Job security | The Barefoot Spirit

5 Ways to Become Indispensable

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 17:00:07 +0000

People often ask us what the characteristics of an ideal employee or outsourced service are. The answer is they should be effective, dependable, and irreplaceable. If you are the employee or outsourced service, ask yourself, “Why was the job created, and what are the goals of the job? How and why was the job budgeted?” If you can honestly answer these questions you are on your way to becoming indispensable.

Here’s a big hint. All jobs have something to do with sales. How does your job create, maintain, or support sales? Sales is the only source of your salary or fee – period! Without sales there is no money for you or anyone else.

Sure, some folks take jobs with companies that are funded by an investor. Those companies have a budget which is steadily diminished by a “burn rate” – the amount of the investor’s money that is used every month to keep the project going. But if the staff is not actively involved somehow in sales, the company eventually folds. Then the employees look for a new company that has a new investor and set about burning up their money. The problem is that ultimately this approach to job security is counter-productive since one has to keep moving, resulting in a reputation of working for companies that failed. They failed because they could not create a positive cash flow resulting in profitability and growth.

If you want job security, build your reputation as an effective player. Here are 5 ways to become indispensable to your company:

Follow the Money. Understand where the money comes from, now and in the future. If your job is now supported by an investment, realize that it must be supported by sales sooner or later, and in most companies, the sooner the better! While investments have time limits, sales should be continuous.
Understand the Justification. Recognize why the job was created and how the job contributes to the sales process. From R&D to service, from accounting to administration, from production to marketing, every job must be pointed at supporting sales.
Know the Processes. Don’t look for security in a cookie cutter approach that requires little thinking. On the contrary, the better you understand the processes and the reasons for the processes, the more effective you will be.
Anticipate the Needs. Once you understand the processes for your job, look for opportunities to maximize those processes to the benefit of your company while reducing the time it takes to get the job done. Don’t wait to be told what to do, and don’t let opportunities get by you. Become relied upon to get the most out of every situation, rather than doing the least necessary to complete the job. Don’t just stay “busy,”’ be productive!
Just Own It! Ultimately, when you thoroughly understand the goals of your job, not just the motions and procedures, you will be in a position to improve the job itself. By focusing on the goals you can better achieve them in a more effective manner. Follow through and follow up as if it was your own business.

So at the end of the day, did you help to increase sales? Did you bring more money in to the company than it cost to support your position? Did you take every opportunity to improve the products and services offered to the company’s customers? Did you help identify, communicate with, and sell the prospects? Did you jump on every opportunity, without being asked, to increase company income and reduce costs? If you did, congratulations! You own your job and are indispensable!

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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Advance in Your Job by Checking Your Own Work

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 18:30:43 +0000

The more your boss trusts you, the faster you become indispensable. They want to rely on you to do your job right, and that means relatively free of errors. Sure, there are bosses that want to micromanage everything you do. Those bosses are actually preventing their people from ever becoming self-reliant. We are not talking about those kinds of bosses.

Too many folks come out of the academic environment where there “work” is constantly graded and corrected. Their teachers are the “safety net.” But now that you have landed that job, you have to make a conscious effort to operate without constant hand-holding. Here are some questions you should be asking to become indispensable in your job:

1.Why am I doing this? Understand the reasons behind every aspect of your job. Don’t just do it because that’s what you have to do to get paid. When you truly get why your job is essential to the customer experience and why that experience results in all the money that the company makes (including your compensation), you will have the clarity of purpose necessary to become dependable. If you don’t understand this critical relationship ask questions until you do.

2. What am I doing? Don’t just look at the cookie cutter aspects of your job. Understand the big picture including the timing restraints, the scope of the responsibility, and the routines you must adhere to in order to keep things from getting by you. If you do it once and it requires constant updating, don’t let your boss have to constantly remind you to update it on a regular basis. You’re boss wants to know that you understand the total responsibility and own it.

3. Is my work correct? When your boss has to check your work all the time, they can get the idea that you can’t be depended upon. Read your own work before you send it in. Look for errors and omissions. We know it’s difficult and no one is perfect. We have found tons of mistakes in our own work when we read it over a few times. Did you cover all the bases? Is it thorough? Did you read the entire request? Are you proud of your work?

