Small business | The Barefoot Spirit

Success Magazine Interview

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:06:29 +0000

Michael & Bonnie were honored to appear in the July 2014 Success Magazine, next to Seth Godin! Their interview was selected to be inserted into the magazine as an audio CD.

SUCCESS Magazine is a leading source for news and information for the entrepreneur, small business, and home-based business owner.

To check out a snippet of their interview, please watch the YouTube video below.

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How to Teach Entrepreneurship – It’s the Wild West!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:44:14 +0000

Schools and courses in entrepreneurship are popping up all over the country. Each school has a slightly different approach to teaching this relatively new class study. Some schools have a few specific courses, while others have full curriculums devoted to entrepreneurship.

This results in a wide variety of approaches about how to teach entrepreneurship. Some schools stress the structure and function of building a business and borrow extensively from their business school curriculums, while others are very hands-on and even give academic credit to students engaging in start-ups. Entrepreneurship is so new that there is no consensus on exactly what should be taught.

With the exception of a few schools like Babson that has been teaching entrepreneurship since 1979 and devotes 100% of their classes to it, most schools offer entrepreneurship along with their main, more established majors.

Many universities know they must have entrepreneurship on their curriculum, but what is it exactly? What are the essential courses necessary to create successful graduates? And who will teach it? Have they been entrepreneurs themselves, and were they successful? How is the success of their method of teaching entrepreneurship measured? Is it number of new businesses launched? Or the number of businesses still operating in two years? And how is the success of the graduating students measured? Is it the amount of funding their start-ups garner, the amount of jobs they create, or is it the speed with which they achieve self-sustaining cash flow? These questions have advocates on all sides, and it’s still the Wild West out there when it comes to entrepreneurship education.

Since the first part of 2013, we have been traveling and speaking at colleges, universities and centers of entrepreneurship. We have participated with entrepreneurship education organizations where professors of entrepreneurship debate best practices for teaching this course of study. In the process, we have been exposed to many different approaches.

One of the Guiding Principles for Success we promote is to ask questions. We think it’s the best way to truly understand what your customers, employees, suppliers, and financiers really want. We encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to find out who their customers are at every level, identify their needs, and ask for constant feedback to provide relevant products and services. Why should it be any different for schools who teach it?

We were recently honored to be the guest speakers at Mississippi State University where we had a truly new and unique experience. From the board of advisers to the students, from the faculty to the Entrepreneurs Club, we were asked basically the same question, “What do you think we could do better to prepare students for the real world? Since you’ve been through it yourself and seen over 20 schools of entrepreneurship, what can you tell us about what others are doing, and how do you think we can improve our program?”

We hadn’t realized before that our experience of not only building Barefoot but, more importantly to them, visiting as many schools as we have gave us a unique overview.

We are not experts and what we know is based solely on our own experiences – building a successful consumer products brand, and talking with students and professors. We respected those who asked the question, and gave them several ideas about form and function that you can read in more detail on our Brand Building site, www.thebrandauthority.net

But one thing we did stress is the importance of the Liberal Arts and Sales Training, also known as the “Soft Skills,” because when you are an entrepreneur you are ipso facto a sales person. You must sell your own people, your buyers, their customers, your vendors and your financiers. It’s a firm foundation in the Liberal Arts that will give students a better understanding of different cultures and better communication skills, a necessity for sales. And after all, sales cures all ills!

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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The Shutdown Hurts Small Business and Start-Ups

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 23:09:37 +0000

The recent government shutdown is hurting our economy at every level. Whatever your politics, the inability of our elected officials to come to terms with each other within the entire year before the shutdown deadline has demonstrated the ultimate in misplaced priorities to the world.

We are just now emerging from the worst recession in recent times, with high unemployment and many of the formerly employed giving up the job search entirely. And what do our elected officials do? Shut down the government, a major employer and source of private sector contracts.

Why? To prove that they carried out what they think is the will of the most influential members of their constituency to the edge and beyond. They feel that they have to do this or else those factions will accuse them of not holding their ground and giving in. This is ridiculous. It is exactly the opposite of why we elect these representatives. They are elected to come to a consensus, not close down the government by standing their ground.

We in the business world, who compromise every day, are being victimized by this narrow-minded thinking. It hurts business. Consumers are less likely to spend, businesses less likely to order new equipment, and expansion plans are put on hold. And hiring? Forget about it! Things are just too uncertain and too unstable. This is not the environment we need to create new business, and grow existing business.

