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Entrepreneurship & Hustle create good ideas

Bonnie Harvey

How Entrepreneurship & Hustle Create Good Ideas

Does anyone believe that entrepreneurship and good old fashioned hustle will not create good ideas? Probably not, but the challenge of businesses of all size is to remain nimble, creative and finding unique ways to market and sell products and services.  An entrepreneurial spirit is needed that celebrates all ideas – good and bad – a spirit that knows mistakes allow ingenuity and creativity.  In this episode of the Manager Mojo podcast you’ll hear from one of the founders of the #1 Wine Brand and get the inside track on the ups and downs of accomplishing a dream.  It’s a dream we can all have and achieve if we just open our minds to ideas that are different than our own.  Make sure you download the Show notes for links to Bonnie Harvey’s sites and books.
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Transcript: Entrepreneurship & Hustle Create Good Ideas

Steve Caldwell:  Hello and welcome to the Manager Mojo Podcast.

Today, I’m very excited to introduce Bonnie Harvey to you.  Bonnie is the co-founder of Barefoot Cellars along with her partner Michael Houlihan.  She’s the co-author of The New York Times bestselling book The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand.

Bonnie’s strength is that she translated her ideas into workable processes and her genius is that she understands how to handle and manage the millions of details that come up with a start up.   I know we’re going to have fun learning from her today because she’s been there just like we all have been struggling with all other things that keep us from being as effective as we’d like to be.

Bonnie’s passion is she likes helping entrepreneurs choose the right path and her hard knocks experience, as she describes it, will offer practical solutions for starting a business, managing that business and avoiding those painful and costly mistakes that affect your profitability.

Along with Michael, Bonnie was honored as recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Entrepreneur Speakers award from the Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Bradley University.  They were also the keynote speakers at the 2014 World Conference on Entrepreneurship in Dublin, Ireland.   I hope to get her to talk about that just a little bit today, as well as about the 2014 Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals and Business Symposium.  In 2014, you can tell she’s been very busy, she is also the keynote speaker the TESS Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum and she co-authors weekly business blogs at www.thebarefootspirit.com and www.thebrandauthority.net with Michael as well as consulting.   I’ll make sure that I put those links in the show notes for your convenience as you’re listening to this podcast. So with all of that, welcome Bonnie to the Manager Mojo Podcast.

Bonnie Harvey: Well thank you Steve.  I’m very happy to be here.

Steve Caldwell: We are excited about having you with us today because I know that you’re going to share a lot of the information with us about how you managed a start up and what you learn from that.

Bonnie Harvey:  Yes, that’s what I love to do.

Steve Caldwell:  Awesome!  So before we get into that, would you tell us a little bit about what fun things have you been doing lately?  What is really getting you excited these days?

Bonnie Harvey:  I’m always excited to share the ideas that I learned how building barefoot cellars from nothing.  We start in our laundry room with no money and no knowledge about the industry and built it to one of the fastest growing wine brands in the nation.  That took 20 years, much longer than we thought but I truly enjoy sharing the knowledge I learned with young entrepreneurs and anyone starting a business and wanting to grow their business.  Michael and I have been traveling throughout the nation and the world speaking on those subjects.  We also do consulting which I truly enjoy as does Michael.  It’s very rewarding to see that we can make a difference in people’s businesses by sharing the knowledge that we learned, often the hard way, so hopefully they don’t have to.

Steve Caldwell: I’m beginning to believe Bonnie after all these years myself in business that there’s probably no other way to learn than the hard way.

Bonnie Harvey: I believe that to be true.  However, there’s a lot that can be learned in the Universities and people who are studying business and entrepreneurship that can be the building block.  It really gives you a head start and I wish that I had more of that education before I hit the bricks running, so to speak.

Steve Caldwell:   Yeah, it’s much better isn’t it?

Bonnie Harvey:  Yes – it probably would have taken me 10 years instead of 20 to be successful.

Steve Caldwell: I get it totally.  So let’s go back to when you were building this wonderful brand.  Tell me, in retrospect, what we’re the two or three things that you learned pretty quickly that you were like, man I sure wish that I had known that before.

