Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan
Founders of Barefoot Wine—America’s #1 Wine Brand
Building a Winning Company Culture
Episode Summary
What does it take to build a winning company culture? Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan, the founders of the world’s largest wine brand, joined me on Keep Leading LIVE!™ to explain the answer! Listen to our conversation to learn more about entrepreneurship, leadership, and company culture.
Keep Leading LIVE!™ (41 Minutes)
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Bio
Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan are the founders of the world’s largest wine brand, international Keynote Speakers, and New York Times Bestselling authors of The Barefoot Spirit, How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand and The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People.
From humble beginnings in a laundry room of a rented farmhouse to the boardroom of the world’s largest wine company, E&J Gallo, they learned valuable lessons crucial to any business. They consult and train startups and Fortune 500’s on brand building and company culture.
They are highly recommended by companies seeking to increase their sales and engage, empower, and inspire their people. They are regular contributors to The Business Journals in 43 cities nationwide, Entrepreneur, and contribute articles & interviews to INC, CEO Forum, Forbes, and other major business publications.
Their new audiobook is presented in a theatrical format with Hollywood actors playing the parts, original musical score, sound effects, and more! Their latest enterprise is Business Audio Theatre, where they offer to tell the stories of other founders to reduce turnover and increase engagement.
They are regular media guests on radio, television, and podcasts. Michael & Bonnie present together with a fresh, authentic, and fun style that entertains, educates, & motivates. www.thebarefootspirit.com www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.
Website
https://thebarefootspirit.com/
Other Website
https://www.consumerbrandbuilders.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhoulihan/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/barefoot_spirit
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/barefoot.founders
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/thebarefootspirit/
Leadership Quote
Leaders must prove that they have their people’s best interests at heart
Get Your Copy of Bonnie and Michael’s Book!
https://www.barefootaudiobook.com/
The Barefoot Spirit Audiobook FREE Chapter 1
https://thebarefootspirit.com/freechapter
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Full Episode Transcripts and Detailed Guest Information
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Transcript
The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more.
This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
All right, everyone, I’m excited to be back again for another episode of Keep Leading LIVE™. It’s been a little while since my last episode and I am delighted to be here with you to share with you obviously a live recording of the Keep Leading!® Podcast. The Keep Leading!® Podcast and Keep Leading LIVE™ are dedicated to leadership development and insights. Of course, I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive and leadership coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.
Well, today, I’m going to talk about leading as an entrepreneur. And as we talk about leading as an entrepreneur, we’re also going to talk about how we build a winning culture inside of organizations. To do so, I want you to meet two very special people who joined me. I am absolutely excited to have with me Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan. They are the founders of the world’s largest wine brand and they’re international keynote speakers and New York Times bestselling authors. We have one of the books right here, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s Number One Wine Brand and The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People.
Michael and Bonnie, welcome.
Bonnie Harvey:
Thank you. we’re delighted to be here, Eddie.
Michael Houlihan:
Hi, Eddie.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, hello, hello. I can’t tell you how excited I am to have you all here with me. I got a chance to meet you all virtually a couple of months ago at the C-Suite Network’s Thought Council meeting where our CEO Jeff Hayzlett interviewed you two and I was just fascinated and I said “Hey, I know Jeff Hayzlett but I want to be able to talk to them too and share them with my audience.”
Michael Houlihan:
Well, we’re glad you did.
Eddie Turner:
Well, one of the things that was so intriguing about what you all said that I loved hearing was I want to talk about this new book and about culture but my audience is made up of people who are all about leadership. So, I want to talk about your entrepreneurial journey to start. Can you share that with us?
Michael Houlihan:
Where do you start, right?
Bonnie Harvey:
Yeah. Michael and I have always been self-employed. We’ve been consultants to various types of businesses. And when we moved here to Sonoma County, this is in northern California where there’s many, many grapes grown, there’s lots of wineries. So, a lot of our clients were in the wine industry in one way or another. So, as business consultants, we learned a lot about business. However, we really knew nothing about the wine business until we kind of fell into it backwards.
