Progress | The Barefoot Spirit

Happy Old Year! Be Thankful for What Went Right to See More Go Right!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 00:49:54 +0000

It’s easy to get carried away with the new prospects for the New Year. After all, this year is over (finally!). And not all the news was good… The media has done a fine job of frightening us by focusing on the negative. Then there’s the personal frustrations of all the things we wanted to do that got derailed, delayed, or deferred. It’s easy to complain about what went wrong last year. We almost can’t wait to put the past behind us and move on to a new world of all possibilities. There are New Year resolutions, plans, goals, and a general attitude that things will somehow get better.

But we’ve found that best way to make the New Year better is to take some time over the Holidays to make a list of what went right this last year. We call it our Annual Accomplishments List. It forces us to really think about all that we have accomplished in the “Old Year.”

Every year about this time, we spend an hour or two going through our calendar to help us recollect what happened. Then we make a list of everything we’ve accomplished, everything that did go right, and all the great times we had. We also add all the great people we met or did business with. We take the opportunity to continue to grow these new relationships by putting them into our contacts and sending them a personal note of appreciation before the year end. If you use this method, it’s amazing, but you will discover that you are making progress, making new friends and achieving your goals!

By taking the time to put together your “Old Year” list several great things can happen. You become more grateful instead of frustrated, hopeful instead of fearful, and most importantly you have real evidence that you can achieve your goals. All this results in an attitude you can take with you into the New Year where you will expect solutions. You will be looking for them at every turn. You will be less likely to overlook solutions just because they weren’t wrapped in a pretty package and hand delivered. The more you appreciate what you have the more you get what you want, if for no other reason than you are focusing on what you want and not what you don’t!

Now you are ready to work on your New Year’s resolutions with the confidence that comes from success. You can more easily visualize your new goals finding their way onto your next year’s Annual Accomplishments List. Why? Because you took the time to appreciate your progress this year, saw it all on one list and said, “Yes! I can do this!”

We want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who has followed us and shared our blog posts, joined us on social media, and attended our talks and Keynotes throughout the year. We hope that our experience has made a positive difference in your lives and businesses.

Michael and Bonnie say thank you for a great Old Year and we wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

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 Happy Old Year! Be Thankful for What Went Right to See More Go Right! appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

7 Steps to Setting and Achieving Your Goals for the New Year

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 18:00:48 +0000

Yes, it’s that time of year again when we start thinking about our goals for the coming year. Before the New Year begins is the perfect time to see what you have achieved over this last year and identify what you have yet to achieve.

Reviewing your achievements is a great place to start. This will remind you that your goals are doable, and will give you the enthusiasm to get down to business with your new set of goals. After acknowledging your achievements, take a look at your uncompleted goals, revise them as needed, and start your list for next year with those. If you are like us you will have several to get you started!

So how can you better prepare to achieve your goals in the coming year? Here’s the checklist we use:

Clearly State your Goals. Seems simple enough, but it actually requires some thinking. Adding in details will create a stronger image in your mind. So, under the goal of “Clean the attic,” for instance, write “Reorganize the boxes into categories of tax files, holiday decorations, camping gear, etc.; toss out the unused items; donate old clothes.” Be sure your goals are reasonable. What kills most goals it that they are unreasonable.
State your Deadline. Just putting a deadline on your goal throws a switch in your brain that says, “We’re really going to do this!” Is it doable in just one year? Or is it part of some master five-year plan? If you want to use that camping gear next summer, then put in an earlier date. Be sure to include your life goals – some people call this their “bucket list” – and record the progress you make towards them throughout the year.
Identify your Strategic Allies. Make a list of the folks who you will need to work with in order to achieve your goal, and what is in it for them. List what you need from each person. Again make sure it’s reasonable. They are helping you, so don’t blame them if they don’t come through.
Lay out the Sequence. Plan the chain of events that are dependent upon each other to bring your goal into fruition. Understanding the interdependencies will give you the confidence to keep going. What has to happen first, second, and third? Determine the milestones. Important – get started on the first milestone immediately.
Identify the Lead Times. How long does each sub-section of your goal take? Who has to be notified, give approval, or complete a project? How much notice do they need? Work backwards to discover when each detail needs to be accomplished. This way you won’t be surprised by a road block you could have seen coming and easily removed with adequate preparation.
Track your Status. Put your goal and your strategy to achieve it at the top of the page and enter your progress weekly. If you have no progress one week, that’s a great time to review your past progress posts. This will give you the confidence that you are making progress. It’s also a great time to review your goal, your plan, your allies, and your lead times. It is okay to make practical adjustments as you go.
Celebrate! Yes, plan a reward for yourself and others for achieving the goal. Maybe it is a camping trip once you clean the attic! Maybe it’s a dinner out, a party, or a purchase, but it is an acknowledgement that you have succeeded. Plan the reward when you set your goal to create the mental picture of yourself as happy and fulfilled after having achieved your goal. There’s nothing like a prize to make you want to win!

We have kept a goal book for years, which we regularly review. So, what’s stopping you now? Use this checklist to begin achieving your goals today!

Who We Are

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

The post 7 Steps to Setting and Achieving Your Goals for the New Year appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

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.

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

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.

The post Gaining Traction in the Marketplace takes Tenacity and Focus appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Business Manners that Pay

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:48:59 +0000

The simple accommodations you make for your coworkers, boss, customers, and vendors cost you nothing, but give you a subtle yet strong advantage.

These are common, time-tested courtesies that are unfortunately not so common anymore.

Although not taught in business school, they can positively affect how others relate to you.

Showing consideration for others with whom you have frequent interaction reminds them that you appreciate their help and understand their concerns.

Here are some tips to help you make a positive impression and be more effective:

1. Keep them advised of your progress. Whether you do what they asked or not, tell them your status on a timely basis. Don’t make them have to come back and ask you where you are on a request. One or two days is too long. If they have to call you to ask, it’s stressful for them from two standpoints: first, they feel like they are nagging you, and second, they are a little perturbed they had to call you at all.

2. Thank them for the information. When someone takes the time to explain things to you in terms you can understand, don’t just say, “got it.” That gives them the impression that you think you are entitled to the lesson. This is especially true when the education they give you is not required. If you say, “Thank you for explaining that, it really helped me,” they will want to give you more attention in the future.

3. Speak up when you don’t get it. It’s OK if you don’t understand what is communicated to you. It’s not OK to pretend you got it when you still haven’t a clue. Later, when they depend on you to have understood certain principles, and you can’t perform, they will start to wonder. Challenge others to explain it again, and in different ways until you can say it back to them in your own words. They will be so happy you finally understood it, they will see it as their own personal achievement. People want to be successful at teaching, so let them know when they have succeeded – and when they haven’t.

4. Call back when you say you will. Often you will get calls that you just can’t deal with at the time. You might say “I’ll call you right back.” But you either have no intention of doing so or you just honestly forget. Write it down, preferably on your calendar. Don’t let them have to call you back. Calling back when you say you will shows the other party respect. They now respect you even more because they know you are busy but are still making time for them.

5. Send a short note. That’s right, a hand-written note. A post card is a lasting way to say thanks publically. Many in the recipient’s office will see the card. By taking the time to send a colorful post card, you communicate with them off line, off phone, off meeting and off lunch. The post card may stay out for weeks, especially if its eye catching. It will give them something to thank you for, and says you appreciate them personally.

There are many more courtesies we could mention, but these are a good start. Think about the other person and their feelings. Let her know she’s appreciated and you won’t leave her hanging. Reduce her anxiety by sending a subtle message that compels her to say, “I really like working with that guy!”

Who We Are

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

The post Business Manners that Pay appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.