4. What needs to be done on a regular basis? Are there items that need to be updated routinely? When you first find out about them, make a checklist right then. Maybe you need a calendar reminder. Some items may need updating as they come in rather than on a calendar basis. If your boss has to remind you of an overlooked part of your job, start a checklist right then. By developing the discipline to know what these items are and recognize them as part of your job, you will become more indispensable to your company.

5. Can you improve the process? Once you understand the job and have been doing it for a while, you will be more likely to see short cuts and other efficiencies that make the job easier and more reliable. The next time you want to blame somebody else for a screw up, ask yourself what you can do in your own backyard to make the situation least likely to reoccur. Suggest and offer new written procedures, checklists and sign-off sheets. Your boss and the whole company will appreciate it.

Most bosses don’t have the time to micromanage you. They want to depend on your work to be thorough and correct. They want to rely on you to take ownership of your job and be responsible for dependable, quality performance. Once that happens, you are more likely to gain responsibility, promotion, security and raises.

Who We Are

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

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The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 4

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:56:20 +0000

With all the challenges your small start-up faces, you still hold some impressive cards. If you play them right, you can have the winning hand! You face all the challenges of cash flow management, distribution management and personnel management, not to mention the competition, push back and resistance you get when you are new in the marketplace.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the advantages you have as a small, undercapitalized start-up. We hope these articles provide encouragement and inspiration for the real saviors and backbone of the economy, the little guys!

Here are a few more advantages that can make the difference and give you a powerful competitive edge:

14. Establishing a Positive Culture. Probably the most important aspect of enduring success in any business is Company Culture. The big company has already established its culture and it may have existed for generations. Unfortunately, most big company culture just evolves over time till its set in stone. When you first pour cement, you can move it with a trowel, but when it hardens, you need a jackhammer. Your small start-up has the advantage of deliberately creating a positive company culture from the outset. You are free to design the DNA and bake it in from the start. To make a sea change the big company has to undo decades of entrenched protocol and unwritten laws that determine the behavior, outlook and personality of its staff. You have the freedom to start out on the right foot on day one and you can easily correct your missteps before you get too big.

15. Company preservation is Job One. Your small start-up has hired a dedicated team that knows what they are up against and has a great deal of respect for the odds stacked against them. As they begin to succeed, they make incredible sacrifices because they see the direct effect they are having personally on the start-up success. There is an air of “we can do this thing if we stick together and all pull our weight”. “Lurking” is not an option. The big company has stratified its work force so much that personal job security often becomes job number one. Decisions can be made that are good for the employee’s protection, advancement or budget, but are actually detrimental in the long run to the company itself. What’s more, this behavior can go unnoticed by top management. You are painfully aware of this short-sighted approach to job security because it’s readily visible in your small start-up and you can’t afford to tolerate it.

16. Be an Acquisition Target. In these days of reduced IPOs and dried up venture capital, there is yet a way for your small start-up to monetize its value. It can get acquired. In fact, it may get acquired by the very big company who may have resisted your advance. You can benefit by the growing trend toward acquiring new ideas. Today, in the big company, a truly new idea can get easily smothered by short-sighted views of job preservation, turf wars or stifled communication. They tend to look outside their organization for truly new ideas that have traction in even a small portion of the market. They tend to look at small start-ups like yours.

In this series we have tried to identify some of the more subtle benefits your small start-up can enjoy over the big well-capitalized, but sometimes sluggish corporations. When it comes to originality, positive culture, or ingenuity, size matters. When it comes to resourcefulness, customer service or maneuverability, size matters. The little guy can still have the winning hand!

Who We Are

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

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The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 3

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:34:46 +0000

By focusing on your customer, and not your big time competitors, your small start-up has the opportunity to address the market with creative and relevant products.

In this series we have examined some of the powerful advantages of being small, undercapitalized and able to turn on a dime.

These days, with lawyers running the big corporations either in fact or in fear, more and more truly game changing concepts are coming from outsiders like you.

Here, then, are a few more advantages of being a small start-up that can help you achieve your goals:

11. Being an Outsider. When you’re new and small, you naturally approach challenges with “common sense” and the experience you have gleaned from other industries and personal experiences. Not necessarily so with the big established companies. They find security in sticking to the straight and narrow. They may not even realize that they are doing things because, well, that’s how it’s always been done. In their sometimes misguided desire for job security, they don’t want to “shake the boat” and can end up doing what they have always done instead of innovating. No one has yet proven to them with financial success that it can be done differently. Perhaps the outsider will!