Michael Houlihan:
It’s crazy. So, bonnie had a client that she was working for, who was owed about 30,000 dollars from a winery for his grapes. He’s a grape grower. And the winery didn’t pay him and they didn’t pay him for three years.
Eddie Turner:
Wow!
Michael Houlihan:
So, finally, Bonnie noticed this in his accounts receivable and asked me to go collect.
Eddie Turner:
So, you were the body man, huh, Michael?
Michael Houlihan:
Well, I just met her about a year before this. So, here I am going to go play the heavy role. When I get there, they’ve already declared bankruptcy and the only thing I could get out of them was goods and bottling services. Now, the goods were wine in bulk and the bottling services. So, we got wine in bulk and bottling services instead of money to pay the debt but it was better than a stick in the eye. I mean, it was something and we thought “Well, we’ll just come up with a label. We’ll come up with a marketing program. We’ll learn everything there is to know about compliance. We’ll learn everything there is to know about distribution. How hard could it take, right?”
Bonnie Harvey:
How hard could it be?
Michael Houlihan:
How hard could it be?
Eddie Turner:
That’s with no money and no experience is what I heard you say.
Bonnie Harvey:
That’s right. Actually, because we were such outsiders and because we had no money, it really was to our advantage. We didn’t throw money at any problems. We had to work them out. We had to be innovative. And we didn’t have money for advertising. So, we went into the community where our end user would be where we would find them around the markets where our product was and we found out what they were interested in besides a bottle with a cute foot on it, okay? And they were interested in a new playground or a library or cleaning up the creek or something and we would support their fundraisers. So, that worked very well for us. By supporting the community, the community in turn supported us and really helped our sales.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. And somehow, miraculously, you went from that beginning, no industry experience, no money to building the world’s largest brand and America’s number one brand, if I understand that correctly.
Bonnie Harvey:
Yes, it is. We didn’t build it to number one. Our acquirer did but we had it for 20 years and the baked-in philosophies that we had with Barefoot, our acquirer took on and continued with, which was supporting the community.
Michael Houlihan:
Well, the thing is when you talk about our travel from the laundry room to the boardroom, it was a rough ride. We learned a lot lessons the hard way. I would say that most entrepreneurs go out there with a good idea and really no idea about how to get it there. So, they really underestimate the distribution process, they underestimate what it takes to get the word out, they underestimate what it takes to hire and train and keep people and keep them engaged. They underestimate all that stuff because they’re focused on their product and their end user. And they forget that between the product and the end user is a whole ton of people that you got to get along with, they’re going to like you. And that’s quite a little lesson. It takes most people about four or five years to learn that lesson.
Bonnie Harvey:
It did us.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, we were pretty thick-headed but the thing is that the company’s success, any company’s success is really a function of its people. It’s not the product. People don’t buy products. They buy people because they want to know “Hey, do you stand behind this product, you know? Do you guarantee it, you know? I want the one throat to choke, right? So, I want somebody who’s responsible here. I don’t just want to buy a product.” And so, that’s kind of the lesson we learned. When we started, we were all about the features and the benefits and the pricing, right? And I mean, here we had a five5-dollars bottle of wine with gold medal winner and a cute foot on it. What the heck!
Bonnie Harvey:
It’s just slam dunk.
Michael Houlihan:
It’s a slam dunk. Well, it was more of a slam.
Eddie Turner:
They want one throat to choke. I’ve never heard that, Michael.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, they do. They want the one person who’s responsible when they make that purchase.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. No, I got you. I just never heard it put like that way. I love it.
Yeah. So, you realized something that it takes people, as you said, even yourselves, a while to understand and that is it’s about the people, not the products.
