 Live from San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's theCUBE, covering QuickBooks Connect 2016. Now, here are your hosts, Jeff Frick and John Wall. Well good morning, if you're on the West Coast or good afternoon on the East Coast, for our viewers that are tuning in on that time zone. Welcome back to San Jose here on theCUBE, the SiliconANGLE TV flagship broadcast where we extract the signal from the noise. We're doing that this week here in San Jose at QuickBooks Connect 2016. Really a small business show that features a lot of accountants. We're going to talk about that a little bit. It's really a feature that Jeff Frick and I were just discussing, we're going to touch on it now. Good morning, Jeff. How are you? Good, John. How are you? Good night, sleep. You're a home game for you. You're a Valley guy. Home game for me. Not a great home game for the Warriors, but I have a sneaky suspicion it's the best thing that Steve Kerr would have asked for. Are we going to get into that this morning? All the hoopla, let's keep things calm. Like you said, it's a home game. The world got kind of turned upside down sports-wise, as the Cubs lost and the Warriors got trounced at home. But not why we're here. We're here to be talking about what's going on at this show. The big theme that I just touched on there briefly is that this is about accounting, right? This is about accounting procedures and accounting tools and accounting resources. But as you and I were discussing before we came on the air, it really is about operating small business here, and that's what drives this energy and drives the passion of this community. Yeah, and as you used to talk, there's a bunch of people from all different walks of life, all kinds of small businesses and nonprofits that are here learning to run their business and into a QuickBooks now becomes kind of the platform in which they can plug and play all these other applications. But it is really a small business show and that's what gives it its positive vibe. That's what makes it more than just a tech conference. And it's interesting to watch and it's the positive energy of what small business means to the economy, what small business means to individual lives. And over and over and over, most people start small businesses because they're passionate about something. So it's that passion that comes through, but unfortunately when we start a small business, you still have to deal with paying bills and invoicing customers and collecting debts and paying your people and setting aside money for taxes. So all the stuff that you're not that passionate about, but is a necessary evil, really what QuickBooks wants to do is help you get that stuff done so you can continue to focus on your passion. And it's not only small business, which of course is to focus here, but self-employed. And that's what has struck me just over the past 24 hours alone. I thought, okay, Uber driver last night, going back to the hotel, lift driver this morning, just two small examples of that. But people, as I had conversations with them over my 20 minute ride was about the problems and the challenges that they have in terms of keeping track of their finances and what their car's doing, their business expenses, the time they're spending, how they adjust for this and their tax preparations and what have you and learning the nuances of that and then finding somebody in whom they have trust to help them. And then at breakfast with three ladies that run a nonprofit in Los Angeles County and they're here for different reasons. You'll learn how to operate their business, you'll learn how to do better fundraising, keep better track of their fundraising, do better jobs with maintaining their taxes and their reporting. So this wide breadth, really, of personnel and purpose and cause and mission makes it a pretty interesting show, I think. And then you've got that pesky thing with the government regulations and compliance and it was great to get Karen Mills on from the SBA, because there as often happens with the government and regulations are kind of chasing the technology and the innovation by the tail and this whole gig economy as more people are driving Uber's and Lyft's and doing these types of activities either full time or part time and not necessarily even as sophisticated as a small business owner is really adding new challenges and I think as you go forward and you talk about healthcare and retirement and as she said, really looking for bad actors trying to take advantage of the situation, it's very interesting times and we keep hearing over and over, I know a lot of big companies continue to have RIFs and reductions in force and people are getting laid off, small businesses and opportunity or doing a gig economy to get a few extra bucks to pay the bills. You love that term too, by the way. I do love it. I like doing gigs, John. You're right. But I think it's interesting times for the government as well to keep up with this evolution and this change. Let's shift just a little bit. You hit on passion a bit ago and we heard that on the keynotes this morning but I want to get your take on the keynotes in general. Frankly, they've blown me away with how prominent of a collection of keynote presenters, quick books has put together. I mean, yesterday we heard from Malcolm Gladwell, we heard from Michael Phelps. This morning had Jillian Michaels formerly the biggest loser, Tony Hawk, skateboarding fame, Christian Serrano, fashion design, Simone Biles, US Olympic gold medalist, Michael Phelps, you know what I mean? This great list of speakers with an inspiring message of their