Cagan, founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group, spoke at Intuit’s recent Create the Offering Forum, an annual event dedicated to inspiring product developers, managers and designers to create awesome products.

In his wide-ranging presentation, Cagan covered topics ranging from customer insights to analytics, and offered advice that applies to companies trying to innovate to deliver awesome products. Here is some of what he shared.

Leadership over management. “At middle management, teams desperately need true leadership,” he said. Leaders need vision. “Not a little vision, but the whole ecosystem you’re trying to create. Someone has to carry that torch.”

Know what you can’t know. “Business plans are OK,” he said, but can be ineffective for long-term product development. “You can’t know which ideas your customers are going to respond to and use. The good teams count on at least three-fourths of their ideas not working.”

Know what your customers can’t know.  Cagan urges talking to customers, with a caveat. “When you go to a home or small business, you’re not there to ask them what they want. Customers don’t know what’s possible. It’s your job to know what’s possible. I’m not suggesting that you stop talking to customers. You should test your ideas on customers.”

Discovery over roadmaps. Quarterly and annual roadmaps can inhibit discovery, Cagan said. “If you’ve got a year committed to new features, you’re not committed to discovery. You’re going through the motions.” Cagan solidly endorsed the idea of rapid iteration, urging leaders to test products within two weeks. “Never wait more than two weeks before you’re testing your idea on real customers. If you go longer than two weeks, it’s your baby. You’re too attached.”

Data over opinions: “You need to get to the point where you’re not arguing over everything. You just run a test,” he said. “You use the data to drive a decision…otherwise you’re flying blind. I don’t put a feature in if we don’t have analytics to see if it actually works.”

Outcome over output: “Focus on outcome, not output,” he said. “You can be a crummy team using very good processes. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about results.”

Collaboration over consensus; small co-located durable teams. “It is not about consensus. (When) everybody’s trying to accommodate everybody, it causes the wrong results and the wrong response,” he said.

In addition, Cagan endorsed collaboration among small, co-located teams. “Co-location means a product manager, product designer and engineers are this close. We’re going to lunch together, hanging out together. We don’t need meetings. We look at the screen and see. It’s a different dynamic. Co-located teams are better than distributed teams.”

Culture over process.  Regimented process can undermine innovation, Cagan said. “You cannot have that mindset. It’s not about process. It’s about culture. (Process) creates a mindset, a bureaucracy. The gauntlet you have to run is crazy.”

Photo: Intuit founder Scott Cook (left) and Marty Cagan on stage at Intuit’s annual Create the Offering Forum.

Get a first-hand look as Ilana and Gonzalo Ben-Ari, founders of the Toronto-based company 21 Toys, explain how QuickBooks Online has helped them change education with toys:

The founders of three of the tech world’s hottest startups joined Marc Andreessen, inventor-turned-investor, to discuss what it takes to create “awesome” in a rapidly evolving world. Their wide-ranging discussion was part of Intuit’s annual Create the Offering Forum, the company’s annual event dedicated to inspiring product developers, managers and designers to create awesome products.

The panelists included:

• Andreessen – Moderator and cofounder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Helped create the breakthrough Mosaic browser, which became popularly known as the Netscape Navigator. Company invested in more than 150 startups, including three that shared the stage with him.
• Chris Wanstrath – Cofounder of San Francisco-based GitHub. Company is a repository for developers of open source software, or as Andreessen said, “the place where code lives.” Named by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies of 2013.
• Justin Rosenstein – CEO and cofounder of Asana. Created a task-management tool designed to simplify workflows with a goal toward eliminating email. Cofounder is Dustin Moskovitz, who also was a cofounder of Facebook.
• Alfred Chuang – CEO and founder of Magnet Systems. Created a system to help enterprise IT departments develop business apps for mobile devices. Former chairman, president, CEO and the “A” in BEA Systems.

Andreessen’s firm has invested millions of dollars in these startups, and he called them the best of a new generation of companies. “One of the great things about being a venture capitalist is going out and finding the guys who kicked our ass,” he said. Here’s a summary of their discussion.

On what they do:

Chuang was “laughed out of the room” several years ago when he predicted apps would one day run on the Web. “Now when I say 100 percent of your apps will run on mobile and in the cloud, they say ‘You’re right.’

“I happen to do stuff that nobody else likes to do. I’m in a strange business. I don’t get feedback or requirements from end users. I have to invent it. You have to invent on behalf of users. This is fun.”

Rosenstein: “Think about how much time you spend doing work, rather than work about work…What would it look like if you could understand what was going on and understand what was going on all the time.

“In the old days it was about building something that people tolerated and met the CIO’s checklist, rather than building something that users love.” The challenge, he said is straightforward: “How do we build software that people don’t just tolerate? How do we build software that they love?”

Wanstrath: GitHub began as an informal effort to collaborate on open source software. “All we wanted to do was work on open source software together. We were doing a lot of work about work,” he said.

The company grew from 1 million users in 2011 to more than 3 million users today, with more than 5 million software repositories for projects large and small. The key, he said, is communicating with customers.

“We hang out with them a lot. We do these things called drinkups all over the world. It sounds like a fun excuse to drink a lot of beer and it usually is. But you get the most important product feedback from someone who only has a few seconds to tell you what they think.”

On whether to ask customers what they want, or create it and let them decide:

Chuang: If you want to make a fundamental platform shift, to go from a dumbphone to a smartphone, you can’t ask the user for feedback, because they don’t know the shift. For me to ask users, they’re going to look at me with a blank stare. User testing doesn’t play a role until later. They’re blindfolded until it comes out.”

Rosenstein: “You have to understand what users want. They will phrase it in terms of a feature. Your job as a product designer is to look through that. What’s the deeper want? We don’t do what they ask for, we do what we think they want.  Balance is one of the core values of Asana. Either extreme will lead you to a bad place.”

Wanstrath: “We like to start with something our people came up with and iterate until we come up with something people really like. We’ll test it with designers and employees. We try to iterate and get it out there and see what people think about it.

On the most impressive company in terms of product design, with the exception of Apple:

Wanstrath:  “Amazon, because they keep going into new businesses and getting new customers — things that are completely different from their core. They started selling books online and they basically brought the cloud to the mainstream. That’s super impressive and a lot harder to do than it looks.”

Rosenstein: “Facebook. They amassed a great team, and they keep launching more and more functionality that does more and more over time. It has a huge wellspring of functionality.”

Chuang: “Tesla. The internal combustion engine is ending. Every aspect is so out there, yet they were able to get the traction they need. They’re innovating, inventing and grinding to be successful.”

Photo (left to right): Marc Andreessen, Chris Wanstrath, Alfred Chuang and Justin Rosenstein at Intuit’s annual Create the Offering Forum.

By day, Tan is a principle information designer at Intuit, working on QuickBooks Online. On Thursday nights – and in a lot of time in between – she becomes “Tanster,” running OfficeTally.com, the largest fan site for the fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company. The site has been viewed more than 76 million times, currently averaging 30,000 page views a day.

She’s been at it since 2006, and her efforts captured the attention of the show’s cast and crew, gaining their friendship, earning trips to the set and appearing in a cameo role in one episode. She joined the Dunder Mifflin gang in a recent farewell party in Scranton, Pa., and just may have a speaking role in the show’s finale, which airs May 16. You’ll have to watch to find out.

With the comedy ending and Dunder Mifflin closing its doors after nine seasons and some 200 episodes, we asked Tanster to reflect on her unexpected rise to the top, the future of OfficeTally and the wrap party in Scranton, which she called “an all-day affair.” (That’s what she said!) Here’s more of what Tanster said.

How did OfficeTally get started?

I started in 2006, during Season 2. Back then, MySpace was a big social media presence, and several of “The Office” cast, including B.J. Novak, Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, and Kate Flannery, had accounts there. I started writing them, asking them questions, telling them about my site, and it grew from there.

I work on it around three hours a day, every day. By the time the series finale airs, I estimate I will have spent over 10,000 hours working on the site!

What’s been some of the highlights?

I have visited “The Office” set six times, made a cameo appearance in Season 5′s “Company Picnic” episode and moderated a writers’ panel at Paley Center in Los Angeles. I’ve rallied the fanbase with a petition to supersize “The Office” finale, collecting over 20,000 signatures, which hopefully led NBC to give the show an extra 15 minutes.

What was it like at the filming of the finale?

