Biznik - Business Networking that Doesn’t Suck

Today I’m am thrilled to announce that Intuit is Biznik’s first major sponsor. We’ve been working closely over the past couple of months with some fantastic people at Intuit, to come up with a form of sponsorship that works for both Intuit and for this community of small business owners. Check out the Learn section this morning, and you’ll see what we came up with - a new section on the Learn page featuring articles provided by Intuit on topics that we’re confident you’ll find helpful, relevant, and interesting.

After working with Intuit to develop this sponsorship, I totally understand why Fortune magazine this year called Intuit - for the third straight year - “the most admired software company in America.” Intuit really does work hard to understand and support small business, and today’s sponsorship is certainly an indication of that to us.

The sponsorship, which will run for the month of April, will help us develop Biznik more quickly, so that this community can grow faster and do a better job at our core mission: helping you grow your business faster and making it more profitable. From all of us and Biznik and on behalf of the entire business networking community here, thank you Intuit!

To give you a complete picture of why Intuit is sponsoring Biznik, I interviewed Laura Messerschmitt, a product manager at Intuit.

Q: There are a lot bigger communities on the web than Biznik! Why is Intuit interested in participating on Biznik?

It’s true there are a lot bigger communities on the web, but bigger isn’t always better. At Intuit, we pride ourselves on customer-driven innovation…staying tuned-in to the needs, concerns & issues of emerging/growing businesses. Forging a relationship with Biznik (a small business itself) and their community of business owners seems like a great way to accomplish this goal.

Q: We’re delighted to welcome Intuit as the first major sponsor of this community. I’m curious, though: why not simply purchase advertising here? Why is Intuit interested in joining the conversation, rather than simply flashing ads at us?

Thanks. We’re delighted to be here and hope to establish a long-term relationship with the Biznik community. In fact staying tuned into the business community, establishing ongoing relationships & the desire to engage in 2-way conversations with business owners is exactly what excites us about the Biznik sponsorship. We’ve found traditional advertising helps people learn about the benefits of our products and services but it doesn’t often give us a venue to really talk with business owners. And talking with business owners is part of Intuit’s DNA.

For the past fifteen years we regularly go on what we call “follow-me-homes” where we visit business owners in their office, garage, kitchen table – you name it– to learn more about what keeps them up at night and what drives them during the day. These conversations help us improve our products/services or even create new ones to help them. So joining the conversation is what we’re really about and we hope to do this by both learning from the Biznik community & sharing our own experiences.

Q: Who will be writing the articles? What kind of experience are they bringing to the conversation?

Intuit has pulled these articles from a variety of sources. Some are coming from other small businesses. Some are coming from subject matter experts who know a certain field really well. Others are coming from Intuit studies as well as our employees, who have spent a lot of time researching the needs of small businesses. We tried to pick the articles that we thought would be the most valuable.

Q: Do you think small, personal businesses are a significant force in the economy? Why?

Absolutely! There are approximately 26 million small businesses in the U.S. They generate 50 percent of the private, nonfarm gross domestic product (GDP). That’s roughly $5 trillion in annual sales. If US small businesses were a country, that would make them the fourth largest economy in the world!

The number of small businesses is expected to go up as Baby Boomers, Gen Y, women and immigrants increasingly start their own businesses. Technology is also allowing small business to do more: to go global, to produce high quality products and services from home, and to partner with big business. We recently did a study about what small business will look like ten years from now. You can check it out at: www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that solopreneurs face? How does Intuit help solve them?

Your Biznik members really should be answering that question, since they’re the ones on the frontlines. That said, we’ve learned a lot over the years, having served over 3 million businesses. The biggest challenges we see businesses facing are getting customers, prioritizing time, managing money & staying confident/motivated.

1. Getting new customers and retaining current customers. A new startup doesn’t always have the network and presence in the community that a more established business might have. Thus, finding customers can be hard.
We are doing a lot right now around trying to help small businesses find customers. We have some new services that recently launched that make it easy for a small business to create a website, get listed in online directories, and manage their customers. Those resources can be found at: http://marketingtools.intuit.com.

2. The Time Crunch: Running a business is very time consuming, especially for solopreneurs. We hear things like ‘I am the only one who does everything & there’s only so much time in the day.’ They’re looking for ways to streamline all the administrative tasks and paperwork so that they can focus on the more important parts—getting customers, building their business & staying competitive. But, this can be challenging.

Finally, helping small businesses with the time crunch problem is at the core of what Intuit does. Our back-office software solutions are designed specifically to help small businesses to manage their books and records easily and quickly. We have free versions of our software that would be quite appropriate for the solopreneur that makes up a large portion of the Biznik membership. To get the free software, go to www.quickbooks.com and search for “Free Simple Start.” That will pull up the link to allow you to download the free Simple Start software.

Staying confident & motivated can be challenging, especially when you’re a solo entrepreneur working out of your home.
In order to help small businesses find trusted advisors, we developed a website. That site is http://www.quickbooksgroup.com/. Click on the “Local Help and Events” tab. We are also working with groups like Biznik to help them help their members develop connections with advisors and friends.

To help businesses get started and stay motivated, we’ve also launched an online community called JumpUp.com. It’s an online destination where you can get your business questions answered, get advice from peers & experts, and find free tools/resources for growing your business.

Managing money is really important for solopreneurs, especially those just starting out. (Poor money management is the #1 reason new businesses fail.) Our QuickBooks line of financial software is great way for businesses to stay on top of their finances. It helps track sales & expenses, generates invoices, pays bills, manages inventory & provides all sorts of really useful reports.

Intuit’s payroll and merchant account solutions are two additional solutions that help small businesses manage money.

The innovation and customer-driven focus that inspired these breakthroughs and alliances leads us to expand further, solve larger problems, and bring new products and services to more people and businesses. As the world evolves, so do we. Yet we remain driven by our passion for inventing solutions to solve important problems, perfecting those solutions and delighting our customers. We started small in 1983 with Quicken personal finance software, simplifying a common household dilemma: balancing the family checkbook. Little more than two decades later, our revenue tops $2.6 billion, we’re publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and recognized as America’s most-admired software company and one of the country’s best places to work.