personal stories, their professional stories, their perseverance, their courage, their failures, all these things that I think really resonate with the crowd and my hats off to QuickBooks for putting together a really outside the box list of keynotes or sampling of keynote speakers that you might not have understood the connection until you saw them on stage. And it really fit like a glove. And don't forget the big man tonight, the Shaq. I've got Shaq. The Shaq is coming down to the Oracle Arena. He was up there last night with the TNT crew coming down. Last year they had Oprah Winfrey. So again, we go to a lot of shows. Generally you'll have one big name keynote who's kind of a famous person to give their message but it's an amazing amount of names all with a personal story for a 5,000 person conference. You just don't see it that often and they just bring them one after another after another after another. And like you said, what's nice is it's their personal story. It's getting a view into what they went through to get to where they are. And as Malcolm said yesterday in his keynote about Fleetwood Mac, the overnight successes generally aren't overnight. You just don't know about them to the morning of the day after the day actually. Yeah, it's a success. Famous, right? But usually there's a long, long road and many failures and that was really a key point I think in this morning's keynote. Where have you failed? What would you tell yourself looking back 10 years, 15 years? What are the lessons that you can share? And what's nice in this type of a situation is we're all kind of in it together. That's right. We all want everyone to succeed. We're not necessarily competing directly. So how can I help you? And the one great takeaway, the question was asked, do you have a mentor? And was it Tony Hawk? One of them just said, I just asked. I just reached out and asked. And I think it's such a great lesson that so many people don't take hold of. Just ask. You may or may not get a response. If you don't get a response, you're in the same place that you were before you asked. Put yourself out there, take a risk. Ask. It amazes me generally when you get to really senior people, successful people. Scott Cook yesterday. Usually they're very humble. They are very willing to help you if you ask. And you're lucky enough to get a few moments of their time. Just ask. It's usually the people that aren't quite as successful that are trying to get really successful or gating the really successful people that are kind of the pains in the butt. But when you get to the guys to the top and the women at the top, generally they're very forthcoming with advice and they're very forthcoming with giving you a little bit of sage wisdom. So just ask. Right. The really one of the consistent themes that we've heard here about, it is about risk taking. And I'm not sure if it was Brad Smith yesterday or it might have been Scott. But they're talking about an entrepreneur. The definition of that is somebody who will jump out of an airplane and figure out how to work the parachute on their way down. And so her Jillian talked a little bit about that today too about not the fear of failure but the acceptance of failure and accepting the risk. And the point that she made, Jillian Michaels again with a pretty inspiring story but really a rags to riches story. The more security that you seek, the less success you're going to have. So like the more comfort you have, the safer you play it, the closer to the vest you play it, the less chance you have to really hit it big and then really succeed. So small business is about being passionate about what you're doing, making sure that you embrace all the aspects of the job. Tony Hawk talked about that. It's not just the fun stuff. But if you're going to run a business, you have to accept doing the accounting, making sure that your payables and receivables are in order, making sure you understand about invoicing and the challenges of that. But if you love all of it, then you'll embrace that and you go in with eyes wide open. But they all had failure stories too. And I saw a lot of head nodding going on out in the audience when I was there as they were talking about when maybe like in Simone Biles, when she fell off the balance to be at one point in a big competition, big failure, millions of people watching around the world, but she got back on the beat and eventually succeeded at the most recent Summer Olympics. So I think it's those kinds of messages, again, that are inspiring. Not somebody up there talking about this tour or that tour, this resource, which is fun and important and a very great time for QuickBooks on this platform, their platform, to announce those kinds of revelations. But the real life stories, that's what I find most attractive about that. And what I think is an interesting element about this particular show. Yeah, I think that's what makes great shows great. It's people, right? At the end of the day, the attendees are people, the presenters are people, and if they can make a people-to-people connection, that's where you really start to learn stuff and absorb things and take away and come back next year. And they had that via this kind of passion about small business. It's not an accounting show. It's supposed to be, but it's really not. It's really a small business. I can't wait to come back, right? Well, hopefully so. Hopefully we will. And we got a full day today. We got a great day coming up and we're going to have much more in store here on the show floor of Quick Book Connects 2016. Coming up here on theCUBE, we'll continue in San Jose right after this.