Small Business United Blog

Lessons for the Working Woman

by Holly Perez

Intuit and the Intuit Financial Freedom Foundation sponsored the Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Calif. During the two-day event, we distributed thousands of journals and made personal connections with women…

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The Power of Suggestion: Customer Interaction that Works

by Dina DiNucci

If you’ve opened a business, you’ve experienced it.  “YOU SHOULD ….serve sandwiches, paint your walls a different color…”and so on.   Plenty of well-meaning friends and customers volunteer their advice on things you should do to improve your business.  When you’re first starting out, the more suggestions - the more you wonder if you’re doing ANYTHING ...

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Sage Advice for Women from a Secretary of State

by Holly Perez

While speaking to nearly 25,000 women (including myself) at the recent Women’s Conference  in Long Beach, Calif., Madeleine Albright believes there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other. Now, these may seem like harsh words, especially coming from a woman who was named the first female Secretary of State ...

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The Daddy of All Coffees

by Troy Marcyes

According to Lee Paterson, the founder of Hula Daddy Coffee, not all coffee is created equal.

The words “pure Kona coffee” can be deceiving. For those who are coffee connoisseurs or just desire the morning cup to get your day started, know that the word “pure” has a certain status to live up to.

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Get Your Business Financially Fit!

by Lily Wong

My Intuit coworker Sherry Martin and her husband, Todd Martin (a former Intuit executive turned small business owner), have a very successful restaurant business. Their Tucson Tamale Company has been in business for about a year, and it has already received numerous rave reviews online and spotlights in various magazines! Todd told me that one of the most important financial decisions he has made as a small business owner was to make a commitment (with Sherry, of course) “not to take any money out of the business for the first two years”…

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From Local To Global Small Business: 5 Best Practices That Make It Happen

by Laurel Delaney

Looking ahead ten years, it is easy for me to see that nearly every single person on the planet will have a global small business that hopefully will become BIG someday.  This evolution will be similar to the shift from black and white television to color.  If you had tried to watch black and white ...

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What Every Small Business Can Learn from Miley Cyrus

by Christen Wegner

A couple of weeks ago, Miley Cyrus deleted her Twitter account. And what happened? The Internet and tweens, girls aged 9-14, everywhere freaked.

Web sites clamored over why she left, and dozens of other tweens vowed to follow suit. Many were sad, many were happy, and many questioned why it was news.

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Today’s Young Entrepreneur

by Rachel Euretig

It must be the month of the Young Entrepreneur. A couple weeks ago, BusinessWeek announced its fifth annual list of the country’s top 25 entrepreneurs 25 and under. And the October issue of Inc. Magazine features America’s 30 “coolest entrepreneurs” under 30.

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Collecting Positive Reviews

by Becky McCray

People trust other people, much more than they trust you. That means your potential customers trust the semi-anonymous reviews written on online review sites more than all that great text on your own website.

Do you regularly monitor what is said about you on TripAdvisor, VirtualTourist or Igougo? How about mainstream booking sites like Hotels.com, Expedia or Orbitz?

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Jumpstart Your Relationships with Customers

by Mee-Sun Yuk

In recent outreach to small business retailers, we found that the big issue on their minds is getting more business, but time and money are holding them back. One great tool unique to small business retailers is their ability to establish great relationships with their customers. Find new ways to use that to your advantage - reach out to customers you already have to drive repeat business to your store.

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