your products to the ultimate end users. How you manage your distribution channel will have a bigger impact on your success than the price, quality, or demand for your products. Sales can be easily stopped anywhere in the distribution channel at any level. We will tell you what skills, attitudes and specific relationships are required to keep the pipeline full and moving.

For those first to sign up for the series, we will give free bonuses including info-graphics, Due-Diligence Checklist for Acquisition, Top 10 Questions to Ask an Investment Broker, Case Study of the Barefoot Brand, exclusive membership in the GPS Community Forum, and detailed worksheets for each module to keep businesses on course.

We will offer a free one-hour introductory webinar so folks can test drive the “The Barefoot Startup’s GPS” If you (or any one you know) would like to discover the secrets of what we’ve learned in 20 years of building a top global brand, now is your chance! This is the first time we are offering this exclusive, boots-on-the-ground information designed specifically to help others gain an edge in their industry.

Sign up now and we will notify you when our free introductory webinar will be available. You’ll receive a few of our expert business resources right away to help boost your bottom line.

We offer you the solutions that proved successful for us- against overwhelming odds! And we learned to have fun along the way! We are thrilled to now have the opportunity to share these lessons with you, to make a difference in your business and future.

To your success!

Who We Are

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

The post The Barefoot Startup’s GPS Will Help You Succeed in Business appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Entrepreneurship is Hot in Asia!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:00:31 +0000

Last weekend we entertained nearly 100 students and faculty from Nanyang Technological University located in Singapore. They were keen on finding out what made us tick as entrepreneurs. Every year the school sends 100 of its brightest entrepreneurship students to the United States where they visit some of our country’s most successful entrepreneurs at businesses and schools in Silicon Valley and the Boston area.

One of the highlights of their visit has traditionally been a visit to the Napa wine country. Bonnie happened to be sitting next to their organizer at the World Conference on Entrepreneurship in Dublin, Ireland where we gave the keynote address last June. She suggested the students visit Sonoma County’s wine country instead this year and offered a two-hour seminar personally hosted by us.

Last Saturday they arrived in Sonoma County where we took them on a walk-and-talk. At each stop we gave them an essential lesson in entrepreneurship:

The 3 Core Competencies. No matter what business you think you are in, you are actually in 3 core businesses which you must master to be successful.

Cash-flow Management: paying your bills with income from your business. You have to reduce your need for capital by outsourcing as much as you can, and by using your suppliers and buyers as bankers. Regular meetings and empathy for their interests are the keys to building trust and extending credit.
Personnel Management: finding good people and building great people. This results in a reduction of turnover, the #1 hidden cost of any business. Requirements include the ability to create compensation systems for all staff based on sales, growth and profitability; public recognition for a job well done; and treating your people as an asset rather than a cost.
Distribution Management: making every “sale” between you and your end-user. The first sale is to your own people who buy because they believe in your product and what your company stands for; next is the distributer’s or wholesaler’s ownership, who buys for strategic reasons; then the wholesaler’s sales people who buy for commissions; the retailer comes next who buys for quick turn, followed by the retailer’s clerk who buys for attention and recognition; and finally, the general public who buys for value, availability and social reasons.

The 2-Division Company. The most successful entrepreneurs think of their businesses, no matter how many divisions they have, as having only two divisions.

Sales: Without sales there can be no other divisions because there simply won’t be any funds to support them. All income comes from the customer. The feedback that keeps your products and services relevant and marketable passes through your sales and customer service departments. They should be advising Marketing and Production, and not the other way around.
Sales Support: This is everyone who is not in sales! This includes the administration, marketing, production, research, legal, accounting, HR, and even the receptionist. Tie part of their income to sales, such as a bonus. Have regular meetings between your sales and sales support people to discuss market changes, opportunities and challenges, and work together on solutions.

The #1 Rule. At every level of business, put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Ask yourself how would you like it if you were on the receiving end of your own employment, sales, buying, and accounts payable policies? Empathy drives and bonds all business relationships.

