Mistake | The Barefoot Spirit

Is Discovery Becoming a Lost Art?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 17:00:32 +0000

We met a student who said he couldn’t see the purpose in discovering solutions for himself with all the information technology he had at his fingertips. If the answer was there, why waste the time to go through the discovery process?

In these days of Googling and You Tubing, it’s easier than ever to find the answers. The speed of the internet certainly panders to our penchant for impatience. We want instant answers – and we get them fast. So, what could be wrong with that?

No longer do we have to stumble and bumble until we finally have the answer. No longer do we have to go through trial and error, research, or any reasoning process. We just get it on line. But did we miss something important by shortcutting the discovery process? Did we miss the principles behind the answer? Did we miss an opportunity to challenge our brains to learn a new principle?

Apparently, we have gotten to a point where we actually don’t want to learn the very principles that can equip us to discover the answers in our own way. In the name of efficiency, we become more dependent on these instant answer resources, and we are losing our ability to solve problems on our own. The internet – the source of all answers – has made us lazy.

Before these resources, folks had to use principles, experience, and trial and error to discover the answers and solutions. In that process of discovery, they learned how to apply principles in a variety of ways. One of those ways might solve the problem and yield the answer. But the process didn’t end there. Now the individual understood the principle behind the answer and could apply that principle to other challenges. They didn’t need an example for everything.

The temptation today for many students is to drop out of formal education and just try to learn everything they need on line. It may be everything they think they need, but is that really everything? We think not. We think they need to learn principles and apply those principles to discover answers and solutions for themselves. This is called problem solving, and it stimulates our brains to be more creative and question the results we find. This is a wider framework which can help solve problems as they occur. If this sounds like an ad for a classical education, it is!

Learning and applying principles to discover solutions gives us appreciation for this invaluable process. It also gives us a fundamental understanding that behind every answer, solution, or process there is a set of principles. We can then look for those principles, and add them to our problem-solving tool box to apply to the next applicable situation.

Sure, you can Google the answer and You Tube the process, but if you don’t look for and understand the underlying principles, you are destined to develop a “copy-and-paste” mentality. Your critical thinking facilities will atrophy and you will become dependent on technology for all your answers.

When you discover solutions on your own, you learn from your mistakes and successes. You force your brain to look at the situation from differ perspectives. You stimulate your intellect! So, students, stay in school, and learn the principles that will enable you to discover solutions for yourself! Don’t be a copycat. Be an independent thinker and come up with new ideas! Discover for yourself the joys of noodling out a solution to your challenge using creative thinking instead of limiting your ideas to what others have already said and done. Be resourceful, and realize that your greatest resource is the power of your own brain.

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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Successful Hiring takes Preparation, Permission and Patience

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:50:59 +0000

No matter what business you think you are in, you wind up in the personnel management business. Your first hires will require a great deal of your time and energy with no guarantees. Your way may conflict with their previous way of doing things.

For the most part, great employees are not found, they’re made. In order to delegate and allow your company to grow, you really have no choice.

All this takes time, energy, preparation and lots of patience, but by working together in concert, you can see wonders.

1. Good Seed. Start with people who demonstrate a high degree of integrity, take responsibility for their own behavior and have a history of long-term commitment. They should be willing to learn and extrapolate conceptual ideas and apply them to new situations. A good way to test this is to give the applicant a verbal run down of the job, the company’s challenges and your expectations for the position. Then, have them send you a one-page summary on a deadline. This will tell you volumes.

2. Good Ground. Make sure their job is clearly defined in writing and explains how your products and services produce the income to pay their salary, bonus and benefits. We used to give our people a “Money Map”. It started with the consumer and worked its way back through distribution, production, and all the payables to finally get to their check. This gave them respect for how and where the money came from – the customer, of course.

3. Care. You must inspect what you expect, especially in the first year. Once you are convinced you have “good seed” it’s worth your while to regularly spend time with them answering questions and mentoring. Listen to what’s behind their questions to discover what they really need to excel in their new position.

4. Light and Space. Give them permission to make mistakes. That’s what allows them to develop into the independent decision makers you need to confidently delegate. To “make those mistakes right,” have them write down what needs to be done to prevent those mistakes in the future. Have them make new polices, procedures, checklists, sign-offs, or whatever, but they have to document everything. Consider rewriting their job description to fit their real skill set.

5. Nutrients. Give them the training they need, in person and in writing. If a document doesn’t exist, have them write it. Create a mini manual for every job with the growing list of frequently asked questions and as many charts and graphs as are necessary to depict processes, relationships and decisions. Provide outside training with conferences, or field time with sales or production staff. The more they understand your total operation, the faster they will become invaluable.

6. Time. How much time you give them before they “get it” really depends on the position, their ability to learn, and how much faith you have in them personally. Some folks take longer but “get it” at a core level. Others may learn a specific process quickly, but miss the big picture. So it’s a judgment call based on your assessment of their progress and conceptual understandings, and the preparation, time and energy you have put in.

Even if you do these essentials, there’s no guarantee of success, but you will be much more likely to succeed. To grow those new hires into fruitful producers it takes preparation, permission and patience.

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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