I watched the filming of the series finale, and actually shot a scene myself! I memorized a whopping seven lines, and halfway through the filming, the lines were rewritten; I had to memorize the new lines on the spot. It was a little nerve wracking but very exciting! I can’t say too much about my scene, except to say that after every take, my eyes would well up. There’s no guarantee that my scene will make it into the final version of the episode, but hopefully it will be on the Season 9 DVD. And if I make it on the air, I get in the credits!

Any spoilers you can share with us?

There are quite a few guest stars that longtime fans will appreciate seeing (and no, I’m not talking about Steve Carell.) And there’s a wedding!

What was it like being at the wrap party in Scranton?

Exciting and emotional. It was an all-day affair. Twelve cast members attended, as well as producers, writers and staff. I was embedded with them for the weekend, which meant I was basically part of their entourage and tagged along wherever they went. It was absolutely fantastic. The fan response to the cast being there was insane. Kind of like the second coming of the Beatles! I felt like a rock star as well. Only in Scranton do people ask me for my autograph and photo!

What were the highlights for you?

Two moments stood out. Producer Steve Burgess presented me with a Dundie for “Best Office Fan Site.” And Jenna Fischer, aka Pam Beesly Halpert, introduced me to the crowd at the main farewell celebration! I didn’t know that either of those things would happen, so I was completely vaklempt! Just an amazing experience.

Do you plan to watch the finale? Will you host a big viewing party?

While many of my friends here at Intuit insist I throw a party, that’s going to be one of the biggest work nights for OfficeTally. I’ll probably do what I always do every Thursday night – sit excitedly in front of my home computer starting at around 6 p.m. Pacific time, waiting for East Coast comments to come in for moderation. Then once the show airs on the West coast, I’ll manually transcribe quotes from the episode.

What will happen to OfficeTally when the show is over? Do you plan to continue following The Office?

OfficeTally will live on. I won’t work on it with the same intensity as I have been for the past seven years, but there is still content that I’d like to post, stuff that I hope longtime fans will appreciate. And the fans love following the cast members, so I’ll still report on what they’re up to.

Will you find another show to blog about?

I think after “The Office” ends, I will cry every day for two weeks, and then take a long vacation far away from my computer. Then I’ll figure out my next online project. Got any ideas? It’s possible that I will blog about another show. But I would have to love it as much as I love “The Office.” So it’s possible, but not likely.

What has OfficeTally and “The Office” meant to you?

I started OfficeTally to simply learn about how to blog. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would turn into such a fan resource. And the more traffic it got, the more determined I was to make it the best fansite I could. It’s been a joy and an honor. “The Office” is a show that comes around once in a lifetime. I first fell in love with the show, and then I fell in love with the people who make the show. I have such admiration and respect for the cast, the producers, the writers and the crew, all of whom have made me feel so welcome and part of “The Office” family. I completely lucked out and words will never be able to express how grateful I am for this experience.

 Photos: Jennie Tan, Intuit employee and blogger for OfficeTally.com (top right); Jennie Tan gets a hug from Jenna Fischer of “The Office.”

Fraser is a pioneer in the field of design as well as a serial entrepreneur. She was cofounder and CEO of Adaptive Path, focusing on design as strategy. Today she is the CEO of LUXr and is writing the book on lean design.

Fraser talked to Intuit employees about how designing for emotion and connecting the dots between people, methodology and outcome can make Lean Startup efforts more effective.

What Lean Startup is not

It’s not cheap.  In fact, it has nothing to do with money at all. It’s about efficiency. In a Lean Startup context, when someone invents the next new thing there is uncertainty. Uncertainty is reduced by performing small experiments and obtaining real customer feedback. Iterations such as that reduce waste and increase efficiency.

It’s not fast. Experiments often tell that you’re wrong. Pay attention to the signs that you’re wrong, because you can get really far down the road of a bad product if you never test what you’re doing. Course corrections take time.

It’s not a shortcut. Instincts and intuition signify when engineers are right, so they push to manifest that vision as quickly as possible. That’s a shortcut. Fraser’s take is to use the learn-measure–build formula. These can be done in and order and even done backward to go forward.

Is there room for emotion in Lean Startup?

When there’s a high value placed on efficiency, it’s natural to ask where the emotion comes in. Emotions can be downright messy and inconvenient. She poses the question, “How do we design for emotional impact when everything we do is about rational experimentation?”

Her answer was a piece of cake.

June, who’s trying to find the perfect wedding cake, realizes her fiancé hates her favorite recipe. So she has him taste-test some cupcakes. He loves the cake part, but hates the pink flowers. Now June has learned something valuable, and goes back to the bakery. Cake No. 2 is still a hit in the taste department, so they’ve validated their findings. Although her fiancé loves the swirled texture on the cupcake, he still hates the color pink. So June and her baker develop a pure white, textured cake. It’s unique. It’s classy. It’s quirky. It’s interesting and they designed it together.

The search for meaning

Fraser believes designers try to inject humanity into the product to find something that means something important to somebody. The value proposition is “Where your business vision intersects with a real person in the real world and their real needs.”

“I want to design for meaning,” Fraser said. “I don’t just mean aesthetics or experience. I mean the entire role of that product in a person’s life. What does this product mean for one person? We have to look at people one at a time.”

As an example, Fraser referred to a pair of gun range headphones she bought for $10. Whether in her busy workplace, or writing her book at a coffee house, she is in constant need of quiet concentration. She tried the $300 Bose sound-cancelling headphones, but they didn’t work as well for her as the $10 ones. This is proof, to her, that the feature game – putting features into a product to meet what we think are the customer’s needs — doesn’t matter.

Get strong to get lean

Lean Startup also means throwing away everything that doesn’t help create meaning for one customer at a time. To be able to make hard decisions and step away from the feature game, means having a strong team.

“Most of your decisions as a team will be wrong,” Fraser said. “It takes resilience to keep coming back from wrong decisions. But flexible teams can solve almost any problem. Teams must start with courage, because it takes courage to get to effective communication, trust, simplicity, solutions, feedback and continuous improvement.”

It makes the repeated cycle of “fail fail fail, succeed” much easier to bear.

Along with this assertion, Fraser challenges: “How can we together build something greater than ourselves that has meaning for one person?”

Photo: Janice Fraser of LUXr discusses Lean Startup at Intuit’s Create the Offering Forum.

But for the first time in 60 years, something on her taxes stumped Hopp. Looking for help, she attended a local tax a ssistance event, hopeful that experts there could answer her question. She wasn’t alone; 105 other lower-income taxpayers joined her to have their taxes prepared for free at an event sponsored by the Computer & Communications Industry Association at the Mountain View public library.

The event was one of 10 held across California where Intuit employees and TurboTax experts volunteered their time to assist and support those needing a little help with taxes. Similar events were held at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites in Tucson, Plano, Texas and Fredericksburg, Va.  The volunteers sat side-by-side with taxpayers, helping them complete returns with TurboTax Freedom Edition, which is offered through the Internal Revenue Service’s Free File program.

Hopp was impressed with the Intuit volunteer who helped her. “He was just delightful and understanding,” she said. “He had a big smile, and I thought – ‘Oh, is he ever eager to help!’” Hopp didn’t recognize the man, but that “big smile” is well known in the hallways of Intuit – it belongs to the CEO, Brad Smith.

Smith is no tax novice. He ran Intuit’s TurboTax unit before becoming CEO. But it was his first time volunteering at a tax assistance event. He spent more than two hours helping Hopp prepare and e-file her taxes, never letting on who he was. When Hopp eventually found out, she was delighted. “Oh really!” she said. “He was very, very positive. He exuded happiness.”Hopp may not have known the CEO was there, but others did. Keith Kruger, a college student and Desert Storm veteran, heard the buzz. “That’s awesome!” Kruger said.  “I believe the leader should be down in the trenches, too.”

While taxpayers were excited that Smith was there, the event has wide support across Intuit and communities around the country.

“People come for a variety of reasons,” said Susan Mason, director of the Intuit Financial Freedom Foundation, the group that leads the company’s tax philanthropy efforts. “Some are like Lois, who were very comfortable and set in their ways, but just need a little help. Others may be uncertain about filing taxes for the first time, or be reluctant to use technology.

“Whatever their needs, it’s rewarding to meet them, work with them and watch their confidence grow as they prepare their taxes, e-file and realize, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ And when they get a refund they didn’t expect, the look on their face is priceless.”

