Financial | The Barefoot Spirit

3 Big Throw Downs Challenge Today’s Grads

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 25 May 2017 17:00:56 +0000

We are excited to go to a friend’s graduation who just completed his Masters in Engineering from Stanford. When we asked him what he was going to do with it, his response came lightning fast, “I’m going to extend the range of electric vehicles another 200 miles!”

Now that’s the kind of goal we wish all the grads had – a goal that positively impacts the quality of life for generations to come. As much as we would like to think people will do the right thing to protect the future of the planet, many people are simply looking for a quick financial gain. Never mind that it’s clearly costlier in the long run to keep burning fossil fuel and poisoning the ocean, people want to see the immediate benefits.

A 400-500 mile range electric vehicle would provide immediate benefits, not because of politics, not because of concern for the environment, but because of market forces. The big challenge for today’s college grads is to discover ways that pay off immediately to compel consumers to make the right choices.

Better Batteries. Today’s younger generations are inheriting a power grid that fosters monopoly and extortive billing practices. For instance, we buy electricity from our local renewable power district to augment what our solar panels produce. But another company that owns the infrastructure charges us exorbitant monthly fees to be connected to their grid. Consequently, our electric bill has tripled!

Several states in the US are so dominated by the power companies that their pricing structures discourage home owners from installing solar collectors. And these are sunbelt states, perfect for generating solar power! So, what’s the challenge here for grads? Create products that store enough power to allow homeowners to cut the cord to the greedy power companies and be independent. Can today’s grads create local, affordable, and sufficient power storage?

Bio-Degradable Packaging. In the classic 1967 movie, The Graduate Mr. McGuire takes Ben, the graduate, (Dustin Hoffman) aside to advise him about his future. He says, “I just want to say one word to you, just one word … Plastics!” In 1967, the plastics industry was heating up and soon seemingly everything was made of plastic. …And it wound up in our oceans, in our fish, and in our bodies.

Maybe now the advice should be “bio-degradable packaging.” With the explosion of individually packaged home-delivered items, we are drowning in foam peanuts, plastic blister packs, and bubble wrap. Can our new grads create a cheaper and healthier alternative?

And what about the oceans? Can the grads develop a profitable way to harvest the plastic that’s floating around and keep it out of our food supply? Can they create a demand for this type of plastic that makes dollars and sense?

Sustainable Food. With 7.5 billion people on the planet, the food business is a good bet. But what kind of food business? We obviously can’t continue to destroy the world’s lungs to feed the world’s belly. The destruction of the oxygen producing rainforests for grazing lands is not sustainable, nor is it ultimately affordable.

We need to develop locally sourced food supplies that are sustainable. They need to compete economically with fossil-fuel-intensive global sourcing. This will mean food production close to, or in the cities, reducing the cost of transportation significantly. Can the grads find ways to make this more affordable? Can they create market forces that favor abundant, healthy, and delicious food locally produced?

Congratulations to all the grads out there. You have a lot of challenges. The whole world is watching to see what solutions you come up with. So get to work!

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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Is High MPG a Selling Point Any More?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 17:00:36 +0000

When we heard the auto industry’s recent request for lower federal miles per gallon standards, we were stunned! They argue that since gas is so cheap, and there is such a demand for low MPG trucks that the 2025 Standards are too costly to achieve. There was no mention of the cost to all of us if we continue to burn that amount of carbon.

Are there no financial consequences to damaging our health and quality of life, or the destruction of property if we burn more? Acting like gas is going to be cheap forever and control on pollution isn’t necessary is very short-term thinking at best. The consumer will be ultimately victimized.

What about the ultimate cost to auto buyers stuck with gas guzzlers? What about the cost of lost auto industry jobs to more efficient imports? What about the cost of reduced American exports because they no longer meet the importer’s mileage standards? The auto industry is only citing cheap gas.

We guess the thinking goes that if gas is cheap, why would a consumer want to buy a high MPG vehicle? Consumers want bigger, more inefficient vehicles. So, lower the standards and give them what they want.

But the state governments may have something to say about this. For instance, if California has stricter standards, what is the cost for the industry tooling up for two markets, one that has lower standards and one that has higher standards?

We think the auto industry is underestimating the consumer.

The consumer is beginning to realize that climate change related catastrophes are expensive and the costs are ultimately borne by them through taxation and increased insurance premiums. How many more superstorms, how many more super fires, how many more floods, droughts, vector-borne diseases will it take? How much more will the consumer pay for food, clothing, and everything consumable before they all connect the dots?

