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Entrepreneur – 14 International Accelerators Speak Out on the Top 4 Components for Startup Success

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 20:11:09 +0000

If anyone could unravel the mystery of why some startups succeed and others fail, it would be the business accelerators. They have a front-row seat with real-world experience. Their reputation is on the line, and rapid turnover is not their friend. They have a vested interest in seeing their clients succeed.

Over the past three months, we have conducted a survey of 14 international business accelerators. With their experience, what was their take on startup success and failure? Over the next few months we will be publishing the results of that study.

Our first question was, “What are the most important qualities successful startup founders possess?” Interestingly, with such a wide range of international respondents, the answers were quite similar.

To read the complete article, visit please 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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5 Ways to Grow and Build Trust

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 18:34:21 +0000

First published on Entrepreneur.com on 11/12/2017

From your creditors to your employees, good business relationships are built on trust. Can the people who depend on you, confidently rely on you to treat them fairly? Once you have proven your dependability, they will make allowances for you and extend their level cooperation. This is essential to your business success.

How much will you save on loan interest with extended credit, easier terms and complementary warehousing? How much will you save on hiring and training by reducing turnover, engaging your people and having them go the extra mile for you? How much will you save on advertising with cooperative distributers, loyal consumers and customers who become advocates? The sooner you demonstrate your trustworthiness, the sooner you’ll receive these benefits and more!

To read the complete article, please visit Entrepreneur.com

Who We Are

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

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Be an Entrepreneurial Job Applicant – A Message to Grads

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 17:00:33 +0000

If you are a recent college grad, you may be hitting the employment market about now. You may think you are searching for a job, but maybe you should be searching for a “customer.”

“I need to pay my bills,” you say, or “I need some security,” but by changing the paradigm slightly to “I need to find a customer, or client, for my services,” you can stay in control of your career and approach the job search more effectively.

If you think of yourself as a self-employed entrepreneur you will focus more on what you do best, what your skill sets are, where your experience is, and how you can alleviate your client’s concerns. You will have to bone up on the “prospect” and distinguish yourself from the competition to land the deal.

In addition to seeing your employer as a customer for your services, you also have to consider your own reputation. All your “customers” have to benefit from, and advocate for, your services in order for you to improve your personal brand image and justify higher fees in your future. So be careful not to take on a “client” whom you cannot really help, or who cannot give you the extended experience and responsibility you need to build your reputation.

By putting yourself in your customer’s shoes you can better understand what they are really looking for in terms of (your) features and benefits. Your features and benefits should address your employer’s major concerns when hiring any new person:

False Starts. The cost of turnover is the #1 hidden cost of any business. But after a while every business becomes painfully aware of the cost of searching, vetting, and interviewing. What if it doesn’t work out? Start all over again! Have some empathy for their investment in the search itself. Selling yourself to them before there’s an opening can give you a big advantage when the time comes to hire.

Orienting and Training. If it doesn’t work out, they lose the cost of reduced production by both the trainer and the trainee. You can reduce their anxiety by becoming thoroughly familiar with how they make their money, what their biggest challenges are, and how your potential job fits into the big picture. Learn as much as you can about the company and the job before you apply. The faster they think you can get up to speed and contribute, the more likely they will be to hire you.

Production. They are naturally concerned with your ability to produce. You are pretty much an unknown for which they will take a big risk. Demonstrate your past experience at successfully overcoming steep learning curves. Get testimonials from previous employers or professors that address this specific issue.

Longevity. They worry that after they invest in training you, you will quit! If you can demonstrate that you have stayed at your previous jobs for at least two years, even if it was internships, you will relieve some of their fear.

Dependability and Responsibility. They want to believe that they can depend on you to show up, produce, meet deadlines, and take responsibility for your own actions. Show them that in the past when mistakes were made you have improved processes to prevent their reoccurrence. They want a process improver, not someone who passes on the blame.