A perfect example of that: Gabriel Ricci, a retiree from Los Altos. He came to the tax event expecting to owe a few hundred dollars to Uncle Sam. But TurboTax experts found a tax credit that Ricci qualified for. That, coupled with some deductions, added up to a $3,100 refund.  “That’s a lot of money for me,” said Ricci.  “I’m going to take some of that money and do something special for my daughter.”

Laura Angeles, a part-time office assistant, had a CPA offer to do her taxes for $140. But she couldn’t afford it. So Angeles was relieved to learn about the free tax event.  And more good news for her: she’s getting an $1,100 refund.  “I’m so glad,” said Angeles. “I’m going to save it for emergencies.”

These stories are just a handful of hundreds that demonstrate the impact these tax events have on people’s lives.

“These events help those who need it most – people who want to save every dollar they can, rather than hand it over to a paid tax preparer,” said Mason. “That’s the beauty of Free File and the TurboTax Freedom Edition. It gives people the ability to prepare and file their taxes themselves, keep their hard-earned money, and get the refund they deserve.”

As for Lois Hopp, she may finally put away her pencil and calculator. She said she’ll likely come back next year. “I’m going to show up and say – I have to have Brad help me!” said Hopp.  “I’m kidding.  I really did appreciate the help, whether it was the CEO or not.”

Photo: Intuit CEO Brad Smith helps Lois Hopp prepare and file her taxes.

Defining what awesome means, however, can be difficult. In fact, awesome can be just as diverse as, well, the products and services we use every day.

At Intuit’s annual Create the Offering Forum, product development, product management, and experience design employees gathered to learn from each other and a host of industry experts on what it takes to deliver awesome.

Intuit CEO Brad Smith says an awesome product experience is not just seen, it’s felt. “Seeing isn’t enough,” he says. “We have to learn what awesome feels like. Finding a personal, emotional impact is what is core to delivering awesome product experiences.”

Smith adds that delivering “awesome” requires three things:

• Benefit: Nails why “I hired the product” and solves a “latent need,” something the customer may not even recognize or be able to describe.
• Ease:  Delivers effortless to use, with little to no data entry; personalized for me, and works with other products I use.
• Positive emotion: Inspires an emotion, such as confidence or overcoming a fear. For example, a new employer celebrates doing payroll for the first time.

Awesome = love 

Alan Tifford, lead designer in Intuit’s Consumer Group and one of the masterminds behind the creation of SnapTax, also shared his take on four tips to be awesome.

• Amaze with the basics: If you’re opening up an ice cream shop, it makes sense to start with flavors that people typically love, such as chocolate or vanilla. Nail the basics before you move on.
• Set the bar: Don’t just aim to be the best in your category. Aim to be the best and an example to be followed across industries.  
• Give love to get love: Build and nurture relationships with your customers just as you would your personal relationships.
• Just be awesome: Believe in yourself and what you’re creating at all times. You may not always know how you’re going to deliver against a goal or challenge, but you can always be awesome.

Check back next week, we’ll share more “awesome” insights from industry experts Marc Andreessen, Marty Cagan and Janice Fraser.

]]> http://network.intuit.com/2013/05/10/how-to-create-a-great-customer-experience/feed/ 1 http://network.intuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Create-Awesome-120x90.png http://network.intuit.com/2013/05/10/simplify-the-business-of-life/ http://network.intuit.com/2013/05/10/simplify-the-business-of-life/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 16:52:15 +0000 Troy Marcyes http://network.intuit.com/?p=10075 Have you ever thought about using QuickBooks Online to run your business? Is having 24/7 access to your financials important? Are you interested in how other small business around the world are using technology to simplify their lives?

Get a first-hand look into the positive impacts QuickBooks is making through personal stories shared by small business owners from Canada, the UK, India, Singapore, Australia and the Philippines.

Watch the first of four inspiring videos on how small business owners from various countries around the globe share how QuickBooks Online has made a lasting impact on their lives and their businesses. See for yourself how QuickBooks Online is giving business owners the time, clarity and confidence to succeed in their greatest passions.

And here is the full version:

“Each of us in one way or another has a blind spot in our lives,” said Rizzi, who taught school and directed educational programs in New York before losing his sight. “When I first came to be blind, I found that I was forever running into literal and virtual walls. They were dead ends that blocked my assimilation into the blind community and hindered my participation in mainstream society. Without my sight, not only did the world become invisible to me, but I learned how it felt to be unseen.”

Today is the second annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Ted Drake, an Intuit staff software accessibility engineer, says this day is an opportunity for each of us to experience our world with a different ability level.

At Intuit, teams across the company have been working hard to build accessible products for people like Rizzi. Here are a few of the changes made in the last year.

QuickBooks Desktop accessibility

Dixie Sanderson was an accountant for 15 years. She owned a strong bookkeeping business in Guilford, Conn., for independent contractors. This ended in May 2004 when a reaction to prescription medicine caused her to go blind. Sanderson was unable to continue working with QuickBooks; she had to dissolve her business and go on disability. The QuickBooks accessibility team began working this year to help her, and other blind accountants, go back to work.

Here’s more on Sanderson’s journey and a transcript.

Rizzi’s engineers at My Blind Spot are working with the QuickBooks team to make content available to screen reader users. The project also includes scripting for the popular JAWS screen reader to enhance usability. This project is moving rapidly and Sanderson is already able to navigate parts of QuickBooks 2013 as a beta tester.

Accessibility for banking customers

Recent legal activity in the banking industry has made accessibility a key focus. A growing number of  Intuit Financial Services customers are asking whether Intuit’s digital banking offerings are fully accessible and compliant with ADA regulations. IFS has worked diligently since 2012 to make their most frequently used online banking pages easy to use for people of all abilities. These include the home page, history page, bill pay and transfers pages.

The IFS mobile applications are built on platforms that have built-in accessibility tools. IFS teams are focused on ensuring the most frequently used tasks in mobile banking are also accessible and they continue to apply accessibility requirements as they enhance mobile functionality.

Mobile apps

• Weave, the task managing app, will be featured at the m-enabling conference  in Washington, D.C. in June. The presentation will cover how family members can use Weave to arrange schedules, shopping lists, budgets, and facilitate communication between care givers.
• GoPayment is currently the only accessible solution for mobile payments. GoPayment’s use of the Mophie card scanner for iPhone 4 bypasses the headphone jack needed for screen readers. The latest version of GoPayment allows users to read credit cards via the phone’s camera.

TurboTax

• The TurboTax team is working to create a new generation of the popular TurboTax Online product. The beta version works very well with screen readers and may be the first to achieve full accessibility compliance. This is especially important as H&R Block was recently sued for the inaccessibility of their online product.
• TurboTax added closed captioning to  more than 300 videos on YouTube. Closed captioning allows deaf people to experience the videos, and is helpful for those who speak English as a second language and for those who watch the clips with their audio turned off. Google can index the caption track for better search results.

In addition, Intuit’s Central Marketing team has also been making accessibility a key element of its redesign on sites including Intuit.com and other small business pages.

Learning, first hand

You can participate in Accessibility Day events being held around the world, online or at your desk:

1. Keyboard accessibility is critical for those with vision and physical disabilities. Find out how a website works without a mouse. Use a rubber band to make a fist around a pencil. Use the pencil tip to navigate your keyboard. The rubber band will force your hand into an uncomfortable position, which shows what it’s like to have arthritis or cerebral palsy.
2. Experience dyslexia: http://webaim.org/simulations/dyslexia
3. Turn off the sound on your computer and watch these videos on Intuit’s YouTube channels. It won’t take long before you appreciate TurboTax’s use of closed captions.

• Intuit Careers: http://www.youtube.com/user/intuitcareers
• QuickBooks: http://www.youtube.com/user/IntuitQuickBooks
• Intuit Small Business: http://www.youtube.com/user/IntuitSmallBusiness
• TurboTax: http://www.youtube.com/user/TurboTax

 Make a difference with your products today

• Caption one of your videos with Amara. The caption track can easily be added to YouTube.
• Screen readers speak many languages; define your site’s language to make the screen reader use the correct voice. This is as simple as adding lang=”en” to your site’s <html> tag [http://nimbupani.com/declaring-languages-in-html-5.html].
• Use Android’s Lint tool to detect accessibility errors on your mobile applications.
• The Worldspace automated testing tool was recently updated. Visit it today to download the latest version of the FireEyes browser extension.

