Almost everyone in the audience is looking for ways to save money in their new or developing business. They’re all looking for the most bang for their buck in every area of spending. Marketing your products and services are probably the biggest challenges new business face. It doesn’t matter how good your products and services are if your customer doesn’t know about them.

No Advertising Budget, No Entry

When we started Barefoot Wine, we were completely undercapitalized. Our first big chain buyer asked us if we were going to spend $200,000 in an advertising campaign to build our brand before he would take it in to his stores. We were so strapped, we didn’t even have one of those $200,000. He then basically turned us down and for good reason, our brand was unheard of, and he would be taking a big risk giving expensive shelf space to an unknown and unproven brand.

He told us that without a well-funded advertising campaign he wouldn’t touch it …and no other chain or box store would either, for that matter. The big chain buyer said, without advertising, we would have to focus on selling the independently owned stores one at a time. We told him, “That will take years!” He said, “You’re right! You better get started!” He did say that once we became a household word, he would put us in to his 200+ store chain. Well, it took 2 years, and yes, he did put us in. His was the first large chain store in the country to take us.

Becoming a Household Name Without Advertising

But we didn’t become a “household word” through commercial advertising. And we didn’t become a “household word” throughout the country at first. We became a household word only in California and we did it through support for the community from which our customers came. You see, the independents were no different than the chains. They didn’t want to take a chance on an unknown brand that wasn’t being commercially advertised. In fact, they threaten to discontinue Barefoot if it didn’t sell within 90 days. And we only had a handful of accounts that would even take that chance, to begin with.

It was during that first in 90 days that we got a call from a nonprofit community organization asking us to support their kids-after-school park. Once again, we had no money. But we did have wine! We donated wine to their fundraiser. The next month we noticed a big uptick in sales in the stores in that particular community. Without knowing it at the time, we had given the members of that organization a social reason to buy our product. They also felt obligated to tell their friends colleagues and families to go out and buy it as well.

We thought, “Wow! Maybe we’ve discovered something here! Maybe this is an alternative to expensive commercial advertising. Maybe it’s more effective simply because it’s more locally targeted. Members of the organization lived in the neighborhoods surrounding the stores where our products were for sale. Then we thought, let’s try this in another market, only this time we asked for a few concessions that the nonprofit could readily provide. They mentioned us in their newsletter, they thanked is from the podium, they let us put up banners, they let us put out lists of where to buy our products at their fundraiser, they let us write posts in their newsletter, they used our logo and let us use theirs.

These were not big national organizations looking for paid sponsorship. These were just little community organizations, but they were made up of potential customers. Why shouldn’t we support our potential customers?

Worthy Cause Marketing

As Ivan Meisner says, “When it comes to networking, take off the bib and put on the apron!” This approach to getting the word out, which we called Worthy Cause Marketing, was so effective that as we expanded Barefoot into other states, regions, and even countries, we got the word out by supporting local communities and their worthy causes.

Already we can hear the objection, “Well it was easy for you. You are selling wine, but how does that work for me with my product and services?” At a local Chamber of Commerce meeting, we met a gentleman who was practicing Worthy Cause Marketing to get the word out about his services. What was he selling? Gun safety! He found that he could support parent-teacher associations, as well as police and sheriffs associations by offering free classes as a silent auction item during their fundraising dinners. Association members saw his support for their cause. Some members bought and used the silent auction classes. They came back and recommended his classes to all the other members.

Targeting the Networked Market

One of the great advantages of working with community organizations is that they are already networked! They are already communicating. And they are local to where your goods and services are for sale. Offering them free goods and services to support their causes as well as helping them get the word out about their goals and fundraisers will endear you and your products to their members. You become part of their organization and a supporter of the causes they hold dear. Of course, they want to support you in the marketplace.

You will not only show the world that you stand for more than the mercantile value of your goods and services, but that you support the causes that are important to your customers. It’s not only a great contribution for your company to make to your community, but in the long run, it’s the cheapest form of advertising!