We offered the students some infographics we have developed which take some of these complex concepts and graphically represent them for easy understanding. They are available to you as well with our compliments at www.barefootbonus.com.

We wish the students of Nanyang U. good fortune in their own businesses!

Who We Are

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

The post Entrepreneurship is Hot in Asia! appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The C-E-O is the Future of The American Economy

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 01:08:31 +0000

The C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization) had their Annual Conference this past October 31 – November 2 in Chicago, and we were thrilled to be a part of it. When we got up to the stage and even before we began our keynote address, we were taken back by the spectacle of nearly 1,200 college students, faculty, and young entrepreneurs from around the world.

This gathering of aspiring collegiate entrepreneurs was representative of the future of the American economy. Ranging in age from 18 to 24, this was Generation Z at its finest! It was a moving experience to realize that among these young people would emerge the next Steve Jobs and similar business rock stars of the future.

Over the three days of the national conference, we heard many inspiring speakers share their experiences on what it takes to make it in business. We were most impressed by seasoned entrepreneur and senior editor of Inc. Magazine, Norman Brodsky. Norman began his keynote speech not from the stage but from the back of the room, true to his out-of-the-box theme. Then, as he walked through the crowd of young people, he asked a series of questions and provided some surprising answers.

At one point he asked, “What is the main job of the CEO?” The young crowd peppered him with an array of answers from “leadership” to “fundraising,” from “the buck stops here” to “company vision.” After each suggestion, he gave a loud emphatic “NO!” After a period of silence, Norman said, “Culture! The CEO’s main job is to build positive company culture – because true success ultimately comes from your people!”

We couldn’t agree more, and, as a matter of fact, our success with Barefoot Wine was really the success of our team culture. We gave them permission to be creative and, yes, even to make mistakes. This inspired a culture that was fun and friendly, open and respectful of the contributions of others. With the customer at the top, serviced by our sales people, everybody else in the company understood that they worked in Sales Support. Creating positive company culture is the main job of the CEO. Thank you Norman for the reminder!

We met hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs from C-E-O chapters in 43 states and several Canadian provinces. They were all there to soak up as much as they could from proven successful business executives. Throughout the conference, we found that the #1 misconception most folks had was they thought the distribution of their product was somehow going to take care of itself, and that the strength of their idea and the demand by the public would be enough to pull their product through the distribution channels.

Once again we had to remind them, “You can’t buy it if it ain’t there!” And it won’t be there unless you see to it yourself. This is especially true at first when you are an unknown. We live in a wonderful country with the most efficient distribution infrastructure in the world. Shopping in stores brimming with choices of all sorts of products gives us the mistaken idea that everything we see is all there is. But there are thousands of products we never see because they simply never made it to the shelf. Sure, you have to have a great product at an affordable price with a cute logo and compelling catch phrase, but distribution management is ultimately the deciding factor.

We hope our experience and the experience of others who spoke will give these young people the insights they need to succeed. We want the new entrepreneurs of Generation Z to be Generation Zero-limits! Go get ‘em, Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization!

Who We Are

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

The post The C-E-O is the Future of The American Economy appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Santa Barbara News-Press Article on Michael Houlihan

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:32:28 +0000

By SCOTT STEEPLETON NEWS-PRESS CITY EDITOR

March 7, 2013 5:59 AM

When he returns to Santa Barbara for a speaking engagement this week, Barefoot Cellars co-founder Michael Houlihan will be treading familiar territory.

He attended City College 1965-67 and it was here, in the early stages of Barefoot, that Mr. Houlihan, who founded the brand with partner Bonnie Harvey, pounded the pavement making the sales.

Mr. Houlihan and Ms. Harvey will speak at the Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at City College at 4:30 p.m. Friday, the first of 10 stops on a nationwide tour to get people fired up about starting a business and to promote their upcoming book, “Barefoot Spirt: How Hardship, Hustle and Heart Built a Bestselling Wine,” which comes out in May.

