One-sentence Practical Nuggets from the Book
Commerce is always and only about people . Michael and Bonnie neither knew about wine nor wine business but they knew people very well. Knowing people made them succeed in commerce so much that commerce experts came to learn ideal business practices from them.
Ignorance is bliss as it helps one to learn . Michael knew nothing about the bottling and marketing of wines so he went asking around beginning with market attendants and moving up to wine marketers. Not knowing enabled him to ask and this enabled him to learn.
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Never give up in business for resilience eventually pays. The Barefoot business faced major challenges, to an extent that a competent project manager would have called it a futile expedition but through resilience, they succeeded eventually.
Ingenuity can change adversities can be transformed into great opportunities . It is a bad debt that Michael was owed for his grapes that saw him get his first 18,000 cases of wine. He used the wine that almost went to waste to create a massive business.
Avoid seriousness in a fun-based business . Michael and Bonnie understood that people take wine in search of fun, so they brought fun into the process of selecting and buying wine, and with monumental success.
There are no impossibilities for the committed entrepreneur who has a good idea . Michael and Bonnie took what seemed to be nothing, wine from a bankrupt company that would have gone to waste anyway, and transformed it into an industry game-ganger through Barefoot wines.
Change the rules, if they are too hard to follow . Michael and Bonnie proved that any rule that works in an industry eventually becomes the industry norm. They made fun work in the wine industry thus changing it into a fun industry.
Key Elements of the Barefoot approach to marketing and distributing
Michael and Bonnie placed people over product in everything that they did. The pair understood that they did not stand any chance of making a better product than the other players in the market, a good example being Robert Mondavi of Napa Valley Wines. Instead, they focused their marketing on two sets of people. The first was the wine consumers and the second was the wine distributors. Instead of creating a marketing strategy that they thought would wow the market, Michael went out and asked the practical experts what the market needed. He talked to store-managers and distributors seeking to find out what people wanted in a wine marketer. He then followed the advice that was given to him and created a product that aligned itself to what people wanted, instead of a product that demanded that people align themselves to it. The reason why Michael and Bonnie were so successful in marketing and distribution is that potential customers and distributors felt as if the pair had read their minds. They provided what the market needed because they took the time to evaluate the market (Houlihan, Harvey, & Kushman, 2013).
Approach to recruitment, compensation, and company culture
The company culture at Barefoot Wines from a perspective of labor relations entailed treating employees like family in all ways. Michael and Bonnie always treated their employees with respect, were quick to praise, and slow to rebuke (Houlihan, Harvey, & Kushman, 2013). Their remuneration approach also took the family-like philosophy of sharing as remuneration was reflective of what the overall company earned. There was low compensation if profits were low and high compensation when the company made good profits. The critical component of labor relations at Barefoot was the recruitment and training process. Michael and Bonnie were keen to hire entrepreneurs as opposed to professionals. They wanted employees who would partner with them to run the company, not just operate under instruction. After hiring, Michael and Bonnie would train their employees intensively to enable then develop an ownership mentality for the company (Houlihan, Harvey, & Kushman, 2013). After finding the right employees, training them right, and treating them like a family, a company culture where all members of staff owned the company and were fully committed to it was established, hence driving its monumental success.
Lessons From “The Barefoot Spirit”
The first critical lessons from the book “The Barefoot Spirit” is that in business, a terrible crisis can be exploited to produce monumental success. It is the terrible crisis created when Michael supplied vast amounts of grapes to a collapsing winery that resulted in the creation of Barefoot wines. The second critical lesson is that just because everyone is doing it, does not mean that it is right. Fancy was a norm in the wine marketing business, including colorful and complex labels. Michael did not know the norm, so he went enquiring about what was right. Michael was to learn that almost every wine marketer was getting the labeling wrong, which enabled him to do his labels right (Houlihan, Harvey, & Kushman, 2013). The third critical lesson from the book was that great risks are necessary in order to make great gains. Michael and Bonnie took tons of wine from a failing winery as a compromise for a bad debt. It was not only very brave but also very risky. Their risky move would, however, change both their lives and the US wine marketing industry. Finally, a good labor force, which is properly constituted, trained, and motivated is critical for success in commerce. Michael and Bonnie invested heavily in maintaining a good pool of human talent, which in turn contributed to their monumental success (Houlihan, Harvey. & Kushman, 2013).
Reflection on 2 All-time Favorite Business Books
My all-time favorite business book is The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Warren Buffett. My penchant for this book is predicated both on what it says and who its author is. Warren Buffet is one of the richest men in the USA and by extension the entire world. More notably, most of the other billionaires on top of the list with Warren Buffet are experts in specific fields. For example, Bill Gates is a computer genius while Zuckerberg is an expert in social networks. Unlike them, Warren Buffets primary competence is business in general and more specifically investment. His monumental success is thus a tribute to his expertise in commerce. It is that expertise that Warren Buffet shares in the world within book. In the book, Buffet gives advice and nuggets of wisdom on investment in different niches including the stock market, real estate, and even entrepreneurship. The value of this information can be judged based on Buffet’s own success.
My second all-time favorite business-book is The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business by Eric Ries. Eric Ries can be informally described as an expert in how to fail in entrepreneurship when building a startup. He left college to create a startup on an online platform for potential employees to connect with potential employers. Similar multi-million dollar startups have been started but the one that Ries began, Catalyst Recruiting failed miserably. In his employment at There, Inc. he was also involved in high potential but eventually failed projects. Eric Ries uses his experiences as a failure in building startups to teach the right way to develop a successful startup. His book includes genius ideas on how entrepreneurs can avoid the mistakes he made so as to be successful in their own endeavors. The contents of the book and the practical expertise of the author are the basis of my preference for the book.
References
Houlihan, M., Harvey, B., & Kushman, R. (2013). The Barefoot Spirit: How hardship, hustle, and heart built Americas #1 wine brand . New York, NY: Evolve Publishing.
