speakers | The Barefoot Spirit

Entrepreneur – Outsource Everything but Accounting, Quality Control and Sales

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 17:06:53 +0000

It’s no secret that most startups are undercapitalized. They need every penny just to stay in business long enough to produce a positive cash flow. Even those that have achieved seed financing usually find out in short order that they need a much longer runway to give sales a chance to take off.

Most investors want to see some revenue before they will take a risk on you. So it’s critical, especially in the pre-rev startup phase, to strip your company down to its bare essentials, be resourceful, and discover and use your hidden assets. If you can’t lengthen the runway, you can at least lighten the plane!

As professional speakers in the world of entrepreneurship, we hear hundreds of business ideas every year. The proponents are passionate and convinced that they have a marketable solution. This may be true, but the market usually requires more time than they have planned to accept their solution.

To read the complete article, please visit Entrepreneur

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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Entrepreneur – The Top 4 Reasons Startups Fail, According to 14 International Accelerators

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Tue, 01 May 2018 15:00:40 +0000

As speakers, advisers and trainers in the entrepreneurial space, we’ve been particularly excited by our December survey of the principles of 14 international accelerators. We wanted to know, from their point of view, what were the key factors in startup success … and failure. As far as we know, this is the most recent study conducted on this subject. Although these folks are from all over the world, it’s amazing how much they agree when it comes to why startups fail.

Inadequate Testing

Inadequate Testing was by far the most mentioned reason for startup failure. This factor is identified by several other terms like not getting started, not understanding how to access the market, and not understanding the barriers to entry. But Greg Wright, founder of HATCH pitch, put it quite succinctly: “Failure to test and validate hypotheses and assumptions,” and its corollary, “Premature scaling (seeking/obtaining funding too early, ramping production/team/advertising before achieving product market fit).”

Keith Hopper, CEO of Danger Fort Labs, adds, “Not addressing an important enough need that customers are willing to pay for.” Ben Hsieh, program manager of Nest and Jason Cole, CEO of Da Primus Consulting, both agree that “not finding product market fit” is a main cause of failure.

To read the complete article, please visit Entrepreneur

Who We Are

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

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Are Conferences About to Change …Again?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 17:00:20 +0000

Would you pay $299 or more to attend a two-day conference to listen to 10 speakers selling products from the stage? We wouldn’t and there’s a growing audience rebellion brewing out there that agrees. In the future, it will become harder to fill your conference seats when your audience is just sitting there waiting for the hook, the “gotcha,” or the ask. Why pay to subject yourself to an advertising campaign? Shouldn’t they be paying you?

Four years ago, conference organizers would tell us as speakers not to sell from the stage! We didn’t and never have. Our goal has always been to educate and entertain our audiences with the hard lessons we learned building an international brand using resourcefulness, cash flow management, employee engagement, and strategic alliances. Our goal has always been to send the audience home with effective tools they can use in their business today. We want our audiences to thank the conference producers for providing those tools.

Over the past year we’ve noticed a big change. Now, most conference producers are operating on a model that basically “sells” their audience to their unpaid speakers. Now, these producers actively promote platform selling by their speakers to their audiences who have paid to attend their conferences. Imagine, free speakers plus income from attendees! When we point this out, they’re always quick to say that they are creating networking opportunities for their audiences and speakers. But how much longer will audiences pay to be treated like prospects?

We believe audiences attend conferences not just to network but to learn new strategies and techniques they can use in their businesses. We believe they can “smell” an upsell 20 minutes away. We believe upselling speakers creates a kind of anxiety as the audience is expecting to be teased and have key pieces of information withheld from them unless, of course, they pay more to get it. Now their conference ticket just buys them a pitch.

More new conferences are popping up every day trying to use this pay-to-be-upsold model. “Why should we pay speakers,” they say, “when we have a whole stable full of free speakers?” The fact is, there are no “free” speakers. They may not charge the producers for their talk, but they are hoping their audience will buy their services instead. When an audience is used like this, are they more likely or less likely to return next year?

Today many so-called speaking coaches are quick to jump on this bandwagon. They advise their speaking clients to sell their services from the stage. This advice is based on the idea that their clients are not professional speakers but are merely using the stage to sell something else to a sequestered audience.

Think about the last three conferences you’ve attended. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you need more people soliciting you? Do you need more emails from their sales campaigns in your inbox? Or do you want to get value for the money you paid to attend the conference?

