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bookcategory: Leadership

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey

About The Barefoot Spirit

It is hard to believe that such an iconic brand as Barefoot Wines began in a laundry room of a rented farmhouse in the Sonoma County hills. Even more surprising is that the people who started it were just an average business couple, Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, with no money and no real knowledge about the wine industry.

The part that isn’t a surprise is that, because of their lack of experience, and because the wine business is one massively complicated industry, they ran into difficulties and setbacks that regularly put the brand near death in the first two decades. What kept it going was an unshakable belief in Barefoot’s potential, Michael’s and Bonnie’s use of universal business principles, and their never-say-die outlook despite facing one seemingly insurmountable hurdle after another. Those hardships, that hustle, and their heart, are the essence of the Barefoot Spirit.

For years, Michael and Bonnie, the Barefoot Wine founders, have been asked to write a book about how this brand got started and became a best seller. “The Barefoot Spirit”, a NY Times Bestselling book, traces that history and tells the story of how an unknown novelty wine became an American icon. It chronicles the unlikely events that made it possible, and it lays out the cornerstone business and lifestyle philosophies that made it, ultimately, an enduring success.

If you like wine, the wine country, or a story about how a plucky little winery transformed an industry, if you want to know what it takes to really succeed in the face of adversity, if you want to know how to use your core beliefs to build a national brand, then “The Barefoot Spirit” is for you.

“An irreverent, eye-opening business memoir. Novice winemakers upend the industry’s pretensions while taking on the jungle of the retail beverage sector in this rollicking business saga.”

“Novice winemakers upend the industry’s pretensions while taking on the jungle of the retail beverage sector in this rollicking business saga.”

“An irreverent, eye-opening business memoir.”

-Kirkus Reviews [Read The Full Kirkus Review Here]

 

About The Entrepreneurial Culture

Does Your Company Culture Empower Your People to Think Like Owners? If any business is to thrive in the global marketplace, its employees must be engaged and empowered. In other words, they must think like owners. Problem is, few employees know how. Your job as a leader is to train them to think this way. Because entrepreneurial thinking is a natural extension of company culture, you may need to rebuild yours from the ground up.

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey—New York Times bestselling authors and founders of Barefoot, America’s #1 wine brand—know how to create the conditions that draw out and nourish people’s inner entrepreneurs. Here, they take the principles that empowered their own tribe of productive, creative and loyal employees to beat the odds and boil those principles down into quick, easy lessons you can put into practice right away. You’ll discover:

  • – How to remove roadblocks to the entrepreneurial spirit
  • – Why everyone at your company must ask questions (including you)
  • – Why your people should embrace mistakes
  • – How to find and hire people with entrepreneurial DNA
  • – How to foster innovation by getting out of your people’s way
  • – How to drive results with performance-based compensation

 

Houlihan and Harvey started the Barefoot Wine brand in their laundry room in 1986, made it a nationwide bestseller, and successfully sold the brand to E&J Gallo in 2005. Starting with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles and create new markets. Today, they are sought-after entrepreneurial thought leaders, consultants, corporate trainers, keynote speakers, and workplace culture experts with hundreds of articles in national and professional publications.

In The Entrepreneurial Culture, 23 Ways to Engage and Empower Your People they take everything they know about the spirit of entrepreneurship and teach C-Suite leaders how to infuse it into their company cultures to engage and empower their employees. The book perfectly complements the lessons from the authors’ New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. Together, these books will give your company the edge it needs to thrive and boost the bottom line.

Purchase your copy of The Barefoot Spirit and exclusively through this C-Suite portal, also obtain a BONUS copy of the companion book, The Entrepreneurial Culture (forward by Jeffrey Hayzlett).

 

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, founders of Barefoot Wine and authors of the New York Times Bestseller The Barefoot Spirit, share with Bizcast host Kevin Craine the creation of the famous Barefoot Wine, establishing an entrepreneurial culture in the business, and give a sneak peak into their new book on that subject: The Entrepreneurial Culture. Michael and Bonnie answer the hard c-suite question: How do you create an entrepreneurial culture within a business and empower employees to act with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington’s personal wake-up call came in the form of a broken cheekbone and a nasty gash over her eye — the result of a fall brought on by exhaustion and lack of sleep. As the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group — one of the fastest growing media companies in the world — celebrated as one of the world’s most influential women, and gracing the covers of magazines, she was, by any traditional measure, extraordinarily successful. Yet as she found herself going from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram, to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion, she wondered is this really what success feels like?

As more and more people are coming to realize, there is far more to living a truly successful life than just earning a bigger salary and capturing a corner office. Our relentless pursuit of the two traditional metrics of success — money and power — has led to an epidemic of burnout and stress-related illnesses, and an erosion in the quality of our relationships, family life, and, ironically, our careers. In being connected to the world 24/7, we’re losing our connection to what truly matters. Our current definition of success is, as Thrive shows, literally killing us. We need a new way forward.

