Marketplace | The Barefoot Spirit

Entrepreneur – Rheem Manufacturing Sets Aggressive Sustainability Goals for 2025

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 06 May 2019 17:06:34 +0000

Sixtyfive percent of the energy that is delivered to the typical home is used for heating the home, cooling the home or heating the water used in the home. The rest is used for appliances, lighting, tools and electronic devices.

We have been reporting on startup companies that are making a difference. But what about the big boys? What are they doing to make a difference with the biggest mega-trend facing the economy? According to Nielsen, consumers are voting with their purchases for sustainably made and packaged products. Rheem Manufacturing Company is the only North American company that has both HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) products as well as water heating products available in the commercial and residential marketplace. We wanted to know how such a large company with such a huge impact on our home energy use was making a difference.

To read the complete article, please visit Entrepreneur

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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Whatever Business You Think You’re in, Your Employees Should Be Oriented on Your Customers

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 22:02:23 +0000

We recently had the pleasure of spending the day with 65 MBA students from Nanyang University in Singapore.

Twenty-five percent of the class were part-time students who were already running their own businesses. They asked most of the questions because they obviously had the most immediate concerns.

One question that was particularly telling was, “How do you to get the most out of your employees?”

We’ve given many talks and worked with many companies on this issue, plus we have our own experience building the Barefoot Wine Brand. We had virtually no turnover during the last several years before we were acquired. These were also the same years that the brand made leaps and bounds in the marketplace and overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Most of those solutions came from our own people.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

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

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Be Ready For That Big Buyer

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:00:38 +0000

Finally, you got a lucky break! That big chain stores buyer will finally see you. Your mind is racing with the possibilities: your product in all of her stores, access to all of her customers, your brand “takes off!”

Not so fast, Bucko! Do you even know what she wants to see? Do you realize that you’ve got one shot at this – and it better be good? Before you were in her stores you could not be discontinued, but once you are in, you can be discontinued …forever!

Everything hinges on the deal, the roll out, and your ability to get around to all of her stores quickly. You must make sure your product got in, is priced right, is visible, and that the clerks and store personnel like you, your representative, and your product. Otherwise they won’t promote it and probably won’t reorder it. This means you fail even with a great product.

When you see her for the first time, you must be prepared.

Pricing. Understand what she wants to “see” on sale. In other words, what percentage of her selling price does she want as profit. Your price to her has to give her that profit. Also understand what she wants to see “on deal” or “on sale.” Find out what kind of “cooperation” (financial support) she wants from you during the introductory special and for how long. Lastly make sure your volume discounts don’t leave any money on the table because she will price your product at the nearest 99 (dollars or cents), and pocket everything above her required percentage. Do the math!

Never reduce your price. Rather, give a temporary price reduction, or she will think you are raising your price when the discount is over. All this gets a whole lot more complicated if you have to go through a distributer or broker. Oh, and one more thing, don’t ever let her see it for less anywhere on line!

Introduction. This is critical to get right. If she buys too much, you may be happy …for a while! But if she doesn’t sell through within a short period of time she will close it out at such a low price that it will haunt you in the marketplace. She must sell through and she must reorder. This means that you or your representative must personally visit every store your product is in on a regular basis to ensure its success. It’s best to have a small test market in nearby outlets that you can visit often to correct sales blocking situations.

Exclusivity. If she represents the first large chain to take your product, she may want exclusivity, preferably long-term, to increase the odds of success. Settle for a reasonable period, being careful not to give her any long-term competitive advantage you will later regret as new chains will want the same deal. Tie all advantages you offer to quantity purchases.

Merchandising Materials. Remember, she wants to know how you are going to move your product in her stores. You must be prepared with allowable signage or video promoting your product. Many buyers will make their decisions on new products based solely on merchandising materials. They know that where the customer, the product, the money, and the decision all come together is at the point of sale. Make sure yours is timely, compelling, and within her size limitations.

Partnership. Think of her as your new, long-term partner. Work with her on the introductory roll out. She knows what works in her stores. Come to an agreement on the price points, price reduction programming, and the scaling of future volume purchases based on the initial success of your product in her stores.

Bottom line: she’s not buying your product so much as she’s giving you an opportunity to sell it in her stores. But hold off celebrating until year two in all her stores! Then you will really have something to celebrate!

