(bright electronic music)
("Get Ready" by Rayelle)
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ Get your mind right here ♪
♪ For something ♪
♪ You ain't ever seen ♪
♪ You better get moving ♪
♪ Ready or not ♪
♪ It's about to go down here he comes now ♪
♪ Better get moving ♪
♪ Ready or not ♪
♪ Not not not not ♪
- [Announcer] Officials in China
are dealing with a major health crisis.
- [Announcer] As the number of cases
and deaths rises sharply.
- [Announcer] Historic levels of job losses last month.
("Get Ready" by Rayelle)
♪ You better get moving ready or not ♪
♪ It's about to go down here he comes now ♪
♪ You better get moving ready or not ♪
♪ It's about to go down here he comes now ♪
♪ Get ready ♪
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ Get ready ♪
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ Get ready ♪
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
♪ Get ready ♪
♪ Oh oh oh ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪
- Good morning and welcome to QuickBooks Connect.
We are thrilled that you are here.
This year's conference, like so many other parts
of our lives these days, is going to be a little different
than past ones.
For starters, we're not together in person.
I'm in a studio instead of with all of you.
Some of you may also be joining us from places
and in ways you never dreamed of this time last year.
The important thing is that we are together as a community,
which is what QuickBooks Connect has always been about,
and even though we're gathered virtually this year,
we believe today is an opportunity
to step away from your day-to-day,
to invest in yourself and your business.
Before we get going, I want to take a few moments
to take stock of where we are
and where I believe we can go together.
This has been a year unlike any other.
Back in March, our world changed almost overnight.
Here in California, we've been pretty isolated,
a state of lockdown.
My three sons go to school on Zoom.
My wife does her best
trying to run her interior design small business
from our kitchen.
I try to get some exercise in my garage,
and since there is nowhere else to go,
I watch a lot of cooking shows on Netflix
that make me feel, just for a moment,
like I'm traveling the world on a culinary odyssey.
I'm also very aware of how lucky I am.
I speak to many of you
and I've heard firsthand how hard it's been out there
for small businesses in so many different ways this year.
I know that many of you have had to make big changes,
whether it was reimagining the way you worked,
who you worked with,
or just how you were going to keep your head above water.
Nearly half of small businesses applied for relief
from the government, more than a quarter
are now allowing employees to work from home,
and 28% are more reliant on e-commerce than before.
At Intuit, our job is to be there for our customers
through good and bad, and when COVID hit hard,
we amped up every effort to be able to help
by facilitating over a billion dollars in PPP loans
through QuickBooks, harnessing millions of dollars
through GoFundMe to support small businesses
all across the country, and launching Intuit Aid Assist
to help people understand what assistance
they may be eligible for.
March seems like a lifetime ago.
We've all adjusted our lives, but here we are,
and it's still going on.
You've told us how exhausting and demoralizing it is
to keep going when the future is so unclear,
about the challenges of trying to make the right call
for yourself, your family, and your employees.
I see it every day with my wife.
Her customers have mostly dried up
and those that have stuck by her
are making the same risk calculations we all are
when facing uncertain futures.
How do I take care of my kids?
How do I keep our family safe?
Is the next paycheck going to be enough to make ends meet?
The bottom line is it's hard to make the right call
when everything is up in the air, everything is uncertain.
So what do you do?
How do you adjust to running a small business
in this strange new normal, with an uncertain future
and no playbook to refer to?
For starters, many of you have done what small businesses
have always done, be resilient, be nimble, persevere,
and find a way to get through.
Let me tell you about Andi Conte.
She and her husband spent 10 years
building Water2Table here in San Francisco.
It's a successful wholesale seafood business
supplying some of the top restaurants here in the city.
In March, she went from running a successful business
to suddenly having zero orders and zero deliveries to make.
Overnight, they were faced with the crushing brutality
of laying off her staff and trying to figure out
if their business had a future at all.
Andi said at first she was just in shock,
just overwhelmed by the moment, but she also wasn't ready
to give up doing what she loved,
what she had worked so hard building, her dream.
So she looked for a way to play offense.
Andi pivoted from wholesale
to running a direct-to-consumer business.
That meant teaching herself a whole new way
of doing business, new ways of selling,
new customer service models, new cashflow system,
learning how to use social media,
essentially, starting a new company
while still keeping what she loved,
supporting local fishermen at the heart of her business.
She stuck with it, pushed through the long hours,
and now has enough of a customer base to keep going,
to hire back more than half her staff.
But this is 2020, the year when anything
that could happen does happen, and just when Andi
was getting her head above water with the new business,
there was a massive fire on the pier
where they have their offices.
The fire consumed almost everything on the pier.
All that Andy had worked for was about to go up in flames,
except there were some fishermen there that night
working their boats.
They knew Andi, knew what she had sacrificed for them,
and they came to the rescue and saved her business
from literally burning down.
It seems so crazy, terrifying, exhilarating
all at the same time, but Andi's story is just one of many.