These should be among the features you offer that will benefit your employer by reducing costs and anxiety while improving production. Take another look at the “services” you offer as if you were an entrepreneur selling them. You will be much better prepared to get the “customer” you want!

Who We Are

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

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Social Skills Can Reduce Your Need for Cash

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 17:00:07 +0000

Business owners want to know, “How do I raise more money?” We ask, “Why do you need more money?” The answer is usually, “To pay my bills” or, “To grow my business.” But we have found that more money may not be the answer. What if you could get more investors, increase your credit limits, extend your terms of payment, and close more prospects – all by using better social skills?

By developing and using good social skills you can reduce your need for capital. Conversely, poor social skills will increase your need for cash. Why? Because people simply don’t know you, like you, our trust you enough to take a chance on you. And people are ultimately making the decisions… not algorithms!

Here are a few examples of how poor social skills will increase your need for capital:

Increased turnover because of poor relationships, resulting in loss of knowledge, skills, and critical supplier and buyer relationships.
Increased need for prospects, because you will be closing (or converting) less.
Reduced opportunities to extend lines of credit because of poor communication.
Everything you want to do takes longer because of lack of cooperation.
Reduced knowledge of your industry because folks simply don’t want to talk to you!

Have we become so dependent on email, social media, and texting that we have forgotten how to communicate in real time? Are we so afraid of personal rejection that we need that constant security “screen” that gives us the lag time to ignore, delay, or delete any uncomfortable or negative communication? Are we afraid to face a person in real time because we may not have all the answers they want? If any of this sounds familiar, get out your wallet! You’re going to need a lot more money!

Perhaps, instead of asking for more money, you should be asking “How can I improve my real time, face-to-face communication skills with vendors, suppliers, employees, and buyers? How can I improve the first impression I make with total strangers in real time?”

Not too long ago before email, social media, and texting, the Baby Boomers had to do their communication in real time. Just imagine! Phones were used only for verbal, real-time communication; meetings were in person; sales calls were in person; and suppliers gave credit if they felt you were trustworthy based on your face-to-face meetings! Personal relationships built trust, and business relationships are built on trust.

So how did these Boomers build the greatest economy, the greatest infrastructure, and the highest standard of living the world has ever seen? They did it by building trust through real time relationships. What are the social skills that made them so powerful and effective in real time? Basically they practiced what we call today the Humanities (AKA the Liberal Arts or Human Studies). They learned how humans tick! They learned through formal education, their upbringing, or just plain hard knocks!

We speak internationally at universities that teach entrepreneurship. Each school of entrepreneurship comes from a different place. They come from the school of business, the school of technology, and from the school of engineering or agriculture. But all have one purpose, to teach their students how to succeed in their own businesses.

Students ask us, “What else should I be taking beside business courses to be successful?” We always answer, “Communication, Psychology, Philosophy, Social Studies, History, Culture, Religion, Literature, and Political Science.” Why? Because it is through the mastery of these Human Studies that you will be better prepared to conduct more fruitful, real-time conversations that will save you money, time and effort. It is through these Human Studies that you will be able to turn real time into real money!

Who We Are

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

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4 Reasons Why Social Responsibility Is Profitable

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:00:36 +0000

We feel compelled to weigh in on the sensationalized debate over whether or not your business needs a social mission. Entrepreneurial pundits like Kevin O’Leary are saying no, “Profit is the Mission.” Basically the argument says so much is required to keep your customers happy, you don’t have time to pursue a social mission. We think this is a very short-sighted view. Long-term profits require a social mission.