Who We Are

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

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Lines of Credit Can Help Startups Retain Their Ownership

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 17:00:27 +0000

We are always surprised by the number of startups that don’t use, or even know about, lines of credit. The first thing we hear is usually, “I need more money!” Sure you do. But the real question is how to get it. Today, with Shark Tank, Venture Capitalists, and term sheets, you’d think the only way to get your business going is by giving up a big chunk of ownership. You may believe there is no other way!

There are several other ways to raise capital for your business, but they all require that dirty word that everyone seems to shun, “Sales!” Yes, sales. We found it down right shocking that out of 40 schools of entrepreneurship where we have spoken over the past three years, only one taught sales. Real sales! Not sales management, not sales projections, not marketing, but real sales, from “Get out of my office!” to “I’ll take two truckloads!” And that only happened because one of the entrepreneurial benefactors of that school said, “Hey, why don’t you guys teach sales?”

When you think of sales as a pitch to an investor, you are starting off on the wrong foot. You might start using terms like “burn rate,” as in how fast you burn through cash without income (from sales) to offset it. You might even get the idea that you have “succeeded” because you got an investor when in fact you may be a long way from a positive cash flow.

Before the investment, you couldn’t lose. Now you can lose the investor’s money. Now you can go back and ask for more because, you may think, if the investor’s in for a dime, he’s in for a dollar. But even if you do get more funding, it comes with a price. You lose more and more of your company until you are working for the VC – who now wants to sell the company the first time he thinks he can get his money back. So much for growth!

We all see so many crowd-funded ideas that never see the light of the retail marketplace. How can this keep happening? Lack of sales before their crowd-funded investment is depleted by extensive R&D and operating costs – that’s how!

So that’s why we advise our clients to get a good sales education first, before trying anything entrepreneurial. The liberal arts are a good place to start. You know, communication, history, culture, psychology, and philosophy to name a few. The human, or soft, skills along with actual sales training can make a positive difference in your business, especially in the early stages.

We also advise our clients to start small and focus on a small area. Limit your number of offerings until you have achieved positive cash flow. Find out what quirks and service requirements lie in a small market so you can take your well-rehearsed show on the road. Make sales your top priority.

If you do, you may qualify for a line of credit from your local banker. Without taking any percentage of ownership, your bank can set up a “revolving charge” so to speak, where your accounts receivable, purchase orders, and inventory are held as temporary collateral to advance funds you can use to pay your bills and grow your business. But it all starts with sales.

Sure, they’ll probably want a “warehouseman’s lien” on your inventory that gives them first dibs if you go south. They’ll want to set up a separate account to collect your receivables. But that can be done on a zero-balance, sweep basis where you only pay for what you need. And isn’t that better than giving up the ownership of your company?

Make sales. Get a “Line.” Save your ownership. Pay your bills. And grow your business!

Who We Are

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

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The 9 Selling Seasons: Seasonal Selling Can Get You More Sales, Part 2

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 18:00:29 +0000

The calendar year is already divided up into at least 9 distinctive selling seasons. Each selling season, for the most part, is named after the 3-day holiday they run through. The selling seasons all start right after the previous holiday and end on the next holiday. These selling seasons can last anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months and they all have their particular festive themes. By understanding and anticipating these various seasonal themes, astute brand builders can secure displays and lever their marketing and merchandising materials.

Last time we examined the first 5 selling seasons of the year: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day, St Patrick’s Day/Easter, Memorial Day, and Independence Day. Now let’s take a look at the remaining 4:

Labor Day – Starts the day after Independence Day and runs for 2 months. This is the “official” end of the summer and the beginning of back-to-school days. This is the last chance of the year to promote anything “summer” such as picnics, outdoor activities and summer vacations.

Halloween – This is another relatively long, 2-month plus selling season interrupted only by Columbus Day, which, although a Federal 3-day-weekend holiday, does not sport a “Columbus” theme with much popularity. Although Halloween is not a 3-day-weekend holiday, many Americans enjoy celebrating it, and the markets are decorated with the fall harvest color theme of gold, orange, brown and rusty red. Plus, there are the mandatory pumpkins and goblins.

