San Francisco | The Barefoot Spirit

7 Ways The Gig Economy Affects Your Business

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 18:18:47 +0000

Most startups fail because they have too much overhead and not enough sales — period.

In fact, in our program, The Barefoot Startup, we advise our clients to outsource everything but sales, accounting and quality control. Overhead expenses are earned by sales, not the other way around.

We recently had the pleasure of attending the Conference on The Gig Economy hosted by the San Francisco Chapter of the Global Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is keen on keeping its members abreast of the latest developments in the international trade space.

What we enjoyed the most was the first panel discussion that included leaders from government and industry, large and small, who focused on their experience with contingency, or “gig,” workers. It was an eye-opener and has special significance for startups looking to reduce their need for capital to cover overhead by outsourcing certain kinds of work.

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.

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Independent Filmmakers Celebrated and Showcased at Cinequest

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 18:07:58 +0000

We recently enjoyed watching several movies at Cinequest, an annual film festival that took place over several days in downtown San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. Cinequest was voted the “Best Film Festival” in the country by USA today, and after witnessing it in person, we can see why.

All the films we saw were imaginative, leading edge, and poignant insights on many important aspects of life that don’t fit the Hollywood mold. And thank goodness. These films need to be seen. Like entrepreneurship itself, they challenge the establishment and give permission to new ways of communicating.

An investment we made 10 years ago in an independent film documentary finally had its World Premiere last week at Cinequest. Just to be selected for an event of this stature was a major milestone for the videographer and team who put the film together.

“Our” film, “The Comedy Club,” was the brain child of David Schendel. We were impressed with his first film, “Yank Tanks,” a fun, colorful, and eye-opening documentary about how Cuban artisans have kept the old American cars from 1956 and earlier not only running, but in good repair. This was done in spite of an export boycott by the US and the secession of the manufacturers of those auto parts over a half a century ago. The replacement parts have all been meticulously made by hand by Cuban craftsmen! Even tail lights for 1956 Chevys! Now, 60 years later, Cuba is poised to become a serious American tourist destination, and “Yank Tanks” and the story of those vintage cars still cruising the streets of Havana will be in demand. Finally the time is right!

Schendel’s more recent movie, The Comedy Club, traces the history of Cobbs, one of the original comedy clubs that provided a launching pad for such greats as Robin Williams, Bill Maher, Paula Poundstone, Bobcat Goldhwait, Kevin Pollak, Will Durst, Dana Carvey, Bob Saget, Kevin Nealon, Ellen DeGeneres, and many others! This is an entrepreneurial story about the club owner, Tom Sawyer (that’s his real name), and how he pioneered stand-up comedy in San Francisco and took the risk that there was a market for it. There are great jokes, interviews and testimonials from many now-famous comedians who showed appreciation for the chance this independent entrepreneur took to give them a big head start.

Now that so many of these comedians have become famous on TV and elsewhere, there is a much greater interest in this film, so all the difficulties resulting in delays are more likely to have worked to the films advantage. So much of a film’s success is based on the timing of its release. The public is interested in how their favorite comedians first got a break. Like the new interest in David’s “Yank Tanks” film, we think the timing is right for a historical documentary of San Francisco’s stand-up comedy scene.

Besides, without an independent entrepreneur like Tom Sawyer taking the risk, we would not have the caliber of comedians we have today. The corporations did finally seize upon, and monopolize, this opportunity, but only after the concept had been proven by Tom Sawyer’s startup, Cobbs Comedy Club. And without an independent filmmaker like David Schendel, this piece of the history of American comedy would be lost.

We salute all the independent filmmakers at Cinequest. We particularly liked “Remember Me” with Rita Moreno (West Side Story), “Ma Ma” with Penelope Cruz, and of course, “The Comedy Club” by David Schendel. M&B give them all two toes way up!

Who We Are

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

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Park Users Should Take Out What They Take In

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 17:00:30 +0000

When Michael was a young boy, his grandfather, a former police officer in the Mission District of San Francisco, would take him to play in Dolores Park where he would summersault down its pristine green banks. Last year almost 15,000 cubic yards of garbage were removed from this historic gem by a so-called progressive city. Times have changed and so has the impact of population, park usage and the proliferation of single use containers.

Today, the weekly trashing of Dolores Park is an unfortunate example of misplaced user entitlement caused in part by the Park Department itself. Every day, park users bring in food and beverages and discard the containers as if it is the park’s responsibility to provide comprehensive garbage service. And why? Because the park provides garbage receptacles. But there are never enough and it overflows throughout the park. When parks provide garbage collection services it gives users permission to leave their waste behind. Trash pick-up was manageable in the past when there was a much smaller attendance, but usage, especially in urban parks like Dolores Park, has skyrocketed over the years.

So what to do? Add more garbage bins? Maybe teach people to use special recycle bins? Both of these solutions avoid the real issue. Park users have been programmed over the years to walk in with their single use containers and walk out without them. The thinking goes something like this, “Someone else will pick it up. It provides jobs. I pay my taxes and I deserve to have my parks serviced no matter how impractical or how expensive that may be. They put a receptacle there, and they’ve always picked up the garbage in the past.”

Regional, State and Federal parks with no back country trash receptacles have a simple message at the trailheads, “Pack out what you pack in!” This policy has been whole heartedly accepted by most hikers, and many feel it’s their duty to pick up and pack out any discarded trash they see on the trail. Why should this be different in urban parks that are coming under increased population and budgetary pressure?

Instead of increasing the number of trash receptacles, why not reduce them and put up a sign on the ones that are left that says, “Please take out what you brought in! Do your part to save your park budget for maintenance, repairs and beautification.”