This debate is exacerbated by simplistic thinking on both sides. As much as we would like to think that companies would choose a social mission out of the goodness of their hearts simply to make the world a better place, the fact is it’s just good business! Here are 4 solid business reasons why social consciousness is profitable in the long term:

Saves on Advertising. We chose social missions for our brand because we simply couldn’t afford commercial advertising. And after some success with what we called Worthy Cause Marketing, we continued with it as our only form of advertising. It was more efficient and targeted, and created more customer loyalty than commercial advertising. It gave our customers a social reason to buy our products rather than a mercantile reason. Sure, we wanted to make the world a better place but we didn’t have the luxury of doing that unless we were selling! How much money was saved as a result of supporting worthy causes?
Creates Brand Advocates. We took an expanded view of our responsibility to our customer. We not only provided products at the price, quality, and convenience they wanted, but we supported the groups and causes important to them. We viewed our customer a not just a consumer, but as a living, thinking, reasoning, and feeling human being with real social interests. Once they witnessed our support for their social causes, an interesting effect took place. While they could choose any product in our category, they chose ours. They also became advocates for our brand because they saw us a partner for their cause. So they passed the word to friends, neighbors, and colleagues. What is the business advantage of that kind of advocacy?
Reduces the Cost of Turnover. Soon we discovered that we had reduced turnover, which is the number one hidden cost of doing business. Turnover not only costs the advertising for a replacement, but the vetting, interviews, orientation, training, false starts, and all the lost business resulting from disrupted relationships. When we began to embrace social causes, our people developed a sense of pride working with a company that stood for more than the products it produced. Now they could help make the world a better place – at work! This gave them a social reason to stay loyal to our company. How much is reducing turnover worth?
Consumers Increasingly “vote” for Socially Responsible Products. The company that mistreats its employees and the environment is being progressively exposed by the new transparency. Your competitors want to “dig the social dirt” on your practices to distinguish themselves in your customer’s mind. Today’s customers know they are “voting” with their brand choices. Don’t set yourself up to lose their vote in the future. Think of social responsibility as an insurance policy. What is the cost of losing customers?

So it’s not a simple argument of “evil” guy versus good guy as the Inc. Magazine headlines. It’s more like wasteful guy versus prudent guy. There are just plain good and profitable reasons for taking an interest in your customer’s causes. Looking at the bigger picture can go a long way to improving the bottom line.

Who We Are

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

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7 Ways to Reduce Your Need for Capital

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 17:28:09 +0000

Happy Veterans Day, everybody! Today, November 11, 2015, it is our honor and our pleasure to speak at the first annual Vets Rock event at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. What would we share at this keynote event with more than 100 veteran-owned businesses that would be of the greatest value to them? What lessons have we learned, often the hard way, in our own business experience that they could use to improve their own businesses – tomorrow?

Of all the challenges aspiring, launch and growth-phase entrepreneurs face, the top has to be capital, or should we say the lack of it. The key to success of any business is simply making more money than it costs you to stay in business. So we decided to share how to reduce the need for capital in the first place.

Here are 7 tips that worked for us:

Discover Your Hidden Assets. What do you already bring to the table, and what can you find if you look with expectant eyes? Discover how you can repurpose something you have for something you need. Be resourceful. Solve problems creatively. We used a door for a desk and a laundry room for an office.

Identify and Work With Your Strategic Allies. Those who succeed if you succeed are your strategic allies. Learn how your products or service benefit your customers, suppliers, and the community. Find a small company you can work with that is poised to grow, and grow with them. We provided a small company called Trader Joe’s with a fun California product and together we spread across the country.

Use Your Suppliers and Buyers as Bankers. Treat your suppliers like business partners. Enter into long-term contracts so they can see a future with you. Keep them up to date on your progress, challenges and opportunities. Notify them in advance when you will be late on a payment, and show them how you will get current. Then ask for extended credit to expand your business and increase your purchases from them. We offered our buyers quantity discounts for cash.

Pay for Performance. Discover the metrics that demonstrate sales, growth, and profitability, then reward your people for achieving those goals. Keep the bonus period short term, such as every month or every quarter to keep the goals active and achievable in their minds. We matched our people’s 401K either 50%, 100%, or 150% based on quarterly achievement.