86% of small businesses had developed new products
and services this year because of the pandemic.
And we've seen stories like Andi's happening
everywhere across the country.
Whether it's pivoting from an alcohol distillery
into making hand sanitizer, shifting in-person art classes
to teaching over Zoom, transforming from a local shoe store
to selling shoes nationally across multiple platforms,
all of them speak to the incredible resilience and courage
and sense of community that is at the heart
of so many small businesses,
and is powering your ability to get through this moment.
I believe in you.
The QuickBooks team, 5,000 strong, believes in you.
We know navigating this crazy year is not easy
and we've worked double time to make sure
that QuickBooks is there for you.
We also know that QuickBooks and our entire platform
is a critical part of many of your businesses,
and we take that responsibility very seriously.
Our vision is for QuickBooks to be the source of truth
for your business, a single integrated platform
to address your needs, no matter how big or small
your business may be, and with all
that is going on this year,
we've been increasing the speed of innovation
and pushing ourselves to grow and evolve QuickBooks
so that it can be there for you now
when you need it the most.
Let me share just a few examples of things
I'm most excited about to help our community.
When times are tight and uncertain, money and cashflow
can become a thorn in your side, a constant reminder,
a nag that you cannot shake, and if left unchecked,
it can spiral out of control.
We have reimagined QuickBooks Money to put you in control,
giving you a faster way to get paid,
an easier way to pay your bills,
a simple way to access new sources of capital,
and the most complete way to see
and control your cashflow into the future.
We have rebuilt banking and money management
for your business.
And we've taken the work out of payroll.
Easily take care of your team with automated payroll,
hold on to your money longer with same-day payroll,
and because we know that payroll doesn't end at a paycheck,
we've integrated HR, benefits, and more
right within QuickBooks.
Next, with an explosive shift to e-commerce,
having an omni-channel strategy for your business
is no longer optional.
With QuickBooks Commerce,
we're now giving you the opportunity
to expand through the most popular online
and offline channels, all connected to QuickBooks,
so you can meet your customers where they are.
We also now offer QuickBooks Advanced
for rapidly growing businesses.
With workflow automations,
enhanced multi-user permissioning, bulk actions,
and connections to the most critical third-party apps,
Advanced will help you accelerate your business.
At the same time, we continue to increase automation
across our entire ecosystem to save you precious time.
We're using artificial intelligence
at enterprise level scale across all of our offerings,
from payroll to our accountant products,
to arm you with the critical insights
so you can run your business faster and smarter.
You'll have the opportunity today
to hear more about all of these innovations and others
from our amazing leaders.
I want you to see and hear for yourselves
the passion and the intensity with which we are working
to solve some of your biggest challenges.
What I want you to hear directly from me
is that you are not alone.
We are here for you.
We will do everything we can to support our customers,
especially now when you need us more than ever.
I want to end where we started.
We all want to thrive, but how do we do that
when the path ahead is uncertain,
when none of us know what the future holds?
Right now, where we are today, this is the key,
to push forward despite current circumstances.
This pandemic will pass but customers' expectations
and behaviors aren't just going to snap back
to the pre-COVID days.
There is no going back.
People are learning new ways of doing things,
and that is reshaping our world.
It's e-commerce and multi-channel commerce
becoming a core part of all businesses, both big and small.
It's the shift to virtual experiences
becoming a common and accepted part
of all aspects of our lives.
It's the rise of remote working and a basic paradigm shift
about the very nature of how we think about work.
So how do we thrive
when sometimes it's just hard enough to survive?
The answer is in the word itself.
We push forward despite circumstances.
Thriving is not some destination you'll get to someday.
It's a mindset for approaching each day.
It's pushing forward even when the path is not clear.
That's why we've designed today to be a toolbox
for helping you chart that path forward.
It's about learning new tools and skills
to adapt to this changing world,
about connecting to this incredible community
that we're all a part of,
and it's about sharing all the ways that QuickBooks
can help you in your journey.
We are thrilled you are here
and I hope you each get something practical
and meaningful out of today's QuickBooks Connect.
But I also know, when you log off today
and get back to work, there will be times
when you feel on your own, you will have moments of doubt.
That's human nature, and it's especially true
when you run your own business
and it's all on your shoulders.
One constant I've seen
in both running my own small business and now in my position
at Intuit is the incredible vision and passion,
and most importantly, the courage of every single person
who has ever struck out on their own.
The world changes, technology shifts,
the unexpected happens, but that core courage
remains steady and strong.
Remember that on the tough days,
on the days when it seems like too much.
Call on that courage that got you to take the leap
in the first place.
It's still there inside you.
Now is the time to have the courage to continue.
Standing still is not an option.
We all need to lean into the future.
You, me, everyone here today, we are all in this together,
finding our way forward, and together,
I know you will do much more than survive.
You will thrive.
Thank you for being here today
and have a great QuickBooks Connect.
(bright electronic music)