There is a good reason for regulations and standards. Any organized society has an obligation to protect its own citizens and future generations from their consumers’ own short-sighted buying patterns. The auto industry has not been held responsible for these associated costs – yet. And they can always point the finger at the consumer and say, “Well, that’s what they asked for!” And in the absence of environmental and health standards there is no long-term protection. Is it OK to hurt the environment permanently along with your health and property – and that of your children – for a temporary reduction in your fuel bill? We think not.

How far do we take this laissez faire philosophy? Do we do away with warning labels and prohibitions on poisonous ingredients in our food so that industry doesn’t have to bear the cost of compliance? Let the buyer beware? “Oh, come on,” you may say, “That’s a bit of a stretch.” But we are allowing the growth of a technology we already know to be poisonous to the environment and ultimately to us? And before all those warning labels on food? People were buying and consuming products that were harmful to them.

Let’s not give up on what most of the rest of the world has committed to: Higher mileage standards. It is about saving our environment and all the long-term costs associated with losing it. We shouldn’t burn more gas because it’s cheap! We shouldn’t burn more gas, period. Not today and not tomorrow. Take a stance and do the thing that is right for the environment, your healthy, and future generations.

Who We Are

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

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Women Entrepreneurs Radio with Deborah Bailey

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 16:03:24 +0000

Bonnie Harvey is the co-founder of Barefoot Cellars along with partner Michael Houlihan. She was Vice President and “The Original Foot” for 19 years. There she had a wide variety of duties, doing whatever was necessary to operate the business. While Michael’s role was “big picture visionary,” Bonnie translated his ideas into workable processes and displayed a genius for managing the millions of details that come with a start-up. She proved to possess a rare combination of creativity and business savvy that served Barefoot well.

In the early days of the brand, Bonnie was responsible for bottling oversight, supply inventory and label design—in fact, the famous footprint is actually hers! Later as Barefoot grew, she focused on overview and direction of the business, setting company goals, and attending to Board of Director matters. She managed all financial aspects of the business, oversaw legal relations and compliance, and edited countless press materials, presentations, official manuals and other documents.

To read more and listen to the complete audio interview, please visit The Secrets of Success Women Entrepreneurs Radio

Who We Are

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

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On Independence Day, We’re more Interdependent than Ever

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:01:11 +0000

As we approach the nation’s 236^th year of independence from England and thereby Europe, we find ourselves glued to the financial news out of Europe like we were still part of it. And we are, more than ever. We worry about the economies of China and Russia as if they were our own – regardless of our political differences. Why? Because our very livelihood depends on the world’s economic and environmental health.

We live on the Pacific Coast where debris from the Japanese tsunami is now just starting to wash up from a catastrophe clear across the world’s largest ocean. Beyond our human empathy for the brave people of Japan, many Japanese products we took for granted became scarce. We were confronted with how the damage to their infrastructure affected our marketplace.

If there’s even a hint of an interruption in the supply of oil from the Middle East, we feel it at the pump. That cost trickles up into everything we buy, including the food we eat.

On the West Coast, we’re now getting air pollution from China. If the developing world continues to copy our approach to “prosperity,” we will suffer the health and environmental consequences right here in the USA.

So yes, we wave the flag and celebrate our great nation. We are thankful for the opportunities and freedoms we enjoy. We are proud to be Americans. But independence? We are all here on the same planet, all interdependent and becoming more so every year.

The good news is that the superpowers all know that their customers and suppliers in the other superpowers are too important to allow anything that would hurt their infrastructure, economy, or the world atmosphere. The bad news is that we haven’t yet realized that our economies and health are ultimately dependent on the health of the environment.

But we as individuals are not completely powerless, especially in America. Over and over again we hear that the world economy depends largely on the health of the American consumer. We all know by now that we vote with our money. In our incessant desire to get everything at the very lowest price, we can inadvertently subsidize political, social, health and environmental practices we would never allow in our own country. Every purchase we make is a vote for how it was made, the working conditions and how it got to us.

It’s hard to blame the government when the lobbyists are financed by our choices. If all politics are local, as it is often said, we can start to make changes in the way we spend our money. We can shop at the local organic farmer’s market and try to buy as many goods and services from local merchants as possible. We can avoid the purchase of single use plastics and vote for cleaner beaches. We can vote for lower healthcare costs by making healthier food choices. Every time we fill up with gas we can at least recognize where those funds are going and hope the day will come soon when we will have cleaner alternatives. Car-pooling, biking, and just plain walking are great votes for a more sustainable future.

This Independence Day let’s recognize our interdependence and how our individual choices can shape the future of not only our great country, but also the world. We are free to make independent choices in how we spend our money, thereby casting our votes. We can yet bring in the “New Order” that our nation’s founders called for by recognizing our true power right here in our wallets.

Happy Birthday USA!

Who We Are

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

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