- Hi, this is Lea Woodford with Between the Lines,
and I am in beautiful Las Vegas
with two of my favorite people in the world,
friends and mentors and amazing entrepreneurs
Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey.
And you probably know them from Barefoot Wine.
You guys, thank you so much for being on the show.
- Oh, it's our pleasure.
- We interviewed, and I've learned so much
about you guys and your book.
Let's talk about this amazing book of yours.
Everybody knows who Barefoot Wine is,
but I want them to know about the magic behind the label,
so let's jump right in and let's talk
about Barefoot Wine, and your book,
The Barefoot Spirit.
What was the inspiration?
- It was really our staff.
Our staff came to us, and they said
you have a company culture
that we've never seen before or since,
and this was after we had sold the brand,
after 20 years.
And they said we were like a family,
and it worked so well, you really have to write it down,
you really have to share the story with other people.
So that's what we did.
And at first I thought it was going to be
more prescriptive text, you know,
the three things never to do
and the five things,
but we didn't do that at all,
we put it in the story form.
So it's more like a business adventure story.
- Michael, it was a lot of fun.
Tell me what you liked about writing this book.
- Oh, I just liked the idea
that we were writing a series of stories.
It's kind of like the old-time cliffhangers,
where you wonder, are Bonnie and Michael
gonna make it to next week,
with everything that's happening to them?
- We wondered that ourselves. (laughs)
- And so we wanted to put it together
in a way that people could relate to it.
So many business books, they start out so high
that you can hardly identify,
and then they use terms that you can't understand,
they've got lists, and what have you.
They're very prescriptive, and they're patronizing.
We wanted to bring it down to the barefoot spirit,
which is down to the ground,
be well-founded on the ground,
and this is sort of a book that you could be the star of.
It could be your business,
and these are the kinds of things
that could happen to you.
- In any business, it's not really about the wine industry.
- I noticed that,
but what I really loved about it,
so many of the business books,
they are very high and authoritative.
And what I loved is you were really raw
about some of the mistakes that you made,
and honest, and it was fun,
but there's years and years of information in this book.
- 20 years.
- This is like going to college for entrepreneurs.
I could not believe the messaging
and all the lessons in this book.
It was a fun read.
I love books anyway, but when they're fun,
and you guys put so much of your personalities
into this book.
And now that I know you, it's really fun.
- Well we have to thank the person
actually did the writing of the book
which is Rick Cushman.
We gave him our stories, and really it took a whole year
to write the book.
He was in Sacramento, he was the wine writer
for the Sacramento Bee for many years,
and he came to visit us every two weeks,
and he stayed two or three days,
and we'd give him all of our stories
and he learned about us over that period of time.
During the day we give him the stories that go in the book,
and then over a bottle of wine at dinner give him
the stories that don't go in the book.
So he really learnt our style,
he learned our personalities,
and when he wrote the book he took all of that into account,
so it's like our voice,
but much better written than we could have done,
and I learned a lot about writing from Rick.
- I was gonna say,
you two are fabulous writers.
- We love to write,
and he taught us a lot,
we write at least two articles every week
on two blogs that we have, two websites.
- I get those,
I'm on your mailing list.
What was your biggest challenge writing
the book do you think?
- Well for me it was that we had so much to say,
you have to remember we are writing
this book to help people succeed in entrepreneurship,
we're trying to make it doable,
we don't want to make it seem out of reach,
but we want to be very honest about
the challenges that we face,
and the kind of problems,
and the kind of on-the-fly decisions that you have to make,
and one of the principles that you refer
to when you make a decision,
because success is really a bunch of decisions,
that I make more good decisions today than bad ones,
what were the standards that you held up,
to look at those choices and say,
well according to the standards I should
go left at the next term,
so the hard thing for me in writing the book
was to get all those principles into story form,
it was a real challenge,
because it isn't just entertainment,
it's an education.
- Infotainment.
- It's infotainment.
- Yeah I like that.
