How can your business benefit from the parks? Several ways, not the least of which is recruitment. At the higher end of the pay scale where specialties become scarce, you are competing for qualified candidates from all over the country. Country wide, other businesses are doing the same.

Many of these candidates have families. Aside from the job, the benefits, and the career opportunities, they want to know what the lifestyle is like where you are asking them to move. They want to know about the obvious – good schools, low crime, good neighborhoods. But they also want to know about recreational opportunities, such as the parks and open space. Before they make any career decision, they want to know if they and their family will be happy and healthy in the new area.  It may be more important than the compensation offered.

So now, from a Human Resources recruitment standpoint and from an employee’s tenure and loyalty standpoint, the parks and open spaces near your business are critical in attracting and keeping the talent you want to hire. Parks and access to open space can be the deciding factor in the candidate’s decision to work for you.

Your HR people should already be aware of the natural attractions immediately surrounding your place of business. But do you, as a business owner, contribute your fair share to this local resource you depend upon? Or do you take it for granted? Maybe you think, “I pay my taxes, so the government should provide these services.” If you do, you haven’t been reading the news. The parks are considerably underfunded and have huge backlogs of deferred maintenance.  The parks also are now dependent on volunteers to help with management and maintenance. Chances are the trails you walk on in your local park were built and maintained by a local non-profit.

We believe all businesses have a responsibility to help support the parks that are supporting their communities. You can do this by writing a big check, which would be very welcomed by these non-profit groups, but there are other ways, too.

You company already has heath programs that involve some kind of exercise to keep employees in shape and reduce medical costs. Why not join an organized group to do clean-ups, trail maintenance, and ecological restoration projects in your nearby parks? Your people will love it and you will be helping to pay the parks back for their positive influence on the recruitment and tenure of your staff.

If your business or your affiliates are in construction, building materials, engineering, water, or maintenance, you can donate supplies to the parks and take it as a tax deduction. It will reduce their expenses and be very well received. Further, most parks will allow signage that says donated by your company for all visitors to see. Now you are improving your company image!

Time for your business to say “Thank You” to your local parks that make your business a more attractive place to work!

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 Why Your Business Should Take an Active Interest in Your Parks 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.