U.S. consumers are spending again! After the historic spending lows of the 2008 recession, consumers are now spending about nine percent more than they did just four years ago. Gasoline, gift and healthcare spending have grown significantly, and the biggest spenders are men.

Those are just a few of the findings of the new Intuit Consumer Spending Index, which are from the actual, nearly real-time data anonymized and aggregated from Mint.com, Intuit’s leading online and mobile personal finance software. Overlaid with demographic information including age, gender, income and location (provided by Mint.com users if they so choose), this is the first report to accurately reflect the average American household’s spending – across ages and income levels, in every state – in a way that tracks to the current population.

National view
The Intuit Consumer Spending Index tracks national spending averages from January 2009 to April 2013. The data shows that Americans are rebounding – with household spending up to approximately $4,220 per month in 2013 from $3,870 in 2009 (comparing first quarter of each calendar year).

State-by-state view
The Intuit Consumer Spending Index tracks spending across all 50 states, shedding light on the impact that a person’s location has on his or her spending habits. Since January 2009, most states have seen an increase in spending – with some rising at a faster rate than others.

Arkansas and the District of Columbia saw the most dramatic recoveries – up 34 and 30 percent – with D.C. also spending the most per household this year ($5,144 a month).

North Carolina and South Carolina, by contrast, each saw spending decrease slightly, by three percent each.

Diving into The Data

Category View
The index tracks spending in these 20 categories:

• Alcohol
• Apparel
• Business
• Education
• Entertainment
• Fees
• Restaurants
• Gasoline
• General Shopping
• Gifts/Charity
• Groceries
• Healthcare
• Household
• Life Insurance
• Personal Care
• Public Transportation
• Reading
• Shelter
• Bills & Utilities
• Vehicle

Some Highlights Revealed:

• Gourmet goes mainstream: Grocery spending has increased by 17 percent, due in part to the price of premium groceries. For example, Californians are spending nearly 20 percent more at premium grocers like Whole Foods Market, while they’ve pulled back by three percent at more general grocers.
• No more reservations about restaurants: Restaurant spending has also increased, up 11 percent, echoing what Mint.com users say: Eating out is the first area they cut when they want to save money. The recovery sends them back out, especially those under 36, who are spending 40 percent more now.
• Wallets wide open at the pump: Gasoline is one of the fastest-growing categories, close to doubling in the time examined. The average American household spent $198 a month on gas in the first quarter of 2013, compared to $110 a month in the same time period in 2009. Continued high prices at the pump are the leading cause; the cost of crude oil has doubled from 2009 to 2013

Looking at how gas spending breaks down across state lines, Wyoming and Iowa were the hardest hit, with spending nearly tripling. On the other hand, Pennsylvania’s gas spending only increased 31 percent.

• Healthy, not  wealthy: Healthcare spending has increased at one of the fastest rates since 2009, with average increases more than 30 percent. While older people (41-55) spend more than $300 each month, younger people saw the most dramatic increase. Their spending increased by more than 40 percent since the first quarter of 2009. For example, 26-31 year olds’ healthcare spending rose from $179 a month in the first quarter of 2009 to $252 a month so far this year.

• Gender gap: Men consistently spend $600 to $700 more a month than women. Where? In the first three months of 2013, men spent more on alcohol (37 percent), entertainment (27 percent), eating out (29 percent), gas (19 percent) and overall shopping (six percent). However, women spent 21 percent more on clothing and apparel.

• Growth in giving: Though overall spending has increased nine percent, a disproportionate amount of that is in gift giving and charitable donations, where Americans have become 47 percent more generous since 2009.

Behind the Numbers
The Intuit Consumer Spending Index is based on anonymized, non-identifiable aggregated data from the more than 2 million Mint.com users who have opted to provide demographic information including age, gender, income and location. This is a subset of the nearly 13 million people who use the personal finance software. The data has been analyzed and normalized to create a statistically relevant view that better represents the average American household.

The index measures spending habits from January 2009 to April 2013, reporting the average amount spent per account each month, across various spending and demographic categories. It allocates spending into 20 sub-categories, such as groceries, restaurants, gas and others, to show how consumers spend, where they cut when times are tough, and how they have rebounded with the economy. Spending patterns are also tracked by age, location, income and gender to measure the impact that demographic factors have on an individual’s spending habits.

The data tracks all consumer expenditures while excluding transactions such as transfers between financial accounts, withdrawals, deposits, income, such as paychecks or investment-related income (including stock and rental properties, etc.) or taxes. Cash purchases are also not captured in the index, as they are not automatically tracked in Mint.com.

The methodology for creating the index can be found here and FAQ here.

Via HireSmartNow.com, small businesses will have access to:

• Video sessions from experts providing advice on hiring, firing and everything in between.
• Three months free of Intuit Online Payroll, from the No. 1 payroll provider with over one million small business customers.
• Step-by-step video tutorials to help small businesses get started on offerings.

Hear what small businesses just like you have learned about hiring smart and some sage advice from Bill Rancic and best-selling author Rhonda Abrams.

And later this month, we’ll profile the small business story of Chris Yamashita, owner and manager of Brown Chicken Brown Cow in Campbell, California. We’ll share Yamashita’s journey on starting and launching a restaurant.

Take for instance Cook’s insights on hiring and reference checks. He asks, “Among all  of the people you’ve seen in this position, on a zero to ten scale, where would this person rank?” They go, “Seven.” Cook says, “Why isn’t this person a nine or a ten?” And then you’ll finally start learning about what this person really thinks.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, these tips can be a valuable resource for any leader.

Do you have a successful leadership lesson to share? Let us know in the comments below.

In 2012, My New Red Shoes served 4,253 school-aged children in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Alameda counties. Learn more about how you make a difference here.

Recently Jennifer Tanabe and I went to visit Jennifer Yeagley and Becca Moos from My New Red Shoes and interviewed them about their journey. And we captured the story for you to view. Enjoy!

To learn more about My New Red Shoes check out this article.

QuickBooks Benefits:
• Helps company grow exponentially with greater efficiency in the office.
• Reduces time spent entering financial data with automated imports.
• Provides analysis for strategizing on sales and marketing, such as forecasting.
• Enables multiple team players in various locations to work off the same file in multi-user function.
• Supports capability to export to Excel allows for financial analysis in parallel software programs.

When eco mom Sandra Harris saw how much trash was generated at lunchtime and the excessive amount of plastics used, she knew it was time to do something to solve this problem. She realized that lunch waste was a burden to our planet and a health threat to our children.

Plastics are made from petroleum – and they often contain unhealthy toxins like BPA and other chemicals. Four years later, this seed of an idea has grown into a thriving eco-friendly lunchware business managed by operations director Faryn Davis and several other team members.

ECOlunchbox® specializes in providing reusable stainless steel bento boxes, plastic-free food containers, artisan lunchbags, napkins and other waste-free lunch accessories.

With several part-time team members working both in-house as well as remotely, growing cloud technology and efficient Intuit software plays a big part in successfully managing the company while keeping overhead to a bare minimum.

Easy to Launch with QuickBooks

In order to bring Sandra’s vision from dream to reality, ECOlunchbox’s management team knew from the beginning it needed a user-friendly accounting system and its first choice was QuickBooks.

“QuickBooks is a very user-friendly application,” said Faryn Davis, who is the director of operations for ECOlunchbox. “I had learned to use the software assisting my mother in her small business while I was in high school.”

The company designs products at their headquarters in Lafayette, California in the San Francisco East Bay and works with artisan manufacturers in India and Thailand.

“Now that the business is growing, we keep track of all our customers, their payment status, vendor payments, manufacturers, and associated purchase orders in QuickBooks Pro,” she said. “It’s very user friendly for me to use as well as the owner who did not previously have experience with bookkeeping software systems.”

Green Company Tracks Greenbacks

Going green is obviously a top priority for a company like ECOlunchbox specializing in eco-friendly products. But managing the bottom line – green, like money! – is even more important in order for the company to optimize cash flow and maintain stock levels of their popular products.

It’s been hard for the boot-strapping company to keep up with demand its products, especially during back to school and other peak shopping periods. But with the tools available in QuickBooks, Faryn says managing the business has been a piece of cake.

“I use multiple reports in QuickBooks to forecast our production needs for the next 12 months,” she said. “The ‘Sales by Item’ report is the tool I use most to plan our orders.”

