strategy | The Barefoot Spirit

How Much Is Your Privacy Worth?

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:00:47 +0000

With all the recent scandals about how your personal likes, clicks, shares, and the groups you’ve joined are being used as products for sale to advertisers, political activists, and even foreign agents, are you finally ready to pay for social networking? “Well, shouldn’t that be free?” you may ask. “It always has been free. Why should I start paying now?”

One question is, how would a “free” social network support itself without income? This is the question social networks have been wrestling with since their inception. The answer is simple, they can’t! What we have today is income models that basically use you and the records of your activities as the product. And who are the paying customers? Anyone who will pay for that information and access to you, of course.

No big surprise there. For decades, even before social media, our snail mailboxes were stuffed with junk mail. The junk mail senders were using information about us from public records and purchasing histories to know how to zero in on us. With social media, we have, in effect, made our choices public and they can be mined and analyzed to tailor ads catering not only to our buying patterns, but to our specific ideological patterns and tendencies. Now they’re really zeroing in on us. This is very valuable data!

It seemed okay and quite innocent when the commercial marketeers hit us with ads seconds after we made a purchase. It was commercial, they were selling stuff, and that’s just part of business, we thought. But now it’s clear that anyone could buy the data and use it for whatever sinister purposes they want. They can interfere with our elections, undermine our institutions, exacerbate our political divisions, vilify those we oppose, and validate our suspicions – no matter which “side” we are on!

“Divide and conquer” is an ancient and classic war strategy. It is being used effectively today by the weaponization of the social media. You voluntarily provide the data that makes you vulnerable. It gets sold to the groups who use that data to manipulate you and others.

There’s talk today about regulating social media. These regulations would presumably make it harder to sell sensitive data, post hateful comments, disseminate false news, and proliferate political messages. But they would apparently leave in place the sale of personal data for commercial uses. At this point social media platforms want to protect their source of income while appearing to reduce the abuse of this data for political reasons.

Because the service would still be “free,” the proponents expect wide ranging support. But it will be almost impossible for the platforms to prevent political abuse while allowing commercial access to your data.

So, we ask again, would you pay a monthly or annual fee for a social networking service that used your fees as their income stream and not the sale of your data? Proponents of this idea say that fees would be minimal to support the platform and provide the services you now enjoy for “free.” And your data would be private!

Imagine a platform where you are not solicited either commercially or politically. Imagine a platform where your choices and data history were not for sale. In other words, imagine a platform where you are the customer and not the product! What is that worth to you?

With the next scandal just around the corner, this “preposterous” idea of paying for something we now get for free may become practical, feasible, and even desirable. At some point, you might prefer being the customer rather than the product! This may be a disruption whose time is rapidly approaching. After all, there is no “free” lunch!

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 4 Core Competencies of the Barefoot Startup

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 18:00:07 +0000

If you managed to survive the entrepreneurial process from ideation to monetization and you were asked to boil it all down into core competencies, what would you say? How would you even begin?

We faced this exact challenge. Our employees, business associates and clients all kept saying that we should break our journey down into its essential parts and expand upon those parts. So, for a year we kept tossing around ideas, thinking about how we could get these concepts across to startups.

Focusing on why so many startups failed seemed to be a good place to start. Did they all have something in common? What were the areas that most of the “failures” failed to master? Surprisingly, they all lacked competency in one or more of 4 key areas. So, we decided to focus on those areas and prioritize them in The Barefoot Startup’s GPS (Guiding Principles for Success). Here’s a brief summary:

Monetization Strategy. Crazy as it sounds, many startups never ask the fundamental question, “Why am I doing this anyway?” Is it a lifestyle? Is it a legacy? Or is it to monetize on brand equity? If you’re setting your course on an eventual acquisition, merger, or public offering, the steps you take at the beginning of your journey will be critical to your survival. They will determine your expansion plans and the steps you take to maximize your brand equity. This choice means that your goods or services must be scalable, and your business can run without you. It means that your files reflect your acquirer’s due diligence. And it also means that you know and establish the metrics and milestones you need to become an acquisition target or, as we say, “Get your peanut in front of the elephant!”
Cash Flow Management. The goal here is to reduce your need for capital. Do you know how identify and utilize your “hidden” assets. Ideally, your buyer’s will pay you before you need to pay for your supplies and overhead, and this is possible. But for most of us, we need to juggle! And we need to spend every dime on the bills before we pay ourselves. This is why outsourcing, reducing overhead, and pay-as-you go are so critical. This is why income and cost projections are so essential. You need to establish revenue, even if its small, before you ask for investors’ money. Do you know how to establish strategic alliances with your suppliers and your buyers, to reduce your need for capital?
Personnel Management. The goal is to reduce turnover, the #1 hidden cost of doing business, and to engage and empower your people. How you find good people and build great people are covered in our video. We believe it is essential to overkill on orientation from day one to demonstrate where the money really comes from, including all the hands, hoops and twists it has to go through to get to them. Paying for performance encourages better performance. Paying by the hour encourages longer hours, not necessarily resulting in productivity. Nurturing a culture of permission, encouraging innovation, and giving public acknowledgement for a job well done are absolutely vital to building a productive and supportive team. Sharing challenges with the entire staff on a know-the-need, rather than a need-to-know basis will unlock your personnel assets to solve problems on the fly.
Distribution management. Do you know how to get your product or service to the market, and more importantly, keep it there? Distribution is everything from supply chain management to sales. Sales is not just to your end user, but to your own people, your B2B customer, their B2C customer and eventually to their (and your) end-user. Understanding and delivering what each person in the chain requires can make the difference between access to market and being shut out. Not understanding the true cost of sales is the biggest single reason for startup failure. Start small, make your mistakes in a small place, learn from them, and get your act together before you take your show on the road. Don’t scale fast to fail fast!

Are you interested? We know that these 4 core competencies, so often overlooked, are so important that we spend an entire hour on each one in our online video course, The Barefoot Startup’s GPS (Guiding Principles for Success). Check it out.

#BarefootStartup

Who We Are

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

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C-Suite Network – Sales and Consumer Care May Know More About Your Customers Than Marketing and Production

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 22:07:43 +0000

Your marketing people have done a fine job of creating a marketing plan, strategy, and package. They’ve considered the market, the competition and the delivery systems. They have honed the message, dialed in the positioning, and developed the compelling logo, catch phrase, and merchandising materials. But like any aircraft designer, they must eventually launch it; then be ready to redesign it based on the constant feedback they get from the pilots who are actually flying it through the headwinds, storms and down drafts. Read more….

Who We Are

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

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3 Essential Questions for Success

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 02:38:37 +0000

There are a lot of ideas floating around about how to achieve success. Some people think it’s all about passion – and passion is certainly an essential ingredient. Some folks think it’s about the drive to achieve, and that will certainly keep you going when times get tough and pure tenacity is required. Others think it’s about superior marketing, like cute logos and compelling slogans, and certainly they play a part. Others think it’s about a superior product that corners the market and addresses a need missed by the competition, and that is also a big factor in success. The fact is, all of these are necessary to successfully run the race. But, sometimes we get so carried away with one or two of these success factors that we forget to take inventory, get down to basics, and truthfully assess our situation.

We have found that the 3 most important questions to answer for success (at just about anything) are the following:

1. Do you know where you are? Sounds simple and obvious, but when you look closer, you find it’s a little more complex. For instance, where are you financially? What is your skill level? How much time do you really have to devote to the project? Is the need for your product or service known and appreciated by the distribution system you must rely upon to get into the market? Do you have good credit? What is your risk tolerance? What is your time frame? And the list goes on. But you really can’t get anywhere unless you are honest and detailed about where you are right now. Find someone who really knows you, and ask them keep you honest.

2. Do you know where you are going? Are you building a business to create a job for yourself, a legacy for your family, or a value to monetize? Are you going to take over the planet or the neighborhood, or somewhere in between? Are you selling a product or a service? Online? At retail? Wholesale? Export? What are your first steps? Who is going to buy your business, brand, or product? What do you perceive as your definitive objective? Often, folks get so excited about their business ideas that they rush ahead, sometimes in the wrong direction because they didn’t really identify their ultimate goal. Look at the big picture and talk to the experts in your field before you commitment yourself to a destination. You may find yourself in a very different work style, requiring a very different skill set than the one you thought you needed if you assumed the wrong destination.

3. Do you know how to get there? The road to success may be different than your preconceived notions. For us, we discovered that in the wine business (or for that matter in any consumer products business), it was through distribution. A great product at a great price with a catchy slogan was a requirement, but the way to success required that we actually manage the distribution system. It is the way the product gets to the end-user, and it required most of our time and money. What will you find out about your business that requires more time, energy, and funding than your product? What strategies will you develop to get to your destination, given a clear understanding of where you are and where you are going?

Sure, you need various ingredients for success, but you still can’t get there without taking inventory, identifying a destination, and choosing the right route. So, honestly answer these 3 questions: Where am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?

Who We Are

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

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