Outsource (Locally) Everything but Sales, Quality Control, and Accounting. Don’t invest in a ton of bricks and mortar or other overhead that require monthly payments whether you have sales or not. Try for just-in-time production and avoid holding large inventories. We outsourced production but held our producers to a set of quality specifications in a contract.

Reduce Turnover. The #1 hidden cost in any business is turnover. It can result in the loss of your company knowledge, supplier relationships, and even customers. The key is to hire, orient, train, and compensate properly. If you are paying your people right, the producers can’t afford to leave and the non-producers can’t afford to stay.

Reduce Your Cost of Advertising. Think about your customers as belonging to a community which is interested in more than your product. That community has needs and cause-based groups that work to satisfy those needs, such education, conservation, human rights, and support of the arts. By supporting community fundraisers and non-profits , we gave their members a social reason to buy our products.

These 7 tips can help anyone who runs a business, and we are happy to give back to our vets by sharing these lessons with them today, Veterans Day, 2015.

Who We Are

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

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7 Ways to Know it’s Time to Fire Somebody

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 17:00:41 +0000

“YOU’RE FIRED!” seems to be Donald Trump’s favorite phrase. He makes it sound easy, as if he has a hair trigger and an itchy trigger finger. But for most of us it’s not that easy. In fact it’s downright difficult – so difficult in fact that we tend to put it off long after we know it’s inevitable.

Why? Because we wonder if “the devil we know is better than the one we don’t.” We worry about the cost of turnover which includes not only the selection process, the training, and the loss of productivity, but also the loss of company knowledge, relationships and even customers. But ultimately, if they gotta go, they gotta go.

So how do we know it’s time to fire someone? Here are 7 signs along the road to the dead end:

Asleep at the Wheel. They are in the job, but not really doing the job. They see the job as some kind of busy work but never wake up to the big picture. They want someone to tell them what to do, but not tell them why. They don’t want to take responsibility and don’t want to be held accountable. In short, they don’t own the job.
Can’t Get Out of First Gear. They get to the minimum level of performance but won’t leave their comfort zone to take on new and challenging requirements of the job. They keep asking for examples but can’t extrapolate the lessons learned in one area to a new area. They demand a copy-and-paste example for everything.
Running Out of Gas. The energy, enthusiasm and drive just aren’t there. For them, the job is a drudgery that they must do to get paid. They have not asked for, or taken on, any new responsibilities in months. In fact they are trying to get out of the ones they have.
Behind Schedule. They are unable to stay on top of the workload no matter how much of it you reassign to others. They have lots of excuses for missing the deadlines and none of them have to do with their own shortcomings. At best they are testy; at worst, haughty.
Accidents. You start hearing from your clients, coworkers and vendors that this person is causing issues either in communication or cooperation. They consistently blame others for their problems and use victim language to describe the reasons for their failures.
Grinding Gears. You’re just plain tired out trying to work with this person. They are an energy drain. They don’t tell you where they are on projects – you have to pull it out of them. They argue a lot and try to use debate as a smoke screen to camouflage their inability to produce. In extreme cases they act like they are doing you a favor just to show up for work.
Pushing the Car. You find yourself co-depending and buying into excuses so you don’t have to face the reality that they are way past their usefulness to your company. You give them more and more help and even have others doing their job and spoon-feeding them long after the training period.

These are just a few examples of how you know it’s time for a trade in – or even better, an upgrade. The longer you put up with the employee who should be working for someone else, the more it hurts everyone’s productivity, undermines your credibility with your own people, and the more it keeps you up at night. Time to bite the bullet, learn the lessons, and say “next!”

Who We Are

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

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Send Your People a Valentine

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 18:00:17 +0000

This is a great time of year to show your people how much you care. It’s still the beginning of a new year and what you do now will set the tone for many months to come.

By now, last year’s reports are finally in. Find something positive in those reports that you can share with your people. This is the perfect opportunity to show them how much you appreciate their efforts on your company’s behalf.