Bonnie Harvey:   Well one of the things that really stands out is we thought because we had an excellent, gold medal-winning product that had a cute name, easy to pronounce, that stood right out on the shelf that it would be great seller, and that just was not the case.  We had to learn to manage the distribution network to understand what every person that touched our product needed in order to effectively do their job that we were relying on them to do and I think that’s probably the biggest lesson that anyone going into business can learn.  As wonderful as your product or service maybe and as much as people may want it, without understanding how you’re going to get it to your end user you’re unable to be successful. We had to learn the distribution network all the way from our distributors, the retailers, wholesalers, right down to the end user and talk to each one of them and understand how to put our self in the other guy shoes.

That was the biggest lesson.  It was more about understanding the process of getting our product to the end user then it was about the product.  Now that on the huge lesson.  The other big lesson that we learned we learned backwards, because we didn’t have money for a vineyard, a winery or a tasting room but we took control of every aspect of our business so eventually we got the same full licensing at any winery in the nation. However because we didn’t have the vineyard, the tasting room and the winery we contracted out for those services which we managed completely and took responsibility for all aspects of.  But what we learned that was of the greatest value was purchase orders.  We could contract out for all the other services that we needed and there were plenty of businesses out there that wanted extra business.  They wanted our business and we wanted their services.  A lot of people starting businesses think that if they are going to go into business they have to build a production facility, warehouse or something, and that’s not necessarily the case.  Look around and see who’s already in that business that may be a lot more financially able and experienced than you and use their services.  Do what you do best and delegate the rest.

Steve Caldwell:   I talk about delegating all the time.   I think that people really don’t have a good understanding of what it means to delegate.  Would you mind telling us a little bit about your philosophy on delegation?

Bonnie Harvey:    Well first of all, wanting to be a take-charge person and a leader, it was the most difficult thing that I ever tried to learn.   I’m still trying to perfect it.

We want to take charge of all aspects.  It’s kind of part of being an entrepreneur. We want to do everything.  However, it’s simply not possible.  So what you have to do is, first of all, lead by example.  You understand the process well enough that you can direct someone else to do it.  Hopefully this someone else is somebody that’s well-qualified and more experienced than you are.   We don’t want to be shy about that, do we?   We don’t know everything, so give it to somebody who has more experience and knowledge in that area.  And the tough part is you have to let them be creative and in the process make mistakes.  That’s how they are going to grow and learn, just like we have, by making mistakes — by doing wrong.  That’s how you learn and that’s okay.   That’s probably one of the toughest things.

Steve Caldwell:   Yes, it’s very tough for people.  You mention control.   I sometimes think of it as being like driving.  When you have both hands on the wheel and you’re gripping it so hard you won’t let it go.  You won’t let the car do its part.

Bonnie Harvey:   Yeah Michael has a tendency to have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake at all times.  It’s a bit of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.  It’s what we do.  But in order to be most effective in our business and to take advantage of what we do best we must learn to delegate, so it’s practiced.  Practice it.

Steve Caldwell:   That’s awesome.  Well, I know you were recently in Ireland and you’re talking about entrepreneurship.   I’d like to know what other people around the world are asking about entrepreneurship.   What are they really struggling with these days?

Bonnie Harvey:   Well, I was very surprised, Steve, to find out that the United States is looked up to throughout the world by entrepreneurs because we accept entrepreneurs.   We rejoice in their successes and when there are failures we say, ‘Well go out there and do it again.’  We have heroes that are entrepreneurs here in United States and I’m very surprised to hear that that’s not so in other countries.

Oftentimes in other countries if someone decides to go into business for themselves they think, “Oh you poor man.  You can’t get a job” or “you do not fit in.”   You know, the worst thing is to have a failure, to go out and try to start a business and have it be a failure.   That failure cloud is over that individual for the rest of his or her life.   They don’t allow a second chance where anybody that is what I think of as a true entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, you know that all of your attempts are not successful.  We are quite willing to accept that here.  I feel very blessed that, with my kind of personality, I live here in the United States so I can jump out there and be an entrepreneur and do the kind of businesses that I truly enjoy and not have that fear  of failure or rejection basically by society.  That’s something that really surprised me, Steve.

Steve Caldwell:   Yes it does.  We do have that image in this country.  This spirit of failure that you’re talking about, I see this holding managers and leaders back even in the United States.  Do you find that to be true in some of the things that you’ve observed as well from the audiences is that you’re talking about?