So who are these representatives, anyway? Mostly lawyers! Lawyers trying to fix an economy by playing chicken with each other at the cost of jobs and new business. Shame on them! They have been given a sacred trust by all of us to come up with a budget by a certain deadline every year. And they have failed.

The media would have you believe this shutdown is over the Affordable Care Act. Both sides will debate it, but they are missing a huge point. The shutdown itself sets a precedent. Every year we can now expect another shutdown! The message to small business and start-ups is clear. This is now an acceptable way for our elected officials to “negotiate,” even if it hurts the economy. This is nothing short of irresponsible.

Talk about the trickle-down effect! Our elected officials have effectively stopped essential funds from flowing into our economy. Whatever either side thought they could gain by the shutdown is eclipsed by the loss caused by the shutdown itself, resulting in loss of faith in the competency of those officials.

Every economic downturn in this country has been reversed by small entrepreneurs starting new businesses and creating new jobs. This requires a stable government that does not take actions to discourage them.

The states have the power to call a Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution. Improvements to consider include cutting off congressional salaries when there is a shutdown. Just beginning this process will send Congress a message that they are ultimately accountable, and they too will suffer financially.

Brinksmanship and playing “chicken” hurts our fragile economy. When business people don’t compromise, they simply don’t get paid. Why should congress be any different?

As entrepreneurial cheerleaders, we are speaking to universities encouraging aspiring entrepreneurs, empowering them with our learnings, and inspiring them with our humble beginnings. Like they say in ‘Jersey, “Can we get a little help over here?”

Who We Are

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

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The Advantages of Being Small and Broke in a Small Business

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:05:39 +0000

Michael & Bonnie were asked to write a guest article for Small Biz Lady, Melinda Emerson. The article talks about the advantages of being broke in a small business and the how they used it as an asset to starting Barefoot.

To read the blog, please visit the article on Small Biz Lady’s website

Who We Are

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

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Women’s Equality in the Workplace is Just Good Business!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 25 May 2013 20:46:44 +0000

Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo COO, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is the founder of the Lean In Movement. She was the keynote speaker at the Professional Business Women of California conference in San Francisco this week. More than 4000 business and professional women came to hear her remarks on the current status of women in the workplace. She points out that there has been virtually no progress in the past 10 years, and women are still underrepresented in top management positions. She listed the many ways that women are still perceived as less competent than their male counterparts to hold the top jobs.

We thank Sheryl for restarting this long overdue conversation. Her movement will benefit not only women but the entire economy. Imagine what great things can happen when we unleash the full potential of 100% of the work force!

Bonnie Harvey was honored to be included in the speaker’s roster and spoke about the self-employment option.

Small businesses and start-ups can’t afford to entertain the “old boy’s” culture still persisting in many larger corporations. When we started Barefoot wines, we were up against the same challenges that every start-up faces: undercapitalization and limited knowledge. The gender of our employees was never a factor. Why? Because we had bills to pay in 30 days that we didn’t have the money for! The very survival of our company was at stake! We were facing insurmountable challenges establishing ourselves in the marketplace. We had to hire the best people to make and source our wines, design and manage our marketing program, and manage our business at every level.

Ironically, we as a company ran into the “old boys” clubs at other companies, and it was a challenge for us. Imagine trying to sell a product to a woman shopper that she wants and having to go through predominately male gatekeepers who were the retail buyers. From our research we learned that most of the wine was sold in the supermarket, and most of the supermarket buyers were women. They wanted consistent flavor from year to year, just the opposite of the vintage-dated wine business. Barefoot blended different years to achieve consistency and continuity.

We hired one of the first female winemakers, a female marketing manager, a female accountant, a female traffic and compliance manager, a female marketing materials manager, and one of the first female sales managers in the male dominated wine business. We hired the best, period! Our board was made up of two women and two men. It would have been foolish for us to make any gender distinctions. Most small businesses and start-ups have to hire the best. They have no other choice.

So why do so many of the larger corporations persist in gender discrimination? Are their budgets so big they don’t feel the necessity to put the best person in the job regardless of gender? Are the top, mostly male, decision makers inadvertently banding together to save their collective jobs at the expense of the companies they serve? Are the policies of all larger firms so similar that women can’t change jobs to another big company without facing a similar prejudice?