Send a “Valentine” that acknowledges them for a job well done. Show them positive numbers on your company’s sales and growth. Throw in a few concrete examples of important milestones that were achieved during the past year. Tell them you know it took team effort and couldn’t have been done any other way. And do it in writing. Here’s why:

Appropriate Timing. What could be a better time to send an appreciative message to your folks than on a day when Valentine cards are already being exchanged? Your “valentine” will fit right into the spirit of the day. It will be unexpected but welcomed, which will make it even more appreciated. It’s really your last chance to thank them for the past year’s efforts that resulted in company growth.
Improved Performance. Acknowledgement and appreciation are still the best ways to validate positive behavior and encourage your people to perform. Aside from income, one of the main reasons why they work for you is for recognition from an authority figure, and that’s you! If you put your appreciation in writing, such as in a valentine, it will mean more to them than simple verbal recognition.
Promotion of Teamwork. It’s the team that is being recognized for their cooperation, communication and support for each other. This is a great opportunity to tie the work of especially the office people to the success of the salespeople. After all, the salespeople depend on excellent products, relevant marketing materials, and timely data to bring in the sales that pay everybody’s salary.
Building Positive Culture. By demonstrating gratitude to your people you are also showing them that you and your company value gratitude. A valentine will reinforce that value and encourage your staff to do the same in their relationships on your company’s behalf. When your people get in the habit of sending notes of thanks to your customers, vendors and other business partners, your entire company will benefit.
Reducing Turnover. One of the main reasons people leave your business for your competitor’s is not just for more money, it’s for more appreciation. Too many employees say they made the move because their last company “just didn’t appreciate me!” Don’t let that be the reason why you lose your top people. If you do, you’ll lose corporate know-how, critical relationships, the cost of replacement, and even your customers.
Small Investment. Sending a note of thanks and appreciation is a very small investment with major returns in performance. Sometimes it can have a greater impact than a staff outing or even a special dinner. It speaks to them personally and it is documented proof of your gratitude. Your people will be more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt on those hard decisions you have to make that may not be so popular.

So write your people a valentine this year and tell them how much they and their efforts mean to you. Build your credibility by showing them that you are a real human being that respects their human need for acknowledgement and validation, and get ready for a fantastic year!

Who We Are

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

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To Get True Entrepreneurial Culture, Corporations Must Pay for Performance

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 18:30:35 +0000

Some of the most popular search terms we see coming from the so-called C-Suite (top corporate executives) these days are, “entrepreneurial culture, employee engagement, and employee empowerment.”

Nowadays it seems even the big corporations want to make the shift to a more entrepreneurial culture. So we put together a companion to The Barefoot Spirit just for the C-Suite. It’s called – you guessed it– The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People.

We will be announcing it this week with several media appearances in New York, including the taping of a new TV show run by Jeff Hayzlett (the former Chief Marketing Officer of Eastman Kodak) called C-Suite TV. We are very excited to have our new book launch coincide with the launch of the C-Suite TV and C-suite Book Club in early September.

We saw a great cartoon recently where a haggard employee was sitting at a bar after work, complaining to the bartender, “Sure they want me to be creative and innovative, but I’ve got a career to think about!” One of the chapters from The Entrepreneurial Culture suggests entrepreneurial compensation to solve this problem.

Chapter Four

Use performance-based compensation, and share the wealth.

Allow us to be blunt: we don’t think that set salaries are a great idea. When you have a compensation plan based on an hourly rate, you’re paying for attendance, not production. Regardless of how much they do or don’t accomplish, your employees will have an “I was there, pay me!” attitude…and can you blame them? Instead, our experience has shown us that performance-based compensation is better for everyone– you, your employees, and your company as a whole.

We created a pretty radical pay system at our company for a simple reason: We were a small company that needed to sell large quantities of merchandise, and we couldn’t afford unproductive people. So basically, we asked employees to bet on their own productivity. (Or as Michael told job applicants, he was asking people to bet on themselves.)

