Thanksgiving | The Barefoot Spirit

5 Reasons to say Thank You and Get More of What You Want

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 04:00:07 +0000

Sometimes we get so busy, we forget to say thank you to acknowledge a great referral or appreciate a job well done. We tend to get overwhelmed by today’s news and financial pressures. Rather than appreciating what’s going right, we tend to focus on what’s going wrong. We are challenged to meet our deadlines, show a profit, and put out the fires. We wish there was a way to make things a little easier.

There is. Say thank you more often.

Do it with intention. Don’t just say thanks and move on. Get specific and say what you are grateful for in detail. Personalize it. For example, we recently got thanked by a client for an introduction we made on her behalf. She sent us a note that said, “I want to thank you guys so much for putting me together with Peter. He introduced me to Mary and now I am doing more business as a result.” Our reaction? Send her more introductions, of course!

We have found that the best way to get out of a slump is to take inventory of what you do have and thank the folks who helped you get it. Several beneficial things start to happen:

Improve Your Focus. When you take the time to identify the things you are thankful for, you are less likely to overlook those same kinds of things when they come around. Tune up your focus and dial in on what you want, instead of what you don’t.
Improved Your Attitude. When you focus on what’s wrong it’s easy to get nervous, pressured, and downright depressed. The sore thumb is only one out of nine fingers. Let the other nine “stick out” occasionally and you will realize that you already have a lot going for you. That should raise your spirits. And people want to do more business with someone who is happy and positive – rather than haggard, hurried and hassled. You will be more effective in all your relationships.
Get More of the Same. By acknowledging the folks who have helped you and thanking them in specific terms, they will be more likely to do more for you. We all like to be appreciated; it’s part of our human nature. So, acknowledge others for what they have done and see if you don’t get more of the same. Friends, employees, vendors, suppliers, customers, and your network of associates all want to be valued and will be even more helpful if they know you appreciate them.
Be Aware of the Process. When you thank someone sincerely and specifically, you see their reaction and renewed efforts on your behalf, you notice more opportunities that you may have overlooked, and you improve your own productivity by being more agreeable, happy, and friendly to others. You become aware that the process itself of giving thanks, showing appreciation, and giving acknowledgement actually helps get you more!
Demonstrate Your Thoughtfulness. Giving thanks shows folks that you didn’t just take their efforts on your behalf for granted. You actually took the time to send a short email, or even better, a hand-written card.

It’s appropriate that “The Holidays” start out with Thanksgiving. It reminds us that the best gift we can give each other on every card and memo we write is a sincere and specific “Thank You!”

We want to thank all of you for reading our articles and sincerely thank YOU for all your help with connections, introductions and suggestions to help us better serve other entrepreneurs. Happy Holidays!

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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Thanksgiving – A Time to be Thankful for a Culture that Supports Entrepreneurship

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:30:39 +0000

We have so much to be thankful for in the United States, and Thanksgiving Day is the perfect time to express our gratitude. The economy appears to be improving, employment seems to be on the upsurge and home values have been on the rise. But there is something else, something that promises to sustain our economy, something unique about us as Americans, for which we all should be thankful. It’s our culture that encourages and supports new businesses to get off the ground and survive.

These new businesses create new jobs, improve our standard of living and extend our very lives. The products and services they provide can be seen all over the world. Other cultures want to know what is it about those Americans that keeps them innovating and improving our world. The answer is it’s our culture of entrepreneurship!

Television shows like Shark Tank and movies like The Social Network celebrate entrepreneurial success. Publications like Entrepreneur, Inc., Fast Company and Forbes keep us on top of the latest real-life challenges and victories of entrepreneurs. Just in the past decade we have seen an explosion in secondary education as school after school focuses on entrepreneurship. Start-up hubs, launch pads and innovation centers are blossoming in every city throughout our great country.

Young people growing up in our society admire entrepreneurship and recognize it as a valid alternative to employment. Many are encouraged to think out of the box and to start their own ventures. Contrast that with the skeptical attitude exhibited in other parts of the world where people are actively discouraged from starting their own businesses.

In those societies, entrepreneurs are seen as people who couldn’t hold down a good job, people who had to seek an alternative means of support, people who took needless risks, and people who failed. They are seen as giving up “all that security” to pursue a sketchy proposition. Failure is seen in many countries as a scar for life, as a situation from which there is no recovery. These people are disrespected and perceived as an embarrassment to their friends and family.

For us, people who take risks are seen as courageous. They mitigate their challenges with imagination, innovation, hard work and tenacity. For us, failure is just a pit stop upon the road to success. When setbacks occur, we cheer entrepreneurs on while other cultures may say, “You are making a big mistake!” We encourage them to pick up the pieces, keep on trying, and when they do succeed, we say, “We knew you could do it!”

Thanksgiving Day is a classic American holiday where we as a nation take the time to reflect on all the things we have to be thankful for. Our culture of support for the entrepreneurial spirit that makes our quality of life possible is also classically American. This year let’s take a moment to appreciate this culture and recommit ourselves to fully support aspiring, struggling, and successful entrepreneurs. It is our support and belief in their success that keeps them going to the benefit of us all. It is their success that creates new jobs, products and services, and helps to keep our country strong. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Who We Are

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

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Let’s Bring Back the Real Holiday Spirit

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 05:18:21 +0000

We live in a world of short sound bites, tweets, and gross over-generalizations reducing everything to the lowest common denominator. In our desire to simplify everything, dumb it down, and “just tell me the one thing,” have we somehow lost the essence of the Holiday Spirit?

