This is a great question because it is the most unnerving part of entrepreneurship and distinguishes it from a 9-5 job. Sure, a job may seem stable and dependable, but if the entrepreneur who hired you suddenly goes out of business, then you are suddenly unemployed. The millennials saw what happened in the recession when their parents were laid off, so they don’t put a lot of faith into their own security with the big corporations like their parents did. They’d just as soon take their chances on their own and at least have some say over the risks involved. We salute them for this! We love working with millennials, because they’ve got guts!

Still, we can hear the anxiety in their voices. We have asked ourselves the same questions. But what do you do about the unknown? How do you prepare for it?

Yes, you are entering a dark and creepy tunnel, but with the right tools you can be ready for just about anything. Just like a sea captain doesn’t know what to expect out there on the unpredictable ocean, but he is prepared with training, relies on standards, adheres to principles, and uses tools to get safely to port.

For entrepreneurship, we like to say you need a hard hat, a compass, and a flashlight to get through that unfamiliar tunnel.

The hard had is a set of attitudes that keeps you positive when the unexpected pops up or falls out of the sky. It’s really how you think of the challenge by taking the 10,000-foot view. The fastest way out of the box is straight up! Up there you can see the other folks that are effected by the same dilemma, discover your natural allies, and look for an elegant solution that solves more than one problem. If you take this big-picture approach, the pop up ghosts aren’t so scary.

The flashlight is to see your way down that dark tunnel and to light up the challenges and opportunities in front of you. Illumination can help you better understand what’s going on. It doesn’t solve anything in itself, but it does give you a better idea of what’s ahead. Illumination reveals the various parts of the challenge, making the solution more discoverable. What is that flashlight exactly? It’s research, asking questions, learning from your mistakes, and it’s the confidence that you get when you can see what you are faced with.

The compass is the set of guiding principles that act as the standards you rely on when making decisions. These are the business philosophies that you believe in, and the principles that build the foundation of your company. You carry these standards with you into the unknown, giving you the confidence to handle just about anything. The main guiding principle is put yourself in the other person’s shoes. From that position, you can discover what others want out of the situation, and once you know that, you are more prepared to get their attention, cooperation, and ultimately their support.

Fear of the unknown can paralyze you. The more you prepare yourself for it, the less scary it becomes. So for Halloween, we offer the millennials a real “Ghost Buster,” the Entrepreneur’s GPS. Check it out! And Happy Halloween!

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 Scarier Than Halloween! Creepier than a Crypt! It’s a Ghost! It’s a Goblin! No, It’s Entrepreneurship! appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Starting a business feels overwhelming. It seems like there’s never enough money, time, or resources to gain traction in the marketplace. We may apply industry standards in our own business, and not even question them. Then we add our own personal standards that we inadvertently bring to our new business. Some may be counterproductive to our very success. Business consists of one decision after another, back to back, sometimes in rapid succession, and often under pressure. Is there a set of guiding principles we can weigh those decisions up against to help us make the choices that will sustain and grow our business?

While building the Barefoot Wine brand, we learned, sometimes the hard way, what those guiding principles looked like. We call them collectively, The Barefoot Spirit . They enabled us to get the advice we needed, and keep the best people. They reduced our need for capital, and increased our credit and terms. By relying on our guiding principles to make decisions, we increased sales, reduced our overhead, gained new loyal customers, and grew our brand. Since then we have found that these same principles apply to most businesses.

Over the next few posts we will examine these guiding principles and how they may benefit you. We will ask questions in four categories to uncover a series of critical decisions that can make a big difference in your success. They may seem simple at first, but as you get into them and their implications, you will realize they are anything but simple.

The questions are: How would you like it if you 1) worked for yourself, 2) extended credit to yourself,   3) sold to yourself, or 4) bought from yourself?

1. Would you work for yourself? Would you want to work for an employer who treated your labor as a commodity, trying to see how little you would work for? Would that save the company money, or lose money due to turnover and lost relationships? Or would you prefer an employer who sees people as an asset, rewarding them for performance and acknowledging their achievements? Would this increase innovation and long-term relationships? We found that people work primarily for income, recognition, personal time, and security. When we began paying for performance rather that attendance, we found our best people didn’t leave because they benefited financially from their own production. Those who were less productive were paid less and could not afford to stay. As an employer, do you acknowledge producers publically, or are you afraid they will ask for a raise? By giving time off, do you think you are losing production, or that you are increasing production with recharged and loyal people? Do you see medical and retirement benefits as a cost, or as an investment in long-term stability?

Your attitude and philosophy toward these critical aspects of business will shape the decisions you make. Next time we will examine the other questions that reveal your basic business philosophy. In the long run, if you would be happy doing business with yourself on all of these levels, you will have a big head start on the ultimate success of your company.

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 Build Your Business using Guiding Principles – Part 1 appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.