But it wasn’t because we were so clever, in fact we made most of the big mistakes! It was because our people were engaged and empowered to make a big difference. They came up with most of the clever solutions that got us through the tough times and over the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They did more with less, improved our policies and procedures, and used innovation to disrupt a rather stuffy industry.

At the closing talk for the C-Suite conference in San Francisco this month, Michael shared 7 of the tools we used to build an outstanding team that was engaged, empowered, and committed to the success of our business. Here is a brief summery from the top:

1. Hire Good People, Build Great People.

Hire for hustle, integrity, and enthusiasm. Look for extrapolation learners. Test their comprehension. Be prepared to redesign the job to fit the talents of each employee. On the last interview, you do all the talking. Explain the business process and why their job is essential. Then ask for a summary by 5 pm the next day.

2. Overkill on Orientation.

When the cement is wet, you can move it with a trowel. But when it gets hard, you’ll need a jackhammer! Don’t let them develop and harbor early misconceptions about how the business works, where the money comes from, and how the customer must be serviced to get the funds that go in their paychecks.

3. The Money Map

Show them a “Money Map”. Start with the community from which the initial customers emulate. Show the transactions that starts the money moving as those customers purchase goods and services that effect your business. Show all the twists and turns that the money goes through on the way to their paychecks.

4. The Two-Division Company

Give them a second graphic that shows how your company is organized with the customer on top! Then, right under that, the only people they talk to daily, your sales and customer service people (The Sales Division). Then right under that, everybody else in the company, regardless of specialty (The Sales Support Division).

5. Know the Need

Contrary to the popular Need-to-Know basis that most companies use to keep their people in the dark, practice Know-the-Need to demonstrate respect for their intelligence and commitment to your company’s success. Share your sales and marketing challenges and ask them for help. You’ll be surprised at the results!

6. Public Acknowledgement

Communicate their accomplishment in writing. Copy the entire staff. Get more of what you are praising for. Get them the respect of other staff. Send a “message” that everyone can get the same kind of top-level acknowledgment when they perform as well as the one being singled out for admiration.

7. Staff Wide Quarterly Bonus

Reward on a quarterly basis. A year is too long (They’ll forget, sand bag, or give up). A month is too impractical (Months are more subject to anomaly and it’s difficult to get the numbers together that fast). Reward everyone to build team spirit. Make it based on sales, growth, and profitability. We used a variable 401K quarterly match.

Want more details or additional suggestions? Check out our short book on the subject, aptly named, The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 ways to Engage and Empower Your People. It worked for us. it can work for you. You may just hear them say, “I love working here!”

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 7 Steps to Engage Your People (And Get the Results You are Looking For) appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

A positive company culture is what we relied upon when building the Barefoot Wine brand into a national best-seller. Here’s how we did it:

1. The money map

When we hired people, they were give an infographic showing the circuitous route the money took to get to them from the consumers, moving through the retailers and distributors and eventually into their paychecks, bonuses and benefits. This was not just a great educational tool from an orientation perspective, but it was a great way to set the stage for a company culture of sales.

2. The two-division company

Unlike the typical pyramid structure with the CEO on the top followed by the C-suite and then the myriad of divisions and departments, our organization had just two divisions: Sales and sales support. Everybody who was not in sales was in sales support, including the CEO, receptionist and accounting, marketing, product development, and production.

Why? Because without sales there would be no income. If you really believe the customer should be on top, put sales on top and have everyone else support sales.

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals 

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 ​7 Steps to Infuse Entrepreneurial Thinking Into Company Culture appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The takeaway for leaders, whether they are politicians, managers, or business owners, is simple. To truly engage your people, educate them beyond what you want them to do and how you want them to do it. Give them appreciation for why you want them to perform in a certain way.

When we were building the Barefoot Wine brand, we found that our people were more engaged when they knew why they were doing a specific job, not just how to do it. We would explain our company’s mission statement, and how each staff member’s performance was essential to achieve the goals of the company.

We would invest hours with our new people explaining the cause and effect that connected their job to the customers’ purchasing decision. We would give them a “money map” showing them how the customers’ money went to buy our product, how it traveled through the retail and distribution companies we dealt with, and eventually ended up in their paycheck. We would detail the reasons why their job directly affected the provision of goods and services necessary for the customer to make a purchase. We would give them the reasons why every team member in our company had to perform excellently to keep our customers coming back. We explained each business associate’s loyalty requirements, from distributers to retailers, from store clerks to consumers, and how our people satisfied all of them.

Some said that kind of training was a waste of time, that new people don’t need that level of detail. They argue that the sooner the new hire starts producing, the better. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it assumes that the processes are already the best they can possibly be, and that there can be no further improvements in customer service or efficiency. It also assumes that expensive mistakes won’t happen due to misconceptions about purpose.

We found, however, that people tend to “make up” reasons when they don’t know the real ones. If they didn’t get it, we would go over it again – and again. When they asked a seemingly simply question about their job, we would listen closely for any misconceptions they held. We wouldn’t just give them the answer so they could thoughtlessly “cut and paste” to quickly get on with their job. We would take the time to sit them down and start from the beginning about the reasons until they connected the dots.

The time we invested in this type of education really paid off. We often heard, “Well, if that’s what we are trying to do, then why don’t we …” and they would streamline our procedures or make them more effective. Sometimes they would even come up with completely new ways of doing things.

Presidents and leaders at every level are only as successful as their ability to engage their people. If your people truly understand why they are being asked to perform, you’ll drastically reduce costly misconceptions and you’ll achieve your company’s goals in surprisingly more efficient ways. Your people will be happier and more engaged because they understand why their performance is essential to the company’s success and that their teammates are relying on them.

Productive people start with good leaders. Happy Presidents’ Day everybody!

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 Communicate the Reasons not just the Processes appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

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

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 Successful Hiring takes Preparation, Permission and Patience appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.