Are the Holidays becoming simply shopping, food, and time off?

If this is our definition, it’s easy to understand how Thanksgiving Friday is now Black Friday and Thanksgiving itself is now just “Turkey Day,” or worse, “Gray Thursday.” We read with disbelief how some shoppers gave up their Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family just so they could wait in line at the stores. Is this any way to celebrate our National Holiday?

George Washington set aside a Thanksgiving Day for Americans to take the time to appreciate what they had, acknowledge its value, and, regardless of religion, give thanks for our freedoms, self-determination and bountiful blessings. He thought we needed the annual reminder so we wouldn’t take these blessings as a given and not notice when they began to erode away. So we ask you, is a thankless definition of Thanksgiving in our best interests?

When great societies fall, we have to wonder if their people saw it coming. The Roman Empire stood for over 400 years, controlled the known western world, united it under a common language, built an efficient infrastructure, and ruled it with laws we use today. What happened to cause its demise? Was it the Vandals, the Huns, the Roman leadership, or was it the people themselves who started the downward spiral? Did they start taking it all for granted, grow to be apathetic, and become distracted by shortsighted materialism?

As we enter the Holiday Season, let’s practice the Real Holiday Spirit of generosity, love, family, and gratitude for what we enjoy. Let’s remember that this time of year has a deeper meaning than just eating, shopping and taking the day off work. Let’s put the “Thanks” back into Thanksgiving and the love back into our heritage holidays. As Americans, we need to have an annual reminder of what we hold dear so we don’t lose it. Now is the perfect time to reacquaint ourselves with the true meaning of The Holidays!

If we really are so impatient that we need just the one thing that sums up the Holiday Spirit, the one word, the shortest sound bite, then it would have to be “Appreciation.” Webster defines appreciation as a feeling of being grateful for something, an ability to understand the worth, quality, or importance of something. Let’s make that “something” be appreciation for friends, family, and community; appreciation for our heritage, our national wealth, our freedoms, and our very lives. Think of it as an investment in a future that contains and perserves all these things that we hold dear.

If George Washington was alive today, would he be proud of the way we celebrate The Holidays? Would his reason for a national day of thanks to kick off the holiday season still be intact? The Real Holiday Spirit starts with each one of us and begins on Thanksgiving Day. Wouldn’t it be nice if we carried that joy of gratitude with us every day?

We want to take this time to appreciate you, our readers and our audiences. We are grateful to have the opportunity to share our experiences with so many aspiring entrepreneurs. And we wish you all the happiest of Holidays with your family and friends in our great nation of diversity, opportunity, and abundance. Make it your intention to have Really Happy Holidays!

Who We Are

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

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Increase Your Abundance by Expressing Gratitude

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:21:16 +0000

Sometimes all we can see is what’s missing, what needs fixing, and what’s wrong. Although we should strive for improvement in whatever we do, we need to take time out and really take inventory of the good things in our lives.

Yes, imperfections may stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, but we still have nine good fingers. It seems like the more we notice something, good or bad, the more we give energy to it and the more it reoccurs. Just the process of giving thanks forces us to think positively about situations, occurrences and achievements that have a powerful impact on our business and lives.

When we take the time to acknowledge what is going right, we tune in with our eyes and ears for more of the same. We tend to miss opportunities if we’re bent on complaining or looking for what’s wrong.

This week as we celebrate Thanksgiving here in America, we chose to share some things for which we all should be thankful:

Health. Most of us are reasonably healthy, and our life expectancy has increased significantly, just in the past few decades. This means we have the opportunity to be with loved ones and share what we’ve learned over a longer period of time. We can employ new discoveries about diet and exercise that will improve our health and fitness over an extended life span.

Wealth. Most of us are living well above the poverty level, and we are certainly better off than most of the world’s population. We have inherited an incredible infrastructure from our parents. It enables us to communicate, access knowledge, travel, drink clean water, and reduce disease. Efficient commerce enables us to enjoy a higher standard of living.

Cooperation. The people we work with and depend upon give us the opportunity to make a living. Our income is dependent on customers, colleagues, vendors, employers, suppliers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. They all play a part in our wellbeing, and provide opportunities for us to sell our products, services and labor.

Friends and Family. The people who know and love us have been there over the years, giving invaluable support and encouragement. They provide us with the long-term view of what’s important and how we are growing though our experiences. These time traveling companions give us a point of reference and share the memories that keep our history alive.

Transparency. Probably the biggest change brought about by the information revolution is the new realization that we can now see where our money goes. We now have the opportunity to research the products and companies we patronize for their practices that affect our welfare, environment, and rights as a global community. Today, we can choose to do business with those we best resonate with. By using our money as our vote, we have an opportunity to improve the world.

There are many more benefits to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Let’s not just take them for granted. When we verbally acknowledge that which is most important to us, we tend to see more of it in our lives. Give it a try and see if it improves your attitude!

Well, if that hasn’t cheered you up, check out these two great videos:

From TED, this short video is on our favorite book of the year, “Abundance” by the editor of Popular Science
An oldie but goodie from the late, great Godfather of Soul, James Brown

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!

Who We Are

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

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