Bonnie Harvey:
It’s about the company culture. And the company culture always comes from the top. And as Michael said, we really made all the mistakes in the book to start with but eventually, we did understand how to work with people and we understood how to maneuver through the distribution network and the distributors, the retailers, the sales people and by going out and asking a lot of questions of all these people. That is how we found out about it. And we did that, again, because we didn’t know anything about the industry. So, this is how it was an advantage to us to not step into an industry that we felt we knew everything about. If we had done that, Barefoot wouldn’t be in the market today but because we asked a lot of questions of people and tried to see how we could give them what they wanted from the top to the bottom, everybody in between, that is why barefoot was successful because we were satisfying a need of a great number of people.
Eddie Turner:
I love the way you explained that there, Bonnie, and it reminds me of a quote that Marcia Reynolds uses often, my coach, and she talks about how in coaching if we approach our clients with the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are a few.
Bonnie Harvey:
That’s right.
Eddie Turner:
So, because you all were beginners, you were endlessly curious. You didn’t go in with this body of knowledge “This is the only way to do it” and that made you such a success.
Bonnie Harvey:
Yes, that was really it. So, a lack of funds and a lack of knowledge were our greatest assets for success.
Michael Houlihan:
And we advise our clients today “Make friends in low places, okay?” Go to the people with dirt under their fingernails.
Eddie Turner:
I like that.
Michael Houlihan:
Go to the people who really move the product. Now, we were in the CPG consumer package goods business but when you think about it, your life is filled with consumer package goods. You go to the store, you go on Amazon, it’s all consumer package goods. So, you have to ask yourself “How did they get there? How did they become for sale? Why is it in my face and why am I buying it?” All of that, in our case, we didn’t have the background to know what to do. So, we went out and we asked people who were driving forklifts. We asked people who were running bottling lines, people who were putting bottles on the shelf, they were clerks. So, these are not the white-collar workers, the college educated folks that you would think or the people who’ve been in the wine business for four and five generations. These are the people who are actually doing the work and they could tell us from their standpoint what worked and what didn’t in terms of packaging, in terms of label, in terms of logo, of this stuff, pricing, handling, you name it. And it was a terrific education for us. Most of those people have never been asked before. So, they just spill. They’re gratified. And that was one of our secrets was, we call it “know the need” as opposed to “need to know”. So, most businesses and most people have the need to know basis – “I’m going to keep you on a need to know basis. You don’t need to know,” they say – but if you tell people “Here’s my problem. Here’s what I want to do. How can I do it?”, that’s giving them the need. So, now they know the need. Now, they can tell you what they know about it but if you’re trying to tell them what you’ve got to sell, you’ve already solved all the problems. That’s a little different attitude. It’s a little more humble but it’s a whole lot more practical in the long run.
Eddie Turner:
Know the need rather than need to know. I love that, Michael. And so, pulling that together with what Bonnie said earlier, it sounds like even this idea that the lack of resources initially made you more innovative and then, to put that together what you said, getting to know the people in the trenches, people in low places to really the people who are actually doing the work.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, they’re your best allies
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, it sounds like we have someone tuned in from Facebook who agrees with you. Sunday, he says “Any successful company is about the people, not the product.” So, he agrees with you too.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, amen to that, Sunday. You’re absolutely right.
Bonnie Harvey:
Absolutely.
Michael Houlihan:
When you walk into a building, you can’t do that anymore, but when you get on the phone or you’re talking to somebody in another company, you know right away what the owners think and what they value because of the way that that person treats you. So, it comes from the top all the way down and you can’t create a positive company culture unless you realize that the backbone of all successful company cultures is sales. It’s that simple. If you’re not making sales, you don’t have any money to pay anybody. So, it doesn’t matter, right? You’re out of business. To make a sale means that you have to provide customer service and you have to give the customer the experience that they expect and even more than they expect and that comes from the top. So, it’s up to the leader to educate the people about where the money comes from, right? It comes from the customer.
Eddie Turner:
yes, one of my mentors, Bob Dean, he used to say that “The customer experience will never exceed the employee experience.”