- It was a great book,
and we learned about the wine,
but I love that it really is about being an entrepreneur,
and the hustle and the grit,
and the pain and tears.
- Absolutely.
- You guys have come out the other side,
but I love that you dove right in,
and you talked about the not so glamorous stuff,
would you like to share that with our viewing audience?
- But that is how you learn,
that's how anybody learns,
going out there and making mistakes,
and we learned not to hide mistakes,
but to bring them out in the open,
and to realize what we had to do to change,
but we had to write or rewrite,
if it was a contract,
if it was a job description,
if it was a label,
whatever we had to rewrite to make
it less likely that that mistake would be repeated,
so we say never waste a perfectly good mistake.
- And I love that you said there were a number of them.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh my gosh.
- But I guess to answer your question,
the idea here is you're going to make mistakes,
and that's okay,
now the wine business is like any other business,
it involves the three core competencies,
which is cashflow management,
distribution management and personnel management,
and those are things that most people don't focus on,
because they focus on their product,
so you go into the wine business,
you think here it is sniff, swirl, sip, right,
keep your pinkie out say some words in french,
talk about mid notes,
and then you find out that it's really about warehousing,
and it's about trucking and pallets and weights,
and signage and the size of the shelf,
and the lighting in the stores,
and whether or not your guy has been there
in the last two weeks,
or if your product is even for sale any more.
- Certainly the romance is gone.
- You could be selling hammers we like to say,
but that's the message of the book,
is actually to encourage people,
they see it and they say this guy is really unraveled
the mystery of the wine business,
they show the whole thing,
this is what's really going on here,
it's a commodity,
it's got to move,
it's got to be sold,
it's got to be kept at certain temperatures,
it's fragile,
it's this and that,
what about that,
but if you went in there with the idea
oh we are going to make a great wine,
I've got a great winemaker,
we've got a great message.
- It takes that too.
- But that's about this much,
compared to the other stuff.
- One of the things that I really loved about the book,
was it's for the solopeneur,
the brand-new entrepreneur,
or for a company,
and let's face it,
in today's economic climate,
you can be on top today and down here tomorrow,
and I loved the way that you really empower your employees,
and that love to talk about the culture that you created,
because that seems to be missing nowadays.
- We created a team,
and they all work together,
and they realized that everyone
on our staff had a different skill set,
and each of those people are required to work together,
in order for us to be successful,
we also have what we called the two division company,
which is sales and sales support,
sales is really what runs the company,
so the people that were out there,
salespeople that were out there in the marketplace,
can come back with some very good information
about what's going on with the competition,
the changes in the market,
what kind of point of sale material,
or marketing material is working best,
and what their particular territory needs,
and they could tell us,
so we could create marketing materials
that were suitable for them,
and so many companies will put
the salespeople on the bottom,
salespeople are out there.
- I was one of those people.
- And that's really wasting your resources,
so we really believed in giving the salespeople
the power that they deserved to help
us run the company efficiently.
- I think that's brilliant,
so Michael I've interviewed you a couple of times now,
and Bonnie,
one of the talking points,
that stays with me to this day,
is how you tell entrepreneurs to start small,
can you share that with our viewing audience,
because this is so important?
- We're were living in days of VCs,
and the VCs are telling people to scale fast,
fail fast, fast, fast,
we believe in just the opposite,
in the barefoot start-up as we call it,
we believe that you should start small,
we believe that you should sell in your neighborhood,
in your town, in your city, in your region,
don't try to be statewide,
don't try to be national,
because you want to make your mistakes in a small place,
because you want to find out what the cost of sales are,
not the cost of goods,
so you make a sale to somebody,
then you find out that maybe they want to return it,
or maybe it needs servicing,
or maybe it needs signage,
or something is going on with
that sale that needs your attention,
well that's service,
so no matter what business you're
in your in the service business,
so to learn what the service really is,
start small,
make your mistakes in a small place,
and as we like to say,
don't sell further away from your home then
you can drive and apologize and return in one day.