Faryn finds the electronic records in QuickBooks also makes calculations easier, especially for reviewing purchase orders.

“We email our purchase orders to our suppliers directly from Quickbooks,” she said. “It’s very easy to go through old ones to log payments applied, check when we’ll be receiving shipments and calculate lead manufacturing times on different products.”

A Flexible Management System

At one point, their number one seller, the ECOlunchbox > Three-in-One stainless steel bento box, was so popular that they had customers on a waiting list. Faryn used QuickBooks to make sure she could minimize their wait time and maximize organization.

“I can easily see in QuickBooks who ordered what first, that way I can make sure people are getting served on a first-come, first-served basis,” she explained. “I can hold on to items to make sure that people on backorder get them first while I continue to place orders for future shipments.”

If there are any changes in the orders that arrive, Faryn makes quick work of them by easily correcting errors.

“Our fulfillment center receives the goods, counts them, then lets me know if there were any discrepancies,” she said. “It’s very easy for me to go into QuickBooks and modify the purchase order to the correct amount if I need to. I never have to worry that our payments don’t match up to what we received.”

Automated Imports Save Time

For online sales, the small business relies on Yahoo Small Business Merchant to ensure a secure, user-friendly online shopping experience for their customers.

“Yahoo Merchant takes care of credit card processing, and holds our item information on our website,” she said. “We export all the order information into an Excel spreadsheet then import that spreadsheet into QuickBooks to update the sales information.”

The automatic import of information is a huge time saver for the company.

“All those items are automatically broken out by item number and customer names are merged with past orders, which makes my job so much easier,” she said. “If I had to go in and input every single order myself it would take me a week.”

More Strategy, Less Tedious Manual Labor

QuickBooks also helps Faryn analyze current sales patterns, so they know the best place to put future sales and marketing efforts.

“I created categories to track the different types of customers we have, whether they are wholesale, retail, e-tail, international, even type of store,” she said. “I check our Profit and Loss report and the Balance Sheet to see how many orders are coming in through each customer type.”

“We look at those to help us know where we should be putting our efforts next – maybe more direct-to-consumer, international e-tailers, or certain types of wholesalers. It’s really helped us as we develop our sales and marketing strategies,” she said. “I’m just so grateful we can depend on QuickBooks to grow with us every step of the way!”

My knives are sharp. Eerily sharp. Wicked sharp. I tilt my butcher knife to catch the light from the stove hood and watch the edge of the blade disappear into what looks like infinity.

Yes. These are some seriously sharp knives.

“Feeling my way toward infinity” is in fact what Eliot Smith calls his process of sharpening knives, a mindful and absorbing ritual that involves progressively finer sanding belts. As the self-annointed Patron Saint of Knives, it is Smith’s sacred duty to restore brilliance and function to the abused, the neglected, the dull and the lost.

Smith runs his knife-sharpening small business from his home in Vancouver, Wash. For a very reasonable fee, he makes kitchen knives, pocket knives, loppers, scissors or just about anything meant to separate anything from anything else sharp enough to do what it’s supposed to.

My awe and amazement of Smith’s metallic ministrations began before I even opened the paper-wrapped bundle I’d picked up from his secure lockers. The care with which Smith had taken to protect what he knew was fine work – and to protect my fingers – was evident. I peeled off the embossed seal, snipped the colorful raffia twine, and gently pulled on fresh green plastic wrap. The anticipation was killing me. Then they were before me, my beautiful kitchen tools.

I knew they were sharp by the supernatural glow along the edge. I could follow their renewed curves with my eye. Then I proceeded to scare the heck out of myself by test-shredding the slick paper they all came wrapped in. Wow!

At Intuit, we call these “moments of customer delight.” I was delighted. And thrilled, inspired, and grateful! What was it about this experience that made it so special?

Smith’s excellent service intersected with my values in ways that were meaningful to me. My parents taught my brother and I a healthy respect for tools and knives. They taught us to value attention to detail, visible results, a solid work ethic and quality workmanship. I watched Smith at work in a video well before I wrapped these extensions of myself in a dishtowel. As video Smith demonstrated his mastery and prepared a butcher knife for delivery, I thought, “This is a man who takes pride in his work. I want to do business with him.”

My instincts were correct. Once unwrapped, one blade whispered through mushrooms, another quickly reduced potatoes down to hash. I felt a tremor of anticipation as I pulled the big oak-handled French chef from its slot. It made quick work of one of the thickest, toughest carrots ever destined for a pot pie. It seemed a sin to return its flashing beauty to the dim interior of the wooden knife block.

Smith has just made my life easier, because these knives do some of my work for me. How can I, as an Intuit employee, contribute to the creation of tools as fine, sharp and simple as this for our small business customers? Smith and his wife have been using TurboTax for years. Now they are considering using QuickBooks for their business accounting. I want Smith to be as thrilled to use QuickBooks as I am to use the knives he sharpened for me.

Knowing what using these tools feels like –- joy! delight! -– is a powerful motivator. I will seek to find the intersection of need, value, and delight in my own day to day work.

Thank you, Patron Saint of Knives. I’m not just a fan on Facebook….I am now a believer.

Photos: Top: Patron Saint of Knives Eliot Smith uses a sanding belt to refresh a blade edge. Middle: Vintage knives restored to full function. Bottom: Smith creates the razor’s edge that razors are known for.

Campbell, the former Columbia University football coach, now mentors Silicon Valley startups and successes. Still known as “Coach,” he rarely speaks publicly, even among the many companies he works with. And the list is impressive, including Intuit, where he is chairman of the board, and Apple, where he serves on the board of directors and was a confidante of founder Steve Jobs.

Campbell broke the silence on April 12, speaking candidly with Intuit CEO Brad Smith, who hosted the first of a series of discussions with industry and influential thought leaders. The opening topic: a leader’s role in creating awesome products and experiences. The following summarizes Campbell’s thoughts.

The awesome product that blew his socks off:

I’m Apple biased. The iPhone is one of the greatest breakthroughs ever. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it – even as images on a screen. It was a blowaway. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. It transformed everything I did. This became a computer in your pocket. I have not been as wowed by anything I’ve seen since. Everybody’s out there trying to copy it.

What it takes to create great products:

What you need more than anything is great people. The world today is one of product creation. We have to keep thinking that that comes from engineers… (In Silicon Valley) there’s a premium on engineers who can understand the use of technology and know how to apply it. Great products come from great engineers. You need product managers to guide them.

The role of product managers:

We need product managers. Jack (Dorsey, creator of Twitter and founder of Square) calls product managers “editors.” There’s a role for product managers to guide the evolution of technology. You learn that the world is about great products. A marketing person would not have created the Macintosh. But a good marketing person would have made it better.

How product managers should prioritize time and coach:

Spend a lot of time with your chief engineer. When you’re a product manager, you’re writing down dates and listing things. That can be done in the last 10 minutes of your day. You ought to be working with an engineer all the time, figuring out what features go in and what tradeoffs have to be made. Pay attention to sales and marketing, but if you’re not spending 80 percent of your time with engineering, you’re not spending your time right.

How product managers can get great products created:

If you’re not an engineer in Silicon Valley, then you have to drive product excellence. There are three ways to look at it.

• Look at current products we have and make them better. Make it faster, tighter, smaller. Or improve functionality.
• Take the (existing) product and rethink it. Solve the same problem in a different way. Mint solved the same problem as Quicken in a new and different way.
• Start from scratch. Spend 10 percent of your time on new ideas. What things are in categories that we know but haven’t approached before?

Best new product on the horizon:

The Nest thermostat. You’d think something as boring as a thermostat in the house would be something that people would yawn at and not be a breakthrough. I was surprised. It’s really expanded the category. You can look for more from them.

Why he continues working with Intuit, after serving as president and CEO:

When I met (founder) Scott Cook, he was looking for someone more visionary. And after I worked with him for some period of time, I felt like, it was his company…it’s still his company. He’s still our visionary leader. Somebody that we look at almost iconically. How do you not want to help Scott?

Once you (Brad) came in, you exhibited the values that you have. You care deeply about people. You care deeply about products. People and products are what we’re all about here. To see the way you run the company – the clarity of your direction, the transparency of where we are in everything that we do – with Scott kind of guiding us from a heart and soul perspective, how do you not want to stay here?

I like doing what I’m doing…and I never wanted to go another place. My independence is important to me. And my devotion to Intuit is important to me.

