Liberal arts | The Barefoot Spirit

The Wright Brothers Followed Guiding Principles for Success

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 17:00:21 +0000

The Wright Brothers came from humble origins to change history. It’s hard to believe as we cruise across the continent at 30,000 feet that the initial flight of man was slightly further than the wing span of most of today’s modern commercial aircraft. They built their original airplane with less than $1000 in supplies. But what we especially like about their story is that it underlines the guiding principles for success that we recommend to aspiring entrepreneurs and startups.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough has blessed us with yet another masterpiece of historical story-telling in his new book, The Wright Brothers. Recently we heard his PBS interview on our way to the airport to take a flight to speak about entrepreneurship to college students.

David carefully researched the lives of these two American heroes and their sister who played a pivotal role in their success. It is a must read for any aspiring entrepreneur and underlines the basic guiding principle for success we call “The Entrepreneur’s GPS.” Our new video webinar on this subject, over a year in the making, will be out soon and we hope our attendees will take those principles to heart and soar with their own dreams.

The Wright Brothers used guiding principles for success in the following ways:

Ask for Help. They practiced practical humility by readily admitting they didn’t know it all, but they were not ashamed to ask for help. For instance, they asked the Smithsonian Institute for any books or reports they may have on the subject of powered flight and studied them intensely. They asked the US Department of Weather where they would encounter sustained winds which lead them to Kitty Hawk.

Be Resourceful. They were without outside funding and did their project solely with their own money, made all of their own parts, and survived on a modest income from their bicycle business. They read incessantly. Even though they had but a high school education, they were self-taught by consuming a large supply of books their preacher-father made available to them.

Communicate Effectively. They were skilled in the art of the English language and used that expertise to communicate what they were attempting and to engage the help of others. Their convincing use of the language reminds us that the Liberal Arts may just be the best education for entrepreneurship. Their knowledge of history and literature helped them understand how to convey their needs and intentions to others.

Be Determined. The Wright Brothers never gave up. They took incredible risks. For one thing, they knew that every time they tried to fly, they could very well be killed. They deliberately chose the soft sands at Kitty Hawk to cushion any potential crash. They continued on in spite of their growing reputation that they were “nice fellows but just a little off.” In spite of setbacks, limited funds and the time it took to make it happen, they were persistent. When they eventually achieved their mission of powered flight it was dismissed as a hoax. Only after five years, when the French (not the US) sent a delegation to Kitty Hawk and they were invited to France to demonstrate their flying machine, did the world finally get it.

We appreciate David McCullough for reminding us at this particular time, when we seem to be swept away by technology, that there are some good old fashioned American values that we would all do well to revisit and apply to our own ventures. Want your ideas to take off? Use The Entrepreneur’s Guiding Principles for Success to get them off the ground and keep them flying.

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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Sales, the Job That Resists Automation

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:00:30 +0000

Once again we have a flood of new grads hitting the job market. But now the concern is, “Will my job become computerized? Will I be out of a job?” Undergrads are asking the question a different way, “What job should I prepare for that won’t be replaced by a robot?” Long-term security plays heavily in the minds of today’s students both before and after graduation. They have already seen many jobs replaced by software or machines and want to know which way to turn.

We believe that there is one job that will always be in demand and can best be done by a living, thinking, feeling human being: Sales! Why? Because ultimately it is a human being that is making the buying decision. They place trust in another human to help them make the right choices. They want to look into the eyes of a real person that they can hold accountable when they make that choice. They want to know who they are “buying,” not just what.

Another reason a job in Sales will endure is that the same skills are required to run any company. You have to sell your staff, your investors, your suppliers, your distributers, and your ultimate customers. These require the human touch and empathy for each person who touches your product or service, from the supply chain to the distribution chain. It’s all sales.

Amazingly, Sales is rarely taught in the schools. Sales Management, where you add up numbers, produce reports, do trend analysis, and create projections is taught. But actual sales, where you farm for prospects, cold call, create relationships, learn the prospects business, gain the prospects trust, overcome objections, master communication, and close the deal, is generally not taught.

So now, the jobs that really can’t be automated are generally not being taught; you would be very hard pressed to find a degree in real sales. Yet these jobs are not only high-paying and in demand, but they will be around for at least the next 50 years.

What should one study to be prepared for a career in sales given that it generally does not have its own curriculum? The Liberal Arts, also known as the Humanities or Liberal Studies. Why? Because in our experience, the more you know about the other person and the better able you are to communicate with them, the greater the likelihood of making a sale whether that’s convincing them to take action, gaining their cooperation, or actually buying a product.

Sociology and Cultural studies will give you a respect for other cultures and their values. This is invaluable to establish essential relationships within an increasingly international market.
Literature, Composition, Speech, Debate and Critical Thinking will help you communicate with every “buyer” from your banker to your employee, and from your wholesaler to your customer.
History and Political Science will give you the big picture perspective, classic lessons learned over time, and will make you aware of the other person’s goals – all essential ingredients to making a sale.
Psychology and Philosophy will help you understand how other people think and why they make the decisions they do.

Sure, there’s more to sales than just the Liberal Arts, but it’s a great start. There is also a myriad of classes on line on sales and negotiation skills to help you with your sales career. But nothing tops actual experience, especially when your livelihood depends on it. You’ll learn the dos and don’ts pretty fast. We did.

So whatever you are taking in school, buy an insurance policy on long-term security by studying the Liberal Arts. You will be a lot less likely to be replaced by a robot!