Admission is free, but seats are limited. Attendees will get access to the eBook version of “The Barefoot Spirit.”

The wine’s roots date to 1965, when San Francisco writer and reporter Davis Bynum created Barefoot Bynum Burgundy at his home in the Bay Area. In 1986, Mr. Houlihan and Ms. Harvey came aboard and Barefoot Cellars was born – in their home.

From 1987 to 1995, Mr. Houlihan personally serviced every account in Santa Barbara.

In 2005, the brand was sold to E. & J. Gallo Winery, the world’s largest family-owned winery and the largest exporter of California wine.

In 2007, Barefoot and Surfrider teamed up to create the Barefoot Wine Beach Rescue Project, a nationwide initiative to keep our beaches “barefoot-friendly.” Each summer, the Project goes coast-to-coast, calling on community volunteers and local Surfrider members to come out and clean their shores.

Not bad for a couple who knew nothing about the business when they started out.

“It wasn’t easy, man,” Mr. Houlihan said in a phone interview Wednesday.

But it was clear from the beginning who would do what.

“Bonnie is very good with what I call minutiae,” Mr. Houlihan said with a chuckle. “But that covers things like money and legal and contracts. She also ran the bottling lines and was in charge of all promotion at the beginning. I am the swashbuckling sword-wielder. I do things like sales and marketing, long-term planning.”

“We respect each other for our different skill sets,” he added.

While the company has gone through lots of change, Ms. Harvey’s footprint is still the label iconography for Barefoot Cellars, which includes still and sparkling wines.

In the talks, as well as in their new book, the couple speaks to an audience much broader than people who want to get into the wine business.

“The three things you gotta know in any business is personnel management, distribution management and cash flow management,” said Mr. Houlihan, whose varied background includes productivity and process improvement.

“You have to know how to treat people so you can maintain and grow relationships. Also you have to know strategic allies. ‘Who’s going to make out if we make out?’ ”

He puts a premium on distribution management. After all, you could have the best idea for a product in the world, but if you can’t get it to customers, what good is it?

“Warehouses are full of good ideas that are sitting unsold. I’m sorry, but it’s more about distribution than the product or how good it is for the price.”

These days, Mr. Houlihan is a principal in the wine consulting business Houlihan and Jones, and he and Ms. Harvey produce free business blogs on two sites every week, www.barefootwinefounders.com andwww.thebrandauthority.net .

Their book is available for download at both sites.

While his work in the wine business these days is more focused on helping others make their brands successful, Mr. Houlihan says one thing about the industry that hasn’t changed – the regulation. Each state has its own rules when it comes to what you can sell, where you can sell it and how much you can sell it for.

“We’re the United States of America, but from an alcohol beverage standpoint, when you’re trying to sell wine interstate, it’s a loose confederation of independent countries held together by Oprah Winfrey and Ricky Lake,” he said.

“We’re selling ideas now, not wine.”

email: ssteepleton@newspress.com

Who We Are

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

The post Santa Barbara News-Press Article on Michael Houlihan appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Discover Your Strengths and Weaknesses Before You Start Your Business

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:21:00 +0000

The right business for you is a combination of opportunity, preparation and resources. It’s more of a discovery than a choice. You will not have the world of all possibilities to choose from, but if you analyze your strengths and weaknesses, you can identify the opportunities that are plausible.

The key to success is to understand what you have an abundance of and what you need more of. We all have a tendency to think we can do more that we actually can. This is why we recommend working with a third party who knows you very well. It will be harder to make claims knowing you are being held accountable.

Have your friend ask you these basic questions to better understand your capacities:

1. Time: How much time are you able to commit to your new venture? Do you have or plan to have children? Are you accustomed to taking vacations and long weekends? Do you have commitments to others, annual family reunions, or a significant other who wants your company on trips? How many days can you commit to working in a year? How many hours a day? Do you have regular appointments, kids to pick up, chores to accomplish and so on?

