A hug? Are you kidding me, a small business owner just gave me a hug. After spending two days with him covering business model canvasses, marketing fundamentals, innovation design and financial sustainability, he gave me a hug. He and I became friends, I became a coach, and he became an inspiration. He so appreciated the coaching and content that my team of 12 Intuit We Care Give Back – Bold volunteers delivered in the course of 2 days, that he gave me a hug. We will be friends forever.
It is an experience like this one that reminds me that everything we do is about the people – the friends we meet in our work and the impact we have on each other. No matter if you work in Mountain View, California, Fredericksburg, Virginia or in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it’s the people who make the difference in what we do. Every time we help a customer solve a problem, help them get a little closer to their dreams, or simply empathize with their struggles, we have impact. It is this connection that drew me to work with small businesses and this is what I have seen first-hand over and over around the world and most recently in Brazil.
Over the past 7 days, we have spent a lot of time with enterprising small business entrepreneurs in Brazil. We delivered all of Intuit’s gifts – Design 4 Delight, customer empathy, financial models, and marketing fundamentals to small businesses, and the response has been tremendous. They realized the power of customer empathy by speaking to and observing their target customers in order to improve their products and services; they realized the need to accurately track and forecast their business to be profitable; and they thought through their customer experiences and how they can improve them to drive word-of-mouth and loyalty among their customers. It is amazing how these models and techniques transcend geography, culture and even languages.
I will leave this experience with many new friends and inspirations. My teammates who have worked extremely hard to develop great content for the small businesses have been amazing. The confidence the small business owners have gained to pursue their dreams – incredible. Knowing that the lives of our team and our participants have forever changed, priceless!