We were recently interviewed on The CEO Show by Robert Reiss talking about reinventing an industry through hardship, hustle, and heart. To listen to the interview, please visit The CEO Show Podcast

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Opportunity is the key to the formula:

Hardship plus Hustle equals Opportunity; Opportunity plus Heart equals Success.

So, how does that work?

Hardship is usually a given in any new business venture. The lack of sufficient capital and experience, combined with long hours, low or no pay, and the steep learning curve are some of the hardships most start-up and small business owners can relate to.  The multitude of false starts, mistakes, and backtracking all take their toll. Many businesses suffer from overdue and/or uncollectable receivables, while the payables demand to be paid on time. The future is uncertain, security is fleeting, and the pressure to make sales happen is tremendous. Now that’s Hardship.

Hustle is all about how fast you move, how quickly you correct and learn from your mistakes, and how you maximize your resources. It’s about taking inventory of your visible and hidden assets every day.  It is always looking for opportunities and jumping on them instantly. In the constantly changing marketplace, it is knowing what you really need to do and doing it when you need to do it. It’s about staying light on your feet. Hustle is about looking for, finding, and investing time in people who possess the quality of hustle. And it’s about identifying and helping your natural strategic allies in business and in the community – those who benefit if you succeed. That’s Hustle!

Heart is what drives you. It’s the way you look at the world around you. It’s putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes whether he’s an employee or an associate, a vendor or a supplier, a wholesaler or a customer. Heart is about your belief in your own eventual success, regardless of the odds, the no-sayers, or the time it takes. It’s the tenacity that keeps you going. Heart is having a sense of humor in the face of hardship, and not taking yourself too seriously. It is about being true to your core values by supporting causes that are near and dear to you by helping your community improve itself, thereby giving others a social reason to buy your product. Heart is what makes you feel good about what you do. That’s Heart!

We never set out to be in the wine business. Like so many other entrepreneurial success stories, an opportunity presented itself. Our grape-growing client was owed a good deal of money for his grapes. The winery owing him the funds had no money, so we had to hustle to negotiate a trade for goods and services before our client couldn’t get anything because they went bankrupt.  Sure, he would have preferred to have the cash, but we took what we could get. Then we had the challenge of converting the goods and services to cash – all without any funds of our own, or any knowledge of the industry!

It was tough going. We learned a lot, often the hard way. We had to delay gratification for years. But because we believed in our hearts in the ultimate success of our product and made strategic allies of our employees, associates, vendors, suppliers, and most importantly, the community, we succeeded.  Hardship plus Hustle equals Opportunity. Opportunity plus Heart equals Success. Take it from us. We’ve been there, done that. And we wrote the book on it!

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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Tomorrow, we have the honor of being interviewed by our friend Matt DiGeronimo, Host of The Smith Floyd Water Cooler. Matt wrote a fantastic book review about our book, The Barefoot Spirit and we will post some snippets and link you to the full article on his website.

Let’s start with that which is obvious about the book, “The Barefoot Spirit” : 

• A New York Times Bestseller in the “we did it, so you can too” genre.

• A Cinderalla story with “hardship, hustle, and heart” pitted against an ”exclusive, stuffy, and boring” business environment, America’s wine industry.

• The book is written in the English language, read left to write, and the content of the book divided into chapters.

– The authenticity of the book’s powerful messages drips from each page. Michael and Bonnie never risk losing their effectiveness by stroking their own egos.  In fact, the tone is light, self-deprecating, and fun from start to finish.  It is much easier to accept our knowledge of “retail category management” as deficient while reading about Michael and Bonnie’s surprise to learn it existed.

– Although Michael and Bonnie’s journey definitely emphasizes action and active learning above analysis, this is not the same story as we imagine Sir Richard Branson telling.  Often, Michael and Bonnie’s decisions were made of necessity and not a propensity, or even an inclination, to throw care to the wind.  It is their challenge with this struggle that makes their story so compelling.  Michael and Bonnie enjoyed the benefits of formal education, exacting minds, and previous business success in more structured environments.  Even with these benefits, they readily admit – with the benefit of hindsight, that if they had realized the full-extent of the challenges that lay ahead of them when they decided in 1985 to “unload” 18,000 cases of stock wine, they may have very well decided to pass.

– Michael and Bonnie’s journey was one marked by its emphasis and impact on personal relationships.  From their assembling the core group of “Barefooters,” to their network of strategic alliances, or their relentless commitment to “Worthy Causes” in the community . . . they ALWAYS put people and what was “right” above bottom lines and profit margins.  There were several instances in the book that truly amazed me.  The beauty of this person-centric approach lies in its effectiveness more than its existence.  Their story proves that the free-enterprise remains one of most powerful tools for affecting social change in micro- and macroscopic environments.

To read the complete review, please click here

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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This afternoon, we enjoyed a wonderful beachside luncheon with Melissa Moreno, the school’s Director. She has been instrumental in the creation and development of the Center. Only three years old, it’s already getting the attention and support of several successful entrepreneurs.

Check out their fireside-chat format conversations with these notables on video at their site. These chats are jam packed with excited students interacting with real entrepreneurial successes.

Today’s entrepreneurial students want case studies from real business founders. They want to hear their story and ask them practical questions about how they overcame hardship, challenges and undercapitalization.

Our economy has proven time and again that it’s the entrepreneurs that create new businesses, new jobs, and innovation. Today, we face big challenges. For many graduates, sometimes the only source of employment is self employment.

The Scheinfeld Center provides a big head start for anyone thinking about starting their own business, whether they are looking for credit, or just want to get the latest academic disciplines or practical tools necessary for successful entrepreneurship.

Like schools everywhere, they are struggling with the economy. This seems ironic since they are one of the obvious vehicles to turn the economy around. They deserve your interest and support, so please help pass the word about the Scheinfeld Center. We need more schools like this!

We were honored to be asked to present our experience to the Scheinfeld students next March. Now we have another great reason to visit Santa Barbara. We hope the lessons we learned, sometimes the hard way, will help the next generation of entrepreneurs to achieve 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.

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