2. Money: Start-ups eat money. Even though your goal is to attain cash flow quickly, you still should know what your limitations are. What are your savings? What are your credit card limits? What is your credit status? Can you raise private capital? Will your family help? Can you get a loan? Can you trade goods and services in lieu of having to buy them? How long will it take your new business to pay its bills, and can you or others bridge that gap? Now, multiply your anticipated needs by two or more!

3. Skill Set: Education is not just the kind you get in school; it’s also the experience you have attained during your career. What do you excel at? How do you handle stress? Can you do what you do well and delegate the rest to others? Are you experienced at hiring and training? Most businesses come down to personnel management and some form of distribution management. Can you take advice? Are you willing to take a smaller piece of a bigger pie?

4. Connections: Who you know is often more important than what you know. List anyone connected with the business you are considering. Who, from your past, can help you? Take a close look at your contacts, past jobs, and friends.

5. Location: Where are you living now? Are you willing to move? How much and how often are you willing to travel? Some start-ups require a lot of travel. Certain mercantile and service businesses nail you down to one location permanently. Are your ready for that?

Once you can look your friend in the eye and honestly answer these questions, compare them to the opportunities you are considering. Thoroughly research each opportunity to identify what is required initially and in the long run, using your honest evaluation in each of the areas above.

Even if you discover the opportunity is not right for you, going though this process can help you understand the difference between what you want and what you need.

Who We Are

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

The post Discover Your Strengths and Weaknesses Before You Start Your Business appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Distribution: The Distance between a Great Product and a Sale – Part 4

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:11:12 +0000

In the previous three posts we have given just a few examples of the importance of Channel Distribution Management in product design. Here we will examine two of the most important factors in product distribution through conventional channels:

14. Stack it! It is great to get your product on the retail shelf, but getting it stacked on the floor is infinitely more valuable. When your product or brand is new, there is no better way to announce its arrival than a colorful floor display. Floor displays are at the option of the retailer, but retailers are more likely to grant you the coveted floor space if they believe they can move your product quickly. This may require special pricing, local promotion, merchandising assistance, special signage, and months of preparation and scheduling. Retailers want to floor display products that have a demonstrated record of brisk sales, a real Catch 22 for new producers with no track record. However, a strategic plan that starts small and demonstrates brisk sales with adjacent retailers will give you and your product credibility.

15. Reorders are more important than orders! Without the reorder, all your work to get your product to the retailer is lost. This is why eternal vigilance at the retail level is essential. There are many reasons why retailers don’t reorder besides the obvious, “The price was too high,” or “The quality was too low.” Here are some examples:

Your product sold out and the retailer forgot to reorder because he was not used to reordering it.
The retailer’s distributer that supplies your product did not deliver.
The distributer delivered the wrong product.
The distributer’s sales person loaded the retailer up last month with products that have yet to sell and now the retailer doesn’t want to order anything from that sales person, including your product.
Your product is still in the back room and never made it to the shelf.
The invoice was wrong and the price was wrong.
Your distributer’s sales person simply did not ask for a reorder.
Your products UPC number was incorrectly entered at the back door and was refused.
Your product UPC number was incorrectly entered on the scanner at the check out.
Your product’s shelf reorder ticket was lost or removed.
None of your Point of Sale signage was up.

If you don’t have your own representative in that city, visiting that store on a regular basis, your product could be easily discontinued for any of the reasons above, and more. And everyone will tell you, “It just didn’t sell”.

There are many more distribution factors to consider before launching any product. The most successful products treat distribution as more important than the product itself.

In most chain stores, you get only one chance…forever! The good news is that your product can’t be discontinued if it isn’t there yet. Do your research. Start small and slow.

There are warehouses full of great products that never made it to the shelf. There are shelves full of many products that are less than great … but they have great distribution. Customers buy what’s there, and they can’t buy what isn’t.

Your product is only new once. So take the time to build the distribution requirements into your product and your budget. Hit a home run at your first and only time at bat!

Who We Are

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

The post Distribution: The Distance between a Great Product and a Sale – Part 4 appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.