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 Work with Your Community to Create Advocates appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

The program, now in its 25^th year, is beloved by consumer and the 16,000 companies and organizations that voluntarily participate to produce more efficient appliances to reduce energy consumption, dependence on foreign oil, and significantly reduce carbon emissions. According to the EPA’s Energy Star’s web site, “Energy use in homes, buildings, and industry account for two thirds of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. As of December 2013, families and businesses have realized estimated savings of more than $295 billion on utility bills and prevented more than 2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the past two decades. The interplay of government, business, and market forces brought together through ENERGY STAR has changed the energy efficiency landscape.”

The Energy Star System is a simple no-brainer way of advising the consumer about the ultimate energy cost to them of appliances, homes, commercial buildings and industrial plants. The site adds, “ENERGY STAR has been instrumental in reducing this energy use in order to realize significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions – contributing to important health and environmental benefits by addressing the challenges of climate change while strengthening our economy. ENERGY STAR benefits have grown steadily over time, nearly tripling in the last decade.”

The program has wide-spread, bi-partisan support, is embraced by the Fortune 500 and represents a cooperative effort by many sectors of our economy from “manufacturers and trade associations, to retailers and efficiency program providers, to home builders and small businesses. ENERGY STAR has grown to represent products in more than 70 different categories, with more than 4.8 billion sold since 1992. More than 1.5 million new homes and more than 22,000 facilities proudly carry EPA’s ENERGY STAR certification, use dramatically less energy, and are responsible for substantially less greenhouse gas emissions than their peers.”

According to the site, “an ENERGY STAR clothes washer uses about 70 percent less energy and 75 percent less water than a standard washer used 20 years ago, (and) a home with the star is 15% more efficient. 85 percent of Americans recognize the blue ENERGY STAR label. Of the households that knowingly purchased an ENERGY STAR certified product, about 75% credited the (Energy Star) label as an important factor in their decision. The latest Good Housekeeping internal reader audit shows that at 92%, ENERGY STAR is now tied with Good Housekeeping (Seal of Approval) in terms of brand influence.” So why ax it?

Do we really want to turn back the clock that far? Do we really want to pay that much more for energy again? At what point does this move become an obvious attempt to bilk the consumer, stifle progress, and hurt the international competitiveness of US products to satisfy one, powerful, interest group? Who could possibly win if this vital all-American program is eliminated? We think it obvious! The energy companies!

So, no matter what your political affiliation, let your federally elected representatives know that the Blue Energy Star label is well worth saving to reduce your operating costs, reduce our foreign dependency, reduce our emissions, increase our health, and bolster our economy. Eliminating the Blue Star is a bad for American business and human welfare all the way around!

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 Government Set to Terminate the Blue Energy Star Program appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Want to solve the balance of payments problem? Export clean energy production equipment and technology to China and India. There’s a huge demand! Want to reduce your taxes? Invest now in the businesses that mitigate the high cost of super storm recovery and drought related food costs. There’s a huge demand! Want to create jobs? Provide tax advantages to producers and consumers of alternative energy. It’s a market that’s not going away. In fact, it comes with an ever-increasing demand.

If the federal government is hamstrung by the carbon producers, let the states like California, and local governments, like Chicago, lead the way. They can provide rules and regulations that give alternative energy the advantage over carbon. They can provide tax credits and other incentives to businesses addressing this issue. And they can provide the volume of purchases for their own uses that will reduce the price of these alternatives.

For instance, shouldn’t every government vehicle be electric? We are excited by the new businesses we see popping up every day that address this demand. All electric and drive-train-conversion garbage trucks and busses are great examples. These are coming from new businesses that create local jobs and can lower taxes by reducing government and public service energy costs.

What about the postal service, the police, the utilities and so on? There’s a huge market here that is only just beginning to be accessed. Local government and public service organizations can tip the scales by providing large purchases that reduce the cost of production and make alternatives competitive with conventional carbon-producing choices.

