We had no idea how long it would take, the opposition we would face, or the enormous hurdles we had to clear in compliance, distribution, and personnel management.

Every day there were new fires that had to be put out. Every day there were unexpected bills hungry for bucks. And every roadblock challenged our very approach to problem solving.

After a while, we began to develop actual problem-solving principles that gave us structure and a set of standards we would apply to future problems. As we solved problem after problem, we slowly improved our approach to problem solving itself.

To read the complete article, please visit Business Journals 

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

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

The post 5 Principles For Solving Problems appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

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

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

NBC News foreign correspondent Richard Engle, a Stanford grad himself, gave the keynote. He encouraged the grads to take chances and “Please don’t get a desk job!” He said that the world was on a collision course with three super trends: technology, over population, and climate change.

He warned that when these forces combine into a deadly cocktail we will see a chaotic and unstable future. He painted the picture of populations doubling and, at the same time, being able to better communicate. He said this would lead to political upheaval where demigods promise peace and stability but disappoint only to be replaced by yet another demigod. He drew the picture of a horrific collision between a bus and a car and said all of the human experience can be seen in that moment; life, death, rescue and escape. He told the grads they could learn from witnessing it.

After graduation Richard Engle left Stanford with $2000 in his pocket and a one-way ticket for Cairo. He said he has been shot at, kidnapped, arrested, and deported during his time as a celebrated war correspondent in the Middle East. His experiences may have contributed to the tone of his talk which was peppered with dire images of an apocalyptic future. Certainly the shock value got the grads attention with the somewhat redeeming message to get out there, take a chance and witness life to continue your education in the real world.

We take a different view. We have spoken to more than 20,000 students in the past two years, but our message takes a more positive spin. We believe this generation will be the saviors, not just the reporters, not just the helpless witnesses. On the contrary, no generation of western grads has been better educated, better informed on world events, more aware of climate change, and more concerned about over population than this one.

Today’s graduates can change the course of the “collision.” They can and will see these mega trends as opportunities for new paradigms, new inventions, and new solutions. Communication can not only make society aware of corruption and foment upheaval, but it can also demonstrate how personal behavioral can empower each of us to make positive changes that can change the world.

Over population’s consequences can be communicated and alternatives offered. New attitudes toward food, air and water can take hold much faster with enhanced communication. Increasing tech-driven transparencies can hold companies accountable for social, employment, and environmental impact.

Climate change can be mitigated with alternative sources of power and transportation. Just making alternative energy more efficient and less expensive than fossil fuel will help the environment, curb warming, and reduce the ongoing wars financed by fossil fuel sales.

All of this spells opportunity for today’s grads.

We want to encourage the grads to not just watch the future, but change the future. Maybe some young engineer like Zach will come up with a breakthrough invention that makes it all possible. One thing is for sure; all grads will be more likely to do it and even more if we let them know now that we are counting on them and believe they can do it! Go get ’em grads!

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 A Message to the Graduates appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

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

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 On Independence Day, We’re more Interdependent than Ever appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.