This approach has been used successfully in several parks across the country. It does not just help keep the parks clean, but it focuses public attention on disposable food and beverage containers by asking park users be responsible for taking them out as well as bringing them in.

We can no longer afford to say, “Bring in your garbage and leave it here.” We have already been successful in training people to take their own bags to the grocery store. So training them to take their own garbage home is not out of the question. But it’s got to be started by the parks themselves with good signage that appeals to people’s sense of community.

If park advocates and volunteers were to start an education process to make users aware of this accelerating situation, would the park users change their ways and take “ownership” of these precious lands made available to them? If children were taught to be responsible for the land around them that they use, how long might it take to reverse this alarming trend?

Let’s apply the decades old “Pack it in. Pack it out!” backpacker’s creed to all park users.

Who We Are

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

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How the Irish Got Barefoot

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 14:53:28 +0000

Over one hundred years ago Michael’s grandfather, John Francis Houlihan, left his hometown of Limerick, Ireland, heading for the port city of Cork where he boarded a cattle steamer bound for America. The only passage he could afford was above deck, so in order to stay warm he had to huddle near the smokestack. It was there that he met and fell in love with Nelly Donohue from Donegal. When they finally arrived at Ellis Island they were incarcerated by United States Customs in separate dormitories, where they remained until they could document gainful employment for themselves inside the United States.

John Francis, being a horseman by trade, was able to secure a job cleaning the recently constructed Sutro Stables in San Francisco, California. That’s where the newly created San Francisco Police Department, which replaced the Vigilante Committee, kept their horses and those of the mayor and other public officials. Then, after two more months of correspondence he was finally able to secure a job for Nelly as a washerwoman and cook in a rooming house on Fell Street in San Francisco across from acres of sand dunes that would later become Golden Gate Park.

Nelly and John were married in the 1890s shortly after they moved to San Francisco. They both worked very hard to save enough to make a down payment on a flat in the then Irish ghetto of San Francisco known as the Mission District. Nelly did laundry and John was promoted from cleaning stables to Head Stable Keeper. In 1906 a terrific earthquake hit San Francisco and broke the underground gas mains, causing many huge fires, including one that destroyed Sutro Stables. John Francis, being a resourceful Irishman, only had time to save a few horses from the flames, so he chose to save the mayor’s prized Percherons. The mayor was so grateful that he asked John what he could do to show his appreciation, to which he replied, “I want to be the police officer who walks the beat in my own neighborhood,” and that’s what he did until he retired in 1941. During those years he watched the ghetto change, from Irish who had lifted themselves up by their own bootstraps into civil service jobs, to Italians who were refugees from WWI.

John Francis knew everyone in the Mission, so when Prohibition came to America, John was quick to make peace with the Italian families who brought their family tradition of winemaking with them from the Old Country. He saw the Great Depression and both world wars. He spoke with a thick brogue ‘til the day he died at the ripe old age of 98, surrounded by his wife Nelly, his only son John Charles and his four grandchildren, John, Michael, Mary Ellen, and William.

John Francis and Nelly used their savings to give their only child, John Charles, the best education possible. He graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law and married Emily L’Heureux, third generation Californian. John Charles went on to have a brilliant legal career and was instrumental in the development of containerized shipping. He helped build the Port of Oakland, which was one of the first container ports in the world. Shipping containers revolutionized world commerce by cutting losses and insurance costs to a fraction of what they had been when cargo was loaded and unloaded by hand. They go from factory, to truck, to ship, to rail, sealed and safe. John Charles traveled throughout the world promoting the idea of containerized shipping ports, and today these containers are a part of our lives.

One of John Charles’ sons, Michael, got into the wine business with Bonnie Harvey in 1986. They were put off by the snobbery and the pretension of the wine business and wanted to create a product that had a more friendly and approachable image. They named their winery “Barefoot Cellars” in memory of the way grapes were originally crushed, barefoot, by those Italian families in their bathtubs in the Mission District. Plus, in California, being barefoot was a sign of fun and freedom. It meant you had the day off, the weather was fine, and you were relaxed and happy at the beach, enjoying life. Barefoot Wines became very popular in California especially with the young at heart.

By 2005, Barefoot Wines were being sold across the U.S. and in 28 foreign countries. When the wines finally made it to Ireland, they came in through the same port Michael’s grandfather left as a young man, and in the same shipping containers Michael’s father, John Charles, helped to promote.

… And That’s How the Irish Got Barefoot! Cheers!

Who We Are

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

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SOCAP 40th Anniversary Celebration During America’s Cup

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 16:35:44 +0000

We are honored to be speaking at SOCAP’s 40th Anniversary Celebration during the America’s Cup in San Francisco, CA. The event will take place on September 12 at 11:45 am to 4:00 pm. If you would like to attend the event, please visit the event details page.

Who We Are

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

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Academy of Friends 32nd Annual Gala

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:34:17 +0000

Title: Academy of Friends 32nd Annual Gala
Location:San Francisco Design Center Galleria
Description: Academy of Friends annually produces the world’s premier Academy Awards Night Charity Gala as the centerpiece of its efforts to raise funds, award donations, and encourage volunteerism that benefit a diverse set of HIV/AIDS direct care and prevention education agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Academy of Friends is a credible steward through which individual donors and corporations contribute to such agencies. And these Beneficiary agencies receive funds based on their proven ability to reach, meet the needs of, and have the greatest impact on those most affected by HIV/AIDS.

The Cast of the smash hit Broadway musical “MAMMA MIA!” will be performing LIVE following the Academy Awards Telecast at the Gala!

Buy your tickets here!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Start Time: 5:00pm PST
End Time: 11:00pm PST

Who We Are

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

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