Bonnie Harvey:
Amen. I like that, absolutely. And we felt that our customer was everyone who touched our product. So, it was our vendors, our distributors, the distributor’s management, sales people, the retailer, the retailer’s clerk and, finally, our end user whom we found in the community.
Michael Houlihan:
And they all had different needs.
Bonnie Harvey:
Yes.
Michael Houlihan:
And none of them, except for the end user, was interested in a good bottle of wine at a good price. So, I mean, what would happen if you walked up to the guy who owns a distributorship in the Twin Cities and you started talking to him about how great your product was and how low the price was when he really wanted to know if you’ve already been okayed for MGM Chain stores in the Twin Cities that has 200 stores and if he’s going to get to distribute your product to those stores which is going to improve his strategic position in the marketplace. So, it’s a lot different than wine.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, yes, it is. Well, you all have mentioned this foot a couple of times with a logo. Now, I understand there’s a story about this logo.
Bonnie Harvey:
There is a story about it.
Eddie Turner:
Before you tell us the story, let me just share it with my viewers who may not, I don’t know how they cannot know about the Barefoot Wine if you haven’t seen it in the stores, but let me just share this before you tell the story. There we go. Here is a picture of what it looks like. And now, I’ll ask you to tell us the story about the logo.
Bonnie Harvey:
It started with Michael going out into the marketplace to find out what the chain store buyers wanted. It’s really a terrific story and it’s in our book Barefoot Spirit but the bottom line is he said that he wanted a salt and pepper act, put it in a pig, make it better than Bob and cheaper than Bob. And what that meant was he wanted a red and white varietal, Bob being Robert Mondavi, he wanted it better and cheaper than Robert Mondavi which was really a lot to ask for and he wanted it in a pig which was a 1.5 liter. Well, that’s where there was more space in the market for a new product. It was less crowded. There was maybe, at the time, five or six different wineries that were producing the big bottle of wine instead of the usual 750 ml. So, that gave us a huge advantage right away. Another thing that he asked for, the buyer, was that the name be the same as the logo and that it be something that is easy to pronounce, totally in English, no French and he wanted a label that would jump off on the shelf, so she, the female shopper, another point that we learned right then, who buys the most wine, will see it when she’s pushing her cart down the aisle.
Michael Houlihan:
From four feet away.
Bonnie Harvey:
So, that was all a lot of great information and that’s when we went to the bottling line manager and asked him about labels, we went into the stores and asked clerks about labels and we looked at the wine department and we saw it was like a pizza out there, there was so much going on it was really hard to figure out how we could get something that would really jump right off the shelf. So, we finally realized that we had a friend that had been bottling wine with the name Barefoot and had been off the market, it was Barefoot Wine and had been off the market for about 15 years. And so, we said “Well, barefoot is the way grapes were originally crushed to make wine. Well, that’s perfect, okay? And if we put a big foot on the label and a lot of white around it, then that’s going to make it stand right out.” The name’s the same as the logo. So, we solved that creative problem. And it would be easy to remember, easy to pronounce. So, that is a big part of the story of how the foot came about on the label.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah. So, Bonnie tells this artist in LA who’s a friend of ours to drop a foot for a label and she does and Bonnie doesn’t like them because they’re too squat or this or that and she tells the artist “Well, you know, I want a long thin foot with a high arch.” And so, the artist, in frustration, finally says “Well, just take a photograph or you know send me a picture of one and I’ll copy it.” So, Bonnie’s thinking “Now, where can I get a picture of a long thin foot with a high arch?” And then she goes “I’ve got one right here on the end of my leg.” So, she sends me out for the biggest ink stamp, the biggest pad that she you could find and she puts her foot in it and puts it in the artist’s the paper and FedEx it down to LA and says “More like that.” So, her foot got on the largest selling label in the world.
Eddie Turner:
So, Bonnie has literally put her step around the world, made her mark.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, I wanted to dance on everyone’s table.