12. Producing Multifaceted Concepts. Being undercapitalized forces you to make every cent count and every idea solve more than one problem. Like the Swiss army knife with its many tools for many uses, your branding concepts have to embrace and satisfy a variety of needs. You simply can‘t afford to rely on conventional and expensive solutions. For instance, you have to build marketing into the brand. You have to build publicity and customer service into the culture. You have to enhance distribution with packaging design. The big boy, because of his size, divisions of labor, and convoluted communication has to simplify everything, even brand concepts. “Just tell me the one thing that this does” is the common query. They know that even a simple message can get lost in translation in their massive structures. So they attempt to “‘dumb” everything down. This results in an advantage for the little guy who produces products or services that are thoughtful, sensitive, and relevant on a variety of levels important to the consumer. It’s more than just the big blade on the Swiss army knife.

13. Flying Under the Radar. The big boys focus on their big boy competition. They generally don’t even see your small start-up’s product for years. This is usually because they expect their market share to be taken by their big competition. They don’t expect game changers who cut the pie in a different and more popular way. Your tiny company will take what ever sales it can. It can’t afford to be choosy. Many of your first buyers may be little guys themselves, also off the radar, over seas, or not registering sales to the big reporting companies. Your small start-up may not go national for years. You may be forced, for reasons of channel distribution or cash flow management, to start small and sell only in a local territory you can control. This advantage allows your small start-up to test the waters, make adjustments and get sea worthy before you take on the world.

Next time we will examine why having the freedom to establishing a new positive culture, making overall company preservation job one, and the trend to acquiring new ideas, gives you a competitive edge. With all the challenges your small start-up faces, you still hold some impressive cards. If you play them right, you can have the winning hand!

Who We Are

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

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The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 2

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:35:06 +0000

This is the second installment in a four-part series designed to encourage small start-ups by recognizing some of their inherent advantages.

Small start-ups face a myriad of challenges. They are undercapitalized, unproven and have no market traction. They are up against the status quo that will use its established power and influence in the marketplace to suppress any new challengers. Buyers are reticent to take a risk on anything new or unproven.

The big boys have might and muscle, but there are still several advantages the little guys have that can move them ahead:

6. Being New. The small start-up has not yet established its direction and can turn on a dime. This advantage affects everything from plans to budgets, from design to being responsive to consumer feedback. Flexibility is a big advantage when it comes to satisfying your customer and improving your product. The big corps are well established with set ways of doing things that can bog them down.

7. Closer to the Ground. If you are the little guy, survival is dependent on having your ear to the ground and in most cases, your feet as well. Starting out requires a lot of hand-selling and “missionary” work. You are painfully aware of what needs to be done in the market place. Because it’s your company, you deal with your customers up close and personal on a daily basis. You can’t afford to be isolated and insulated. You don’t have MBAs and focus groups to rely on. You rely on yourself.

8. Faster Communication. Information can cross departmental lines easily in a small start-up. For one thing, there are fewer departments. For another, staying in business is more important than “going through channels,” which can be a maze of department heads, divisions, silos, and, if you’re lucky, ending with the intended recipient. The big company keeps order by installing informational gatekeepers. They can stop, change, or delay a critical message based on their perception of priorities, and, too often, job security.

9. Out-of-the-Box Thinking. Because the small companies are usually under financed, they are always scrambling for inexpensive and effective ideas to stay in business. This apparent financial hardship forces you to discover and employ unorthodox ideas, strategies, and tactics that the big guys wouldn’t dream of. They don’t have to. In a small company, cost-saving ideas, customer retention, and marketing concepts can come from anywhere. The big guys tend to want ideas to originate from their proper divisions, which can miss or kill some gems in an effort to defend precious turf.

10. Better Risk Tolerance. Just starting something new is a big risk, and most start-ups don’t make it. Because they are desperate to survive and have less at stake, they are more risk tolerant than the established companies. Small companies tend to tell their legal advisors what they want to do, then ask how to do it. The big guys are more risk adverse and tend to be guided by their legal advisors. Risk adversity can blind companies to new, unproven concepts.

So when you feel overwhelmed by big, established competition, remember that your flexibility and freshness can help you survive. The benefits of being a start-up give you the flexibility to grow and ultimately improve not only your own company, but also your industry.

Next time we will see how being an outsider, with enhanced concepts and simplified processes can have an advantage over an insider with simplified concepts and complicated processes.

Who We Are

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

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