“We The Prosperous” – Meet Verone & LaVerda, World Travelers Spreading Inspiration

Every Intuit customer has their own story. Along each of their journeys, they find passion, share advice, take risks, celebrate success, and form a community of their own.

From small business owners, to the self-employed and those simply seeking ways to be more financially savvy – we’re here to be a part of each story and champion our customers as they take steps forward on their path to prosperity. Hear how the power of many comes together to support the business of one with #WeTheProsperous.

Meet Verone and LaVerda – they use QuickBooks to help them manage their travel blog and apparel brand, Find and Journey as they roam the world and share inspiring stories.

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Intuit: Verone and LaVerda, tell us about your business!

Verone and LaVerda: We started Find and Journey because we really enjoy going to different places, and wanted a platform to share our experiences. The business – consisting of our blog and now an apparel brand – lives primarily on social media. The idea came about during a trip to Dubai in 2016 when where we shared our first stories about our trip. LaVerda’s favorite place to visit is Hawaii, and Verone’s favorite place is Dubai.

Intuit: What do you wish someone told you before you started your self-employed journey?

Verone and LaVerda: We wish someone had told us to start our own business sooner! Sometimes fear can get in the way. We always wanted to start our own business, and it took us some time to build up the confidence to do it. Now that we are on this journey, it feels amazing and we just love doing it!

Intuit: What would you say was your main obstacle to becoming successful? How did you overcome it?

Verone and LaVerda: Staying creative! So much of our travel blog takes place on social media, and the social media landscape can change so quickly. It can be challenging to stay creative and relevant – we want our content to always interesting enough so our audience keeps coming back. To help us stay current on social media trends, we’ve studied other blogs and brands that have been successful on social media to help guide how we want to curate our own content.

Intuit: What’s been most surprising about your self-employed journey?

Verone and LaVerda: That it requires a lot of patience. We sometimes want to reach a level of success really fast, but we are quickly learning that it takes time to get where you want to go.

Intuit: Who are you inspired by?

Verone and LaVerda: Our parents are our biggest inspirations and supporters. They believe in us, and keep us motivated and energized to keep going even when times are tough. Our dad has started a number of his own small businesses, so we look to him for advice. At the end of the day, he loves that we are independent and doing this on our own, and learning as we go.

Intuit: What drew you to Intuit’s products? How do you use them?

Verone and LaVerda: We use QuickBooks and TurboTax. Both products came highly recommended from friends of ours. QuickBooks is super simple to use and understand, and is crucial for us to keep track of our business. We use TurboTax for our own personal taxes, and it helps us split up our business and personal expenses and tax information pretty easily.

Intuit: Who do you lean on for support? Who do you go to for questions about your business?

Verone and LaVerda: We like to ask our audience and fans on social media for traveling tips and experiences. We make it a point to be interactive on Instagram, in particular. We also go to our parents and friends for lots of things, like bouncing ideas off of them and asking questions when we need help. Our friends are a focus group of sorts for testing new ideas before sharing with our broader audience.

Intuit: What are your goals for the year?

Verone and LaVerda: We want to inspire other girls out there to start their own businesses and chase their dreams, and hope they see us as an example that it can be done. We see it happening within our circle of friends, but want to inspire people from all over enough to make changes in their life.

We’d also like to travel to some places that we’ve never been to. In particular, we’d like to visit Tokyo, Japan and a few places in South Africa.

Intuit: What does prosperity mean to you?

Verone and LaVerda: Prosperity means finding happiness and reaching the goals you set forth for yourself. It is something that is defined by yourself and not by others. Prosperity is about personal growth and competing against yourself to reach the life you want.