Next to publically traded companies, women-owned businesses are the top U.S. employers today. Will the large companies discover the benefits of treating women equally in the workplace before they quit and start their own businesses? Women-owned businesses have no glass ceilings. No wonder they are growing so fast!

Who We Are

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

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Take the Time to Explain the Reasons – Part 1

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:49:05 +0000

Training without explaining is like trying to program a computer. The computer will only do what it’s been programmed to do. It will not know why it’s doing it and its approach to the job will be limited to what it’s been directed to do. That approach to training staff has become more and more popular, because it’s easier to explain what you want done than why you want it done. Some say anything more is just too much information and not necessary for the performance of their job. This, of course, results in robot-like behavior that is by the book. But your company will pay the price when an analytical or thoughtful decision is required of that person and they are not prepared to make it. In programming, it’s called a bug, but in human behavior it’s called a misunderstanding. Lack of comprehensive training may be a better descriptive.

In our company, we spent hours making sure that each member of our staff understood the “whys” of what we were asking them to do. This extra time and energy spent in big-picture education paid off handsomely with fewer mistakes, less misunderstandings, and more efficiency. And on occasion, new jobs were designed by our own people to improve our customer service.

Like many production businesses requiring distribution, we had a reoccurring problem with out-of-stocks. Sometimes the problem was at the retail store level and our reps would try to solve those. Other times the issue originated with our distributor. But sometimes the problem was right under our noses, in our own company, and we didn’t see it.

A previously “invisible” cause of out-of-stocks was discovered and solved by one of our own people. But, because she understood the big picture, she was able to identify it even though she was working in a totally different end of the business.

One day out of the blue, a woman in our accounting department came to us and said, “You need a traffic officer.”

“A what?” we said

She said, “You need someone to ‘babysit’ the delivery process from your wholesaler’s purchase order to the trucking company and all the way to our warehouse.”

“Isn’t that the distributor’s and trucking company’s responsibility?” we asked.

She replied, “Yesterday an 18-wheeler drove here from Minnesota to pick up a load, but because the driver didn’t have an appointment, our warehouse manager turned him away due to backed up scheduled orders. The truck drove all the way back to Minnesota – without our product! This means the work you put into getting retail placements in Minnesota will be lost.” She went on, “Last week our LA distributor’s purchase order you got verbally was lost in the vacation shuffle at his own company, so it was picked up two weeks late, resulting in run-outs all over LA.”

We made her the traffic officer the very next day!

Because our company policy was to explain the why’s, she went beyond her job description of sending out invoices for orders that were shipped. Because whatever question she or any of our staff asked was met with a relatively detailed explanation starting with the customer and working back to their job and their question, she gained an insight to our overall operation which alerted her to the problem and allowed her to present a solution.

Next time we will share some of the ways you can give your people a better conceptual understanding of the big picture so they can make better decisions and improve your bottom line. It’s not just what they do, but why they do it!

Who We Are

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

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Women-Owned Businesses to the Rescue!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:26:11 +0000

Sheryl Sandberg in her bestseller, Lean In, laments the stubborn persistence of the “glass ceiling” holding women back in corporate America. After years of advancement in women’s access to the top corporate positions, the progress has slowed to a crawl. She raises several important issues, asks some serious questions, and suggests some positive actions.

But there’s one sector of business where the lid has been blown off and it is flooded with successful women! This is the sector of women-owned businesses. Since the Great Recession, women-owned businesses are second only to publicly traded firms in job creation according to the 2013 Report on the State of Women-Owned Businesses.

This was not surprising to us when we coached and engaged over 1000 woman entrepreneurs this week in Syracuse, New York. We were attending the 11^th annual WISE Symposium. It stands for Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship, and ignite they did! With over 100 booths in the exhibition hall and more than 20 powerful speakers, the symposium lived up to its reputation as a premier event for women’s entrepreneurship.

Speakers and breakout sessions covered the gamut from starting a business to developing a brand story, from financing to company culture, and from growing your business to retaining your customers. Just the presence of so many successful and aspiring entrepreneurial women in one place gave attendees the encouragement, enlightenment and empowerment to help them be successful themselves.

It was inspiring to see so many women with such a sense of excitement, all there to learn how to better run their own companies.