Here’s the entire broadcast:

Photo: An overflow crowd watches Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell discuss awesome product development and leadership in an inaugural event hosted by President Brad Smith.

When Vicki Amon-Higa was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, she turned to the animals she raised at home for comfort – horses, goats and rabbits, just to name a few.

“For me, the animals were always there,” said Vicki. “The animals put me on solid ground. They just want to give love.”

Fighting the disease, Vicki endured a double mastectomy and chemotherapy and received strong support from friends at Intuit, where she led process excellence teams. In the end, she beat her cancer. But it changed her. Vicki had a new outlook on life.

“I think I let small stuff get in my way,” said Vicki. “I was trying to prove things. The cancer got me to realize that all the small stuff doesn’t really matter. You only have one life. You have to figure out what’s important to you.” And to Vicki, that was children and animals.

Fast forward to 2009, when Vicki and her family launched Animal Assisted Happiness, a place where children with special needs can find happiness by getting up close and personal with animals. Vicki invited children into her Los Altos, Calif., home, and allowed them to bond with the same animals that had helped her heal.

“We’ve had many kids come over, and they won’t communicate with me,” said Vicki. “But they will be intent on the animal, and start talking to them, and doing things with them. And through that, they start engaging with me.”

AAH soon outgrew Vicki’s home. So two years ago they moved the animals to a farm in rural Gilroy, about 50 miles south of the bustling Silicon Valley. AAH now has 55 animals and works closely with a dozen Bay Area schools for children with special needs.

Sometimes schools take field trips to the farm, but most often AAH shuttles the animals to schools, usually three to four days a week. And other organizations are seeking out AAH, as well. Vicki’s rolling menagerie now visits senior centers, and is scheduled to travel later this month to Moffett Field, a former naval air station, to host an event for children whose parents are deployed in the military.

Vicki and her husband, Peter, run AAH, in addition to working fulltime jobs. Until last fall, the couple funded the efforts out of their own pockets – they’ve invested more than $35,000. It’s been a stretch, but the family has made it work.
“We have a little bit of means,” said Vicki. “And we’re not taking anything away from the family, financially, in order to do this, but we’re giving back tons.”

While AAH is going strong, it faces challenges and needs help. For starters, the farm in Gilroy is too far from the schools it serves. AAH is close to securing land for a new farm in Sunnyvale, but it’ll need money to design and build it. Plus, AAH needs volunteers: people to care for the animals, clean the barn, assist school visits and help with fundraising and development. To encourage youth involvement, AAH even has an advisory board that includes middle school and high school students.

While AAH was the result of the most frightening time in Vicki’s life, it has turned out to be one of the most rewarding. And she has never looked back.
“It only takes one person to make a difference in someone’s life,” said Vicki. “Seeing these kids interact with animals – the smiles melt your heart. It helps put your life back into perspective.”

To volunteer, donate, or simply learn more about AAH, please visit www.animalassistedhappiness.org.

Photos: Top: Vicki Amon-Higa, co-founder of Animal Assisted Happiness, surveys the barn with a friendly alpaca at her Gilroy, Calif., farm. Bottom: Vicki’s daughter, Maya Higa, introduces an AAH rabbit to a visitor from a seniors center.

Things were looking pretty blue for Lesa Wallace: the economy had gone into recession, she was downsizing her once thriving handbag manufacturing business, and she no longer had the time to volunteer for a children’s charity she was very involved with, called CASA.

It was the ends from the leather bags that were sitting amongst a pile of leather scraps and buckles when she had her moment of inspiration. She would turn the scraps into stylish, quality leather bracelets, and donate 10 percent of sales to charity.

“The only real cost for the bracelets was labor, since we already had the material,” said Wallace. “I thought to myself, I can’t give my time anymore, but this is one important way I can give back to CASA. And, I can recycle high quality materials to do it.”

Buckling down to new business
Many of her traditional customers were shuttering their stores, and she needed a new channel for reaching buyers. “A friend suggested we sell directly to customers at farmers’ and artisan markets,” said Wallace. “I liked that idea right away and it gave me an opportunity to not just sell the bracelets at low cost but also talk about CASA and the work they do.”

Lesa pulled herself up by her bootstraps, designed and oversaw production for the bracelets, and brought them to market. They were an instant hit. “People loved them,” she says. “And they loved that we were giving a part of the proceeds to charity.”

Losing sales without credit cards
Without the ability to process credit cards, Lesa found that she was losing sales. “I was very limited without a mobile payment processor,” she said. “There’s a lot of foot traffic at these markets, but people don’t always carry cash.”

It was time for a mobile credit card payment processor. She researched about 10 different providers before settling on Intuit GoPayment. “I liked that we could have multiple users on one account with GoPayment,” she said. “That way we could have several salespeople working at different markets on the same account. This was a big advantage Intuit had over other processors.”

Lesa also relied on expert advice to make her decision. “I liked that GoPayment was rated very highly.”

Seamless setup for new payment system
With GoPayment, Lesa can accept credit card payments using an Apple iPad, iPhone or Android mobile phone. She also added a magnetic card reader that attaches to the smartphone, which let you process payments much faster. One salesperson uses their Android phone while she and another use their personal iPhones.

The setup for the new credit card payment method was a snap. “The packaging was very clear and concise,” she said. “All I had to do was download the app, plug it in, and I was ready to go. It was completely seamless.”

Increasing sales with GoPayment
Once she was able to accept credit cards, sales took off. “As soon as we got GoPayment, our sales grew about 30 to 40 percent,” she says. “And it’s continuing to grow, month after month.”

Lesa doesn’t worry anymore whether customers have cash on hand. “We definitely used to lose sales when we didn’t have GoPayment,” she said. Even if they say they’re going to an ATM, it’s just not the same as making the sale right then and there. GoPayment synchronizes all the payment information with QuickBooks back at the office. It makes it so simple.”

Growing the business in unexpected ways
The bracelets have not just been a hot selling item, they’ve also opened up new, unexpected opportunities.

“In the last few months, five different women have opened up new businesses with our bracelets,” she said. “They buy wholesale from us, set up a mobile payment processor themselves, sell the bracelets at their local markets, and donate a part of the proceeds to their local CASA branches. It’s opened up a whole new channel of business for us. And it’s given an opportunity to these women to earn extra income.”

Getting back to basics
For Lesa, GoPayment is an integral part of her new business model.

“We could not have achieved what we did without GoPayment,” she says. “It’s been so critical to our success.”

Lesa’s story is yet another example of turning what feels like the worst thing in the world into a fantastic new opportunity. And will she keep finding new and interesting ways to grow her company? You can bet your boots she will.

Mint will help financial institutions position themselves as trusted advisors by showing customers their entire financial picture in one place. The offering will provide free actionable advice on how to save money, deliver on-the-go tracking with mobile apps and enable a bank or credit union to suggest helpful products and services.

The tools that Mint users know and love, such as “Goals,” will also be available to end-users. Goals, which was introduced into Mint.com more than two-and-a-half years ago, has already helped users set aside $33 billion.

“By blending Mint with their digital banking home page, financial institutions can provide immediate, meaningful financial insights to their customers, help more people save money and further deepen banking relationships by recommending relevant financial products at the time when people are most interested,” said Greg Wright, vice president of product management at Intuit Financial Services.

More than 2,800 financial institutions already depend on Intuit Financial Services to provide financial management capabilities that can help increase their customer engagement. Innovations such as blending Mint with digital banking are part of Intuit’s commitment to helping even more consumers and businesses improve the way they manage their money through their financial institution.

Image: Screen shot of immediate savings page powered by Mint to be offered by financial institutions. Click to enlarge.

Image: The latest Intuit Employment and Revenue Index shows small businesses added 10,000 new jobs in March. Unfortunately, small businesses are lagging behind the rest of the economy. While overall employment has risen 4.5 percent in three years, small business employment has risen only 1.4 percent over the same period.

Small businesses want to grow and they want to hire people to help them grow. To do this, they need access to the financial resources that will allow them to hire new employees and help drive economic growth both in their communities and in our nation as a whole.

Unfortunately, too many small businesses today are facing increasing difficulty when it comes to accessing the capital they need:

• 43 percent of small business owners said that in their need for funding they have been unable to find resources – loans, credit cards or individual investors.
• 29 percent of small business owners reported that their loans and lines of credit have been substantially reduced over the last four years. And 1 in 10 had their lines of credit and or loan called in early by the funding source.
• Overall, 53 percent of businesses have been unable to grow their business or expand operations, including hiring, due to lack of capital and 32 percent have reduced their employee roles.

