Self employment | The Barefoot Spirit

USASBE Is Dedicated to Excellence in the Education of Entrepreneurship

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 22:57:50 +0000

USASBE, The United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, is a non-profit organization that provides support for the colleges and universities across the country that are teaching entrepreneurship. They serve as a forum to share best practices, leading edge techniques, and most effective curriculums. There are effectively raising the standards for this relatively new degree.

Unlike other degrees, a degree in Entrepreneurship can’t really be used to land a job or impress anyone. It’s all about self-employment – creating and running your own business. Today there is an explosion of interest in entrepreneurship and in entrepreneurship education.

The advent of USASBE couldn’t have come at a better time and we are avid supporters. Last year we spoke at their annual conference in San Francisco and we were honored to be invited back to their 2014 conference in Ft Worth. During 2013, we traveled the country, speaking at colleges and universities that teach entrepreneurship. We spoke about how to navigate your business from here to there given the unforeseen and seemingly insurmountable challenges ahead.

In business navigation, like tennis, boxing, or almost any sport, you have to assume the action-ready stance with your knees bent, ready for anything. You don’t know where the ball or the blow will come from, but you do your best to be prepared for it. You make yourself both as stable and as flexible as you can. You also need a few tools like a compass, a hard hat and a flashlight, because you can easily get lost, take a hit, and lose sight of your objective.

Having a set of “Guiding Principles” to hold every decision up against can help you make more right decisions. We attribute our success to those guiding principles which we collectively refer to as “the Barefoot Spirit.” Here is a very brief summary of the top 7:

Empathy. For every major decision, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Understand what they want first. Then figure out how to get what you want by helping them get what they want. This goes for your customers, investors, employees, vendors and especially your community.
Alliances. Who are your strategic allies? Who benefits when you benefit. Look around you and see who’s going in the same direction. What suppliers will sell you more if you sell more? How can you help the community achieve its goals and give them a social reason to by your products?
Mistakes. Instead of blaming others, ask what you can do to make the mistake less likely to happen again. Identify and improve the documents that will prevent them from reoccurring. Maybe it’s a sign, label, check-list, sign-off sheet, policy, procedure, contract clause or a job description, but document it somewhere and fix the problem! Never waste a perfectly good mistake, and give your people permission to make them.
Sharing. Always take a smaller slice of a larger pie. Include those you depend on most in your success. Don’t be put a limit on your sales people’s commission so they can “sand bag” you, leave for a better paying job, and take your customers with them. Don’t be concerned if they make more than you; it’s “found” money.
Two-Divisions. Your company only has two divisions, Sales and Sales Support. Everyone who is not in Sales is in Sales Support. This includes Production, Marketing, Legal, Accounting, and even the Receptionist. Sales advises Marketing, not the other way around.
Performance. If you pay for attendance alone, you will hear, “I was there, pay me.” Give bonuses based on profitability. That way the non-producers can’t afford to stay and the producers can’t afford to quit. Turnover is the #1 hidden cost of doing business. Make sure everyone knows exactly where their salary, bonus, commission, and benefits come from, and that’s the customer!
Partnering. Treat your people like partners. Share the good and bad news with them. Publically acknowledge people for improving your company. Treat your bankers, investors, suppliers and vendors as partners, too. Share your challenges and your accomplishments, and ask them for their help and advice.

Our talks are beyond the structure, organization, and function of entrepreneurship. They are about the business philosophies and attitudes that can help prepare you for the unexpected and help you navigate your business to success. We are grateful to have the opportunity to promote the Barefoot Spirit to the next generation of entrepreneurs, and give them a big head start.

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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Back to School – Back to Entrepreneurship

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 02:35:20 +0000

The prospects for self-employment have never been brighter. Information is at your fingertips. Rents, labor, and interest rates are at an all-time low. Big corporations, stifled by their own structures, outmoded compensation plans and legal constrictions, are hungry to acquire new and innovative ideas from the outside.

The prospects are great and the opportunity is now, but can entrepreneurship actually be taught? Certainly, the skills and tools that, from our experience, are absolutely necessary to be a successful entrepreneur can be taught. More and more business colleges across the nation that are creating schools and centers of entrepreneurship agree.