We were honored to be the lunchtime keynote speakers and to share our stories in the real world of hardship, hustle, and heart. Entrepreneurship is not for the meek. In fact, for most of us, it’s a “get rich slow” scheme fraught with many sacrifices. You give up your “8 to 5” for a “5 to 8.” You give up a salary, benefits, and vacations, sometimes for years, just to get your head above water. You endure less-than-desirable working conditions, impositions on your home life, and loads of stress, all on a budget as thin as dental floss. But the rewards of making the decisions that control our destinies push us to succeed.

Women entrepreneurs are the true heroes of our economy. Since 2007, they have added 175,000 net jobs, versus the national net decline of 569,000 jobs among all privately held firms. Between 1997 and 2013, the number of women-owned businesses grew at 1.5 times the national average. In the process, they have created a multiplier effect that resulted in income for all the businesses they contracted with and all the merchants and services where their employees shopped. Meanwhile their new ideas, products and services continue to improve all our lives.

Especially for the WISE symposium, we developed a series of four, one-hour web conferences tailored to entrepreneurs, and we are offering them to you now as well. Here, you will learn some of the important guiding principles we used, starting in our laundry room, to build the nation’s #1 wine brand, Barefoot. You will gain the benefit of our real world experience and reduce the time and difficulty achieving your success. To learn more, check out www.barefootwinefounders.com/web-conference . We would love to help you become a successful business owner!

Who We Are

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

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The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV)

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:16:19 +0000

Very shortly, we will be having a flood of vets returning to our country. Many have disabilities suffered in the line of duty. What will become of them? Will there be enough jobs? Can disabled post 9/11 veterans become successful entrepreneurs?

Dr. Mike Haynie, of Syracuse University in New York, has taken a proactive approach to attack this daunting challenge head on. Before Syracuse, he was a US Air Force Academy professor at Colorado Springs and served 10 years as an Air Force officer. Shortly after arriving at SU, Haynie established the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) program. This groundbreaking initiative is designed to offer world-class training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post 9/11 veterans disabled as a result of their military service. He is a leader in veteran’s affairs and an expert on entrepreneurial thinking.

His concept is quite simple actually. Why not prepare qualified veterans for self-employment as entrepreneurs? Through the EVP they can get world-class entrepreneurial training. It wasn’t long before the program expanded from Syracuse to Cornell, Connecticut, Florida State, LSU, Texas A&M, UCLA, and Purdue.

Purdue joined the EBV consortium in 2009, and has had a total of 77 vets through the program (including the 26-2012 Graduates). Students are accepted into the program based on the quality of their proposals for starting their own business. In 2009, the Department of the Army named the EBV a national “best practice” for programs serving soldiers and their families.

Last week, we got an email from Mellissa Evens of Purdue University who heard us speak on entrepreneurship in San Francisco last January at the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) conference. She asked us to come to Purdue in November to engage and coach over 30 veterans with disabilities and 200 Purdue students enrolled in the program. The veterans attend the program at no charge – they have paid the price with their service.

We were sincerely honored and agreed to donate our time on the spot. What a great opportunity to share our experience with this incredible group! Successful entrepreneurship requires guts, determination and sacrifice, the attributes these heroes have already demonstrated. The guiding principles we learned the hard way building the Barefoot Wine brand are applicable to most business ventures and many are not taught in school. We hope to give them a head start in the real world of business and entrepreneurship and perhaps save them some of the hard knocks we experienced.

The idea of a whole new generation of disabled veteran entrepreneurs to lift the economy with all the jobs that they will surely create is a very creative and exciting proposition. Welcome home! Now let’s get back to work!

Who We Are

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

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Why Being an Outsider and Undercapitalized can be Your Strongest Assets

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 03:00:27 +0000

Sometimes what you don’t have can be a true blessing. When we speak to aspiring entrepreneurs and students hoping to start their own businesses, they often tell us that they are afraid of being under capitalized and not knowing enough about their industry.

They have been taught that in order to start a new business, they need to write a detailed business plan and get it financed. They have been encouraged to stay in an industry they know.

Sometimes however, opportunity presents itself when you least expect it. You may think you do not have all the knowledge you need, or a detailed business plan, or the financing in place. You may not have even considered this business. Yet seizing an opportunity is generally time sensitive.

Sure, you’ll need experience from folks in the industry and you’re going to have to hustle to write some kind of a plan. But from our experience, most business plans are only good for getting initial investors. Once the rubber meets the road, the plan will often be a memory and the cash flow projection will be the new “plan.” And that will change monthly. As far as money is concerned, most start-ups never have enough anyway. So being adequately capitalized is a relative term. That means you may have to ask your relative for some extra cash – even if you thought you had enough to get started.