This needs to change. Small businesses play a vital role in creating jobs and growing the economy. It is incumbent on industry, government and financial institutions to find new and innovative ways to ensure that small businesses can access the capital they need.

At Intuit, we are piloting a new service called QuickBooks Financing, which will help small businesses obtain capital faster and at lower rates from lenders. The service also helps lenders make more informed risk decisions, increasing the potential for small businesses to obtain a loan quickly.

We know there is much more than can be done by us and others. I urge lenders to be innovative – look at other ways to verify a small business’s assets rather than what is just on its books. As the backbone of the economy, small businesses should not be excluded from receiving a loan, simply because there are not financial assets on the books. Get creative!

I am also interested in what you think about this important issue. In particular, I would love to hear your ideas on what is the one thing that banks, government, and industry could do differently in order to help small businesses today.

Let me know what you think in the comments and I promise I will bring the best of these ideas with me as Intuit engages with all of the key stakeholders on this important issue.

Cover photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images

An article was previously written aboue Snap Payroll on the Intuit Network but I wanted to remind people just how important applications are for small businesses. Every day I speak to small business owners and they are always looking for new ways to improve their business and grow. This is just one of many applications that can help solve a problem that many owners experience.

Apple also published a video about Snap Payroll and other applications that numerous business owners can use. To view the video, click on Apple’s ‘iPhone in Business’ section.

Are you working in your pajamas, like I am? Whoa. Take a breath. I haven’t taken casual Friday to new depths.

I’m working from home – WFH in Intuit-ese – which just happens to be in the news right now. And no, I’m not wasting time, watching TV or shopping online. I’m sending emails, taking calls, using Skype. I’m working, but not jockeying for position in front of you on the freeway. Sounding better? Maybe. Here’s my WFH life:

I work from home at least one full day a week. In fact, most mornings start there before I head in to the office (flex time, another topic). I have an enjoyable setup at home, with machines and software customized for my needs. I can hop on at 7:30 a.m. and go all day. Not always, but most always.

The hours I log working at home mean I create less smog, cut traffic, and reduce shredded rubber and heavy metal output (Watch out for that street sweeper dust). I am an introvert, and can focus in the peace and quiet of the day. At work, it’s constant…not noise, but distraction. A million projects going on; someone always needs something, 12/7. Constant demand.

Which is good. It proves how successful WFH can be. Productivity? Check. I crank volume. My whole approach is to deliver, execute, ship. I coast into deadlines, making clients happy. I have a fast connection, an afternoon of phone calls, and my kids’ school a block away. Then it’s back for a final meeting

before heading off to swim practice – theirs, not mine. My kids have my undivided attention. If it’s important, people ring. They don’t ring often. My time is dedicated.

Speaking of time, I’ve eliminated almost two hours of daily commuting (34 miles total, but that’s Highway 85). Instead of focusing 20 percent on a call while behind the wheel, I can apply 100 percent at home. But that’s just me. There are a lot of people who don’t do diddly doo, and maybe they work somewhere else. But for me, Intuit gets its money’s worth. And I get my life – and more.

Photos: Top – Video producer Scott Caplener’s home setup has plenty of muscle to edit the most demanding productions. Bottom: Setting up the studio for a shoot for Quicken 2000.

Campbell, a 30-year tech industry veteran, has been called a guru, advisor, mentor and coach. He has inspired and influenced some of the Valley’s best and brightest companies including Apple and Google. A former head football coach for Columbia University, he has been known to lead effectively both on the field and in the boardroom.

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Did you attend the CEO conversation with Bill Campbell on April 12? If so, we’d love your feedback on the event.

The survey should take 3-5 minutes to complete and your responses will be completely confidential. Just click the link below.

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It is easy to lose sight of this fact. Recently, I met with a product team that was spending more time preparing for and going to meetings than they were building a great product. We diagnosed the issues and I walked away with three key insights that leaders can do to make sure they are removing barriers, not creating them.

1) The team sets the calendar, not the boss. Often times, supervisors schedule check-in meetings to be updated on the status of a new product launch. The problem is the meeting may not align with the natural learning milestones the team is experiencing in their product development process. So the end result is that it creates extra work for our teams to get ready to update us, distracting them from focusing on the important work like building the product. The boss should be coming to a meeting at the natural check-in points or when the team calls it, not when we decide we want an update.

2) Do your homework in advance. Leaders should get up to speed on the topic areas before a meeting. Our job is to arrive grounded in the context. Don’t waste your teams’ time bringing you up to speed. For example, if I am attending a meeting with a team for a product review: prior to the meeting, I should actually use the product, learn about or use the competitive alternatives, and then focus the my attention in the meeting on the thing the team is wrestling with. Said another way, my job is to understand:

• What’s the problem you’re trying to solve, and what is getting in their way?
• Where’s the area where they have the least amount of confidence that I can help?

3) Refine the team’s priority list, don’t add to it. Often times the boss may have a number of ideas, leaving a meeting with 10 other ideas to pursue. When we aren’t around, our teams refer to this behavior as “swoop and poop.” Particularly with new product teams, our job is not to create a whole bunch of new priorities, but instead we should help the teams narrow and focus. A great product review is when we close by asking the question:

• What is the one thing, out of everything we went through today, that you’re gonna walk out of here and really focus on?

As leaders, our most effective position is often at the back of the line. Meeting only when it’s appropriate time in the project to meet. Getting up to speed and grounded in the context prior to the meeting, and focusing the time with the team on areas where they need the most help. Then leaving the team focused.

Commit to remove barriers, not create them. Your teams will thank you.

But there is more to Hartsough than his love of the Ohio State Buckeyes and small businesses.

In the summer of 2012, Hartsough took the reins as director of corporate sustainability, leading Intuit’s environmental efforts under the banner of Intuit Green. Corporate sustainability and Intuit Green are critical components of the company’s overall corporate social responsibility efforts.  Hartsough spoke to the Intuit Network about why this job keeps him on his toes.

What are you most passionate about?

There are two things I get fired up about. The first is something that drove me for a long stretch in my career, around engineering leadership. The key idea is how to blend technology and organizational development to make software development organizations more successful.

Bruce Hartsough, Intuit’s director of corporate sustainability.

The second thing is hiking, which I took up about 15 years ago. Somehow seeing the environment not in a theoretical sense, but really spending a lot of time out in it – brought something alive for me about the importance of protecting it. In fact, my wife and I were introduced by a mutual friend who thought we would enjoy hiking together, and we still go hiking every weekend. We also have done some backpacking and hope to do more.

What’s your personal definition of sustainability?

Traditionally, it’s linked to environmental impact. And corporate sustainability is about how to lower the company’s environmental impact. But the modern definition, and the one that I’m drawn to, is the “triple bottom line” concept that emphasizes not just the environmental impact but also the social and financial impacts. That’s an emphasis that I have brought to this role – really broadening the definition of sustainability to include working with people at Intuit to emphasize our social impact, as well as our long-term profitability.

Can you talk moe about your approach to the social and financial parts of that equation?The social justice aspect is very important but you can’t really influence environmental impact if you’re dealing with situations where people, say, are in poverty. So our emphasis as a company on financial literacy has a fairly strong impact on people’s ability to make positive decisions. For example, about what kind of food they buy, which in turn has a big impact on the environment. In fact, improving women’s literacy in the developing world has a strong impact on the rate of population growth, which drives the amount that we collectively draw on the planet’s resources. And on the financial side, as I’ve learned from my background as a product development leader, if you have products that are not satisfying shareholder goals, then obviously you can’t be in a position to make investments in areas such as environmental and social justice.

How can Intuit use its products to improve customer sustainability?

There are at least three ways we can do this:

• I’m part of a team that focuses on innovation for social good. We’re working on bringing in potential customers and nonprofits to see how we can create interesting applications, or extensions to our existing applications.
• Potentially partnering with companies that offer sustainability products who would want to reach our millions of small businesses. For example, we might look at an energy management system or an employee engagement tool that causes employees to understand their role in sustainability better, perhaps by gamifying the way education is done. I’ve had interesting conversations with a number of companies about this.
• We can focus on nonprofits. One of my favorite aspects of this role is that I get to spend a lot of time talking to nonprofits – particularly environmental nonprofits. More than 90 percent of them say they use Intuit products to run their company. I don’t think we’ve really organized our thinking about what this means to us as a company yet.