We think you should get information that is of great value to you. It won’t happen unless you complain about platform sales or simply vote with your feet. Let’s go back to paying speakers on the condition that they don’t perform platform sales and that they deliver valuable and usable content in return for their fees. Let’s get more speakers who have actually done what they’re talking about instead of those who’ve created a new word, written a book about it, and were a bestseller on Amazon for 2 ½ seconds.

When speakers only speak for fees, they have a financial interest in delivering value. They don’t tease, scare, or hold back. They must perform, or they won’t get paid again. Speaking is their real job. It’s what the audience is paying for. Right? If you are a speaker, a conference attendee, or a conference producer, let us know your ideas on this subject.

Who We Are

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

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What does Business and Barefoot have to do with Wine?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 18:17:07 +0000

WHAT DOES BUSINESS AND BAREFOOT HAVE TO DO WITH WINE?

18 JUNE, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

Today we are talking about Wine … Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, founders of Barefoot, America’s number #1 wine brand, during Small Business Week presented by the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce. They also co-authored the New York Times Bestselling Business Paperback, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand.

They are speakers, writers, consultants and world- class thought leaders in entrepreneurship. They are keynote speakers at the World Conference on Entrepreneurship in Dublin, Ireland. Their journey to building Barefoot is an inspiring story that every entrepreneur should read. Michael and Bonnie took an opportunity and created a wine brand that forever changed America’s wine industry. They successfully sold the brand to E&J Gallo in 2005.

To read the complete article/interview, please visit Champagne & Cake

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The C-E-O is the Future of The American Economy

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 01:08:31 +0000

The C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization) had their Annual Conference this past October 31 – November 2 in Chicago, and we were thrilled to be a part of it. When we got up to the stage and even before we began our keynote address, we were taken back by the spectacle of nearly 1,200 college students, faculty, and young entrepreneurs from around the world.

This gathering of aspiring collegiate entrepreneurs was representative of the future of the American economy. Ranging in age from 18 to 24, this was Generation Z at its finest! It was a moving experience to realize that among these young people would emerge the next Steve Jobs and similar business rock stars of the future.

Over the three days of the national conference, we heard many inspiring speakers share their experiences on what it takes to make it in business. We were most impressed by seasoned entrepreneur and senior editor of Inc. Magazine, Norman Brodsky. Norman began his keynote speech not from the stage but from the back of the room, true to his out-of-the-box theme. Then, as he walked through the crowd of young people, he asked a series of questions and provided some surprising answers.

At one point he asked, “What is the main job of the CEO?” The young crowd peppered him with an array of answers from “leadership” to “fundraising,” from “the buck stops here” to “company vision.” After each suggestion, he gave a loud emphatic “NO!” After a period of silence, Norman said, “Culture! The CEO’s main job is to build positive company culture – because true success ultimately comes from your people!”

We couldn’t agree more, and, as a matter of fact, our success with Barefoot Wine was really the success of our team culture. We gave them permission to be creative and, yes, even to make mistakes. This inspired a culture that was fun and friendly, open and respectful of the contributions of others. With the customer at the top, serviced by our sales people, everybody else in the company understood that they worked in Sales Support. Creating positive company culture is the main job of the CEO. Thank you Norman for the reminder!

We met hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs from C-E-O chapters in 43 states and several Canadian provinces. They were all there to soak up as much as they could from proven successful business executives. Throughout the conference, we found that the #1 misconception most folks had was they thought the distribution of their product was somehow going to take care of itself, and that the strength of their idea and the demand by the public would be enough to pull their product through the distribution channels.

Once again we had to remind them, “You can’t buy it if it ain’t there!” And it won’t be there unless you see to it yourself. This is especially true at first when you are an unknown. We live in a wonderful country with the most efficient distribution infrastructure in the world. Shopping in stores brimming with choices of all sorts of products gives us the mistaken idea that everything we see is all there is. But there are thousands of products we never see because they simply never made it to the shelf. Sure, you have to have a great product at an affordable price with a cute logo and compelling catch phrase, but distribution management is ultimately the deciding factor.

We hope our experience and the experience of others who spoke will give these young people the insights they need to succeed. We want the new entrepreneurs of Generation Z to be Generation Zero-limits! Go get ‘em, Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization!

Who We Are

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

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C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization) Interview

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:08:21 +0000

We were interviewed by Michael Luchies of C-E-O (Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization). To view the interview, please visit YouTube.

We also will be their keynote speakers at C-E-O Annual National Conference in Chicago, IL October 31 to November 2. Visit the organizations website to register for this event.

Who We Are

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

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