Bonnie Harvey: I think it’s particularly true in larger businesses and corporations.   People are afraid to be creative because maybe they’ll come up with a silly idea and be mocked.  I think in small companies we rejoice all ideas.  We celebrate all ideas, because it’s like brainstorming.  It will lead to another idea and lead you to something that’s quite workable.   All of that is fine in a small company and it should be encouraged. In larger company oftentimes good ideas are not able to move away from the person that has it.  Maybe he’d give it to his supervisor and the supervisor wouldn’t give it to the next person up to the ladder.  Or they might change it and call it his or her own instead of giving the first person credit for coming up with it.  So it has to do with the idea of the person who’s on top, because whatever philosophy they have trickles down into the company.  I think the best leader if someone that will encourage people to come forward with good ideas, that will listen to people from all parts of the business, from what may be considered the “worker bees,” the majority of the people, all the way up to the supervisors, managers, vice president, president — we’ve got to listen to everyone equally so we can be creative, innovative and improve.   That’s what it takes.

Steve Caldwell:   Absolutely it does.   I know you’ll get a kick out of this.  Back probably 25 years or so ago I was working at a really, really large company as an employee and we had one of the top echelons come in and talk with us.  He actually asked for our opinion.  Well normally we were not asked for our opinion in meetings.   If you gave your opinion you almost had to look at your boss and say, “Well what is my opinion?”   I had I talked very honestly about problem that we had and I actually got called in afterwards by my bosses because they were really disturbed that I would even talk about a problem whenever this individual that actually said, hey I want to know what you’re struggling with.   So I learned that thing called ‘politics.’  I’ve got to tell you I see it much more today in companies than I did even 20 years ago.    It’s almost like they are afraid to let go of the reins and encourage other people.

Bonnie Harvey:   I can’t see any progress happening with that and you can just see the fix that you can get into.    Take some of the automobile producers and manufactures out there.

Steve Caldwell:   Excellent point.

Bonnie Harvey:   Hiding a problem just complicates things.  In fact, we have a saying in our company, “Never waste a perfectly good mistake.”

Steve Caldwell:   I love that!

Bonnie Harvey:   If there’s a problem, if there’s something that’s gone awry, let’s take a close look at it.  Let’s all talk about it.  Do not hide it, do not say ‘oh it’s fixed’ and wash your hands and think it’ll never happen again.    Things have a tendency to happen again unless you take a close look at them and write down what it is you can do to make sure it doesn’t reoccur.

Steve Caldwell:  Great point.  I know Bonnie when I was looking at the story of your business that you really put a premium on involving your employees and your team members.  So I’d like for you to talk a little bit about that.  I noted that you actually started interviewing the people who were driving forklifts, delivering and doing all types of things to get their opinion.  Could you share a little bit about why you did that?   What you learn from it?

Bonnie Harvey:   Oh absolutely!  First of all, we started with no knowledge of our industry, so if we weren’t out there asking questions of people that knew more about it than we did then we really would have been totally lost.  But we kept that philosophy even when we did learn a bit about our business and we talked to people at the top and the ‘bottom.’   We said let’s make friends with people in low places not just high places, people that are out there getting the job done, people with dirt under their fingernails and people that are out there in the stores.  We talked to the clerks about what it is their customers are looking for in the stores.  Let’s talk about the warehouse man.  This is a very interesting story.

We had a product that was out in the supermarkets and there was one store that wasn’t selling a bit of it.  We called up our distributor and asked what was going on.  They said they didn’t know.  They’ve got the product.   I guess the sales are bad.    So we sent our salesperson there because we always have somebody on the ground to check out what was going on in the retail level, the wholesale level and community level.  He went into the store and found that they had the wrong product in their warehouse in the back of that grocery store.  They wouldn’t bring it out on the shelf because it wasn’t what they ordered.  So that’s why the product didn’t sell.

So Michael asks why they didn’t replace the product.   It was a miscommunication between the store and our distributor.  Michael goes to the distributor and wanted to understand how the wrong product was delivered.   And Michael was told, “Well it’s got to be the guy in the warehouse.  He’s the one who picked up the product and put it on the truck.”