- That is such great information,
so many people try to start at the top,
and I've been guilty of that,
I've had to go back to the basics
and stay in my ZIP Code for a little while,
so I love it every time you mention that.
Now let's get back to your book,
what was your favorite chapter?
- Well Bonnie what was yours?
- I think that I liked the chapter about my mother,
Mamma Mabel and the Monks,
because it seemed so unlikely,
there were so many unlikely people
that came into our lives and to our business,
and my mother had lived with us for about seven years,
and during that period of time,
some monks who were from Thailand befriended her
and the funny part is even though that
they were friends they didn't speak the same language,
they would just pop in whenever they felt like it,
and visit my mother,
and there was one older monk,
we called him old monk,
and we said you're welcome here,
don't misunderstand this,
but what is the attraction,
why do you come here?
And they said we want to be around Mabel's life force.
And she put him to work too,
we give her 12 boxes of T-shirts to fold,
she'd help us in our business as well,
and she didn't have time because
the boxes showed up a little late,
we had to take them and ship them out,
so she invited the monks over to help her fold them.
- Everybody gets involved in a start-up,
all hands on deck.
- That's right you've really got to look
at your assets and your resources carefully.
- What was the biggest aha moment for you?
- In the business?
- In the business that you mentioned in the book.
- I think the biggest aha moment was when
I personally learned,
the humility that is required to make a sale,
I thought that if you went and beat somebody
up with features and benefits and why they should buy it
and pricing and programming and all of that,
that they just roll over and buy it,
it took me quite a while to realize that
I had to become the assistant buyer,
I had to put myself in the buyer's shoes,
I had to find out what was the pain
that the buyer was suffering,
and how could I possibly help him or her relieve that pain,
so we like to say that you want to be the assistant buyer,
you can't be the assistant buyer unless
you know what the buyer wants,
so you have to ask lots of questions,
once I started asking questions,
sales really took off,
and it was a big lesson for me,
because I never done anything like this before in my life,
and I was like wow,
what's wrong with these people,
why don't they see this,
it's only 5.99,
what the heck,
it's called a winner.
it had nothing to do with it.
- It's so funny,
don't you think that sales are really
more relational than transactional?
- Absolutely.
- We were really in a service business,
we had a product--
- Is your line, it's service.
- If we didn't service our product,
as Michael said it could have been any product,
then the buyers were not interested in seeing us again,
so we had to find out what they wanted
first as the supermarket,
the stores,
they wanted some colorful point of sale material,
and they wanted it changed seasonally,
so it would attract people,
it would be colorful it would decorate their store,
or we were able to give them that,
and we can often tell them what kind
of sales program or marketing materials that we had,
and not even talk about our product,
to show them how we were going to support their needs,
and that would make a sale.
And one of the things that I really can't stress enough,
is if you're an entrepreneur,
you need to read this book,
Barefoot Wines is an international number one bestselling
line across the board,
across the world,
everybody knows who Barefoot is,
and they didn't spend a dime on paid advertising,
I think everybody in the world,
especially entrepreneurs,
want to know how you did that,
and it's all in the book.
- Yes it is.
- Is there one thing that you want
to leave our viewing audience,
especially those entrepreneurs out there?
- We started without any knowledge of our industry,
and we started without any money,
and those turned out to be really our biggest assets,
because we didn't have preconceived ideas
of what the industry was about,
so we really had a fresh take,
and if we had money,
we probably would have thrown money at all of our problems,
to try to solve them,
and it didn't take money to solve the problems,
it took personal relationships.
- Oh my gosh,
I love talking to you guys,
and I'm sorry that it's time for us to go,
Michael and Bonnie how can our viewing audience get
a copy of your amazing book?
- They can go to our website,
www.thebarefootspirit.com.
- Thank you guys so much,
always a pleasure.
- So much fun, thank you.
- Yes, thank you.
- This has been Lea Woodford with Between the Lines,
thanks for watching.