But being well capitalized creates its own problems. Some attempt to solve all their problems by throwing money at them. Some buy more advertising when sales are down, when they really need to concentrate in a smaller market they can control. Some throw a ton of money into a cute logo, clever marketing slogans and cool packaging when understanding the distribution system is what is really needed.

When you are underfinanced, you have no choice but to be creative, resourceful and careful. We often say, “If necessity is the mother of invention, then being under capitalized is surely the father.” Some of the most imaginative solutions come from being forced to solve business problems with limited capital. In fact, you may well discover new ways of doing things that are more efficient and less costly than conventional thinking would dictate. We were unable to afford advertising when we started our business, so we discovered another way to get the word out. Turns out, it was more effective than paid advertising. By donating our product, time, and resources to non-profits within our market area, we gave their membership a social reason to buy our product.

When you are outside the industry, you think outside the box. When we started Barefoot Wines, in a world of stuffy wine labels, we put a colorful, fun, label with a foot on our bottle. In a world of mostly male gatekeepers and vintage wine, we produced a non-vintage wine blended for consistency, and aimed our marketing at predominately female shoppers. We didn’t know the industry, so we didn’t realize how unconventional all this was. Now our industry has loads of non-vintage wines with fun labels.

True innovation often comes from the outside by folks who don’t know what they can’t do. Imaginative problem solving often comes from folks who still have to get the job done in spite of inadequate capital, because they can’t do it any other way.

So if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, chances are you already have two effective weapons you can use: limited capital and limited industry knowledge. Use them to spearhead your imagination and innovation – and maybe even reform your entire industry!

Who We Are

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

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Build Your Business using Guiding Principles – Part 4

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 21:46:27 +0000

The critical decisions we make in business are guided by our attitudes toward our employees, our creditors, our vendors’ representatives, and our customers. How we treat these people is based on our perceptions, opinions, and attitudes.

In this series, we have endeavored to demonstrate how our guiding principles affect our success. By putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, we get an objective view of our own business practices. The ultimate standard by which most business decisions should be measured is, “How would you like it?”

Seems simple, but it’s not. So here is the last question:

4. Would You Buy From Yourself? (This includes the correlated question, “Would you buy your own product or service?”) Would you buy from a company that treated you like a pain in the neck if you had a problem with their product, or would you prefer to buy from a company that thanked you for bringing your concerns to their attention? Would you buy a product that previously tricked you with false claims, fancy packaging, and an amazing price? Or would you be loyal to a product that demonstrated time-tested value? Would you continue to buy a product that had “cheapened” over time, or would you shop for an alternative? Would you rather buy from a company that saw your purchase as clicks on a page, or one that gave you personalized attention before and after your purchase?

When we built the Barefoot Wine brand, we were often pressured by producers, packagers, middlemen and retailers to reduce our price – even if it meant reducing our quality. This implied that price was the main reason our customers bought our products. We were advised to use less expensive supplies, cheaper packaging, and mass standardization. They told us it would make their jobs easier. We resisted their well-meaning attempts to reduce costs and labor. We believed they did not take into account the value proposition to our customers. We believe that brand loyalty is based on the same concerns that we as consumers have about the products we buy. Here is what concerns us:

Over Delivery. We look for products and services that provide good value for the price, either in quality, quantity, or both. When products meet or exceed our expectations, we are more likely to remain loyal and recommend to friends and family. When those brands take a stand on issues important to us and our community, we have a further incentive to remain loyal.

Perception of Quality. A product’s packaging, pricing, and reputation all send us signals about its value. If it lives up to those “brand promises” of quality, we are validated in our decision to buy. Until the price goes up, the quality goes down, or the packaging becomes more corporate or generic, we remain loyal. Consistent quality and value is king.

Third Party Endorsements. We all need the continued validation that we are making the right decision to be loyal to a brand. Awards, accolades and endorsements are what we look for. Continued recognition for quality and value demonstrates reliability, and keeps us coming back.

Excellent Customer Service. How we are treated when things go wrong is more important than how we are treated when things go right. It’s when we see a company’s true colors and decide whether or not to continue buying their products. Reputation is based on excellent customer service.

It’s just good business to put ourselves in the other guy’s shoes. Our guiding principles are the standards by which we make our decisions. Sell the product you would buy. Build the brand you would be loyal to.

Who We Are

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

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