Eddie Turner:
I love it. Well, I am absolutely enjoying my conversation here with you, Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, founders of Barefoot Wine, America’s number one brand. And we’re going to take a quick pause here to talk about some of the folks that allow me to do what I’m doing and we’ll be right back with you all.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman and CEO of the C-Suite Network and you are listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
I want to tell you about my friends over at Grand Heron International. At Grand Heron, you’ll see the address to the website here on the photo, the key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.ca/Podcast to learn more.
And a couple other sponsors I want to thank that came in for this month. American Express; Microsoft, specifically promoting their team’s platform; AT&T; Progressive; Wal-Mart; Oracle promoting the NetSuite product; Dropbox; Trulio; and Goldman Sachs, launch with GS, that’s the product that they’re promoting.
If you are watching us here now, you can catch the archives on KeepLeadingLive.com. This will be a regular podcast episode because I know that many of you, about 20% of my listeners, listen on their Apple Watch when they’re working out. So, you can be able to listen to this as a regular audio-only episode in December. This will be one of the closeout episodes for the year. So, visit us at KeepLeadingLive.com and KeepLeadingPodcast.com. Don’t forget to stop by Apple Podcast and give us a rating if you believe that what we’re offering is of value to you.
I am talking to Bonnie Harvey and Michael Houlihan, founders of Barefoot Wine, America’s number one brand.
So, you all told us a lot about culture before we took our break. And now, as we’re coming back, I wanted to ask you about business because you have so much business experience in your other book that we mentioned about entrepreneurship. What is the biggest challenge you see facing businesses today?
Bonnie Harvey:
Engaging their people to stick with them. People, with COVID, they’re working from home. And it makes it a whole lot easier to be looking for another job that might pay just a little bit more. And without their co-workers around them, they start losing touch with the company and they may forget the principles that the founder had. And this is very dangerous because company culture, as we’d said before, comes from the top, comes from the owners and the top management of the company. And they’re not getting that reinforced now. So, I think it’s really important to find a way to reinforce good company culture by giving them the principles that the founder has in a way that they will remember, that they will enjoy hearing, and that they will act upon to really engage them more so they will stay with the company and they’ll act in a way that would make the founder proud.
Eddie Turner:
And speaking of staying with the company, I understand you all did such a fantastic job of creating a culture that people didn’t leave. For the last 10 years, you had no one resign.
Bonnie Harvey:
Yes, that’s right.
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah, we had virtually no turnover but that’s after doing it wrong for five or seven years. We learned our lessons the hard way and when we finally figured out what the keys to a positive company culture were and we began to put ourselves in our employee’s shoes and we began to realize that what they really wanted to know was did we have their best interests at heart. And so, what were their best interests? We had to really come down to it and identify it and lay it out. And we did and we found out that there were four things they were really interested in. Of course, number one was renumeration. They had to pay their bills. They got to put their kids through school. They have to pay their mortgage. Okay. So, everybody knows that but then number two is a little bit more surprising and that is they wanted recognition. They wanted recognition from their fellow workers and they wanted recognition from us, as owners and founders. They wanted appreciation. So, that meant that we had to engage them if they would engage for us. And so, that gets back to sharing problems and asking them for solutions and whatnot. And also, coming out and saying when they did a good job and saying it publicly and saying it in writing and copying it to the entire company, that was really an important breakthrough. And then the third thing that people want is they want time off. They want time off to spend with their kids or they want to have swing time or they want to have a life outside of work. So, this is the part where you have to decide how much work from home can you do versus how much work in the office can you do. We gave them their birthday off with pay, for instance. And yes, they could swing the day to another day. And then the fourth thing that they’re all looking for is security and that means secure job, it means secure retirement, it means secure medical. It means all of this stuff. It means all the social support that an employer can give them. So, we figured out how to manage those four different areas and how to deliver. And once we started doing that, it made a huge difference.