The creation and mass production of efficient home battery systems will ultimately cut the cord to the carbon-producing utility companies that argue that they are not getting paid for “storing” your solar power on their grid. Fine, cut the cord. Store it in your garage.

We live in a local government district that recently used its power of eminent domain to take over the utility company within its jurisdiction. Then it required the purchase of alternative energy to provide its subscribers. This not only sent a message to other local governments, but increased the demand for alternatively produced energy and reduced its cost.

At some point, it will become obvious that the utility companies heavily invested in carbon energy sources are trying to use their influence to stop alternative energy because they simply don’t want the competition. The gas lighting companies were the largest obstacles to Edison’s electric light. What changed things was the price tag. Electric lighting was eventually cheaper than gas.

This is what business, with the help of local government, must do today. Make alternative energy cheaper than carbon producing energy. They can do this with regulations, purchases, and tax breaks. In the end, producers and consumers alike want to spend less money. If the environment is saved, it will be because it’s cheaper to save it, and it’s also good for business!

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 Saving the Environment is Good for Business appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

They all say they want an entrepreneurial culture where their employees are engaged and empowered. But do they really?

You can hire the best. You can vet for self-starting, creative, resourceful people with a sense of urgency who take responsibility for their own actions. And you can even hire entrepreneurship grads.

But without the proper environment in your own company you will stifle the new hires, and lose others who are frustrated.

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 ​Organizations that want an entrepreneurial culture need to walk the talk appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

We saw a cartoon recently that best summed up the paradox. The tired, haggard, office employee was down at the bar after work, sipping on his martini. He turns to the woman next to him and says, “Sure, they want me to be creative, imaginative, and resourceful, but I have a career to think about!”

Long before Barefoot Wines, Michael worked for the Federal Government. Right out of college, he was keen on being productive, making a mark, and moving ahead. But he ran into office politics, turf battles, and empire building within the organization. Few folks seemed to care about more than their job security. Most had become isolated and insulated from the real job at hand. Upon realizing that this could become his future too, Michael decided to not just quit his job, but quit the idea of having a job in any siloed organization.

The good news is that if it wasn’t for that experience, there would be no Barefoot Wine today!

The biggest problem with any kind of vertical or pyramid structure is that the structure itself is contrary to the entrepreneurial culture. Why? Because as the organization grows, sales and personal responsibility for the customer experience become more removed from the process. Soon, under the guise of efficiencies of scale and divisions of labor, folks get comfortable strictly focusing on their own specialties. They figure they‘re going to get paid, no matter what. Sales is someone else’s responsibility, they think. At the governmental level, it can be even worse. They can feel like their organization exists without customers, sales, or accountability.

Sales is the key to the entrepreneurial culture. Three entrepreneurs in a garage have no question that they must make sales happen or they won’t be there tomorrow. No matter what their skill set, all know that sales are critical. So what happened as they grew? Simply, many new divisions were created and they separated themselves from sales! So it’s not so much how to build an entrepreneurial culture as it is how you lose it! Little by little, the principles that allow an entrepreneurial culture to survive and flourish are replaced by fear, compliance, and restrictions on communication. Compensation systems increasingly are based on attendance, status, and tenure, rather than sales, growth, and productivity.

In order to attract and retain a staff with entrepreneurial DNA, you must provide the fertile ground that is essential for them to thrive and be effective. Just like an early stage startup, you must provide a culture of permission, enthusiasm, inclusiveness, recognition, acknowledgment, and performance-based compensation. The customer experience must be more important than the structural or political limitations of the organization.

You must get back in touch with the organization’s goals and means of support (i.e. sales).  That must be the entrepreneurial motive that overrides corporate divisions of labor, status, and tenure. Serve your customer with an engaged and empowered culture that wants to, and is allowed to, deliver the excellent customer experience you desire. Your people are engaged when they know they can make a difference, and are encouraged, appreciated and compensated to do so!

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 Organizations That Say They Want an Entrepreneurial Culture Need to Walk the Talk appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.