In a commencement address Arianna gave at Smith College in the spring of 2013, she likened our drive for money and power to two legs of a three-legged stool. They may hold us up temporarily, but sooner or later we’re going to topple over. We need a third leg — a third metric for defining success — to truly thrive. That third metric, she writes in Thrive, includes our well-being, our ability to draw on our intuition and inner wisdom, our sense of wonder, and our capacity for compassion and giving. As Arianna points out, our eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success. They don’t commemorate our long hours in the office, our promotions, or our sterling PowerPoint presentations as we relentlessly raced to climb up the career ladder. They are not about our resumes — they are about cherished memories, shared adventures, small kindnesses and acts of generosity, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh.

In this deeply personal book, Arianna talks candidly about her own challenges with managing time and prioritizing the demands of a career and raising two daughters — of juggling business deadlines and family crises, a harried dance that led to her collapse and to her “aha moment.” Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research and scientific findings in the fields of psychology, sports, sleep, and physiology that show the profound and transformative effects of meditation, mindfulness, unplugging, and giving, Arianna shows us the way to a revolution in our culture, our thinking, our workplace, and our lives.

Sheryl Sandberg

Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential.

Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TEDTalk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.

In Lean In, Sandberg digs deeper into these issues, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to cut through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of working women. She recounts her own decisions, mistakes, and daily struggles to make the right choices for herself, her career, and her family. She provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career, urging women to set boundaries and to abandon the myth of “having it all.”  She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women in the workplace and at home.

Written with both humor and wisdom, Sandberg’s book is an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth. Lean In is destined to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can.

Dov Baron

Everything you’ve been told about leadership over the past thirty years no longer applies. The world has changed, and so has everything we know about becoming—and remaining—an effective leader particularly when it comes to keeping your top talent!

The effective leaders of tomorrow will do one thing–Keep Top Millennial Talent. Finding and keeping extraordinary talent will be what determines which organizations thrive and which ones fade off into oblivion in the immediate future.

Don’t believe it? Then consider that the average company spends 1.5 to 2 times the annual salary of an employee in training and development. Meanwhile, the average millennial employee is only looking at a tenure of two and a half years… at the outside. That employee will walk away before your investment ever pays off! What’s worse–the employee you have invested in will take the skills and training that you paid for, and leverage them into a better position with your competitor.

In this book Dov Baron lays out the strategies for not only keeping your top talent, but have them become Fiercely Loyal. It could likely be the most important thing to happen to leadership and human resources in a hundred years…read it and use it!

This groundbreaking book will give your and your company the edge you need to thrive in today’s rapidly changing corporate climate.

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website

Sylvie di Giusto

The Image of Leadership is the result of Sylvie di Giusto’s journey through two career paths: one in the field of human resources, the other one as a professional image consultant. The title reflects the reality that everyone can and should acknowledge, which is that true leadership manifests itself in ways that are both seen and unseen.

This book will take you step-by-step through the development of your professional imprint. The focus will be on all of those things that people perceive about you, with an emphasis on your appearance and your image.

By all means, it’s not a “How-to” book, because there simply is no “one-size-fits-all” formula for a look of leadership. Instead this book provides you with a deep understanding of the most important concepts to achieve your image of leadership. Because…

  • – YOU have to create your own professional imprint, which is true to your personality and which works for the duration of your long career.
  • – YOU have to appear confident, authentic, professional, and respectful to be perceived as a leader—no matter your height, weight, color, age or gender.
  • – YOU have to look like a leader long before you are one.
  • – YOU have only 7 seconds to create an imprint of leadership.
  • – YOU have to show people your leadership, every day, consistently.
  • – YOU —and only YOU— can choose to present yourself as a leader, or not.

 

This book is written to be entertaining for leaders at all levels. You’ll encounter hard data drawn from Sylvie’s research and she also shares countless stories from her 20 years of experience in corporations around the world, while she will prove her theories with people who are currently in the public eye. There is no other book that encourages you to learn about your image from famous politicians, CEO’s or pop stars at the same time.

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website 

Josh Allan Dykstra

Why is it that so many of us toil away in jobs we hate, being treated like machines, doing things that will eventually ruin the planet? Is this really the best we can do with our work and our lives? Concluding a massive research project spanning the fields of behavioral economics, future trend analysis, and management science, Josh Allan Dykstra elegantly shows how the world of work is evolving—and that the competitive advantage of business is shifting towards something much more life-giving than where we’ve been.