Michael goes to the warehouse and he’s talking to the forklift driver.  He asks what the problem is with getting the right product on the truck. Why has this been so difficult?  He is told, “Well it is so dark in here I can’t see the products.  There’s not enough light in this warehouse.  Sit up here in the forklift seat and see what I see.”   Michael says, geez it’s really is dark. How can you deliver anything right?   Michael asks, “What do you want?  Do you want the labels on the box to be bigger?”  He suggested, “Why don’t you just put all the cases, all varietals, in a different colored case.  That way I can easily see the color and I’ll know how to recognize the varietals.  That will help me to deliver the right wine.”   We thought that sounded very clever, so that’s what we did.  We put each of our varietals in a different colored case and we had much less problem with wrong deliveries after that.   Not only that, but there was added benefit of making a beautifully colorful display when the cases were stacked at retail.

Steve Caldwell:   Very cool!    And it all comes from a forklift driver not being able to read the label.

Bonnie Harvey:   Yes, and it comes from the owner being willing to loosen its tie and get down there and talk to people that are handling their product at every level.

Steve Caldwell:   That’s awesome and what a great example.  You know, one of the things that we observe all the time is that managers really struggle with trying to look problems in the eye and deal with them.  How did you guys deal with that?  Was it a philosophy?   Was it something you taught?  It’s obvious that you didn’t have that attitude.  Tell us your secret on how to do that.

Bonnie Harvey:   In addition to welcoming and celebrating problems and taking a good look at them, we also tried very hard to put our self in everyone’s shoes so we could look at it from all aspects.   You can’t see a situation, no matter what it is, if you stay in your own shoes looking around.  You’ve got to get out of that space and look at it from different points of view.   When there’s a problem that you’re having, chances are that is a problem that somebody else is having.  We found that sometimes you could take problems or challenges and kind of mix them all together and come up with a solution that satisfies everybody.  So you want to be looking at it from other people who are dealing with your product and see what challenges they have.  If there’s a problem, maybe it’s simply in communication.  Maybe you’re talking to the wrong person or you’re talking to them in the wrong way.  So if you’re getting a lot of no’s then you call back a different day and you talk to a different person in a different way.

You’ve got to be creative and open-minded.  You can’t be stubborn and think that’s their problem – or, the reason that didn’t get that done is because I put a call into them and they didn’t call me back.  You’ve always got to take that finger that you’re trying to point at somebody else and say, “Hey they did it wrong.”   Turn it around and point right back at yourself and figure out what you can do to make the situation right.  How can you better communicate?  How can you better understand the needs of the person you’re relying on to get the job done?  How can you get ideas from all the people around you to help solve the situation and improve?   Write it down, and make sure that it never happens again.  You can change the checklist, the policies, the procedure, clause in a contract, job description – there is something that you can change to help the problem be less likely to occur in the future.

Steve Caldwell:   That’s a great advice, and it’s trying to divert and get away from the attitude of playing the blame game, isn’t it?

Bonnie Harvey:   That’s not going to get you anywhere and it’s not going to solve your challenges, that’s for sure.

Steve Caldwell:   I know that you also have a philosophy that’s very different than a lot of the corporate world we see in the United States today.  You guys believe that sometimes you’ve got to be less legalistic and more adventurous.  So tell me a little bit about your philosophy on that.

Bonnie Harvey: Well, as they say, if you’re going to make an omelet you’ve got to breaks some eggs.   You’ve got to be willing to get out there and do things a little bit differently.  As an entrepreneur you do things differently.  It’s part of our nature.  So as far as dealing with compliance and legal issues oftentimes what we would do is what we call ‘Advice Management.’ We have to get the advice of legal counsel, for instance, to see what we can do in a certain state.  It’s something that we want to do, advertise our products or something, and with the alcohol/beverage industry the product and the rules and regulations are very tight, very controlled.   So instead of saying “Can I do this?” to our legal counsel we would say, “This is what we’re going to do, how can we do it?”  You start off with the premise that this is where you’re going to go, not can I go there, but this is where we are going to go.  Let’s figure out how to get there.  That makes a lot of difference.  So you’re not being directed by the rules and regulations as much as you are setting yourself a goal and finding the way to get there.   That’s a mental attitude and as I called it before, Advice Management.  You’ve got to understand how to direct your advisors in the direction that you want them to go.