Eddie Turner:
Sounds like you built it off Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Michael Houlihan:
Absolutely. We like Maslow.
Eddie Turner:
Well, that’s wonderful. And you mentioned earlier about a money map but I remember you actually described you all had quite a process where you just laid it out for everybody to be able to see it, full transparency.
Bonnie Harvey:
Yes, the money map showed where the money comes from. And it was a physical map, a sheet of paper and it shows that the money comes from the community, that that’s where the consumer is and it shows how that dollar, let’s say 10 dollars that she pays the clerk in the store for the bottle of wine, then the owner takes a portion of that, pays the overhead and then buys another replacement bottle of wine from the distributor and that might be 8 dollars. And then the distributor pays his overhead, buys a wine bottle from us for 5 dollars. So, now we’ve got 5 dollars for that wine. Well, the wine itself costs 3 dollars. So, that leaves us with 1 dollar for our overhead and 1 dollar into the big pot for everybody’s check and for their benefits and for their vacation pay and for everything that they get is in that one pot of gold. So, if somebody wants a raise, the only way they can get it is by increasing the sales and helping that dollar go all the way around and into the pot so the pot will get larger and then they can get a raise. So, it all starts with the sale, doesn’t it?
Michael Houlihan:
Yeah. And by seeing the path that the money takes to get into your wallet, you become aware of every process and you begin to identify, you say “Oh, this is where my job fits in,” you say “This is where I make a difference. Oh, here’s where my fellow worker makes a difference and here’s how I supply my fellow worker with the information that he needs or she needs to do the job so that the cycle will continue to keep the cash flowing.” And I think a lot of companies don’t do that. We like to say “When the cement is wet, you can move it with a trowel but when it gets hard, you need a jackhammer. So, this is why this is the most important thing you can do in the onboarding day or two. People are going to answer all the questions they have about your company the day they’re hired whether you give them the answers or they invent them. You don’t want them to invent the answers because they’ll invent answers that came from the last place they worked. So, when you want to establish a company culture, the first thing you have to do is make sure that the blackboard or the whiteboard is clean. And then the first thing you put on the blackboard or the whiteboard, whatever you want to call it, is the money map. You give them a picture of an actual graphic treasure map and they see it. And if that’s all they get, believe me they are miles ahead and you are miles ahead right there. So, that’s a big secret for us.
Eddie Turner:
It’s huge. I mean, you all shared that with us at the meeting and all of our jaws just dropped. It was incredible because it’s like the light bulb went off for us and we weren’t a part of the company. So, we could only imagine what that must have been like for the employees.
Bonnie Harvey:
It sounds very basic and it is but it’s not something that owners generally think of. And an employee will think that the money comes from the owner, the money comes from the company but the company and the owner aren’t necessarily independently wealthy that they can afford to support everyone on the staff. And, as strange as that sounds, it really is an eye-opener to see the money map, yes. Thanks for appreciating that, Eddie.
Eddie Turner:
Oh, absolutely. Well, you all talked about lessons you all learned and how long it took you to learn them and then how you turned that into an amazing success and that the true success was about the people, not the product but you still made an incredibly impressive product that has gone around the world. What lessons, would you say, if you just take one of the many that you’ve learned, that could keep other leaders who are listening to us from bumping their heads a little bit that they could avoid with just one you could share.
Bonnie Harvey:
Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. The other guy is everyone that you do business with. It could be in your personal life too. It certainly works in your personal life. Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Find out what it feels like. Talk to them and find out what their needs are and fulfill their needs. Then you’ll be successful.