Nathan Jamail

Creating a Coaching Culture to Build Winning Business Teams

There are enormous differences between managing and coaching. Yet many companies and organizations encourage their leaders to coach teams without ever teaching them how and without creating a culture that supports coaching.

Nathan Jamail—a leading consultant, professional speaker, and the president of his own group of businesses—trains coaches at several Fortune 500 companies and learned that it takes not only different skills to achieve success, but a truly effective coach needs an organizational culture that creates and multiplies the success of every motivated team member. The Leadership Playbook shows leaders the skills necessary to be an effective coach and to build effective teams by:

  • Fostering employees’ belief in the culture of a company
  • Resolving issues proactively rather than reactively and creating an involvement that constantly pushes employees to be their best
  • Focusing on the more humane principles of leadership—gratitude, positivity, and recognition—that keep morale high
  • Holding teams and individuals accountable
  • Constantly recruiting talent (“building the bench”) rather than filling positions only when they are empty

Combining research, interviews, and inspiring stories with the lessons that have earned Jamail the respect of the world’s foremost corporations including CISCO, FedEx, Sprint, the U.S. Army, and State Farm; The Leadership Playbook will dominate the category for years to come.

Dina Simon

Make Unstoppable Simple

Being unstoppable doesn’t mean you are never blocked or stuck on your way through life. It means you need to figure out how to break through life’s obstacles and fully live your journey. That’s the essence of Make Unstoppable Simple.  It is a creative way to problem-solve, learn to see road blocks or people with a different lens, and figure out how to move your life forward.  Many people unnecessarily suffer in silence, letting fear or panic stop them in their tracks.  The fear of failure or of having to admit you need help doesn’t need to end your dreams.  People will line up to help you if you tell them what you need and how they can help you!

Make Unstoppable Simple walks you through my life journey and shares the difficulties I have encountered along the way. The story is unique to me – but not unlike what everyone else faces.  A roadblock doesn’t need to stop you! It can be a signal that a change is needed. Use it as an opportunity to reflect on your skills and capabilities and build on that platform.  There will be times you just need some self-talk and other more serious instances when you need to call in the troops to steer you into gear.  I love to help people grow and accomplish things they never thought they could do. My hope is that Make Unstoppable Simple will serve as a springboard for you to reflect and set some actionable goals to break-through to be unstoppable and achieve whatever you want out of life – both personally and professionally.

bizcast

Lee Frederiksen

What does it take to become a well-known expert in your field — someone other practitioners and the media seek out for leadership and insight? We call these stars Visible Experts℠. And becoming one is easier than it looks.

What You Will Learn

  • The 5 levels of Visible Experts
  • How these stars earn up to 13X more and help their firms grow faster and be more profitable
  • Why and how clients them seek out
  • A step-by-step program to turn you — and others in your firm — into Visible Experts
  • How you can do it up to 5X faster than most Visible Experts
  • Tips and advice from real-world industry stars

In this research-based book, you will learn how you or your colleagues can become Visible Experts and leverage this status to drive significant new growth and profits for your firm. You will discover which tools and techniques you need to build your reputation and ascend to prominence. And you will hear from real experts from across the professional services who have climbed from obscurity to the peak of their profession — successful experts like Warren Buffet, Seth Godin, Robert Lang, and Sarah Susanka.

The Visible Expert is the essential manual for any individual or firm that is ready to take their expertise to the highest level. Based on interviews with over 130 Visible Experts and 1,028 buyers of their services, this book will take you higher, faster.

Robert Sher

Most midsized company leaders want their businesses to become mighty growth machines. Unfortunately, sometimes that growth slows, stops, or goes the other way, and their leaders don’t know why. Is it the market? Is it the product? Is it the leadership team? Is it something he or she has done wrong – an ill-conceived deal; an unrealistic strategy?

Because business consultants focus on big companies that can afford big consulting fees, and because the problems of the Fortune 500 are very different than those of midsized businesses, there have been very few books that provide relevant growth advice for midsized company leaders, or can point out where the growth-killing potholes hide.

But not anymore.

Robert Sher focuses exclusively on midsized companies. He has long been an advisor to CEOs and their teams at many midsized businesses. His new book Mighty Midsized Companies: How Leaders Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers gives readers the inside story on many highly-successful midsized companies and describes the critical factors that have powered their success. Sher has spoken to (and advised) many of the leaders of these companies, and he understands what drives midsize company growth as well as the issues can creep up to kill it.

Sher’s book is devoted to the executives who run America’s 200,000 midsized companies as well as those 370,000 businesses with 20 or more employees who are on the verge of becoming midsized. It explains how CEOs and their management teams have overcome the growth killers and instituted mechanisms for avoiding them in the future.

For leaders of midsized companies, and for people who would like to turn their smaller businesses into bigger ones, Mighty Midsized Companies is a unique and essential read.