Thanksgiving – The time between Halloween and Thanksgiving is just over 3 weeks. Now we are officially into “The Holidays.” With the addition of Veterans Day on November 11^th which is also a Federal Holiday, the dominating theme during this period of time is family, food, and home. Discover how your product or service fits in, and how you can best present your offerings in a way that compliments these predominant themes.

Christmas-New Years – From Thanksgiving to New Years is about 5 weeks and the theme is holiday shopping, home, family and friends. Vacation time adventures, snow recreation, and year-end themes also abound. This is the most competitive time of the year for many businesses but a relatively slow time for others that rely on fair weather. Savvy consumer products marketers will have already pre-sold displays to retailers many months prior. They will be watching their inventory to replenish it when it depletes at every level including the supplier, manufacturer, distributor, and retailer warehouses. They will also be watching the retailers’ shelves for out-of-stocks. They will point out that retailers can order more without fear of over stock because they can sell off any unsold balances during the Valentine’s Day- MLK Day selling season starting January 2. This also is the last chance for brand builders to move product that will be counted in the total sales for the year. Those numbers will be critical in January when most buyers make all their buying decisions for what to keep and what to discontinue for the coming year.

The key to seasonal selling success is to look at the year in advance and decide how your products and services can work with the various holiday themes that already exist in the marketplace. Make plans sufficiently in advance so you can reserve the space, pricing and programming, and have all the celebratory materials designed, produced and delivered in ample time to take advantage of these seasonal opportunities.

Seasonal selling seasons are going on whether you jump on them or not, so get with the program and plan ahead!

Who We Are

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

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Gaining Traction in the Marketplace takes Tenacity and Focus

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 19:56:50 +0000

You may hear about a brand that “just took off.” From our perspective, very few brands just take off. What’s more likely is that they started out small and sometimes took years to gain traction.

As we’ve said many times before, it’s not the quality of the product, the price, or the demand so much as it is mastering the distribution and timing.

They say you can move the Queen Mary if you exert enough pressure over time. You can push with all your might for years and then, at last, slowly, it begins to move! You finally overcame the momentum and you are gaining traction. What if you gave up and stopped pushing after the first year?

We read in Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Inc. magazines about seemingly overnight start-up successes. It almost looks easy. It seems like you can have instant success with just the right product at just the right time. Although there are some examples of that kind of success, it’s the less glamorous, and unheralded, “get rich slow schemes” that are more common, and more dependable.

The number-one ingredient in start-up success is not necessarily the great idea, the great price, or even the great demand. It is tenacity!

Here are 5 Tenets of Tenacity:

1) Deferred Gratification. Sometimes you work 12 hours a day and weekends just to get your idea off the ground. You may even have to forgo vacations in the early stages. Take advantage of pop-up social opportunity? Forget about it.

2) Belief in your Concept. When you are new or different, you’ll be hard pressed to find people in the distribution channels that will give you a shot. You have to hold onto a deep-seated belief in your product and its eventual success. You have to constantly imagine your customer enjoying your product even when others try to discourage you.

3) Focus. Understanding your priorities is job one. As events unfold and the hoops you have to jump through present themselves, it’s easy to get distracted. Keep your eye on your goal and focus on the big picture. The details are tedious, frustrating, and take time, but the realization of your vision is well worth the struggle.

4) Support. Gain encouragement from the ever-increasing number of supporters you attract along the way. Starting out small, the positive feedback you get from even a relatively few happy customers will give you the confidence to press on. The support you get from other businesses that have an interest in your success will validate your concept.

5) Progress. Yes, it may take a lot longer that you thought, but you are making progress albeit ever so humble. Each little victory is one step closer to your goal. There’s nothing like actual sales to demonstrate the viability of your product. And every mistake you make, if treated as a learning experience, will improve your chances of success.

Today, tenacity has many fashionable names, like drive, charge, and the right stuff, but whatever you call it, it’s just plain old stick-to-it-ness. Starting a new business is easy and fun. But once you discover the surprising amount of time, hard work, and sacrifice necessary, it’s your tenacity that will see you through. And when you do succeed, try not to laugh when they say, “Wow! That idea just took off!”

Who We Are

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

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On Independence Day, We’re more Interdependent than Ever

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:01:11 +0000

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

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

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