Michael Houlihan:
In other words, don’t fall in love with your product. Yes, you have to have a fantastic product. It’s got to be knocking it out of the park. It’s just got to be destroying the competition but even with that, you’ll fail because there’s warehouses in Des Moines, Iowa, that are filled with great products that never made it to market. And the reason they didn’t was because the owners the founders and the companies that were behind them didn’t know how to put themselves in the other guy’s shoes and satisfy their problems so that it could move along and get into distribution. We speak all over the world and one of the big questions that we get all the time is “How do you sell products in the United States? We want to sell products in the United States. It’s the best market in the world.” Well, it’s because we have so many freeways here. General Eisenhower, after the war, he said “Okay, we’re going to build an interstate highway system.” Well, that resulted in trucks. That resulted in big container loads of trucks. And so, the most efficient way to move things was by big container loads but people are not going to buy a big container load if they don’t like you. They’re not going to buy a big container load if they can’t trust you. So, how do you build that trust? How do you get them to know, like and trust you? So, that’s the key to success in America and it’s the key to success throughout the world actually.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Well, as I think about a lot of the things I like to share with leaders, we always like to leave them with one quote that they can live by. You all have given us several great quotes throughout the conversation today but is there one last quote that you use, that you live by that you can share with us as well?
Bonnie Harvey:
There’s the two-division company. All companies have two divisions. Sales, that’s on top and Sales Support, that’s everybody else. That’s the CEO, the CFO, the COO, it’s the VP, it’s even the P. We’re all in sales support.
Eddie Turner:
That is a great quote. I appreciate that.
Now, I pointed out earlier this cover because I wanted to show the foot but I want to go back to this for a moment if I could because there’s a story behind this. Can you all talk about what this is for my listeners?
Michael Houlihan:
Well, this is actually the story behind the story. So, what this is, is our new audiobook which is different than other audiobooks. Most audio books are read to you. This audiobook is performed for you. It is fully casted. It has sound effects. It has music. It is dramatic. It is gripping. It is a seat of your pants rocket ride on an entrepreneurial adventure where you will accompany Michael and Bonnie as they get their butts kicked, pick themselves up off the sidewalk, learn a few lessons, dust themselves off and proceed onward. And I think you’ll enjoy it. It was one of the top five audiobooks of the year by the Audiobook Publishers Association. And business books are pretty boring – The Three Things You Got to Do, the Five Things to Never Do, the 20 Things Your Customer Wants from You. I forget them and at number three, I’m done. This is not patronistic. This is not anybody telling you anything. This is you experiencing, acting in scenes and they’re fun and you’ll enjoy it and you’ll walk away with some really good ideas. You’ll say “Man, I don’t want to be like Jim, you know. I remember what happened to Jim.” And so, there’s a lot of Jims and Marys and Janes in this book and they do a lot of things so that every scene has action, it has outtakes, it has consequences.
Bonnie Harvey:
It’s how we built our company culture. It’s the philosophy that we use that was very successful and it’s all told in story form because people can remember stories. They’re not going to remember “Do these three or seven things” but if I give you three or seven stories, that’s what you’re going to remember and then you glean the message out of that, makes it memorable.
Michael Houlihan:
And so, we’re going to make it memorable for you. We’re going to offer every listener to Eddie’s podcast is going to get a free chapter. So, this is like an episode, a 25-minute episode, you’re going to get it for free. We’re going to have the download link in the show notes.
Eddie Turner:
Well, that’s very generous of you all. Thank you for doing that.
Michael Houlihan:
Hope you all enjoy it.
Eddie Turner:
Well, I am delighted and just thank you so much. And thank you for being here with me today. Where can my listeners learn more about you two?
Michael Houlihan:
Well, you can go to www.TheBarefootSpirit.com.
Eddie Turner:
Okay, excellent. So, I’ll be putting that in the show notes along with a copy of the two books that you’ve produced so folks can read about you all, follow you on social media, they are following you on social media, follow you on social media. The Barefoot Spirit is a wonderful spirit about the culture that you all have created and you’re just amazing people who’ve done amazing work. Thank you for being with me today.
Bonnie Harvey:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Eddie.
Michael Houlihan:
Thank you, Eddie. And thank you everybody for tuning in.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, thank you all for tuning in. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is about action. Leadership is about activity. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate from all that we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.
The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.