For salespeople specifically (and to a lesser extent, sales-support people), we offered a small base salary and told new hires, “The more you sell, the more you make. There’s no limit.” And in order to ensure that our employees didn’t ease off when they felt they were making “enough,” we set up an increasing incentive, so each step—though harder—would be worth a lot more than the last.

Here’s an example of how it worked: If someone sold, say, 100 cases in April 2000, and 100 cases in April 2001 (these numbers are unrealistically small for simplicity), their commission would be the same in both years. But if they sold 10 percent more – 110 cases – they would get $1 for every case over that 100, or $10 more.

If they sold 20 percent more in April 2001 – 120 cases – they would get $2 per case for every case over 100. Not just $1 for cases 101-110 and $2 for cases 111-120; they would make $2 for each case, or $40 more. They didn’t just get higher pay for additional growth, they got the boost for all the growth. It kept multiplying. So, 30 percent more – 130 cases – would earn $3 times 30 cases, or $90, and on up. (And again, keep in mind that these numbers are unrealistically small!)

At various points, we were chastised by other businesspeople who felt that we were “overpaying” salespeople. This was partially due to the fact that several of our top salespeople made more than we, the owners, did! Yet when we looked at the numbers, we knew we were doing the right thing.

Our unorthodox compensation system didn’t stop with our salespeople, either. Performance-based pay also applied to our sales support-staff (i.e., everyone who wasn’t a salesperson). In addition to their salaries, these employees received bonuses based on quarterly sales.

At first, many members of our sales-support staff were skeptical. For example, one bookkeeper claimed that it wasn’t fair to be paid a bonus based on quarterly sales because bookkeepers could not affect sales. Turns out, that claim wasn’t entirely accurate. Here’s what happened: Soon thereafter, one of our salespeople got a last-minute meeting with “Mr. Big,” a supermarket chain buyer, at 8:00 AM the next morning. And because the bookkeeper in question knew that his bonus would be affected by the sale, he made sure that the salesperson had all the necessary reports by 7:00 AM. Needless to say, our salesperson came back to the office with the purchase order.

Here’s another example of how pay-for-performance motivated our sales-support staff. One day, a gentleman walked into our reception area wearing an aloha shirt and Bermuda shorts. Although he appeared to be on vacation, this man was checking out our wine display and everything written on the walls. Our receptionist, who knew that her bonus was based on sales, proactively asked the visitor if he was a wine buyer. When the man shared that he was actually a big wine buyer for a 30-store chain in the Southwest, our receptionist immediately introduced him to our national sales manager. And because this wine buyer was relaxed, on vacation, and in discovery mode, he ended up putting our product in all of his 30 stores! You can bet that our receptionist really savored that particular quarter’s bonus.

Overall, performance-based pay really helped us grow, and best of all, the increased “pay” was “found money” that cost us nothing.Plus, we reduced turnover, which is the #1 hidden cost of doing business. Think about it: when members of your team leave, you don’t just lose those employees; you lose their hours of training, their institutional knowledge and their relationships outside the company. In the case of salespeople, you can lose customers who are more loyal to your former employees than the product they represented. Plus, it can be costly to look for and train new candidates.

Basically, our compensation system meant that producers couldn’t afford to leave, and non-producers couldn’t afford to stay. Meanwhile, we constantly attracted new go-getters who were willing to bet on themselves.

It’s simple: How you treat your employees directly correlates to how successful your business will be. If you treat them like a commodity—if you’re stingy with pay, recognition, and benefits—they’ll do only the bare minimum to keep their jobs, and eventually, they’ll leave.

We suggest you use performance-based compensation, too. Yes, every company and every industry is different, but if it’s possible to earn profits, it’s possible to tie those profits to your employees’ salaries and bonuses—and we guarantee that you’ll see results! Sharing the wealth never looked so good!

Who We Are

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

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