This fall thousands of students of entrepreneurship return to school to work on their degrees in this relatively new course of study. But who will they impress with a degree in entrepreneurship? They have just earned a degree in self-employment! This is a truly different kind of student, not the kind who wants a degree because it’s a job requirement. They plan to build themselves their own job! They are studying entrepreneurship because they want to be successful in their own businesses.

When we started Barefoot Cellars, we didn’t have the benefit of the entrepreneurial education now being offered across the country. It would have made our journey smoother and shorter. Not long after we sold Barefoot, the Great Recession hit. We had never lived through anything like it. We watched businesses fold, money dry up, and people lose their homes.

It was heartbreaking to see what was happening to our country. Many of the middle management jobs that provided entry-level positions for business grads had vanished. Outsourcing and automation took their toll on the workforce.

We wanted to do something about it, but we felt powerless. Then we did what we always do in a crisis: we took inventory! When we looked closely at what we had to offer and what was going on around us, we discovered we possessed some powerful assets we could share. We had a successful entrepreneurial experience. We were living in a country that had to rebuild itself the same way it did after the Great Depression, the World War, and the bursting of the Dot-com bubble – through entrepreneurship. Self-employment suddenly began to look like the best chance of employment.

It was then that we decided to stop procrastinating and write our book.

But, what could we offer that was yet to be taught in schools? We decided on the set of guiding principles that we learned during our 20 years building our brand. These are the business philosophies and standards that saved us so many times. We conveyed those concepts in fun stories about a popular national brand familiar to most people. We wrote The Barefoot Spirit to inspire, encourage, and empower a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.

Our intention was to write a book that would be required reading in the new schools of entrepreneurship as a modern case study of a start-from-nothing American success story. It is filled with all the bumps, mistakes, and missteps that happen in the real world. We are happy that many schools are adopting The Barefoot Spirit as a guide and an entertaining lesson in what to expect after you graduate and go out there and really do it. We like to think it fills in the gaps between learning how to write a business plan, a budget, or an application for a business loan, and what else it takes to be successfully self-employed. We wanted to give them tools they can use.

After many decades out of school, we’re going back to school again, only this time it is as thought leaders in entrepreneurship. We will be speaking to thousands of students this fall in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, and Indiana. We are proud to be making a difference in the lives of these courageous young people who hold our country’s future in their hands.

Who We Are

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

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Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:09:20 +0000

Santa Barbara has always been our favorite Southern California town – great biking, hiking, surfing and culture. But today, we discovered a whole new reason to love this gem of the Pacific Coast, The Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. This unique school takes the increasing demand for entrepreneurial education head on, and at the community college level, no less.

This afternoon, we enjoyed a wonderful beachside luncheon with Melissa Moreno, the school’s Director. She has been instrumental in the creation and development of the Center. Only three years old, it’s already getting the attention and support of several successful entrepreneurs.

Check out their fireside-chat format conversations with these notables on video at their site. These chats are jam packed with excited students interacting with real entrepreneurial successes.

Today’s entrepreneurial students want case studies from real business founders. They want to hear their story and ask them practical questions about how they overcame hardship, challenges and undercapitalization.

Our economy has proven time and again that it’s the entrepreneurs that create new businesses, new jobs, and innovation. Today, we face big challenges. For many graduates, sometimes the only source of employment is self employment.

The Scheinfeld Center provides a big head start for anyone thinking about starting their own business, whether they are looking for credit, or just want to get the latest academic disciplines or practical tools necessary for successful entrepreneurship.

Like schools everywhere, they are struggling with the economy. This seems ironic since they are one of the obvious vehicles to turn the economy around. They deserve your interest and support, so please help pass the word about the Scheinfeld Center. We need more schools like this!

We were honored to be asked to present our experience to the Scheinfeld students next March. Now we have another great reason to visit Santa Barbara. We hope the lessons we learned, sometimes the hard way, will help the next generation of entrepreneurs to achieve success!

Who We Are

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

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