Who We Are

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

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How to Teach Entrepreneurship – It’s the Wild West!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:44:14 +0000

Schools and courses in entrepreneurship are popping up all over the country. Each school has a slightly different approach to teaching this relatively new class study. Some schools have a few specific courses, while others have full curriculums devoted to entrepreneurship.

This results in a wide variety of approaches about how to teach entrepreneurship. Some schools stress the structure and function of building a business and borrow extensively from their business school curriculums, while others are very hands-on and even give academic credit to students engaging in start-ups. Entrepreneurship is so new that there is no consensus on exactly what should be taught.

With the exception of a few schools like Babson that has been teaching entrepreneurship since 1979 and devotes 100% of their classes to it, most schools offer entrepreneurship along with their main, more established majors.

Many universities know they must have entrepreneurship on their curriculum, but what is it exactly? What are the essential courses necessary to create successful graduates? And who will teach it? Have they been entrepreneurs themselves, and were they successful? How is the success of their method of teaching entrepreneurship measured? Is it number of new businesses launched? Or the number of businesses still operating in two years? And how is the success of the graduating students measured? Is it the amount of funding their start-ups garner, the amount of jobs they create, or is it the speed with which they achieve self-sustaining cash flow? These questions have advocates on all sides, and it’s still the Wild West out there when it comes to entrepreneurship education.

Since the first part of 2013, we have been traveling and speaking at colleges, universities and centers of entrepreneurship. We have participated with entrepreneurship education organizations where professors of entrepreneurship debate best practices for teaching this course of study. In the process, we have been exposed to many different approaches.

One of the Guiding Principles for Success we promote is to ask questions. We think it’s the best way to truly understand what your customers, employees, suppliers, and financiers really want. We encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to find out who their customers are at every level, identify their needs, and ask for constant feedback to provide relevant products and services. Why should it be any different for schools who teach it?

We were recently honored to be the guest speakers at Mississippi State University where we had a truly new and unique experience. From the board of advisers to the students, from the faculty to the Entrepreneurs Club, we were asked basically the same question, “What do you think we could do better to prepare students for the real world? Since you’ve been through it yourself and seen over 20 schools of entrepreneurship, what can you tell us about what others are doing, and how do you think we can improve our program?”

We hadn’t realized before that our experience of not only building Barefoot but, more importantly to them, visiting as many schools as we have gave us a unique overview.

We are not experts and what we know is based solely on our own experiences – building a successful consumer products brand, and talking with students and professors. We respected those who asked the question, and gave them several ideas about form and function that you can read in more detail on our Brand Building site, www.thebrandauthority.net

But one thing we did stress is the importance of the Liberal Arts and Sales Training, also known as the “Soft Skills,” because when you are an entrepreneur you are ipso facto a sales person. You must sell your own people, your buyers, their customers, your vendors and your financiers. It’s a firm foundation in the Liberal Arts that will give students a better understanding of different cultures and better communication skills, a necessity for sales. And after all, sales cures all ills!

Who We Are

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

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A College Degree Can Give You an Entrepreneurial Edge

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 28 May 2012 03:08:20 +0000

This year’s grads face serious employment challenges, but there’s probably never been a greater opportunity to create your own job. According to Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, the job prospects look rather dim due to the economic down turn. He cites some trends that may throw into question the very value of a college degree itself: heavy competition for jobs, a significant decrease in earnings, outsourcing, and student loan debt.

While traditional employment prospects are certainly less accessible and less rewarding, college grads faced with these challenges might consider a different strategy altogether – starting their own business.

Here are some reasons why today’s college grads have an advantage as entrepreneurs:

1. Less to lose. If it’s going to take a year or two to find a job, if it’s going to pay peanuts anyway, and if the chances are it can be outsourced and leave you unemployed, then the prospects of self-employment suddenly don’t look risky by comparison.

2. Information Explosion. There has never been more information available on how to start and run a business. In addition, with your college education, you have learned how to learn, how to research and how to access that information. Your college experience has taught you to seek out the advice of experienced experts, a key to business success.

3. Essentials. If you had any liberal arts classes, you learned how to communicate with people, and respect history, culture and psychology, all essential for entrepreneurial success. If you had any business classes, you will be able to at least understand the basic principles of commerce and provide value to your customers.

4. Youth. Most of you grads are relatively young and can handle the long haul it takes to develop a successful business. Get started soon and have a greater advantage over folks who wait or who are forced to become entrepreneurs. You have more time to learn from your mistakes, perfect your processes, and build your brand.

5. Cheaper Costs. Ironically, labor is relatively inexpensive. Rent is down. Interest rates are down. Suppliers and service companies need strategic allies and are more likely to offer beneficial terms. Unemployed and retired experts are available to give you advice.

6. Increased Demand. More than ever, the country is looking for new ideas to help invent our way back to prosperity. “Find a need and fill it” has never been more necessary. We need to save our environment, find clean energy, feed more people, improve education, and solve our clean water problems – just to name a few.

7. Opportunities Abound. Technological advances are begging for applications. We have only scratched the surface of what we can do with what we already have discovered. From digital to genomes, from materials to biotech, and from optics to communication, the world is your oyster. Check out “Abundance” by Peter Diamandis http://www.abundancethebook.com/.

Yes, times are tough, but remember that the last downturn spawned many of the top companies of today. Many of them were started in a garage. As you approach today’s challenges, your college education will give you a big advantage.

A degree is not a vaccination, anyway. Can’t find a job? Maybe its time to say hello to your garage.

Who We Are

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

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