Any other accomplishments you’d like to highlight on the job so far?

We’re continuing to focus on employee engagement. That includes making sure employees worldwide understand the impact that they have on the environment, as well as making sure our operations are sustainable.

I feel very good that we continue to manage our carbon footprint through initiatives like  consolidating our data centers. I feel good about the LEED Gold campus center that was built in Mountain View, and the LEED Platinum development center that we are opening in Bangalore. We’ve got a “Bloom Box” that we’re running now in San Diego – a natural gas-powered source of electricity for parts of that campus. I also feel really good that we moved up to 29th place in the Newsweek Green Rankings 2012.

I consider it a privilege to have this position and to live my passion in the workplace. I encourage people to join the conversation on Twitter.

So confident in the idea, Mariette, who refers to her husband as a “visionary,” advised Scott to chuck his job and start a company. “Just quit your job,” Mariette told Scott. “Let’s move to California, let’s take the kids, let’s go live the dream in Silicon Valley.” And that’s exactly what they did.

Within the next year Mariette and Scott moved their family to Los Altos and launched Vidtel, a cloud video conferencing service. “We took all the poker chips and went all in,” said Mariette. Five years later, the company is going strong. “We’ve never looked back,” she said.

Marriage is hard work, and so is running a business. Yet more and more couples are signing up to tackle both. There aren’t any recent numbers, but it’s estimated that married couples own more than 3 million businesses.

This includes, of course, the local mom-and-pop shops, but there are also some big-name companies in the crowd. Cisco, VMware and Flickr are just a few well-known firms that were founded by married couples.

Perks and Pitfalls

The perks of starting a business with a spouse are obvious. There’s likely no one you trust more than your spouse. And you understand and recognize each other’s skill sets. Married couple Julia and Kevin Hartz, co-founders of Eventbrite, an online ticketing platform, knew their strengths and divvied up responsibilities based on them. Julia focuses solely on people; Kevin oversees the executive staff. “It’ll allows you to work harmoniously and will help you get from Point A to Point B two times faster,” said Julia.

And then there are the personal perks. You can tell – not ask – the boss when you’re leaving work early to catch your child’s soccer game. Or, you can bring the kids to work with you, something the Hartzes do. “They are part of our journey, so they often come to the office or accompany us on business trips,” said Julia.

But along with these pluses come challenges, such as putting all your eggs in one basket. The Whartons went two years with no income. “It’s not for the fainthearted,” said Mariette. “You have to look at yourself before you start an adventure like this and make sure that you have an appetite for risk and uncertainty.”

Another downside: It’s way too easy to bring your work home – business chatter often takes place during breakfast and weekend downtime.

Where’s the Money?

But the biggest challenge many couples face is raising capital. While the Whartons and Hartzes didn’t have a problem, venture capitalists are reluctant to invest in a company run by a married team because the personal and emotional component is too risky. “When there’s a personal relationship on the management team, it complicates things some,” said Geoff Yang of venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures. “It’s definitely a yellow flag.”

 Yang says he has to think ahead: What if one spouse is asked to leave the company? Would the other one want to exit as well? Can the remaining spouse make rational decisions about the situation? “The relationship tends to trump their obligations as an employee or officer of a company.”

Yang says he’s invested in three companies – out of roughly 100 – founded by married couples. Only one failed, and Yang says it wasn’t because of the relationship.

Tips for Success

So is starting a business with a spouse an uphill battle? Maybe. But starting a business usually is, regardless of the relationships. And experts say it’s even more important for married entrepreneurs to follow the same ground rules as anyone else starting a business. Intuit Vice President Greg Wright, who oversees the personal finance website mint.com and small business offerings, provided suggestions for anyone starting a business – married or not:

• Agree on the level of financial risk. “Each partner will likely have a different tolerance for financial risk,” said Wright. “So decide upfront what you’re willing to risk to grow the business. And know where you draw the line.”
• Divide duties based on skill set. “Businesses are most successful when partners tackle the areas they know best,” said Wright. “Determine at the start who’s in charge of what, and plow forward.”
• Ask for outside help. “When married couples run a business, it can take over their lives,” said Wright. “So seek support from people who’ve been through this before. And seek support professionally, too. When it’s just the two of you talking about the business, it narrows your perspective.”
• Communicate. “You can’t let personal feelings affect the business,” said Wright. “So you need to have honest and open communication at all times.”

As for the Whartons, they’ve experienced more ups than downs, and say they’d absolutely do it again. “It’s addicting – we get a big charge out of it,” said Mariette. “But it’s for people who really have a clear passion and are willing to put a lot at stake.”

Hear more from the Whartons about their journey in starting a business together:

Photos: Top: Scott and Mariette Wharton, married couple who founded Vidtel, a cloud video conferencing service. Bottom: Geoff Yang of venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures.

But for thousands of San Francisco Bay area homeless children, it’s a treat – something that protects and comforts tiny feet, helps them fit in with their classmates, and masks their poverty.

My New Red Shoes, a Bay Area nonprofit, helps children in the Bay Area start the school year on the right foot by donating a new pair of shoes to those in need. In addition to gathering and distributing footwear, the organization creates homemade bags for children that include new shoes, $50 Old Navy gift certificates, school supplies, a tag that says “made with love by X (the volunteer’s name),” and a personalized note – just a few special touches to make each child feel loved and important.

Intuit employees from the Employment Management Solutions team volunteered at the organization’s headquarters, using their We Care and Give Back hours to help sort and organize the items for distribution.

“Our team took a few hours out of our day to organize shoes by size and type, sew shoe bags and write personalized, handwritten notes,” said Anu Sanghvi, group product manager. “In addition to our volunteering efforts, we got the opportunity to eat lunch with the non-profit’s team to understand the struggles they face and what keeps their team motivated every day.”

This Redwood City business is a long-time Intuit Online Payroll and QuickBooks customer. Their heart and soul is a small team of four who, on a daily basis, organize, count and keep track of all their donated shoes on paper.

“By volunteering at this great organization, we got a chance to live in our customers ‘shoes’ for a day, and experience their day-to-day struggles first hand. We also donated shoes to help them with their goal of serving 6000 children this year,” said Sanghvi.

“One pair of shoes can change a life for a child in our local community,” said Jennifer Yeagley, executive director of My New Red Shoes. “We’re an organization that thrives on donations and goodwill, and with the help of Intuit and our loyal volunteers, we’re hoping to grow and make a difference to more children in our community, one shoe at a time.”

A gymnast enters every competition with a perfect 10. As they conduct their routine, points are deducted for mistakes. As a result, the gymnast’s goal is to avoid making any mistakes.

It is my experience that the most successful people in business have learned and grown the most from making mistakes. In other words, they approach life like a baseball player.

Consider Ted Williams, whose lifetime batting average was .344. In his best season he hit .406. This means he struck out or didn’t get a hit six out of 10 times. He’s in the Hall of Fame as the greatest hitter in the history of baseball.

In business, it is better to step up to the batter’s box, make contact and try to get on base, and when the time presents itself, swing for the fences. More times than not, you’ll not be successful, but when you do connect, the runners advance and the team will win.

(Photo: Baseball player Ted Williams, Flickr, Baseball Collection)

Today, small businesses make up 87 percent of all U.S. employer firms, employing more than 19 million people across the country. For new and growing small businesses, becoming part of these statistics is a daunting task. We’ve heard from our customers that hiring a first employee is a defining moment for their business and they often don’t know where to start. Whether they are worried about finding the right person or having the right paperwork in place, they know their decisions will forever change the face of their business.

At Intuit, we believe that being armed with the right tools and know-how can help change people’s financial lives. That is why next month we are teaming up with LinkedIn to host a free “Hire Smart Small Business Event,” which will help small businesses make the right decisions when hiring workers. The event will allow them to hear from guest speakers like author and Apprentice winner Bill Rancic and award-winning author and USA Today columnist Rhonda Abrams. Small businesses can also receive personal consulting from experts including lawyers, accountants and HR specialists. Most importantly, attendees will be given the tools and resources they need to get started right away.

Hire Smart will be on Saturday, April 27 and there are options to attend in person or virtually.  I hope you, or a small business owner you know, will consider joining me and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner to celebrate and support small businesses.

To learn more about the event, visit: www.HireSmartNow.com.