Steve Caldwell:   Bonnie, I love that term ‘Advice Management.’   The reason I ask is that I believe this ‘advice management’ mentality, as you called it, is actually holding back management and leaders from doing their real job every day.  I think they look to their bosses for what they should do instead of what they can do and what they need to do.   I think they get over managed because of it.  Do you find that as well from your experiences and talking with your business?

Bonnie Harvey: Yes.  Managers tend to want over control generally and the larger a company the more that tends to be the case.   When you’re starting a small company and you’re building, you’ve got so many more advantages.  You really do rely on your entire staff to help you succeed.  You rely on them for their good ideas etc.  So it’s much easier in a smaller company to involve everyone.

We’ve actually written a book called Entrepreneurial Culture23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People and that is just being released.   I think it’s an excellent book for anyone who wants to build that entrepreneurial culture, which is really team work in their company.

There are many ways that can be done, not that it’s all easy.  It takes a lot of change sometimes to improve.  So the company first of all has to be willing to change in order to make this happen.  But yes, there are many ways to create a better feeling of teamwork, because that’s what makes everyone in the business happy.   That is what makes them more productive.  That’s what allows the energies to flow and the good ideas to flow.  It’s when they know that they’re making a difference, not only in the company but in their community.  How is the company that your employees are working in, what does that company represent beyond the product to service that they are offering?  How do they work with their community?  How are they a part of their community and their neighborhood?  The more they are a part of the community and the neighborhood, the more that they have  happy employees that will be contributing more to the bottom line basically.

Steve Caldwell:   Right.   You want engaged employees don’t you?  You want them to be doing those things.

Bonnie Harvey:   Yes.  And by over-managing them you restrict their creativity.   I think that’s a well known fact.

Steve Caldwell:   Absolutely.

Bonnie Harvey:   Changing that attitude has to come from the top.   Employees can’t do it.  Sometimes managers can’t do it.  It has to come from the top man or woman of the company, and their attitude may have to step up and say things are going to change.

Steve Caldwell:   That’s great advice.  Well for those people who are thinking about either that next level or that next step in success, what would be your advice to them, maybe the top two or three things that you would recommend, that they really think about and get their arms around?

Bonnie Harvey:   Well, the first thing is 1)  Realize what your best attributes are.  Hopefully there’s something that you really enjoy doing as well.   Find a way to move ahead using those attributes and using that passion that you have to further those attributes.    2)  The next thing that works in any situation is to understand how to put yourself in other guys shoes.   In all aspects of the business, everyone that you doing business with, what is it that they are looking for?  What inspires them?  How do they communicate?  It may be different than how you communicate.  How can you best work with them to make them feel appreciated, to make them understand that in order to accomplish your goals that you have to rely on them.   This is part of delegating as well.  It’s also part of what was for us primarily distribution management.  Understanding how to best work with the people all around you.  It’s really a people game.  It’s understanding people — what it is that they need, how they think, how to best work with them and how to bring out the best in each individual, including yourself.

Steve Caldwell:   That’s awesome, Bonnie!  Thank you so much for that advice and as we come to our close, how would you like for our listeners, if they want to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do that?

Bonnie Harvey:   Well, you could check out our website and they can contact us on the website, which is www.thebarefootspirit.com.   We also have an excellent blog on that, not only that website but another website called www.thebrandauthority.net.

Steve Caldwell:    I’ll make sure I put those in the show notes as well and we’ll link to them.  On behalf from the Manager Mojo Podcast, I want to thank you so very much for being our guest today.  It’s just been a great joy.

Bonnie Harvey:   Well thank you Steve.   I really love sharing some of the things that I’ve learned.

Steve Caldwell:   It’s been fun to hear your passion and I want to encourage our listeners to make sure you check out both books that Bonnie mentioned — The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand and also The Entrepreneurial Culture23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People.

Bonnie thank you again for being our guest today and we wish you much success in all that you do all over the world.

Bonnie Harvey:   Thank you!   Thanks so much Steve. I had a great time.

Thank you for helping us learn how entrepreneurship and good old fashioned hustle will help us create good ideas and insure that we win with our employees and our customers!